Word: phenomenons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lone gunman on a single day was waged by James Oliver Huberty, who murdered 21 victims, many of them children, in a McDonald's restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif., in 1984. In the past two decades, random mass slayings have become increasingly common in the U.S. It is a phenomenon peculiar to the late 20th century: a single twisted soul / slaughtering near or total strangers, acting on a vague, incomprehensible motive. Like so many other mass murderers, serial killers and assassins, Sherrill, 44, was described as a quiet loner. He was unmarried and apparently had no close friends, although...
...from the beach. People always seem to bring a lot of stuff to the beach--suntan lotion, towel and book to read that you never get around to reading but do get sand in, but beach-goers on the Vineyard seem to bring more than most. This phenomenon is best described as power-beaching. To make the correct impression at a well-populated Vineyard beach, you must bring a whole slew of different accoutrements (not things, accoutrements). First of all, no sexy bathing suits allowed. For women, anything by Ralph Lauren or Lilly Pulitzer (especially the pink zebra bikini...
Regrets Only, her first novel, highlights a growing Washington phenomenon: reporters are no longer just ink-stained hacks who cover the capital's celebrities; they have become, in fiction and fact, stars in their own right. In a town where power and glory are as ephemeral as the jobs that confer them, top reporters who stay put can become the most enduring part of the celebrity elite. It is a theme of Sally Quinn's novel--and of her life...
...their children. Critics today argue, with some validity, that the mothers got away with what they did because their demands were more humanistic than political, and because Argentine society tends, like most of Latin America, to worship the mother as an extension of the Virgin Mary. (In Spanish, the phenomenon is known as marianismo.) But the undeniable fact is that, in a society in which the newspapers (with one exception) were silent, the courts were a farce, the police formed an arm of the military government and members of opposition groups were being tortured and murdered in some 340 clandestine...
...meantime, he finished the script on which Sylvester Stallone did his usual devastating rewrite -- and turned into Rambo. The Terminator was a low-budget ($6.5 million) job, perhaps the most original movie of 1984 and a surprise critical and commercial hit. Rambo, of course, was Rambo, the movie phenomenon of the following year. ("I recognize parts of it," Cameron says manfully, but adds, "I was trying to create a semirealistic, haunted character, the quintessential Viet Nam returnee, not a political statement...