Word: popped
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fragmentation and separateness. In such a world, it is remarkable that we have anything at all in common. Perhaps at one time, religion or nationalism might have been a source of unity. But such things are not really possible in the modern age, and to a large extent, pop culture has, for better or worse, become that great unifier...
Considering Harvard's origins, this new wrinkle should be no surprise. This university began, in the misty days of our colonial past by training ministers to spread the gospel in the wilderness. So it is only right that it should row prepare them to spread the new gospel of pop culture, with folks like Beavis and Butt-head as their animated messiahs...
LIKE A TROUBADOUR ADRIFT ON the blue highways of America, John Mellencamp has hitched his muse to the hopes and broken dreams of the heartland. Even before the mid-'80s, when he renounced the pop artifice of his John Cougar past and took back his given name, he had found his calling as a spinner of hook-laden odes to the ordinary man. Early hits that hinted at the darker dimensions of suburbia, like Jack and Diane and Pink Houses, sold millions and made Mellencamp an MTV star. On later albums, like Scarecrow (1985) and The Lonesome Jubilee...
...heavy champagne consumption in the late '80s, sales have dropped dramatically, and profits with them. In 1989, 249 million bottles were sold; by 1992 the number had slumped to just over 214 million. Part of the problem is cyclical: the sluggish world economy has provided little incentive to pop champagne corks. But the French producers are also paying for aggressive pricing in the days of high demand. Prices nearly doubled during the '80s. Champagne drinkers started looking elsewhere -- notably to Australia, the U.S. and Spain -- for acceptably priced bubbly, even if it did not contain the right stuff...
While he could express himself on the court, off it he was a captive of his own role as a megacelebrity. So assailed was he by fans, autograph seekers, hangers-on and the usual detritus of pop fame that he would rarely leave the protection of his hotel room when he was on the road. At the same time, as the most popular corporate spokesman in America, he was stuck in the persona that marketing wizards had created for him: the smiling, aw-shucks athletic phenom whom you would gladly have over to your house for a breakfast of champions...