Word: presto
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...there is help. Just make a quick phone call, and a compact van, stocked with thousands of solutions, will arrive at your door. A driver- decorator (98% are women) will survey the immediate problems and analyze whether your inclinations are in the formal, casual, transitional or luxurious mode. Then, presto! Out from the van can come decks of fabric swatches, wheels of paint chips, pages of wall coverings, rows of baked tiles, furniture catalogs -- even lamps and statuary. For customers who like things fancy, there are silk screens, antique engravings, custom-framed landscapes and Old Master reproductions -- a Degas...
...hundred years later, 25 Senators and 181 Representatives rolled north from Washington on a special 14-car train to a red-white-and-blue- buntinged Philadelphia in honor of the occasion. The original event at the Constitutional Convention was the resolution of a big state-little state fight that, presto, gave states equal standing in the Senate and strength reflecting population in the House. The anniversary proved a high point of Philadelphia's occasionally turbulent Bicentennial festivities...
...system, which even Britain has largely abandoned, is complicated. Converting from inches to feet requires dividing by twelve, (quick, how many feet is 97 inches?); going from pounds to ounces calls for multiplying by 16. By comparison, the metric system is a breeze: just move the decimal point, and, presto! five meters equals 500 centimeters equals .005 kilometers...
Recent Met stagings -- notably Franco Zeffirelli's spacious La Boheme from 1981-82 and his Tosca, for which Rome was rebuilt, two seasons ago -- also have marooned their casts in movie sets. Presto: singing pygmies. Now comes this extravagant Fledermaus with singers who become a backup chorus to the brocade and the woodwork. Rosalinde (Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa) gets lost in the crowd during Orlofsky's drinking party in Act II, and the vengeful Dr. Falke (Baritone Michael Devlin) blends nicely with the patterned wallpaper and the potted ferns...
...computer came up with several hundred possibilities, including Priazzo, now a best-selling pizza dish sold by the Pizza Hut chain. When International Harvester decided it needed a new image, Anspach Grossman asked its computer to reel off names that suggested a "leader" with "direction and focus." Presto. Out popped "navigate" and "star," which were then combined to form Navistar...