Word: sharpers
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...with changing consumer tastes. The high-end market has detoured dramatically from the posh, living-room-on-wheels tradition of Cadillacs and Lincolns that once defined upper-middle-class status. Today's luxury buyers, guided by the Information Age, are less extravagant, more practical and technologically sharper. "The status symbol used to be 'I've got money,'" says Jim Press, general manager of Toyota Motor Sales USA. "But here in the late 1990s, it's 'I've got good taste.' The days of conspicuous consumption are gone...
This is funny enough but gets tired easily. Celebrity by itself teeters so often into self-parody that it seems too easy to bash it. Fortunately, Ellis does more than that, injecting Glamorama with a sharper plot than those of earlier novels, a plot which kicks in about a quarter of the way into the novel. Victor, for a $300,000 fee, is sent by the mysterious F. Fred Palakon (whose name echoes G. Gordon Liddy's neatly enough to hint at the web of deceit to follow) to London to look for a former Camden College friend, Jamie Fields...
...Sometimes I tried too hard to do too much. I would go to home plate and swing hard at almost everything instead of having the calm to wait for the right pitch. My new goal was to be a greater offensive threat. With patience, an improved swing and a sharper eye, I felt I could bring more to the batter's box and be an even steadier performer for my team, the Chicago Cubs...
...looks as if she knew what she was doing. On Spirit, Jewel is once again firmly rooted in pop-folk, but her vocals are richer, and her songwriting is sharper. "I wasn't trying to be contrary or go against type," says Jewel. "I just wanted to be emotionally evocative." On Deep Water she sings with new authority; on Enter from the East she is tender but never weak. There's only one bad song on this CD: Fat Boy, a song about, you guessed it, a fat boy. "Oh fragile flame," Jewel sings, "when no one feels the same...
...television show survives is usually a fairly trivial matter, but in the case of Sports Night the stakes are higher. This series, which airs Tuesdays at 9:30 E.T. on ABC, represents the best opportunity in a long time for network comedy to evolve into something sharper and more interesting. If it fails--a highly possible outcome, given its mediocre ratings--then the networks will be all the more wary of trying something novel. On the other hand, if the show succeeds, it just might revitalize a very tired form...