Word: silken
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even if it were bound in rich Corinthian leather with a silken page marker, my Daily Planner would still not be able to transcend its plebeian origins. All through 1988, I fell behind in the race to the top because my desk diary lacked the fat glossary of practical information that people like Michael Korda take for granted. It is galling to admit that I have at my fingertips neither the international dialing code for Abu Dhabi nor an up-to-date list of bank holidays in Kuala Lumpur. Even worse, I am forced to rise from my swivel chair...
Seattle's ocean feast is dazzling in its diversity. Coral-shelled "singing" scallops that send forth quiet popping noises when swimming and sweet Penn Cove mussels vie for places on seafood menus with assorted salmons (coho, chinook, silver, sockeye, king) and several types of rockfish and cod. The silken black cod also known as sablefish is especially enticing in the pomegranate sauce that glosses it at Le Tastevin. Then there is geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck), a giant clam that can be sauteed with the robust Mediterranean seasonings that befit what might be described as clam-flavored squid...
...Ramey's silken voice, which ranges high into traditional baritone territory, is worlds apart from the toneless barking and roaring that too often pass for singing among basses. A flexible, liquid instrument, it can scale the trickiest Rossini coloratura passages or rattle the rafters in triumph...
...sauteed onions overpowering the delicate Dover sole meuniere. Another problem at all meals in all rooms is the tearoom breads, delicious by themselves but poor as foils for wine, the satiny American smoked salmon and the elegant terrine of truffled duck liver. Other fine dinner appetizers were the silken lobster-filled ravioli with chanterelles and hazelnuts and a ragout of wild mushrooms. Among main courses, moist, roasted pheasant with a subtle gamy flavor was well set off with pungent cranberries, and a mustard glaze added zest to sliced, rare roast filet of beef. Near misses were a too soupy stew...
From his first eminence in the early '50s as the rage of syndicated TV, Liberace was a vision out of a closet yet to be opened in mainstream show business. The silken singsong voice, the candelabrum, the welded dimples and fluty presence, the references to his sainted mother Frances, all made him a conversation piece, a figure of fun -- the Gorgeous George of mid-cult music. As Michael Herr observes in his new book The Big Room, "Never before, at least knowingly, had a man ever had the big steel balls to show himself like that, and on television...