Word: sound
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Dirty Dancing concert tour might be just another oldies show if it were not for the fact that the record business has already scoped out a trend that goes beyond recycling oldies. Producers are trying to realchemize the sound of early '60s pop with singers too young to know the decade by anything but rumor and parental reminiscence. Tiffany, a 17-year-old singer from Norwalk, Calif., had a surprise No. 1 hit last year with her version of the Tommy James and the Shondells 1967 hit I Think We're Alone Now. Tiffany, who concertized in shopping malls...
...bushy beard and piercing green eyes. He kneads the exposed abdomen with both hands, presses one thumb down and draws it across the skin. A trickle, then a stream of blood appears. The audience gasps. Now his hand thrusts into the abdomen and, accompanied by a sickening squishing sound, pulls up a clump of bloody tissue. Host Johnny Carson grimaces. A groan of revulsion sweeps the crowded studio; one woman faints...
...lesson under a maze of heating pipes and lighting wires. Take-out fried chicken, quarts of Tropicana are put aside. "Feel how loose your tongue is! Baaa, baaa, baaa," exhorts the teacher, an ivory- skinned redhead, hammering on a piano key with her index finger. The kids imitate the sound and start giggling. "Don't laugh at each other! We're here to learn!" scolds the redhead. Silence. Then a few whispers in Zulu. "Heee, heee, haaa, haaa!" sings the teacher. More giggles. When class is finally dismissed, the kids clatter up a narrow staircase, whistling and ululating. The doors...
Sometimes, of course, our markings may be simply a matter of aesthetics. Popping in a comma can be like slipping on the necklace that gives an outfit quiet elegance, or like catching the sound of running water that complements, as it completes, the silence of a Japanese landscape. When V.S. Naipaul, in his latest novel, writes, "He was a middle-aged man, with glasses," the first comma can seem a little precious. Yet it gives the description a spin, as well as a subtlety, that it otherwise lacks, and it shows that the glasses are not part of the middle...
Thirsty West Virginians who plunk quarters into soda machines help finance a state medical school. Cigarette smokers in Washington State cough up $31.7 million a year to clean Puget Sound, while home buyers in Maryland pay transfer fees that help buy new parklands. This practice of earmarking taxes for specific government functions is growing steadily: at least 18 states have adopted targeted taxes since mid-1984, and dozens more such levies -- for schools, police, roads, drug-abuse treatment -- are pending in states from California to Michigan...