Word: tic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...just a smile," the song goes, but with polls showing Governor George W. Bush falling behind in the New Hampshire primary, and after two underwhelming debate performances, the smile with enough wattage to light the national Christmas tree has devolved into the Smirk. It is actually a full-body tic: a pressing together of the upturned lips with a shrug of the shoulders and a preening tilt of the head that signals the Governor is awfully pleased with himself...
...Back-in-the-day, as one is wont to say, we had CB jackets with Freaky Freazies inside. No need for smart wool jackets or canvas my-first-briefcases. We'd wrap a sheet of strawberry Fruit Roll Up around our index finger, then lick. Eeew. Anna stuck a tic tac up her nose. (The school nurse used tweezers to dislodge the one-calorie mint...
When Deep Blue beat chess master Gary Kasparov in its 1997 rematch, the news was greeted without too much alarm. After all, chess was just a game, like checkers or tic-tac-toe. If a computer could memorize enough mechanical moves to play, that didn't mean it was smart; it was just good at plugging numbers. Computers can only do what they've been programmed to do, the conventional wisdom said; true originality, the capacity to look at a unique situation and determine an appropriate response, required more than circuits...
...today's teen audience, those days are deader than the Dark Ages. But the high school worries about pride and friendship and whether one should pack Tic Tac or gum on a date are timeless. On a wedding day three pals (Richard T. Jones, Omar Epps and Taye Diggs) flash back to their youth in Inglewood, Calif., courting the girls and stoutly refusing a joint from the local gangster ("What are you all, Muslims or something?"). The movie is aiming more for American Graffiti than American Pie; it dares to hint that a man should strive for humanity, not strutting...
...thatchlike chest hair, the costumes from the Who's rock opera Quadrophenia and the grotty dentures he used in an SNL skit about sugar-filled British toothpaste. The supervillain, bald-pated Dr. Evil, was lifted from the Bond film You Only Live Twice, with Myers adding the pinky-sucking tic of his former SNL boss Lorne Michaels...