Word: veneered
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tabloid reputation as a party girl, but after meeting her one comes to suspect that her girlish veneer may be more than just an actressy affectation. That wouldn't be surprising in someone whose childhood was spent sheltered in the famously vast Spelling mansion (her father is TV producer Aaron Spelling), who was escorted to school by bodyguards, who hasn't traveled much and who has been working what are often 18-hour days since the age of 17. Chatting with her, one learns she is afraid of ants, likes "crafts" (she is a practitioner of the nearly lost...
...shooting had its philosophical veneer. Justin Sledge, 16, a friend of Woodham's, not only disrupted a prayer vigil for the victims but, dressed in a black trench coat, black shirt and dark glasses, also distributed to the media a page allegedly copied from Woodham's notebook. In an apparent reference to Boyette, the note instructed "Grant" to read a passage to the public from Nietzsche's 1887 book, The Gay Science, a section containing the philosopher's famous declaration, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed...
...death the next day and not just take his Lexus? The ingredients that went into these cruelties may never be detected. In any case, there was private elation at the news of Cunanan's death in La Jolla among the rich, closeted gay men for whom respectability requires a veneer of heterosexuality. Here Cunanan had lived with businessman and arts patron Norman Blachford. Before Blachford, Cunanan had been known as the companion to two other local "benefactors"--one of whom was reportedly so nervous that Cunanan would name names if apprehended that he considered suicide himself...
...China: its name is Guangzhou. This southern madhouse of a city lashes the nerves. Noise. Dirt. Pollution. Crowds. Blinding neon ricocheting off mirrored towers. Ceaseless tearing down and building up, with no visible organizing principle, just decrepit neighborhoods vanishing into gaping construction holes. It is Hong Kong without the veneer of British order, capitalism out of control. This is the world of money, money, money; a city that never sleeps, with dress shops open at midnight and vendors hawking at dawn. No wonder its presiding genius is Deng Xiaoping, smiling down from a giant mural...
Someone came up with the less-than-brilliant idea of slapping a '50s-retro veneer on all the singers' clothes and gestures. Rigoletto in hat and coat recalls Willy Loman with a hump; Gilda sports a flaring gray poodle-skirt, a bright red cardigan sweater and ponytail tied with a matching red ribbon. The duke, when he comes a-courting, looks sublimely ridiculous in a red monogrammed vest. Even the courtship scene between the duke and Gilda is straight out of the '50s, reminiscent of that porch swing on a summer night--a worthy tradition...