Word: paraphernalia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...city paid for 13,000 lawn signs and 10,000 bumper stickers--among other Census paraphernalia--in an attempt to get citizens to fill out their forms. This doesn't include the government's own campaign of cheesy commercials involving a shrunken man on a monopoly board who threatens that people who don't fill out their Census "get nothing." (As if you don't already feel bad enough about forgetting to turn in your forms last month...
...baby boomers, the museum freezes under glass that deceptively innocent era, roughly from the late '60s to the late '70s, when the phrase recreational drugs had not yet become a tragicomic oxymoron. In addition to the paraphernalia collection--which resembles nothing so much as a college dorm room circa 1975--there are photos of such icons of the day as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Timothy Leary (twice!), as well as the shorter-lived Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix...
This reality had not yet dawned on what locals call the Southland last week. Trolling Orange and Riverside counties one day, I spotted only one piece of presidential paraphernalia--a Bush poster stapled to a telephone pole. At some point, one of these candidates is going to wise up and get involved in a car chase, which guarantees live coverage by every TV camera in L.A. and the rapt attention of the entire electorate...
...competition. Indeed, there hasn't been a full-blooded Pequot since the turn of the century; members only have to prove they are one-sixteenth Pequot to be admitted to the tribe. Not that they don't try to make the reservation "authentic." Festooned with American Indian cultural paraphernalia--the casino's version of frequent flyer miles is referred to as "wampum"--there is even a sleek new museum of Pequot history and culture in one corner of the reservation. The tribe's spiffy new high speed ferry is painted an earthy mauve tone and named after Sassacus, the sachem...
After navigating through a riotous crowd wearing an obscene amount of WWF paraphernalia, we enter the arena and take our seats. We are about five feet from the edge of the ring. I smile at Christina. She smiles back nervously. The lights go out. Let the ass-kickin' begin...