Word: tang
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...arrogance, if such it is, flows from the challenge Disney believes it can uniquely meet: to entertain everyone, of every age, from every land. Walt Disney proved that this was possible with his first cartoon features and his first theme park. To aim for every taste is to sacrifice tang -- the movies and parks can lack edge; the thrills may be as flat as the main courses in some of the specialty restaurants. But it is a noble goal, beyond commerce or compromise -- especially today, in an age when every form of pop culture has at least as many enemies...
Cold Mountain was not a place but a man, an 8th century Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty who quit the imperial court and retired to a mountain community of Buddhist monks and hermits. There, for the rest of his life, he wrote verses (strict in form, four couplets to a page, each a small tower of vertical characters) declaring his independence from the material "world of dust." Cold Mountain was one of those jokester sages in whom Buddhist culture -- Zen Buddhism in particular -- abounded. Marden, whose interest in Oriental poetry had been deepening in the 1980s, seized...
...there is a nagging anxiety over the nation's soul. French culture, so some worry, is in danger of turning into pasteurized processed cheese: wholesome, possibly edible, but lacking distinctive tang and texture. What the country managed to preserve despite humiliations over the centuries -- pride in a singular civilization -- it now risks losing under the impact of American pop culture and in the homogenizing vat of that mysterious entity called Europe. Chauvinists like the immigrant baiter Jean-Marie Le Pen say the greater threat comes from African Arabs and blacks who have had the inestimable privilege of settling in France...
...Yorkers have not yet given up on meat. "On the East Coast, we do a lot of barbecue," says Sandi Tang, a partner with her husband in Tommy Tang's, N.Y. and L.A., which serves Thai cuisine. "But on Melrose Avenue, it's rice and noodle dishes, all prepared with olive oil." And the waiter had better be , on top of that information. Warns Paul Guzzardo, who runs Bice, a Milanese restaurant that has branches in both cities: "In our Beverly Hills place, people really question and challenge. Is the vinegar balsamic? What is the exact pedigree of the house...
There's an acrid tang in nearly every area of modern American pop culture. Heavy-metal masters Motley Crue invoke images of satanism and the Beastie Boys mime masturbation onstage. Rap poets like N.W.A. and the 2 Live Crew call for the fire of war against police or the brimstone of explicit, sulfurous sex. Comedians like Sam Kinison and Howard Stern bring locker-room laughs to cable TV and morning radio. On network television, sitcom moms get snickers with innuendos about oral sex. In movies, the F word has become so common, like dirty wallpaper, the industry's conservative ratings...