Carl Mayer, a friend and classmate, says that he and Spitzer specialized in "intensely fierce competitions," whether in running, tennis, basketball or even spaghetti-eating.
While melodious songs such as "Oblivion" and "Wild Ones" are surprising tame, some of the lyrics on Savages are X-rated (cover the kiddies' ears when M'Queen goes off on "Take My Picture") and most of the music is intensely fierce.
The impact of his all-in approach is exceptional: "emotionally fierce, intensely sensual, brilliantly danced and stunningly designed" was the way that Hedy Weiss, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, described his full-length work Carmen, but his effectiveness isn't dependent on scale.
But in the current climate, in an election year when the gun control issue is the subject of fierce and intensely partisan maneuvering -- and when mothers are considered swing voters -- such a campaign is not without risks.
He was at once fierce and kind, intensely serious and very funny.
And in the view of troops here who fought intensely in the weeks before the offensive began, fierce battles probably lie ahead if they are to clear the Taliban from sanctuaries so far untouched.
At its best, the quartet plays with a brand of fierce, sharply directed energy and the kind of intensely focused sound that makes every line in a texture stand out clearly.
The songs, by turns rapt, erotic, and fierce, could be heard as a portrait of an intensely complementary marriage, the delicately spiky piano writing urging the singer into one voluptuous passage after another.
The plans have stalled during this year's intensely fought mayoral primary in which several of the Democratic candidates are fierce critics of Wal-Mart and have backed union efforts to block the retailer's entry to New York.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of arthouse cinemas and the sudden availability of classics on DVD and via Netflix go hand in hand with the rise of their art: their fierce focus on the immediate and the intimate includes the intensely personal experience of movies — whether treasures from the history of cinema or instant classics newly arrived from around the world.
For parents who belong to the so-called silent generation, born in the 1920s, '30s and early '40s, and intensely private about their affairs, the reluctance to discuss financial matters can be fierce.
