So forget about the story that at 16 Simenon read Casanova's "Memoirs" and set out to outdo him, sleeping with 10,000 women before he "retired".
The result has been a flood of brash pronouncements, as the Cassandras of the financial set try to outdo themselves with increasingly outlandish predictions.
A result has been a flood of brash pronouncements as the Cassandras of the financial set try to outdo each other with increasingly outlandish predictions.
But in the absence of images, the task of preserving the memories of the game fell to the fellows in the press box who, shortly after Bill Mazeroski's home run sailed over the left-field wall at Pittsburgh's long-gone Forbes Field, set about trying to outdo one another for the most poetic and enduring recounting.
Even for a choreographer who did more than most to promote the storyless ballet, George Balanchine outdid himself with "Jewels," the spectacular evening-long plotless work he set to the music of Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky in 1967.
With "Fire in Babylon" set to a soundtrack of bass-heavy reggae music, fast bowling also becomes the film's prime emblem for postcolonial black liberation: Caliban learning Prospero's magic, then using it to outdo his former master.
It's a relentless pace in which each set piece seems determined to outdo the one before and, in fact, it began to feel like sophomoric high-schoolers getting together after a rough and tumble weekend to one-up each other with tales of their drunken, drug-addled behavior.
Do not try to outdo the gift you are receiving, because it sets the bar at a place that may be tough to top.
Department budgets should be set by performance ratios, encouraging departments to outdo themselves, rather than scrap for larger shares of a fixed pie.
One set of dueling neighbors, eager to outdo each other, affixed more and more signs to their yards; one morning the Romney lawn sat nearly barren.
