He notices the "virtuoso triviality" of Andy Warhol's diaries, for instance, or the "tundra-like humourlessness" of a literary scholar, or the "phosphorescent prosperity" of England in the 1980s (you need not necessarily accept the implied political sentiment to hear how neatly that last phrase suggests burn-out and showiness).
It specialises in "Eurogames", which emphasise strategy over showiness, downplay luck and conflict, lean towards economic rather than martial themes and strive to keep all the players at the table until the game's end.
Consumers in China are turning from monogrammed showiness to subtler elegance.
They are interesting for their behaviour or showiness or both.
Hence, the 19th-century term copperplate hand usually connotes calligraphic showiness and sleekness.
The Nuits ("Nights") poems ("La Nuit de mai," "La Nuit de décembre," "La Nuit d'août," "La Nuit d'octobre," 1835 37) express the purifying power of suffering in verse of sustained sincerity, purged of all the early showiness.
As a farmhouse, their home was built with dignity rather than showiness in mind, and the pared-down, Spartan quality of the couple's mid-20th-century and contemporary furniture echoes that.
However, I suspect their rapture partly comes out of relief that he finishes before his giddy exuberance turns into unwelcome showiness - a sliding scale that one might apply to an initially amusing relative at a boozy Christmas dinner.
Zing and pizzazz and showiness are the very last words you'd use.
Liszt, Wagner and their followers determined to create "the music of the future", while Brahms, Joachim and Clara Schumann deplored such iconoclasm and its showiness.
Garner is a good film actress (she played a fuzzy-minded ingénue in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator"), and it's possible that her characterization is too subtle to work alongside her fellow-actors' showiness.
