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Bingo!!!!! Whether any of those on the summer 2003 press tour in Hollywood ever actually yell that phrase, interrupting some producer, actor or suit in the middle of a press conference, it has become part of the long, rich lore of the semiannual gathering of critics and publicists.
In a column in The Washington Post last week, the always insightful Lisa de Moraes spilled the beans about one way that some veteran journalists, asked to sit through half a dozen or more press conferences each day for almost three weeks, keep the glaze off their eyes and their ears to the grindstone.
In her column, she explains that each journalist gets a bingo-style scorecard on which each square represents a different TV corporate-speak cliche. When, as inevitably happens, someone onstage says something like, 'It's all about the writing,' you get to mark the corresponding box on your scorecard."
"Press tour bingo involves lifting cliches and hackneyed expressions that all have a number they coordinate to," Ms. de Moraes explained to me the evening after her column was published, during the ABC All-Star Party. "And the object is to fill up your scorecard with as many of these cliches as you can during the course of the press tour."
I asked her if there was a prize. "No, grievously, there is no prize," she said, "except the pure joy of being...