The opposite of sharp

My Mom, our loyal M&M reader, just mentioned that Roger Ebert also liked "Eastern Promises," so I went and read his review. Which is fine, until he gets to this observation in the final paragraph:

"I write little about casting directors, because I can't know what really goes on, and of course directors make the final choice for key roles. But whatever Deirdre Bowen and Nina Gold had to do with the choices in this movie, including what might seem the unlikely choice of Mortensen, was pitch-perfect."

I'm glad this came in the final graf, so I only had to miss one sentence when I stopped reading at that dreaded phrase "pitch-perfect." Man, I'm so sick of this. When did everyone start saying pitch-perfect? The irony is that it's such a "tone deaf" expression. Falls flat every time.

Writers and editors who have worked with me know I have a long (and always growing) list of pet-peeve writing tics, and pity the fool who hands in a story without consulting it first. So I hereby add pitch-perfect to a few other all-star selections:

unprecedented
indeed
to be sure
tone deaf
it is what it is
[the overuse or imprecise use of superlatives]

OK, get back to work you tone-deaf geniuses.