Dog and Pony Show

I was in a meeting with my boss. We were talking about my direction in the company. I was sitting there 2 feet across from him at a small circular table, looking at him in the eye, reacting to his words. I also had a blank sheet on the table - clearly visible to him. The sheet was for writing down follow-ups... but I had no need for notes...

...Not until he said,
"basically, this is a dog and pony show..."

I nodded and smirked as if I knew what he meant... but on the inside I froze. "Not another one of these damned phrases!" At the top of my piece of paper I wrote the phrase, nicely in cursive to remind myself of this personal follow up to define the mysterious phrase.

I'm not quite sure of his reaction, but if it had been confusion and alarm that his employee might be incompetent, I wouldn't have been surprised. I would have thought the same thing if I had been talking for 30 minutes, and that was only thing written on top of the paper.

I completed my follow up a week later when I re-discovered my piece of paper.

Spears's Definition:
Dog and Pony Show
Fig. a display, demonstration, or exhibition of something -- such as something on is selling (As in a circus act where trained dogs leap onto and off of trained ponies.)

Gary went into his standard dog and pony show, trying to sell us an an upgrade to our software.

Don't you get tired of running through the same old dog and pony show at every trade show?

I would like to expand on this definition... dog and pony shows are fluff - when you hype something up too much.

Another one down, how many more to go?

---

Dog and Pony Show

My Score Card for this idiom:
Able to be understood initially?: Yes
Able to be understood once explained?: Yes

---

Yours ignorantly,
an under-read American