neat as a pin

The workshop is neat as a pin, well-knolled and tidy, an orderly temple where the high priests of advertising turn a concept or a printed logo into a physical artifact for the ages — as much an art space as it is a manufacturing space.

When Hamlet was home from Haggard tours, he’d visit Petree at his home, where everything was always neat as a pin.

Of what was labeled, correctly, as Matsuzawa: “Faceless, typewriter, neat as a pin but utterly flaccid performances with small, tiny poetic gestures added like so much rouge on the face of a Russian doll.”

Deacon encapsulates nearly every stereotype of Asian musicians: He writes that Matsuzawa’s performances are “faceless,” while a white woman’s “flow naturally”; the Asian pianist is technically “neat as a pin,” a “typewriter,” not organically creative and only able to copy a European’s innate capacity.

The next month, the hole was completely filled and covered “as neat as a pin” with shrubbery.