A shocking transformation occurs when the quaint and curious villagers gather as a mass: Britten suddenly writes in spare, forceful choral lines, paying heed to "Boris Godunov."

That is a shocking transformation for a team that was 78-84 last season and whose $74 million payroll is half of Boston's and about a third of the Yankees'.

Decent cops, guys you thought you knew, underwent a shocking transformation, as the man you used to work with barricaded himself in behind barbed wire, broken glass and howling dogs.

It is only the physical intervention of his wife Emily which brings him back from this latter, shocking transformation in which he seems poised on the brink of becoming a non-physical form of proto-consciousness and possibly disappearing from our version of reality altogether.

To everyone's surprise, including his own, Rime falls in love with a schoolmarm, gets married and through the wonders and agonies of love undergoes a shocking transformation.

Senator Mark Hatfield has known your family a long time and who knew your father, the late Senator Prescott Bush, said and I quote, "If his father were alive today, I'm sure his father would see it as a shocking transformation."

BIG For Christmas The twins wish they were grownups when they are invited to the biggest Christmas party ever and their parents won't let them go, but a shocking transformation has occurred when they wake up the next morning.

What the late Republican Senator Mark Hatfield said of the resentment-stoking, red-meat-throwing H.W. in 1988 could apply to Romney now: "If his father were alive, I'm sure his father would see it as a shocking transformation."

Shreds of velvet and silk, scattered about the floor of the bridge, also bore evidence to Laazia's destructive rampage- and shocking transformation.