Word: barrenness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what a feeling it was! By pointing and clicking my electronic mouse, I could pick up a square of green from one corner of the screen, drop it on a barren stretch of land and watch it blossom into a prairie. I could sprinkle the forest primeval with dinosaurs, insects and birds. I could fill the seas with starfish, lobsters and whales. I could rattle my little planet with computer-generated earthquakes and hurricanes...
...Frunze District of northwest Moscow used to be famous for its dairy products. Nowadays, almost no customers are seen there during peak afternoon shopping hours. No wonder. Refrigerator cases offer bottles of a sour apple-grape drink instead of butter and cheese. In a touch of the absurd, otherwise barren shelves display seltzer-water dispensers and brightly colored plastic Little Drummer Rabbit dolls, presumably for toddlers who will have to do without fresh milk...
...most significant thing about Marsalis' career is not his personal success. It is the fact that, largely under his influence, a jazz renaissance is flowering on what was once barren soil. Straight-ahead jazz music almost died in the 1970s as record companies embraced the electronically enhanced jazz-pop amalgam known as fusion. Now a whole generation of prodigiously talented young musicians is going back to the roots, using acoustic instruments, playing recognizable tunes and studying the styles of earlier jazzmen, from King Oliver and Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Moreover, with major record labels...
Director Andrei Belgrader wisely adopts a minimalist approach towards this play, recognizing that its success depends on acting and the use of dialogue rather than any inspirational staging. The set is appropriately barren, and the difference of agreement between the two characters is highlighted with a minimum of movement. One clever touch is Belgrader's decision to spice the 18th Century satire with modern references and expletives; they serve both to shock the audience into attention and remind us that the script has meaning for contemporary society. Another is Shalhoub's coughing jag, with its reference to Topol's song...
...about oil, or is it about order? Those who say the gulf crisis is about oil note that U.S. military forces would not be massing to protect one distant feudal monarchy and restore another if the barren sands of Arabia had nothing underneath. Those who say it's about something finer -- re-establishing a civilized world order -- argue that we would not be going to all this trouble if the threat to our energy supply came in the traditional way: by a meeting of oil ministers in a Geneva hotel...