Word: extravaganzas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the first of these expired on Thursday, the Reagan Administration sent some 400,000 "nonessential" federal workers around the country home at noon, supposedly shutting down the Government. Democrats in Congress accused the President of staging an unnecessary "Hollywood extravaganza" to put pressure on them. Reagan retorted that the blame lay with "the majority party in the House." Actually, it had been the Republican-controlled Senate rather than the Democratic-controlled House that had held up most appropriations bills...
...cowboy hat and bandanna, beer and wine were freely consumed, and country music played. Unusual goings on for a company famous for dark blue suits and white shirts and where liquor is not permitted at official functions. In the words of one independent IBM dealer, the three-day extravaganza was "on the tasteful side of gaudy...
They could have been married in the Rose Garden, but Actress Patti Davis, 31, and Yoga Instructor Paul Grilley, 25, preferred the politically neutral turf of Los Angeles' Hotel Bel Air. Except for eschewing a White House extravaganza, however, Davis, who has occasionally vexed her father with liberal views on premarital sex and marijuana, opted for a traditional wedding. Ronald and Nancy Reagan came down from their ranch near Santa Barbara to give away the bride and meet their daughter's new in-laws, Terrence and Donna Grilley. While 134 guests looked on (and 180 police and federal...
Even the flamboyant David Wolper (Roots, The Thorn Birds), producer of the more than $6 million extravaganza, ran afoul of an overweening zeal on the part of an employee well down the ladder of power. There were 300 placard bearers on the field trying to rehearse, and at the oddest moments an automatic sprinkler system would click on and reduce their practice to drippy disarray. At last the producer located a workman whose raiment included an enormous ring of jangling keys. The key holder was intractable at the start: "Watering that field is just as important...
...tour has both needed and suffered from Michael's heft all along. Besides freighting an amount of equipment unprecedented even for a rock extravaganza-375 tons of it in 22 semitrailers, including two outdoor stages and one indoor stage, 64,000 lbs. of sound-and-light equipment, and eleven hydraulic elevators-the Jacksons had to shoulder the weight of Michael's colossal celebrity. That might not, at first, seem like such a burden. It was the monster success of Michael's Thriller album, which seems to have turned into a kind of long-playing Guinness statistic...