Word: fright
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...STAGE FRIGHT. The immigration law set to go into effect in October contains a minor provision causing major artistic anxiety: it limits to 25,000 a year the number of actors, musicians, models and athletes who can enter the U.S. to perform under temporary visas. Other oddities: applicants must be "internationally recognized" or "culturally unique" (whatever that means) and must have been with their group at least a year. The bill was pushed by organized labor to protect American jobs, but the tight limit (applied first come, first served) could instead assault American culture...
Meanwhile, his rivals nervously shift their feet, twitch their fingers, rub gold crucifixes, amulets and talismans. Grace Craighead of Philadelphia quivers with stage fright. "I'm soooo nervous," she says. "This is my first tournament." Adrenaline is boiling, shoulders are hunched, fingers poised to punch the two keys that will spin the slot-machine wheels to winning numbers and bars, or losing spaces...
...Erbil one sees why everybody is fleeing. The giant mosaic portrait of Saddam on the outskirts of town is riddled with bullet holes. The Kurdish parliament building is also trashed and gaping with shell holes. No one knows what is going on, but everyone is catching fright, which soon sweeps the city as it is doing in all the other towns. On a street corner, Kurds have a snowball fight with snow out of a truck brought down from the mountains for drinking water. A young girl wandering in a yard hands the visitor a message. "For my brother...
...build in every bit of fright imaginable. Riders want it," explains coaster designer Ronald Toomer. Most of the new roller coasters are constructed with tubular steel, which lends itself to loops and corkscrew twists. But a number of coaster builders are putting modern tracks and cars within a traditional latticework of wood, which provides the sense of ricketiness, danger and nostalgia that riders love. In fact, roller coasters are safer than ever. Unlike old coasters, which speed out and back over often predictable sets of hills, today's rides careen through tight turns, 60 degrees plunges and dark tunnels, sometimes...
Taken in by an American family in 1980, Arn Chorn is now 22 and a college student in Rhode Island. He understands in retrospect that he was brainwashed into becoming a Khmer Rouge. Yet he also remembers how thrillingly fright and excitement mixed. He can still describe the sweaty terror before an attack, squatting in the reeds, trembling. Then the fear metabolized into adrenaline, enhanced by the delight of pumping an automatic rifle. "Sometimes," he says, "you enjoy yourself in battle...