Word: giant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...regarded as a mere extension of the IRS: Who would pay their taxes if the alternative were not the sadistic embrace of the federal pen? Some of our more disillusioned citizens, the kind who keep talk-radio buzzing, have already concluded that what we have going here is a giant extortion system: Send us money, the IRS demands every April, or be prepared to spend a lengthy sabbatical locked up with a serial killer who has devoted the past 10 years to working...
...become such a pervasive force (2,000 stores of various kinds, 160 built each year) that it is redesigning the social structure of rural and small-town America more than any other force besides nature. Wal- Mart is beginning to nibble at the edges of large cities and giant shopping malls, many of which are weakened by the general economic malaise...
...when Eisner calls, architects listen. They know they will be encouraged to create show-bizzy, show-stopping showplaces that millions of people each year will see and enjoy. At Euro Disney, the Pritzker-prizewinning Frank Gehry designed the nightclub center called Festival Disney, whose plaza is guarded by giant towers of oxidized silver and bronze-colored stainless steel under a star-studded canopy of lights. It's as if the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey had dressed up and gone out to strut...
Graves' Hotel New York has a stolid maroon, teal and coral facade. Inside, though, the joint comes alive. Giant floor designs of the Mets and Yankees emblems, an arcade evoking the city's subway system, Broadway posters, corridor carpet that looks like carpet on tile, a lamp in the shape of the Empire State Building, and big apples (big apples!) everywhere. It's Gotham without the crime or grime. Pure Gotham, pure Graves, pure Disney...
...Disney style need not be seen as the apogee of American culture; it can illuminate, it can suffocate, it can buoy or cloy. But when the Disney Imagineers get it right, they get it big. Euro Disney's Disneyland Hotel, the Imagineers' pink Victorian palace, boasts a giant Mickey Mouse clock and, at night, thousands of light bulbs that trace the spine of every ornate gable and cupola. The capacious lobby, with its 40-ft. ceiling, beckons you to collapse into its deep sofas and get toasty at the mammoth fireplace. In the guest rooms, a sculpture of Tinkerbell graces...