Word: grimming
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...recession is hitting Las Vegas on all fronts. Nevada legislators have struggled to close a deficit of more than $1 billion in the 2009 budget. Budget projections for 2010 and 2011 also look grim. Construction on Boyd Gaming's $4.8 billion Echelon resort was stopped last August just as three of its towers reached the 12th floor (the tallest would have risen to 55 stories). Construction won't resume until 2010, though the cranes will remain towering above the site (it's cheaper to leave them in place - and these days no one else in town needs them...
From any vantage point, the situation is grim. Construction in the area dropped 92% in October, compared with the same month a year earlier. In November the county issued 80 new home permits, down from an average of almost 500 permits a month in 2007. Housing prices have deflated with a deafening groan. Keith Schwer, who runs the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, estimates that 50% of homeowners owe more than what their home is worth. Perhaps the only positive note is that housing prices have returned to more reasonable levels...
From a TV perspective, Christmas Eve 1966 looked grim. The regular Saturday night college basketball broadcast was suspended due to the holiday, and while many viewers in the New York area might have had something better to do, those who tuned in to local broadcaster WPIX would face an hour and a half of nothing, followed by a roller derby at 11:30. WPIX president Fred Thrower had a suggestion: the station would announce the cancellation of all its programming that evening "in order to present a WPIX Christmas card to our viewers." (The roller derby, Thrower noted...
...quite so optimistic. On Dec. 19, the Big Three automaker closed all of its factories for a month - twice as long as the usual year-end shutdown. Chrysler's sales were down 47% in November, even worse than the 37% decline for the industry over all. And all the grim headlines about Detroit's uncertain future aren't helping local salesman. At this sprawling dealership in suburban Kansas City, the biggest problem facing auto salesmen is squeamish buyers spooked by too much talk about bailouts and bankruptcies. "Our problem is getting them in the door," Sullivan said of his nervous...
...Horton Foote drama, Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), about an ex-con singer who has problems staying out of criminal or domestic trouble. And in Inside Daisy Clover (1966), Wood is a thornier soul: a '30s waif who becomes a movie star. (The young man in her grim life was played by Robert Redford, again at the beginning of a big career...