Word: instantly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Vegas was created as the world's first experiential duty-free zone, a place dedicated to the anti-Puritan pursuit of instant gratification -- no waiting, no muss, no fuss. In the '30s, Nevada was famous for its uniquely quick and easy marriage (and divorce) laws. And although a certain kind of demented Barbie and Ken still make it a point to stage their weddings in Las Vegas (158,470 people married there in 1992, a majority of them out-of- staters), it is now an atavistic impulse, since the marriage and divorce laws in the rest of the U.S. have...
...When instant gratification becomes a supreme virtue, pop culture follows. Siegfried and Roy, the ur-Vegas magicians (imagine, if you dare, a hybrid of Liberace, Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Copperfield and Marlin Perkins) who perform 480 shows a year in their own theater at the Mirage, don't seem satisfied unless every trick is a show-stopper and every moment has the feel of a finale. In front of the new Treasure Island is a Caribbean-cum- Mediterranean faux village fronting a 65-ft.-deep "lagoon" in which a full-scale British man-of-war and pirate vessel every 90 minutes...
...image of a deeply resentful human being, as reflected in his writings and speeches, that inspires critics to compare Zhirinovsky to tyrants like Hitler, whose self-pitying laments Zhirinovsky echoes when he writes: "Life itself forced me to suffer from the very day, the moment, the instant of my birth. Society could give me nothing." Having portrayed his life, and especially his childhood, as plagued by deprivation and rejection, Zhirinovsky has learned to project these sentiments from the personal to the national scale, elevating them to a world view that has resonated in this impoverished country...
...with a steely manner and a Satchmo Armstrong voice. Says Brooks: "I strongly believed that an old man on crutches with no teeth wouldn't get cast. When they called me back, I thought it was just keeping up appearances." Brooks is a natural, with a commanding presence and instant believability. He is enough at ease offstage to question the script's accuracy about Anacostia, where he has lived since he was three: "We didn't have any rich black man, mean or otherwise. This play deals in pleasant generalities without getting down to the aches and pains...
...original item here, for if you've seen one Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, you've seen them all. Take the beloved feel-good plot of protagonists overcoming rigid British class divisions through happy fate, play it out in an exotic new location each time, and voila! You've got instant rollicking G&S humor. Luckily, it's an attractive formula and one that is well-mastered by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players...