Word: las
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Las 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...
Whenever the change began, American show business is today so pervasively Vegasy that we hardly notice anymore. The arty, sexy French-Canadian circus Cirque du Soleil had its breakthrough run in Manhattan before decamping this year to Las Vegas, and neither venue seemed unnatural. Big rock-'n'-roll concerts nowadays are often as much about wowie-kazowie production values -- giant video walls, neon, fireworks, suggestively costumed young men and women, clouds of pastel-colored smoke -- as music. Michael Jackson's highly stylized shtick -- the cosmetics, the wardrobe, the not-quite-dirty bumps and grinds, the Liberace-like gender-preference coyness...
...Opera, Cats -- dominates New York City's so-called legitimate theater, and stand-up comedy is ubiquitous. In the '90s, Friars Club comedians like Mason have hit Broadway shows, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical Starlight Express has been permanently installed in the showroom of the Las Vegas Hilton. The crossbreeding seems complete...
Last year 8 million of the city's 22 million visitors were under 40, and nearly half of those were under 30. When Soul Asylum, as part of the MTV- sponsored 1993 Alternative Nation tour, landed at its last U.S. stop in Las Vegas, the band deviated from its song list to belt out Vegasy tunes like Mandy and Rhinestone Cowboy. Luke Perry and Jason Priestley of Beverly Hills, 90210, huge Tom Jones fans, recently flew to Vegas to see their hero sing, and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers went to Las Vegas to see and meet Julio...
...started reveling in the Vegas gestalt, certain intellectuals were taking seriously the city's no-holds- barred urban style. It was 25 years ago that a little-known architect and professor, Robert Venturi, returned to Yale with his two dozen student acolytes after a remarkable 10-day expedition to Las Vegas, where they stayed at the Stardust. His influential 1972 book, Learning from Las Vegas, immediately made Venturi famous as a heretical high-culture proponent for the ad hoc, populist design of the Strip -- the giant neon signs, the kitschy architectural allusions to ancient Rome and the Old West...