Word: lavishness
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...Such shockingly careful behavior is almost certainly a backlash to the shockingly egregious instances of expense-account excess that have come to light in recent years. In one case, brokers hoping to win more business from Fidelity Investments treated one of the firm?s traders to a lavish bachelor party, including private jet travel, female companionship and, yes, dwarf tossing, not necessarily in that order. The hosts expensed it. Last year, the CEO of Savvis Communications resigned in the wake of a $241,000 charge to his corporate card during an evening with business associates at a strip club...
...Hamptons are best known as a summer playground for Manhattan millionaires. But this night, the people who service the lavish Hamptons lifestyle were throwing their own party. They caravanned from a nearby church, little girls in frilly dresses and pomaded boys in squeaky shoes, shepherded by their parents--the roofers who tack gray slate to colonial homes, the maids who scrub toilets and dust Swarovski stemware, and the gardeners who feed the Hamptons' endless appetite for formal English gardens and straight hedgerows...
Massarano is not the only flatlander engaged in a high-stakes land rush for fractionals--the new-millennium term for time shares in lavish condominium projects in Aspen and other beautiful-people playgrounds sprouting around the world. Shelling out an average $221,600 for a deeded share, these Range Rover-in', Fendi-friendly folks who live to ski, golf and power shop are buying a couple of weeks of prime time in first-class venues stretching from the West Coast through the Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. More often than not, though, the tab ranges from...
Cheaper air travel and a lavish expansion of facilities in recent times mean the number of pilgrims to Mecca for the annual hajj festival now regularly totals around 2.5 million. In spite of improved safety precautions, the death last week of 363 visitors in a stampede during the "stoning of the devil" ritual is an all-too familiar tragedy. DECEMBER 1975 Some 200 pilgrims camped at Mina, east of Mecca, die when a cooking-gas cylinder explodes, sparking a fire that sweeps through the tent city NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1979 127 troops and 26 civilians die in fighting at Mecca...
...boogie and salsa in addition to waltz). In that case, why attend? For the stunning visual spectacle, above all. Upwards of 60,000 flowers decorate the opulent 137-year-old venue, which is crammed to the rafters with staff in 19th-century livery and guests in white tie or lavish gowns. Then there's the matchless beauty of the polonaise, the famous opening dance performed by handpicked debutantes, pictured here. Their grand entrance is as vivid a hallucination of old Europe as you'll ever experience?and something that even the most curmudgeonly traditionalist cannot fault...