Word: sheerly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...foreshadows the American conviction that one can mandate, even legislate morality. That conviction represents an amalgam of Puritanism, with its belief in a permanently flawed human nature, and the Enlightenment tradition, with its belief in the perfectibility of man. Cotton Mather, meet Thomas Jefferson. This contradictory combination bespeaks the sheer and sometimes hopelessly unrealistic determination to overcome any evil that cannot be ignored, the refusal to accept the status quo in the universe...
...Shankar's complex, exotic melodies so that six bewildered Parisian studio musicians could play them. "Ravi and his tabla player, Alla Rahka, kept telling me I was getting it all wrong," Glass recalls. "No matter how I tried to notate the music, they kept shaking their heads. Out of sheer desperation, I just eliminated the bar lines altogether -- which, of course, revealed the fact that Indians don't divide music, the way Western theory says it must be done. Instead, they add to it. That was the closest I'll ever get to a moment when the creative light suddenly...
Sellars' furious improvisations are sometimes arbitrary and pretentious, and more than a little of the text sinks in the mire of expressionistic excess. But his reworking is so full of passion, inventiveness and sheer theatrical verve that one cannot help cheering. Dumas's tale of Edmond Dantes, a young - seaman in Napoleonic- era France who is unjustly imprisoned for 18 years and then escapes to seek revenge on those who wronged him, could have been a routine exercise in nostalgia or camp. But Sellars obviously sees grandeur in the play and is determined to make the audience...
...life becomes the obsession of a repressed New Jersey housewife. Madonna's current 28-city, 38-date concert tour, of which she is not only the lead singer and dancer but the director and driving force, has sold out almost instantly just about everywhere tickets have gone on sale. Sheer velocity of box office is watched very closely by concert promoters. Big stars are supposed to sell out, but stars whose shows sell out slowly may have peaked. When Madonna tickets went on sale for three June dates at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, fans who had huddled...
...last week's outpouring of public warmth and support for the veterans was massive and genuine beyond dispute: a gesture of splendid grandeur. As sheer spectacle, the tribute was a rousing success. It was vintage Big Apple, a ticker-tape parade through the canyons of lower Manhattan. Blizzards of litter (duly calculated to be 468 tons). Bands blaring (God Bless America and The + Caisson Song). Onlookers shouting down from skyscraping heights. Placards and posters flashing and bobbing (YOU'RE OUR HEROES and THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICES). Throngs (perhaps a million, according to police) cheering, clapping and even weeping...