Word: absurdities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Over in the corner, Tobias Schenkel is wrestling with the intricacies of an early 19th century pocket watch: on its blue enamel face, two angels strike the hours with tiny hammers. In this age of oscillating quartz crystals and digital technology, Tobias concedes that there's something absurd about his chosen profession. But for this 25-year-old, that's the whole point. "Watchmaking is like an island in the modern era," he explains. "Amid all these new technologies, it's one old technology that's exactly the same today as it was 100 years...
...late '80s he fronted Jane's Addiction, the artsy Los Angeles punk-metal outfit. He christened his next group, Porno for Pyros, while flipping through a fireworks catalog. And when he started an eclectic summer music festival complete with freaky sideshow acts, he dubbed it Lollapalooza after hearing the absurd word in a Three Stooges short. Even his stage name is a word twist. Born Perry Bernstein, he renamed himself "peripheral": Perry Farrell...
...jobs, that number comes from an 11-year-old study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute that economists complain wildly inflates the employment potential. "It's just absurd," says Eban Goodstein, an economist at Lewis and Clark College, who predicts the real job growth will be less than one-tenth that number...
...debate about whether or not the Internet is the "fastest growing mass medium in history" is absurd. Personally, I'd settle for being the second fastest growing mass medium in history. No one argues that web penetration has been faster than another little gadget known as the telephone. The telephone took five decades to reach 90% penetration. Mass mediums don't go away. That's why they're called mass mediums...
...than to get the studio bosses' approval of the actor to play him. "I fought and fought to have Steve Buscemi. We could have made this film four years earlier if I'd agreed to cast the people they were giving me, like Freddie Prinze Jr.--people who were absurd for the part. Also, we literally got a note, 'Can't we have a double wedding [at the end]?' They were serious. It's unbelievable people don't get a gun and start killing people down there." Zwigoff's stubbornness paid off. "I got the cast I wanted," he says...