Word: absurdities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Danger! Kids Playing Tag" [oct. 30] reported that a Massachusetts elementary school has outlawed tag and other chase games during recess. But why not encase schoolkids in bubble wrap before sending them out to the playground? That's no more absurd than banning tag. Sure, kids often get hurt. It is our job as teachers and parents to help them set effective physical and psychological boundaries through discussion and role play. I suggest that district administrators watch kids in the classroom after a recess without active physical play. Kids badly need this kind of break in their academic day. Being...
...soon cast in seemingly can't-miss projects: Billy Bob Thornton's first post-- Sling Blade directing effort, a 2000 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, and Cameron Crowe's 2001 Vanilla Sky, a remake of a Spanish film Cruz had starred in. Forced to utter absurd lines like "Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around," Cruz somehow became the girl of co-star Tom Cruise's dreams in Sky and his first post--Nicole Kidman girlfriend in real life...
...line that snaked up Newbury Street and into the aisles of the store itself. When Flav’s limousine finally arrived, there was more than the typical excitement surrounding a celebrity sighting in the air. There floated a tense uncertainty, as if those present wondered whether such an absurd character could exist in real life. One trademark shout later, though—a gravelly “FLAVOR FLAAAAAAAAAV”—and all such fears were put to rest. For the televised William Drayton is not a caricature at all. The line to meet Flav...
Moreover, conspicuous consumption, the second force fueling the creation of McMansions, leads to absurd designs and uses of space. Most American families do not need formal sitting rooms, studies, and formal dining rooms. They also do not need 50-foot high Palladian windows, unless they are conducting church services in their great room on Sundays instead of watching football on a 70-inch plasma TV. And are cathedral ceilings really necessary—especially when they extend to a foyer big enough to hold the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree? Unless these people are having foreign leaders and royalty over...
Hell, even Billy Joel got in on the act with his trumped-out prole anthems “Allentown” and “The Downeaster Alexa,” conjuring up infinitely absurd images of Joel working in a steel mill, or relying on “the rod and the reel” to feed his family. Predating the Killers’ similar appropriation by several decades, Joel’s irony may have been unintended, but the best of the genre, and its musical ancestors, relied on a self-conscious tension between catchiness and acerbity...