Word: surrealness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...martial noises. August 1990 seemed in a way like August 1914. The President's adamancy in sticking to his Maine vacation (the tense, almost angry flailing at golf balls, the powerboat Fidelity bucking out of harbor, a war getting organized by cellular phone) contributed to an air of the surreal. So did the alien theater of war: the Saudi peninsula's shimmering heat, its lunar landscapes, its customs and culture out of other centuries altogether...
...darkness fell, the scene grew ever more surreal. A car came racing up the hill, snatched and chased by licking flames. In front of us, the hulks of other cars were blazing. A man caked in soot appeared, looking for his horse. As night began to deepen, the dark hills acquired necklaces of orange, and the sky around us was a locust-cloud of ashes. And, when we were told that it was the time to make a break for it, we finally raced down the mountain through a scene more beautiful and unreal than any Vietnam-movie fire fight...
Beer and cigarette smoke mix in the darkness, giving way to an ambience of noisy excitement and adventure. Performers sway and jump, creating blurs in the colored spotlights. The experience is surreal: the blaring rhythms of the music, and the contrast between the darkness and tungsten highlights serve to envelop the senses, overwhelming reality...
Last November Epic/Sony released a CD single of the jingle, sung by actor Saburo Tokito, who plays an oddly intrepid businessman in Regain's surreal commercials. So far, the CD has sold 300,000 copies and topped the Japanese pop-music chart. Definitely not amused: Japan's Labor Ministry, which has been trying to persuade the Japanese to shorten their workweek...
Strasser also has a redeeming weakness for illusion and the surreal. The back corridors at Computer Associates, with their white walls, black floors and deep side niches, are moody and de Chiricoesque. Both there and in his offices, conventional ceilings in the reception areas simply end at the passage into the back offices, showing themselves to be flimsy quarter-inch- thick sheets -- and suddenly revealing the ducts, pipes and light fixtures above. "Thresholds are important to me," Strasser says. "Going from one place to another is more important than the places...