Word: rubes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Time and its offspring, movement, have fascinated some modern artists. Sculptors can build it straight into their work -- the last half of the 20th century is full of wind-, gravity- or motor-powered contraptions that range from the balletic (Alexander Calder) to the Rube Goldbergian (Jean Tinguely) -- but a painter has to deal with a still, flat surface. On it, there are two possibilities. The first is to try to render the movement of the object itself, as the futurists did with their racing cars, or the cartoonist does with his speed lines. Mostly this results in illustrations, straightforward...
...father, a toymaker abducted by the evil rodent genius Professor Ratigan. The movie's scene-stealer is a peg-legged bat named Fidget, who gets laughs when someone stomps on his foot ("My only foot!"). Later Basil and Dawson are trussed up on Ratigan's killer mousetrap, a Rube Spielberg device that jump-starts the filmmakers' ingenuity and accelerates the plot toward its nifty climax. Nothing as weighty as the art of animation is at stake here--just some clever cartoonists having a holiday on mice...
Robertson's appeal was, perhaps, the only clear-cut revelation to emerge from the Rube Goldberg process that Michigan has adopted for picking delegates to the nominating convention that is still more than two years away. Last week 10,110 potential candidates signed up to run in August to become precinct delegates; the winners will eventually select delegates for district meetings, which will then select delegates for a statewide convention, which will choose Michigan's delegates to the national convention early in 1988. Confusing? Yes. But the contest last week was to see who could get the most people...
...decade, pitchers do seem to travel in clusters. Hubbell materialized in the swift company of Dizzy Dean and Lefty Gomez. Seaver enjoyed the prolonged fellowship of Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan. Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry formed their club. Even Walter Johnson had Rube Marquard. "There's some safety in numbers," Tom Browning agrees. "Last year, when Pete (Rose) was drawing the crowds, I was left alone to get a nice quiet...
...movies of the decade (Blade Runner, Diva, the Mad Max films), texture is text here, submerging the plot in a garage sale of 20th century detritus. Brazil is a place, like Stalin's Russia or the British welfare state, where everything is planned but nothing quite works. A Rube Goldberg spy machine kibitzes with a roving bloodshot electronic eye, then wheels away in a deranged gait. Giggling plastic surgeons do their "snip snip slice slice" with metal clamps and Saran Wrap. Sam and a man in the next office share a desk that each keeps yanking through his own side...