Word: rubes
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...Chevalier's 7,000-word translation, the phrase "as complicated as a Rube Goldberg invention" became "more complicated than existentialism." A "hoot-nanny" emerged as a corrida (i.e., bullfight). Rose's untranslatable "razzle-dazzle and razzmatazz" was altered into the equally untranslatable "plaisanter sur des plaisanteries plaisantes." Rose's laconic account of the end of a riot at his Texas Centennial Exposition ("The brawl was over") was elaborately transformed into "My savage cowboys became as well-behaved as [Paris] street urchins on the day of their First Communion...
Supremely confident ("I think I will bust TV wide open"), Wynn was onstage all but five minutes of the half-hour show, grimacing in a succession of funny hats, outlandish garments and size 13 shoes. The fluttery mannerisms, Rube Goldberg inventions and falsetto giggles were the Wynn trademarks made popular by a long succession of musical comedies (Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 and 1915, The Perfect Fool, Hooray for What...
...technical assistance, ranging from hydrographic surveys to health advice, to get the program started. Webb's vague generalities on how the program would stimulate world trade and hence the U.S. economy were not the blueprint the committee wanted. Snorted Ohio Republican John M. Vorhys, critic of foreign spending: "Rube Goldberg must have been your consultant...
...league manager (for the Pittsburgh Pirates) four years before Admiral Dewey sank the Spanish fleet at Manila. In his 49 years in Philadelphia he won nine pennants (the last in 1931) and five World Series, trained a roster of greats whose names still make old fans' eyes gleam-Rube Waddell, Chief Bender, Frank ("Home Run") Baker, Eddie Collins, Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons...
Most spectators, including Princess Elizabeth, got their biggest chuckles from Rube Goldbergish efforts like W. Heath Robinson's Magnetic Method of Stretching Spaghetti (at the expense of Britain's face-lengthening austerity program) and H. M. Bateman's Tragedy at Wellington Barracks, a study in horror-struck faces as a butter-fingered guardsman on parade drops his rifle. It was dapper Australian-born Cartoonist Bateman who had started the whole thing in a speech to the Royal Society last February, declaring it was high time the British had a "National Academy of Humorous Art." Last week...