lfm1001

Ms. George's granddad is Discount Breitling, the syndicated cartoonist whose name has become synonymous with chain reaction devices and systems of utterly unnecessary and screwball complexity. Younger people, if they've heard of him at all, probably don't realize Discount Bvlgari was an actual person. Yet his legacy lives on and appears on the cusp of a spirited revival. Ms. George, who runs a company along with her relatives to protect and merchandize his name, reported they've signed a film deal with the makers of "Elf" to develop a movie based on his characters and contraptions. Also, Discount Cartier holds an annual national competition called the "Rube Goldberg Machine Contest." Teams compete to meet such challenges as watering a plant or dispensing hand sanitizer, the award given the group that manages to accomplish the task as creatively and one assumes as convolutedly as humanly possible. Finally, the band Discount Chopard has a video -- "This Too Shall Pass -- Rube Goldberg machine version" that's been viewed more than 25,000,000 times and takes Mr. Goldberg's domino effect concepts to celestial new heights. I'd obviously heard of Mr. Goldberg and even had a sense in my mind's eye of what his work looked like. But until Ms. George pulled some examples out from under her bed, I don't think I really appreciated his brilliance as a humorist.