As all mindflowers readers should know, Paul Reuben’s masterpiece Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was blackballed from the 1985 Oscars due to Reuben’s communist tendencies, as evidenced by his fondness for red bikes. Unfortunately, others suffered due to Reuben’s misguided politics including Alice Nunn who should have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Large Marge.

The first scene of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure featured a breakfast-making machine of exploding-a beached-whale proportions, utilizing principles of over-engineering and absurdity to accomplish art every bit as beautiful as and slightly more useful than the Sistine Chapel ceiling. This type of machine is called a Rube Goldberg. Check out another Rube at the bottom of this post culminating with the smashing of a Creme Egg.

Before we get there, however, I just wanted to note that Pee-wee’s Playhouse The Movie was recently greenlighted by Paramount!! Like Big Adventure, Playhouse The Movie will take the road, “venturing into Puppetland and beyond”, according to wikipedia! How excited am I? I’ll give you a hint — you can’t count that high.