Run, don’t walk–no kidding: the Rube Goldberg exhibition at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum runs through July 8. It is fascinating, totally original and too much fun to miss. This is the right time to celebrate Rube Goldberg; he was born on the 4th of July,1883, in San Francisco. His father was the Sheriff of San Francisco County. Known for inventing insanely complicated machinery to accomplish simple tasks, the name Rube Goldberg is still applied to nutty, sometimes bureaucratically snarled up operations.

.Instead of making difficult tasks easy, as most modern technology would seek to do, a Rube Goldberg machine makes simple tasks incredibly difficult, usually by using ordinary objects and actions to achieve the goal. They are ridiculous machines created with a careful understanding of humans. The exhibition includes many cartoons, drawing, writing, even videos.

Rube Goldberg married, had two sons, moved to New York City where he continued his work and won a Pulitzer Prize among other awards. He also started an award contest for cartoonists.

Rube Goldberg passed away in 1970, in New York City, after making the USA a brighter place. Go see the show! Admission is FREE, July 3 ( and Aug. 7 and Sept. 4).The CJM is located at 736 Mission Street. Information: thecjm.org and 415/655-7800  Hours: Open daily (except Wednesday) 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday 11 a.m.-8 p.m