Saturday, August 11, 2007:
GDI Tech Test
The Commando Projector, out standing in its field.
So I'm not doing a great job of keeping up with the other really excellent Guerilla Drive-ins around the country, both new and old. Listen to what happened just last week:
This is magnificent work. If I want to be numbered among this host of giants, this band of creative ass-kickers, then I am going to have to get out there and
show some more movies! Screw the 70-hour workweek! Screw the strep throat! Damn the torpedoes!
So this Saturday I picked up a 1000-watt gasoline generator from
Knox Rentals and decided to put together a fully self-contained off-grid tech test.
Could I show a movie out in the middle of the woods?
Well, in this case, "the middle of the woods" means "the middle of Uncle Rob and Aunt Tomi's mowed field in Downingtown", but the answer is "yes, definitely." Hurrah!
The gas generator was quiet, and it provided plenty of power to run the projector. I put it on the end of a 100-foot extension cord, and I could barely hear it
even when the projector wasn't running. It did smell a bit, though — but when I moved it from upwind to downwind, the bilge-fume drift went away.
Here's a very brief clip of the projector running:
I scream! You scream! We all scream "OH GOD, MY ARM!!"
In partial payment for inviting ourselves over Rob and Tomi's barbecue, we made some ice cream with a hand-cranked ice cream maker that Kate got me for our fifth wedding anniversary
(theme: wood). I was hugely excited about this, especially as it is the hand-cranked kind, which is awesome, and also means that I can try to rig up some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption
to power the ice-cream maker from the motorcycle. Or the film projector. Whatever. Making ice cream is one of the natural end-states of a Rube Goldberg contraption; there is no way
that the process of making ice cream can be made too convoluted, too complex, or too difficult. It just makes the ice cream that much better.
Next time I will crank a little longer, though. And maybe only half as much Grand Marnier in the peach puree. It had a little bit of a kick to it.
Gasoline Generators! Pith Helmets! Snakes!
...okay, only one of each.
So the actual projection went well: I got only a little bit of poison ivy from the ride through the trees to the field, and it gave me an excuse to wear a pith helmet. We watched
the 1970s educational film "Families", while soaked in Deep Woods Off, and a snake curled up in the projector cover, carefully set aside. The screen was about thirty feet from
the projector, making the image about six feet wide. It was
plenty bright, so I think that I can experiment with a bigger screen — or a bigger wall — next time.
Right now, the bottleneck is in getting permission from a couple of really excellent venues around West Chester. I'm working on it! Stay tuned! Aaron,
I'm coming for your title!
