This Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 from 9pm until 12-ish, at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Helicopters
$2 Processing fee, please!
$4 Cosmopolitans
The Los Angeles Mosquito
If you live here in the LA area, chances are, you have experienced the chopping of rotor blades roaring through your neighborhood. You have probably had an otherwise peaceful outside telephone chat with a friend turn into you hollering “WAIT. HOLD ON… HELICOPTER… CAN’T HEAR YOU… JUST A SEC…”
Maybe you’ve even had the crazy electric bird circling your house twirling a ballyhoo on your backyard and the scratchy loudspeaker blaring from the sky “COME ON GUYS, IT’S LATE, COME OUT FROM THE BUSHES, WE KNOW YOU’RE THERE.” Hopefully, they aren’t talking to you.
Our fair city is quite ubiquitous with the helicopter, in most cases, they are merely a nuisance to our troubled ears, we’ve gotten so used to them. But we’re going to celebrate them this week by assembling, painting and decorating beautiful little wooden rubber band-powered facsimiles. They are so lovely, you simply must have one for your collection.
Why?
Because helicopters are AWESOME, that’s why.
Helicopters aren’t just for chasing suspects on the run, or for indeterminate dubious military usage.
This amazing machine takes off and lands vertically, it can hover for extended periods of time, and can operate under low airspeed conditions, and it’s got a happy little propellor on top for cuteness. Where else can you find something so useful, and at the same time, so cute?
HELICOPTERS
1.) Act as air ambulances when road vehicles can’t reach the scene quickly
2.) Find lost hikers/swimmers in Search and Rescue missions
3.) Fight fires by “water bombing” the area with “helibuckets.”
4.) Report to us what’s up with the freeway traffic, or other types of news (celebrity funerals or alligator transport, for instance)
5.) Reflection seismology! So nerdy!
6.) Aerial photography
7.) A sassy way of getting places, OR a great way to see the city, if you feel like being a tourist for an hour
8.) FUNNY GIRL (1968) Barbra Streisand. Hudson River. Tugboat. One of my favorite shots EVARRRR. It was pulled off with luck, skill and I guess some kind of ESP between the pilot and cameraman because it’s INCREDIBLE. It’s the longest crane shot in the world (for that time) and it’s not using a crane, and it’s absolutely exhilarating.
9.) Helicopter crashes in fictional action films are an unabashed love letter to explosions.
10.) It’s hard not to find a helicopter we don’t love, from the ones on M*A*S*H to T.C.’s chopper in Magnum P.I, to Stringfellow Hawke and his faithful Airwolf. Oh yeah. And Blue Thunder. Ha.
Twirl your cheeky self in here for some crafting goodness!
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain
