I don’t like horror movies. At all. I don’t understand the appeal. I like being challenged, and having an adrenalin rush, but I don’t generally like being afraid. Something I do like, that I’ve discovered recently, is that I like being lightly creeped out. I enjoyed having H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Moon-Bog read to me by Josh of Stuff You Should Know fame. (I can’t find a reliable way to link to the episode, but if you go to the Stuff You Should Know website and search for “Josh N Chuck’s Hallowe’en Spooky Scarefest” you’ll find it. It’s from 29 October 2015.) It not scary. It’s just mildly creepy. I thought it was suitably creepy that I read it to the kids the following year in the lead up to Hallowe’en.
Anyway.
I didn’t read any more mildly creepy stuff for several years, until I decided it was time to dip my toe back into the H.P. Lovecraft bog. I don’t know what made me pick At the Mountains of Madness, but it was appealing. Aliens (maybe?). The Big Dumb Object (BDO) trope. And clearly inaccurate descriptions of Antarctica. Maps of Antarctica at the time of writing (1930-ish) had large swathes of blankness on the maps – perfect if you want to add a BDO somewhere realistic on earth.
I’m part way through at this stage. It’s slow going for me.
I was nervous about the weather. The BOM said that it was going to rain. Then that it wasn’t going to rain. Then it looked like it was going to. But then it didn’t. It was even quite mild – for being winter.
The process the second time was much the same as the first, except that I had all the required bits and pieces, so all I needed was to gather some nice-to-have accoutrements and I was off and running. I brought a string of lights this time to make the park feel a bit more inviting in the wintery darkness.
I should have spent a bit more time selecting better films, I think. It’s not that they weren’t good, but they didn’t feel quite as inspirational (or inspiring) as the previous screening.
The same number of people turned up – probably around 15. But this time there were people there that I’d never met before. It’s a movement! A community! A *thing*.
Everyone* had told me I had to read 3 Body Problem, but I never got around to it. When I saw that there was a TV adaptation of it, I thought it was best that I read the book before watching the TV series. In hindsight, I probably didn’t need to. They two are pretty significantly different, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the TV adaptation covers the remaining two books in the trilogy that I am yet to read.
From now on, in this post: book only.
The book grabbed me pretty quickly when numbers start appearing on photo negatives. That was exciting. Unfortunately, the excitement peaked right there in chapter 2. It didn’t go away, don’t get me wrong. But the excitement simmered rather than boiled from there on.
The descriptions are vivid, and the story really got into my head.
The idea: a guerilla cinema in the park. I wanted to inspire people to get outside more, and push what they consider “normal” with bicycles and travel by bike. Inspire people. Inspire myself. I came up with the name (it has a pun!), drew quite a bad logo (that I will, one day, get someone to update for me), picked a date, hoped that the weather would be good, and went for it.
I put the call out over Instagram and my Last Minute Adventure Club Whatsapp group and people were keen.
I didn’t want to have to spend a lot of money to set this up, and didn’t think it was necessary to. I bought a big piece of white fabric to use as the screen – that was around $30. I already have a laptop, amplifier, speakers, and power stuff. The only big-ticket item that I needed that I didn’t have was a projector. I asked on Instagram, and a friend was willing to loan me their projector for the event. Perfect. The park near my house where I was planning to host the cinema has a sneaky power-point that I could tap into. Also perfect.
The big day came. The weather was good. I’d downloaded the videos so I didn’t need to rely on internet while in the park. I had sausages to put on the BBQ. I loaded up the bike and set off for the park. Hung the screen. Set up the projector. Wired the sound. Fired up the BBQ. Everything came together beautifully. People turned up. We chatted. Ate. Watched. Chatted some more.
Magic.
You can follow the Cycling Gorilla Cinema on Instagram now. Follow along here: @cycling_gorilla_cinema
After you’ve installed r-base on Ubuntu with the default packages, you will have issues installing Tidyverse. It’s because there are a bunch of packages missing.
