UFO Hoax

Today I played Wii bowling and Super Mario Bros. with my Frick Bros.

I have a bunch of yet-to-be-inflated 17″ balloons at my house that were to be used for a UFO I was going to launch.

A few months ago, I had this plan to send up a UFO over the Albuquerque skies. It contained lights and everything. Oddly enough, the stupid “balloon boy” thing appeared on the news while I was making the thing. Minus the setback for looking slightly unoriginal, I also discovered that the balloons and amount of helium required to lift my UFO was outrageously expensive.

My friend Kevin got super excited about the idea, so we calculated the cubic footage of helium required to lift the thing. It was only after he bought a bunch of balloons that we discovered they wouldn’t do the job.

In reality, we would need over fifty 17 inch balloons to lift my UFO… or around ten 36 inch balloons, or just one 6 foot balloon. It was to cost around $100 for the helium and balloons we needed, and I had already spent about $50 on lights, tape, and batteries for the UFO itself.

I used the Tape Man technique to make the UFO. Without lights/batteries, it weighed only 3 pounds. Then it was probably 8 pounds with lights and batteries. It’s crazy how much helium is required to lift only one pound.

It actually looked quite good with lights. It’s a clear shell, so the inside lit up pretty well. Unfortunately it’s a Hoax that needs investors, because now is the time of year where block laying season has come to a halt.

Tape Man

Remember: Your model needs oxygen when making Tape Man

Sometime last year, my très temporaire band His Holiness played a show at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe during an active art show with various installations. A display that fascinated me was a 3-Dimensional design involving clear cocoons of humans known as Tape Men.  A Tape Man is a mannequin created by wrapping plastic wrap around a human and covering them with multiple layers of packing tape. Eventually you cut your friend out of their shell, and tape it back together to have your very own Tape Man.

I recently discovered that a different street artist named Mark Jenkins made Tape Man popular, and I found many of his ideas fascinating. I told my brother about it, and we spent most of our afternoon making our first Tape Man.

This is my Tape Man rescue pose. Yes, we did put clothes on him.

As you can see, our Tape Man has a well-developed set of legs, but a very saggy upper body. Unfortunately due to lack of tape, as well as patience, we failed to create a very sturdy Tape Man. But here is a good photo with Tape Man in the car with me:

Tape Man can protect you from car thieves.

Go to the flea market to get cheap packing tape and make a Tape Man. Making a Tape Man would also make for a great first-date activity… of course, only if your date is enjoys all of the taping and saran-wrapping of the face, etc. If you come up with ideas as good as Mark Jenkins, you just might feel okay for spending so much money on packing tape.