Kate went to a kniting party yesterday afternoon, and Lydia and I headed into the basement to screw the new anamorphic lens onto the Commando Projector. I had gone to eBay to buy the cheapest piece of “scope”-print film I could find, to test with. That turned out to be an eight-minute dance scene cut from a (deservedly) forgotten 1965 rock-and-roll flick: “Every Day is a Holiday.”

If you squint at the picture on the right — or if you click through to Flickr — you can see the tape marks on the wall showing how much wider the scope lens is than “vanilla” 16MM. Put simply: IT IS FANTASTIC, and it made me feel for the first time that using a 16MM projector for the Guerilla Drive-In is more than just a kooky Luddite stunt. The image is bright and colorful and w-i-i-i-i-de.

Watching “The Thing” out in the snow is going to be fantastic.

Kate and I were curious about the band that does such a terrible job of dancing in the “Crazy High Noon” saloon scene, so I looked up Freddie and the Dreamers. And I found this on YouTube. Holy cow, I know every generation thinks it invented sex, but the combination of black suits with rump-shakin’ go-go dancers in fuzzy sweaters, fringe miniskirts, and some kind of stripey sixties fishnets? Maybe every generation thinks it invented the “booty and car wax” video, too. But this is clear proof to the contrary: