You call that a Mousetrap?

August 10, 2004 5:16 PM

Ahh, Mousetrap.

Just turn the crank and snap the plank and boot the marble right down the chute, now watch it roll in into the pole, and knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub, which flips the man into the pan...the trap is set... here comes the net...

Replace marble with "bowling ball", trap with "twenty three ton crane", and net with either "bank safe" or "piano", and you've got a pretty good idea of the Life Size Mouse Trap event that just hit San Francisco. (Summary pic / All pics).

And yes, of course there were protesters.
posted by effugas (11 comments total)

Where's a cat when you need one?
posted by jonmc at 5:19 PM on August 10, 2004

Ha! I was there. It was kind of surreal and strange especially with its out-of-the-way location. I'm also wondering how much pre-show testing they did given how many things didnt quite work the first go-round (but, still impressive when it did work)
posted by vacapinta at 5:48 PM on August 10, 2004

I'm jealous. My pictures didn't come out half as good!
posted by zia at 5:54 PM on August 10, 2004

vaca--

It's based on freaking MOUSETRAP, a game so unreliable that its brokenness played a central part in the game mechanics. Give 'em a break :-) The first round worked pretty well.

zia--

Long exposures rock. :-) OK, things are a bit saturated...
posted by effugas at 5:56 PM on August 10, 2004

Not to piss in the cornflakes, but did anyone else find the "protest" gimmick kinda tacky? I guess Abu Ghraib is funny if you... no, wait. It's not funny in any way whatsoever.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:48 PM on August 10, 2004

This is very, very cool. I spent so many hours trying to get that stupid game to actually stay together that I can't imagine starting a project like this.
posted by dual_action at 7:13 PM on August 10, 2004

Oh, man - Mrs. Commish is SO mad at me right now, because she has been threatening promising to build one of these in our yard for about ten years now, but I would never get around to helping her with it, and instead I just kept saying how hard it would be and how you could never get all the parts and stuff, and now I just said "Hey Sweetie, you won't believe what somebody just posted on MetaFilter..."

It's all my fault, of course.
posted by yhbc at 7:21 PM on August 10, 2004

effugas's Profile
Name: Dan Kaminsky
Homepage URL: http://www.doxpara.com

So, this is a self-link, right? Doesn't bother me much since this is pretty cool, but such things are frowned upon, nicht wahr?

(It was revealing your s3kr1t photographic technique that undid you, effugas.)
posted by kenko at 9:19 PM on August 10, 2004

I guess I should have checked MeTa before making that comment. I are dumb.
posted by kenko at 9:20 PM on August 10, 2004

kenko, I'd leave that kind of bastardliness to the ancients -- they can pull it off in all its bastardly glory.
posted by Satapher at 9:44 PM on August 10, 2004

posted by Pretty_Generic at 12:17 AM on August 11, 2004