Larry, Cat in Space (2:30 p.m.)
Fito, Gato en el Espacio (3:30 p.m.)

Setup

  1. Planetarium entrance light off.

  2. Sound board: sliders up for CD, DVD, and output; down for all others.

  3. Video projector: monitor select line 1, input select line 1, to enable show DVD (video at DVDLARRY.CUE line 422, DVD-FITO.CUE lines 310 and 427). Unplug XP from line 1 for brighter video.

  4. CD: entry music.

  5. DVD: Larry—Cat in Space/FITO in show (left) DVD player. You should see one rectangular button on the monitor; brightness and contrast down to prevent audience from seeing it. Debris on the disk might cause a disk player in the corner of the monitor and a red circle with a line. Animation (right) DVD player is not used.

  6. Zeiss: audience faces south, crescent Moon 45° up on meridian. At lines 41–44 of DVDLARRY.CUE, make sure Moon does not interfere with portrait of Diana.

  7. Spice computer: DVDLARRY.CUE (no dash) or DVD-FITO.CUE (with a dash).
    1. Line 45 highlighted: Zeiss latitude motion to get crescent moon on meridian above Diana portrait.
    2. Line 64 highlighted: slew hard right, halfway up dome (not too low), speed 9:30 or 10:00 on dial. Leave slew in automatic. (Slew left at lines 265–272, right at 299–310.) Zoom is not used.
    3. Line 80 Time 1:31.50 highlighted: wait for audience to enter.

  8. Audience entry sequence.

Show

Launch the show by aiming the DVD remote at the show DVD and pressing ENTER. After the gold rectangle disappears, video projector brightness and contrast up. Zeiss whites and blues down gradually. Planetarium entrance light off.


There it is—the Moon.


Me, I like to go out with my humans


Back to watching the sky…

Blastoff!

I sniffed around and found some food…

“Outside” looked very strange.


There was a window in the boarding area…

The door opened with a hiss…

Mirror image

Glenn says that one of the slides of the full moon is in backwards. He doesn’t know precisely which slide, but it’s the one associated with the line on the cuesheet “When LIGHTS FADE leaving only FULL MOON, stars on.”) Don’t know that anyone would notice this—on the other hand it’s a fairly simplified pic of moon features and the “lady in the moon” is looking the wrong way…

A militarized Moon with a “commander”

The Moon is populated entirely by Midwesterners. Diana, the Roman moon goddess, doesn’t need her clothes—everyone on the Moon wears the same uniform. Confusingly, Larry sees an earth chord (line 309), but the “space plane” flies all the way to the moon without stopping at a “space station”.

Larry replaces Our Place in Space and Viaje a los Planetas. Larry premiered on Friday, October 6, 2006; Fito on Sunday, October 29, 2006 (no one showed up). Thanks to Jack Nicholson for voicing the cat (“Whatsamatter? Never seen a cat before?”).

Links

  1. Larry home page at Loch Ness
  2. Cheat sheet
  3. Script in English
  4. Larry is the remote descendant of You will go to the Moon by Mae and Ira Freeman.
  5. Differences between DVDLARRY.CUE and DVD-FITO.CUE (listed by diff). The English version has an Earth chord (LoCate 5 STEP: F, lines 76, 309); the Spanish version has video (line 310). The titles, signs in the mob scene, and closing credits are also different.

¡La Luna necesita gatos!