Casual
Carlson, Tucker
Casual TATER TOTS Epiphanies are rarer in life than in literature. But they do occur, those moments when everything changes in an instant, when you know your understanding of the world will never...
...The first one to hit the center with a potato got ice cream...
...The center of the stump disintegrated...
...How about marshmal-lows...
...Overall, it's a group with creative instincts, subversive tendencies, and the free time to combine them...
...I used about 15 seconds of White Rain hairspray and shot a plastic bottle full of powdered Kool Aid...
...My first shot missed entirely...
...Tempting...
...We were in Maine, visiting friends who live in a rural area up the coast...
...Flames leapt from the muzzle...
...On Spud-gun.com, a guy named Dave Malis posted a photograph of himself "shooting toilet paper soaked in Cole-man lantern fuel...
...gauge shotgun...
...It's like a tracer round...
...Spudguns don't qualify as "firearms," the ATF said, "provided that they are used solely for launching potatoes for recreational purposes...
...For the record, potatoes remain the 1 I most effective projectile food...
...I pressed the button...
...Like a 10...
...I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't do well...
...It knocked me back about a foot...
...They haven't complained yet...
...And they've had plenty of opportunities...
...A couple of Sundays ago, my kids and I decided to test our marksmanship...
...The dogs hid...
...On the underside was a red button, an igniter taken from a gas barbecue...
...What happens if you fire a lime point-blank at a stockade fence...
...I hit a tree, he knocked a hole in the fence...
...Spudtech shipped it to my house in a week for under a hundred bucks, no permit necessary...
...Minutes later he emerged from the barn with the thing in hand: four feet of white plastic PVC plumbing pipe, capped at one end...
...Obviously I needed a potato cannon...
...That's nothing," said my friend...
...It KICKS like a mule...
...I liked the fan pages best...
...After a bit more searching I wound up at Spudtech.com, official site of the Spudgun Technology Center...
...Well I've completed the Big One," he writes...
...A few years ago, its engineers created the SP9004, a remarkable device, billed (no doubt accurately) as "the world's most advanced hand held laser-guided bolt-action aluminum potato rifle...
...But they do occur, those moments when everything changes in an instant, when you know your understanding of the world will never be quite the same...
...So did my son's...
...She was thrilled, and so were we...
...Just down the page, Nathan Lovern, no hometown listed, is pictured in his undershorts cradling a PVC bazooka the size of a telephone pole...
...It went about 300 yards and hit a tree and exploded...
...Using a ram- t'^^t rod, he forced a baking potato down the barrel...
...It was early evening, cocktail hour, and we were sitting on the back porch watching the kids play in the grass...
...Marsh-mallows tend to melt in the barrel and clog the rifling...
...Go pro, and there's paperwork to fill out...
...I've got to come up with some cheap ammo...
...In 1998, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms released its official position on potato cannons...
...He handed it to me...
...Wait till it gets dark...
...TUCKER CARLSON...
...If it explodes and you can imagine it, you can find it online, often with blueprints...
...We now know...
...The report was tremendous...
...It was awesome...
...Both of the girls did better, but it was our youngest, the 2-year-old, who prevailed...
...What about an apple...
...Spud-tech is the Bell Labs of the potato cannon industry...
...We made a bipod out of two-by-fours to steady our aim, and painted a target on a stump...
...The Internet is home to a thriving potato cannon community...
...Compressed and ignited, propane explodes...
...In the end I settled for a conventional plastic model with a rifled barrel...
...She hit the bull's-eye dead on...
...We'll cut open a lightstick and pour it on the potato...
...Hey," said my friend, "want to shoot the potato cannon...
...Apparently my neighbors feel the same way...
...I had one of those this summer, when I saw my first potato cannon...
...It wasn't difficult to find...
...Apples are too mushy...
...Within 15 minutes, I came across spud pistols, propane-propelled tennis ball guns, vegetable mortars with car battery igniters, as well as actual potato cannons, with wheels...
...All experiments we've conducted in my backyard...
...I was in love...
...Then he unscrewed the back of the pipe, sprayed a shot of Aquanet hairspray into the combustion chamber, and closed it back up...
...In the end, we all got ice cream...
...As long as it's a hobby, the feds are fine with it...
...As it turns out, Aquanet (like Right Guard underarm deodorant, and a number of other grooming products) is made with propane...
...The potato flew about half a mile before I lost sight of it...
Vol. 7 • January 2002 • No. 17
