One night I was sitting at home, trying to get to sleep, when the phone rang. When I answered, I heard a friend of mine (lets call him "friend A") saying:

Friend A: "Hey Joao. Do you know that guy in your building who owns a van?"

Me: "Yes. Do you know what time it is?"

Friend A: "Yes. Can you give him a call, and come meet me with the van at the corner of 77th and park?"

Me: "Its 3:00 am. I don't think he will be very happy if I call him at this hour to borrow his van."

Friend A: "I know. Hurry up before anyone else gets here."

So I call "the man with the van", who also happened to be awake, and trying to find things to keep himself entertained, such as lighting cockroaches on fire, and watch them running away. So he agreed to meet me down by the van, since he had just ran out of roaches, and mice are not nearly as much fun.

We drive to 77th & park, and Friend A is standing on a big pile of garbage, looking as if he should have a flag of some sort standing next to him, while he claimed that pile in the name of the one true emperor of all trash. Among the pile-o-trash, there was this huge old style projection TV. You know those that take half your living room, and project on a screen larger than any wall you might have, and nobody can walk in front of it otherwise the colors all shift? One of those. It takes all three of us to lift the beast into the van, and the big-ass(tm) projection screen had to be disassembled in order to fit in. I had to convince the man with the van that setting insects on fire in public might raise his auto insurance premium, so he decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Once we got to Friend A's place in Astoria Park, we had to remove the front door from its frame in order to get the beast in. We put it in the middle of the room, which was a welcoming addition since the guy had just broken-up with his girlfriend, and she got to keep the coffee table. The projection screen was just a few inches wider than the widest wall in the room, and slightly higher than the room itself. No problem. Remove the frame around the screen, cut a couple of inches off each side with an electric saw, improvise a new stand out of the original stand plus some A/V console parts (we both worked in recording studios), and a few of those spare parts we have no idea where they came from, but guys keep it around for days like this, and voila! It covered the entire wall, but that was irrelevant. Who needs wall space when you have a huge-ass TV?

Next on the agenda was the projection module. We opened it up, opened a couple of beers, and went to work. First thing we noticed was a lot of dust. After vacuuming its insides, we managed to turn it on. You would be surprised by how large a percentage of sensitive electronic equipment can be fixed with one vacuum hose, and a vigorous shake. The thing was missing the color blue, but it didn't take us long to find the cause and fix it. That was 1986, and since then Friend A has gotten married, divorced, married again, moved to Massachusetts, had a child, got divorced again, and the beast is still working.

The man with the van? He is now a respected Entomologist.