About the Foam

In the latter half of Preston's tale of the U2 concert roadtrip of 87, he mentions a burning toilet. There's a little story behind the foam upon which it floated down the Provo river.

Sophmore year in the industrial design program was ALL about the foam. Most of our projects, including the all important "speed shape" project, typically began with a drawing and a large piece of foam. Now, everyone was out buying a mid-density green foam which was perfect for carving, and, with a light dosage of primer paint, for building up a bondo-based (auto body filler) design. (I still have my speed shape) The foam did not come cheap.

As a visiting professor, Randy Killen was a BYU drop out who built a name for himself in special effects in Hollywood, working on such notable flicks at Nightmare on Elmstreet 3, The Howling 5, Beetlejuice, and he built one of the coolest swirling liquid contraptions I've ever seen for a weak movie called Prince of Darkness co-starring Alice Cooper. He also worked on those cool old Duracel battery commercials with the James Bond boats and chariots - if you remember them. But I digress.

Randy had connections at the BYU studios north of campus, and came across a massive stockpile of 8 foot by 3 foot by 6 inch slabs of the coveted green foam (as seen here) -- and they were willing to donate it all to the design department (and sophmore class, specifically) for free. We just needed to get it out of there. So we made a team effort, borrowed trucks, and moved all of that foam up to the Brimhall building and into the middle shop room where the paint booth was/is.

Unfortunately, the Brimhall building was under renovation still, which eventually bled into the shop area where they wanted to paint -- and they asked us to move all the foam outside for a few days. So we stacked it all outside the double doors in the shop, across the street from President Holland's house.

As you can imagine, Pres. Holland was not thrilled with that idea -- a wall of green foam across the street from his house. Someone from his house sent security over to question us about it, and when explained what we were doing, everything seemed to be ok. Apparently not. We got a few more complaints, and it didn't help that they took longer than expected to finish painting the lab.

It was at the end of our semester, and we all had our designs up at the Wilk for a show. A couple of us were walking back to the Brimhall to carry a few other items, and we saw a flatbed truck pulled up to the back shop doors, and two guys loading all of our foam onto it. We ran to stop them, and were told it was a request directly from Holland, and if we wanted to keep any of it, to take what we wanted then and there. We each grabbed a couple pieces, put it back inside the shop, and ran back to tell the rest of our class. When folks went back to grab some for themselves, the truck was gone.

I have to admit, I had harsh feelings against Pres Holland for a few years -- which is all stupid. I mean, it was too much foam for any of us to ever use, and its not like it cost us anything. Plus he's an Apostle now. But hey, I was angry, and at the time it was a big deal.

A couple months later, in the dead of winter, we used one of those giant slabs to float a burning toilet down the Provo river (pictures forthcoming).

Comments

[Porgo, Mop Boy to the Gods]

I was admiring some of this foam at a local store the other day with my oldest son, who is almost a Webelo, and I couldn't believe how expensive a small piece of this stuff was. It was something like $10 for a piece that was 8" x 8" x 2"