Saturday, April 8, 2017

SOMMELIER OF FORTUNE

I have lived and worked in Houston, Texas my entire life. I would describe Texas as a mostly sane place, but one feature I still notice as being slightly odd is the preponderance of gun magazines on the rack at the grocery store. Today I counted ten (10) magazines that featured reviews of pistols and long arms for various purposes. As much as I enjoy guns, I’ve never felt compelled to discuss the merits of a weapon with the written word. Until now.


I’m talking, of course, about the Champagne Machinegun.







Maybe watch the demo video below on silent if you don’t like EDM.






The gun is made by a French nightclub-product company called Extra-Night, and distributed stateside by a gentleman in Miami named Jeremy Touitou. Mr. Touitou had built his empire on sparklers used to present bottles in clubs, so it would make sense that he remains on the bleeding edge of novel applications for sparkling wine in clubs.



I’m extremely pleased that someone has thought critically about a way to get people excited about spraying sparkling wine onto others. Methode Champenois sparkling wine is exciting even before being opened- no beverage on the planet is more dangerously carbonated at six atmospheres of pressure. This miracle of chemistry allows us the joyous spectacle of saberage. But that’s old news now- this is the next evolution of gregarious, attention-seeking champagne usage- delivering it across the room to a stranger’s face, potentially without their consent.



I have not personally held or tested this champagne machinegun, but based on pictures and video, combined with a little bit of weapon and sparkling wine knowledge, I’m prepared to discuss the pros and cons of this device.



The CMG does allow one to spray sparkling wine with more accuracy and stability than just holding your thumb over the bottle. It does this by introducing a rear and forward grip to the bottle with a chassis that resembles a tommy gun. It further improves on the thumb-on-the-bottle method by giving the champagne a narrow channel to flow through, regulating the rate of flow to a speed that empties a magnum in about 45 to 60 seconds. The CMG currently only fits magnums. This product was conceived to encourage sales of large format sparkling wine in clubs. I have every reason to believe it will succeed, because it is completely crazy, and people with money love crazy bullshit like this.



Since it is the first gun on the market that shoots champagne, we can say by a lack of competition that is it the best. However there is a lot of room for improvement and for the sake of progress, we should discuss the CMG’s shortcomings openly:



-It is full-auto only. Because this isn’t an actual gun with moving parts, it’s just a more stable way to hold a magnum while you shake it up to force wine out. Rocking the gun back and forth causes it to begin “firing”- this is an extremely imprecise method of firing. Full auto is only helpful if you intend to engage a large grouping of targets, or intend to engage one target heavily. Perhaps this is easy to accept if you’re firing a magnum of inexpensive cava, but let’s assume you’re rolling into the baby shower packing a mag of something more precious like Pierre Peters “Les Chetillons”, you’ll want to choose your targets more judiciously instead of spray and pray. Multiple firing modes like semiautomatic, and burst fire should be added if you wish to encourage truly high-end champagne shoot-outs.



-Its flashy appearance is not in tune with what the gun-loving public likes. I can understand the logic in selecting a tommy gun as the design for the CMG- it’s a classic American gangster weapon, associated with kingpins and ruthless crime bosses. However aside from the errant shiny gun in a rap video, the public wants modern, tactical looking guns, AKA Black Rifles. Sure, making it in various shiny colors makes sense in a club setting, but if they really want to see this weapon proliferated, they need to make it look like something you would plausibly see in a recent release of Call of Duty.



-It has no ability to accommodate accessories or modifications. A major oversight of the CMG is its lack of weapon attachment rails. These are essential for adding cool-looking and maybe practical devices like scopes, flashlights, lasers, even under-barrel grenade launchers (in case you have to blow up a car to squirt champagne on someone behind it).



-The price is $459. Just to put this price in context, you can get many different real guns for less than this. I don’t think I’m asking for too much for this to cost less than real guns. Right?



-Lastly, the gun does nothing to increase the effective range of champagne exiting a bottle. As mentioned before it is merely a glamorous holster for you to shake a bottle inside of. It is very unsatisfying that the firer does not get to actually pull a trigger.



I am not listing these faults in an attempt to discredit or undermine the Champagne Machinegun, Mr. Touitou, or Extra-Night. On the contrary, I am interested in pushing this idea forward, and creating a mass proliferation of champagne weapons. Here are a few additional suggestions for how to improve on this very good, albeit super crazy idea:



-Create a more powerful version that enhances the range of the gun by diverting sparkling wine into a secondary pressurized chamber. Making the wine come out of the actual gun barrel would be nice. Also, a semiautomatic fire mode would be a huge step up in conserving ammunition.



-Create a larger version that can accommodate various sizes of sparkling wine bottles up to as large as a Nebuchadnezzar (16 Liters). Obviously this will be prohibitively heavy to carry, so it will need to be mounted to a vehicle. A stretch hummer should do nicely.



-Create a smaller version that can shoot an entire bottle of champagne in 1 second. Sounds crazy right? It already exists. In the late 90’s Super Soaker released the CPS 2000, a water gun that could fire up to a liter of water in 1 second. All you have to do is buy one off ebay and reverse engineer it.






The bottom version is the original, which was recalled for being too powerful. It was awesome.

Do not waste our time by suggesting these requests are too complicated. Lockheed Martin just announced it is ready to deploy *laser weapons* into battle with US armed forces, so don’t tell me a better champagne machine gun is impossible.



There is a war going on out there, and we need all the help we can get in the fight against sobriety and boredom. Get to work.



If you need further help testing this gun, please feel free to send a sample to:



Public Services Bar

202 Travis St. Suite 100

Houston TX, 77002