By Charly SHELTON

Joe Rinaudo may not be a name that everyone in the Crescenta Valley recognizes right away. But many who have spent a summer evening at Two Strike Park watching silent films will recognize his face. Rinaudo is the stalwart facilitator of the summer nighttime silent film event hosted by the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley and a 30-year resident of La Crescenta. Each year, he brings his original 1909 hand-cranked 35-millimeter motion picture projector, outfitted with a Magic Lantern glass slide attachment, to delight families with silent films from a bygone age, which is accompanied by live piano music at the park. Due to the pandemic, last summer’s event was canceled. But Rinaudo has kept busy with other antique instruments during the pandemic. Back in March, around the time of the first shutdown, a family friend alerted Rinaudo to the fact that he had been meme’d.

“I honestly have no idea what a meme is,” Rinaudo said. “My office manager’s daughter keeps telling me I’m famous in the meme world, but I don’t know what that means other than what she tells me.”

A clip of Rinaudo frantically playing an old American Fotoplayer started making its way around social media, with the caption “Day 89 of Quarantine.” A Fotoplayer is an all-in-one piano-organ sound effects machine that was used in the silent film era before the advent of the theater pipe organ, Rinaudo said. It has two player piano rolls for the music, which leaves the operator’s hands available for pulling and pushing the sound effects and to also change the different pipes and percussion during the movie. And Rinaudo’s hands are flying in the video meme as he operates the various pull-strings, levers and horns to provide sound effects to the lively piano roll playing.

The clip featured in the meme, from an episode of “California’s Gold” with Huell Howser, gained popularity. When Rinaudo’s friend posted that she knew the man behind the meme, she was flooded with requests for him to do a live show with the Fotoplayer. She was contacted by several companies that wanted to produce the concert, but it seemed to Rinaudo that it would be easier to just stream it himself on Facebook Live. Despite a few technical glitches, that first concert drew over 10,000 live views that evening.

Now with the arrival of the holidays, Rinaudo is at it again. This weekend, he will hold a Christmas concert on Facebook Live featuring the Fotoplayer, with piano rolls ranging from traditional to silly, and a surprise or two along the way. And despite the rarity of the machine and the uniqueness of the event, Rinaudo keeps a light and fun atmosphere about everything and is just happy to share his love of this special and all-too-rare music machine with the public.

“I’m mostly just goofing around with the machine at home with friends unless I’m doing a narration for a silent movie restoration that will be released on DVD,” Rinaudo said. “There is a larger Fotoplayer at the Academy of Motion Pictures in Hollywood, and I take those performances much more seriously. In fact, the very last show the Academy did before everything was shut down back in March was a restoration of the silent movie ‘Two Arabian Knights.’ I put a score together with 75 different roll changes to fit the mood on the screen. That movie was one of the very first Academy Award winners and it was great fun playing for it.”

The Facebook Live concert will be held this Sunday, Dec. 20, at 6 p.m. The stream is free for all to attend, and viewers don’t even need to have a Facebook account to enjoy the show. Just search Fotoplayerjoe to find his Facebook page.

The concert is free but for anyone who may wish to support Rinaudo’s efforts, he asks that donations be sent to Famous Players Orchestra, an organization that he belongs to whose members perform live orchestral accompaniment to silent movies, and they are raising money to make a recording. Donations can be made online at FPOrchestra.org/donate.