Postcard update

Found out what's been delaying the postcard blog. Audie was working long hours to finish animating special effects in The Mummy 3 for Rhythm & Hues Studios. Since it's not only his job, but also kinda cool, I guess I can be understanding.

Intruding Genius

More cleverness from Audie Harrison

What is Funny?

It may well be that what I regard as my sense of humor - not just that, but large tracks of my artistic vision - may in fact just be an extreme form of the Helsinki/Stockholm syndrome. I may be Patty Hearst.

At art-school, I was targeted by a group of "upperclassmen". Their very artsy performance piece was to follow me around repeating certain questions and statements.

I recall at one point I ended up underneath one of those little foot-high tables in the quad, surrounded by a chorus of:
"What is humor, Rolfe? What is funny?"
"Tell me about your mother."
"Stroke my knees, Rolfe, make me feel like a man."

While that was happening, I sure couldn't see the humor (or art) of it at all. It was torture. It was terrorism. Worse: it was like being back in Junior High. :)

Then one day Dallas Brunson says to me that they'd deliberated for a long while before deciding who to target. They'd chosen me because they figured I'd get it: I'd appreciate it, and wouldn't wig too badly. With those words, it went from horror to honor.

Looking back, I'm sure that without that transformation, the concept of the postcards never would have occurred to me. Dallas also gave my name and address to a marine recruiter - they sent me some really cool posters. Thanks, Dallas!

Six Degrees of Kenneth Hite

I keep a bunch of books in my bathrooms. Typically, they're odd reference volumes, the sort of thing you can pick up and read a page or two from without feeling a need to begin or end at particular places. One of those books is Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast by Kenneth Hite.

Today, I was reading the section titled "Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon", wherein he connects Kevin Bacon to Ed Asner to John Wayne to Eulalie Jensen to Leon Trotsky to Karl Marx to Louis Blanc to Esquiros to Josephin Peladan to The Rosicrucian Order to Sir Francis Bacon.

One could just as easily have gone from Rosicrucian Order to Sirhan Sirhan to RFK back to JFK and Kevin Bacon. Or from Sirhan Sirhan to a Postcard that referenced him that was sent to A. Harrison.

Hite also quotes Foucoult's Pendulum, wherein Umberto Eco connects "sausage" to "Plato" in 5 easy steps.

Anyhow, there's a lot more Kevin Bacon craziness over at transitivegaming today, including Bacon Numbers for people you know. (Mine's a 4, and that ain't no Fakin' Bacon number)

Mail call from the Tenth Galaxy

Excerpts from my inbox:

"But I still try and make time to make my own stuff, like FUN GUN, etc... Speaking of making films and modern masterpieces and the like... I would kill to see "A View To A Clone 2: In The Mouth Of Cloneness" again at one point in my life!

What have you been doing all this time?

- Audie

P.S. I still have all those post cards. That was one of the coolest things that ever happened to me... I just wish they turned out to be from aliens or some bizarre secret society like I originally thought. I should post them on my blog..."

To celebrate, here's Galaxy Ten...

Sorry about the Postcards, dude

Lookie what I found. I found a blog by Audie Harrison. Complete with a really cool movie by Audie Harrison.



Long, long ago, Audie and I worked at a theatre together. Then I tortured him with Postcards, for which I've never really apologized properly. Then he moved out of state, and I moved out of state, and like a dozen years went by.

(This is apparently the season for getting in touch with people all over again. Repeated Expletives with old school chums. My wife and I going to visit Jake & Kris this weekend, and Sarah's family too - it'll be a busy couple a days. X tried to visit me this weekend on his way to Olympia, but I'd already scheduled that instead. Brendan Riley got into touch with me out of freakin' nowhere. And now this.)

Raise your hands if you'd like to hear a story about being tortured by postcards...