Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Project Garth

This post is basically just me stealing something from a friend of mine. I just felt the whole thing needed to be given new life, because when it was happening it was one of the strangest, most bewildering and hilarious things I have ever been privy to.

At the turn of the century, I was often to be found in the company of some of Victoria's finest folks at a little place now known as the Last Resort. My friend Garth Johnson lived in the house at the time, and was experiencing a most perplexing phenomenon: he was receiving letters of reply of a most curious nature from numerous celebrities, politicians and other public figures. Curious, because he had never sent them any correspondence to reply to. The confounding messages were often accompanied by autographed photographs of the principles, and contained references to many strange and varied comments and requests that Garth had purportedly purveyed. Some of the original letters arrived marked 'Return to Sender', thus giving him a glimpse of what he had allegedly written. We would often gather in the living room in front of the fireplace to unveil and puzzle over the latest bizarre communiques, searching for patterns and clues that might reveal the true identity of the perpetrator or perpetrators of this long running ruse. To no avail. For an entire year, the mystery unfolded without any indication of cessation. Until one day Garth received a letter stating that it was over and the person responsible would be at the annual Christmas party, and wearing red! Which was kind of a cruel hoax, because he was really wearing a black shirt with a little bit of red on it and was, as such, impossible to identify. Which I'm pretty sure he realized would be the case, but did it anyway in order to stretch out the incredible tension we felt as we combed the house in search of him. He eventually came clean and we all had a good laugh about everything. And then Garth beat him up.

In the end, Garth received 14 replies from sixty six letters sent, some of them consisting solely of autographed photographs, some accompanied by letters. The replies are wide ranging and hilarious, either by virtue of what the target says about Garth's letter, or by virtue of the fact that they obviously paid little attention to it at all. The stock response from G.I. Joe and the blithe sentiment of Nancy Kerrigan are two personal favorites. Please, enjoy:


Also, visit the perpetrator's blogs:


and


 

3 comments:

  1. You remember it so well, Andrew wearing "red" and the beating......

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  2. oh man, the beating. who could forget. little did he know he really would be wearing red that night . . .

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  3. This is awesome! I don't know who this guy is but I would have his babies.
    K-hud

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