The Road Kill Recorder Retrospective

Being the sort of person who rescued caterpillars from the swimming pool skimmer and such, the roadside carnage was difficult for me to see. I started this postcard publication to "lighten" that experience.

The "Road Kill Recorder" also known as "RKR" was mailed once a week. I'd keep count of recognizable and unrecognizable dead things I saw driving around. Every issue had a feature road kill event and my week's count of dead things.

During the early 80's I was way into doing mail art. I had a mailing list of 400+ people. My involvement doing internet art is very similar to my mail art then. I love sharing...

I picked about 15 people to send the RKR. Some were local friends. Others were places like Ralph Records in San Francisco because I was such a great fan of The Residents and SnakeFinger. I remained anonymous.

I went to the printer with my original pen and ink drawings twice a month.I'd glue them to cardboard that came out of my dad's dry cleaned and folded shirts.

Before long receivers of the RKR wrote back- they responded! I held "contests" with the prize being a date with the anonymous RKR Scout. I started getting fan mail. I kept my identity secret- other than the return address.

One day I got a really special fan mail letter. The sender was so stoked about my Road Kill Recorder. He sent MONEY and a couple addresses of his friends to get the RKR too. WOW. At the time he wasn't the superstar he is now; this special fan letter was from Penn Jillette!

When we finally met years later in San Francisco, Penn and his crew were expecting the author to be a zitty faced teenage boy- instead a cute girl in a mini skirt walked in. Their jaws dropped! It was so funny! My anonymous thing worked, and the RKR subject matter was not something expected from a girl...

Ha Ha! See what you think

©2007 Leslie J Michel