To Donna, Love Bob

Why was this 1975 photo of ME all over London in 2008? Ozzie@SpaceyIdeas.Com Their experiment was still going on in July of 2008, so I kept mum about it. I was at least hoping for a trip to London out of it, but these young cinema students had no funding for such a thing. Anyway, it's all over now. (Tiny URL for this page: tinyurl.com/r33q2y)

The story, as I learned about it

ILC Industries, the NASA Contractor that made Apollo moon suits, held a "Garage Sale" in 1975 to clean out the storerooms. I flew down to Dover, Delaware from my home in Rochester NY. My flight to Philadelphia got me to the sale 2 hours late, and all the bubble helmets were gone by then.

I bought a white outer suit, and the blue training liner that was underneath. Before sending the outer suit to my buddy in Connecticut (I kept the training liner), I went to a portrait photographer, and had the photo made.

Donna was someone I was dating at the time I bought the space suit. When I visited Donna and her family in Brooklyn NY a few years ago, I found that they had the last remaining print that I had signed to her all those years ago. Her husband Marc was kind enough to scan it for me, and e-mail it to me.

As to how my picture got plastered all over Britain, I've got no idea. I'm waiting to hear from the folks at ToDonnaLoveBob.org myself. When they ask for your code number, put in "31220" so they'll know you visited this web site (unless you've got a code number from one of the photos). Why that number? Well, put 31220 into a pocket calculator, and turn it upside-down.

A group of cinema students calling themselves "The Asbo Twink Collective" just found the image of me in the space suit on the internet, and took it upon themselves to use it in an experiment in "pop art culture". Here's their explaination:

--- On Wed, 7/9/08, Reuben Le Prevost wrote: From: Reuben Le Prevost Subject: Re: ToDonnaLoveBob.Org - from the Original Ozzie To: ozzie@spacelaunchinfo.com Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 3:27 PM Dear Mr. Osband, Thank you for your patience with us. We have been conducting an art piece/experiment looking at the role of the photographic image the current cultural marketplace. We deliberately designed an anonymous style of interaction with our subjects to keep them in the dark. We argued with each other about whether to respond to you because we wanted to retain our anonymity while also feeling that we owed you the right to a response. However we do plan on sending you the images you requested. We wanted to stay anonymous because we are interested in what happens to popular 'art' pieces when they have no clear author. In the current climate of celebrity pop art culture we wanted to block the desires of those who took part to know who we were, however in their desperate search for an author they found you! We are a cinema school collective. We will send you your pictures. We wish you well. Reuben Le Prevost and The Cinema School Collective

Reuben Le Prevost Other collaborators in the Cinema School Collective: Gillian Marcus Marcus Munnelly Anna-Maria Pfab Maximilian Steckelmacher

That's about it. They generated a Power Point Presentation of the experiment's results that they submitted for their grades, but they asked me to remove itmy link to it. They said, "we feel its important to maintain some mystery around the processes and ideas involved". In the latest e-mail from them[reuben090213.pdf - MISSING], they also mentioned that the Asbo Twink Collective has broken up Of course, their production group has broken up, and they no longer live at the address given on the back of the photos. It was a student group, after all, they have since graduated, are no longer students, and have all moved on. That's why they've pointed the ToDonnaLoveBob.Org domain to this page (the registration has since expired, and no one has renewed it - I certainly can't afford to). Apparently, I, the subject of the photo through no fault of my own, am now the archivist of The Project.

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I received some e-mail about the project from people tracking down the photo (it was on the Internet, after all, which is how it all got started - links to their Blogs below) who found me, but not The Project. (Do not be surprised if many of the links below have 'timed out' on websites that were not renewed - It was a long time ago now)

No fame or fortune resulted from the experiment - none that I know of, anyway. Please feel free to visit my Launch Viewing web site (or just check out the Launch Schedule), and if you should come to Space view Park in Titusville to watch a launch, look for the tall, bearded wierdo in the green shirt with the funny patches on it, and please say "Donna sent me".

Robert Osband Computerist Spaceyideas.Com PO Box 321 Titusville   FL USA   32781 Ozzie@Spaceyideas.Com

Ozzie's old space suit photo was showing up all over London.	Ozzie, in only the training liner, has his copy of the novel "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" autographed by the author Robert A Heinlein at MidAmericon, the 1976 World Science Fiction Convetnion.	This is a more recent photo of Ozzie. The phone he's holding was his first mobile phone. Since he lives in Florida now, he claims his hair is "sun bleached".

When you visited "http://ToDonnaLoveRob.Org", you were presented with the following web page:



Each picture had a four-digit number on the back, such as the one shown below, along with the Web Page Address.



Once you entered the number into the text box on the web page, it took you to a "ThankYou" page that gave you a mailing address. The address is no longer valid. For those who were visiting their web page from a link on this page, I had suggested entering the 5 digit number "31220". It's the number I'd send to my friend's numeric pager, so when they read the number upside-down, they'd see the name "OZZIE" (put the number in a calculator, and see).

It turns out that the address was that of The Cinema School Collective at the time. The address is no longer valid.