From Laura Harrison

What to say about Doug, or Douggie as my 7-year-old daughter Luisa used to call him...  

Like you, Pepper, I have a lot of great memories, albeit more recent ones. Doug was one of the first people I met in Houston, a little while after I moved here 7 years ago. I remember being instantly intrigued by this weird guy who held court at a party one night, talking about dolphins in outer space... What a welcome relief from the usual mundane party prattle! I had to know more...We became fast friends, bonding on art and film and politics and life in general, and as I learned more about his history with Ant Farm, I decided I wanted to make a documentary film about them. My friends Beth Federici, Jacob Vaughan and I have been working on this film, off and on (depending, among other things, on the availability of those all too-elusive funds!) ever since.  

Like all of you, I've been the happy recipient of dozens of those wonderful quintessential DM missives, (every one of which I have saved in a bulging file since I could never bear to part with them), as well as the wildly ranting emails, in rainbo fonts, invariably marked "highest priority." I too have that postcard marked June 11th from Eden...I have this lovely vision in my mind of Doug going to the local post office that day with fifty or so perfectly rendered and virtually identical postcards, each stamped "Killers of Eden," and I try to imagine the undoubtedly amazed look of the postmaster.

Once when we were up in Amarillo, Texas filming the renovation of Cadillac Ranch, I saw Doug and Stanley Marsh looking through a similar bulging file of their correspondence over the years, and it all looked remarkably the same: the work-of-art one-of-a-kind envelopes, the multiple stamps, the beautiful drawings and calligraphy...

We did some amazing interviews with him there, in front of his beloved cadillacs (although he often said that CR was NOT the crowning achievement of Ant Farm, just the greatest crowd-pleaser --but the light in his eyes when he looked at the newly made-up cars said much...), talking about his life and work, excerpts of which we'd like to share with you all via a tape I will send along with those Houstonians who can make it on the 29th.  Sadly for me, I can't be there.

  The last interview I did with him was early this year, for another film I'm working on about people who don't vote.  Doug was a life-long (and highly committed!) non-voter, and had enough to say about the issue to fill a couple of hours of tapes.  (FYI, as he liked to write, it had a LOT to do with Buckminster Fuller...) As with everything else he believed in, he had strong opinions that he was happy to share in his usual colorful and articulate manner. One quote that I've never ceased to repeat referred to a piece of particularly hated local architecture, which he described quite vividly as "a bourgeois dry-heave." That building has never looked the same since.

  But beyond the shared interest in art and working on the film together, I valued the time we just hung out every couple of weeks or so, over beers and non-stop conversation at Brasil, our usual spot here in Houston. I loved the fact that we were always eachother's greatest fans! (He designed a fabulous Doug Michels original pool for my back yard/ I edited the so-called "chick version" of his House of the Century footage for the Aurora Picture Show festival one year) I loved the fact that although sometimes he drove me crazy, he was truly the most original and ceaselessly creative person I ever had the great fortune to meet here. I loved the fact that when he announced he was turning 60 and I told him I was turning 40 just a few days before, he immediately sent me this beautiful birthday card with 60/40, 70/50, 80/60 on it...

  How I wish that were true. Miss you madly my friend.
 
Laura H.