Postcard Wars

Good luck.

This is greatly appreciated.

Paved roads and all.

Another hello from Istanbul! This time with a dancing Turkish woman! Where are the kofte?

…comes this greeting from my parents.

Well done, parents!

I do believe this is the first time Postcard Wars has received something from Italy or an Italian-controlled entity. This comes as somewhat of a surprise.

Pack your bags, lads, we’re off to BendFilm!

The charming Tower Theater by day.

The charming Tower Theater by night.

McMenamins in Bend — where you can sit on a couch, watch films and drink $3 Oregon microbrews.

An awards ceremony outside in a heated tent with neon blue lighting.

There were even neon-blue “light cubes” in guests’ drinking glasses. That’s just cool.

And, of course, the awards!

It’s not too often you deal with Russian humor, expressed in Cyrillic, in a series of four postcards from a correspondent we’ll call “Susanka.” But that’s what’s happened here. As Susanka explains it, none of these postcards is funny. But one must give credit for some of the cartoons, notably #4.

MOCKBA, I!

MOCKBA, II!

MOCKBA, III!

MOCKBA, IV!

But wait, we’re not done yet here. The best features of these postcards were the stamps. Look how cool! Is it odd that these make me well up with pride for a country that’s not mine? (Imagine Russian anthem at this point.)

Ryan, aka The Goose, went to an Albanian village called Hotolisht recently (right along the river Shkumbin, of course), and came across a surprising find — Andre the Giant, towering above his former professional wrestling counterparts. Who can name all of the wrestlers in this photo? One of them is King Kong Bundy. Is that Ravishing Rick Rude I spy?

The Dry Tortugas, of course! (Not that I knew that before I received this card.)