by Jas Faulkner It all started with one of those thrift store finds that moves you to dust off and rekindle an old interest. I was there to do my biweekly stuffed animal grab for Niklas Lidstrom -aka- Destructo the Wonder Shih Tzu when I saw they had cobbled together roughly fifty dollars worth of calligraphy supplies into a ziploc bag and with the asking price of five dollars. This is probably a good place to hit the pause button and admit that I’m a big old typography nerd. It was a love of letters and alphabets of all kinds that pushed me to major in graphic design at one point in my overlong undergraduate career. I am still a sucker for typography books
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by Jas Faulkner Why do people draw in books? A friend of mine borrowed my copy of the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail for a scene study class. She returned it with thanks but a grumpy rejoinder about the copious scribbling along the margins. After listening to more grumbling, I finally broke it to her that the bizarre creatures were actually printed in the book. They were the handiwork of the film’s animator and co-director, Terry Gilliam. She had every reason to believe that the artwork was mine. However, she had no idea that Gilliam, and for that matter the rest of the artists often still known as Monty Python, had been influences for decades. My father passed his adoration of the Pythons
by Jas Faulkner THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.-T.S.Eliot (from The Wasteland) There is always a stifling blanket of ambient rage that drapes over everything whenever something bad happens. I had hoped, as I set out to run errands and spend time away from my work, that the Spring weather would serve as a balm. On April 18th, 2013, Nashville was blessed with beautiful weather and relative peace and safety. In spite of this, every stoplight presented someone with
by Jas Faulkner He was the first critic to have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Chicago Sun-Times reviewer was also the first of his profession to win a Pulitzer Prize. At a time when the word, “iconoclast” is almost tragically abused by dint of misapplication, Ebert lived a professional and personal life that embodied its definition. “When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was, all is well. I am as I should be.”
by Jas Faulkner Jeremy is finishing a story while Kaia and I look at the clock. We’re waiting with a dozen other classmates for the big hand to click over to the twelve and the little hand to scoot to the six. At that point, at least for us, class is in session. Not that anyone would notice if we were late. After all, Jeremy is somewhere near Jackson Hole , I am in Nashville, Kaia is in Victoria, BC, and the rest of our study group is scattered all over the globe. Our classroom is a digital pocket of space and time, an online intellectual stasis chamber situated somewhere in 2009 at Yale. Open Yale Courses is home to English 300 Introduction to the