Tight type

Last year I found these letters in a really cool antique book of typefaces in the Howard Tilton library on Tulane's campus. There were many other alphabets in there, mostly calligraphic, that are worth studying if you are interested in crafting cool handwriting, cutting a stencil, or developing a tag with some surfing serifs.

CONO

Cool stencil seen somewhere around Freret.

(Color of New Orleans)

stickers and links

Personally I take no shame in peeling stickers off the street. Certainly I don't steal everyone I see but those that I do take I have no qualms about. One of the ways I'm able to justify my reverse vandalism is by advertising them here so you can find out about them yourself. This is a sampling of some of the local New Orleans artists, organizations, and radio stations. Check 'em out:

SECTION 8- another local zine/website that was one of the inspirations for the PaprPapr

NOLA Rising- Rex Dingler's campaign to cheer up New Orleans with some cheesy slogans and spit in Fred Radtke's eye at the same time. More power to you Rex.

WWOZ 90.7 FM- "New Orleans jazz and heritage station." The best radio station on air in town and everywhere else. They consistently play great old timey blues, jazz, country, and whatever other music you'd never think to listen to. One time I tuned in driving down Claiborne with my mom and they just happened to be playing a song called "Nashville Blues." I've trusted those DJs ever since.

WTUL 91.5 FM- Tulane's college station just a hop, skip, and a turn away from WWOZ. This is another station I turn to with confidence. Whenever I get tired of the hits from the 1930s on 90.7 I just turn to 91.5 and see what my friends there have picked out. Yesterday I meant to call in and praise the DJ who put on "Stereo" by Pavement. That made my day.

The medium is the message: advertising

photo by Andy Fritzshall

Inspiration= new faith in government

Here is another good find pulled from the recycling bin. This article raises an interesting question about whether or not art can actually have a profound social impact. Does the art Obama's campaign has inspired really matter? I, of course, say yes. Even though a poster may still just be poster, all people need to exercise their talents when the inspiration comes. To deny our creative potential is stifling and damaging to ourselves. When we take hold of inspiration and work to actualize it into to something like a cool design then other people see this and become inspired themselves. This cycle of inspiration motivates more production and more creativity. So although one poster may not save the world (or one candidate for that matter) it is still one step towards progress.

Another more simple way I look at it is this:

Barack Obama's encourages people's optimism and hope which inspired creation of art.
George Bush's played on people's fears and distrust which inspired xenophobia and shopping.

I figure we can only go up from here, one poster at a time.

Words from a letter written in a Birmingham jail

Editor's note: correction

There's a typo/misuse of a word in the intro for Second Guesses. My thanks to those that pointed it out and taught me the real meaning of this word, which is not synomous with poetry but rather the antonym.


PROSE
noun
1. ordinary writing as distinguished from verse
2. matter of fact, commonplace, or dull expression

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

#2!!!?! Second Guesses

The title of the second Paper Paper comes from my new favorite activity.

Ever since KRS1 spoke I've been looking at a lot of things in my life differently. This has lead to a lot of confusion and self-doubt.

When I find myself skipping classes to go cut and paste pages for this dinky magazine and staying up late in the basement of the LBC eating Rat food at two in the morning, dizzy from paint fumes, it makes me wonder: "What am I really doing at college?. . . .Aren't all these other people so much more in control than I am?. . .Should I be on track with my own five-year plans and switch to a major that leads to well-known career?. . .WTF Bud?!??"

Luckily I've got a lot of cool friends and an understanding family. You have made all this possible for me. If you're reading this now it means you got to read one of the two issues of the paper-paper and that's what makes it worthwhile. When you guys come up and tell me you dig the zine and we rock a thoughtful conversation for however many minutes, that's when I'm filled back up with hope and the realization that 'Yes! Life doens't suck after all. Tulane is filled with real people of substance!'

Were it not for these moments, 3 speeches may have been the first and last PaperPaper publication. Because of those conversations, though, I'm more inclined to wake up each morning and start a new print project.

Plus, now that I know you're excited to read what I've made, I'm also more excited to find you out the moment I have it ready and to give you a copy. So if you haven't gotten the new issue and have not yet read the poems by C. Meinzen, Shakti, Roy de Vicio, Nathan Scott, and Evan Hanzcor, get at me. But do it soon because I've got a fresh (but small) stack of these in my bag and I see somebody I want to give one to everywhere I go.

Art by Art

ART TERRY's Super Dome Lithograph.

All I know about Art is that he's a screenprinter older than I am who rocks a beard and mustache that I someday aspire to grow. He made this print for some kind of swap project in his class where each student made an edition large enough to give a copy to all the other students. Apparently one of the dudes in his class didn't care enough to clean out his locker when the class ended so his collection of prints ended up in the scrap pile. This is how I came to own the print: by rooting through the trash.

PAPER PAPER the first

Time to pass this on one to a friend...

Props for the performers

Since classes ended Tuesday there has been a lot of excitement on campus. The usual spectrum of emotions on campus, from debauched partying to anxious studying, has been amplified tenfold making campus a very exciting place to be right now.

The two maxims of "Live to party" and "Strive to stay alive" combine to describe these last moments we have before summer begins.

Along with all the projects and tests that conclude the end of classes, there is also been a surge of FREE public performances that are the culmination of the live-arts classes. Everybody should check out whatever is planned next for Dixon Hall because I have seen two great shows there already in the past two days.

I have to shout out to the people who really rocked the stage during the African dance performance Wednesday and the Green Envy concert earlier tonight:

-Nothing made the crowd more hyped than the multiple backflips Quentin Alston did during his routine. I saw him and his dance partners outside the show before it began, sweating, anxiously waiting on their fourth man to show up. Not only was dude already an hour and half late but he was also carrying the Zulu warrior costumes that none of them had seen yet, much less danced in. So give Quentin and the other guys a pound simply because praise should be given to any dudes who have the balls to dance on stage in front of their peers dressed in grass thongs, dancing with black and white spray-painted shields that look like farm cows.

-But, honestly, they didn't really own the stage like Ellen Bull did. While some nervously adjusted their tribal robes, she took control of the performance like she was Nzinga incarnate back at the table with the Portugese. Personally I always dance best when I pretend nobody is looking at me but the smile on Ellen's face as she worked it showed she wasn't scared. She knew we had come to clap for somebody, so she must have figured that it might as well be for her.

- A Cappella groups are such a staple of colleges across the country that we tend to disregard them before a note is even sung. And its not without cause that they suffer such bad reputations: my brother was in an a cappella group in high school with four lanky dweebs who sang barbershop-quartet harmonies.

Technically a cappella songs are complicated layers of sound that take real coordination to pull off, but singing songs that were popular on 78's is asking for the scorn of your peers. And if Green Envy had started off there show with something stupid like a coffee jingle, I'm sure I wouldn't have been the only fool tempted to interrupt it by yelling obscenities.

But of course I didn't do that, just as the Green Envy avoided any and all lame music. To be perfectly honest about it, a few of the songs I would've assumed would be lame but the purity of 14 voices all singing the same thing really highlights the quality of a good composition.

For instance, Amber by 311 is a universal college favorite that I enjoyed for some years until I actually listened to the lyrics. Ever since then I can't help but to roll my eyes at the stupidity of the stoner chorus. Can you imagine actually stepping to a girl and telling her what "the color of her energy" was? I guess its different if you have a guitar in your hands but whatever...until tonight I'd forgotten that the song sounds really pleasant. And as I sat listening with my eyes closed I wondered "How in the hell is Green Envy able to actually sound just like the recorded song?" Their version would have been identical to my ears had they not made its sound better than 311 ever did. They have an awesome ability to mimic the strangest and most minute sounds in a song making themselves sound like the original band and each of its players. That mastery of complex sounds showed especially with Eleanor Rigby.

No Tulane student who has ever shaken his ass at a house party could argue with the songs they picked out: two 80's power ballads! Somebody to Love by Queen and Take on Me by A-ha (next time you see him, give James Lowther a pound for hitting that high note from the chorus. You know the one, just sing it in your head it for a second)

Also before tonight, I had heard Regina Spektor's Fidelity one too many times as a cellphone ringtone.. So Marisa Sack's version made me fall for that song all over again. And freshman Maggie Windler did a good job reviving a song that was popular when she was five year's old: Ace of Base's The Sign.

To top it off they ended with the Killer's All These Things That I've Done, which is a song that rocks, much like themselves. If you make it out to their next show I'm confident you too will be rocked. Until that next show happens, you can pick up the CD they are about to drop in August.



Or you can burn it from a friend like I plan to do.

4,000 "words"

Sunday @ 1:00, LBC pocket park

All this is to preface the performance my classmates and I will give at Pocket Park on Sunday May 4 at 1:00. There we will be performing a short theatrical production inspired by Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed we get to do in lieu of a research paper written in spanish. Check it out as we make a spectacle of ourselves.

***The sorority girls in my group would be horrified to know I'm actually promoting this event because they are already horribly embarassed by what were going to be doing.***

So come check it out!

SUNDAY 1pm
LBC Pocket Park

Super Domes & Squalor Homes

"EL NUEVO ORDEN DE NUEVO ORLEANS"
(The new order of New Orleans)

This is a flyer I've made for my Latin American Theatre class project final. The inspiration for it (and the PaprPapr tambien) comes from the newspapers, posters, and other bits of printed propaganda that the Mardi Gras Krewes throw out along their parade routes satirizing the current state of affairs.

"La Cupula Pulula!" The word for dome in spanish is 'cupula' and 'pulular' means 'to swarm or gather'.

The Superdome is the grandest of New Orleans modern landmarks. I remember as kid roadtripping with the family in mom's chrysler minivan, driving into town, and laying eyes on that massive bubble at the end of the day. After 8 hours in the car, coming from Nashville to NOLA, the city skyline was a sign of relief, encouragement that soon we'd get to our cousins house.

The most memorable crowd that ever gathered there was of course on August 29, 2005 when those who couldn't or wouldn't leave their homes, came to hunker down during Katrina. I surely wasn't there among them then and I don't have any particular memories of seeing that building on my way out of town the morning before. Crossing the Lake on I-10 and seeing how beautiful and calm the water looked is the thing that struck me as I left.

But who can imagine all the memories that monumental blister of a building must conjure with each different person in the city?

Today there is a new dome on the city's horizon. Or rather its underneath the city. Below I-10 at the end of Canal St. and along N. Carrolton St. is the new location of the city's unofficial homeless encampment. Since December, when these people were evicted from their roost out front City Park, camping tents having popped under the overpass. Everybody in the city has seen them because N. Carroloton is such a main artery to get downtown and it would be impossible not to notice them. But the street was also never a really pleasant place for pedestrians in the first place so I just zoom by in my car, staring to the left for a moment to wonder, then they're passed by and I'm back on my way with the air-condition on, the windows up, and my music blaring for nobody but me to hear.

What's going to happen to these people? We all want to know (or at least I say I do) but I haven't sought out the answers for myself. What happened to these people in the first place? Its easy to surmise when I see all the storm wrecked neighborhoods that have stood in disrepair for the past two and half years (now closer to 3 really).

Probably they were residents of these areas, people who never ever imagined they might be forced out on to the streets. Or maybe their homes didn't flood and received only minor wind damage but they were told they couldn't move back in because their housing project would better serve the city if it was reduced to rubble.

There is a lot to wonder about in New Orleans today. Why are the housing projects being torn down while people who need to be housed are sleeping under the streets? How is it possible that a group of people can be so close up in front of me can remain invisible? What will have happened when they truly do disappear as the local government keeps promising each week?

NOLA residents can't wait and see...