Jason Polan was my friend.

I intend to build an archive, here and other places, of our 20 years of collaborations. Here are some things.

Recently I was asked to memorialize my friend Jason Polan:

Some things to Start With

I wrote an early (maybe the first?) profile of Jason for a magazine called SLASH.

The last thing Jason asked of me was to repost a tweet-storm I wrote about Kevin Feige and Martin Scorsese. (He said he was too tired to follow all the posts on twitter, so I went through an hand-coded it in html, like I am doing for this site.)

The morning Jason died, the New York Times emailed me for comment to be included in his obituary. I sent them more material than was appropriate, but far less than I could have said.

There is so much of Jason out there, in the world. I have so much I want to organize and present here. But there is so much I want to hear about, and to see. Please email me about anything you like. fgs (at) umich.edu

Obituaries of note:

Jerry Saltz in Vulture

Some Early Writings from Poor Mojo

Back in 1999 I co-founded Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) (www.poormojo.org), and like with a lot of things, Jason was right in there. He designed our logo(s) (an endless number of giant squid drawings), he was an avid weekly reader and advisor, and he submitted (and we requested) a large number of pieces of writing.

Jason Polan
Rant (published December 18, 2003): A Guide to Charging the Mound;How to Win, No Matter What
Rant (published November 11, 2004): A Letter to the Editors, in Celebration of PMjA Issue #200
Rant (published July 14, 2005): The Blind Accordion Player
Rant (published August 25, 2005): It Was Wet Outside And Everybody Was Carrying Heavy Things
Rant (published July 5, 2007): Things on a Bridge
Rant (published July 26, 2007): 756
Poetry (published April 14, 2005): Forward Across the Sky
Poetry (published August 3, 2006): Calisthenics
Fiction (published December 22, 2005): They Think It Is Funny
Fiction (published April 6, 2006): Snow
Fiction (published July 20, 2006): The Driver
Fiction (published February 22, 2007): The Blue Sweater
Fiction (published August 16, 2007): The Acrobat
Fiction (published November 15, 2007): And Then He Ate Her
Fiction (published November 5, 2009): They Did Not Know Each Other

Later Collaborations

The Biggest Tree in Manchester

(There is so much stuff to go in this category that this is just a placeholder I created because I found the one above link.)

Jason Links:

Jason was a long time collaborator with a lot of awesome people. I'll try to build a list here. Can people send me links?

20X200 Stuff

Jason's Every Person in New York Blog

Every Person in New York on Amazon

Stuff at the Whitney Shop

His Saludos Shoes

His Uniqlo Umbrella New York Shirt

Thesis

(This page is a sketchpad for an archive. I will be adding to it periodically. If I don't have it on this page, I haven't thought about it yet. Help me.)

Created March 5th, 2020. Last updated March 10th, 2020.