Arts & Life

Since 2008, Mel Chin has traveled the country and collected over 400,000 of what he calls “fundred” dollar bills. They are hand-drawn interpretations of hundred dollar bills, using a template he created. He collects from individuals, schools, and community organizations.

“Our mission is to have everybody who wants to contribute can contribute a drawing,” Chin explained on WFAE’s Charlotte Talkss. “A drawing of currency they see it in the form of like a hundred dollars, it’s a “fundred”. They’re like, we’re having fun and to fund something.”

It's that time of year again — the leaves have fallen, the dark comes early, the air brings with it a certain chill — and I've been piling up books on my reading table, books I've culled from the offerings of the past few months, which because of their essential lyric beauty and power stand as special gifts for you and yours.

In an episode from the fifth season of Mad Men the show's main character, advertising executive Don Draper, is asked by his client, the cologne company Chevalier Blanc, to supply a Beatles song for a television commercial. The year is 1966, and the 40-year-old Draper doesn't have his finger on the rapidly rising pulse of popular music. So he calls in a team of younger, hipper copy writers, including his wife Megan.

"When did music become so important?" he asks her.

It's just about that time when members of the press begin to attend screenings of Les Miserables. I hereby vow to engage in none of the following conduct.

1. Throw crusts of bread at the screen and yell, "HEY, JEAN VALJEAN, ARE YOU HUNGRY?"

2. Do my imitation of Amanda Seyfried singing "There are so many questions and ah-nswers that somehow seem wrong," even though it's really funny and quite terrifying.

3. Refer to the short-haired Anne Hathaway as "Ruth Buzz-y."