Photo by nwhitford on Flickr. 

I started Is Greater Than in late 2007 with little direction or ambition, as a response to the sadness and frustration I felt after the end of Punk Planet magazine, where I served as an intern and a reviews editor during its last year. Despite my brief tenure at the magazine, I had been a long-time reader, and it had a huge impact on my thinking. I credit Punk Planet with inspiring me to leave the soul-sucking customer service jobs I had held for 13 years, and pursue a writing and editing career. My only real hope with Is Greater Than was that I could in some small way try to carry on the legacy of politically-minded cultural coverage that Punk Planet excelled in. 

As a result of that excessively vague mission, Is Greater Than has seen multiple permutations in the past four years, from a overtly political direction in the early days to its recent incarnation, in which politics still inform the coverage but the focus is more squarely on culture, literature, art, life and music. 

When starting a blog or online magazine, every seasoned blogger or journalist or media pundit will tell you that the key to building traffic is specialization, focusing on a topic with a laser focus and excelling in your coverage of that. I read this sentiment many times while starting Is Greater Than, but specialization seemed incredibly boring to me. I’m a generalist, as are most of the people I know and whose work I respect. Of course it’s essential to develop a unique perspective, and really know your shit — something I learned the hard way with a series of very earnest, but misinformed takes on topics such as Constitutional Law during the 2008 election — but I wanted to edit a site that included contributors with a wide array of interests.

That probably hurt Is Greater Than’s traffic in the long term — aside from a couple spikes when posts received the attention of major blogs, we settled into a pretty consistent average of a couple hundred visitors a day — but it made editing the site much more interesting and rewarding.

I still think general-interest coverage can work online, but it requires a strong, well-articulated, unified point of view. (Or lots of startup money.) My primary regret with Is Greater Than is that we didn’t identify a distinct POV early on. The importance of that is something I’ve learned over these four years, as well as many other things — how to set an editorial direction, work with writers of varying backgrounds and levels of experience, write CSS and PHP, manage databases, and the importance of knowing what you’re talking about before hitting the publish button.

Unfortunately, it’s now time to bring Is Greater Than to an end. There are multiple reasons for this: other personal and professional projects dominating my time and attention, my need to focus on a number of other developing projects, and a WordPress installation buckling under four years of relative neglect. It’s sad to end it, but it’s time to move on.

I can’t fully express my gratitude to the many people who have read, supported, edited, interned for, and contributed to Is Greater Than. A full list of our contributors can be found on the about page, but there are a few people I’d like to specifically mention, for their support and/or work for the site: former editors Brigid Barry, Gabriel Levinson, and Laura Pearson; long-running contributors Matthew Beck, Laura M. Browning, Leland Cheuk, Leilani Clark, Lynette D’Amico, Levi Fuller, Matt Gajewski, Cat Johnson, Peter Koht, Janina Larenas, Tom LG, Lavinia Ludlow, Erica Phillips, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Kai Smart, Kira Wisniewski, R. John Xerxes, and Michael Zapata; and Daria Davis, Anne Elizabeth Moore, and Dan Sinker, without whose work and support, I might still be serving coffee drinks for minimum wage. If you’ve enjoyed the site over the past few years, be sure to follow those links and keep abreast of their excellent work.

As for me, my primary gig, where I use many of the skills I’ve learned here, is editing the science, technology and civicsystem channels of Shareable.net, an online magazine about the sharing economy. If you’ve enjoyed reading Is Greater Than, I urge you to check out Shareable. We cover a broad scope of topics I think are relevant to IGT readers — collaborative consumption, culture and community, social media, open source software, activist efforts around the world, and much more.

In addition, I’m an working freelance writer covering the politics and culture of technology, underground movements, music, books, art and comedy for a variety of publications. Links to my work and more can be found on my site at paulmdavis.com. I’m also focusing more on my music, exploring podcasting, and dusting off the old domain 12ptplan.com to use as a place for longer-form blogging and musings. It’s pretty bare right now, but won’t be for long. Follow the RSS for 12 Pt. Plan here. You can also keep abreast of my activities, as well as any random smart-ass thoughts that come to mind, on Twitter at paulmdavis.

I’m incredibly proud of the work we have done over the past four years, and though the site will cease publishing, the archives are not going anywhere. Most of all, thanks to you, the readers, whose interest, support and feedback have made it an incredibly rewarding experience.

1.

Once upon a time, the Little Mermaid came into Red Lobster. She came into Red Lobster sad and wobbly. Sad, because she missed her family and friends far away under the sea. Wobbly, because she was now an ex-Mermaid, and had still not quite gotten the hang of legs.

The Little Mermaid came into Red Lobster every Thursday. She never ordered anything, never requested a table. She just loitered in the lobby, by the aquariums, and sang to the lobsters. She had a good singing voice, but, still, customers complained. We told her she could sing to the lobsters all she wanted if she bought something—a Caesar salad, crab cakes, mozzarella cheese sticks, a cup of clam chowder—but she never did. I think she had money troubles. The market price of lobster was then around twenty-seven dollars a pound.

Our manager, Farnsworth, instituted a strict zero tolerance policy toward the Mermaid. He warned new hires about her during induction training, posted “For the Enjoyment of Customers Only” signs on the lobster tanks, stapled a poorly taken photo of the Mermaid to a corkboard in the staff room. But, if he wasn’t around, and no customers complained, we left the Mermaid alone, let her sing to the lobsters for as long as she wanted. I think she wrote the songs herself. They were extremely sad, and many of them seemed like they were meant to be duets, presumably with the lobsters, but when it came time for the lobsters to sing all we heard was silence. This made her sad songs even sadder.

When business was slow, I’d sneak away from my tables and stand near the hostess’s podium, to watch the Mermaid, listen to her sing. Usually I could catch a chorus or two before my tables became restless. The hostesses teased me, said I must have a thing for redheads. Everyone assumed I was the author of the crude graffiti concerning the Mermaid in the employees-only restroom. But, unlike my male coworkers, my interest in the Mermaid went beyond her big doe eyes and exposed navel and tiny seashell bras. It was her voice that truly enchanted me. Red Lobster piped in bland Lionel Richie and Michael Bublé hits all day—the Mermaid’s enigmatic half-silent songs were a welcome respite. I thought about asking her to teach me the lobster parts of her duets sometimes, but my voice wasn’t very good. I wouldn’t have been able to do the lobster parts justice.

Occasionally, as part of my professional responsibilities as a Red Lobster team member, I had to retrieve a lobster from the lobby aquarium during one of the Little Mermaid’s songs. I always begged my coworkers to do it instead, but to no avail. There was a color-coded chart in the staff room that clearly indicated the lobster-handling rotation. I tried to be as respectful, as inconspicuous, as possible. I’d always wait until the Mermaid closed her eyes, immersed herself in a particularly emotional vocal passage, to grab the lobster. I’d always scoop the doomed crustacean out of the tank briskly, efficiently, attempt to ferry it to the kitchen without the Mermaid even noticing that one of her duet partners was gone. But I was never brisk, never efficient, enough. Her eyes always opened, as I grasped the lobster, as it writhed and twitched and thrashed in my hands. She always noticed. She always witnessed my betrayal.

Could the Little Mermaid hear the lobsters? I can only assume she could. Did she have to teach the lobsters their parts of the duets, or did the lobsters already know the melodies, the lyrics, had they sung these songs since birth, since long before they were scooped from the sea floor by New England fishermen and transported a thousand miles to Red Lobster number 437? Did the lobsters sing these songs during their strange journey? Did they understand what awaited them in the restaurant lobby? Did they fathom why their friends, once removed from the aquarium, never came back?

The Little Mermaid never said anything when I retrieved the lobsters. She never screamed, never slapped me, never missed a beat. She just kept singing. But I knew she hated me. “I’m sorry,” I’d say, under my breath, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over, as I carried the lobster, struggling and writhing, to the kitchen. It’s not like I enjoyed this, I wanted to tell the Mermaid. It’s not like I caught the lobster, ordered it, wanted it to die. I was just doing my job. And I didn’t even want to do my job. But that’s what a job is—nine times out of ten—doing something you don’t want to do. And I only kept that job, I wanted to tell the Mermaid, as the lobster in my hands twitched and thrashed and writhed, I only kept it so I could hear her, every Thursday, singing her half of her sad, sweet, seasick songs.

2.

Once upon a time, the old woodcarver Geppetto waited for his son, Pinocchio, to come home from a party. Tick, tock, tick, tock went the woodcarver’s twenty handcrafted cuckoo clocks. Pinocchio’s curfew was midnight—it was now one-thirty. Geppetto, furious, whittled a wooden cuckoo until it was thin splinters of pine.

A real boy. That’s what Geppetto had wished for, and that’s what he had gotten, along with all the toils and tribulations that came with one. Geppetto had tried to be a good father, but Pinocchio, even with the guidance of his insectile conscience, Jiminy Cricket, had always been a handful. Geppetto’s first years of fatherhood were spent largely in emergency rooms, principal’s offices, juvenile courts, the stomach of a giant whale. Now, Pinocchio was seventeen, and Geppetto had two different bail bondsmen on speed dial and three different prescriptions for anxiety and stress. Geppetto had fired Jiminy Cricket the previous fall and experimented with other moral-advising insects—a sawfly, a mealybug, a bagworm, a banana gnat, a louse—but Pinocchio’s behavior didn’t improve. In the winter, Jiminy Cricket begged for his old job back, and Geppetto relented. Geppetto knew how tough the job market was—he himself had recently enrolled in classes to become a certified professional locksmith and a licensed acupuncturist and masseuse. There was just no money in woodcarving anymore.

Geppetto put down his whittling knife and paced around his workshop. He dusted his clocks, swept up splinters, arranged the tools in his toolbox by alphabetical order. It was no mystery what Pinocchio was up to, in the early hours of the morning. He was with one of his good-for-nothing girls: Briana, maybe, or Amber, or Nikki, Ree-Ree, Marisleidis, Honey Bee, Nyeesha. Why couldn’t Pinocchio go out with a nice Italian girl, like Sofia D’Allesandro, who had bought two of Geppetto’s wooden lawn reindeer for her grandparents last Christmas? With no Mrs. Geppetto, Pinocchio sorely needed a positive feminine influence, but instead he cavorted all hours of the night with girls whose idea of formal attire was black instead of leopard print thongs and whose names regularly got carved into the partitions separating truck stop urinals.

Mrs. Geppetto. Geppetto had tried to meet women, had tried to find Pinocchio a loving and nurturing mother, but to no avail. He was so old, so poor, so frail. And women were suspicious of a man who spent so much of his time whittling. No, there would be no Mrs. Geppetto, except for the puppet the old woodcarver kept hidden in a deadbolted closet, for special occasions, but there could still be a Mrs. Pinocchio. A nice girl. She would make all the difference, thought Geppetto, one nice girl, to impress upon Pinocchio the virtues of prudence, wisdom, moderation, and restraint. But how much longer could he wait for Pinocchio to take an interest in such a girl? For such a girl to take an interest in Pinocchio? Even with his three anti-anxiety medications, Geppetto’s blood pressure was through the roof. No, the clocks were tick-ticking, the cuckoo could come at any moment, it was time for Geppetto to take matters into his own hands. And so he cleared off his worktable, retrieved the necessary tools, selected his finest slab of Italian cherrywood, and began carving Pinocchio a nice, Italian, wooden girl.

Geppetto named the girl Arabella. She was short and slim, like the girls Pinocchio canoodled with down by the abandoned glue factory, but whereas their faces were tarty and twisted, hers was hand-carved to be warm, friendly, kind. Geppetto put the finishing touches on Arabella—sanded her blemishes, took a half-inch off her waist, rectified small asymmetries between her breasts—and then knelt dutifully on his bed and waited for a wishing star to twinkle in the sky. Unknowledgeable about astronomy, Geppetto mistook Venus for a star sufficiently twinkly to grant him a wish, and he clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and wished upon Venus that Arabella, his beautiful teenage puppet, would become a real girl. He made it explicitly clear to Venus that the Arabella, once brought to life, was not meant to be his wife, or girlfriend, or anything funny like that. He didn’t want Venus to get the wrong idea. He simply wanted Arabella animated so she could win the heart of his troubled son Pinocchio, guide him along the straight and narrow path, enhance his character and assist him with his studies, keep him from coming home at two-thirty in the morning and vomiting all over Geppetto’s customer invoices and wood lathe.

And lo, in a cerulean flash, the Blue Fairy did appear to grant gentle Geppetto his wish. She was just as beautiful as Geppetto remembered, although she was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and spandex Capri leggings instead of her customary sparkling blue gown. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the Blue Fairy moonlighted as a water aerobics and Pilates instructor. There was just no money in wish-granting anymore.

The Blue Fairy, with a wave of her wand, brought the lovely Arabella to life, and told her that if she proved to be brave, truthful, and unselfish, she would one day become a real girl. Geppetto asked the Blue Fairy if she could recruit an insect or possibly an arachnid who knew right from wrong to serve as Arabella’s conscience, but the Blue Fairy said no, she could not, for liability reasons. She couldn’t afford to be sued for any intervertebrate contractor’s misguided or fraudulent third-party advice. Instead, she gave Arabella a helpful pocket guide, Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality, as well as a Pilates and water aerobics brochure, in case Arabella ever wanted to enroll in a class. And then, in another cerulean flash, she was gone. She taught an indoor pool power plunge class at eight-thirty.

Geppetto introduced Arabella to Pinocchio the next morning, at breakfast. The old woodcarver sat his pulchritudinous puppet directly across from his son and winked at Pinocchio every time he said Arabella’s name.

“Arabella, what a beautiful girl, eh, Pinocchio?”

“Dad, she’s made of wood,” said Pinocchio.

“Cherrywood!” said Geppetto. “The finest cherrywood, imported from Sicily!”

“Umm, does anyone want my hash browns?” said Arabella, meekly. “I don’t have a digestive system.”

Geppetto enrolled Arabella as a junior in Pinocchio’s high school. He told the registrar that Arabella’s previous school transcripts had unfortunately been swallowed by a giant whale. On her first day of school, Arabella’s classmates called her Lumber Girl, threw her into the gym swimming pool to see if she would float, and carved their initials into her shins when she wasn’t looking. Arabella consulted Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality to see what the proper response was to her classmates’ bullying. Her guide said, “The bad puppet, when bullied, seeks revenge, for instance by slashing the bully’s tires, or pouring sugar in his gas tank, or planting thirty grams of cocaine in his backpack and getting him arrested for felony drug trafficking. The good puppet, when bullied, remembers that any satisfaction earned from revenge is ultimately fleeting, whereas the fortitude and unique life perspective gained from dutifully enduring the bully’s relentless verbal and/or physical abuse will last for an entire lifetime.”

Home was not much better for Arabella. There was nothing to do, Geppetto’s cat Figaro kept sharpening his claws on her ankles, and Geppetto was always making her and Pinocchio sit through candlelit spaghetti dinner together as Jiminy Cricket played “Bella Notte” over and over on a tiny accordion.

“It is a beautiful night, eh, Pinocchio?” said Geppetto, winking mischievously at Arabella and his son.

“Old man,” said Pinocchio, venomously. “If I hear ‘Bella Notte’ one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to rip Jiminy’s six legs off one by one with my bare hands, and throw you back into the stomach of that motherfucking whale.”

Despite Geppetto’s and Jiminy Cricket’s best efforts, no sparks flew between Arabella and Pinocchio. Arabella told Geppetto that Pinocchio was a mindless, crude, substance-abusing misogynist. Pinocchio told Geppetto that he could never date a girl whose handjobs would give him splinters. Arabella was attracted to some of the girls at her school, but she never spoke to them, never made eye contact, kept her feelings hidden. Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality said any feelings that felt wrong were wrong. It said, “The good puppet embraces the simplicity and convenience of celibacy.” It said, “For an alphabetical glossary of sins and malfeasances, turn to page 178.”

The weeks passed. Pinocchio got all Fs on his midterm report card. He received a ten-day outdoor suspension for baking pot brownies in Foods and Nutrition. He got two members of the color guard pregnant. Geppetto fired Jiminy Cricket a second time and tried out several non-insect arthropods as Pinocchio’s conscience—a centipede, a millipede, a sea spider, an acorn barnacle—but alas, no matter what class the conscience, what family, what order, what subphylum, Pinocchio’s slide to Gomorrah continued unabated. The last straw came on the final day of Pinocchio’s suspension, when Geppetto came home early from an acupuncture house call and discovered Pinocchio straddling the half-naked Blue Fairy on the workshop floor. The Blue Fairy said it wasn’t what it looked like, as she frantically collected her discarded clothes and lubricated magic wand, but Geppetto paid her protests no heed.

“Out!” Geppetto shouted at his son and the fairy who had brought him to life. “Out! Out! Out! You are no longer welcome in this household! And you too!” he shouted at the barnacle then serving as Pinocchio’s conscience. “Barnacle, you have failed me for the last time.”

After that, it was just Arabella and Geppetto in the old woodcarver’s workshop. There were no more candlelit spaghetti dinners. There was no more accordion-playing Jiminy Cricket. There was no more “Bella Notte.” Geppetto thought about asking Arabella if she’d like to be his daughter, but wasn’t sure if he could stand to be disappointed by another child. Instead, he asked Arabella to get a job and start paying rent. His jobs weren’t going so well. There was just no money in woodcarving, massage therapy, locksmithing, or acupuncture anymore.

The Blue Fairy had said that Arabella would become a real girl if she proved to be brave, truthful, and unselfish. Arabella thought that she had been unselfish, but she certainly hadn’t been truthful or brave. She had never spoken a word to the girls she fantasized about at school. She had never admitted to Geppetto the real reason why she had no interest in asking any boys to the upcoming Sadie Hawkins Dance. In health class, Arabella learned about her female classmates’ blooming bodies, about all their hidden, pliable parts, the parts that, for her, were just flat, rigid strips of sanded-down wood. “The good puppet does not succumb to weaknesses of the flesh, as the good puppet has no flesh,” said Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality. Arabella ran her fingers along the grain of her Sicilian cherrywood. She thought about the girl who sat in front of her in biology class. She poured on a dollop of wood polish. “Star light,” she whispered, as she rubbed the polish into her rigid parts. “Star bright / first star I see tonight / I wish I may, I wish I might . . .”

Arabella got a job at a chocolate shop. She worked after school and on weekends, five to six days a week. During Arabella’s job interview, the shop’s owner said he had been having issues with employees stealing and eating his inventory. Arabella informed him that she had no digestive system and he hired her immediately.

The day of the Sadie Hawkins dance came. All of the girls Arabella secretly admired had long before secured their dates. Arabella worked alone at the chocolate shop that night and envisioned all the girls dolled up for the dance, chiffon, velvet, silk, taffeta, lace. Geppetto had made Arabella a dress, back when he still hoped she would rescue Pinocchio from perpetual delinquency, but he had never shown it to her. Perhaps she could be his daughter, after all, he thought, kneeling on his bed, staring at the stars outside his window. She seemed good. Really, truly, sincerely good. Maybe she wouldn’t disappoint him. She could be his daughter and he could still charge her rent. Yes, it was decided. He was going to have a daughter. He was going to be the proud father of a beautiful girl. In the chocolate shop, Arabella removed one chocolate from every gift box, and threw the commandeered chocolates into the trash. “The bad puppet does not consider the consequences of his or her actions,” said Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality. Arabella did not consider the consequences of her actions. There was no need. She couldn’t eat chocolate—she couldn’t eat anything. She would be held completely blameless. Outside, the stars shone brightly. Arabella took the trash out to the dumpster and smiled.

3.

Once upon a time, Snow White spoke with her late stepmother’s magic mirror. The mirror was just one of many items of furniture that Snow White inherited from her stepmother. She also inherited a dining table, a bridal chest, a Gothic buffet cabinet, a four-poster bed, and a handsome mahogany armoire.

Snow White spoke with the magic mirror when her husband, the Prince, was away on hunting trips. The Prince was away on hunting trips often. In the early days of Snow White’s marriage, the Prince would leave the castle before sunrise and return at sunset with a carriage brimming with foxes, mink, pheasant, elk, quail, but, lately, the Prince’s hunting trips had extended to overnight excursions, and yet he always returned with his carriage completely empty. Snow White never asked the magic mirror why the Prince’s carriage was empty. She never asked the mirror what the Prince was actually hunting. Instead, Snow White asked the mirror trivia questions. Marsupials, U.S. state capitals, Peloponnesian War battles, the periodic table. Sometimes, when she couldn’t think of any more trivia questions, Snow White asked the magic mirror how the seven dwarfs were doing. The dwarfs, still laboring in the mines, weren’t doing so well. Happy had contracted black lung. Sleepy had developed miner’s elbow. Bashful had been fatally crushed by a coal car. Dopey had split his own hand open with a pick.

The months passed. More and more dwarfs succumbed to black lung. Grumpy fell down a 200-foot mine shaft. Sneezy developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Prince’s fruitless hunting trips expanded from weekends to entire weeks. Snow White spent her days half-heartedly singing to birds at the mouth of the wishing well where she and the Prince had first met, and her nights struggling to think of more trivia questions for the magic mirror. Some nights, she couldn’t think of a single question. Instead, she and the magic mirror made small talk. “The cucumbers are really coming in,” Snow White would say. Or, “Good tomato weather today.” Or, “Wind’s really blowing up a gale.”

A year went by. The seven dwarfs were now down to three dwarfs. Snow White’s tomatoes and cucumbers perished in a late frost. The Prince’s hunting carriages kept returning empty. Coliform bacteria were found in the wishing well. Snow White ran out of trivia questions, and instead spoke to magic mirror about more personal matters. “Magic mirror, on the wall,” she said. “Is it normal for my husband to spend so much time away from me? Is it normal for him to always say he’s too tired to touch me? Is it normal for him to constantly belittle me in front of the duchesses, the marchionesses, the countesses, viscountesses, baronesses? Is it normal for him to spend so much time with his female horseback riding coach? Is it normal for him to hide racy pictures of teenage scullery maids in our handsome mahogany armoire?”

Snow White had been a teenage scullery maid herself, when she and the Prince first met. He hadn’t known she was a princess then. He had thought she was just a hot no-strings-attached servant girl singing to birds near a wishing well. Then, the magic mirror proclaimed Snow White the fairest one of all, and Snow White’s jealous stepmother ordered a huntsman to murder her, and the huntsman instead advised Snow White to flee into the forest, where she befriended the seven dwarfs by performing a variety of domestic services. A period of contentment and whistle-accompanied manual labor followed, until Snow White’s stepmother engineered a severe case of food poisoning that rendered Snow White comatose in a glass coffin, where the Prince discovered and revived her with true love’s kiss. It seemed romantic at the time, but the more Snow White thought about it, the more red flags it raised. Why was the Prince kissing a sixteen-year-old, presumably dead girl lying in a glass coffin? How many other comatose underage maidens had he kissed? What would he have done to her if she hadn’t woken up? What was he hunting for on those hunting trips? What else was he hiding in her stepmother’s handsome mahogany armoire?

The magic mirror had proclaimed Snow White the fairest one of all, but Snow White certainly didn’t feel like the fairest one of all. She didn’t look anything like the Prince’s racy teenage scullery maids. They were all curvy, long-legged, exotic, bronzed. Snow White bought a push-up bra, platform heels, silicone buttock pads, but she was too self-conscious to wear them. She endured several sessions at a local tanning salon, but her skin merely turned an angry lobster red.

Snow White sometimes dreamt about the huntsman. It was always the same, the dream, the huntsman crawling into bed with Snow White, kissing, caressing, undressing her, running his tongue across her naked body, making love to her savagely, then tenderly, whispering into her ear that she was the fairest one of all, all while holding her still-beating heart in his hand. Snow White recounted the dream to the magic mirror, asked if it was normal for a woman to dream such dreams about a man other than her husband.

“Good sweet corn weather today,” said the magic mirror. “Azaleas are coming into bloom. Wind’s blowing up a gale.”

That August, a mining accident trapped the three still-living dwarfs two thousand feet below the earth’s surface. Doc, Dopey, Sleepy—their small, bearded faces appearing on the front pages of newspapers across the world: “Los Tres Enanos,” “Les Trois Nains,” “De Drie Dwergen.” With the Prince away on an extended hunting trip, Snow White coped during the crisis by reading the newspaper accounts of the rescue operation to the magic mirror and tossing all the wedding jewelry the Prince had given to her into the wishing well. Seventeen days into the rescue, engineers discovered a note attached to a drill bit that said, “Heigh ho, heigh ho, food and water running low.” An audio recorder subsequently lowered down the exploratory borehole captured the faint sound of whistling.

Sometimes, late at night, Snow White recalled her time in the glass coffin. How peaceful she had felt, how tranquil, waiting for her true love to wake her with a single kiss. “He had to love me, right?” she said to the magic mirror, after relating Le Monde and The Christian Science Monitor’s latest features on the dwarfs’ attempted rescue. “If he didn’t love me, he couldn’t have awakened me. So he loves me. Or, at least, he loved me. Right? Right? Right?”

“Leaves are turning,” said the magic mirror. “Good cauliflower weather today. Birds starting to get restless.”

Snow White was eating apples again. She had sworn them off after falling victim to her stepmother’s spell, refused to consume apples in any form: apple juice, applesauce, apple cider, Apple Jacks. But now, when she bit into a fresh, juicy apple, she secretly longed to succumb to another slumber-sorceress’s spell, to rest once more in a glass coffin until the Prince rescued her from stasis with true love’s kiss. “He will come back to me,” she said to the magic mirror, as a hot apple pie cooled on her windowsill. “Someday my prince will come back.”

Meanwhile, the three dwarfs, still trapped in the mine, had become international media sensations. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy t-shirts. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy plush dolls. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy vitamin-enriched cereals. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy marital aids. A club remix of the dwarfs’ subterranean whistling charted in seven different countries. Licensing agreements and endorsement deals were lowered to the dwarfs along with water, flashlights, medical supplies, and food.

After returning with yet another empty hunting carriage, the Prince informed Snow White that he would be away for the entirety of fox season. “How long is fox season?” Snow White asked, but the Prince was already gone. Snow White tried to keep herself busy with domestic tasks—sweeping, mopping, dusting, rinsing, polishing—the mindless routines that had always brought her comfort, distracted her from her troubles, inspired her to gaily whistle; but try as she might, she couldn’t sweep away her pain. She couldn’t swiffer away her sadness. She couldn’t squeegee away her loneliness. She couldn’t whistle anymore.

Two months later, the dwarfs were successfully rescued from the mine. Reporters from all over the world were there to greet them at the surface, as were celebrities and foreign dignitaries, as were film and television agents, as was the Prince, who presented the dwarfs with gold medals and baskets of gourmet summer sausage and cheese. Snow White, meanwhile, remained at the castle. She wanted to see her old friends, to celebrate with them their improbable rescue, but couldn’t stand to be hassled by the cameras, the journalists, the duchesses, countesses, baronesses, the crowds.

Snow White stopped sweeping. She stopped mopping, wiping, dusting. She stopped singing to the birds, stopped whistling while she worked, stopped wishing at the wishing well. Mostly, she just spoke to the magic mirror.

“Magic mirror, on the wall,” said Snow White. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

“Well,” said the magic mirror. “Fairest is such a nebulous term . . .”

“The fairest,” said Snow White. “You know, the most beautiful, most attractive, most enticing, smokin’, bangin’, bootylicious.”

“Right, but beauty is such a subjective quality . . .”

“The loveliest, prettiest, cutest, hottest, finest, flyest.”

“And of course wise men say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . .”

“The bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the hostess with the mostess, the caterpillar’s spats.”

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure . . .”

“The sweetest honey, the phattest shorty, the foxiest lady, the stone coldest fox.”

“And really, who am I to say . . .”

“The fairest!” Snow White exploded. “Come on! Tell me! The fairest! Who is it? Is it Duchess What’s-Her-Name? Is it Viscountess What’s-Her-Face? Is it one of those goddamn teenage scullery maids? Who’s the fairest of them all?”

“After all,” said the magic mirror. “I’m just furniture.”

The three dwarfs never had to work in the mines again. They made the rounds of all the talk shows, guest starred on television sitcoms, signed six-figure endorsement deals, hawked energy drinks, snack foods, domestic beer. The house where they had lived with Snow White and the other four, dearly departed dwarfs was redeveloped into a mine-themed water park. The mine where they had labored was repurposed as a heavily advertised tourist trap. The forest through which Snow White had fled the huntsman was converted into a casino, a golf course, and a forty-six-story luxury hotel.

Snow White, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony. Her mother, the queen, had wished for her unborn child to possess these physical attributes, and though she died during childbirth, she got her wish. “Why couldn’t my mother have wished for something more practical?” Snow White asked the magic mirror. “Why couldn’t she have wished for intelligence? Why couldn’t she have wished for kindness, healthiness, sanity, safety, love? Why couldn’t she have wished me a happy childhood, a painless adolescence, a good marriage, a peaceful and contented dotage? Why couldn’t she have wished to not fucking die the moment I was born? Fuck snow-white skin. Fuck blood-red lips. Fuck ebony hair. Where’s the peroxide? I’m dying that shit blonde tonight.”

Snow White still possessed the glass coffin. It was in an underground floor of the castle, in storage, along with unwanted inheritances from Snow White’s stepmother: a throne, a cauldron, a fondue set, back issues of Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. The coffin was still furnished with comfortable bedding and a pillow. Snow White had joked to the Prince that it would make a perfect extra bed for a guest room, back when Snow White and the Prince were still speaking to each other, back when it was still conceivable that Snow White might ever have guests.

One thing Snow White never told the magic mirror was that she sometimes lay in the coffin. She always did it early in the morning, when everyone else in the castle was sleeping, when she herself couldn’t sleep, when her thoughts were racing with nostalgia and regret. She descended the basement stairs with a candle and a Red Delicious apple. She traversed the piles of her stepmother’s bric-a-brac. She opened the coffin’s glass case, and carefully climbed inside. “Only true love will awake me,” she thought, as she bit into the apple, blew out her candle. “Only a kiss will shake me from this evil spell.” Snow White, skin scarlet as strawberries, lips glossy as glass, hair bleached as bone, waiting in the darkness desperately for her rescuer, her prince, to come.

Season 6 of famed fashion reality show Project Runway accepted into its contestants tall, blonde — and dare I say — bombshell Althea Harper. Hailing from Dayton Ohio, Harper was a recent college graduate when accepted onto the show. She was young and bubbly, but this designer also brought talent to match. On Project Runway she received much praise for her work from Tim Gunn, “Everyone [thinks] she’s only on the show because she’s a tall blonde beauty. But she’s extremely talented. She’s going to blow people away.” Others like celebrity guest judge Tommy Hilfiger declared Harper’s work to be “genius.”

Harper honed her craft at design school at University of Cincinnati School of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning as well as abroad at Central Saint Martins in London. During her studies she worked with some of fashion’s most prestigious names: Alexander McQueen, Ann Sui, Vivienne Westwood, and Zac Posen. On Project Runway she proved herself by making it to the final three designers, giving her the opportunity to show at New York Fashion Week. Although she did not win the competition her place as first runner up won her a position with the design team of well-known label, Tory Burch. While contributing there Harper began to build her own self-titled line, Althea Harper, which she now designs for and runs full time.

Since its runway birth in 2009, the Althea Harper line has shown consistently at New York Fashion week. Through this showing and the growth of her line, Althea’s work is starting to cement a place for itself in the world of fashion. Her work creates balance between soft and hard, using structure and tailoring juxtaposed with draping which automatically adds softness and femininity to her modern pieces. Her contrast melding puts her in the perfect place to design for the edgy, fashion-forward women of today.

The spring 2011 collection from Althea Harper was named Harmonics. Upon first glance it seems to offer something for almost everyone. The silhouettes in Harmonics vary from skin-tight dresses, skirts, and tops to oversized sweaters and loose fitting trousers. This range offers both clear and obvious sexiness as well as subtle grace. If the collection cannot dress everyone it at least attempts to speak to women everywhere. Harper explains, “I was inspired by sound waves-the shapes they make and how they symbolize our communication to one another. I took the curves of the waves and then contoured them on the body to enhance the female form through both cut and print. I wanted to create a statement for a woman, through the shapes of sound, to communicate to the world without even saying a word.“

The piping and different prints loop the collection from one piece to the next — like a sound wave extending until it fades. As she explained, Harper placed these accents along the curves of the body-this technique enhances the curviness of the wearer and gives this collection a greatly feminine heir. The designer makes her silent statement through a mostly neutral palette of creams, grays, blacks, and tans. An yet, just when it may seem that the conversation may not rise above a whisper pops of hot pink, royal blue and shiny black patent leather interrupt the conversation and snap the viewer to attention. These accents explain that this collection is pretty, but it is not sugar, spice and everything nice. There is a definite edge butting up against the softness that makes up the majority of the collection.

See Althea Harper’s Harmonics collection and more on her website.

These are popular times for novels set in a dystopic near-future America. This setting has understandably become a reflection of our collective disaffection as citizens, our anxieties, our angst, the society’s hypocrisies and contradictions. In Zazen, Vanessa Veselka’s first novel, the crumbling America is as frail as the tofu scramble her twenty-seven year old protagonist Della slings at the vegan-friendly diner. The President plans numerous wars, protestors self-combust, bombs explode in our cities, and people die easily. And there’s very little Della’s tattooed, hair-dyed, vegan, sex-party-loving friends can do to stem the tide of the American corporate war machine.

Like Zazen’s America, Della is also on the verge of collapse. Deeply alienated from her friends, family, and her nation, Della faces three options. Does she flee and tour eco-friendly Honduras? Does she stay and get co-opted by her failing homeland? Does she try a third rail? Despite having good reasons to choose the first two options (including the potential of a committed relationship with her girlfriend Jimmy), Della chooses the least likely path because she has not just lost faith in America, she’s lost faith in love and the concept of rebellion itself.

With an epidemic of bombings in the city, Della decides to call in bomb threats of her own, causing panic among the population, mobilizing police forces, and causing chaos she can control. It’s this control over the powers-at-be that Della considers an effective form of rebellion. But when she calls in a bomb threat that becomes real, Della has to choose a fourth rail: to go on the lam.

The most striking aspect of Zazen is Della’s voice. Her first-person observations of the futile counterculture, which resembles a somewhat stock collage of Portlandia and Brooklyn hipster stereotypes, are dead-on. One can feel Della’s inability to find true connection and intimacy with others, even Jimmy, in every sentence. One can also feel Della’s deep affection for the other characters, despite their manufactured misfit absurdities. In the following passage, Della’s impulse is to run away with Jimmy but for some reason, she can’t commit:

“I stepped closer and put my hand against her ear. I still couldn’t hear out of mine. She relaxed. More cracks lacing the ice. We talked about Honduras and what we could do there. She grew animated but I could feel it all coming apart in my hands. Let’s get out of here, I said. Let’s take a cab across the river and go somewhere where there aren’t funerals and koi ponds, and she agreed. We went salsa dancing at a Latino bar near the old international district. We told them we were sisters so that they’d let us dance together. Then when we were leaving, I kissed her in front of all of them outside on the street with the light of the Salvation Army sign falling down all around us.

On the way home I wondered how many chances we get…That’s the problem with me. I want to believe in a world of second chances but I can’t.”

When the novel must eventually solve the mystery of who’s following through on Della’s fake bomb threats, and when Della’s voice must convey an urgency and danger to the plot, Zazen, like Veselka’s dystopic America, begins to buckle under the weight of its ambitions. A farm harboring revolutionaries with bombs feels like a hippie commune. A potential bombing at a big box retailer feels like midnight parking lot loitering. Even when Della is in heightened danger, she’s got time to visit her friends at a sex party. The end result feels less like Children of Men and more like a less carnivorous version of Dazed and Confused. Despite the failures of the plot, however, Veselka’s unique vision and lyricism are reason enough to read Zazen and look forward to the author’s next work.

Zazen
A Novel
By Vanessa Veselka
272 pages, Red Lemonade Press

STAKE LAND (2010)

“In a world where America falls to vampires, two hunters stand between chaos and justice – that world is STAKE LAND.” Or one can image some such 1980s dramatic voice over before the exciting montage of speeding cars, tiger roaring vampires, blood squirting out from flame flickering shadow, the silhouette hip grinding of a dancing girl, then the screeching tire shot gun blast echoing in the empty, snow falling woods.

And none of those quick flash images would be wrong, since many of them are in the movie. But what that would fail to portray is the true horrific atmosphere STAKE LAND manages to scrape off the sides of the zombiepocalypse vampire diary sarcophagus.

The story is familiar, a young boy is accidently rescued by a mumbly stranger seconds after that boy’s family is eaten by a vampire. The older stranger adopts the young boy, trains him in the art of hunting and slaying vampires, as they meander toward the promised land of New Eden. Along the way, they encounter tribes of humans more savage and frightening than the supernatural monsters that hunt in the night. The boy slowly leans toward maturity and a family is briefly created from hitchhiking stragglers and other orphaned survivors.

Yawningly familiar, right?

Except STAKE LAND is a better film than its reduced plot implies. For instance, the flashback scene where the young boy, Martin, races to chase the barking dog and narrowly escapes the vampire attack that claims his family is contrived. But the payoff introduction to the vampire monsters establishes a brutal and terrifying tone for the rest of the movie. It is an inventive and effective scene, one of many to come.

I am reminded of a recent interview with THE WALKING DEAD’s creator, Robert Kirkman, where he admits that he would not want to survive any sort of zombie invasion because such an event would turn the world into one giant prison. STAKE LAND explores this brilliantly though radio static broken by announcements from the pockets of humanity, what the movie calls “lockdowns,” that have banded together in de facto tribes. Some are just trying safety in numbers, maintaining a community the best they can. While others have gone insanely cryptomessianic subtly worshiping the vampires while adhering to an Aryan Nation Christian militia – like the movie’s real big bads, The Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood and our heroes cross swords several times, leading to the most effective menace in the movie. Radio broadcasts, roadblocks, and graffiti all proclaim the deadly intention of the Brotherhood to eek out their revenge upon the hunters. Leading to the most brilliant scene in STAKE LAND which involves a helicopter and a lot of squirting blood.

But the Brotherhood, also, provides the silliest and most unfortunate plot engine of the last third of the film. While our intrepid band moves through the elevated wilderness among the bare straight trees of winter and the gentle wisps of falling snow, the audience feels the edge of a lost civilization, the slump into a silent comfort zone that is actually a more perilous frontier. I am not sure we needed the final standoff, since it seemed tacked on and unnecessarily unexplainable in a movie that had maintained its own internal logic exceptionally well.

The whole experience of the film is heightened by Jeff Grace’s haunting piano soundtrack. The marriage of Folkways inspired Americana music and the single piano perfectly scores the normalness of the abnormality of a vampire world. One should never underestimate the power of a movie’s ambient music to maintain and elevate the impact of the visuals.

I can not recommend STAKE LAND enough to any of you. Even with its flaws it will entertain you in ways few other end of the world pictures have before.

Pancakes have always been a frustrating and disappointing experience for me. Most of my life I have been completely unable to cook them without burning the outsides or leaving them raw in the middle. After making pancakes every Saturday for three months, I can honestly say everything I knew about pancakes was wrong.  If you are like me, you grew up making pancakes from a box, not a recipe. Box pancakes are generally easy to make because there is only one way to make them; but as soon as you enter the world of personal, customized recipes everything changes. All the tricks (like, don’t flip it until the bubbles stop closing) lead me astray the more creative I got with my cooking, to the point where I nearly abandoned pancakes entirely. I think it actually took me three months of regular pancake making to gain any confidence in making or adapting them. So, let me first share a few of tips about making pancakes, then go over 3 of my favorite pancake recipes.

• You don’t need bubbles to form if you are making thick cake-like pancakes, and you need the top of the pancake to be almost dry and dotted with tons of holes if you are making incredibly thin pancakes.
• “too hot” doesn’t make the pancakes look weird, too much grease does. Having your pan too hot just burns the pancakes. This explains why the first pancake always looks weird. I’ve found the best way to handle that problem is to use well seasoned iron skillets, seasoned to the point where you don’t need to add additional grease (there is butter in the batter for these recipes). If you must add oil to the pan, try to towel most of it away, leaving the thinnest coating possible.
• sugar AND butter are used in the recipes to help caramelize the pancakes, making them a nice golden brown. If you want to remove or adjust one of these you will need to compensate with the other or your pancakes will be pretty gross (over cooked on the inside, or underdone on the outside)
• you don’t have to line everyone up and serve them right away. Put them on a plate in the oven on the lowest temperature and they will be fine for at least a couple hours (I promise!)
• I strongly, strongly recommend serving your pancakes with sour cream and real maple syrup. The combination is incredible.

Basic Pancake Recipe: (this is an unsweetened, slightly salty pancake recipe, fluffy and wonderfully golden)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unbleached white flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 egg
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 stick (4 Tablespoons) melted butter

Method:

• sift dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl
• in a small bowl, beat 1 egg and mix in 2 cups of milk and the melted butter
• add all the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and quickly mix them together well (it can be lumpy, just make sure there are no pockets of dry ingredients hugging the bowl)
• using a ladle measure about a half cups worth of batter into a hot well seasoned pan. Flip when it fluffs up a little and the pancake seems a little stiffer. You can lift a corner and peak underneath if you are uncertain when to flip it.

NOTE: for thinner crepe-like pancakes add about a 1/4 cup more milk, mix well and flip when the tops are dry.

Chocolate Corn Cakes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1/2 cup corn flour (do not use polenta or coarse cornmeal)
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate, cut coarsely
• 1 egg
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 stick (4 Tablespoons) melted butter

Method:

• sift dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl then add the 2 oz of chocolate
• in a small bowl, beat 1 egg and mix in 2 cups of milk and the melted butter
• add all the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and quickly mix them together well (it can be lumpy, just make sure there are no pockets of dry ingredients hugging the bowl)
• using a ladle measure about a half cups worth of batter into a hot well seasoned pan. Flip when it fluffs up a little and the pancake seems a little stiffer. You can lift a corner and peak underneath if you are uncertain when to flip it.

Buckwheat Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1/2 cup buckwheat flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 Tablespoons of molasses
• 1 egg
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 stick (4 Tablespoons) melted butter

Method:

• sift dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl then add the 2 oz of chocolate
• in a small bowl, beat 1 egg with 3 Tablespoons of molasses before mixing in 2 cups of milk and the melted butter
• add all the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and quickly mix them together well (it can be lumpy, just make sure there are no pockets of dry ingredients hugging the bowl)
• using a ladle measure about a half cups worth of batter into a hot well seasoned pan. Flip when it fluffs up a little and the pancake seems a little stiffer. You can lift a corner and peak underneath if you are uncertain when to flip it.

NOTE: Because of the molasses these pancakes will cook faster than most pancakes. Flip them a little earlier than you think you need to, they burn quickly. Also, be careful about adapting the quantity of buckwheat. Too much will make the pancakes sandy and bitter. Buckwheat also absorbs a liquid quickly, meaning you might need to add extra milk if you add extra buckwheat.

Well, this is a bummer.

With the impending demise of Is Greater Than, it seems that this will be my last column for this here web site, and the last installment ever of Records by Their Covers (assuming HuffPo doesn’t come calling). Keep your eye out for the coffee table book, though. It’s been fun dissecting album covers and displaying my musical ignorance for the world on a monthly basis, and being a part of the Is Greater Than family. I tip my hat to Paul Davis for his efforts, and I wish him all the best in future endeavors.

I didn’t really have a choice for the theme for this final piece. All I had to do was search [internet retailer]‘s music releases for “End,” sort by date, and voila! A delightful pile of crap, with a few sparkling diamonds embedded in it.

All Ends – All Ends

There’s a lot going on here. We have two delightfully begothed frontwomen, a couple guys in the back who seem to have a Black-Crowes-in-Hot-Topic sort of thing going on, and then there’s a guy wearing a bizarre hat standing behind the ladies who looks vaguely homeless, although he does have a nice shiny chain which seems to match the one the redhead on the right is wearing. There’s also some serious abuse of Photoshop going on here, what with the swoopy, blurry clouds taking the top of Red’s hair off, and the truly awful font choices. I’m going to give the band a little credit and assume this is another in-house job, but somehow I have no doubt that it accurately reflects the music inside. With an album cover like this, there is no way this band isn’t terrible.

I Am Many – To Every End There Is a Beginning

It’s a funny thing about album titles with the word “end” in them: you get a lot of cliches and tired tropes and rephrasings of the same general concept. So here we have the band I Am Many with their entry, To Every End There Is a Beginning. And while it’s easy to say “damn, that’s frickin’ profound, Einstein. What teabag did you read that on?” there’s a reason it’s a cliche: it’s true. Take our friend Paul here. He is, alas, ending Is Greater Than, but I’m sure as he closes up this shop he will be opening the door on another, exciting new chapter in his life — to torturously mix a metaphor or two and throw another cliche in the mix. So let’s not find fault with I Am Many (or any of these other bands) for their overly familiar album title. Instead, let’s praise them for their intriguing, minimalist album design. I’m going to guess based merely on the logo here that they are a band of the heavyish persuasion, but it’s clear they’re not by-the-number metal or anything like that. They’ve made it clear that they have arty, modernist inclinations. I’m certainly curious to hear what the band behind this cover sounds like.

The Living End – The Ending Is Just the Beginning Repeating

See, there we go again; another pseudo-philosphical rephrasing of this end = beginning concept, this time helpfully illustrated with an ouroboros, a spirally thing we’ve all seen a million times, and a classic optical illusion. This album cover isn’t terrible, but between the Ventures font, the clip-art graphics, and the tired title concept, I think I would go for I Am Many’s offering before checking this one out. If I were to hazard a guess as to what this band sounds like based purely on the art, I would say Tortoise playing surf-rock. Which now makes me want to listen to them more . . .

Peter Green – The End of the Game

This is either a reissue of some classic, forgotten (by me, at least) electronica from the ’70s or an absolutely brilliant new cover meant to evoke that era. Between the roaring cheetah (which, by the way, is exactly what I looked like when Paul told me he was folding the site) and the video game font it’s obvious this record totally rules, though. I’ll be checking it out as soon as I finish this piece.

Tasters – Reckless Till the End

I don’t even know what to say about this, but it’s so gag-inducingly awful I had to include it. First of all, for a second the band’s name reminded me of the classic third-wave ska band The Toasters, whom I saw many times in my high school rude boy days and totally loved. Tasters, I’ve never heard you, but I think it’s safe to say you’re no Toasters. Stop almost using their name. Next we have the album title, Reckless Till the End. With this spelling, and without an apostrophe, I am forced to read that second word as a verb – what farmers do to soil. The end result is somewhat abstract and poetic, and I’m sure not remotely what these geniuses meant. It was bad enough when The Who convinced everyone that ‘alright’ was a word, but this is just nonsense. I would talk about the art itself, but its terribleness sends my brain into a defensive shutdown as soon as I look at it. For a band called Tasters, they have displayed a remarkable lack of taste with this album cover. I can’t imagine what the music is like, but it has to be better than this cover, right?

All Shall Perish – This Is Where It Ends

Yes indeed, this is where it ends: kneeling in the town square in front of a church and a motel, blindfolded and bound, being whipped by a man in a tie while various religious leaders condemn you. I hope this isn’t what’s happening to our Dear Leader Mr. Davis right now. I’m pretty sure based on this art that this is a contemplative album of melancholy folk music. Isn’t that the vibe you’re getting? Also, note to the copy editors out there regarding title capitalization: Just because a word has two letters doesn’t mean it’s lower case.

There’s an old album cover with an image of a microphone wearing a tuxedo and bowler hat; there’s another with a blue-on-blue background and a lone piano under a yellow streetlight; another has a horseman riding across the neck of a violin. These covers, along with roughly 2,500 others, were designed by the same man; Alex Steinweiss.

From the late-1930s through the early ‘70s, Steinweiss designed album covers for record labels including Columbia, Decca, Remington, RCA, London and more. His portfolio is packed with vibrant, playful illustrations that were designed to catch the eye of potential record buyers. His job was to package classical, jazz, pop, country, soundtrack, vocal, orchestral and blues records in such a way that people would want to buy them. In doing so, he solidified album art’s place in pop art, established a much closer relationship between music and its packaging and became one of the most celebrated and recognizable designers of the 20th century. Steinweiss, who passed away on July 17, 2011 was a key player in transforming record packaging into an art of its own.When Steinweiss began working for Columbia, the company was, like many other record companies, using generic packaging for its records; either flip-through albums or brown paper sleeves that had label designs on them. With the introduction of the long-play album (as opposed to 78s with a song per side), they enlisted Steinweiss to create a new package to house the records. He patented his design for the cardboard album jacket as we now know it and convinced Columbia to let him design the covers.

His massive contributions to popular and musical culture have made Steinweiss a legend of graphic design; a pioneer of album art. But here’s where the story gets a bit tricky. Steinweiss is credited with single-handedly inventing album art. The story that is passed around says that before him, all albums came in brown paper sleeves; that he alone had the idea that images could accompany music.

The problem with this claim is that before Steinweiss’s designs, album covers with images already existed. Decca alone had released somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 albums with photos and illustrations on them. Albums by Bessie Smith, Bing Crosby, WIllie the Lion, Benny Goodman and many more all had images on their covers years before Steinweiss. In 2010, Dr. Michael Biel, a professor at Morehead State University, gave a presentation at the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) conference detailing the many pre-Steinweiss albums that had graphics on them.

So what’s the deal? Here is my best, non-album-cover-expert unravelling of the story: Prior to Steinweiss, records were packaged in either book form or brown paper sleeves. This much is agreed upon. But, what gets lost is the fact that some of these albums featured pasted-on photos and/or illustrations on the packaging. So the idea of having graphics on albums pre-dates Steinweiss, and the idea that he invented album cover art is incorrect. What he did invent (and patent), is the modern album cover; the actual cardboard outer that graphics could be printed directly on. He pioneered a new way of stylistically marrying records to their packages.

The confusion seems to be in the phrasing. Is Steinweiss the inventor of the modern album cover? Yes. Is he the inventor of album cover art? No. While he revolutionized the field and provided the visuals for generations of record appreciators, it’s a bit of an over-swing to say that he was the first to transform brown paper packaging into art. He was one of the most influential artist to ever design an album cover, he was (and still is) the father of the modern album cover (in more ways than one), and he revolutionized the art and opened the doors to the golden age of album cover art, but the first to put an image on an album cover, he was not.

The thing about the way I troll for fodder for this column – going to [monolithic internet retailer]‘s web site, clicking on new music releases for a given week, seeing what catches my eye – is that I have no way of knowing whether the album covers that I write about are in fact new, or are just reissues of older albums. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m looking for artists I’ve never heard of and don’t permit myself to do any research on them before I write about their album covers. So the odds that I will end up exposing my ignorance by writing about an established, classic artist that I’ve just never heard of are fairly high.

This month I crank those odds up a bit more by picking album covers with designs that are either inspired by classic designs of the past or, maybe actually are classic designs of the past. Once I finish writing this I’ll go and figure out what’s what, but for now we’ll just feast our eyes on some timeless (or perhaps just anachronistic) album covers.

Mànran – s/t

I’m pretty sure that this is in fact a contemporary album, but Mànran has fully embraced a classic aesthetic with this cover. It’s a simple, clean design that evokes a bygone era without seeming to be (at least to my ignorant eyes) ripping off any one specific album cover. The band’s all-black attire links up nicely to their floating band name, popping them off the washed out yet gorgeous yellows and blues of the background. I would guess based on this classic approach and the band’s look that they make pretty straightforward, sixties-influenced rock and roll, perhaps along the lines of the Who or the Stones. It looks like they might have a horn player or two in there helping round out that sound.

The Dangerous Summer – War Paint

Everything about this cover – the grainy, washed-out image, the simple, blocky font, the inclusion of the track list and label logo – screams of a bygone era. I wish I knew enough to say exactly what it is that this cover reminds me of and evokes so perfectly – maybe a late sixties jazz or soul album? I don’t know – but I do know that they got it (whatever it is) just right without seeming to try too hard. Like the best tributes, this cover works very well on its own as a tasteful piece of classic design. The Dangerous Summer could be a jazz group, or a soul group, or a contemporary rock band that weaves jazz and/or soul influences into their sound. They could also be something else entirely: Bedroom folk? Garage rock? Ska? Hard to say. But whatever they do, I’m sure it’s quite tasteful and well-conceived.

Down to the Bone – The Main Ingredients

As with the previous album, I had to double- and triple-check to make sure I didn’t have the band name and album title swapped. (There is a band called War Paint – or, I guess, Warpaint – but as far as I can tell they have nothing to do with our guys up above.) Maybe I’m old fashioned (OK, I’m definitely old fashioned), but I just think “The Main Ingredients” sounds more like a band name than “Down to the Bone.” Be that as it may, these guys are called Down to the Bone, and I feel pretty confident calling this one as a ’70s revival soul record. Everything from the font to the ‘fro to the purple and cream color palette pretty much screams groovy get-down good times, am I not right? This has got to be a new record, but I certainly wouldn’t do a double take if I were to flip past it sandwiched between Rufus and Mavis Staples in a musty stack of yard sale vinyl.

Yuya Uchida and the Flowers – Challenge!

Here, Yuya Uchida and gang hearken back to the freakiest of psychedelic folk, again using both the content of their image (nudity! black and white magazine! natural splendor!) and its vintage processing (grainy! washed-out!) to boldly plant their flag in a classic era. (Assuming, once again, that this isn’t an actual old psych-folk record from the ’60s – I’m pretty sure their font choice outs this record as being a product of the 21st century, but folks in Japan have always been pretty forward-thinking; maybe they just had really advanced fonts back then.) The band name and art all point, as already mentioned, to this album being a contemporary nod to the weirder folk stylings of the ’60s and ’70s. Hopefully the LP is a gatefold in order to best enable the doobie-smoking that I’m sure is recommended to enhance listening.

Beau Williams! – Bodacious!

The cover of Beau Williams!’s Bodacious! is, granted, not exactly timeless. It’s very much of a specific actual time in the not-too-distant past, and I really want to know the story behind it. I would normally say that this was clearly a product of the ’80s that had been sadly overlooked by me these past 30 or so years, and leave it at that. And yet! This image has very clearly been manipulated in more recent years. The artist name (Beau Williams!) and album title (Bodacious! [note: not Beaudacious! Why not?]) were without question added in Photoshop (Arial Black, unless I’m much mistaken) in recent years. So does this mean the album cover – and the album itself – are recent creations? (Please, please, let it be so.) Or perhaps the original album didn’t have such information on the front, and those in charge of the reissue (and I’m sure the hordes have been clamoring desperately for this reissue) decided to add it while they had the chance? There’s no way – short of a quick Internet search, that is – to know, but either way I love this record.

This recipe: Left, Other Recipes: Right

Ingredients (makes 1 1/2 cups)

• 1 cup of pomegranate juice
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 Tbs pomegranate molasses (look in the international aisle of the market)
• 2 heaping Tbs of dried hibiscus (easily found in herb stores or Mexican markets)

Method:

• in a heavy bottomed sauce pot combine all ingredients and bring to a vigorous boil
• remove from heat and let steep for 5 minutes
• strain and pour into a bottle, refrigerate.

The reader…will hear the accursed cat, which is a symbol of unredeemed guilt, mewing behind the wall.
The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

I don’t have much patience for animal stories: heroic dogs, cute kittens, playful puppies, disdainful cats. I’ve been known to defriend facebook friends just for posting one of those cute cat videos: cats playing pattycake, talking cats, the surprised kitten… The last thing I want to look at in my private web space is a cute cat! There are babies being born, people dying, cancer, books to read, litter to clean up—for Chrissake!

I am, however, a devoted pet owner, and I find no contradiction in loving animals and being intolerant of animal stories.

It wasn’t always the case that I mocked animal stories. As a kid, I read the requisite animal books; the horse books that every girl read— about the horses mistreated in Black Beauty, the wild horses in Misty of Chincoteague and Misty’s offspring—Stormy, Misty’s Foal, and the race horse heroes: Black Gold and Man O’ War and National Velvet. I read the dog books too, with their forgone dead dog conclusions: Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, White Fang. I don’t remember the cat books. Were there cat books? Maybe T.S. Elliot’s compendium of cats, Old Possums’s Book of Practical Cats that inspired the Broadway musical Cats. The Cheshire Cat and his slow fading grin. More than any book, however, I recall a movie about a cat most readily: The Three Lives of Thomasina, about a cat who is the pet of a Scottish widowed vet’s daughter. Thomasina is injured in a fall and the vet euthanizes the cat, breaking his daughter’s heart. There’s a funeral with bagpipes and mourners, and a resurrection. Because this is Thomasina’s first death, she loses her memory but comes back to life. Thomasina narrates, sounding a bit like Maggie Smith in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. “They say that to die is a journey from light to darkness but here is light again.”

When we moved to Chicago, we moved with two dogs and two cats. The dogs adjusted to the move as well as we did, which means they were disappointed in the size of the yard, by the unavailability of a sandy shore river bank, dismayed by the traffic, skittish about the frequency of car alarms and emergency vehicle sirens, and incredulous about the variety and quantity of garbage and litter in the streets and alleys. Their incredulity included a certain amount of wild joy and gratitude (Dead squirrel! Flamin Hot Fritos! Really old pizza!) that ours did not.

The brothers, cats

The cats, brothers, never moved to Chicago. We brought them along with us—seven hours in the car in their individual carriers crying piteously—in spite of frequent spritzes with a spray that was supposed to mimic a calming feline scent pheromone. We were very calm—a little drowsy driving, even—but the cats were unrelenting in vocalizing their unhappiness. They were older, accustomed to having access to the yard in Minneapolis, to living in proximity to a compost bin that attracted a steady supply of small rodents, to open windows, and the cool cat hideout under the neighbor’s front porch they accessed through a missing slat in the porch skirting.

Ida, the big-headed floppy rag doll, had a busted lawn chair on the deck that was his. And yes, his name was Ida, and he was a male. Sometimes my girlfriend told me she had named him for African-American activist Ida B. Wells, sometimes she said film director and actor Ida Lupino. Except when the temps dipped below zero during Minnesota’s frigid winter, Ida never missed a day in his chair, stretched out on his back, front and back feet hanging over the chair’s edges. He loved to be brushed. He loved a bath, but he had no social skills. His feet were enormous. He scratched the back of the couch, the antique area rug, the wall—everything in fact, except his multiple option scratching posts, trees, and condos—like a vandal. He shredded pillows and cedar deck boards, pin-pricked 400-thread count sheets and liked to clear surfaces like the dining room table and my bedroom dresser. He’d jump up on the table and leisurely sideswipe candleholders, salt and pepper shakers, pens, books, papers to the floor. There was no collar that ever stayed around his neck for more than a day or two. I suspect he bribed the dogs to pull them off. We finally gave up on collars and tags and had him micro-chipped.

His brother, Bone, was a brown tabby with a pointed chin and a white vest. Bone liked to travel—sans carrier. He once left home for nine days. It was April. I stapled a poster with his photo and the headline “MISSING” on utility poles and trees all over the neighborhood. I visited animal control and the animal humane society and submitted a missing pet report. I went back more than once to comb through the logs describing the dead animals collected without identification: “black and white, domestic short hair, male, found on the 27^th block of East Lake Street,” and the logs of animals killed at the shelter. We were sure he was road kill, or had been trapped in a garage, or was dead by some unknown but no less fatal means. Every evening during the time he was gone we walked around the block and down the alley, calling his name. Then one night, nine days after he had first gone missing, I was awakened by a cat meowing outside the front door. I woke up Polly and we ran downstairs and threw open the door. It was Bone, our wanderer and world traveler. He strolled in the house like he had just gone out for quart of milk and what’s the big deal. He was clean, seemed to have been eating well, and was much more casual about our reunion than we were. The next day I called all the animal agencies to update his status: was lost, now found. The woman on the phone told me that in the past two days three other cat owners had called to report that their missing cats had also returned home. Where did the lost cats go to be lost? Were they all hanging out together at a cat jamboree?

In Chicago the cats didn’t go outside. We coaxed them to join us on the deck, we left the back door gaping open. Ida stepped out a few times and turned around and came right back inside. As a poor substitute we made up window seat beds and look out posts. Every car driving down the street, every person walking by the open window, was a potential big scary loud threat that propelled the cats from their carefully constructed outside world views. In the big city, the cats’ space became smaller and smaller.

Bone’s lament

Almost immediately after we moved into our orange brick bungalow, we launched into a few house projects, and then, as happens with house projects, a few more: the new back door, the new window, the front door, the front steps. Our first year we lived with sanding dust on every service in the house, the sound of sawing and pounding, and a shifting crew of carpenters, masons, painters, and electricians. The cats had gone through two house remodels in Minnesota but they weren’t having any of it in Chicago. Ida camped out in the basement, Bone retired to our upstairs closet. We saw Ida when he came out to eat. Bone came out at night to remind us of his vast discontent. He sat on the rug at the foot of our bed and cried through the night. He ripped out great clumps of his hair. Food did not soothe him, or treats, or petting or thrown pillows. If we had houseguests he made a point to visit them at night and speak his grief around the hair hanging from his mouth. The nine-year-old granddaughter of a friend made him a sympathy card. It said, “We don’t know each other. I’m sorry you’re sad.” The young son of Minnesota friends who visited, sent Bone a package of grass and dirt from the yard at our old house in Minneapolis. He thought a relic of the old country might lift Bone’s spirits. It lifted ours but did nothing for the cat. Night after night, Bone was inconsolable. He would not be deterred or distracted. He would not shut up.

Ida shrinking

As Bone got loud, Ida got smaller. He was always a big cat, sixteen pounds plus and longhaired, so he looked bigger and bushier than his actual size. One day I was brushing him and felt bumps and edges that I’d never noticed before. His bones were poking out and his coat was dry and thin. There were other signs: excessive drinking, profuse peeing.

We started at one vet, a reasonable neighborhood clinic, although with no chairs in the waiting room, no computerized recordkeeping, which rubbed our finicky middle-class sensibilities the wrong way. When they diagnosed Bone with diabetes, and the treatment protocol of daily insulin injections and prescription food didn’t ease his nightly lamentations, we started over with another vet—with waiting room chairs and computers and higher rates—who diagnosed Ida with diabetes as well.

Skipping ahead

In Minneapolis we’d had the same vet for a dozen years. She’d known the history of our pet-keeping, she had fostered our yellow lab’s mother and attended his birth; I once saw her kiss our old orange cat, matter of factly, as a point of conversation. She referred us to the Veterinary Center at the University of Minnesota when tests revealed the unlikely scenario that both our dogs shared a genetic enzyme deficiency although they were not related except by household. When the old cat went through a bout of uncharacteristic aggressiveness, she demonstrated soothing touch to help clear the cat’s heart chakra. She’d been with us, witness to our terrible grief both times, when we said good-bye to Polly’s gray lhasa-poodle and the old orange cat.

In Chicago, after months of insulin dosage adjustments, glucose monitoring, pureeing chicken thighs and livers in a blender, nights chronically disrupted by Bone’s lamentations, Ida swinging his shaggy head from side to side, dragging his back legs behind him, blindness and muscle weakness brought on by hypoglycemic reaction, we had the option of walking through the nicely furnished waiting room at the new vet’s office past all the healthy, happy pets and pet owners into an exam room with a cold metal exam table. The vet suggested a twenty-minute appointment, so we wouldn’t be tempted to linger. Feeling foolish, feeling like we were indulging the worst of Americans’ misplaced obsession with our pets, I found a Lincoln Park euthanasia specialist—a Dr. Death for pets. The boys could have a whole death experience with a personalized soundtrack and scented candles and an everlasting forty-minute appointment. So could we.

The Rainbow Bridge

Alice Sebold’s version of an individualized heaven in her novel The Lovely Bones includes reunions with our dead pets. The Lovely Bones, published a year after the September 11 attacks, is in the pile of formulaic and enragingly simplistic post-911 artworks that attempts to address how to make sense of something that doesn’t make any sense. What happens after the worst thing—the fictional rape and murder of a child—happens? Not to worry—the dead girl goes to heaven and hangs out with her old dog.

I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.—The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

When the worst thing happens, or just a bad thing, or a part-of-life sad thing, I am all for taking comfort where you can, even if comfort comes in the form of mawkish depictions of the Rainbow Bridge that we will cross with our dead animals before we enter heaven together.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

We moved to Chicago carrying the ashes of dead animals—cremains in plastic bags in a shoebox. We didn’t want any more dead animal ashes. I didn’t want to have to find a final resting place for the cats who never rested in Chicago, who never felt at home here. so we eschewed the individual cremation, the paw print impression, the hair clipping. We felt heartless and cheap, guilty, and, finally, irredeemably sad.

There’s an Edgar Allen Poe story about a cat called, “The Black Cat.” It’s a gruesome fable: the narrator adopts a black cat that he loves at first and then, inexplicably, grows to hate. He maims the cat by cutting out one of its eyes; the cat recovers and is hanged by the narrator. The narrator’s cruelty seems to be provoked by the cat’s devotion:

[I] hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence…

Following the murder of the cat, the narrator’s house burns down:

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing…. The destruction was complete. … I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

His despair doesn’t preclude another cat and another attempted cat killing though. He swings an ax at the cat that lands in his wife’s head instead. To hide her body, he walls it up in the cellar. In the process he accidently walls up the second cat with his dead wife, sealing his fate. His crimes are discovered when the cat’s howling behind the built wall attracts the attention of the authorities.

Poe’s narrator kills his cat from depravity, from an unbearable burden of love. We despair of our own mortality, accumulating an anger that anticipates the inevitability of the loss of all we love: pets, places, people. Our choices are to knock down our reason with cute and sentimental—we are the surprised kitten being tickled by death’s hand; or we can blind our love, choke devotion by the neck until dead, build brick walls to hold back our terrible love, our terrible grief, lie down shaking in our beds at night listening to the cat that calls to us, our hearts engulfed in flames, still waiting for the light again.

No, wait, I’m sorry. That’s “The H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew,” and their album You’re It!

But this cover says so much, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it just fill you with wonder? Can you even begin to imagine the story behind this album? For starters, we have the two fellows on the cover. Contrasted with the name of the band/guest, we are led to one of two conclusions: Either these two men have been chosen from among many to stand in for the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew (I mean a “big band,” that’s a lot of people, right?), or in fact they themselves comprise the entire H-2 Big Band with Special Guest Bobby Shew. (In the latter case, I have the guy with the keyboard pegged as the Band, with homeskillet on trumpet as the much-vaunted Special Guest. I assume Chuck Mangione was busy.)

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the latter is the case. These two gentlemen probably worked very hard putting together this album that I have never heard (and, let’s be honest, probably never will). H-2 over there probably spent weeks on his arrangements, layering keys and horns and woodwinds and percussion, getting everything just right before calling in old Bobby to rehearse the trumpet parts. I can picture them now, woodshedding in H’s den for hours every weekend before heading down to the studio to lay down the tracks. Then the big day comes. They hit the studio. Everything goes aces. The MIDI horns and strings and piano do exactly what H-2 has programmed them to do; the sweet, tender woodwinds and pulsing percussion provide the perfect bed for Bobby’s dulcet tones on the trumpet. The engineer is agog. He has never heard anything so smooth. Burt Bacharach, lounging in his hot tub with a glass of chardonnay many miles away, feels a chill.

As they’re winding up the session, the engineer bouncing the final mixes, Bobby and H-2 call their wives to let them know they’ll be finished soon. An hour or so later they step out of the studio into the sun, axes in hand, dizzy with achievement, blinking and wondering if it’s just them or if the rest of the world realizes that everything is different now. They hear a juddering, woofing, chopping sound from above. Their porkpie hats are blown from their heads. What can it be? They look up, and their wives are hovering above them in a helicopter! “Congratulations, H-2!” “Congratulations, Bobby!” The wives know something special has transpired on this day, and they realized the best way – the only way, really – to mark it was with a helicopter ride. Bobby and H-2 look up at the helicopter, each at his own wife, pointing in victory and grinning to beat the band. The helicopter pilot (who is also H-2′s graphic designer), sensing an important moment, pulls out his 2.5 megapixel digital camera with built-in flash and snaps a picture. “That right there is gold,” he says to himself, looking in the viewfinder at the preview image.

As H-2 and Bobby relax at their respective homes with their respective wives over dinner, listening to the CD master that will become You’re It!, their helicopter pilot/designer (let’s call him Huey) is hard at work. He imports his triumphant image into his Gateway PC and examines it – the pointing! the snazzy shirts! It’s so great. Sure they’re looking in different directions, but you hardly notice that, right? My god, look at those shirts! H-2′s gleaming teeth! He really feels like these men are looking at him through the photo – looking into him, even – and telling him something. Telling him that he’s it. That’s it! Without conferring with Bobby and H-2, Huey realizes that he has the perfect title for this album. He opens up MS Paint and just lets the spirit take him where it will. He knows the boys will be so very pleased.

JW: Tell me about your background? How did you come design?

AY: I’ve always been interested in fashion for as long as I can remember. After high school I decided to try turning this passion into a career by enrolling in the fashion design program at Philadelphia University. Upon graduation, I moved to NYC and landed my first job in knitwear.

The rest is history!

JW: Name 3 adjectives you would use to describe your self as a designer:

AY: Open-minded-When I start to design a new season I try not to seek out inspiration to avoid limiting myself. The best concepts, ideas always come to me unexpectedly, which I feel is reflected in my clothing.

Patient-It’s important to stay calm even under the most trying situations (the majority of the time) or you’ll stress yourself out and it’s just not worth it!

Balanced-As I design I try to find the happy medium between innovation and marketability. I want the collection to stand out from the pack, but it needs to be wearable. This is definitely one of my biggest challenges, but the most important to achieve.

JW: Name 3 adjectives your closest friends would use to describe you:

AY: Thoughtful-I always try to look out for the people in my life.

Positive-the cup is always half full in my book. Life is too short to dwell on things that may hold you back; it takes less energy to look on the bright side.

Loyal-I will definitely be devoted to something if I feel strongly for it whether it is a person, cause, etc.

JW: When you’re working what do you like to listen to and why?

AY: It depends on my mood, but the majority of the time it’s going to have to be something upbeat for sure.

If I’m just sketching or organizing, I like to sometimes have an old movie (one that I’ve seen numerous times) playing in the background.

JW: What motivates you to design?

AY: Honestly, this may sound corny, but it’s simply my passion for it that keeps me going everyday. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.

JW: What fashion publications if any do you read and why?

AY: I read WWD so I can stay informed on current events, breaking news, and trends within the fashion industry. For inspiration, I always look to Dazed & Confused, Dansk, and I.D..

JW: What is your impression of the fashion industry today? What would you say are good and bad about it?

AY: It’s very difficult to break into it especially now since there is so much competition and over saturation-a prime example being the trend of celebrities creating their own lines. These collections can launch overnight and garner all this praise and success. This can be a bit disheartening, but it motivates me to work harder. On the positive side of things, I’ve met a lot of helpful industry people who have offered some great advice. It has been a nice surprise experiencing all this generosity.

JW: What do you love to wear?

AY: I absolutely love wearing layers. I always have to be comfortable before leaving the house and layers help.

JW: What is the story behind your spring 2011 collection?

AY: I was at a loft party last year and saw this striking projection on the wall, which instantly caught my eye. A friend told me it was the film Blade Runner and I knew right then and there what my spring ‘11 inspiration would be.

JW: What has been your favorite collection that you have designed so far and why?

AY: My latest collection-autumn/winter ‘11. I feel it definitely showed a growth in me as a designer and I was able to make it more of a hands-on development incorporating a few couture pieces for the first time ever.

JW: What season do you think you design best and enjoy designing most?

AY: I would have to say autumn/winter because, as I’ve mentioned before, I love layering and I feel there’s more opportunity to play with chunky textures and knits.

JW: Who is your ideal client?

AY: A confident woman who isn’t afraid to take chances when it comes to fashion and doesn’t take it too seriously.

JW: What designers past and present do you admire/are inspired by, why?

AY: Vintage YSL–the perfect execution of tailoring and androgyny.

Madame Gres–her draping techniques were innovative and breathtaking.

Hussein Chalayan–the way he has merged technology with fashion is incredible. His garments always have unexpected details that make them special.

JW: In your own words what is the aesthetic you strive for with your label?

AY: Effortless architectural fluidity

JW: What are your favorite materials to work with?

AY: Silk: draping is always easy to achieve and the end result beautiful

Chunky knits: always fun to turn a basic body into an interesting texture and it’s so easy with a novelty yarn.

JW: Do you have any favorite arts, works of art, films or books that inspire you?

AY: Cy Twombly–many of his paintings contain exquisite movement and textures that lend well to my aesthetic (one of his paintings was the concept behind my autumn/winter 2010 collection).

Paul Klee–I’ve always loved his use of color and ethereal quality in many of his works. When I design he’s always in the back of my mind.

Frank Gehry–his deconstructive style of architecture has always inspired me. [He is] always thinking outside the box and taking risks.

Auntie Mame-the 1958 film-has become one of my favorite points of reference. Rosalind Russell is outstanding as the lead and her exquisite wardrobe is ever inspiring.

JW: How do you feel public icons (actors, actresses, socialites, musicians, etc) present themselves style wise? Are they on trend and relevant or missing the mark?

AY: It depends on the person, really (or their stylist, I suppose!). I can’t keep track of everyone, but the ones I choose to follow seem to always be on point. For example: Alexa Chung-I’m a fan of her dressed down, but dressed up vibe, the Olsens-no need for explanation here, and Mia Wasikowska-she always looks stunning on the red carpet-and it’s always unexpected.

JW: What is your biggest fashion regret. What is your biggest fashion success?

AY: I don’t have any regrets; I see everything as a learning experience and stepping-stone.

I’m still growing for sure, but one of my biggest achievements so far was being named by Time Out NY as one of the top 10 breakout designers of 2010.

JW: What current trends do you see lasting and fading?

AY: I think the whole sheer trend is here to stay, [it’s] very pretty and ideal for layering. Also, the elongated and easy fitting bodies that are currently all over the runway, I feel are here to stay.

70s styling is totally in right now, but I don’t think it has staying power.

JW: What are your long-term goals for yourself and your line?

AY: I want to eventually ease into accessories, bags, and shoes. I would love to reach more retailers internationally and eventually one day show at a fashion week outside of NY such as London or Paris.

JW: What up-and-coming designers do you see becoming successful? Why?

AY: Bodkin–I think she has a unique aesthetic that sets her apart. Her story is also interesting, coming from a journalism background.

Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair–I absolutely love this collection. It’s a great mix of avant-garde and wear-ability. The fabrics are always interesting.

JW: I read that your parents are originally from Hong Kong. Did you feel any cultural differences between you and your peers growing up?

AY: I definitely saw more discipline in the way I was brought up. My parents were very protective, not allowing me to stay over at friends’ houses, strict curfew. Of course I hated it at the time, but I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t gone through it.

JW: How has your cultural background influenced your design?

AY: I feel that my Chinese background has definitely played an important role in my designing. I think you can see it in subtleties throughout the collection season to season: in the drapery, construction details, some of the color choices. Subconsciously, it’s always there.

JW: Who are the most influential people in your life?

AY: My parents.

JW:  What do you do when you’re not designing? What do you do to relax?

AY: I try to spend time with my friends. It’s important to not lose touch with people I care about even if I do have a crazy schedule! We usually catch gigs, eat out, or go to the cinema (one of my favorite things to do). I absolutely love the Sunshine and Angelika theaters (in New York City) they have great independent flicks.

Ann Yee’s collections are available online and at NYC stockists Sucre, krisTEES, EVA and End of Century.

There are a lot of headbands in the National Basketball Association. And socks and towels and jerseys. And on every one of them; in fact on just about all things NBA, there is the logo. You know the one. It’s one of the most recognized images in the world. And anyone who has the slightest interest in basketball knows that the guy in the image is Jerry West. Everyone, that is, except the NBA, which tends to hedge questions about the logo saying that they don’t have a record of who it is.

How is it possible that we all know it’s Jerry West, but someone whose job is to run the NBA is unsure? It’s not. League officials know as well as anyone who the logo is modeled after, but they want to move away from the idea that it is a specific person.

“They want to institutionalize it rather than individualize it,” says the logo’s designer Alan Siegel, in an interview with the L.A. Times. “It’s become such a ubiquitous, classic symbol and focal point of their identity and their licensing program that they don’t necessarily want to identify it with one player.”

Siegel, who designed the mark in 1969 has no confusion about who the player on the logo is saying, “It’s Jerry West.”

Assigned the job of designing a logo for the NBA, Siegel was flipping through photos when he came across one of West that suited him. He used the image to create the logo. No big story, no confusion, it’s West.

A Swing and a Miss
A slightly more interesting story of sports logos is that of Major League Baseball. The current design pre-dates the NBA logo by one year and presumably provided inspiration for the West design as Siegel also worked for the firm that created the MLB logo and the designs share several similarities. With the baseball design however, it’s understood that the logo is not a specific person, but a nondescript generalization with an added bonus that the silhouetted image can be seen as either a right-handed or left-handed batter.

It’s a brilliant and oft-imitated design that has inspired countless creations, and it was created in one afternoon, with magic markers, by graphic designer Jerry Dior. And that’s where this story gets good. Well, it used to be where the story got good, but now the situation has resolved itself a bit.

For 40 years, Jerry Dior wasn’t publicly acknowledged for his massive contribution to professional baseball. While graphic designers often go unrecognized for their work, Dior had expressed that it would be nice to get some kind of acknowledgment for his long-standing design. Nothing major; maybe throw out a pitch or something. In 2009, Dior got his wish. He was recognized in a pre-game presentation in Yankee Stadium.

Of Dior’s design and his long-awaited acknowledgment, baseball commissioner Allan H. Selig said, “Jerry Dior created a symbol that has stood the test of time…the silhouetted batter is instantly recognized worldwide as the official emblem of Major League Baseball. I’m glad that we have been able to acknowledge Mr. Dior’s contribution to our national pastime.”

Of the honor Dior said, “I would like to thank everyone at Major League Baseball for making this day possible. This is one of the most exciting days of my life.”

In an interview with MLB.com, Dior expressed his pride in the longevity of his design. “Every other design I’ve done has been dropped or changed or updated over the years,” he said. “This is the only thing I can point to that hasn’t changed in 40 years. It’s the proudest I’ve ever been of my work.”

So there you have it: the guy who designed the MLB logo is Jerry Dior and the guy on the NBA logo really is Jerry West. Now go outside and play.

It may be well into the glorious, green, sunny season of spring – at least for those of you not stuck in the interminably cloudy, cold weather sinkhole that is Seattle these days – but that doesn’t mean everyone’s releasing bright, cheery indie-pop records about bunnies and dancing and dancing bunnies and dancing with bunnies. There are still many musicians out there crafting dark, disturbing works and putting them out whenever they damn well feel like it. If you do pick up any of these albums, you’ll probably want to wait until nightfall to put them on the old hi-fi.

Vampires Everywhere! - Kiss the Sun Goodbye

I had to scroll down far enough to make sure this album had a track list and song titles, and it wasn’t a misfiled audiobook or DVD or something. But no, apparently there is a vampire-themed band (I will just go out on a limb and make that assumption) called Vampires Everywhere! with an album called what else but Kiss the Sun Goodbye. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this album cover. It certainly is exactly what I would expect from such an album. But maybe that’s the problem; I mean, it almost seems as though the designer had some fancy, new-fangled computer program, and they just entered “Band Name: Vampires Everywhere! / Album Title: Kiss the Sun Goodbye” into it, and this is what it spat out. It’s just so perfectly high-school goth romance, you know? The only thing that really doesn’t quite fit in is the exclamation mark in the band name. That makes me wonder if the whole thing is a joke, but everything else is so deadpan and maudlin I tend to doubt that. If it is a joke, then well done, Vampires Everywhere! You got me.

A Storm of Light – As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade

I wish this image weren’t so grainy, as there’s a lot going on here that requires parsing. First, of course, we have the oh-so evocative album title, almost a short story, really. So the valley of death is becoming us . . . does that mean death is turning into people? Or perhaps that the valley of death looks really good on us? (“Oh, dear, that valley just totally becomes you!”) Or is it a backwards way of saying that we are dying? And then when whatever that first part is about is happening, some of our memories – but just the silver ones – appear to be fading. Or is it that all of our memories are silver (silver is also quite becoming), and they’re all fading? I guess that makes sense; as I die I expect that my memories will fade, regardless of what metal they’re made of.

But wait! We haven’t even gotten to the actual album art yet. Again, there’s a lot going on here: A foregrounded, disturbingly collaged figure, with a grey dismal scene (the aforementioned valley of death?) behind it. The figure has some strange headgear (headscarf/crown/halo of spears) and appears to be holding a flame in its right hand. The right side of its body looks normal, but the right side is all exposed muscle and viscera with various things poking out of it. Now this is where it gets really weird: Looking at the stuff coming out of the viscera (and man, I wish I had a bigger version of this image), we see a bunch of bric-a-brac, but what most clearly stands out to me is a giant bird (maybe a stork or a heron or something), and an upside-down ice cream cone! What in the world can any of this mean? I don’t know, but it’s totally compelling, and also completely appropriate to the dark, overwrought quality of the band name and album title, but in a way that no computer program could ever have spit out. I have no idea if I would ever want to hear this record, but I almost want to guy buy it on vinyl just so I can fully absorb its visual wonders.

Andrea Centazzo – Midnight All Day

I love the creepy simplicity of this album cover: the blurred, high-contrast, ghoulish image; the simple color palette and stark font choices. If I didn’t know better I might think it were the soundtrack to a vintage Italian horror film. Oh, wait, I don’t know any better. So maybe it is the soundtrack to an Italian horror film, but if it’s not, it’s certainly doing a great job of evoking that aesthetic and luring in potential listeners with it. I assume that the music on this CD will appeal in some way to those who would be attracted to vintage Italian horror film soundtracks, so I look forward to hearing loads of dark, synth-heavy mayhem.