September 2011
3 posts
Going the Way of All Good Things: The End of Is... →
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
Alt Disney →
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,…
Counterculture Amid Dystopia: Vanessa Veselka’s... →
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…
July 2011
1 post
Records By Their Covers: Classic Cuts →
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 –…
June 2011
3 posts
A Better Brighter Grenadine →
Recently I spent an extraordinary amount of time testing grenadine recipes, trying to find one that wouldn’t sacrifice color for flavor, or flavor for color. There are a lot of complaints out there…
Moving On: From Light to Darkness to Light Again →
Photo by Graham Watson on Flickr
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…
A Swing and a Player →
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…
May 2011
2 posts
Records By Their Covers: I See a Darkness →
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…
Alexi Freeman: Stardust →
Here in the US the sun is finally getting close enough to the equator to warm our frosted bones and we can finally bring out all those wide legged pants and maxi skirts that have excited the…
April 2011
5 posts
Making Muesli →
In my circle of friends it has always been all about granola. A friend of mine in Philly makes a vanilla bean and sea salt granola that I would, if it came down to a last bowl, punch…
On Playing the Cajón →
This wooden box looks like my dad’s makeshift garage stepstool. Or my friend’s makeshift ferret bin. Due to the hole, one might assume it’s a makeshift stimulating aid from someone’s fetish…
Records by their Covers: Me and My Axe →
Most artists treat their album covers as a way to communicate what their music sounds like, in one way or another, allowing the potential consumer to quickly decide whether or not to waste…
Soup From The Can →
Photo by Mister Bijou on Blogspot
As soon as Roger saw me he said I smelt like the rain. I had made some questionable late night phone calls just to complain about the incessancy of it. And yet…
Reconsidering Rosie →
What name do you associate with the “We Can Do It” poster? Rosie the Riveter? Yeah, me too; until recently, anyway. Turns out, we’re wrong. Kind of. The iconic image captures an era and…
March 2011
5 posts
Going Deep With Alex London →
Last month I was introduced to Alex London’s work with surprised pleasure via the fall 2011 collection, Kagami. The clothing made it clear that this is not your average…
Minutes →
June 6
Rats have been spotted in the children’s room. It is thought that they are getting in through the pipes. The library director thanked Angela for trying to catch them, but it is not the…
Olive Oil Cookies with Meyer Lemon →
I have to admit that I love this time of year. Spring is right around the corner, and here in California the rain storms are raging and the citrus is still booming. All around me people…
Reading Room: Google Earth Revolutions, .gifs as... →
Uli Westphal‘s photo collection of mutatoes, mutated and surreal fruits and vegetables from Berlin’s farmer’s markets.
Combatting air pollution with…glowing artificial trees?
MIT…
The Art of Being Open-Minded →
Jeff Koons, Pink Panther, 1988. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Gerald S. Elliott Collection. Photo © MCA Chicago
I feel the same way about Jeff Koons as I did about learning to…
Here He Goes Again On His Own: Cooper McBean and... →
Our friend Cooper McBean of The Devil Makes Three has kept himself busy in the band’s downtime, putting together a backing band on the side for his solo efforts and recording a four-song ep…
February 2011
8 posts
AA for the Suicidal →
An excerpt from Lavinia Ludlow’s new novel alt.punk, available March 1st. For more information, visit Casperian Books.
The drive back to Sac does nothing to sober me up, either, and although…
The Ease of Whole Grain Mustard →
I have a little bit of a weird mustard obsession. I don’t like very many kinds of mustard, or very many brands of mustard, but the ones I like I like a lot. Usually when I like something this much…
The Fall of Borders: Strange Victory, Strange... →
So this is it. Borders has officially filed for bankruptcy. They have released a list of 200 stores they will be closing over the next several weeks, and it is expected that they will close at…
Chicago Murals, Imperfect and Haunting →
This was my first visit to the murals, but it was clear they had changed. I was walking along an abandoned viaduct in Pilsen, one of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. It was gray and cold, like so…
42 Frames: Restrepo →
Maybe I am a liberal peacenik of the highest order or maybe I am just a total dick. Either way, I really disliked this Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington documentary. And I disliked it for some…
Reading Room: Introversion vs. Fear, Mapping... →
The bleak iconography of digital illustrator Yehteh.
Do you know the difference between introversion and fear? Common mistakes introverts make.
Is Apple’s aggressive new stance on…
Nudie Cohn: King of Bling →
Photo by Mike Salisbury
Maybe you don’t know Nudie suits by name, but you almost certainly have seen them. Lots of them. They’re those classic—and totally over-the-top—Western-style dress suits…
January 2011
6 posts
My Father’s Legs →
Image by thegloaming on Flickr
The doctors in the hospital were worried about circulation in my father’s legs. We needed to move pillows around, adjust things, even rub them at times. I never…
Reading Room: Dubai’s Sinking Islands, Existential... →
In 1820, Thomas Jefferson Beale buried $65 million worth of treasure, never to be found. The Thomas Beale Cipher is a beautiful animated short about the mystery. via
Schadenfreude/man’s hubris…
True Gritty →
The American West is the closest this nation comes to the founding hero myths that ripple through other nations’ cultures. The cowboy with his trusty horse, ten gallon hat, and sparkling six shooter…
Shabd Simon-Alexander: Neo Tie Dye Effect →
Thoughts of spring are refreshing thoughts of renewal and fresh starts. And although we’ve barely seen the worst of winter yet, it is sometimes good to let our frostbitten minds drift off to a place…
Men Among Man →
Photo by Sami Keinänen
A man named Man wakes angry, very angry, and he’s not certain why. There are many reasons these days. Just open your Twitter feed. That’s what Man does. China raises…
The Ineffable Allure of Faded Murals →
I know a woman who moved apartments because of the murals. In her first apartment, she had to walk under the 53rd Street viaduct, past the murals, to get to school everyday. She wanted the city to…
November 2010
16 posts
Submit to Is Greater Than’s third semi-annual X >... →
In 2007 and 2008, we did a year-end roundup using the following format:
X event/news item/cultural artifact/personal experience was > Y event/news item/cultural artifact/personal experience
(short…
Tradeoffs →
Photo by Geir Halvorsen on Flickr
If Dave switches from an extra large coffee to a small one daily, he’ll save roughly $365 this year, as this year is not a leap year. With $365 dollars, he can…
Orange Skillet Cake →
The skillet cake, or upside down cake, is too strongly associated with canned pineapples and maraschino cherries, imagined to be a sickeningly sweet concoction full of things you’d rather not eat if…
Reading Room: Misleading Metaphors, Imaginary... →
For the short holiday week, an early Reading Room:
Patti Smith talks books with Jonathan Lethem. In other Lethem news, he’s got a new book about John Carpenter’s over-the-top political allegory…
Early and Often: Is Greater Than Reader Survey →
Please participate in this (short) reader survey! It’d be an enormous help to us as we plan the site’s future. RSS and mobile readers can access the survey here.
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Doubling Down With Four Loko →
As you have no doubt heard, Four Loko has caught flack from all directions: Parents, university administrators, high school administrators, idiot teenagers, busy body 20-somethings who probably…
Insanity Meets Fashion: The Twentyten →
On the outskirts of Brooklyn, away from the bars and boutiques there is a place where the desire to be hip isn’t so concentrated. The buzz of twenty-somethings having fun is replaced by the buzz…
Reading Room: Steampunk as Totalitarianism, Online... →
Historical footnote still bears grudge against marginally more relevant legacy indie-rock outfit.
David Mitchell auctions off a character name in a future novel to benefit autism.
Does the…
Records By Their Covers: Why So Serious? →
There’s a fine balance that most musical acts have to consider between being serious and sincere about your art and just taking yourselfway too seriously. Of course there are exceptions on both…
Downsizing →
He wakes up. Slowly. Like an elderly robot with a defective switchboard, his left eyelid opens milliseconds before the right. For a moment the hungry paws beneath the door-jam evoke an irrational…
The Green Zone: Kung Fu and WMD’s →
When I saw that Paul Greengrass directed Matt Damon in this flick about the search for WMDs in the early days of the Iraq War, I feared that the film would devolve into another Jason Bourne movie….
Reading Room: Sore Winners, Information as... →
Welcome to a new weekly feature on Is Greater Than, a roundup of interesting items I’ve come across over the past few days:
“The Tea Party, in this sense, is not a new development so much as it is…
Just Another Dopamine Squirt: Texting, Facebook,... →
The last chapter of Jennifer Egan’s new novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, takes place approximately twenty five years in the future. Global warming has become the norm, producing fabulous…
Meat Men →
No people who turn their back on death can be alive. The presence of the dead among the living will be a daily fact in any society which encourages its people to live.
- From A Pattern Language …
Typography and Baseball →
A couple of months ago I discovered a box full of stuff that I had long ago tucked away in a closet. Included among the photos, clippings, magazines and yearbooks was a thick wool sweater that was…
The Aura of Art →
British sculptor Rebecca Warren is most famous for her unfired clay female figures that straddle the line between abstract and figurative. Impossibly balanced, these ghostly white-gray figures are…
October 2010
10 posts
The Mystery of Hot and Sour Soup →
Hot and sour soup has been an emblematic mystery of Chinese cooking for me and many of my friends. Some of them have spent their entire lives looking for the perfect bowl, ordering it from as many…