A few of hundreds, at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits—cooler than you’d think.

Be sure to check out the jungle courtyard in the center of the building if you visit.

Longtime favorite artist, Nikki McClure, just announced her annual calendar, again full of beautiful paper cut artwork, inspired by the natural world and peaceful, familial life.

McClure’s been producing these calendars for buyolympia.com for years now, along with producing cards, shirts, prints, and other, similarly themed products, all derived from hand-cut paper pieces done from a single sheet of paper.

You can read an interview we did with Nikki back in 2011 to find out more about the process and the artist herself.

McClure also announced a coming show next spring at Los Angeles’ Giant Robot, details to come.

Below, some excerpts from the 2015 calendar, which you can order from buyolympia.com.

Just came across this shot from a photo shoot we did for MooShoes in south Brooklyn way  back in 2008 and it struck me, both in terms of how long ago that now is and how great the light is in these shots.

The light falls so differently on the wets coast than it does in the east, I’ve found. This cool, winter light makes me miss New York and the east coast a little bit.

That winter coat…makes me not miss it so much.

No idea who made that bag or which shoes those are—maybe Neuaura?

Anyway, consider this out Throwback Thursday.

We’ve been meaning to write these guys up for a while now.

Louisville Vegan Jerky Co produces what is, for me, the best dry vegan jerky on the market. Now, I know we all have the things we miss when we go vegan. Cheese is an across the board, universal longing for most of us. Beyond that, it varies, vegan-to-vegan, I think. For me, beef jerky definitely falls into that category of beloved, now shunned foods from my past. As a kid, I loaded up on the stuff every time we stopped for gas. Mind you, this was long before the ‘artisan jerky’ market hit the scene, so we’re talking pretty nasty stuff, Slim Jims included.

Come on. I was raised in the south. What do you expect, man?

Now, the vegan market’s had various versions of jerky for as long as I can remember, with old-timers like Stonewalls (they’re so old they got the domain name soybean.com!) and more developed companies coming on the scene later, like Tofurkey and Primal Spirit. Despite the intense name, I’m a fan of the latter, though it’s more of a wet jerky (sorry, gross, I know), with saucy soy-, gluten-, or mushroom-based jerkies. It’s also made overseas in Thailand and then imported by Primal’s HQ in West Virginia.

Newcomers Louisville Vegan Jerky Co. produce a dry jerky, like Stonewall, but one that uses longer strips of protein and, most importantly, a ton of beautifully natural, mouth-explosion-inducing flavors.  The company also sources its seasonings locally whenever possible, so take that Thailand.

As they say:
“Louisville Vegan Jerky Co. was started in 2012 as ‘What A Jerky’. The ingredients and brand got an upgrade in 2013 to follow down a path of using local seasonings and incorporating the city we love so much into our brand.”

Smooth move, What A Jerky. Back to the flavors though—sidestepping the old-school, straight-forward approach, LVJC instead goes big, tapping into the taste trends of the day with flavors like Bourbon Smoked Black Pepper, Bourbon Smoked Chipotle, and Sriracha Maple.

Bourbon and peppers and smoke. Who can’t love that?

The sodium’s a little high, but it’s jerky, man—it’s based on a food that was preserved with salt. That’s authenticity. Also, it’s nice getting a vegan jerky with ingredients you recognize and don’t number in the millions. If Facebook‘s to be believed—which it obviously always is—it looks like they might even have a Sesame Teriyaki Jerky now. It also seems like they’ve updated the packaging. Which is a great excuse for me to go find more of this stuff.

Ooh—and they’ve got cool shirts (–>).

Find store that carry Louisville Vegan Jerky with the company’s store locator.

We worked up this illustration—based off of the wallpaper we did for MooShoes Los Angeles—and the poster below for the just announced holiday party we’re holding at the store in partnership with LA-based gourmet food company, Spork Foods.

Owned and operated by sisters Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg, Spork Foods offers organic vegan cooking classes, in-home healthy eating consultations, private cooking parties, corporate trainings and demos, team-building cooking classes, and more. Plus, they’re both super-nice, genuinely talented people to boot.

In addition to a night of in-store holiday discounts and a seasonally inspired menu from Spork, we’ll also have complimentary sparkling lime rosé from Pampelonne, complimentary snacks from Setton Farms, merchandise for sale from our friends at PETA, and excellent tunes from our in-store DJ.

So mark you calendar now, LA—Friday, Dec12, 6-9PM.

Sad news in the world of intelligently enjoyable indie pop came our way Friday—longtime favorite band, Yellow Ostrich, officially called it quits after a little over four years and roughly 250 live shows.

We’ve been fans for most of that time—you can read this past March’s interview we conducted with frontman, Alex Schaaf (above), to learn more about the band and listen to excerpts from 2014’s Cosmos—so we’re obviously sad to see them go.

But we’re also excited at what’s to come. As with other outwardly negative events in everyone’s lives, these kind of things tend to push some of us toward choices or situations into which we may not have otherwise ventured.

And it seems like that may be the case with Schaaf’s new musical venture, Human Heat, which, for now, exists as a bedroom studio project for Schaaf, who plans to begin work on building it into a full-fledged band with live shows to come. So far, though, the project shows promise and has us excited to hear more, taking some of Yellow Ostrich’s distinct sound at pushing it out of its comfort zone, relying a little more on electronics and bringing in some nice guest vocals from T. Lieberson + Tei Shi.

Listen to Human Heat’s debut EP below and buy it for $4 on bandcamp.

If you’re in New York City December 8, you can catch Yellow Ostrich’s final performance at Glasslands.

Human Heat by Human Heat

KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic is giving away native Angeleno TOKiMONSTA‘s single, “Drive”, featuring Arama, as today’s Top Tune, so get it while you can and start off your weekend with a dance party.

In the sidebar, a shot we got a couple weeks back of TOKiMONSTA DJing at KCRW’s Masquerade.

You can hear more work from DJ extraordinaire + electronic artist TOKiMONSTA (AKA Jennifer Lee) below and on her SoundCloud page, where you can also download more singles; visit her Web site to see her coming tour dates, next up, SF in two weeks.

Top photo by Nikko LaMere.

You may or may not have seen our previous piece breaking down our outdoor design studio—from which I am currently writing these words—but one thing not mentioned there was my old mousepad, which was the hardcover edition of Castles, a book I’ve had since childhood.

See, our outdoor table, used as work desks, is slatted, which is great for running chords through, but not so much for using a mouse, which we still need to do since Apple has yet to introduce touch screens and we’re not yet at the Minority Report, swipe in the air stage yet, which I’m hoping Apple will soon announce it’s skipping ahead to. So, when we set up the office for the first time at the beginning of this year, I just grabbed what I assumed would be a good surface for my mouse work. Indeed, it was, but taking the book out every workday and flipping through it every now and then, I rediscovered how awesome Castles is.

I was your classic nerd as a child, severely into fantasy and anything involving castles and elves; still am at heart. This book—beautifully illustrated by Alan Lee (known for his work with Tolkien’s books), written by David Day, and published by Bantam Books in 1984—is bound to stir up excitement from anyone else equally into the genre. Castles draws on history and legends through the middle ages—from Beowulf to Camelot to Norse legend to Irish folk lore to Jack and his giant to the more modern castles of Poe’s stories—to channel Lee’s artistic talent and Day’s poetics to pair with the artwork and retell these oft age-old stories. It stands to this day as a beautiful piece of work that grabs the imagination of both the young and young-at-heart.

A few months back, I noticed that my mouse had started to rub the fabric of the book a bit raw, so I retired Castles the mousepad to preserve Castles the awesome book.

You can see a few shots from the book below, but it seems like you can also still order the book used via Amazon. If you’re into this sort of thing, I highly recommend doing so.

Another from our photo archive, this one from Katie’s early personal work.

It’s always been a personal favorite of mine—one of those strong visual images that gets locked into your subconsciousness in formative years and sort of sets a path, I think, for what you appreciate and, likewise, want to create in you own work. I love what’s shown and what’s not shown in this shot; the perceived emotion or intention between the mostly obscured figures.

Katie’s always had a great eye, and I think this is one of the first things that really proved that to me.

Don’t forget to vote today!

If you, like me, happen to be coming off of some hectic months and are just now figuring out both where you need to go to vote AND how you’ll be voting, I highly recommend referencing Planned Parenthood’s voting guide, which is very well designed and, probably more importantly, attempting to help guide us all into making up for hundreds of years of government-sanctioned, institutional misogyny.

It’s especially handy on things like Proposition 46 in California, which is described as follows on the ballot:
“Should California require random drug testing of doctors, require doctors to check a statewide database before prescribing certain drugs, and raise the cap on noneconomic damages in medical negligence lawsuits?”

To which Planned Parenthood responds:
“Because Prop 46 would reduce access to reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood urges a NO vote. The proposition will negatively impact access to OB/GYNs, who may have to reduce services because of increased insurance costs, particularly impacting rural and low-income Californians.”

Nice tidbit of information there.

So don’t get discouraged fellow last-minnute political-crammers, just get help. We can do this.

Also, don’t vote for this guy.