We’ve got a good friend who used to make a point to stop and pick any spare dropped change on the street—everything from a lowly penny, to a dime, to a twenty he once found on the streets of DC if I remember correctly. He may still make a habit of this day, for all I know, but, point being, he gathered all this change with the intent of eventually using it to buy something he’d never otherwise spend his money on; it was “free money” in his mind, essentially.

In the days leading up to this year’s leap day—the quadrennial retroactive accounting we engage as a society to make up for the fact that it takes the Earth 365.242199 days to circle the sun, not 365—I’ve come to view Leap Day in the same manner. We just got handed 24 hours that we don’t usually have, and we should do something awesome with it. Why not build a kite with a friend and fly it in the park? Or go to an old folks home and spend some time with some lonely elders? Or publish a satirical newspaper? Or just sit and do absolutely nothing in this age of doing way too much of everything?

Time is fleeting, our days on this earth uncertain, and, though it’s all essentially a trick of math in this made up, clearly flawed system of time measurement, why not take advantage of this fake holiday to guide your life in a positive direction it wouldn’t otherwise be steered in? Like doing something really special for someone you love on Valentine’s Day even though you know full well it’s a pseudo-holiday that’s been co-opted by commercialism.

Or you can just propose to dudes if you’re traditional turn-of-the-century British women. Or Amy Adams.

This morning, we heard that Anhoni—the transgendered artists formerly known as Antony and best known for his work as Antony and the Johnsons and his collaborations with, among others, Björk—announced she will be boycotting this year’s Academy Awards.

As reported yesterday by the LA Times, Anhoni was nominated for the best original song Oscar this year for her track “Manta Ray”, a song “about ecocide” she wrote with composer J. Ralph for the Discovery film Racing Extinction. Anhoni’s letter yesterday beautifully, eloquently, and heartbreakingly explains the reason, after so much initial excitement for being nominated, she decided she could not attend the Academy Awards this year:

“I am the only transgendered performer ever to have been nominated for an Academy Award, and for that I thank the artists who nominated me. (There was a trans songwriter nominee named Angela Morley in the early 70’s who did some great work behind the scenes.) I was in Asia when I found out the news. I rushed home to prepare something, in case the music nominees would be asked to perform. Everyone was calling with excited congratulations. A week later, Sam Smith, Lady Gaga and the Weeknd were rolled out as the evening’s entertainment with more performers ‘soon to be announced’. Confused, I sat and waited. Would someone be in touch? But as time bore on I heard nothing. I was besieged with people asking me if I was going to perform.” She continued—”My anxiety increased as weeks passed. I slowly realized that the positive implication of this nomination was being retracted. The producers seemed to have decided to stage performances only by the singers who were deemed commercially viable. Composer David Lang’s song “Simple Song #3” performed by South Korean soprano Sumi Jo was also omitted.”

Anhoni admits she realizes she wasn’t omitted from the performances as a direct result of being transgender, “but if you trace the trail of breadcrumbs,” she writes “the deeper truth of it is impossible to ignore. Like global warming, it is not one isolated event, but a series of events that occur over years to create a system that has sought to undermine me, at first as a feminine child, and later as an androgynous transwoman. It is a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed by capitalism in the US to crush our dreams and our collective spirit.”

We strongly urge everyone to read the full letter themselves at Anhoni’s site, but we just wanted to take a moment to echo Anhoni’s words and applaud her for speaking out and not just, as she writes, being “lulled into submission with a few more well manufactured, feel-good ballads and a bit of good old fashioned T. and A.” The desire to attend such a highly lauded, esteemed event, even in this year of mounting controversy, must have been near-impossible to ignore, but we are at the very least, happy she has brought this all to light and started a public discussion that will hopefully lead to much-needed progress.

You can listen to “Manta Ray” below; additionally, we highly recommend Anhoni’s excellent recent song “4 Degrees”.

We’re about a week behind on all things entertainment (mom came out for her first west coast visit), but please forgive us for not shouting from the rooftops in celebration of Broad City‘s season three premiere last week.

There’s a lot of great TV out there right now, but I nonetheless stand by the opinion that this is the best, smartest, funniest comedy on television. The season premiere started out with one the best stand-alone intros to date, showing a montage of bathroom hilarity. You can see it below, and head to Broad City’s Comedy Central page to see more clips, full episodes, and a behind the scenes clip from the intro.

A shout-out to El Matador State Beach in Malibu, our go-to beach when we want to impress east coast guests.

Once, in a happily naive time not long ago, I sung the praises of a certain soap far and wide. That soap—Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap—is a deep, rich brown and something about its smokey, pine-rich musk just fundamentally soothes me. I can’t explain it exactly, but for years, it was my must-have soap, to the point of bringing it with me on weekend trips so as not to be without it.

Then, I realized that the primary ingredient in Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap is derived from palm oil; tropical-forest razing, orangutan-killing palm oil. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, ask this panda bear for more details, but, basically, the flourishing palm oil industry is very directly linked to massive deforestation, tropical habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, indigenous rights abuses in the (now many) countries in which it’s produced. Many people, myself included, think that even supposedly ethically sourced palm oil is troublesome due to both lack of oversight and demand on non-ethical, mainstream palm oil generated by the ethical streams.

So. It’s bad.

I’d long avoiding it in foods (including in vegan butter), but hadn’t ever considered it might be in other products. Like my beloved soap. So it’s been a long, sad time since I’ve experienced that pine-tar-induced euphoria.  Thanks to Katie, I’ve got a new fix, man.

Los Angeles-based, Texas-inspired lighting specialists and apothecary Jones County Road makes, among other things, a Campfire Hand and Body Bar that matches if not exceeds that euphoric shower experience I so missed. And the small-batch, hand-crafted soap is totally palm oil free. As they put it:

“The Jones County Road mission is simple: to provide an alternative to the overly manufactured merchandise of our time by bringing handcrafted and expertly designed products into the everyday home. Mixing cues from its headquarters in Los Angeles with its roots in small-town Texas, the Jones County Road aesthetic is both classic and modern as well as functional and unique. Everything at Jones County Road is carefully crafted by hand with top-quality materials.”

Which makes perfect sense in my case—JCR gave me both a wonderful alternative to a mass-produced favorite and the opportunity to support a small, local business.

You can order the company’s products via their site or find their soaps at General Quarters on La Brea, one of my favorite menswear shops in town.

More importantly, you can sign the pledge to stop buying palm oil and find out more at saynotopalmoil.com.

Still kind of amazed this snow-capped paradise is a mere 2 hours from downtown Los Angeles.

Is there public radio version for the term alma mater? If there is, we’d readily apply that to New York’s WNYC, our previous aural house of knowledge and virtual collegiate environment, usually kept on throughout the day in our Brooklyn studio.

Moving to Los Angeles also brought a move to our new home city’s most prevalent public radio station, KCRW, and, for the most part, we haven’t looked back…though we do miss Brian Lehrers‘ yearly April Fool’s joke new story and Leonard Lopate‘s general comically grumpiness.

A recent exception is our participation all week in a new project from Note to Self—WNYC’s “tech show about being human”. The project, titled Infomagical, aims to help participants combat information overload in this age of non-stop everything and we have to say, it’s been pretty great. Like many, we’re not always the best at stepping back and examining what we’re doing and why, we’re more the tackle-massive-to-do-lists-and-say-yes-to-everything-even-if-it-means-collapsing-in-a-pile-of-emotional-exhaustion-every-day types. So this project—comprising interactive, largely text-based daily exercises—has been both enlightening and (honestly, no drama) potentially life-changing.

As they put it: “For the week of February 1-5, Note to Self will issue a daily challenge—a task designed to cut through the information overload and help you think more clearly.”

You sign up, chose a personal goal for the whole thing (i.e. – be more creative, spend more time with family, et cetera) and set off on your stress-shedding, life-streamlining adventure. We won’t give the whole thing away, but we highly recommend it.

Clearly, the week’s over now and they actually capped participation earlier this week, but NtS also recently announced that they’ll be doing the whole thing again next Monday. So head over and sign up at Note to Self’s Infomagical site now! You won’t regret it.

Now stop staring at a screen and go hug a dog on the street or something.

Cool graphic via Note to Self; below, my newly Zen-ed out iPhone screen.

Last summer, we received a strangely mysterious email from our friend, chef, and Mud Hen Tavern co-owner, Kajsa Alger about a new venture they were all embarking on—Blue Window, “a take-out window like you’ve never seen before.”

The concept was relatively simple, but innovative at the same time—they use a kitchen-adjacent take-out window to supplement the dinner-only tavern during the weekdays with a totally different, themed menu that’d last only 6 months before turning over to a new theme. Our main take away was that they further Mud Hen’s already vegan-friendly leanings, offering that “all items can be made vegan—just ask!”

The first iteration was an Asian themed menu, featuring some amazing items like a BBQ jackfruit-filled bao, vegan gochujang hot sauce wings, a vegan bahn mi, and many more craveable selections. We wrote the whole thing up last year when Kajsa + co. invited us to Blue Window’s preview tasting event.

This past Saturday, Blue Window successfully retired their first menu and again invited friends of the restaurant to a tasting of their new menu—Blue Window: Junk, celebrating…well, junk food—decadent deliciousness; the street-est of street food; the opposite of kale. And again, all can be made vegan—just ask! And some menu items are even vegan as are.

You can view the full menu on Blue Window’s site, but our favorites were the vegan braised beef cheddar melt (which stacks carmelized onion, really great housemade pickles, braised, saucy vegan beef-style soy meat from VeriSoy, and superbly melted Daiya onto a vegan mayo-slathered, amazing soft sandwich bun) and falafel battered onion rings with black olive honey (actually agave, so, vegan) and richly spicy tahini hot sauce.

Blue Window: Junk officially opens for business today at noon. So fair warning to all those who missed out on or didn’t quite get their fill of Blue Window: Asia—you’ve got sixth months, friends.

Below, the vegan braised beef cheddar melt; the by-default vegan fried artichoke po’ boy with cornmeal-crusted artichokes and oyster mushrooms, housemade remoulade, and pickled lettuce + tomato; the falafel onion rings; a nacho baked potato topped with housemade vegan nacho cheese, broccoli, guacamole, vegan sour cream, and pickled jalapeños; the vegan chili cheese Frito tamale with Fritos, 3-bean chili, vegan sour cream, and pickled jalapeños; and a special we hope they make a regular—chocolate whoopee pies (or gobs if you’re from PA) filled with peanut butter-banana meringue made from (wait for it) chickpea brine. So very good. To the right, Super Team Blue Window, shot by Kajsa via BW’s Instagram.

We just added some print work did with UNICEF’s polio team to our portfolio.

We’ve been working with UNICEF for a number of years now on communications strategies to help end polio worldwide. Though the disease is now only endemic to three countries in the world—Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan—differences in culture, lack of education on the disease, and lack of access have made it extremely difficult to address in those countries. In an effort to help UNICEF and their partners eradicate polio worldwide, we created this ‘Passport to a Polio-Free World’—an education print piece that, along with its inserts, follows the theme of an oversized travel passport, with stamp-style callouts, passport-like page imagery, and the distinct rounded page and cover corners.

You can read more about the piece and see additional images of the finished product in our print portfolio.

Now that we’re well into to the new year and most of our friends, family, and clients have gotten our annual new year’s cards, we can safely write them up here.

We’ve been sending out holiday and new year’s cards for years now, first making them by hand, then, as our business grew, beginning to source out printing through various traditional letterpress shops that we like working with. Over the years, we’ve refined them, pulling from lyrics from some of our favorite songs and illustrations that reflect our love of animals.

This past year, as many already know, we lost our beloved cat of nearly twelve years, Allister (who was likely around 17 years old himself). We took that loss very, very hard. Honestly, we still think about him every day and our hearts still ache for that furry feline with such an impossibly big personality. So we clearly had to honor his memory with this year’s cards.

Along with our illustration of Al, the cards feature the chorus from Mr. Little Jeans‘ “Oh Sailor”, a song that served as kind of an anthem for us as we drove cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles with Allister and our dog, Owen, in the back seat. The lyrics seem fitting to us.

You can read our 2014 interview with Monica Birkenes—AKA Mr. Little Jeans—and leaf through our various posts on the majestic cat that was Mr. Allister Mcvittes.

Happy new year, y’all; appreciate what you got and hold on to it tight.