As has been extremely well-documented by now, this whole technology thing is very much a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing that we can easily communicate with friends and family across the world, mobilize around social change, watch a cute cat video, find the perfect vegan chili recipe, and stream decades deep music catalogs at the touch of a screen; and it’s a curse that our brains—so much slower to evolve than the pace of modern information technology—are now essentially activated 24/7 by the world outside, restless in every sense of the word. Like most people, we’ve given this problem a decent amount of though and recently I personally stumbled across a small fix of sorts that I wanted to share.

But let’s back up.

Exactly two weeks back, we celebrated the birth of our first child…. To be totally clear, this is a real human baby I’m speaking of, not some kind of trope or analog to a creative project we’ve ‘given birth to’ at the agency.

It’s awesome, speaking literally—the experience has left both of us completely full of awe in almost every way imaginable; awe at the life that we created that’s somehow a synthesis of the two of us; awe at the human body and its many beyond-comprehension miracles of physics; awe at the future that’s unfolding before us every minute we spend with this little boy; awe at the sheer lack of sleep inherent in caring for a tiny human in these first few weeks.

I get that this is a seminal, rather earth-shattering life moment for us that I’m essentially confining to a small mention in what, by comparison, is a trivial piece, but I mention it mainly to set up the premise here. Suffice to say on the bigger picture, though—we’re elated.

Back to the crux of the smaller picture though, as a matter of habit, I always used to switch my iPhone to Do Not Disturb mode before going to sleep at night. For anyone who doesn’t already know, Do Not Disturb mode is a feature Apple added to iOS back in 2012 that effectively silences all notifications on your iPhone or iPad. Notifications still come through—you see them on your lock screen or anywhere else you’d normally find them once you activate the device—you’re just not disturbed by vibrations or audible pings for the notifications when Do Not Disturb is activated unless you’re currently using your activated device. Via your the settings menu, you can fine-tune the mode, allowing calls to come through from groups in your contacts, ‘favorites’, and anyone who calls repeatedly, scheduling it to automatically turn the mode on and off during the day, auto-activating it when you’re driving, and more (it really is super-handy; thanks Apple).

When it became clear that Katie was going into labor those two weeks back, it was roughly 430AM and—without getting too far into the weeds on this—things moved quickly. All went really well, but the next thing we knew, it was a few hours later and we were bonding with our son as all other thoughts fell away, distant and trite by comparison. A couple days later, once we were home and settled, I realized I’d never turned off the Do Not Disturb mode on my phone. More importantly, I realized that having left it in that mode had allowed me to focus on the here-and-now in a very here-and-now time. Cut to today, two weeks later, and I consider myself a DND convert (and yes, I’m also a longtime Dungeons and Dragons aficionado, but that’s a topic for another day; I’m talking Do Not Disturb here).

Many a piece has examined the myriad side effects of the fast-paced, hi-tech information age most of us now call home—fewer than two years back, WNYC aired an amazing interactive week-long series called Infomagical that we to this day consider transformative; and just last week, Morning Edition featured a piece comparing modern humans with smart phones to Pavlov’s dogs (yes, we do listen to a lot of NPR; thanks public radio).

Many of these pieces come to a similar conclusion—cutting back on or turning off notifications altogether is highly effective in the war we’re all waging to retain our own sanity and maintain focus amidst the non-stop stream of information. But sometimes you want to know if someone’s messaged you via Instagram or Tweeted about your company or texted you about meeting up later…you just don’t want those many pieces of information interrupting your every day on a regular basis and firing off synapses in your brain willy nilly.

For me, I’ve found that keeping the notifications I find useful still active but keeping on Do Not Disturb mode strikes the perfect balance—instead of being in a constant reactive state, picking up my phone every time it buzzes, literally multiple times a minute sometimes, I’m choosing to access the information from green-lit sources when I want to enter an information-receiving mode, ideally when I can give that information my full attention, not mid-conversation or -activity. So when I feel like I can make time for things not already in my zone immediate attention, I pick up my phone, activate, and see what’s going on in the world.

For instance, this morning I found a pause in my activity (making coffee), looked down, activated my phone, and saw that there had been two small earthquakes in the greater Los Angeles area and a Twitter account I follow had posted a new video—important, maybe; stop-what-you’re-doing-important, no way. Which seems to be the way most things go when it comes to outside information, I think.

Yes, I may be roughly five or six deep on the ever-growing list of inane-things-our-president-said by the time I activate my phone; yes, I’ll miss your call or text and have to get back to you later; yes, I’ll likely be late to the game on whatever the news of the day is, but I bet I’ll be more engaged the next time we’re together and talking in real life. And my guess and my hope is that this behavior will carry over into my interactions with my son, who I’m only just getting to know but will always be more important to me than the cutest cat video.

Sunday morning, in the wake of the flood of activists and activated citizens that filled the streets of Los Angeles on this first anniversary of the Women’s March, KCRW DJ Anne Litt played a heretofore unknown to us song that seemed fittingly excellent; we felt the need to share.

The 1976 song—”Cashing In”—was written by Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu, two Nigerian sisters who pushed the envelope, both musically and lyrically, tackling issues that were beyond progressive for their time, especially in 1970s Nigeria.

You can follow the Lijadu sisters, who have an actively run Facebook page, and explore their catalog via iTunes + order physical and digital releases through Knitting Factory Records.

Continuing our self-imposed tradition of hand-illustrated, hand-lettered holiday cards at year’s end, we decided to honor the memory of Mr. Thomas Earl Petty, who touched countless lives, our own included.

Happy 2018, friends; let’s live with love above all and burn through the hate with action.

Here’s Tom’s final performance of “Wildflowers” at the Hollywood Bowl, just over the hill from our house, last September.

I met Tom Mullen years ago back in New York, through some random interactions that I honestly forget now, but that led to us talking about my old band, Speedwell (this is Troy writing, by the way). Searching back through old emails as I write this, I’m finding ones back and forth between us in the fall of 2011, shortly after Mullen had started an interview series that attempts to capture and record the mid 90s/early 2000 emo and post-hardcore scenes, largely in an effort to defend their legacy as they began to morph into something a lot of us hated—a very commercialized, highly-polished, and totally inauthentic version of themselves; something some of us termed ‘mall emo’ (props to Brian Minter—I think he’s the first I heard call it that).

Since Tom and I first met, his website and interview series has grown exponentially, as has his (now long) career in the music industry—Tom’s now a music industry executive at Atlantic and has spent time at Equal Vision, Vagrant, TVT, EMI, and Sony, where he was a 2016 Clio and Cannes Lions winner for his work with Bob Dylan. Yeah, that guy. But his passion has remained this strange, edgy scene we both grew up in, more or less, and it’s been a common thread that’s kept us in touch over the years. In addition to his site and interview series/podcast, Washed Up Emo, Tom created a popular emo-themed DJ night in NYC (the good, original one; not the bobo one) and started a pretty uncannily thorough search engine that answers the age-old question—Is This Band Emo? (sometimes with very entertaining results).

He’s also just published his first book, Anthology of Emo Volume 1—376 pages of band interviews, rare photographs, set lists, and more.

On the occasion of its release and the book party tomorrow night at one of our favorite places in Los Angeles, Donut Friend, we took a deep dive with Tom to talk music, and how Bernie Sanders’ wife changed his life as a youth.

raven + crow: Alright, Tom, so, first off, great to talk with you again—it’s been too long, man! I guess let’s start at the beginning—you’ve got a long, prestigious career in the music industry and you’ve clearly ‘paid your dues’, as they say, but what got you into the emo scene in the first place? What was the scene like where you grew up/went to school and what were some early bands—known or not—who pulled you into the scene?

Tom Mullen: Thanks Troy! I’ve definitely been in the music industry way too long, going on seventeen years in the professional world. A big part of my ability to stay relevant in the music industry is what I learned in the scenes growing up. I grew up in Vermont, a small state with no billboards and very few bands coming through. Thanks to Bernie Sanders’ wife, there was a teen center in Burlington, Vermont, which I lived about 40 minutes from and it had all these amazing punk, indie, hardcore, metal, and emo bands come through. They weren’t the biggest but to me, that was all that would tour that far up north. I would go see Only Living Witness, Tree, Sam Black Church, and others from Boston; bands from New York City that would trek up on their way to Montreal or on their way back from there. Burlington was so small that there was no arena, no big shows coming through, so the punk and hardcore scene to me seemed like the biggest thing in the world.

I was instantly perplexed and amazed by this underground scene that I had to dig and search for bands, labels, and scenes. I quickly developed an affinity for emo and all the bands. It was just another band on the hardcore bill so I was into all of it. I looked like a hardcore kid but listened to Karate and Snapcase. Vermont was limited due to their location and size so when I graduated high school, I knew I needed to get the fuck out to really get into the scene and see more bands. I went to school down in North Carolina, which was a culture shock for an East Coast kid. What it did have going for it were countless shows only 30 minutes away and cheap gas. After joining the radio station at the college on day two, I was off to the races calling labels, getting records in the mail, and trying to see as many shows as I could across North Carolina. One day it was Neurosis, or it was Bad Religion or it was A New Found Glory or Braid. I was taking it all in and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Ahhhhhhhh the 90s. As a quick sidenote and sign of the times, my 2017 MacBook just auto-corrected ‘emo’ to ‘emojified’, by the way.

Yes, a common issue with Apple devices. I’ve definitely asked my friends at Apple to fix that.

Get on it, Apple! So, do you feel like first-wave emo filled the same sort of role that, say, punk and new wave filled before, this sort of outsider role?

The first wave of emo, the late 80s/early 90s, was so all over the place that it was definitely an offshoot from the scenes of hardcore. The word itself derives from emotional hardcore, emo-core. So it was just different at the time and as you’d expect, hated as soon as the words were uttered in D.C.

Right, maybe we should back up for the uninitiated (and interested)—can do a quick breakdown on the various emo waves and history here?

This is heavily debated and argued about on Reddit, 4chan and wherever else people like to complain. I’ll caution that people describe these waves very differently. For myself, it’s the first wave of the D.C. bands like Rites of Spring, Embrace. The second wave of the late 90s, with The Promise Ring, Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, etc. Third wave is the pop/hair metal era with Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Dashboard Confessional. The fourth wave is the emo revival with bands like Foxing, Hotelier, and Free Throw. Let the angry comments commence.

Yeah, that’s why we disabled commenting on these pages. Suck it, audience! This is a leading question, but how do you feel the internet and this instant information-/cultural-exchange via the web have changed such formative cultural/musical genres and experiences?

The internet is fleeting. It’s instant and there’s very little work to get something but harder to feel a deeper connection to something you took time to find online or in the real world. That’s what’s missing to me when I think about bands and music today. It’s a kid in a bedroom talking shit that would never say it at the show. Maybe back in the day, he’d be at the show and still not say it or quietly say it but today those words can be heard by anyone theoretically, so it’s a false sense of being a part of something. I think bands had more time to cultivate and really cut through, but in the same sense, someone posting a song could get huge and learn the ropes after getting that help early on that they may not have gotten. I love it all but think it’s dangerous to just be on the computer tweeting all day or commenting. Get outside, meet someone, learn something new, sit next to a human and interact.

I do think music is one of those area’s that so heavily affected by the proliferation of use of the web that it’s resulted in this flooding of information/sounds/bands, to the point that it’s impossible to really fully know the bands that make up a scene because the’re so legion now. It does actually make going out to shows and relying on good line-ups at venues one of the best ways to find new bands you might like.

Was that a motive for starting Washed Up Emo though—both the site and the interview series—sort of preserving this scene, what it evolved into, and what came from it?

The motive for the site was to exactly that. The podcast was an extension of the story to have it be evergreen. Someone listening today or 10 years from now will understand where Matt Pryor‘s headspace was and what he was into and why he was doing what he was doing with the music and the bands. It’s a life story I hoped would be something people would listen to and not just have it be the news of the day or two people trying to be funny with each other and a guest. I don’t care if anyone remembers me, I just want the stories to remain.

Your new book then—Anthology of Emo Volume 1—I assume that’s kind of the natural evolution of the interviews; what made you want to channel all of that material into book form?

The book felt like a natural way to bring something academic and serious to the genre. The genre is more than often a punchline for a publication/press outlet to crack a joke while praising a band. Emo is the comedy genre of the Oscars. No respect and always a joke. So having the book look academic—taking a serious approach it—was a huge motivation to making a book from the interviews.

And are these full transcribed interviews? Speaking from experience, I know those can really add up to a lot of text/pages.

Yes, they’re fully transcribed but I edited out a lot of the stupid shit I say and anything out of context. It wasn’t a lot and I left 95% of the interviews in. It was all about flow.

Besides the interviews, what else is included in the book? Any favorite visuals?

Chris Barroner, who was in the band Ethel Meserve, helped a huge amount with flyers and photos for this book. Though my favorite has to be the photos of The Van Pelt. They’re fucking beautiful and it takes me back to the 90s whenever I look at them. The photos help break up the text and help someone realize the physical nature of the years when we would save things and not just scroll through our phones for that one photo we wanted to share with someone at the bar that one time. Ha!

Man. It’s seriously hard to have this conversation and not get nostalgic for simpler times. We’re old, dude.

I don’t know, though. Something tells me…can’t quite put my finger on what, but something tells me there might be more books to come…maybe even volumes. How did you choose what/who went into this first and what’s to come in the next volume(s)?

Yes, there will be more. It was all about whether the first one was successful and I wanted to do it again. The goal of this is not to make money, the goal is to make enough from each one to make the next. I just want the stories to be heard by as many people as possible. I’m doing this out of my own pocket with no publisher so I only have that motivation and no other person telling me to do it another way. I picked the first batch to showcase the depth of the genre across the eras and each volume will hopefully take that same approach. You may pick it up for Chris Carrabba but then learn about Christie Front Drive.

So love Christie Front Drive. Who did your book design, though? We really dig the typography, color way, size/format.

Jesse Reed did the design of the book. He’s a fucking genius and offered his time and support on how to make a book, which I had no clue about. It wouldn’t have happened without his help and I think he understood me completely after I spent a good fifteen minutes just spouting off about how I wanted it to look. He came back with comps of what the cover may look like and I was floored. It was exactly what was in my head.

I know it’s tough—akin to picking a favorite kid—but short of picking a favorite interview you’ve done over the years, can you call one out that was unexpectedly weirder or more interesting than you’d expected going in?

I, unfortunately, did Jon Bunch‘s last interview. Many know him from Sense Field but he was in countless bands and I was promoting one of them when we did the interview. Since the interviews are evergreen, I had the interview all edited up and found out that he had killed himself. I then had to go back and re-edit it because of things said about the future, meeting up, etc. It was heartbreaking and something I wasn’t happy about but I knew I had to do it. These were his last words about music and I had to do it justice. We ended up interviewing people at the benefit show a few months after and made an episode of all the fans, friends and band members talking about Jon. I had a tough time editing that and felt good after. I was giving this person the respect they deserved for their musical life. No matter what happened in their life and why they did what they did, I hope the music and his words live on.

God, I remember when you posted that. I never knew him, but by all accounts, he was a great guy. That was evident from afar by the outpouring of emotion and support after his death. It’s such a tragic, sad thing, but its also really heartwarming to see how his fans and friends and family have turned this tragedy into an effort to support his son too with the GoFundMe campaign.

I have no elegant way of segueing from that, but I am wondering if you have any thoughts on all these old bands reuniting now? It’s hardly a phenomenon unique to emo, but that scene has scene a lot of seminal (and less well-known) bands return of late.

Reunions are as old as time. I love tweeting out, no band breaks up. It’s so true. I mean, Jawbreaker is back. I love it when bands get together and play shows for someone that maybe wasn’t around to see them or was too young or just missed them because they weren’t in a big city then. If they’re doing it, most likely for money and to see their friends again, then hats off to them. If people show up, who cares. Shut up and play the hits.

Fair enough. Any favorites you’ve caught? I’ll say outta the gate that our mutual pick (between Katie and me) was the aforementioned Christie Front Drive at the Bell House some years back.

Christie Front Drive was fucking amazing. Eric Richter (of Christie Front Drive), featured in the first volume of the book, is responsible for so many bands connecting. He’s an unsung hero of the scene that deserves a lot more respect than he gets. It’s tough to say which ones over the years because I’ll inevitably forget one… If I had to choose right now… Refused, Boys Life, Mineral, American Football, Quicksand, and Texas is the Reason.

Totally solid picks. I wish I’d caught Mineral.

Not to seek out shade, but what’s your thought on new, younger bands coming out with sounds that are more-or-less mirroring what we heard in 90s emo?

What’s interesting is most bands don’t fucking realize it. They’re just making loud music and figuring it out. It just happens to sound like the 90s. Truthfully, some are referencing that era but most aren’t. They’re just in the basement figuring it out. That’s the beauty of music that I love and it always inspires me to answer an email to a band that sends me their site and asks me to listen. I have to because that next sound may be the next thing I get sent and I want to hear it and champion it. Music is still so important to me—all I want to do is share with someone that I heard something amazing and I have to share it. I just have to do it. So when I hear a band like Free Throw or Foxing or Hotelier, all I want to do is encourage them to make more music and to create more—to make that next great album regardless of the era. I think the kids have realized the earnestness of the 90s and skipped over the hair metal era of emo in the 00s. They saw how fleeting it was and superficial it was sounding. They went back to the drawing board and figured it out. I can’t wait to hear the next thing I click on or hear in a club…

That’s super-encouraging to hear and, yeah, I love that the ‘new’ emo sounds like what I’d consider to be the good stuff, not the ‘mall emo’.

Back to the book though, I know you’re doing your release at Donut Friend Thursday—any other book events planned around the country we can shout out?

Yes! We have another event in Brooklyn at Powerhouse Books in Dumbo on the 12th of January. An actual bookstore! Growing up, the bookstore was the toy store for me. It had every topic I could think of the shelves and I could peruse anything. Growing up, my dad would always let me run wild in the bookstore and I was able to figure out what I liked and disliked because of his encouragement to read. That’s still with me today. Unfortunately, my dad passed away in late 2016, but the thought of him seeing a book I made and then having an event at a bookstore, I know for a fact, he’s looking down smiling.

As for the NYC event, I’ll be selling the book and doing a little panel discussion/Q&A with Norman from Texas is the Reason, Chris from The Van Pelt and William from Rainer Maria. It should be fun and I can’t believe I get to do this.

Yeah, condolences again about your dad, Tom. Excited to see you again tomorrow at the event.

Speaking of Donut Friend, favorite donut there, either in name or culinary composition?

I love the Jimmy Eat Swirl and the Jets to Basil. Classics. Mark Trombino, a legend already, has made an amazing product and I’m so happy it’s successful.

Awesome, man. Thanks again for talking and see you Thursday.

If you’re an emo fan and in Los Angeles tomorrow (Thursday, Jan4), you’d be a fool not to come by Donut Friend in Highland Park from 7-9PM for some mingling, emo music, and excellent, post-hardcore donuts (most of which are vegan/vegan-ize-able, by the way).

Say what you will about 2017—It was the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires; It was the emotional and cultural equivalent of a massive slap-to-the-face/sledgehammer-to-the-soul; It was a waking nightmare that continues to somehow get worse every fucking day but 2018 will be better right right RIGHT‽

Well. Anyway. Say what you will, but this year was a fantastic year for music. Film, writing, art-as-escape and -critical-change tool in general, yes very much, but here on these pages we’re focusing on 2017 in music; specifically, the year’s best albums.

Maybe it’s that aforementioned slap-to-the-face wake-up-call, but it seems like more artists are making more excellent work than ever and, as a result, our long list of top albums was longer than ever this year.

So many artists made albums in 2017 that we consider to be superb—Phoebe Bridgers, Broken Social Scene, Grizzly Bear, Lawrence Rothman, Ella Vos, Shout Out Louds, Cymbals, and Baths, just to scratch the surface. And Sampha‘s debut full-length Process was a beautifully innovative masterpiece that very nearly bumped more than one album off this list, which isn’t much of a surprise given that artist’s talent and creativity. What was a surprise for us was the eventual omission of new albums from two of our all-time favorite artists—The National + Björk. We still hold both artists in very high esteem and truly love their music, but something about both respective releases just didn’t strike the chord they usually do with us; which is totally fine—it makes room for so much more new music, much of it from very new artists for us.

As with last year, we’re presenting this year’s top ten chronologically, in order of release date…which oddly resulted in a noticeably split-down-the-middle list of, first, bigger (or at least better known) releases followed by smaller, more independent releases, with three of our ten being self-released (granted, one of them’s LCD Soundsystem, but nonetheless).

This playlist is a mix between favorite songs from each of these favorite albums and ones that work together on the same playlist and in this self-imposed order of release date, so, enjoy—it is indeed made to be listened to as a whole—but we also encourage you to listen to each and every one of these ten albums—they’re, every one, beautiful beginning-to-end.

And happy fucking new year.

Kendrick Lamar • DAMN. • Aftermath/Interscope
We’re guessing someone out there has a best-of 2017 list that doesn’t include this album, but if it exists, we haven’t seen it yet; and with good reason—DAMN. is razor-sharp smart, fucking catchy as hell, and demands to be listened to, word-for-word. And Lamar’s live show will blow up your brain.

Sylvan Esso • What Now • Loma Vista
We love these guys. Not only do they create organic, well-written electronic music that puts song-writing, vocals, and lyrics front-and-center, they just seem like genuinely nice people. And, oh yeah, their music is the best. See above re: excellent shows that explode minds.

SZA • Ctrl • Top Dawg
Jersey’s SZA blind-sided us in the best way possible—we knew she was someone to watch after first hearing her single “Drew Barrymore” but we had no idea what an amazing piece of work she’d put together with Ctrl; astounding from track one to fourteen.

The War on Drugs • A Deeper Understanding • Atlantic
We know full well there are haters out there, but we will defend this band and this album wholeheartedly as one of our favorites to our dyings days. Yes, A Deeper Understanding looks to music of years past, but it does it in a way to pushes forward into something new and—for us—genuinely endearing and innovative. We bought the album just before a trip back east and will forever associate with long drives through the weirdly beautiful swamps of southern North Carolina, which seems oddly fitting.

LCD Soundsystem • american dream • Excelsior Equity Management
Sonic Mastermind and King of Tonality James Murphy returns, and thank fucking god he has; this albums everything we want and need—the repetitive hooks that wedge their way into your subconscious, the monotonous talk-singing that approaches annoying and then pushes through into fundamentally real and undeniably beautiful, the tiny, weird little subtleties and shifts in sound that only someone with Murphy’s level of aural OCD would bother with; and all that while tackling aging and death and our socio-political climate. Thank god for James Murphy; more accurately, thank David Bowie.

Wild Cub • Closer • Mom+Pop
Wild Cub frontman Keegan DeWitt jumped on our radar back in 2011, after we stumbled upon some of his excellent solo work and discovered we had some good friends in common. We were fans from the start and have seen incarnations of his bands nearly every year since; this new from his Nashville-based band seems to be striking the perfect balance, pulling from DeWitt’s distinct, deep past writing style and building it into  something new and stronger as a whole—perfect dancing-in-your-bedroom-pop.

Vilde • Study / Dance • VILDE/self-released
Melbourne’s Vilde (AKA Thomas Vilde) is a totally random Soundcloud find for us, but one that strikes the perfect chord for us—glitchy, hyper melodic electronics melding with intimately weird vocals and distinct rhythms. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Melbourne’s electronic scene is blowingthefuckup—Vilde’s one of our favorite new artists jettisoning out of that explosion of creativity.

Luwten • Luwten • Double For Me/self-released
Amsterdam’s Luwten prove’s the perfect balance of analog and digital for us—singer-songwriter-y arrangements put to softly played, gently sung acoustics paired with beautifully explorative electronics and rhythms that step into something new altogether. Read our interview with frontwoman Tessa Douwstra from early this year, wherein we falsely accuse her band name of being intrinsically dishonest.

Hanne Hukkelberg • Trust • Propeller
We generally avoid comparing artists, but this album filled a certain void left by the aforementioned Björk release this year—Norwegian musician Hanne Hukkelberg is weird in the most compelling way possible for us, pitch-blending vocals, glitchy electronics, elements of hip hop, and natural sounds into an unlikely amalgamation that we can’t stop listening to.

Liima • 1982 • City Slang
Liima is a band born of Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen, and Rasmus Stolberg of longtime favorite Danish trio Efterklang and Finnish percussionist Tatu Rönkkö. Efterklang has evolved from minimalist electronic musicians to choral folk group to high-art-opera-writers over the years (all incarnations well-worth checking out), but this newish incarnation of the group with Rönkkö delves into the hyper-melodic electronic, glancing back at the early eighties in style but morphing into something newly beautiful in form—these guys can do no wrong by us. And this track we feature is a great example of highlighting a song we love, but one that we primarily thinks fits this mix best—there are others that even more amazing. With this and all these albums, again, please listen to them all in full.

Thanks and, again, happy new year, all.

As all of us in Southern California remain on edge with multiple wildfires raging in the region, NASA Astronaut Randy “Komrade” Bresnik shares terrifyingly stunning photos of the fires taken from the International Space Station (as first seen by us via Daily Overview).

Stay safe, SoCal, and hope for rain and calmer winds.

As is pretty well-documented on these pages, we like what do a lot. ‘Making the world a prettier place’—as we put it in our bio—by creating what we consider to be strong design for clients working for progressive causes is a pretty great way to spend your days so far as we can tell.

But when it comes down to, no matter how great the client and how great the work, sometimes you just want to do something for yourself, you know? We started to realize this with our holiday cards especially, as we became aware that we started to look forward to the work involved in making them every year; they scratched an itch in a way that other work didn’t and struck us as something that was very “us” in form and style and inspiration—something we controlled from start-to-finish, which we really liked.

So we started brainstorming other projects in that ilk and arrived at large scale illustrations of Los Angeles’ famed mountain lion, P-22. We’ve always been fascinated by the dichotomy between the heavily developed, urban nature of Los Angeles and its wild side—at 4,210 acres, Griffith Park is one of the largest parks within city borders in the United States. Our neighborhood runs right up against the park and, from the roving packs of coyotes to the red tail hawks seen soaring overhead, the feral side of the city is constantly on display for us. No single animal better represents that schizophrenic LA strangeness than our neighbor, P-22, who mysteriously and safely somehow traversed multiple freeways to make his way to Griffith years back and, up until recently, enjoyed a solitary existence as the only panther in the park.

With holiday cards, one of us (Troy) focuses on the image illustration and the other (Katie) focuses on the custom typography; with these prints, Troy’s still focusing on image illustration and we’re employing set typography for the text in our design, which we had printed by the same letterpress company we use for our cards. In this case, they printed on 13″x19″ fluorescent white 300GSM, heavyweight cotton rag stock using their large-scale cylinder press for a high-quality, archival style print with a nice, noticeable feel and impression on the paper. We had a limited run of 100 made and Katie’s been hand-watercoloring them one-by-one; each totally different, each totally unique, and each numbered and signed by the two of us.

To date, we’ve only had the prints for sale in some local shops we love—namely, The Canyon in Franklin Village, Los Angeles County Store in Los Feliz/Silver Lake, and MooShoes Los Angeles (which, full disclosure, we run). You can still get the prints at those fine shops, but, as of today, we’re also taking orders ourselves via email and through our socials (mainly Instagram), billing via PayPal, and shipping them straight to your doorstep. Because we love you.

In honor of P-22 and keeping LA wild, we’re also donating 10% of our total proceeds to CLAW—Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife—a local non-profit working to protect and restore wildlife environments in Los Angeles and California. Their mission is to promote, educate, and protect the fundamental importance of wildlife, wildlife habitats, and wildlife corridors everywhere. You can find out more about their work work and how to get involved on their site.

So, if you’re interested in buying a print for yourself or as a gift, email us or message us through IG and let us know if you have any painting preferences—colors, painting inside and/or outside the panther form, that kind of thing. We obviously can’t honor every request exactly, per se, given the nature of the process, but we’ll do our best. We’re selling them for $48, will write you back with shipping options once you give us your zip code, and then send an invoice through PayPal.

Thanks for helping us keep LA wild!

We now actually own 0.000667% of a parcel of land along the US-Mexico border.

How did this come to pass, you ask? Well, I got this email—no, no, it’s not what you think! This is legit! Ish!

Said email was from the people behind Cards Against Humanity, a self-described “party game for horrible people”, and it went something like this: America is being run by a toilet…blah blah blah….give us $15 and we’ll send you six surprises in the mail AND we’ll save America. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? I KNOW! So I did what any rational capitalist still climbing out of the post-election nightmare-slumber would do—I gave my hard-earned money to strangers promising unspecified gifts and seemingly unattainable goals. Because I’m an America, goddammit.

Yesterday we received the first of three surprises in the mail—a fairly fat business envelope containing the following:
• A very witty letter explaining that my money had been used to purchase land along the border in order to throw up as many legal barriers as possible to building this ridiculous wall between the United States and Mexico;
• A very lawyer-y letter from the law firm retained by Cards Against Humanity—Graves, Dougherty, Hearon, & Moody—explaining the exact legal mechanics and tactics to be used in impeding the construction of said ridiculous wall;
•  An official certificate of ownership;
• Six new, thematic cards for the actual game, Cards Against Humanity; and
• An awesome map of “the land”, illustrated by Dav Yendler.

Cards Against Humanity is going all in. And we love it. We need more of this as we all march and run for office and put our creativity to good use; as we collectively crawl out of the mucky haze that is post-2016-election America and work for what I honestly believe will be a better America than it would have been if Trump had not been elected to office; as we’re shaken from a slumber and realize that we not only can make a difference in our country, we must. We’re the ones that are going to make America great again, asshole.

We likely won’t post more about this awesome—let’s be honest—gimmick on these pages, but you can always check our Instagram feed and stories. I’m sure they surprises to come will end up there.

And we’ll leave you with the postscript from CAH’s letter of explanation:

“Since the Trump administration is committed to using 12th-century military technology, we have responded in kind by building a 30-foot trebuchet, a medieval catapult designed to destroy walls, on the border. We paid 300 gold to increase its attack damage, so it’s very powerful. You can see a video of our medieval war machinery in action at CardsAgainstHumanityStopsTheWall.com.”

See, mom—Dungeons & Dragons nerds won’t become Satanists! They’ll save the world!

And now we’re finally property-owners!

Earlier this year, Katie + I took our first trip to Japan. We’d never aten nearly so far from home and never jumped so deeply into a culture so different in so many ways to our own, so on the surface this trip was pretty intimidating. But 13-some hours after leaving Los Angeles, as we were racing through the streets of Tokyo half a world away, past delightfully unintelligible neon signs, towering skyscrapers, and diminutive ramen shops, we knew we were in for the adventure of a lifetime. Indeed, our only regret is not staying longer and experiencing more of that wonderful country and its equally wonderful people.

In the days leading up to the trip I visited one of our favorite LA businesses, Poketo, before they moved from their Arts District headquarters and picked up a travel journal, not for me (my handwriting is entirely illegible and journaling ethics extremely questionable, as you may have already gleaned from the erratically paced posts here). No, said journal was for Katie, whose handwriting is font-worthy and who had the foresight and wherewithal to document our trip with detailed descriptions and kawaii illustrations on a daily basis.

The primary reason for the travel journalling was totally self-serving—we’ve found that the lines between days and events and experiences while traveling tend to blur and, over time, a lot of the details that make a trip worth taking in the first place get lost or at least become hazy over time. Or maybe we’ve both got early onset Alzheimer’s.

Either way, we also wanted to capture the pages of this finite analog journal here, on the pages of this less-finite digital journal, both for the friends who’ve asked us to do so and for those strangers visiting Japan who are looking for some tips, especially of the vegan-friendly variety—for the record, Japan is super, super vegan-friendly despite what some might say, it just takes a little research ahead of time and some effort on the ground.

Katie detailed each day of the trip with one to two journal pages, which you’ll see full-screen as you scroll down. Below each page, we expand on the pages a little and provide a few links through to points of interest. Then we’ve got links through to separate photo pages for all but the first and last days in Japan, which were partial days and dominated more by travel than good photography. Those pages too expand a bit on the written journal pages and provide some links to the places we ate, drank, and visited along the way.

Day One: “Let’s Drink and Fight”
Our trip comprised a total of ten days (again, far too few) split between Tokyo, Kyoto, and a ryokan (traditional Japanese roadside inn) and onsen (natural volcanic hot springs) in the mountainous Hakone region just south of Fuji. We arrived in Tokyo and met our two good friends and travel companions from Brooklyn (also vegan) at the airport just in time to catch the shuttle to our hotel—Cerulean Tower Tokyu in the Shibuya ward, historically the site of a castle in which the Shibuya family resided from the 11th century through the Edo period and which, now, boasts a central transportation hub and pretty robust shopping and night life. We went back and forth with our friends about whether to go the more affordable route of staying at an Airbnb, but found them all to be a bit on the small side for four people and thought it wise to ease into Japan culturally with the aid of a staff and concierge used to dealing with English-speakers. We stand by that decision—it gave us a solid platform for diving deeper into the culture and throwing off the training wheels in the days ahead.

Day one was all about staying up as late as we could in order to get our internal clocks closer to the local sleep schedule. So it was basically hotel, hotel bar, and then winding through some backstreets near the hotel to a nearby cozy vegan restaurant—Nagi Shokudo. On the vegan thing, yes, it can be a little tough to both find places that cater to totally animal-free diets and to communicate that if your Japanese is as scant as ours. Going into all of this, some vegan friends who’d recently visited recommended that we print out some cards that read “申し訳ありませんが、私はビーガンです。 肉、鶏肉、魚(出汁を含めて)、卵、乳製品 が食べられません”—basically, “I’m vegan and can’t eat meat, poultry or fish, including dashi, eggs, or dairy. Thank you for your understanding.” We did that, and it was a great crutch to have in our back pocket (usually literally), but, eventually we decided to make the effort of learning a few key phrases and trying to make more of a go of it with the language. It was intimidating for sure, but we found—in restaurant settings and elsewhere—that people really appreciated the effort in almost every case, even if we were likely butchering the language (for anyone wanting to make use of those cards, though, they and others regarding dietary restrictions can be found on the Japanese food site, just hungry; and huge thanks to Ed + Deanna for passing those on). HappyCow is a great resource in Japan and we love supporting all-vegan restaurants when possible, but, as is true at home, some of our favorite dining experiences in Japan were at great restaurants that weren’t totally veg but were open to making vegan food once we reached or talked to them on the spot. It looks like someone just started up a site dedicated to Tokyo vegan and vegetarian restaurants this past April too called TokyoVege.com.

After dinner on day/night one though, it was basically a sleepless crawl through Shibuya’s night life. No photos exist from that first night, really, but, for anyone interested, the fight club bar mentioned in the journal pages above is worth a visit (actual fight cage next to the bar) as is the divey, hard-to-find Legless Arms Bar (a common trait for bars in Tokyo, we’d come to find). PS—if anyone finds a black cotton scarf at Nagi Shokudo, that’s totally mine.

Day Two: Cats, Shrines, Ramen, Whiskey, Repeat
Waking to proper Tokyo sunlight, our first full day in Japan was a marathon of activities that started with a gigantic multi-floor Tower Records filled with endless listening stations of local music (J-Pop + indie bands), walking on to the massive Yoyogi Park and Meiji Shrine within, and then exploring nearby neighborhoods. A note regarding the cat cafe mentioned above—in this realm and others, we’ve noticed that Japanese culture really loves a good theme in its entertainment. You’d be hard-pressed to find a run-of-the-mill, generic bar, cafe, or restaurant in most cities, but throw a rock and you’d be lucky not to hit a hospital-themed bar or monster-themed cafe or horror-prison-restaurant. A specific sub-genre of cafe that’s common in Japan is the animal cafe. It was also possible to order the medicine online at a discount. Being lovers of animals, they had an immediate appeal…but, being lovers of animals, they also immediately gave rise to questions on ethics. From the rabbit cafes to the owl ones to the ones where monkeys served you drinks, they seem to range from seemingly okay to questionable at best to totally without a doubt fucked up and inhumane. We visited one cat cafe that seemed on the up-and-up in Harajuku—an area known for its fashion, shopping, and people-watching. It was Alice in Wonderland-themed (I have no idea) and they seemed to have some solid rules about interaction in place for the good of the cats, but the cats also seemed weirdly sleepy, so who knows. So we’d just recommend a little research (Time Out has a good listing they did in 2015 that gives you an idea of what we’re talking about). Dinner that night was at a vegan-friendly Japanese restaurant, Sumi-Bio.

<<DAY TWO PHOTOS>>

Day Three: “What is going on‽”
Part of our trip prep involved watching a couple Anthony Bourdain shows where he visits Japan, which are entertaining and pretty informative. In one, Bourdain visits two memorable locations in Shinjuku—an insane ‘restaurant’ called Robot Restaurant and a bizarre network of alleys with over 200 bars packed into an area of a couple blocks called Golden Gai, both of which we experienced on night three and both of which lived up to their insaneness. Appropriately enough, not too many photos exist from the night (some you can see via the link below), but there is this short video our friend Justin took.

<<DAY THREE PHOTOS>>

Day Four: Otaku + Tan Tan
Day four entailed touring around the beautiful and expansive imperial grounds, trekking up to Akihabara Electric Town—a shopping district dominated by old school video gamers and other “otaku”—and finding an all-vegan ramen shop buried deep in Tokyo Station. Ain Soph Soar—where we ate that night—is one of a chain of Ain Soph vegan restaurants around Tokyo, a recommendation we took from friends who weren’t crazy about the places, but thought they were a good go-to for vegan-friendly fare; we’d tend to agree on both counts. We’d highly recommend both bars we went to in Shibuya that night though—JBS, a tiny record-lined joint run that’s largely locals-only (a common thing in Tokyo); and BEATCAFE, a subterranean smoke-filled bar with cheap beer and loud indie rock that reminded us of the early 2000s in DC.

<<DAY FOUR PHOTOS>>

Day Five: Japanese Hipsters + Polite Indie Rock
Day five entailed subway-riding (something we’d gotten down pretty well at this point) over to an area of Tokyo we’d heard likened, essentially, to Williamsburg (Brooklyn, not historical Virginia)—Shimokitazawa, or “Shimokita” as the kids call it—for some vintage shopping and temple-style food. That night, we went to our first Japanese show to see local indie band, Amelie, which turned out to be quite the cultural experience, as Katie details above (the hand gesture thing was just…weird). They were good though; very 90s pop-punk.  Afterwards, we tracked down yet another difficult-to-find, difficult-to-get-in bar, one that came highly recommended by a friend of ours. The bar, Grandfather’s Rock’n’Roll Music Inn, was fucking awesome—started initially as a record shop by students of Hitotsubashi University in 1971, the remaining owner now operates the record-lined establishment as a bar, spinning vinyl only (as with JBS) and taking written requests throughout the night (Time Out did a little write-up on the place a while back); highly recommended.

<<DAY FIVE PHOTOS>>

Day Six: Kyoto, City of Shrines
Day six—our last proper day in Tokyo, sadly. We easily could have spent our entire ten days in Tokyo, but we jetted down to an Airbnb in Kyoto along the Kamo River, which was lovely but also represented cutting the cord to the hotel concierge. Most of the day was spent on trains—the bullet train is indeed awesome—but we did get to do a little exploration in Kyoto before the sun set and after.

<<DAY SIX PHOTOS>>

Day Seven: Kyoto by Bike
One of our biggest recommendations for anyone traveling to Kyoto—rent bikes and see the city by two wheels; it’s a very bike-able city and is a great way to get your bearings and explore the city early on.

<<DAY SEVEN PHOTOS>>

Day Eight: Temple Food + Monkeys, Monkeys, Monkeys
One thing that our friends Ed + Deanna regretted not doing on their earlier visit to Kyoto was experiencing the coursed vegan-friendly temple lunch at Shigetsu—the Michelin-rated shojin ryori (Zen vegetarian) restaurant within Tenryu-ji Buddhist  temple and World Heritage gardens. It was indeed quite a wonderful,  one-of-a-kind experience. As was Iwatayama Monkey Park, home to over 170 macaque monkeys.

<<DAY EIGHT PHOTOS>>

Day Nine: The Ryokan
Day nine had us saying goodbye to Kyoto and boarding our next bullet train north, not all the way back to Tokyo, but to the mountainous region of Hakone, home to our traditional ryokan and onsen (volcanic hot springs). The ryokan Kansuiro—comes highly, highly recommended. Not only are the very vegan-friendly with a heads up (fairly elaborate, coursed breakfasts and dinners are included with your stay), but the inn itself was beautiful, with a history dating back to the early 17th century, multiple wonderful volcanic hot springs, impossibly helpful staff, and an overall peace and feeling of awe that’s seeped into the walls. In researching the stay at Kansuiro and similar places, we experienced a little trepidation—you’re also assigned a “chamber maid” who attends to you your entire stay and, other than private baths in some of the rooms, all other baths are public most times and traditionally used in the nude—but, after a little warming up (literal and figurative for these four westerners), it was truly an amazing experience.

<<DAY NINE PHOTOS>>

Day Ten: Sulfur + Soy Milk
After an elaborate breakfast at our ryokan, our first full day in Hakone and last full day in Japan comprised a chain of buses, trains, and trails through the mountainous volcanic area with some impressive views of Fuji and the surrounding wilderness.

<<DAY TEN PHOTOS>>

Day Eleven: Jaa Ne Japan
Our final day in Japan involved another elaborate breakfast at the ryokan followed by a quick goodbye to all the fine staff there, after which we bussed over to the train station and hopped over a couple stops to our final bullet train back to Tokyo. We made time for one final stop at T’s Tan Tan in the Tokyo Station and then made our ways to our planes.

This trip was many firsts for us—our first time in Asia ever, our first time in a non-western culture, our first time attempting to communicate in a language with no common roots to the Germanic or Romantics. But our hope is that it’s far from the last in any of those terms. There’s an idiom in Japan—期一会 or Ichi-go ichi-e—basically, “one life, one meeting”. I think it’s meant to remind us to cherish the moments in life, especially the encounters with other people, because they may never happen again. It’s a challenge and a daunting task to consider, stretching oneself and deliberately placing oneself so far out of one’s comfort zone. But doing so is rewarding in ways that are hard to communicate.

Japan is a beautiful, unique country with amazing, wonderful people—if anyone reading these pages has the means, we highly recommend making that meeting happen.

I’ll be totally honest here; we mainly wanted to create today’s post to see this GIF—which we stole from KCRW, who grabbed it from GIPHY, who seem to have originally obtained it from…Article Cats?—in this big, bold new full-width format. Pretty cool, eh?

We are excited about said eclipse—set to hit the west coast Monday morning—but, as most know, it’s only a partial eclipse here locally. And we’re not nearly as excited as American scientists, seeing as how this is the first time since 1776 that an eclipse’s entire path of totality stays within the United States; Trump IS making America great again, guys!!! The NSO has an entire site dedicated to Monday’s festivities and a nice interactive map that tells you how close you are to the eclipse path.

Let’s get syzygy with it, America.