Yesterday, I finished one of the weirdest trio of modern books I’ve ever read.

Bound up in this handsomely designed anthology, Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy compiles sci-fi writer Jeff VanderMeer‘s 2014 novels Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. As Joshua Rothman puts it in his review for The New Yorker:

“Broadly speaking, the novels, Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, are eco-sci-fi: they’re about researchers exploring a mysterious, deadly, and unaccountable wilderness called Area X. But they’re also experiments in psychedelic nature writing, in the tradition of Thoreau, and meditations on the theme of epistemic pessimism, in the tradition of Kafka.”

Rothman goes on to admire VanderMeer’s ability to keep the reader on his or her toes, avoiding the common pitfall of speculative fiction of, once arriving at the crux of the fictive/sci-fi element, becoming predictable and/or trite.

But through each of these three novels, as soon as you feel you’ve got something figured out, the author flips the story on its head, adding some other, larger element that encompasses what you thought you knew in a newly complex way, switching narrative perspective, and, in general, keeping the story-telling excitingly ahead of the imagination of the reader…in my case, at least.

At times, it left me wheeling and kind of clueless, but it never left me bored. And even if I had some problems with Area X as a literary series, the fact that Paramount Pictures has bought the rights to produce all three books (with Ex Machina + 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland set to direct the first film) has me excited about the story’s translation to the big screen. Done well, it’ll be sure to be a visually stunning thriller that, likewise, keeps its audience excitedly on its toes.

Plus neon Pantone printing, man. Best.

Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral + Tyler Comrie.

A candle that caught my eye the other night in the way in moved and refracted light in the camera lens.

Just back from our very first Coachella and, I have to say, it’s pretty fucking awesome.

Sure, it was crowded with roughly 30,000 shirtless twenty-something bro-dudes and equally as many of their female equivalents (many also shirtless), but, overall, we have no complaints for a festival that brings together that many amazing musical acts.

And, though the performances and legitimately cool art were impressive on their own, the thing that amazed us both most was how very well organized the 90,000+ person event was. Sure, many of us have planned a party, but how many of us can say we’ve successfully planned a party for that many people? If you have, license to complain about Coachella granted; if not, I’d recommend chilling out, bro.

I’m looking at you, Bieber.

Above, six sequential, unedited shots of Katie at Aphidoidea‘s Chrono Chromatic—”a monumental sculpture that celebrates the festival’s broad spectrum of music and artist”; below, (spoiler!) the final state of Poetic Kinetics‘ Papilio Merraculous. Read more about the visual art at this year’s festival on Coachella’s Web site.

We posted this photo a bit back via MooShoes Los Angeles’ Instagram account, but loved the shot so much, we wanted it to live here too.

Shoes by our house brand, Novacas; street art in Silver Lake by Mister Uncertain.

It’s been written by me on these pages many a time at this point, but, for years now—since my late high school/early college days, at least—artist Nikki McClure has been producing material to make both Katie + me swoon, be it in her vocal-forward, radically personal music in the early + mid nineties or in her later visual work with traditional paper cuts. We’ve spoken with Nikki before about her work and how much we appreciate it; on the occasion of her first exhibition in Los Angeles since we’ve lived here, we wanted to catch up again and find out how things are going for her, how her work’s changed in the past few years, and what she’ll be showing at the exhibition, which opens this weekend (details at the end of this interview and on Giant Robot’s site).

raven + crow: Alright, so, it’s been a little while since we last spoke. What’s been going on for you in the past four or so years?

Nikki McClure: Four years. I could have been President. But instead, I’ve been making dinner, getting the kid to go to school (today we took a walk and then went to school, late), making new books, books, books, sailed to Alaska, swam off Japan and Santa Cruz, learned to scuba dive, built a house, swam across the inlet, wrote cranky emails, made crankies, and witnessed eagles mating every one of those four years.

Eagle voyeur, eh? No, I’d personally say that beats leader of the free world. Who wants that kind of responsibility? We’ve been enjoying all of the book work you’ve been doing of late too. Our cat, Allister, very much enjoys How to Be a Cat and would like to know if a particular cat inspired the book.

When I bought a house in 1998, with every last dime I had, there was a cat left behind. “That’s Bud. He lives in the garage. Don’t worry, the neighbors feed him.” Well, eventually I fed him and even let him on my lap though he was a stinky tomcat, blind, with a festering wound that would never heal because he had cat AIDS. He was Bud. I needed to make some more dimes after buying the house, so I made a cat calendar to support myself. The calendar became the inspiration for the book. My publisher was happy to just reprint the calendar, but I had changed a bit since 1998, so I added a kitten to the story. I’m happy to hear that your cat enjoys it. People send me pictures of their cats with the book, often in a sunny spot. I’m not so sure if it’s the book or the warmth that the cats are digging.

Both, right? I noticed you’ve started doing a lot with large format prints—both digital + screen—and selling original paper cuts via BuyOlympia too—what inspired those moves?

Someone asked for a big print and BuyOlympia got a big printer and was already making prints for other artists. It seemed a way to make a nicer print than the offset mass produced ones that I sell. Plus, people have been framing the cheap prints and treating them like art, so why not up the ante and provide Art art for the people? The silk-screens are experiments with colors. I made some on wood for my last LA show. I will be making a silkscreen print for the Giant Robot show in LA of a 2016 calendar image. LA is Futureland, so why not? I discovered a cool printer here in Olympia, Justin Crawford. I liked what he was doing with color and ink and paper and images. It’s fun!

Yeah, I just took a look at his D.A.R.E. style shirt—nice. Is it tough for you to let go of those originals though?

Usually. But one of the first originals I sold was to a family with a little girl. My image would hang in their dining room. She would look at it every day for 12 years. It would become her visual memory, burned into her mind (I should laugh evilly here, but it makes me pretty happy and quietly humble). I keep one from every series. Now I let my son decide which one he wants. They will be his someday when I’m gone.

Aw. Well, that’s beautiful. The “Love: 15,000 Years Later” screen prints seemed really awesome—I read you did those for a trip to Japan? Can you talk about that?

I had Justin Crawford print them up. I wasn’t happy with the cover of the 2015 calendar. TOO YELLOW, yet I wouldn’t let myself freak out with colors like I really, really wanted too. I’m pretty strict about my image making rules: one piece of paper, all connected, color to add meaning, one color added. So the rainbow color pallet of sunset didn’t fit into the rules. And when I tried it on computer…it looked weird and computer-y. But I really wanted to give it a go in a manual way. Silkscreening gave me that chance. The colors started out vibrant, then faded over the printing evening, just like the real sky was fading. I like that it shows time through the printing process. It also seemed that Japan would understand.

I want to write a series of short stories entitled “Japan Would Understand”. Speaking of Japan…by way of LA, now you’ve got a show coming up at the Asian American punk, arts + culture zine turned gallery + store, Giant Robot here in Los Angeles. Congratulations, first off. How did that come about?

Eric from Giant Robot asked me. Plus, my son has been asking me “When are we going back to LA? You should have a show again at that cool place.” I’ve had a few shows there. I’ve known Giant Robot for many years. (A pause while I remember). Was it the mid-1990’s??? early 90’s?? WE GO WAY BACK. It was through music, then through art that we connected and have maintained contact.

Awesome! Los Angeles scores cool points with America’s youth! What are you planning to show at the exhibition this go ’round?

I’ll show the originals from In, my latest children’s book, reviewed in LA Times last weekend. I’ll also show some of the 2015 calendar paper cuts and then a few other mixed assortments of ideas for my next book. I will also have the new silkscreen print.

That all sounds really fun—we’re excited to see it all in person. And excited to finally meet you in person and have you visit our fine city again!

YES! That is the reason why I’m having the show, to go to LA to that cool store (and eat and swim and see beauty).

We can help you with all of that. Any other plans while you’re here?

Eat, swim, the Getty, maybe the Last Bookstore’s tunnel, get new Vans for the kiddo, hook up with friends who will also be in LA.

Aw, I’d tell you to come to the vegan shoe store we run in Silver Lake, but we don’t carry kids’ stuff. Definitely back you up on the Getty plan and the Last Bookstore. Nice choices.

It’s funny, I feel like places like New York, San Francisco, and around Portland + Olympia usually have fairly strong opinions of LA—they love it or they hate it. Most of my life in New York, I was running off some pretty out-of-date estimations of a city I’ve grown to love. Do you have any thoughts on Los Angeles?

I absolutely love it, for a few days. But after that, I never want to drive again and also want to leave before I see something violent (which I have lingered too long and too late and have seen in LA). LA is beautiful. There are avocado trees! And everything is so shiny and smiling and there is too much to do. I will notice the polluted air. I live in such a clean place. Portland is stinky and too many cars. Seattle is stinky and too many cars. Olympia is just right for me.

You make some pretty good points. Though I’d counter—visit our neighborhood, Beachwood Canyon. I just got back from a 6 mile run in the mountains with our dog. You can see all the way to the ocean and you’re surrounded by nature a short walk away from Hollywood proper. It’s amazing.

This might be a bit of a non-sequiter, but I feel like you’ve become this sort of ambassador to the idea of slowing down and enjoying life in a certain way. Did you reach a point in your life where you realized that had to become a priority? Or have you always had that perspective?

You are the second interview this week to think so…the fact that I have 2 interviews does not mean that I am busy. I’m just in a YES mood and 2 people were curious enough to ask.

Slow Life Ambassador? Hmmm…. It’s always been a priority to me to allow room in my life for spontaneity, to allow room in my life to LIVE. I’ve been lucky to find a way to be supported by so many people (all those calendar-buyers—thank you!). The work I do sometimes is Work work, but I can only physically cut paper for a few hours a day, and I can only think up so many creative thoughts before we have to go out to dinner because I’ve no creative energy left to think up what to make for dinner! There is no homemade pie those nights. I am addicted to gazing out windows or lying down on the sodden Earth and watching birds fly about. I have the only job that allows me to do that as part of my job! Slowing down, I haven’t pushed things along. I’ve let my life happen organically and that can be slow. Sometimes it is fast, things and projects sprout like mushrooms. Picking mushrooms and berries, swimming and hammocking: all these things take time and only happen one season a year. It would be a shame, and not living to let a season slip by without taking time, using time in other ways. I’ve said NO to a lot of things, but never NO to a walk, or swim, or blueberry patch.

I like that. A lot. It’s actually been a subject that’s been on my and my partner’s minds a lot lately—any advice for those of us trying not to buckle under the weight of everything going on in our lives? What do you do when you feel like things are getting out of hand or your spreading yourself thin?

Walk. Take a walk together. Make time to walk because when you are done everything will be better and you’ll do everything so much quicker that it will feel like you made time expand. Have a 3 minute dance party if it’s raining too hard or you have something due in 1 hour and it is freaking you out.

Excellent advice! Except that it never rains in LA…sadly. Speaking of doing too much though, we started up this retrospective online music journal with a partner + friend of ours called Forgotten Favorite, where we sing the praises of some of our favorite 10+ year old songs—you should totally contribute if you ever have any interest. Anyway, it’s had me digging more through my old music, yours included, and I keep meaning to write up a Nikki McClure favorite. I know it’s sometimes weird, but did you have a favorite of your own?

Ha! I’ve been trying to listen to the new Sleater-Kinney album, but my machine is shuffling all their songs from all the years. I am flipping back and forth in time and age. …God, it is so sunny. I might just ditch this interview!

Hah! Wait, beforee you do—I always loved that song you did for the 89.3 KAOS benefit, “EGD (Pop God)”, which I think you did with Tae from Kicking Giant (another one we want to write up). Do you still keep in touch with K Records + KRS crowd at all? Has everyone moved on to…I don’t know, home goods and design firms or is anyone doing music any more?

Yes, no. I picnicked with Lois under the cherry trees at the state Capitol last week. I sometimes see Calvin about. Kicking Giant is going to play in Olympia in May. Tae is a book designer. Rachel Carns makes Magic Kombucha. I made a t-shirt of Bud the cat for the new Sleater-Kinney tour.

OH MAN! Where can I get one of those shirts‽ I NEEED IT! Also, I love that Rachel Carns of Slant 6, The Need, and Kickign Giant now runs a kombucha company.

Back in 2011, we asked you about your apparent (and shared) fascination with crows. Since, we’ve moved to Los Angeles, where, in our area, we have an abundance of ravens, of all things. It’s awesome. But if you had to—had to—pick a favorite wild animal, what would it be? I’m guessing owl…..

The crows are calling “GOD DAMN DOGS!” That’s what they say here …or what I’ve taught them to say (that’s a long story). We feed them scraps of fishes and they are respectfully wild, yet curious about us in a way that is not quite tame. More equal in our animal-ness.

Oh, I still love crows. We do have a raven pair who who of shoof by in flight, two eagles too, and occasionally an owl. My son would vote owl or Bufflehead.

But those are birds…favorite of all animals? My husband, Jay T. and my son, Finn.

Now for the SUNSHINE!!! I might not need LA for sun after all. But I’ll go. I’ll swim in the warm ocean. Favorite swimming spots anyone??? Please share. Also Japanese food??? and ice creams. And another uniquely LA spots??

Ooh—the swimming’s only marginal, but the beach is amazing—visit El Matador State Beach if you can! And Japananese—Tastu near the gallery for ramen + Shojin in Culver CIty and in an awesome Japanese mall downtown for really good vegan sushi and super-nice staff. Then one of our favorite Brooklyn coffee + ice cream joints—Van Leeuwen—copied us and made the move out here. They’re still working on their west coast brick + mortars, but you can catch they’re truck around town. Check them out on Twitter for today’s as-of-yet announced location. They make my favorite vegan ice cream out of coconut + cashew milk. So rich + creamy.

Thanks so much for talking with us again—can’t wait for the show this weekend!

It will be fun. See you there.

15,000 Years Later, Nikki’s exhibition, opens this Saturday, April 4 with a reception 630-10PM at GR2 Gallery—Giant Robot’s gallery—located at 2062 Sawtelle Boulevard. Nikki will also be talking about her process at an Art Talk at the space at 5PM on Sunday, April 5. You can view + purchase much of Nikki’s back catalogue via long-time purveyor of all things Nikki McClure, buyolympia.com.

Below, Nikki’s studio + a work in progress; a storm water hatch cover she designed—”They are on all Olympia streets and my outdoor shower!”;  a new print; bucolic Olympia; a lovely looking pie made by Nikki; and the artist enjoying some walking + gathering in the woods.

I want to believe that the coming reboot of one of my all time favorite shows, The X-Files, is going to be good. I want to believe.

But I am oh-so-rudely reminded of my similar hope at the sad, sad arrival of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Plus the past few public appearances by show star David Duchovny have been a bit…rough, to say the least. He seems to have held it together with his recent appearance on David Letterman though. And who wouldn’t be excited about the return of Mitch Pileggi‽

The good news for Duchovny—he’ll evidently have a folk rock career to fall back on if this new X-Files doesn’t pan out.

The other night, as I was in the process of beating what is, I must say, undisputedly the best video game ever—Super Mario Brothers—our friend and colleague, Paul Singh of the creative collective, Pel, was serendipitously responding to the following email I sent to him a little while ago:

Subject: Kind of Important Question
Message: How hard would it be to make our 404 page at raven + crow a playable version of Super Mario Brothers?

The answer came in the form of Paul writing on my victorious Instagram post—”check your 404″.

Which, before recalling my request to Paul, I took to be some sort of cool guy way to say “check yo self” or something…and, now that I think about it, I’m going to start trying to drop into my vernacular. “Check your 404, man. Sheesh.”

But, obviously, Paul meant he’d—awesomely—done as requested.

So, as of this week, any time you accidentally or purposefully visit a page that doesn’t exist (resulting in a 404 error or Not Found message), you’ll be able to play Super Mario Brothers. What’s more, you can play as Mario or a host of other early NES heroes, including Zelda hero, Link, Metroid, MegaMan, and more.

So get lost on our site, man. And apologies to your employer.

Note that this most likely won’t work on your mobile devices or in out-of-date browsers.

First time beating SMB without warping, by the way. Pretty proud of myself.

Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center is currently running Rock & Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip, an exhibit that features photographs of the hand-painted billboards that dominated the streets of LA for nearly two decades. As they put it:

“…this exhibition brings to life a unique period in the history of rock & roll and the fabled Sunset Strip, whose nightclubs were the birthplace of rock & roll royalty. Photographer Robert Landau traces the billboard phenomenon from the breakthrough promotion for the debut album by the Doors in 1967 to the advent of MTV in the 1980s, which signaled the end of an era.”

Poor MTV. Ever the scapegoat of shifts in pop culture.

The exhibition is up through August 16 and, judging by the examples here, well worth seeing. You can see more shots on the exhibition page.

Skirball is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. near Manhattan Beach and open noon to 5PM Tuesday-Friday, 10AM-5PM on weekends, and closed Mondays.

Heads up to Los Angeles vegans and visiting vegans: We can report with sound hearts + minds that the menu at Commissary—Roy Choi‘s much buzzed about recent venture in Korea Town’s Line Hotel—is indeed navigable for those seeking cruelty-free dining.

Katie + I lunched there recently with an old friend in from out of town and were met with both affable, knowledgable advice from our server and a bevy of vegan and vegan-izable options, all of which were delectable. Call it over-hyped if you like, but the food we had was both creative and extremely good.

Despite the restaurant being billed as “a greenhouse with a focus on fruits and vegetables”, past reports of Commissary just after opening struck us as slightly intimidating—icon-dependant menus with less-than-cooperative servers unwilling to break down exactly what a dish represented by a drawing of a piece of broccoli entailed, for instance.

We experienced nothing along those lines, though, with a seemingly expanded, more visitor-friendly menu and a server more than happy to tell us what was vegan or able to be made vegan. Lucky for us, that covered most of the vegetables and many sides, which is more than it sounds like given the restaurant’s very LA focus on small plates.

As the restaurant themselves put it:
“It’s not necessarily a vegetarian restaurant, just good food and drink based around plants as the foundation. It’s also an homage to all the people and families here in So Cal that work on farms to bring food to our tables. Set beside a shimmering pool, it’s got all the amenities of a private club but created for the public. Come sunbathe in carrot juice, mack on a salad, or grab some eggs and toast. Commissary is your own little oasis where you can feel right at home and chill.”

On our visit, we opted for the wood fire-roasted carrots, the dried fruit quinoa salad, a vegan green curry coconut dish, and tempura multi-colored cauliflower, all complimented by fresh juices that were paired with a sweet vinegar base (and are recommended to be further paired with gin for those looking to Snoop it up).

Though that more than filled us up, we’re excited to get back soon and try the rest of the dishes open to us. We’d encourage you to do the same.

We picked up this bunch of kale at the Hollywood Farmers Market yesterday and I knew immediately that I had to pull a color palette from it. The range of reds, purples, spring greens, and deep, dark greens was so appealing to the eye that I just couldn’t let it go.

Adobe released their mobile app Color—based on the desktop version of the same name (though it was originally called Adobe Kuler, for some reason)—earlier last year, but we had yet to use it very often, relying more on pulling palettes from higher res SLR photos with our computer-based design software. Now that we’ve upgraded to new phones with more powerful, higher resolution lenses though, the app’s suddenly become much more appealing. And fun to use.

So, clients, if you get us working on branding for you on Mondays going forward, expect some potentially produce-inspired looks.