The star is made of sandpaper. We used an industrial style “coin envelope” to get the hardware-store vibe going upon receipt. If you didn’t receive one let me know and I’ll put you on the list for next year!

I’ve been hand-making New Year’s cards for about 15 years.

I love sandpaper and wanted people to be able to experience both the front and the back. Under the star, and I’m curious to know how many people found it, is this:

The idea, in broad-strokes, is that we’ve been given a limited amount of TIME to play with here on the planet Earth - a KIT of years, days, hours, etc. - so let’s use it well, take good care of it, and pay attention to the details! In that spirit, Happy 2010 to you, may your days run smoothly and be beautiful.

Warm regards,

Jesse

We highly recommend the brand new issue of Nozone edited by frequent collaborator Nicholas Blechman and containing several contributions originating from our Topanga studios. Nozone, like Nicholas, comes from New York City and meticulously maintains a NY edge in both message and media.

Nozone is a graphics-based political ‘zine that Nicholas (AKA Knickerbocker) and a Xerox machine started when the latter was a teenager. Each issue has a theme (the last was “EMPIRE”) and the theme for the current issue, Nozone’s tenth, is “Forecast”. Inspired by prophesies of all kinds - from weather reports to doomsday predictions - Nozone X takes a long look at our relationship with an increasingly uncertain future. Over fifty designers, cartoonists and artists offer their visions, projections, and scientific findings. Though it never loses its sense of humor, this issue has a very serious underbelly and, cumulatively, manages to pack a very profound punch. As far as praise goes, perhaps it would be best to quote zeitgeist designer Stefan Sagmeister from his blurb on the back cover:

“Nozone proves again and again that design can do so much more beyond selling and promoting. And it is gorgeous.”

Agreed! The book is beautifully printed and produced, a pleasure to hold (and smell!). Please support your own print fetish (if you have one) by purchasing the item from publisher Princeton Architectural Press or one of many other stores including, and this is particularly cool, Urban Outfitters who have a very snappy book section in play these days.

It was an honor to participate in this endeavor and congratulations Nicholas!

As far as my contributions are concerned they are, as usual, mostly story-based. Below is an excerpt from our NOZONE SURVIVAL KIT - a fantasy toolbox of items designed to make an environmental mega-disaster both more survivable and, um, more fun.

A clip from the main open of our ground-up re-packaging/ re-imagining of HBO’s only Entertainment News show “The Buzz”. For more information, as well as some beautiful stills, go to our blog entry. It’s embarrassing to show it here at You-Tube-rez - alternatively, you can catch it in beautiful HD many times a day on HBO!

RETURN to list.

This is an excerpt from an illustration I wrote for NOZONE #10: FORECAST. A collaboration with Nicholas Blechman, the designer who also publishes Nozone, this chart — in its full form — makes predictions in 12 categories (from population to language to footwear to food), in 10 year increments for the next 100 years.

It’s not a pretty picture.

I won’t give too much away but here are a couple hints for our 100 year forecast: We won’t be speaking English, and we won’t be living on this planet, either.

Nozone is a beautiful publication that has won just about every design award in the business and consistantly draws amazing submissions from top-shelf artists and illustrators. Past issues are collectors items. Each one has a theme (EMPIRE, UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA, WORK and CRIME to mention a few) and an attitude. To give you some flavor, here is a welcome blurb I wrote for issue #10:

Never before has looking into the future been so complicated, or so traumatic. Prophesies, doomsdays, conspiracies, Ice Ages and potential revolutions are everywhere. Wherever you look - from the cover of Time Magazine, to the weird weather out your window - the message seems universal: the Earth our children inherit will almost certainly be nothing like the one we currently inhabit. In the spirit of our Massive Uncertainty we welcome you to …

Nozone #10: FORECAST

Back in the 90’s Nicholas (aka Knickerbocker) and I collaborated on illustrations almost constantly for the New York Times, Wired, George, The Nation and many other publications. Since I moved to LA this has slowed down, but things are still happening. Here’s an example of a NYT piece:

See you in the future!

Thanks, Nicholas.

Not enough! But there is one thing: both of our websites were built by the same web design company based on the same web technology. The talented people at One Digital Farm, in collaboration with Souljerky and Splendidcorp, created both this site and the Beasties’ amazing new web using a blogging software program called Wordpress. Wordpress sports an easy-to-use “backend interface” which allows even non-web-people like myself to make entries and changes to their sites. It’s all part of the continuing cyber-revolution, bringing the power into hands of the people, and I’m proud to be standing (virtually anyway) next to my old heroes the Beastie Boys kicking some serious backend interface. Peace.