Ralph Steadman is probably best known for illustrating the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, famous for the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson is dead and gone (per his final request, his ashes were loaded into a cannon and blasted into the air outside Aspen, Colo., in 2005), but Steadman, a Brit, is still very much alive and kicking at the age of 76.

Steadman’s latest work, a collaboration with filmmaker Ceri Levy, is a coffee table book called Extinct Boids. It’s bestiary of extinct birds, some of which are real (there’s the dodo, of course, and the great auk, and many lesser-known species) and others (the Rodrigues Blue-Back Throstle and the Mechanical Botanical Spunt, to mention a few) that hatched directly from Steadman’s and Levy’s imaginations.

It’s a strange and wonderful thing -- Steadman’s ink-splattered illustrations narrated by Levy’s comic journalings and notes. Think John James Audubon on a lot of acid. But there’s a serious message here, too -- about how little we know about the world around us, about the damage we’ve done, and the spirit and creativity we’ll need if we’re going to save a few scraps of it for the boids and other critters.

To learn a little more about the project, I caught up with Steadman and Levy last week for an hour-long video chat that ranged from trench humor to the time Steadman got vertigo while standing over a French toilet. I’ll spare you the latter tale and a few others. Hope you enjoy the rest.

Hanscom: How are you?

Levy: I’m OK. Where Ralph has got to, I don’t --

Unidentified voice: [raucous opera singing]

Levy: Ah. I’m Ceri, and the singing part of the duo is Ralph himself.

Steadman: I should have brought my bird warbler over.

Levy: Welcome to our chaotic world, Greg.

There’s something in the air this season -- and I’m not talking about the smell of hot credit cards. People are pushing for simpler holiday celebrations -- and some of them are pushing pretty hard.

The New York Times ran a profile Saturday of Kalle Lasn, the 70-year-old mastermind behind Adbusters. The magazine surprised many of us a year ago by sparking the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now, Lasn is on a quest to convince the developed world to stop with the shopping, already.

Lasn is one of the forces behind turning Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving, a major shopping frenzy -- into “Buy Nothing Day,” and he’s now pushing “Buy Nothing Christmas,” asking people to march on Times Square from tomorrow through New Years Day brandishing signs that read “#BuyNothingXmas.”

Aw man, I’m touched. Really. A couple of weeks back, I asked for ideas for making this the best Christmas ever for my wife and two young daughters -- this, after telling a national television audience that I wasn't going to buy my kids any presents, and asking my friends and family to refrain as well.

I just spent half a day reading through all the comments and tweets. The good news? You're full of great ideas. The bad news? I now have no excuses. This has to be the most memorable, non-materialistic Christmas on record, or I will forever be known as the Grinch.

So what did you all tell me? Here’s a taste:

Oh help. I've really done it this time, guys. I wrote a column for Black Friday asking my friends and relations to get my kids nothing for Christmas. Now I know what you’re thinking: What a noble request! A father trying to introduce his children to the joys of a simple holiday! What could possibly go wrong? Well, let me tell you.

First, let me say that, contrary to what you may have read in the comment section below that column, I was not scarred by horrible holidays as a child. I grew up in a mountain town. My Christmas memories are made of snow crystals and red plastic sleds, ski days and spruce boughs. Yes, Santa came to our house, and we exchanged gifts, but the highlight of the holiday season was the time we spent outdoors.

Let me also say that my wife, Tara, and I have some rich holiday traditions of our own. We celebrate Santa Lucia Day, a solstice tradition that is strong in Scandinavia. (Our eldest daughter is named for the saint, whose surrogate appeared in my bedroom late one wintry night when I was in college, bearing candles, mugs of hot chocolate, and a tray of saffron buns.) Each year, we have a solstice fire in our backyard and host a feast for family and friends. One of my favorite traditions involves an annual running race around Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park, which we follow with a great wassail-drinking fest and an off-kilter run home through the snowy streets, exchanging greetings with the local denizens as we pass.

On Christmas, Tara and I always get the whole family outside for some frolicking in the snow (or mud, which is almost as much fun) -- and yes, Santa does come to our house. Tara is amazing at whipping up holiday magic for Lucia, who is 8, and her 4-year-old sister, Chloe. The trouble, as I said in my oh-so-tactful "nothing for Christmas" column, is the sheer volume of gifts that spill from the UPS truck, er, St. Nick’s sleigh, from the far corners of the country.

To cut down on the clutter and send a message of simplicity, I have always opted against getting my kids things for Christmas. Instead, I give them experiences -- a sleep-out in a snow cave or a day on the ski hill. But come to find out, my holiday cheer leaves something to be desired. Like, a lot to be desired. Apparently, I’m a total Scrooge McDuck.

Last March, I found myself talking to David Rothkopf, an international energy consultant and writer who was a bigwig in the Clinton White House. I was describing President Obama’s strategy for reviving American cities: Hamstrung by Tea Partiers in the House of Representatives, the Obama administration had set up what amounted to a set of demonstration projects designed to prove that smart policies on inner-city schools, transportation, and urban development could get dramatic results -- and save taxpayer money at the same time.

There was the Promise Neighborhoods program, which created “children’s zones” to give kids in some of the nation’s hardest-hit urban communities a fighting chance. The Department of Transportation’s TIGER grants funded innovative “multimodal” transportation projects (read: bike and pedestrian paths, streetcars, rail, etc.). The Partnership for Sustainable Communities brought together officials from federal environment, housing, and transportation agencies to support local smart growth initiatives.

Wise moves, I figured: If the GOP doesn’t let you play the game, at least practice your shots and show the coach (in this case, the American public) that you’ve got what it takes, so you’re ready to jump in if and when the opportunity arises.

“There’s another word for that,” Rothkopf said: “Bullshit.”

Dear family and friends,

I hope this Black Friday finds you well. I also hope this reaches you before you head for the mall …

I'm writing to send a heartfelt thanks for all of the wonderful gifts you've given my girls over the past four and eight years of their lives, respectively -- and to ask you to stop. Really. It's not that we don't love each and every one of these hand-picked gems. We do. It's just that at this point they have one of everything. In some cases three or four.

I knew I should have taken the bus ...

We may gripe about taxes and subsidizing Amtrak, but when it comes to getting around, Americans are apparently looking for alternatives to sitting in traffic in our beloved automobiles. Don’t believe me? Look at the election results.

This year has seen more transit-related ballot initiatives than any year in at least a decade, according to the Center for Transportation Excellence in Washington, D.C. While two of the highest-profile measures failed -- including Los Angeles County's Measure J, which was defeated yesterday, and another that bombed in Atlanta last summer -- in more than two-thirds of the contests this year, voters opted for more buses and trains.

“Atlanta and Measure J were very closely watched around the country. Both were not successful, but that obscures the broader trend,” said Jason Jordan, the center's director. While he was still waiting for the results of two races, Jordan said transit came out on top in at least 62 percent of the races yesterday. For the year, the success rate will be above 70 percent.

It’s here at last -- the day we’ve all been waiting for. The day when, with any luck, this overhyped, overadvertised, overanalyzed electoral circus will finally end and we can all go back to looking for work and trying to save the planet from the boneheads we elect to run the place.

So, you might ask, which races will Grist’s urban experts be watching most closely today? Here’s a quick list of races that we believe will have the biggest impact on U.S. cities – both individually and collectively. Know of others? By all means, comment below or tell us via Facebook or Twitter. We’ll be watching every tweet and biting our nails.

The highest office in the land

Cities have gotten about as much love from the presidential candidates this year as the climate (read: zilch), but the stakes are high nonetheless.

In the latter days of the George W. Bush presidency, I found myself nursing a hangover on an early-morning flight from Missoula, Mont., to Denver. I’d missed my plane the day before and decided to spend the evening with an old friend, finding our way to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

Much to my horror, the woman who plopped down in the seat next to me that woozy morning-after turned out to be a high-level official in Bush’s Interior Department -- the branch of government that keeps an eye on the national parks and monuments and other public lands, from Ellis Island to Yosemite.

I was the editor of an environmental magazine at the time, and I’d skewered this woman and the administration’s drill-mine-log-everything policies in print. Now here I was, strapped into a chair right next to hers -- and battling a mean case of crapulence to boot.

Come to find out, this woman was feeling a little hungover herself -- not from too much drinking, but from the development binge she’d helped facilitate on the public domain. (A binge that, incidentally, included a few well-documented benders featuring Interior Department staffers and oil company employees.)

It’s something of a miracle that Craig Childs wasn’t in Atlantic City or New York when Sandy roared ashore earlier this week. It’s not that he lives there -- he and his wife and two young sons make their home at the base of a volcanic monolith in the Colorado boondocks. It’s not even that the author and adventurer spends a good part of his time actively courting cataclysm -- his latest book, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth took him to areas of upheaval (geologic and otherwise) around the globe. It’s just that he has a way of showing up, serendipitously, right when everything goes to hell.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Childs, who has written almost a dozen books about the desert Southwest, archaeology, and wild animals, was in lower Manhattan, on his way to meet literary agents. “I was walking crosstown so I didn’t see what was going on, but there were emergency vehicles streaming down Fifth Avenue, and I could see people coming out of the subway station and popping up to the surface and being riveted by something overhead,” he says. “I came around the corner right after the second plane had hit, and pretty much just stayed down there until the first tower fell.”

Apocalyptic Planet opens with a scene of Childs, passed out in a friend’s L.A. apartment after a trip in the wilderness, awakened by an earthquake that rattles the walls and hurls books from the shelves. “In those moments, my picture of the earth was remade,” he writes. “The floor felt as if foot pedals were pumping beneath me, a continental margin humped up on he back of a tectonic pate. Humans may have a big hand in carpeting the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and dumping every toxin we can imagine into the waterways, but when the earth decides to roll, it is no longer our game.”

Nor is it our game when the earth decides to whip up a megastorm and hurl it at the Eastern Seaboard -- though we likely had a hand in creating that monster. Or when it decides to reclaim farmland and cities with desert and sand dunes, or obliterate entire landscapes with tsunamis or volcanic ash -- all scenarios that Childs explores in Apocalyptic Planet.

Sound scary? This week, I caught up with Childs, who I’ve known for a decade or so, to talk about Hurricane Sandy, our cultural obsession with the End Times, and why he thinks “things are not as dire as we think -- but they could be much more dire than we imagine.”