this blog is about me (directly)

my name is leon leon leon, and i am nearing the last minutes of the work day, so everything seems to slowwwwwwww down. i'm loving my new fashion style because it involves snappy business wear paired with sweet ass racing shoes (i think theyre racing shoes because they have a checkered stripe on the back). i'm trying out boxer-briefs because i think they make my butt look good, also, i like a tight package. i'm listening to house music.

house usually sucks, because it's what you normally hear while shopping at armani exchange. and usually if you're shopping at armani exchange, you're a douchebag. so it works, in a way.

but some of the best house comes from the top producer/dj/musicians ever - namely, the guys in daft punk. of course, daft punk is considered "french house" to some, but they've put out stuff on other names that's much more house-oriented and less pop-accessible. think less "harder better faster stronger" and more "one more time".

daft punk is thomas bangalter and guy-manuel de homem-christo.

thomas bangalter was part of the short-lived group stardust, that put out the immensely popular song "music sounds better with you", along with alan braxe and vocalist benjamin diamond. he was also part of another duo called together with dj falcon, another top-notch dj.

alan braxe is in his own rights a sick french house producer, and works all the time with a dude called fred falke. any track with either of their names on it is going to be fucking banging - with both of them, it's going to be off the hook.

guy-manuel de homem-christo has his own duo with eric chedeville called le knight club. do yourself a favor and download any track by, or remixed by le knight club. how these guys continue to bring such a fresh funky groove to dance music year after year is insane.

o yea, he also produced an album for a little someone called sebastien tellier!!! sexuality dropped in 2008, clashed electro and r&b, and spawned a slew of bloghouse remixes.

thus ends our brief segment of the more you know: daft punk edition!



i'll upload some tracks onto here when i get home. though i dont know if anyone even downloads what i post - do you?

Is that a paintbrush in your pocket or...

My latest artist infatuation is with the painter Kehinde Wiley. I've been following his work for some time now, and have always found it appealing, but his recent gallery exhibition with Deitch Projects is absolutely astounding. He finds his models on the streets of Brooklyn, and paints them in juxtaposition with classic imagery to create visually and intellectually arresting pieces. Never has a painter set my heart so aflutter with anything that even hints at realism...But everyone has an experimental phase right?

So you got a pretty big canvas there, want some help stretching it?

this is what i do

I realize that the purpose of this blog is not to talk about ourselves (directly), but Leon did just post about his dj-ing gig, and I just had a conversation with Zamdrovsky about "isn't-it-amazing-that-we-all-have-jobs-now-even-though-we-were-so-worried-before (except for Alex who is still in college)."

Anyway, I'm spending this week going to classy restaurants and taking pictures of food that looks "christmassy." That's my job. The best part is that we get to eat everything afterwards. It's entirely possible that the magazine I work for believes that because I get perks like occasional free food from restaurants they (the mag) are not obligated to pay me living wages. Nevertheless, it's a pretty funny gig. AND I get to take pictures of tomatoes.

I want to hear what everyone else is doing too. It would be pretty cool if we all could do a short post about what our "real" lives are like these days.

(By the way, don't tell anyone that I posted this photo here, I think that I'm technically violating my contract that I never signed)

um HELLO

so wtf is the deal just when i start posting again yall slows down. sucka butt! yesterday, while watching cool hand luke (paul newman is so classically beautiful, i want to stare into his eyes all day. i've never seen a paul newman movie before. my boss started a dvd club here at work) we saw the puppies of mysterious puppycam (why? where? who? can i have one?) burrow under their bedding, being all unbearably cute. i spend a not insignificant portion of my day watching those lil tykes romp about

i was also catching up on episodes of my favorite game show, never mind the buzzcocks. if you've never seen it, you should (episodes are on youtube) - it's a british celeb-pop quiz show that is more the view than jeopardy. hosted by simon amstell, a terrificly sarcastic basard (you might remember him from popworld, where he made britney spears cry during an interview), the show frequently has top musicians and actors on who basically spend the entire show making fun of themselves, each other, and amy winehouse. oh yeah, she was also on the show too, being fantastically drunk.

one part of the show, called 'identity parade', has each team try to spot a musical artist out of a line-up of five people. it's embarassingly rude (and hilarious), because it's sorta like 'haha, you once were a famous musician now no one even remembers you'. the worst is when you actually do remember the artist. this last season had the singer from bbmak on. wow. i remember bbmak (back here babyyyy ...), and i just felt terrible. this guy was once on TRL, now he's in a line-up of losers, while current, successful musicians and actors are laughing and pointing at him.

i hope i'm never like that guy. id rather be dead than a has-been.

albatross albatross albatross

ok so yea i havent posted on thousands in about forever. whats changed since then? well, we now have a real president, its almost turkey day, and i got a day job. duck, duck, GOOSE THAT IS NOT IN ANY WAY COOL OR AWESOME.

i also made my dj debut this weekend at a place called the mug lounge, on the lower east side of manhattan (13th and ave a). we randomly scoped this place out a few weeks back before seeing mstrkrft, and the bartender there happened to mention they just fired their friday night dj. wasting no time to hop on board, i laid down a fresh set of tunes for them, and they liked what they heard (to be fair, they asked me to play house, trance, european house, european trance, reggae, and old school hip-hop. or something like that. they have no idea what they want). i also met renee, who is 33 years old and a 32B bra size. she tried to request songs, but ended up just pointing at her breasts the entire night.

ive been trying to mix more disco and house, and have come to the conclusion that "doom house disco" is my new favorite genre. it doesnt exist. but it will.

heres some tunes of what comes close. first we have some doom, from a little-known dj in canada called hemingway. its gritty, its dark, and makes me think of blade runner, if it was directed by david lynch. then we skip the house and go straight to some disco, with a remix of sneaky sound system by breakbot. last, i bring you some house. HOUSE OF JEALOUS LOVERS that is, with a funked up high energy party pleaser that will have people to their feet in no time. tenderlions does the remix, and brings their upbeat sound to a classic.

hemingway - machine

sneaky sound system - when we were young (breakbot remix)

the rapture - house of jealous lovers (tenderlions remix)

now i have to go to a "meeting" about "market research" on the "7th floor". killself.

Albums of the Year (Heartfelt and Sincere Opinions)

This list was compiled in like 10 minutes.

Either there will be disagreement (no loss, probable gain), or someone will chime in with something better (super gain). I'm especially interested in the 1990-2003 years, because those will have solidified and proven some enduring value.

Guaranteed net positive gain!

2008 - The Dodos "Visiter"
2008 - Fleet Foxes "Fleet Foxes"
2007 - Animal Collective "Strawberry Jam"
2007 - Andrew Bird "Armchair Apocrypha"
2006 - Sonic Youth "Rather Ripped"
2006 - Sunset Rubdown "Shut Up I Am Dreaming"
2005 - Wolf Parade "Apologies to the Queen Mary"
2005 - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah"
2004 - Arcade Fire "Funeral"
2003 - Motion City Soundtrack "I Am The Movie"
2002 - Wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"
2000 - Modest Mouse "The Moon & Antarctica"
1998 - Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

Garfield Minus Garfield

Many of us are familiar with Garfield Minus Garfield. For those who aren't familiar, you're in for lasagna!

Here's an interview with the author posted on The New Yorker's website.

Does an internet-based comic creation program exist? Can anyone advise on the best way to create comics intended to be displayed online? I miss making comics. Man I'm sure you all miss me making comics. They were so GOOD. I tried to get the newspaper to take them off their website, but they said something like, "No, sorry, just because you now think your work sucked and don't want it to be linked to your name, doesn't mean we will take it down for you." I swear some future would-be employer will reject me for mental health reasons after googling my name and stumbling on those gems.

HayK, do you have a comic blog yet?
Congrats to Leon Leon Leon for locking up a weekly DJ gig!

improve your life by 100000000%

Live puppy cam, you make me want to be a better person. I have no idea who you belong to...which is odd, but as far as I'm concerned, all these puppies live inside my computer for the sole purpose of keeping me entertained. Romp! Romp about! *stiffled giggles* oh this feels wrong.

Spit Pee Soup

Normal human body stuff rarely jostles me. I am more likely to help a bleeding person than to turn away; grossness doesn't override what a situation may even lightly require. For example, when I use the loo and the dude posted up in the urinal next to me very clearly ate some asparagus beforehand, and another dude's rapidly re-puckering anus is spewing pebbles like a warrior Flintstone's [insert-generic-dinosaur] gatling gun might have done, I'm more likely to to stifle a laugh than to wrinkle my nose.

However! Just a few minutes ago I leaned over to spit while I was peeing. It wasn't a trajectory spit; it was more like an extended drip. Just as the bottom-most part of the drip entered my pee stream, and their vectors combined to redirect the saliva glob away from my body, the middle of the saliva glob did that silly-putty thing* and my just-pursed lips received a small "splat" of spit. I couldn't help but feel that I had kissed pee.

*The weight of the lower "bulb" of the saliva glob pulled downward and stretched out the glob until the center became too thin to support the "bulb" and broke, after which the lower half of the glob shot downward along the combined vector of the orignial extended drip (via gravity) and the pee stream (I guess about 20 or 30 degrees below horizontal), and the upper half responded elastically, vertically.

We all have heros.

Way to go Madonna. Only your terrifying quads could have the insane ability to make Britney Spears seem relatively normal, sane, and maybe even in possession of a little thing called class in comparison. Excuse me while I clean up the vomit on my keyboard. Looking at the quintessential pop bad girl from way back when, and the grossly infamous good girl mouseketeer gone rotten (I'm not even bringing Lindsey Lohan into this), I fear for the likes of Hillary Duff and Miley Cyrus in the ongoing attempts to "mature" their image. In fact Duff is already well along that path going at her B-side celeb rate, but her new video still really weirded me out...I don't like Lizzie Mcguire telling me to touch her. I really really don't.



I'm sorry. I really am. You...you had to know how bad it was. Please don't hate me.

hell hath no nothing.

I just made a huge, huge, un-overstatably huge realization about posting on this bull-hog: I really have no reason to worry about timeliness; in fact I have, more or less, six times less reason to worry about it than anyone else. (except Dan. Fuck you, Dan.) Seriously: I could think something in one moment, and then not do anything for the next six hours' worth of moments, and it would all be the same to our dear readers (us) in North america. (God damn it Dan, Fuck off.)That's the thing - there is no fury in a blog scorned; only in the ego of the blogger.

You see, I live in France. GMT+1 while all you folks (again, Fuck you Dan) are plodding along in GMT-5. Ew.

My purported raison d'etre on this old family farm was "an american in Paris". But the thing is: I don't really even live in Paris. I live just outside Paris in a charming slice of the banlieue known as Noisy-le-Sec. The translation has something to do with nut trees and dryness - I'll get back to you. So I feel a bit guilty/dishonest about leaning too heavily on that role. But lacking any other discernible expertise, or at least any that outshines the estimable skills of my/our/your co-bloggers, I'll take whatever pigeonhole I can get for the moment.

So without straying too far afield, my opening anecdote is this (seriously, Fuck-you-Dan):

If it weren't for my incorrigible instincts towards thrift and self-importance, I would have no "international reaction" to share with the world. (I was asleep at 5:00am when my mom called me to tell me Ohio had flipped - the closest I got to your whooping and street dancing was an unexpectedly smooth cnn.com feed of the speech from Grant Park.) Luckily, in the weeks preceding the election, I happened to be badgering the press relations manager of a certain French music magazine for press passes to their ridiculo-stacked festival this coming week, and on November fifth, her eventual (positive!) reply went something like this:

"Bonjour John,

First off, congratulations! It is a true joy and comfort in the world today! We escaped Sarah Palin! The only problem is that in France, we've still got Sarkozy..."

Lacking an Obama shirt or button or even a flag pin, I was hoping people would just kindof recognize I was American and rush up to shake my hand and thank me the next morning...but no dice. I absentee-voted for Obama, and all I got was these crummy press passes.

um. Dear Joaquin Phoenix, we did that first.