Good Idea!

Here's a customink mock-up of my new product line! Patent pending!!!
GUESS WHAT YOU'RE ALL GETTING FOR XMAS?!?!?!

taking a "sick day"

...and by that I mean a shaun the sheep day.

Congratulations, Europe!

(Most information is from this nytimes.com article, but I've incorporated some knowledge from my high school biotechnology class.)

Following several weeks of preparation at the universities of Barcelona, Spain, Bristol, England and Padua and Milan in Italy physicians have completed the first successful transplant of a human windpipe, using the patient's own stem cells to reduce greatly the chance of rejection.

Preparation included extracting a three inch segment of trachea from an organ donor, "stripping" the trachea of cells from its previous host, removing stem cells from the recipient's bone marrow, growing an ample amount of these stem cells, and incorporating the stem cells into the trachea segment. This graft was used to replace the recipient's damaged windpipe.

This transplant is special for two reasons. There is minimal risk of rejection because the recipient's stem cells replaced the donor's. And, the stem cells were not embryonic stem cells. Many of those opposed to stem cell research object specifically to the use of embryos in the stem cell incubation process.

I am so impressed. Victory!

things i have seen outside my office window

nothing. i work in a cubicle.

Things I have seen outside my office window

1. Dawn and sunset
2. Actual blimp landing
3. White-out winter conditions
4. Orange feral cat
5. Treehouse
6. 11 turkeys at once (twice)

this is post 101

i frequently suffer from bouts of extreme depression - usually when i'm walking from one place to another, listening to my ipod, and feeling oh so alone. sometimes it's the song, or the weather, or every pretty girl i pass by. this time it was all three, as an 8-minute remix of "golden cage" by the whitest boy alive came on, a gust of wind buffetted my face, and a gorgeous blonde walked by with purple boots, a purple scarf, and a copy of surely you're joking, mr. feynman! under her arm. i will never get to kiss that girl!

what surprises me about dance songs is the way they can affect me. you mention house, techno or electro to someone, and their mind jumps to some coked out, ecstasy-laden club where everyone's drinking red bull vodkas and finding new ways to air hump to sound waves. yet i've been listening to dance music almost exclusively for the last year, and i still come across songs that make me feel a whole array of emotions. it's a way a song uses the beat to drive home a beautiful melody, or to slowly seep a fuzzy synth through your head. repetition kills you, repetition drugs you, repetition allows your heart to mindlessly soak up a feeling. for me, it's also because i've always been one to focus on the music part of a song, rather than the lyrics. honestly, i could care less for words. it's all french to me.

the whitest boy alive - golden cage (fred falke remix)

sebastien tellier - roche (breakbot remix)

on a happier note - i'm learning to cook fried rice! this is my second time, and hopefully it turns out better. i wish someone else was here to try it with me.

Accidental Mid-Occidental Festival

So Madison is in the midst of an accidental music festival. Two nights ago I saw Best Friends Forever (Minneapolis!), Best Fwends and Matt & Kim. Did any of you guys see Best Fwends open for Japanther at school about 2 years ago? They were really amusing then. This time around they were stellar. In the end, though, Best Friends Forever stole the show!

Last night I saw Disappears, Times New Viking and Deerhunter. Disappears were a tidal wave of distortion and intensity (everything else lost within), Times New Viking were great (but not much better than their album, which, like I said, is great).

But Deerhunter! Wow I have a new favorite band! Bradford Cox always annoyed the shit out of me. Maybe I was feeling tolerant last night, maybe he's not that bad. (Really, he's just a nice guy puttin' on a rock show!)

That band though rocked SO hard and writes SUCH good songs. Long, acutely-constructed, hard-rocking SONGS, MAN! I've been listening to a ton of Sonic Youth lately, and this show was right up that alley. So. Good. I cried...

And tonight I'm seeing No Age and Titus Andronicus.

omg they cancelled lipstick jungle AND my own worst enemy ???

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.