RIFF MARKET

Respect the Cruise

My love for Tom Cruise only increases the more I play this video. He stopped by BET's 106 and Park a week ago to promote M:I-3, the Yung Joc video came on, and Cruise started doing Joc's rev the motorcycle dance to the amusement of black people everywhere. This isn't jumping up and down on Oprah's couch or anything, but when the camera pans to his feet, which are lifting up and down in the manner of awesomeness, Cruise comes pretty close to perfect.

To be clear, I'm not poking fun. I seriously love this guy. My fascination started in summer 1990, when I took a bunch of friends to one of those "go to the movies" birthday parties at the AMC 309. We saw Ghost Dad starring Bill Cosby, which fyi netted the following review on IMDB:

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1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful:-
Best and Greatest, 1 August 2002
Author: SemiDtachd from Connecticut

This movie is far and away the BEST and GREATEST movie ever made. I may not know all that there is to know about cinematic technique. I hold no degree in Film or Photography. I have not studied writing, acting or directing, nor have I watched many so called "classic" films. However, I still feel that I am qualified to say that Ghost Dad is the pinnacle of achievement in the realm of motion pictures. Bill Cosby is a genius, and offers a finely tuned performance which recalls the "ghost" of all of his viewers' "dads." Wonderfully cast, superbly directed, touchingly photographed, and ably written, this film will no doubt stand the test of time to supplant "Citizen Kane" at the top of the cinematic hierarchy.

Obviously Ghost Dad was terrible. And to Matt, Andy, Donny, David, John, Joey, other Matt, maybe Chris, and whoever else I brought to Ghost Dad: Really sorry about that. I promised you Ghost and Demi Moore's titties, and all you got was "America's favorite dad in a spirited comedy" and my mom breastfeeding my baby sister.

To my credit, the previews before Ghost Dad featured Days Of Thunder, which may or may not have already been in the theaters at that point but after that goddamn there was nobody cooler in the world than Cole "Victory Lane" Trickle, a/k/a Tom Cruise. Granted my pantheon of cool hot actors was limited to Rodney Dangerfield, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, and Jake and Elwood Blues, but none of these guys had made out with Nicole Kidman on stage or real life, and at 8 years old that was make or break.

Since then I've been a Cruise fanatic. I've seen Days of Thunder fifteen times and once read the memorable quotes from Top Gun and Magnolia, so I pretty much get the gist. Last year I saw 1991's If Looks Could Kill and thought Richard Grieco's performance was very Cruise-esque, if not flat-out Cruisey. I saw Cruise on Oprah and realized he doesn't play characters in movies, the characters play him: above the law, permanently awesome, on the edge, sort of short but in a permanently awesome, Joe Pesci sort of way. My mom always said I reminded her of a young Tom Cruise and now I know why--I'm like, five foot eight.

Yet last night at the weekly Mix Hut meetup, Cruise-on-BET was the butt of easily over 400 admittedly hilarious jokes. 350 of these boiled down to mimicking TC's dance ("I don't know what kind of motorcycle he's driving!") and the other 50 were just jokes about going up to different people in the restaurant and doing the dance for them. I have to say, I've gotten pretty good at this fucking dance.

Thing is, Cruise does know what he's doing--he knows exactly what kind of motorcycle he's driving. There's a chapter in Neil Strauss's The Game where Strauss hangs out with Cruise at this thing called "wheelie school." Cruise was learning how to jump over a motor home on a motorcycle for a stunt I assume he had to do for M:I-3:

"I'm training to jump a trailer," he said. He pointed to a mobile home sitting just off the track. "It'll be bigger than that one. But it's not that hard."

He squinted at the vehicle for a moment, visualizing the feat. "Well, the jumping's not that hard. It's the landing that's difficult."

He cocked his right hand and slugged me in the shoulder.

I'm sure there's more about this in the Rolling Stone piece Strauss put together on Cruise too. Either way, the fact remains that Cruise has probably jumped over more trailers than Yung Joc, the BET, the Mix Hut, Bill Cosby, and the entire blogosphere combined. Switch to missiles already.

Kidding, But Two Short Things

1. More than a few Fishscale reviews I've read pull out with a Ghostface live show recap--specifically the thing about the blue light, a type of light that has been known to fuck with emotions. The recap always seems to come out of nowhere and I don't know why Ghostface more than any artist recently has been subject to it.

2. Via J Smooth via Sam Chennault, seems like Mr. Wu Loyalist #1 (Ghostface) has forgotten about his curious role in that whole Wu gunrunning fiasco.

Somebody Forgot to Say "Hey Ya"

Turns out a lot of people didn't know Stephin Merritt hates the blackies; I thought this was common knowledge! What did you think when you heard the line "a pretty girl is like a minstrel show"? Why did you think the fields were "magnetic" and not "cotton", or "barbeque"? Why did you think he spells his name S-T-E-P-H-I-N instead of S-T-E-P-H-BLACK? And who did you think invented racism--the gays?

Look, it's not like Merritt hates women or the gays. That'd be a little nuts. But imagine this: a gay woman blackie. What would he do? Or is it: What did he do? My guess is no less than half the songs on Holiday are about this woman he murdered.

I don't want to give Merritt all the credit here. I mean it's not like everybody isn't a little racist, at least in somebody's eyes (one exception: blind faggot Mexicans). But in case you need actual evidence that proves Merritt is absolutely and empirically a racist instead of racism being, say, more about reception than intent, here are some song lyrics I found in a song called "Strange Powers":

On a ferris wheel
looking out on Coney Island
under more stars than
there are prostitutes in Thailand

!???????????????!?!!?!?!?!?

Holy living fuck this guy hates the brothers. But the thing is, how many prostitutes are actually in Thailand anyway? I know what you're thinking: Probably not as many blackies getting their scythe on in Merritt's backyard.

Download:
My Bloody Valentine's "Lose My Breath"

As usual this Blaine guy totally kicks my ass by doing something I neither would have done nor thought to do. Yesterday he held his breath for over seven minutes in an "8-foot globelike tank" at Lincoln Center. Globelike tank! I'm pretty sure he had handcuffs on too, which means he couldn't punch his way through the tank like sharks do.

So obviously this got me thinking about the MP3 blog world. Then I started thinking about music. Who's our David Blaine? Here are my nominees:

Kelly Clarkson. Had a doctor remove all the blackheads from her face then wrapped herself in sheet music, just to give us the bassline to "Since U Been Gone."

Tony Yayo. The guy's been walking around with five tarantula spiders in his bucket hat for ten years.

Spiders. Five of these guys have been hiding under Tony Yayo's bucket hat for ten years.

Phish. These guys played a concert New Years Millennium that was stone-cold fucked.

Proof. Faked his own murder.

David Bowie. Invented Arcade Fire.

Riff Market Make It Stop Series Pt 1

In all likelihood I'll flipflop a bit on Lily Allen, the latest fun fresh new breezy mishmasher digital photos in bathroom myspace young person to, as they might put it, get blogfucked in the internet hole for her take on the popular music. Make no mistake though. The flipflop will be between disgust at her music's no bones about it malevolent spirit, and my mere apathy for yet another "I like Mobb Deep and T.Rex" rich dad lookyloo with an ear for sonics and a dainty singsong but not the heart to make good on either. Total clown.

The inevitability factor I could care less about. She could be big, could be, but three minutes tops. Best chances are she'll sign to Vice, do a few mismanaged dates in New York to tepid response except from the sorry dudes who think they might have a chance bedding her if their pics have enough megapixels, get a sweet Phones remix, and then we won't care about her until the May 2006 episode of I Love the Naughts, hosted by Coolfer. I'm bothered slightly by a very smart, very good friend throwing up his hands all "she's gonna be a big star, this review is of no use, no sir can't stop Hurricane Blogtrina" as if he's not in the only spot to keep this bitch in her place, but I trust he actually likes LA and thinks her irresistability is her fault not ours.

oh man he said bitch!

There's a critical case to be made surely, triphop ska as a Osama bin Protest music or odes to high London rent prices or whatever. But 98% of critical cases made are merely defenses of personal taste, worthless logic and historical context to justify that you really really like how artist X's pants ride up his butt or artist Y has three songs about snakes. You like the person, then you go to bat. Pop <--- Populus <--- People <--- It's all personal.

I'm sure the real Lily Allen is a blast around town, says actually funny things and kills two bottles on dinner dates and three with friends. But the Lily Allen on all these MP3s is a heartless, spineless, too cool manipulative bitch who expects you to hold the door but only so she can tell her friends that she owns you, who sings how she dated a guy for a year and a half and was miserable the whole time and it's his fault for ruining her "mental state" and now she's going to ruin his and Lily why the fuck did you stay in the relationship if you were miserable the whole time? ("Big Day", which includes the terribly ironic line "You left me in such a state/ You've only got yourself to blame"), who wakes up next to the person she loves on Sunday morning (cf. "Sunday Morning") but refuses to say "I Love You" because she'll lose the almighty upper hand. Instead he gets "you killed it with 'I love you'"--like, "you did a good job saying 'I love you', I know how much it takes to say that." But she doesn't.

"LDN" is such the perfect single for Allen since it's all small talk. She's good for seeing people picnicking and saying "al fresco," for watching someone get mugged and making a joke about it instead of calling the police. She can walk around town and say stuff about people, and surely that will make her "Joyceian" according to all the people who haven't actually read Ulysses but, you know, get the gist. "Smile" is the same beat with trite lyrics made triter given how hard she's trying to be herself, find her heart. You dumped her, she got by with "the help of her friends," and she also "found a light at the tunnel at the end," and now she loves to smile when you cry. Hey, simple enough, black and white and immature like you like them. Now put her in a threesome with Gnarls Barkley, get MSTRKRFT to remix the footage, put it on youtube and call it a day already.

"When you look with your eyes/ everything seems nice/ But if you look twice/ you can see it's all lies." She said it not me.