RIFF MARKET

Riff Market Presents:
"Status Ain't Hood Quarterly Report: Riffs"
August 2006



HOT RIFFS ALL OVER YOUR FACE

73 RIFFS: CRAZY CARL STANDUP. Funnier albeit less Indian than Eugene Mirman.

75 RIFFS: THE RAPTURE IN GENERAL. At least I didn't post the stupid fucking OKGO video.

77 RIFFS: BEN DICKINSON. Rhymes with awesome.

79 RIFFS: FACEBOOK ITUNES PARTNERSHIP. All over your facebook.



NOT RIFFS MEDIA DOT CUMDOGS A/K/A WHAT REMAINS OF MICHAEL LACEY'S ZINE NEW YORK BRANCH

34 RIFFS: GARY GLITTER BANNED FROM STADIUMS. Not banned from ironic mashups.

25 RIFFS: GROWN ASS WAYNE PUBLICITY STUNT. This d-boy's "d" is for depends lol.

20 RIFFS: OLD GUY PLAYING SAX IN THE PARK. Also had serious pants boner that I worry comprised his "solo."

4 RIFFS: YOUNG GIRLS DANCING TO "ASS AND TITTIES". At least they weren't like cooking to it but still.

-11 RIFFS: ATLAS ON SECOND AVENUE BETWEEN 4TH AND 5TH STREETS. QED.



MORE THAN ALBUMS 2006
The Rapture: Pieces of the People We Love
Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet
Beach House: Beach House
Luomo: Paper Tigers
n0 things: Trees
Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

SOME SONGS 2006
Rick Ross vs. Simian Mobile Disco: Hustlin' Hustler (Cadence Weapon Hi-Speed Edit)
Applegarden: Armageddon
Kaos: Cerebral Tremolo (Brennan Green Remix)
Earl Greyhound: S.O.S.
Reverso 68: Tokyo Disco
Menstruation Monsters: Dirty Soaked Tampon (Christopher Just Remix)
Clipse: Time's Up (Freestyle)
Skaatbard: Clap
Grizzly Bear: Lullabye
Kris Menace Presents Stars On 33: I Feel Music In Your Heart (Kris Menace and Lifelike Remix)

Crazy Carl, Riff Market High School Affiliate, Laps It Up On YouTube



73/100 RIFFS

Riff Market Sports Edition

I was very bummed to read on Viacom auxiliary blog Stereogum that the National Football League has banned, or sorta banned, football stadiums from playing Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2" because Glitter molested some Vietnamese girls. To be clear, we're talking about the freaking "The Hey Song" here--banned, gone, no more jumping up with two beers in your hand and yelling HEY! and having all the beer spill out into the guy in front of you's cheese hat. (This is good time as any to mention that I have heard "Rock and Roll Part 1" several times and don't know why this "part"--which is so obviously integral to the other "part"--has been largely forgotten. I'm assuming Glitter must have molested some American chicks on the sly, the NFL fatcats found out, and somebody said something like, "OK Gary, enough's enough. We're banning exactly HALF of your two-part sports anthem 'Rock and Roll' from our stadiums." Nobody had any problem with this and I think that's pretty bullshit.)

Here are some other things the NFL execs should ban in the stadiums while they're at it:

01. Seats. Chances are Gary Glitter molested those Vietnamese girls while sitting down on something. I'm not saying molestation only happens one way, but you gotta remember Glitter's a pretty old guy and his legs probably went on him after the initial meets and greets.
02. Old Guys. Old Guys are more likely to have retired from their jobs as glamrockers than Young Guys still in the biz, which makes Old Guys more likely to fly to Vietnam, find a nice seat to sit on, maybe a lawn chair or something, and molest a few girls they've just met. I'm thinking it could even be an honor system thing, i.e. a stadium guard asks an old guy, "Are you an old guy?" and the old guy says "no" and walks into the stadium. Because some old guys are young at heart. Not a big deal at all.
03. Anything You Can Sit Down On. Who can be sure what Gary Glitter was sitting on exactly when he molested those girls. It could have been a rock, a table, the sidearm of a couch--not to forget, a seat. So let's just play this one safe in our stadiums and ban anything you can sit down on. Who knows the station of GG's bum at the time of the dirty.
04. Maps. Gary Glitter probably had no idea where Vietnam even was without the aid of a map. He would have had no mass of land to set his sights on, take out his huge black marker and draw a huge black circle around it, and underneath the mass of land draw an arrow and the caption "Rock and Roll Part 3."
05. "Two-Hand Touch". You wait for it, you get it.

34/100 RIFFS

Atlas: The Lily Allen of Restaurants

Some people have bad days, which is fine, but other people are GRADE-A ASSHOLE MATERIAL, much like the music of Lily Allen, and Atlas on Second Avenue between 4th and 5th streets in Manhattan now finds itself in the latter category. Basically a sandwich and salad and shake shop with a vegan bent and an untastable Moroccan vibe, Atlas has a pretty steady following for its cheap eats and overuse of avocados. I've walked by there on the way to the Bank of America and people always look pretty hip eating sandwiches with too many avocados in them, and that's saying something. I had gone here for coffee once or twice and had one of their crepes before too, and the only thing that had seemed remotely bothersome was the way you have to wait forever for the food to be made, and how this wait occurs among all these people who are sitting down at tables, and how suddenly these people are annoyed at you and you're annoyed at them for being annoyed at you and finally the food comes, you go back to your cubicle, and you forget about it.

In pursuit of cheap last-minute eating, Lady J and I walked in and sat at the table nearest the display fridge at the front of the restaurant. There were crumbs on the table still but I don't want to get ahead of myself. We figured out that we wanted a goat cheese crepe, a grilled chicken salad, and a Moroccan grilled chicken salad (the difference between the two is that the MGCS has peppers in it, and maybe some avocadoes). Normally I don't order salads for dinner but I had had a pretty big lunch, and as you can imagine the striking similarity between her salad and mine caused no little distress. I don't understand why it's such a big deal if you both order the same plate, more or less, but apparently this is a big deal, and I've been looking stuff up on messageboards to find out more on the why.

I worked my way out from the table and made myself to the top of the line, to the register guy. He is wearing a hat with the brim really bent out of shape, fratdude '99 style, not in the flat-brim style of today's rap stars. I think nothing of this. My heart is like the motto at Crunch: no judgements. He asks me what I want, I tell him "I'd like a Grilled Chicken Salad, a Moroccan Grilled Chicken--" and all the sudden he picks up the telephone. As he's taking the order from someone on the telephone, he yells at me to keep giving him the order, and with a sweet hat like his, he surely looked the spot of Multitasking Don, so I doubted him not. I gave him the order again, double-checked with him after he finished with the phone call, and he triple-checked with me by charging $22.00, which is roughly the cost of two GCSs, a goat cheese crepe, and two Poland Spring water bottles. I sat back down and waited for the Atlas runner to swing out with the food. J killed a fly with a folder she brought with her. 20 minutes pass.

Kindly, since I know how pokey this place is with the food (the price of no price), I ask about our order. Sweet hat guy asks me what I ordered again. I tell him a Grilled Chicken Salad, a Moroccan Grilled Chicken Salad, and a Goat Cheese crepe. Three items, and for his benefit, since I should be clear that nobody behind the counter knows the language very well, I hold up three fingers very incidentally when I say "three items." He says something in a different language to his sidekick, who is this guy about the twice the size of him and no sweet hat that I can recollect, who brings the food out and probably assembles it all too so he's seriously the stooge in this story, and the sidekick nods to me and says the food will be right there.

"Here's your goat cheese salad, and here's your artichoke crepe," sidekick says. I tell him that's not what we ordered. He says-- and I honestly don't know what to make of this part-- "Yes, I know, that table right over there ordered it, but he told me to bring it out to you." I tell him we want the food that we ordered and paid for, and he's remarkably amenable to this idea. We go over what was ordered, and he hurries back to the counter. The dude with the hat starts yelling at him for bringing the food back, sidekick says it's not what we ordered, hat dude says something to sidekick and then wiggles his nose at me like he's I Dream of Jeannie Clarissa from Clarissa Explains It All the Bewitched chick. [thanks]

Three minutes later--record table time at Atlas, where employees can take up to ten minutes just to pull a soda bottle out of the refridgerator for you--sidekick brings over the order. All three items are stacked in a plastic bag, in aluminum takeout containers, and there are no napkins in the bag. "I'm sorry," he says.

-11/100 RIFFS