RIFF MARKET

---

Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN THIS IS A JAZZY PHANG INTRODUCTION: MY MAN DON POLLYANNA IS IN THE BUILDING!! CHECK IT OUT!

ALSO CHECK OUT:
YEAR IN RIFFS: P. COLTON SPIDERFANG
YEAR IN RIFFS: THE REAL JAKE THE SNAKE

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: DON POLLYANNA
Ambler Campus

What would Johnson, Frodo, Ranger or Jones be without Boswell, Tonto, Sam or Short-Round? Well, what would a canvas be without an easel? I first learned of the sidekick and their rich tradition while studying at Temple University's Ambler Campus; auditing course called Ill Get That, Boss: Behind Every Great man, Another Man. But to know how I joined this regal fellowship, and how I met the great man, and how I would become the man behind him, one most go back 10 years, to hip-hop's raging days of puberty.

They say only bastards and frozen yogurt come from New Jersey and in 1995 I found a dark metaphorical truth to the cliché. For, in my soul, I was just a recently-orphaned child, wandering through a gargantuan TCBY, looking for, in the parlance of the time, for someone to shove.

I was a pauper then. I had lost a small fortune in the great angel dust crash of 91, and had squandered the rest of my savings in an ill advised investment in the Troop clothing line's first foray into the men's fragrance arena (blunt smoke...perhaps you recall it). I found myself in a barren way, so I took to wandering the garden state for revival of finance and spirit.

It was on the periphery of the set of New Jersey Drive that I met Spiderfang. The location for the under-appreciated Nick Gomez film had become, ironically, something of a Wailing Wall for the region's most enterprising car thieves, as well as any other man of nefarious intentions. On the outskirts of the film's motor pool we created our own Moss Eisley space port. It was a band of brothers. We sang the blues.

'Everybody on the Isle knows I'm the original “Incarcerated Scarface.” Raekwon got no fucking respect for intellectual property!

“1989, right? I was in the bing for stealing the stereo volume knobs out of Mercury Cougars, cause my thieving game was so fucking personally tailored to the wants and needs of the Tri-state stolen auto accessories consumer. I got sent on an up north trip. Not my first. And I didn’t give a fuck because I was in my Chippewa Indian zone, and bars can't contain the motherfucking Little Sturgeon!’

This brief digression was hardly an inconsequential. I would later find that Spider considered the Wu-Tang Clan to be kleptomaniacs when it came to his ideas. In the early 90’s, upon his release fro Valhalla, Spider was in the process of raising a 9-man rap ensemble, the iconography and vocabulary of which were rooted in his fascination with the Chippewa tribe. Spider’s vision for the group, which he had dubbed War Eagles, was to include a no doubt potent mix of Chippewa imagery, shot through the lens of the trife life he had lived on the streets of Staten Island.

When the Wu-Tang Clan commenced their Sherman’s March into the American consciousness, Spider was crestfallen.

‘Staten Island is a small fucking place. Bitches talk. It’s like Designing Women,’ he told me, in his inimitable style. In his view point, one I share, as if it needs to be stated, the Rza had appropriated the mythological infrastructure of War Eagles, replaced the Native American spirituality with the Orientalist, zen-warrior mysticism of Kung-Fu films, and deftly sold it to the youth of White America who were desperately looking for a version of rap that wasn’t so dogmatically concerned with reality.

“Enter the 36 Chambers…Squaking Buffalo of the High Country…you telling me that’sa coincidence?

So the seeds of lifelong feud with members of Wu-Tang were already sowed before Raekwon got his cocaine dusted hands on another piece of Spider Fang’s personal history.

“One day in the weight lifting area, some dude cut the line for the 20-pound dumbbells. So I told him if he didn’t respect the order of the yard I was gonna take that dumbbell and examine his prostate with it.! I ain’t gay! But you need to let these sluts know the pecking order!

“This little fucking Gremlin whips out an Oral B 24-Soft fashioned into fucking Excalibur. I shouted, ‘Not the face!’ And you know what happens next? He cut my face! But I respected that. Never let another man tell what is and isn’t possible!’

His disfiguration was not without its charms. Prison puts a high value on empirical evidence of one’s mettle (or so I’m told). And nothing says, ‘I’m a superconductor of violence’ like a scar from a crude blade/oral hygiene tool, bisecting one’s face. Spider became the stuff nightmares are made of; there was chatter: “Spiderfang, the scarface from C-Block, he’ll give you a colonoscopy with a dumbbell and he won’t even ask nicely before he goes in.”

Upon his release, and his return to Shaolin (as it was by then re-christened) the legend of the ‘Incarcerated Scarface’ grew. Spider did little to temper the rumor mongering, paying no heed to those who might be in the business of appropriating the legend for their own purposes. Spider liked to invoke Charles Foster Kane, “You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you. AND THAT’S WHAT THAT BURGLAR SHALLAH RAEKWON DID! BUT HE DIDN’T ADD, “DEDICATED TO AND INSPIRED BY THE ORIGINAL RIVER FROM WHERE MY CREEK OF A CAREER IS DRAWN, THE ARACHNOID MC SPIDERFANG; MY ARTISTIC FATHERFIGURE UNDER WHICH I SUFFER THE GREAT ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE!”

You could’ve heard a Dutch being split.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

On the ninth day of SPIDERRIFFMAS today I got my man the Real Jake the Snake giving you a taste of his next verse for my next single, it's gonna be called FANG GANG. It's got this soul feel to it, but with like ten-thousand guitars. Shoutout to my man DJ Hometaping--he's murdering the game! FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: THE REAL JAKE THE SNAKE
GUEST VERSE

Real recognize real, Fang. Snake's in the motha fuckin house. Let 'em know.

Hey, yo, yo, Fang talk about trickin all his "Google Earth Bitches".

Meanwhile Snake constrictin on all you fuckin snitches.

My scales, my scales, my scales, uh!

Poison, bitch!

Let's go!

Defamation, desquamation, A! A!

Hustlin, bitch, you know snake's got that yay! Ya!

You don't see me, but I'm comin,

So slippery, Snake in the grass,

Rat-tat-a-tat-rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tattle,

I straight fuck up yo' life when I bite all yo' tenda cattle.

Hustlin, bustlin, rappin, bitin, hissin, rattlin, killin, lova,

Makin that pussy all kinds of wet when Snake's winding up inside ya

Mad, crazy nice, son,

Eatin tons of mice, son,

That's the type of shit I'm on,

Rattlin to the break of dawn,

Pussy ass rappers best get gone,

I'll bite you.

Snakes.

Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

I'm out.

Get venom!

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

YEAR IN RIFFS: P. COLTON SPIDERFANG
Genesis

Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!! You think Topanga's hot asian friend's got a Google Alert? Chirp back lover! THEREALSPIDERFANG@GMAIL.COM. Anyway this is my year in riffs I was talking about way back, it's called GENESIS. It's got this cool style, it's how I used to think before the accident. Flip those 'burgers! FANG.


In the afternoon when school was out and the last one had left with his little dirty snuffling nose, instead of going home I would go down the hill to the spring where I could be quiet and hate them. I took off my shirt thinking my shirt is off believing if she sees me with my shirt off she'll see my valley the valley in my chest it looks like darkness when I shower it goes to sleep hoping I wish the darkness would go to sleep forever. In the water was a face that was my face, and in my face were eyes, and mouths with crumb stains, they hung from follicles I had never seen but knew I had them, like we forget that we have blood in our hands until those hands are cut, and what bleeds isn't blood but a reminder of our bloodness.

I look at the face in the water. It's a kind face but a tired face, weathered with lines like tree rings, some fat others skinny if I am tree then a tree is an I, if is were she would not know she would never see under the shirt, if were was I would be a tree and my shirt is just the bloodness of my pastness. I punch the face. I punch it and it goes away, but then it comes back again, laughing at my fist with its waves and laughing at my face which is the same face, slurping back first in waves like the ocean then little ones like pa's fish bowl when he would put my fingers in it. He would put our fingers in it and the fish would nibble at our fingers and I would think this fish is going to eat all my fingers but my fingers won't come back like my face in the spring and the water would get cold he doesn't care about my finger he just cares about my not-finger and I would cry because I like my finger but pa likes my not-finger and pa likes the fish. Colton, pa said, you stop crying Colton, you stop that now. Goldie got to ett, he said to me, and Colton that's why you never wash your hands, never wash your hands Colton, Goldie got to ett. And he said this to me, and his eyes were like holes in trees and scaring me like my darkness.

I will never wash my hands ever again

Looking into the spring I lean down and my hands are dirty from the mud by the water. My shirt is off still but it is not dirty, it is pure. I sit there looking up at the sun, right at it like it wants to say something to me. I want to stop the looking but looking believes more than remembering looking never again, not for nothing. I take my hands and I push them towards each other on my belly, the mud and the hair together and my belly is now two hills and in between the hills is a valley, a dark line where the hair hides and the mud. I am looking into the spring. I see the belly in the spring, and I see the two hills thinking there are four hills now thinking there are four hills and two valleys and two faces and twenty fingers and no fishes I pull my fingers away from my belly before the fishes get our fingers, but the mud is still there and my shirt is on the grass by the mud, and it is pure. Never wash your hands Colton ok pa I won't Colton why don't you put the bike down and help your pa with something in the garage I look at the shirt and put my hands on the shirt, and then I look back at the sun and I cry. The smoke from the factories, I see the city lights and the purple fog of overnight commerce hang over the island, and I see the stadium and the beaten colors of the vending machine, yellowed from the distance and the sun, thinking cash rules everything around me looking back at the sun and looking for the my valley but it was disappeared.

IN CONCLUSION: IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

Download: "Triple FAT Goose (The Real Spiderfang Fangs Out Fangmix)"

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: DANNY CHUN
My Favorite Part of the Song

It was a great year for music. I don’t think anyone would argue that 2007 was all about the quarter notes. And if December’s new releases are any indication, ’08 will be the year of the half rest, and that excites the fuck out of me.

Anyway, this piece is about Rock Band. You're all as familiar with that game as I am, right? No? Here we go!


SETTING: NEW YORK’S LEGENDARY HEEBIE JEEBIE’S.
I’m so excited for this show. The band, The Farts, is from London but they won a private jet at a concert and now they’re in America looking for a sound guy so that next they can get roadies. I’ve never heard them but they say the drummer, KindBud1337, is really good, plus he’s got a new pair of pants that he’s pretty happy with. Oh weird, that fan over there looks exactly like me. Come to think of it, there are only like four different kinds of people in this whole audience. And they’re all pumping their fists in unison. As am I.

Nice, the band just got on stage. They're doing a random setlist, which is one of those concerts where the band doesn't know what song they're going to play until it starts. I wish they'd just play their hits, like "Say It Ain’t So" and "Dani California."

There’s the singer, a black guy with sunglasses and a leisure suit. And his amazing guitarist, a long-haired goth with spiky shoulder pads. And their rock-solid bass player, a girl in a miniskirt. And there’s KindBud1337 on the drums. Boy am I ready to hear some rock music!

Yes, they’re playing their new song "Vasoline" by Stone Temple Pilots! I love this song! KindBud1337 is really tearing it up on drums. Tap tap tap, tap tap tap -- the man is out of control! Every time he hits the drum, four notes come out. Uh oh here comes a yellow note...he got it! He made ten notes in a row without messing up -- I’m going to start appreciating him twice as much per note. If he does it again, my appreciation will triple. When it comes to rock music, nothing matters like consistency. Oh man, his drum fills are awful. How can his normal playing be so magical, yet his drum fills so horrendous?

This is my favorite part of the song. But the drummer keeps messing up! And now he's been kicked out of the band, mid-song. He's just sitting there doing nothing. Wait, the guitar player tilted his guitar and now the drummer can play again. I guess I'm fine with that. All right, the song's over. What will they play next?

“29 Fingers" by the Konks? What is this shit? I’m out of here. Oh wait, I can’t move.

Jesus, his drum fills are terrible.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: LEILA STRACHAN
AN INTERVIEW WITH LES VINYL

This week I had the privilege of interviewing American singer-songwriter Les Vinyl to get his take on 2007.

LAS: First of all, I’m a huge fan. Thank you for doing this interview.

Les Vinyl: Wow, so this must be so weird for you then. Wow. I'm imagining being you: I feel excited, honored, hungry… Wow. You're so welcome.

LAS: I hope you don’t mind the Old Spaghetti Factory. I love this place.

LV: I prefer the Cheesecake Factory but Spaghetti Factory is also pretty perfect. Did you ever go to that dance club Sound Factory? The food is terrible.

LAS: Once I went to the Harley Davidson Factory. I didn’t eat any food, but our tour guide did tell us that they “try to use as many robots as possible”. Oh, and definitely order whatever you want. This is totally on me, by the way. Alright, let’s do this: Concerts. I went to see The Handsome Family this year, and they have a song about Tesla and in it he eats saltines. I guess for that reason, it was my favorite concert of 2007. Also I think maybe it was the only concert I went to. What is your best 2007 concert story? I’ve thrown out Tesla/saltines. Top it.

LV: The Animal Collective dudes were definitely the group of the year. Strawberry Jam, Person Pitch, Pullhair Rubeye (re-reversed): Those were my most played albums this year. I saw Animal Collective twice. Once at the South Street Seaport and the other time at Webster Hall. The Webster Hall show was baller. Everything they play is so deliberate. I was dancing with strangers all night. Months prior to the concert I had downloaded loads of live performance torrents so when the show rolled around I was familiar with every song. I also saw Panda Bear play solo at Bowery Ballroom. That was a Blastoise (awesome pokemon reference).

LAS: Okay let’s get real: the Kanye West/50 Cent feud. What was your role in all this?

LV: Look, I only sell bullets. Does that mean I know where, who, and why they are used? Friend, the answer is no. Only when.

LAS: Do you think Kanye got dissed at the MTVVMAs? That guy complains a lot. But also he’s so awesome! How do you reconcile these facts?

LV: I admit it. I mean, I wouldn’t say I have my Player Hater Degree but ugghhh, I’m so mad at all the attention this little gopher-cheeked-baby-bitch gets. Then I hear “Flashing Lights”- double ugghhh. I really love mid/late 90s pop rap and Kanye knows how to take me there.

LAS: Also remember at the MTVVMAs when Chris Brown was doing awesome dancing and he was totally jumping from one thing onto another thing, like “Fuck it, whatever, I’ll jump that shit, don’t even worry about it.”? That was awesome.

LV: Truth is I was controlling him from my computer. It said I can win a free ipod if I jump Chris Brown from one stage thing to another. Unfortunately, all I won was a sub par Rihanna performance of “umbrella” with more distorted guitars and live drums. I guess I’m stuck with this MiniDisc player.

LAS: How is your Mizithra sauce by the way? That’s the thing I always think I’m going to order, but then never do, you know?

LV: Zeus couldn’t have made it better himself. I could be eating Ambrosia, I can’t tell.

LAS: Okay, I really love your song “Ghosts”. Can I tell you a scary story? True story: I was all alone in this big house in the middle of the night. And there was a lot of creaking and rattling. And then I started hearing weird gothic piano music, and then maybe some Bjork. And then Joni Mitchell. And then some They Might Be Giants. And it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. I’ve watched enough Medium and Criminal Minds to know that this was obviously either a ghost or a serial killer trying to gaslight me. It was probably my most important musical experience of 2007. Do you have any 2007 ghost stories?

LV: One. It was around June. I was continuously spilling hot coffee on my crotch until the cups I had laid out turned cold. You see, I had a lot of time to kill because I was late for meeting with my late wife (may she rest in peace) Rebecca “The Vertigo” Hitchcock. She had news for me… She’s late! I anticipated this so I dropped a clammy handful of money on the table of St. Peter’s Gourmet and bounced. I took the shuttle bus from heaven to my red bean bag chair hideout. Yeah, June was cray-cray.

LAS: No one said having the gift would be easy. I think that’s the point of that show Ghost Whisperer, but I don’t know I’ve never actually seen it. Now, the one thing on everybody’s mind: 2007 and still no flying cars? Wtf, right?

LV: Riiiiiiiiiight. Wink! Write that. Write “wink”.

LAS: We lost a lot of big names this year. I’ve included an abbreviated deathwall below. What song would you dedicate to each person? (You can include songs from any year, including the future.)

Norman Mailer (Writer)
LV: As tribute to “The White Negro” and to Norman, I choose Eminem – Without Me

Ingmar Bergman (Filmmaker)
LV: Keepin’ it Swedish: The Cardigans – Beautiful One

Jerry Fallwell (Evangelist)
LV: The Hidden Cameras – Ban Marriage

Evel “The Daredevil” Knievel (Daredevil)
LV: Gorillaz – DARE. I know. “too easy”. First off, go stab yourself in the face! Second: I will always love this song and this man.

Marcel Marceau (Mime)
LV: Oh man, The Shangri-Las – Out in Street

Ernst Gallo (Winemaker)
LV: Mobb Deep – Quiet Storm. I want either this or neutral milk hotel – three peaches played at my funeral.

LAS: Okay, I get it. I didn’t ask for your life story.

Vladimir Kryuchkov (KGB Chief, Gorbachev plotter-againster)
LV: TLC – Red Light Special

Barbaro (Racehorse)
LV: Department of Eagles – The Horse You Ride

Jean Baudrillard (Philosopher)
LV: Cracker – Get out of my head

Momfuku Ando (Cup of Noodles inventor)
LV: No Doubt – Don’t Speak

LAS: Let’s end this thing. Any plans for 2008?

LV: Yes. I’m going to be like famous; like boy band fame. Like I’ll be like Michael Jordan without all that whining bullshit! My resolution is to fight that dude. Put it your planner, Toon Squad.

LAS: …

LV: That was the name of the team in Space Jam. Do you think people will get that? That soundtrack was good. Oh man, remember Jock Jams?

LAS: You have a lot of food left. Are you going to box that? You should box that.

For more Les Vinyl visit myspace.com/lesvinyl. LAS faves: “Ghosts”, “Deadly Fucking Silent”, “To The Moon For The North Atlantic, Part 1”, “Adam and Cave Man Woman”.

For more on the Old Spaghetti Factory visit www.osf.com.




97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: NICK SYLVESTER
Another Five Years of Life

A lot easier to write last year's. Stupid decisions, the personally/creatively catastrophic sort, have a way of aligning everything you didn't think needed alignment, plus with brute clarity you'd never get from the shrink sesh or cozy pray-on-it. Pants down and balls out and egg cracked wide open, suddenly you find out the limits of your current ideas and your abilities to translate them; the people who understood you and the people who merely said they did; down to the hundredth of a thousandth of latitudinal/longitudinal degrees, with option for street view, where exactly you stand in the world. If after all that you still happen to give a shit, you connect the dots and scour for those missing pieces to What Exactly You Were Getting At. You reacquaint yourself with yourself, spend a lot of time hitting the speedbag in the barn. Then maybe you come back to the rink and slug your own personal Racki, then maybe you jump off the ice and onto a sexually explicit videotape with some youngblood, then you watch Keanu Reeves run away with your career, and then it's Year In Riffs time: wash rinse repeat.

These days I spend a lot of time hitting the speedbag in the barn. Where I published seemed off Google's radar, what I wrote was exercise. I bought cookbooks and watched my face pock from the splashback of hot olive oil. There's a cat now, and an apartment with a couch, and a mattress on a boxspring. In two months I saw Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, 8 1/2, Blow-Up, Blue Velvet, Breathless, Days Of Heaven... you get the idea. Major catch-up. Rules of the Game. For whatever reason I had always begrudged film the uninterrupted two-hour burden it supposedly placed on me, one that music, even the most difficult stuff, supposedly never had the arrogance to do. Wash, rinse, then: twelve-grand in credit card debt--twelve grand! It took me the whole year but I beat it down to goose eggs. Lots of Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Juan Atkins. Lots of Faulkner. Long mostly fruitless hours in front of certain hundreds of thousands of words I called in finite jest the Ten Minute Wait, and only now, a year and a half into it, am I realizing why I have to see them through. Writing has to be the most roundabout way imaginable of making friends, trying to be loved, curbing social reflux, connecting on the astral plane--especially in this city, when best friends are a half-hour subway ride away and don't make you jump through verbal hoops for said astral planitude. Except most of them write too, or hide in their studios audio and visual, and one doesn't begrudge the other (at least one hopes not) for the time and energy and aloneness their roundabout communications by nature require. Lots of emails.

(Which is to say that "All My Friends" is not "about" aging. I don't know why everybody keeps saying that, except that I know exactly why people keep saying that: Every Pop Song Ever Is About Aging. Somebody on the internet got paid money to pass off that nugget as criticism, as his own, and nobody called him on it because unlike most somebodies on the internet, he can at least write a good sentence. Anyway the song sums up last graf's sentiment better than I could. "Where are your friends tonight?" isn't just for missing them. It's also what you say to yourself when you've hit upon some brilliant riff in your black mold studio, when that clear turn of phrase comes to you on a Friday night and you decide to stay in and feel it out, when after a decade of hedonism you figure out you have a voice, and something of astral planar significance you want to say, and a good reason as to why you in particular have to say it. You hole up and work your ass off and suddenly you're touring the world to much acclaim and yeah you're tired but hey: "Where are your friends tonight?" They're watching Frasier reruns like they always do. Like they always do, tomorrow they will wake up and go to work. Or more likely they're doing exactly as you are, good because it gives slack to guilt, bad because you're not the only one stuck alone in the proverbial middle of France. So the question you ask when you're lonely as all fuck, it's the same one for when you've realized your time away has scored cosmic dividends. A really tangled emotion to deal with--let alone put to beat. See also Panda Bear's "Bros": "I'm not trying to forget you/ I just like to be my own/ Come and give me the space I need/ And you may and you may/ And you may and you may and you may/ Find that we're all right.")

Double digits of friends are out of work at the moment. If you've been reading the last few days, you've seen their names and could with minimal dogpiling find out when and where you've seen their work elsewhere. It's not so much the money-lack that's tough but the uncertainty timewise. Difficult to commit to writing something like a screenplay, say, when you don't know exactly how much time you'll have to work on it. All bets off, they've all lost their psychic exhaust pipes--no way to, as Mike Schur put it, sublimate fear. Granted nobody's in tears or anything but the funk is thick and undeniable.

A few weeks ago some of us made it out to Friday Night Fights, this amateur boxing night that happens underneath the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on 60th and Columbus. We went down the steps to what looked like a grade school cafeteria, except there was a ring lit up in the middle of the room, lunchlady types selling beer and hotdogs and popcorn out the kitchen, "Cher Chez LaGhost" loud on fat speakers, two white screens on either side the room with half-baked video art and foreign television advertisements projected onto them, elsewhere vinyl banners announcing the Fights' sponsors: Singha, Le Tigre, Wallstreet.com, Mohegan Sun, New York Post. I'd seen one fight before, by accident. But just from the way people around us talked about the fights, you got the sense they were new to this too, the bulk of our boxing and fighting knowledge cribbed from Punch-Out! and Tekken and Mortal Kombat and (to a lesser extent) Blades of Steel. Father Martinez, the church pastor, got into the ring and made the fights' introductory remarks. "People say to me, 'Isn't it too violent for a church?'" he said. Most screamed back no--not too violent. "Well, yes, it is," he said. "But like all good sports, it teaches us who we really are."

Martinez skirted the question he started with but whatever, that's not the point. In Muay Thai kickboxing, Fighter #1 often tries to land huge hits on the thigh of Fighter #2's leading leg. The kick makes this fat dad's-belt-on-the-ass kind of sound if it lands square, and from there maybe the guy next to you will start screaming stuff like "KICK HIS ASS, SEABASS!" or "RIP HIS HEAD OFF!" or "I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE AMATEURS AND ALL BUT WHY DON'T YOU THROW SOME PUNCHES!" before returning to his lady, whom he's now gripping by her backfat. Otherwise the kick is rather uneventful--no blood code, like a cheap Chun Li roundhouse sweep. I found myself drifting in and out, making Sagat jokes, drinking Singhas, then caught sight of my friend Chris's face. Another kick had just landed. He was rapt, smiling. "They're trying to give each other charley horses," he said.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: STEVE HELY
THE RIDICULOUS RACE: EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

This is an excerpt from the book “The Ridiculous Race”, co-authored by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran. Look for it in bookstores in June 2008!

A Conversation Which I Imagine Must Have Occurred Somewhere in Ulaanbaatar on the Night of May 6, 2007, Following My Attempt to Eat Lunch

Starring Tishgilit and Borte, two Mongolian girls.

TISHGILIT: ‘Sup, Borte.

BORTE : Hey Tishgilit.

TISHGILIT: Hey, how was work today at Yochin Booye?

BORTE: Just another day at “Mongolian national fast food.” The craziest thing happened today.

TISHGALIT: Really? What?

BORTE: Well, this American guy came in – at least I think he was American. He had like a huge backpack on, and his hair was all crazy and he was totally sweaty and everything. So he walked up to the counter, and started saying stuff in English.

TISHGALIT: What’d you do?

BORTE: So, I was like, “I don’t understand,” but of course he didn’t speak Mongolian, so that didn’t help. So he starts pointing randomly at the menu, and going like this. (SHE PANTOMIMES EATING.) And I was like, “okay, I get it, asshole, I’m not an idiot. You want some food. What do you want?”

TISHGALIT: And he of course keeps babbling.

BORTE: Of course. So, finally, a guy, a Mongolian guy, in the restaurant comes up, and says he speaks French, and maybe he can translate. So he and the American guy start speaking French. Except that it’s pretty obvious this American guy can’t speak French very well, so this takes, like, ten minutes. During which the American guy keeps making the “eating” gesture. Finally the Mongolian guy is like, “he says he just wants whatever’s good.” So, I’m like, okay.

TISHGALIT: So you give him the sauced fat lump?

BORTE: Right, exactly, I give him sauced fat lump with a fried egg on it, and some salty tea.

TISHGALIT: Salt tea, good call.

BORTE: Right, a totally delicious meal. And of course it takes him forever to figure out the money.

TISHGALIT: God, he couldn’t figure out the togrog? What a fuckface.

BORTE: So that takes him forever, and he acts really grateful. But then he sits down with his sauced fat – which is totally good, by the way, and sort of picks at it.

TISHGALIT: Huh. Was there something wrong with it? Was it beige?

BORTE: Of course it was beige! I gave him like the beigest piece we had! And he still didn’t like it!

TISHGALIT: Weird. What about the salt tea?

BORTE: Oh, he tastes the salt tea, and it’s like this dude has never tasted salted tea before. Cause he’s all like, surprised, when he tastes it.

TISHGALIT: Ugh. What the blog?

BORTE: I know. And I’d made it extra salty, just for him! But then he tries to pretend that he really likes it, and keeps looking at me and smiling. Meanwhile he’s, like, picking at the sauced fat. And I’m just staring at him, and thinking, “Dude, I don’t know how you got here, or what you’re doing, but if you don’t like beige fat with fried egg, you’re gonna have a hard time in Mongolia man.”

TISHGALIT: True that. Anyway. Only one way to relax after a day like that.

BORTE, TISHGALIT (simultaneous): Fermented mare’s milk!

They pour themselves two big glasses of fermented mare’s milk and high-five.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: ADAM MOERDER
Lat Pull-Downs: Favorite Musical Moments of 2007

After spending the last month very academically and mechanically procuring year-end album and singles lists, I defragged my brain by going back and listening to whatever songs gave me the most visceral kick. Below are some very subjective moments from those songs that made me the most excited about music in 2007, regardless of whether or not they were in any way "important" to music on the whole.

The Tough Alliance - "Miami" @ 1:35
My former college roommate is a huge Miami sports fan, so when Eric Burgland lets out that first huge sighing chorus of "ah"s on this tropical-tinged ballad, I'm always reminded what a shitty sports year it's been for the city. The Marlins, Dolphins and Heat all suck, Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis got dealt, U of M football is in a tailspin, and of course, the Sean Taylor shooting. I think TTA's Situationist politics bit is pretty intriguing, even if I'm not quite sure exactly what it entails, but "Miami" is my favorite song from them, probably because they step down from their soapbox and let you fill in the blanks, but also because it still registers when taken out of TTA's barnstorming context.

Animal Collective - "For Reverend Green" @ 4:55
There are a lot of times I feel really bad about being a staunch atheist, especially that period this year when I read new books by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens back-to-back and incessantly harangued all my friends about how the Middle East should be blown up and that Billy Graham is worse than Hitler. I'm sorry, guys. Anyway, the worst feeling though is when the church I was confirmed in sends me a birthday card each year, single-handedly one-upping all those Facebook wall posts and pokes, and how I'm reminded of my former reverend, Reverend Roberts, who suffered a stroke halfway through my confirmation classes and has been placed in assisted living ever since. Now she was a reverend in the U.C.C. church, so out of all the Biblical stuff to get excited about--the four horsemen stuff, the time God killed a guy for picking up a stick on Sunday, et al--she became most animated when discussing how more movies need to depict aliens as loving creatures like E.T. rather than the soulless conquerors stereotype we're used to seeing in sci-fi. Pretty heavy stuff, which is why when Avey Tare repeatedly yelps "For Reverend Green!", I can't help but think of that one confirmation class when a crazed Reverend Roberts denounced Independence Day as "horseshit."

Justice - "Genesis" @ 2:16
One of my 2007 pet peeves was all the comments/criticism Justice received for sounding coked up, a lot of it coming from critics who've never even done cocaine. Cross has a lot of cogent moments--sexy even, which would be impossible if they were so coked up since cocaine makes your dick numb--the first of which occurring 136 seconds into the album. The minute or so surrounding this moment on Cross's opener was my go-to adrenaline fix at the gym, helping push me through many sets of bench press and lat pull-downs while saving me a lot of money I would've wasted on NO-Xplode otherwise.

Of Montreal - "We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling" @ 3:38
Usually I maintain a pretty good poker face re: songs about relationships, but Hissing Fauna synched up so Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz-like to my own girl troubles that I couldn't help but indulge myself in Barnes's medicated heartbreak. That's not to say I regressed here to junior high levels of schmaltz, cranking up Weezer's blue album and writing shitty poetry in my bedroom because a girl I liked didn't sit next to me in the cafeteria. "Mutants" is a really pretty, optimistic closer to a dark album filled with misogyny and medicinal/recreational drug struggles. Not to wax Klosterman, but my personal Hissing Fauna ended with a girlfriend level-up on par with the upgrade from Super Mario Bros. 2 to Super Mario Bros. 3--lots of fun new levels, new costumes, a warp whistle, etc. As for the lyrics on this song, I have no idea what's going on so it's hard to for me to relate, though I guess I also felt like a "mutant" earlier this year when I had a really bad sinus infection.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS:


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: MIKE SCHUR
A Garbage-Filled Room w/ Shitty Drop-Ceiling

Writing is a dark and dank profession. Either you sit in a room alone, miserable, and self-doubting, and think about how you’re a fraud whose best ideas are both behind you and weren’t even that good to begin with, or else you sit in a garbage-filled room w/ shitty drop-ceiling with twelve other people who are all trying to make jokes to hide the fact that they all think they’re frauds whose best ideas are behind them/weren’t very good to begin with. So: the strike, which is relentlessly terrible and is putting thousands of people out of work because six of the largest companies in the world refuse to acknowledge the somehow controversial fact that a computer is just a differently-shaped box you can use to watch TV shows, might afford me one possible good among its many evils, I thought, a few months ago: the chance to rebecome a human being.

This would include, I figured: walking around, meeting friends for dinners, seeing types of doctors I hadn’t seen this century, and most of all, interestingly, writing something. Irony of ironies -- the only way I figured I would write those short stories I had always talked about, or that small little movie idea, or the novel that is definitely in me, might be during a writers strike. So then we went on strike, so then: here we go!

Except that it turns out there’s a real “Iceman Cometh” aspect to the strike that was not anticipated and is not very cool at all. While I work at a show, all I dream about is all of the other wonderful kinds of writing that I could be doing if not for this damned job that I have. And now that I have all the hours in my day, I can’t do a fucking thing. I can’t even open a document. I picket in the morning, and then I just kind of sit there. I pass hours. I watch “Around the Horn” unironically, because it is better than having to write. And apparently it has become crucial for me to check the same 12 websites continuously, on a rotating basis, in case anything new is posted. (One of these sites is my own blog.) I’m not lying when I say that I accepted NBS’s assignment, here, because it would force me to open a document and type words.

N.B. that I did not have this problem pre-strike. When I was writing, I could keep writing on other projects. It is the absence of regular writing that has led to me not being able to write other things. Which is interesting in some psychological way that I can’t quite parse.

I read in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that in order to counteract the horrifyingly cramped quarters in which hens are forced to live on conventional farms, organic hen farms also have to have a small outdoors area where the hens can run around and play and be hens. But the thing is, hens just hang out where the food is, and since the food is distributed in the horrifyingly cramped quarters in which the hens live, they just ignore the outdoor area, because they’re forgotten how to like relax and hen it up. I think you see where this is going. It turns out I love and miss and crave the shitty drop ceiling and the garbage smell and jokes made by other fear-sublimating writers on the staff. I want to go back to my hen house. It’s weird and cold and lonely outside.

So that’s why the strike should end. Is that what I’m supposed to be writing about? I’m 33 minutes in, so it’s too late anyway. And by the way, lest this document fall into the wrong hands and in any way be used as agitprop about how weak the WGA is and how we’re all going to crack, allow me to add that the companies are being greedy disingenuous dummies and I’d rather watch 50,000 Around the Horns than sign their crappy deal and trade the future of union labor in this country for $250.

One piece of good news = I have seen a lot of the doctors I wanted to see. I have five cavities and my vision has gotten worse since 2002. But dermatologically, we’re good.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

YYES! It's the (day after the) FIFTH DAY of Spiderriffmas hosted by your man The Real Spiderfang, and I will give the beeper number for the guy who used to play Code-man on Step By Step to the first person who can correctly guess what my true love gave to me today, the fifth day of Spiderriffmas. What's that?!

FIVE GOLDEN LINKS!

That's right, I've joined Linkpasser. It's a social bookmarking website, the best of the internet picked by your friends. So while I was in bed this morning switching out my road wheels for something more all-terrain--let me tell you, that pint of Sahadis babaganush, that six-pack of microbrew I pick up from this guy parked behind the adult book store on Hoyt, these are all-organic food stuffs lover, no preservatives, no antibiotics in the feed, and let me tell you, they do not deliver themselves--while I was in bed pumping tire, my main girl Wife Huckabee was up on the internet, passing links to your boy FANG, sliding up and down the world wide web like Zap on a joust pole. Lycos.com, we takin over!

Each contributor to the 12 Days of Spiderriffmas was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

This week I got some serious names lined up. I got my man Curtis Hanson, Don Pollyanna's supposed to holler like Wednesday, plus I got my own Spiderriff I'm working on, it's called GENESIS. Sonic CD, holler! Game Genie, get your paper up! FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: COLIN JOST
Letter To Mayor Bloomberg


Dear Mr. Mayor,

Let me begin by saying that I admire all you’ve accomplished in your first 6 years. “It ain’t easy being mayor,” as they say. Well, I say. I’m quoting myself.

Enough small talk. I need to talk to you about a serious threat to our city.

You: Really? Come right in.
Me: Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.
You: Not at all. You seem like a reasonable person. Reasonably handsome.
Me: Mr. Mayor, please.
You: Sorry.
Me: Mr. Mayor, what if we made a sequel to Jaws?
You: They already did. They made three or four sequels.
Me: One of them was a prequel.
You: Really? The one at SeaWorld?
Me: No, that was the son of Jaws.
You: The one with the killer whale?
Me: No, that was Orca. Look, it doesn’t matter if they’ve already made a sequel. Look at Rocky Balboa. Look at John Rambo or whatever his name is. You can always make another sequel. The question is: How do you update Jaws? What’s the modern-day equivalent of a shark?
You: An investment banker!
Me: …
You: Sorry.
Me: The answer is: A pigeon.
You: A pigeon.
Me: Yes.
You: You’re proposing that we make a sequel to Jaws, but we replace the shark with a pigeon?
Me: Not just one pigeon. Many pigeons.
You: Isn’t that the premise of The Birds?
Me: Yeah, but in our movie, the pigeons actually attack people.
You: You haven’t seen The Birds, have you?
Me: … It’s in my Netflix queue.
You: Ok, even assuming this is somehow distinct from The Birds – which I frankly doubt – why would the current mayor of New York make a “sequel” to Jaws about pigeons?
Me: (slow, dramatic clapping)
You: What are you doing?
Me: Wait, I might have jumped the gun. Did you just say, “I’ve already made that movie – in my heart”?
You: No.
Me: Then forget the clapping. You know what, forget the movie altogether. It was a metaphor.
You: For what?
Me: Pigeons.
You: I don’t know if that really counts as a metaphor.
Me: (slow, dramatic clapping)
You: Stop it.
Me: Sorry.
You: If you’re trying to call my attention to the growing pigeon problem, thank you. I’m well aware of the situation and I’m trying to find an effective yet humane solution.
Me: Kill ‘em with kindness, right?
You: Not exactly.
Me: With poison?
You: No.
Me: Exactly. And that’s where I come in.
You: You heard me say ‘No,’ right?
Me: Loud and clear. So I dress up like a pigeon, go to a public park, and eat a bunch of poison. The real pigeons look at me and think, “Wow. Poison must be the new iPod or something.” You remember what happened with iPods, right? Cut to six months later. The press is swarming. “Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor! All the pigeons are gone! Children can breathe again! The murder rate has dropped below zero such that hundreds of corpses are reanimated every year! How did you do it (‘it’ being the elimination of all pigeons)?!” You stare off into the distance. With binoculars. And you see a tombstone. It’s mine. It reads “Husband. Father. Fake Pigeon. Hero. Friend. Popular. Always wanted to open a pizzeria.” Etc. We’ll work out the details. You cry a solitary tear and tell the press, “It was worth it. It was all worth it.” Then you walk away, confusing them.
You: (slow, dramatic clapping)
Me: Welcome aboard, Mr. Mayor. Let’s do this.
You: What? Oh, I was just shutting off the lights. They’re on that Clapper system. I’m leaving.

Anyway, you get the point. There’s a pigeon problem. But you’re a smart guy. You’ll think of something. Catch you on the flippety-flop.

-Me

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

YYES! It's the (day after the) FIFTH DAY of Spiderriffmas hosted by your man The Real Spiderfang, and I will give the beeper number for the guy who used to play Code-man on Step By Step to the first person who can correctly guess what my true love gave to me today, the fifth day of Spiderriffmas. What's that?!

FIVE GOLDEN LINKS!

That's right, I've joined Linkpasser. It's a social bookmarking website, the best of the internet picked by your friends. So while I was in bed this morning switching out my road wheels for something more all-terrain--let me tell you, that pint of Sahadis babaganush, that six-pack of microbrew I pick up from this guy parked behind the adult book store on Hoyt, these are all-organic food stuffs lover, no preservatives, no antibiotics in the feed, and let me tell you, they do not deliver themselves--while I was in bed pumping tire, my main girl Wife Huckabee was up on the internet, passing links to your boy FANG, sliding up and down the world wide web like Zap on a joust pole. Lycos.com, we takin over!

Each contributor to the 12 Days of Spiderriffmas was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

This week I got some serious names lined up. I got my man Curtis Hanson, Don Pollyanna's supposed to holler like Wednesday, plus I got my own Spiderriff I'm working on, it's called GENESIS. Sonic CD, holler! Game Genie, get your paper up! FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: ROB DUBBIN
All Of Us Over Here At EMI Just Downloaded Your New Album

After last year's burnout I played 2007 pretty safe, a strategy reflected in a year-end list that is 90% albums from bands I have liked for a very long time. For example, Carl Newman appears to have perfected a frighteningly effective awesome-generating algorithm. I picture him being in acquisition talks with the usual suspects.

Anyway: rather than riff on music, I will instead share a memo I accidentally received from EMI Music CEO Eric Nicoli in the early morning hours of October 11th. This is the sort of thing that happens when your email address is one letter off from Phil Selway's. See you next year!

--

From: Eric Nicoli, CEO, EMI Music
To: Radiohead
Subject: LP7

Well, it's 12:05am on 10/11, and all of us over here at EMI just downloaded your new album. Really great. Very exciting. We hope you understand our decision, in keeping with our business model, not to pay for "In Rainbows," and instead to bill you for the time it took for the transfer to complete.

In case you're wondering, no I haven't listened to any songs yet. Stings, doesn't it? Are you starting to realize just what a huge mistake you've made?

Well, it's about to get worse. Because if I know Radiohead, and I think I do, what you guys really care about is money. And I'm about to listen to your album for the first time and list, track by track and right off the top of my head, a few of the improvements our supposedly obsolete company would have made.

Here we go:

1) 15 Step - Okay - I'm picturing a commercial, for a car, a powerful car, like the 2008 Dodge Caravan. We're driving in the Caravan, me and all of you guys, over some rocks, and then it turns out that the rocks are Red Rocks, and we all get out and throw on this massive jam, and obviously Dave Matthews Band is also there, because they live there full-time because it's prime fiddle-altitude. You guys do a mashup of this song and "Two Step" called "Seventeen Step" or "Thirty Step" or however - I mean you guys are the math geniuses. Speaking of math: I'm thinking eighty-five a pop for tickets, fifteen dollar service charge, plus eight dollar handling charge, plus tax, plus rock-repainting charge. Next!

2) Bodysnatchers - So "Young Folks" was kind of the soundtrack to 2007, right? Three series premieres, ten commercials, the music video for "Young Folks." Well I know Peter, Bjorn, and John personally, and let me tell you, right now they could call their band Peter, Bjorn, John, and Money. I'm thinking we do the same thing with this track, right after we overdub some whistling into the chorus. Wherever the chorus is.

3) Nude - In terms of a music video, I'm thinking shot-for-shot remake of TKA's "Louder than Love." How comfortable are you guys with turtlenecks and mimed dry-fucking?

4) Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - This one seems ripe for merchandising. I'm going to riff off your lyrics here: "In the deepest ocean..." live five teenage cartoon fishes! The theme song, which obviously we'd let you guys write, could go something like:

"Hey hey we're the Weird Fishes
Fighting crime in the ocean
Maybe you didn't think there was crime in the ocean
Well that's how good we are at fighting it
Everyone transform!"

Then they transform into tiny undersea Dodge Caravans, the official van of fighting crime. Also the fish would be based on your appearances, since I think we can all agree that Colin Greenwood already looks like a flounder.

5) All I Need - Didn't really vibe to this one. Kept expecting a rap verse.

6) Faust Arp - Here's where things get totally viral. We put the entire album in stores, right? On a CD? But when people buy it, they find that we've LEFT THIS SONG OUT. If they wanna surf the Arp, they're going to have to upload a sweet youtube vid of themselves asking for it! Then we charge them another five dollars.

7) Reckoner - This would be a for-sure number one hit, like an "Elevation" level jock jam, if you replaced all the lyrics with the ones from "Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye."

8) House of Cards - Rename it "House of Coffee" and bam! Starbucks tie-in. We also have a script kicking around for a sequel to "Akeelah and the Bee," called "Akeelah and the Creep." Creep's on this album, right?

9) Jigsaw Falling Into Place - We can get a million dollars a month to use the first seven seconds of this song in a Chase commercial that repeats on constant loop whenever someone gets into a taxi. These are the kinds of moves that turn songs into art. Money art.

10) Videotape - Campaign song for Sony Blu-Ray. I know how much you guys like irony.

11) No secret track? Is this career suicide?

Good luck on your sinking ship,

Eric

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

YYES! It's the FIFTH DAY of Spiderriffmas hosted by your man The Real Spiderfang, and I will give the beeper number for the guy who used to play Code-man on Step By Step to the first person who can correctly guess what my true love gave to me today, the fifth day of Spiderriffmas. What's that?!

FIVE GOLDEN LINKS!

That's right, I've joined Linkpasser. It's a social bookmarking website, the best of the internet picked by your friends. So while I was in bed this morning switching out my road wheels for something more all-terrain--let me tell you, that pint of Sahadis babaganush, that six-pack of microbrew I pick up from this guy parked behind the adult book store on Hoyt, these are all-organic food stuffs lover, no preservatives, no antibiotics in the feed, and let me tell you, they do not deliver themselves--while I was in bed pumping tire, my main girl Wife Huckabee was up on the internet, passing links to your boy FANG, sliding up and down the world wide web like Zap on a joust pole. Lycos.com, we takin over!

Each contributor to the 12 Days of Spiderriffmas was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

This week I got some serious names lined up. I got my man Curtis Hanson, Don Pollyanna's supposed to holler like Wednesday, plus I got my own Spiderriff I'm working on, it's called GENESIS. Sonic CD, holler! Game Genie, get your paper up! FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: JAMES HARVEY
Castle On A Cloud

I am sitting on a crowded R train, discreetly changing tracks on my iPod so the guy who just sold me a blank CD-ROM for 10 bucks won't notice I'm listening to Act 1 of Les Miserables. He's laughing, for two reasons: 1) I bought the CD even though I saw it clearly labeled as a CD-ROM and knew immediately it wasn't compatible with any type of computer I've owned in about a decade, and 2) He caught a glimpse of me queuing up showtunes, which tells him I was probably lying when I admitted that I did, in fact, enjoy remixed rap music. Just to prove him wrong on reason number two, here are some remixes I made in 2007:

"James Harvey's extended break-up Remix": The Wrens "The Meadowlands" in an iTunes playlist, set on shuffle and repeat.

"Ode to NYC (The Remix)": In a large iTunes playlist, I import various sound bytes of Wesley Autrey, the Subway Hero. I open up the iTunes cross-fade and set it to some ridiculous level, like 12 seconds or something, so I can imagine, in the brief moments of overlap when one clip ends and the next one begins, that a second Wesley Autrey is out there somewhere.

"Crank That (Club Edit)": Soulja Boy's "Crank That" playing with my iTunes equalizer set to +12 dB in the following ranges: 32, 64, 125, and 250. Ideally, you have like six of my Dell laptop computers playing this song at the same time because the speakers are kind of tinny.

"Crank That (Explicit Version)": Same as the original song, but with an added introduction explaining Soulja Boy's Superman dance mocks crippled people.

"Sam Harris vs. Richard Dawkins (Seminars for Long Term Thinking Mashup)": Cut up lectures by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, edited together as if they were debating religion. Dawkins responds to each point Harris makes by saying nearly the same thing, except that in a debate context it seems as if he's just affecting a British accent and sarcastically mimicking everything Harris says. The crowd thinks this is hilarious. Sam Harris's closing remarks are interrupted numerous times by the dude who screamed "Judas!" at Bob Dylan.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

YYES! It's the FIFTH DAY of Spiderriffmas hosted by your man The Real Spiderfang, and I will give the beeper number for the guy who used to play Code-man on Step By Step to the first person who can correctly guess what my true love gave to me today, the fifth day of Spiderriffmas. What's that?!

FIVE GOLDEN LINKS!

That's right, I've joined Linkpasser. It's a social bookmarking website, the best of the internet picked by your friends. So while I was in bed this morning switching out my road wheels for something more all-terrain--let me tell you, that pint of Sahadis babaganush, that six-pack of microbrew I pick up from this guy parked behind the adult book store on Hoyt, these are all-organic food stuffs lover, no preservatives, no antibiotics in the feed, and let me tell you, they do not deliver themselves--while I was in bed pumping tire, my main girl Wife Huckabee was up on the internet, passing links to your boy FANG, sliding up and down the world wide web like Zap on a joust pole. Lycos.com, we takin over!

Each contributor to the 12 Days of Spiderriffmas was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

This week I got some serious names lined up. I got my man Curtis Hanson, Don Pollyanna's supposed to holler like Wednesday, plus I got my own Spiderriff I'm working on, it's called GENESIS. Sonic CD, holler! Game Genie, get your paper up! FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: CURTIS HANSON
A Miracle, Or Just A Mirage

Word up, friends, rock & roll interviewer Curtis Hanson here. 2007 was a major year for me, and for my various works. I know people have to get back to shopping for rotating-head-action hip-attachment St. Elmo dildos or whatever consumers are “into” this holiday fuckfest, so I’ll keep it short: 2007 was a year of incredible thoughtlessness.

I hate to drag a rusted tomb of a ship out of the freezing murk just for the sake of an example, but let’s talk about the Titanic for a second. Sure, it was a tragedy: an old zombie woman lost her necklace, Leonardo DiCaprio had to have sex with a fat lady, and don’t even get me started on how the captain of the iceberg felt. But what about my loss? Sure, you could say, “Curtis, why are you upset? You even won a ten thousand dollar bet that the ship would sink before the movie was over.” Well, you know how the band is playing as the ship goes down? That was my favorite band.

Now you know two things about me: I have ten thousand dollars, and I play favorites.

The other day I was interviewing this homeless guy about what he thinks about the movie “Margot at the Wedding,” and a car splashes through a puddle and water gets all over my pants. It was straight out of “Harold and Maude” or something. Something ephemeral. You gotta admit though, the homeless are our future.

I’ve gotten a lot more thoughtful myself as the world crumbles around me like so many ancient, magical civilizations that we learn so much from but when it is all but too late. Take Rome for instance. Everyone says Rome didn’t fall in a day. Well, don’t look now, but Rome is still standing. I went there in August for a custody hearing (don’t worry, no one I knew). The place is just like it always has been. They got pasta, they have temples, plenty of ruins, the Coliseum is doing fine, and the music scene is from a planet I wish I had a spaceship to get to. The point is: everyone thinks it was destroyed and is vanished, but there are tons of people there, trying to get by just like the average Joe USA. Does no one even read a book or look at a computer? Rome exists people, and not just in your hearts. Read a paper.

And sexwise. I know everyone wants to read my mind about sex, and let me put it this way: let the lady come first. Plain and simple. That will make it easier when you gotta split. I might be getting older, but I DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES I USED TO.

I CAN’T GET MY CAP LOCKS BUTTON TO TURN OFF. I KEEP PRESSING IT, OH JESUS, WHTAT THE FUCK. AkKAKKaK AA Ok, I got it. Nick, you take care of this, will you? Thanks. Anyways, here is that interview you asked for:

Curtis Hanson: So, J.J., what do you stand for?

Jack Johnson: Where did you get my work number? [Hangs up]

Curtis Hanson: Does music interest your folks too? Is talent a miracle, or just a mirage? What kind of music is your favorite? Will God ever date a woman who isn’t so “holy”?

Peace x 100,000.00

Curtis Hanson

(Thanks for this opportunity, Spiderfang, I really haven’t been getting too much work lately and this is really a big help. I’ll see you at Meg’s X-mas brunch hopefully, if I’m not stuck with the kids.)

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007