i saw this once. it took me seven hours to realize that turtles have shells and hence the top turtle was not “protecting” the bottom turtle

though i know i am white and young and entitled to, in a disturbingly large portion of the universe, allowed to gawk at r. kelly like he was some sort of schizoid, i sort of don’t, because, you know, i don’t really listen to all his records in the first place. i’ve been chewing on double up lately, though, because i wonder if i see anything in him other than the occasional punch line (though yeah, i subscribe to the position that–i’m paraphrasing john darnielle–”if you don’t think r. kelly thinks it’s funny to talk about how the ‘remix to ignition’ is actually the remix to ignition over the song itself, then you’re racist”).

anyway:

r. kelly, did you write “sex planet” before neptune was tossed out as a planet? i’m curious.

incidentally, i like the idea of a sex planet, a lot, actually. it’s comforting.

other than that, i guess i feel a little bit inspired by how shameless he is on “leave your name,” and really like the bounce on “i’m a flirt”–auto-tuned vocals::t-pain as hair::samson–but, y’know, another summer, another r. kelly album, another gaggle of hip young kids saying “did you fucking hear the new r. kelly album yet–hilarious!” and mock grind-dancing and whatnot (i still only grind to julee cruise, “sleepwalking,” “i love how you love me,” and “donna” by richie valens on my warm brian mcknights).

except for “the zoo.” what we need more of is “the zoo.” “the zoo” is a song about doing it like animals do it, which is sort of an old trope, but a refreshing one, especially after wallowing in all-to-human psychodrama and all-too-human bullshit like “hanging out in bars” and “talking to girls” and “analytical thinking,” especially in the summer, even though i have pretty much gotten out of doing drugs that make me feel like i am actually a lizard. and i really have no problem admitting that the closest i have come to sex in the recent past is watching episodes of planet earth at four in the morning or eating an octopus. bird sex is violent and uninteresting, for the most part. ape sex…fine, i can handle it. turtle sex is uniformly great, which i think has more to do with turtles, who are in no particular rush.

i’ve been trying to disguise myself at the dog park lately, because i feel like the dog owners are on to the fact that i don’t actually own a dog and am just there to whistle “the zoo” to myself and watch the dogs carouse. favorite dog is one i’ve named TAILS, a sprightly creature that looks like a chihuahua wearing an enormous orange muff. tails has this thing where he’ll only hump dogs at least four times his size, and he really jackhammers in there, and the big dogs pretty much don’t notice, or notice a little less than a horse notices a fly.

this post is dedicated to r. kelly and tails, for inspiring pungent misanthropy and furthering my confidence in anti-social behavior.

please make sure to check out woebot’s new mix, which i’ve been enjoying a lot, and i think has a great conceit: sonic cousins to the panda bear album. calypso, new agey stuff, henry cow side projects, beach boys, van dyke parks–well-considered and quite fucking great. it almost makes me want to post my own summer mix.

i am sorry, i didn’t even realize that there were a bunch of comments on the feist post. lots of you got marked as spam.

this post is dedicated to andy beta, who has–and i think he barely realizes this–gotten me into more music that i’ve come to love than almost any of my friends.

anyway, i think beta thinks that my feist crusade is, well, both a “crusade” and a headhunting, to the point that he pre-empted me with a wonderfully complicated post about his personal relationship to the album (nb: i have heard feist. i listened to let it die several times and even purchased it for relatives; i listened to a couple snippets of her new one, which, no, i have not heard in its entirety). further, beta calling me a “professional acquaintance” sorta begs the question of the possibility of us having this back-and-forth to begin with–we’re friends, which is why we’re bothering. right?

my beef with feist isn’t a beef with feist at all, as i told him in a marathon phone conversation a few weeks ago. it’s about the response to her music. it’s about the idea of feist, not as a person or even as a musician, but as a probably unwilling phenomenon. Results 1 - 10 of about 123,000 for feist “sophisticated”. (0.24 seconds). do i have a problem with sophistication? not inherently. i love steely dan, and my aunt and i bumped let it die b2b with katy lied last christmas. what.

ultimately, my reaction to feist–OR MORE, LET ME POSIT AN ABSTRACT: HER “FEISTNESS”–is as personal as beta’s passion for her. i mean, calling the stylus review a “backlash” seems like a devastatingly blind way to consider what is ostensibly a middling review. does liz’s stance that feist is more “corporate” than before constitute criticism? no, i don’t think so. but liz definitely seems to feel like feist used to walk an important line, and now the line’s gotten blurry, and now she seems less potent to liz. fine. these are all charged opinions skating around on the invisible concrete of value systems. did i like liz’s review? it was okay. maybe too aggressive. did i like the piece in the new yorker? it was okay. maybe too irrelevant. did i like the pitchfork review? it was okay. it leaned hard on fest’s self-sufficiency and abstracts when i feel like what we need regarding feist is more context–who listens to feist, who sounds like feist, where is feist on the musical map.

then again, we’re all revealing our biases here, which is fine. for me, lately, i’ve been depressed by the critical masquerading of adult-contemporary music as any sort of edge at all. i am 24 years old and grant myself this rebellion. i spent a long time trying to “like” “everything,” but have, as of late, found myself gravitating away–flying, really–from the kind of baby-powder, fresh-lacquered sounds that seem to have struck my generation into a fast middle-agedness. do i want feist to sell one billion records? sure. i want everyone to be rewarded for their hard work, which is partially why i’ve given up on communism. i would love to see feist as a happy, rich woman. would i get just this small twinge of disappointment though, if, stuck in among the billion, were some of my best friends, people whose tastes i’d grown up with, sipping riesling in some fresh socks? maybe.

and that’s my problem, people. maybe i’m bucking my inevitable aging. maybe i want a riesling and feist. maybe i don’t want to want a riesling and feist. maybe the fact that i cannot stop listening to dan deacon or epmd or stetsasonic or raymond scott is my last gasp of energy before a gentle, 60-year coma. maybe the fact that i am trying to focus my attention on quiet music with teeth–excepter, juana molina, robert ashley, the ghost box groups–is just a weird placeholder for my inevitable senility. weirder things have happened, e.g. the discovery that ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises. strange but true.

i am following something a lot more difficult to parse than critical opinion here, and so is beta, which i applaud. and i applaud his bravery for being frank about it. i just get the feeling that in the sea of wilcos, seas and cakes, feists, and all the other unweird indieness wafting out lately, that someone, somewhere is lying to themselves about their age. i have no problem with carole king or with my mom’s musical opinion. we can both listen to the del-vikings; she’s in it for nostalgia, i’m in it for the easy, optimistic weirdness that permeated records of her youth. but when my aunt and i listen to feist, we’re both just sprinkling lemon juice onto a salmon fillet, waiting patiently for the future, which could mean nothing at all.

also: someone interviewed me for salon about my emp paper. of this i am proud.

any even semi-regular reader of this blog may notice that i have an unquenchable thirst for THE MOUNTAIN GOATS. so instead of just letting myself scratch the itch in private, i’m starting a blog entirely about the mountain goats, which you can read here. i will write about one mountain goats song every day for the next thirty? sixty? ninety? days, i have no idea.

the only other thing inspiring me right now are my awesome slippers, weather reports–right now, at 4:34 pm est on 5/8/07, the forecast for gainesville, florida is “smoke”–and my awesome synthesizer, with which i am trying to outdo selected portions of the SUNROOF! discography.

your death, accelerated

to folks under the age of, say, 33 (sorry sages): what, if anything, do you like about canadian recording artist FEIST? now’s really the time for the randoms who read this page to come out and say something. this is really important. i’m doing field research. i have a thesis already. help deliver me from the burden of my assumptions.