Another in a long line of pen pal messages sent to Matty.
 
Dear Matt,
 
I imagine that your absence is due to the fact that you have been jamming out to this album the past couple days on your iPad. You have to make good use of it because I would imagine from your post on iPad version Dos, it will become a relic, almost like R.E.M. is.
 
An alligator climbing up an elevator.  What will Stipe think of next? Pushing an elephant up the stairs?  Here we see that Michael Stipe has once again ventured into Wild Kingdom to give us another rocking song.
 
Do you ever visit one of Mario Batali’s restaurants hoping to meet up with him?
 
We also hear Peaches on this track and in my honest opinion she offers the best “Guest Vocals” of the three stars brought in on this album. I think her tone gives this song a bit more insurgence and comparing it to the other rocking “All the Best” it seems to not feel as vague as that one is.
 
Although I have to admit that I am having problems trying to figure out the different characters in this song and how they relate to each other.  I guess the way that I would see it is the Alligator being portrayed here is being chided by technology and their message is seemingly a hypocritical one considering the Alligator would symbolically stand for survival or adaptability.
 
So telling an Alligator that they have a lot to learn is like telling Steve Jobs he doesn’t know anything about Macs.
 
Or, conversely, the message suggests that technology and innovation has been ignorant to nature and the environment.
 
Of course I can just turn all the lyrics off and just jam and walk around the neighborhood like the guy in the Uberlin video, but alas, I am not that guy.
 
At the end of the day it’s a pretty good song. I like the part where they put the underline symbol between the words in the song title.