Yeasayer’s Chris Keating Hates Cheese and Doesn’t Care for Keanu Reeves

Extra! Extra! Welcome to “Softball,” where we ask celebrities of every stripe to give us their take on what’s swirling in the modern hellscape of the 24-hour news cycle.

In this edition, Chris Keating—frontman of the Brooklyn-based experimental rock band Yeasayer—responds to some headlines and trending topics ripped from the front pages on Tuesday, June 4th. The band is gearing up to release their 5th album, Erotic Reruns (out June 7), which in Keating’s own words is “a sort of maybe reaction to the weird fucking abysmal climate that our country is going through.” Here, the artist delves into further detail on said “abysmal climate,” sounding off on Jeopardy!, Keanu Reeves, and Paul Manafort heading to Rikers.

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“LAST NIGHT’S JEOPARDY! WAS THE MOST WATCHED IN 14 YEARS”

(VULTURE)

“I love Jeopardy!. It’s excellent, it makes me feel stupid. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, with emphasis on “reasonably.” And then I watch it and I get like three questions. These people are amazing. I saw that dude James Holzhauer, he almost got the biggest win total of all time. He almost beat Ken Jennings. I hope Alex Trebek overcomes his health issues and Jeopardy! stays on for another hundred years.”

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#STRAIGHTPRIDEPARADE”

(TRENDING ON TWITTER)

“What does that mean? Isn’t that just St. Patrick’s Day? That’s not necessary. I feel like straight pride is not a thing that I’m interested in having or being around. You know when like dudes or girls are too hetero, and they’re just like, ‘I’m just so fucking hetero.’ Not good for them, fuck that, that sounds lame.”

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“PAUL MANAFORT TO BE SENT TO RIKERS, WHERE HE WILL BE HELD IN ISOLATION”

(THE NEW YORK TIMES)

“I am glad that he’s going to jail. I think that he deserves to go to jail. I think that our despicable president deserves to go to jail. It’s very ironic that all these people— Michael Cohen, Manafort, Michael Flynn—they all are going to jail. But then the person they were doing devious deeds for became president, right? I don’t know. In terms of him being in solitary at Rikers, that’s probably a good idea for him just in terms of like, not having to join a prison gang. Because I don’t think he’s going to do that well.”

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“GOVERNORS BALL ATTENDEES EVACUATED, ACTS CANCELED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER”

(VULTURE)

“I heard nothing about that, which is weird. I played Governors Ball and it was really fun, but I’ve also been to some of those festivals where a stage collapsed or lightening hit. I was at the Tibetan Freedom Concert when lightening hit the center of it; that was when I was a kid as an audio technician. Playing shows, I’ve been at festivals where they had hurricanes in Germany and they had to put everyone inside. It was totally a trip. It was kind of like a bonding experience because our show got canceled and we were just stuck. Our bus was stuck in the mud and all we had to do was just drink German beer in the rain. The hurricane cleared and then we watched Rammstein headline.”

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“R.I.P. APPLE’S ITUNES: REMEMBERING THE BEST, WORST AND WACKIEST MOMENTS”

(ROLLING STONE)

“Are we going back to CDs? We’re in a streaming culture now. I think everyone knows that, right? That’s just a reality we’re facing. Who cares? There was a point in time when I would have only, say $20, and I would want to buy a CD, but I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I want to get a new Mariah Carey album or the Stooges album.’ You could only get one. You can’t get half of a Mariah Carey album and mix it with half of a Stooges album, although that might be amazing.”

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“KEANU REEVES IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD”

(NEW YORKER)

“I don’t care. Listen, I love River’s Edge. I like a lot of movies he was in, in the 80s and 90s. But John Wick just seems like violence porn to me. I just don’t care. I’m tired of movies with machine guns in them—I feel like they’re all just an ad for the NRA. I hear he’s a cool dude.”

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#NATIONALCHEESEDAY

(TRENDING ON TWITTER)

“Cheese is disgusting. I kind of abide by the Keith Richards school of, do anything you want, but don’t eat cheese.”