Cruising Solo

Ah, the ol’ family food chain. My dad bought a car, so Suanna and I bought his old one, a ’93 Mazda with considerably fewer miles than our venerable ’92 Corolla. Suanna and Ella flew back from Michigan, but I drove our new ride back to DC alone. Fortunately I had had the forethought to bring the trusty mp3 player along, so I had tunes for the ride.

I ripped mp3s off of my CDs several years ago, at the height of the popularity of _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_. I knew I wanted to assign genres to the tracks so that I could play songs by genre either on the computer or in the car, but traditional subdivisions like Folk, Rock, and Alternative weren’t useful at all. So I decided to organize by metaphor: my “genres” became characters from _Buffy_, based loosely on the music that character might like. So all geek rock (They Might Be Giants, Moxy Fruvous) went into the “Xander” category, while the artsy moody stuff (Belle & Sebastian, The Pernice Brothers) fell under “Willow,” and so on.

For the long cruise home yesterday, I opted for “Giles”: everything from the 60′s and 70′s, or by artists who were at their height at that time. It turned out to be a good choice. The air was balmy and the sunroof was open around twilight, with the sky dappled orange behind me, when the following sequence kicked in:

Absolutely Sweet Marie –> Respect –> Piece of My Heart –> In the Light –> Like a Rolling Stone[1]

The sublime beauty of those twenty minutes carried me the rest of the way home without complaint. Well, that and lots of cheese popcorn.

It’s high time for a new set of genres, though. I need a set of ten or so characters or other entities that I can assign music to in a non-arbitrary and metaphorical way. Any suggestions?

fn1. That’s Dylan, Aretha, Janis, Zeppelin, Dylan, for those who weren’t sure.

Missing the Zimbabwe Fun

Argh! What a weekend to be out of town and without time to blog. The whole story of the mercenaries held in Zimbabwe is confusing and fascinating, and ties neatly into stuff I’ve written before about “Northbridge”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000156.html and “PMCs in general”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000312.html. Hopefully by the time I get home there’ll still be something worth commenting on. In the meantime, “Josh Marshall”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ is doing a pretty good job of distilling the news; “Jonathan Edelstein”:http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/ is doing some but I keep hoping for more, seeing as Africa is one of his specialties.

Checking In On Liberia

It’s been a few months since my “last Liberia-related post”:http://www.polytropos.org/index.php?p=207, and even longer since one that addressed Liberian reconstruction and not just the fate of ex-dictator Charles Taylor. This is a case of “no news is good news,” with a couple of big caveats: 1) there’s been plenty of news, just nothing major, and 2) ‘good’ in this context equals ‘no resurgence of civil war, mass starvation, or other complete breakdown of the social order nationwide.’

Briefly, US troops are long-since gone, and the UN maintains a peacekeeping mission with forces from Ireland, Sweden, Pakistan, Nigeria, and “many other nations”:http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/prev_dip/africa/liberia/fst_liberia.htm. As part of their general ‘maintenance of law and order’ role, their biggest task has been to oversee the disarmament of thousands of fighters, many of them children, on both sides of the recent conflict. There’s been periodic news of rebel groups acting up in the back country, but nothing that has grown significantly. The “current concern”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/03/03/liberia.rebels.reut/ that there are Taylor supporters training in Nimba county is more troubling, but as yet unconfirmed. Peace hasn’t been achieved everywhere in Liberia yet, but it’s spreading.

The outlook on reconstruction is better than I thought it’d be. Monetary pledges have been “quite generous”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3718634,00.html — $200 million from the U.S.; $520 million from international donors. The interim government, a messy power-sharing arrangement between the former government and rebel forces, is holding together. A clearer indication of progress will be how smoothly elections go late next year.

Charles Taylor continues to find himself under some pressure, even though Nigeria has no intention to extradite him to stand trial before the Sierra Leone Special Court. There’s a proposed UN resolution to “freeze his assets”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3826262,00.html. Investigators for the court are also trying to “search Taylor’s residences”:http://allafrica.com/stories/200403081216.html in Monrovia:

The team, headed by Chief Investigator Allen White, met strong resistance on Friday, when they tried to enter a house in Congo Town, the south-eastern suburb of the capital, Monrovia . . . “We can not allow you to enter this house. We are under instructions not to just allow anyone to enter this house. There are properties here and they must be protected,” said Joseph Kollie, one of the supporters of the former president . . . It took the intervention of UN peacekeeping forces and a delay of several hours before the investigators were able to gain access to the building.

First of all, it’s “Congotown,” not “Congo Town,” and second of all, that’s where _I_ lived. I wonder if the residence was on Old Road Congotown, the threading road that was the main route into downtown until the big-road-whose-name-escapes-me was built. There were quite a few swank houses on Old Road, including the big white one my family lived in. Many had lovely views of the ocean on the far side of the not-as-lovely lagoon. It wouldn’t be at all unusual if one of them was Taylor’s. Weird.

Freezing Taylor’s assets is a good idea, since there have been plenty of indications that he wants a victorious return to Liberia, and will use any means to get it. But what about the man himself? On the “get him from Calabar and put him on trial” side we have the unlikely alliance of “human-rights groups”:http://news.amnesty.org/mav/index/ENGAFR510052004 and private military companies like Northbridge. (Northbridge apparently missed out on all the juicy Iraq contracts, so they really, really want this gig.) On the “leave him there” side there’s the U.S. State Department, which negotiated for his exile and would rather leave this particular boat unrocked for the time being.

Finally, the U.S. Navy has vastly increased its powers to stop commerical vessels in international waters in order to search for weapons of mass destruction, thanks to a “new pact with Liberia”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3746450,00.html. Why would an agreement with a tiny, broken nation give so much power? Because this particular tiny, broken nation has always enjoyed a steady stream of income from selling “flags of convenience”:http://www.flagsofconvenience.com/. Plenty of countries will happily let you register your ship with them on the cheap — you pay cheaper licensing fees than you would at your First World home port, and all you have to do is fly that country’s flag on your ship. Liberia has always been one of the very cheapest purveyors of flags of convenience, and consequently, lots and lots of commercial vessels (I hesitate to say ‘the majority’, though I’m fairly sure that was the case in the Eighties) fly the Liberian flag. The Navy has taken advantage of this state of affairs to gain their new searching rights. Clever, clever Navy. Don’t go abusing that power, now.

An interesting footnote, enabled by Google News: the vast majority of newspapers that carried the AP story about the Navy pact gave it the headline “U.S. Given Right to Search Liberian Ships.” But a handful of small papers, mostly in Middle America, gave the headline a more patriotic spin, like the “Topeka Capital-Journal’s”:http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021404/pag_pact.shtml “Pact empowers U.S. sailors.” I’m sure somebody out there has done a study on trends in regional variations in AP headlines in general. I’d love to see it.

Blog Pledges

RPG luminary Robin Laws has “started a blog”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/robin_d_laws/ (a livejournal, technically). (Hat tip to Emily at “20×20″:http://www.20by20room.com/.) Right out of the gate, he has included a number of “pledges”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/robin_d_laws/300.html.

1. When I am sick, I pledge not to write a blog entry about it.

2. And, if, in my delirium, I do backslide and whinge about being down with a bug, I further pledge never to describe the current state of my mucus, no matter how vitally compelling I may consider it to be.
3. Nor will I write to inform you that nothing interesting has happened to me, and/or that I am bored. Further, I will not tell you how crappy or uncrappy my day has been. I acknowledge that by putting a piece of writing in the public view, I am obligated to at least try to make it in some way entertaining.
4. I will never inform you that I woke up this morning; this will be assumed to be evident from context.
5. Never will I write merely to vent about bureaucratic run-arounds and/or poor customer service.
6. Even though I am a Canadian and it is my birthright, I will never post to tell you what the current weather is in Toronto, even if said weather is affecting my mood in a significant way.
7. I shall not commit the sin of linkage! No posts consisting of a one-line comment and then the exact same URL half the blogs on the net are also pointing at today.
8. As much as I like photos of other people’s cats, I promise not to acquire a cat for the purposes of posting its image to the journal. This would be insincere. And I’m allergic.
9. The next time my computer goes bung — and oh yes, we all know it will go bung — I will not make my subsequent return to journaling an account of my hellish tech experience, no matter how much my thwarted co-dependence on technology has laid me low.
10. The only light permitted will be natural light; the only music, source music. _Oh wait, wrong list_ . . .
11. I pledge never to wax mystical on the nature of the creative process.
12. I shall abjure, abominate and otherwise refrain from any and all cute quizzes in which one figures out what kind of action figure, abstract philosophical concept or bar of soap one might be.
13. I promise not to post in Spanish, as I do not speak, read or write it.

The blogsphere would be a better place if more people abided by these rules. I have tried to abide by a similar set of guidelines, but have been smart enough not to _articulate_ them. Now the rest of us can play the game of seeing how long it takes Mr. Laws to violate one of his pledges. Those who know him personally can start a betting pool, perhaps.

My confession: Of the above pledges, I am guilty of violating #5, #9, and #13 at least once but no more than thrice apiece. On numerous occasions (including this post) I’ve been, if not _technically_ guilty of #7, guilty of a related-but-lesser charge. My great failing is undoubtedly #12, though in my defense I must say that I pass along only a small fraction of the quizzes I come across.

Hobbit Happenings

The word has been out for a while that Peter Jackson wants to make a film version of _The Hobbit_; “this article”:http://apnews.myway.com//article/20040306/D814VP480.html (via “Slashdot”:http://www.slashdot.org/) moves the news definitively out of the realm of rumor. It’ll be a few years off, but, pending some lawyerly finagling between New Line and MGM, it looks like it’ll happen.

This is splendid news, although I am a little concerned by this bit:

Jackson said if he were going to direct the movie, he’d want it to feel like the rest of the trilogy . . . “I’d want Ian McKellen to be back as Gandalf, I’d want it to feel like it was part of the same mythology that we’ve done with ‘Lord of the Rings,’” Jackson said.

See, I think this is a mistake. _The Hobbit_ is written in a completely different style and has a different tone than the trilogy. It’s a children’s book. Jackson should make a children’s movie out of it. Instead of recycling the visual vocabulary of the LOTR films, Jackson should give his team a bit more work and come up with a whole new look and feel for Middle Earth, geared to a younger audience. Ian McKellen is more than welcome to return, of course, and I like the rumor that Liv Tyler has been approached to portray Arwen during the dwarves’ sojourn in Rivendell. (Bigger Tolkien geeks than me will know whether that works out historically — if Arwen was actually living in Imladris at that time, or if that was one of the periods when she dwelt in Lothlorien.) But the design, the directing style, and the writing should account for how different a novel _The Hobbit_ is; the film version shouldn’t be a prequel cut from the same cloth.

Regardless, though, I think I’ll see it when it comes out . . .

Monthly Blogroll Update

It’s spring cleaning time for the blogroll; I’ve removed several of the links to blogs I don’t actually read much any more. “Calpundit”:http://calpundit.com/ will enjoy some spotlight time in the Top Five this month (like he needs it). And there’s just a few additions:

* “Paranoia XP”:http://www.costik.com/paranoia/ is the “aforementioned”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000306.html blog by the developers of the new edition of a classic RPG.
* Two more friends have started blogs: “eologism”:http://eologism.blogspot.com/, by Christopher DeJong, and “Notes from my couch”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/scottsteg/, by Scott Stegenga. In the grand tradition of Polytropian nepotism, they are promptly linked.

They Might Be Giants: A Personal Discography

At first I planned to emulate “Jonathan’s”:http://www.jonathanlaughlin.com “Top 10 Beatles’ albums”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000298.html countdown. Instead I’ve opted for a chronological consideration of the major releases of the world’s finest band, They Might Be Giants. Sticking to the studio albums leaves a lot out, especially recently; maybe someday I’ll cover the live stuff, the children’s music, and other miscellany. By doing this in a single entry I’ve committed the sin of the uncomfortable middle, length-wise: each album gets far less attention than it deserves, but the whole is intolerably long. My apologies in advance.

How entrenched is the music of They Might Be Giants in my mind? Consider this scene: It’s December 2, and my daughter Ella is one day old. We’re in the hospital. Her mother is napping, and I’m holding her on my lap. I have no idea what I ought to be doing just now, but a song seems in order, so I try to think of something I can actually sing, where I won’t forget the tune or the lyrics.

The only songs that come to mind are by They Might Be Giants.

So I launch into a wobbly rendition of “Women and Men”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/women-men.htm (which is kind of appropriate, if you think about it), and carry on from there.

*They Might Be Giants (1986)*

I’d love to say that I was onto TMBG from the beginning. But when their debut album was released, I was living in West Africa and was too young and/or unhip to be into (or even aware of) alternative music of any kind. When “Don’t Let Start”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/dont-lets-start.html was creating buzz on MTV, I was ecstatic to be getting my hands on Cyndi Lauper’s second album six months after it had been released in the States. So like far too many people, I had to work backwards to get to their debut.

It’s difficult to think of the first two albums separately. They have that old-school TMBG sound — guitar, accordion, drum machine — in its purest form, song after song. These days, it’s easier to buy them albums together, with B-sides, in the compilation Then: The Early Years. But for me they’ll always be separate.

Highlights:

“Don’t Let’s Start”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/dont-lets-start.html — The quintessential TMBG song, in many ways. The first time you hear it, you think: “What a catchy little song. So quirky, so clever, so peppy. I do believe I shall dance.” The second time, you pay attention to the lyrics, and realize “My goodness! This may be the most morbid song I’ve ever heard. ‘No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful’? ‘I don’t want to live in this world anymore’? And yet, I still feel like dancing.” Three or four listens in, you find yourself touting the old “TMBG is actually a very _depressing_ band” line, and maybe three or four _dozen_ times after that, you’ve come out the other side and realize that somewhere under the surface morbidity, in ineffable synthesis with the music, there’s a subtext full of . . . groovy hope.

“Rabid Child”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/rabid-child.html — This is just your typical song about a strangely-afflicted child whose only connection to the outside world is CB radio. This album, more than any other (I’ll hazard to say) is full of the truly “out there” tunes that lack any sort of traditional pop song architecture and are full of unexpected, occasionally dissonant whistles, toots, and bells. “Rabid Child” is a good example. I’ve always thought it would be a cool idea to make a mix tape (er, mix CD) comprised of songs about eccentric, isolated children. This one and R.E.M.’s “The Wrong Child” would be obvious fits, but I haven’t been able to come up with more examples than that.

“She’s an Angel”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/shes-an-angel.html — This is, hands down, my favorite TMBG song ever. I have a strong suspicion that it’s one of the Johns’ favorites as well: they’ve managed to fit it in to every live show I’ve ever seen, often in one of those first-or-second-encore, culmination-of-everything slots. It all comes down to the plaintive twang just before the chorus:

Why, why did they send her?
Over anyone else
How should I react? These
Things happen to other people
They don’t happen at all, in fact

Is it a song about a guy who has fallen in love with a mortal woman whom he thinks is angelic, or is it a song about a guy who has fallen in love with an actual supernatural being? As is the case with many of their songs, this question only serves as a door to a hallway I’ve yet to reach the end of.

*Lincoln (1988)*

Ah, glorious Lincoln. The apotheosis of the early years. I’m not sure yet where I’ll put it in the rankings — I’ll do those last — but it’ll definitely be in the top three. To say that it’s the Giants album with the bleakest lyrics is missing the point; what they really are is the _cleverest_ lyrics in their oeuvre, and that’s saying a lot.

Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desk-top globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
My apartment looks upside down from there
Water spirals the wrong way out the sink
And her voice is a backwards record
It’s like a whirlpool and it never ends (Ana Ng)

Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders
What the part that isn’t thinking isn’t thinking of
Should you worry when the skullhead is in front of you
Or is it worse because it’s always waiting where your eyes don’t go? (Where Your Eyes Don’t Go)

Bonus points to anyone who knows where the Wallace Stevens reference is in this album. Musically, Lincoln has a tad more of a pop sensibility than the debut, though you still get whacked-out tracks like “Cage and Aquarium”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/cage-aquarium.html.

Highlights:

“Ana Ng”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/ana-ng.html — I was lying when I said that “Don’t Let’s Start” was the quintessential TMBG song. This one is. It’s OK to point newbies to DLS to get a layman’s understanding of the band, but those in the know know that this one has it all.

“Purple Toupee”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/purple-toupee.html — A capsule history of the Sixties gets put in a text blender, and this is what comes out. What the music has to do with that era, I don’t know, but it sure is cool.

“Kiss Me, Son of God”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/kiss-me-son-of-god.html — As it happens, the first copy of Lincoln I ever got my hands on was a tape copy that “Ed”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/ borrowed from his suitemates in college. They were a pair of religious-right types, very straight-laced and stuck up. Their tape didn’t include this song — they thought it naughty and possibly blasphemous, so they didn’t copy it over. This only makes sense if you have _no sense of irony whatsoever_.

*Flood (1990)*

Ah, Flood. My very first exposure to TMBG was hearing “Birdhouse In Your Soul”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/birdhouse-in-your-soul.html on a mix tape Jonathan made freshman year. It was one of those “I _have_ to listen to everything this band has ever done” moments. Some people need a few listens for Flood to grow on them. I wasn’t one of those people. The first time I sat down to listen to it start to finish, I started over and listened to it again. Five times. At least.

Flood was TMBG’s first major label album, with Elektra. They have a whole honeymoon-followed-by-bitter-divorce tale with the label that’ll be familiar to anyone who has watched a couple random episodes of VH1′s Behind the Music. The particulars in this case are described in the incredible documentary “Gigantic”:http://www.giganticfilm.com/, though there are far better reasons than that to watch it.

There exist people who feel that with Flood, TMBG lost their essence — traded away their avant-garde, stick-pounding glory for the big bucks of mainstream success. You don’t hear from those people much any more, partly because most folks _started_ listening to the band with Flood, and partly because they’re wrong. This album compromises nothing. It is, without a doubt, the “if you only ever listen to one They Might Be Giants album” album. If it lacks the lyrical punch of its predecessor, it compensates with the soaring power of its best songs, and the fact that there’s not a weak track in the bunch. Flood is also the album where the Johns show off their flexibility by dipping into a different musical style with almost every song. You still have to see them live to really appreciate the fact that they are musical geniuses and not just the geekboys of rock, but if you listen closely to Flood you can start to see it. Er, hear it.

Highlights:

“Birdhouse in Your Soul”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/birdhouse-in-your-soul.html — Even if you think you haven’t heard any TMBG, this is the song you’ve probably heard before. And if you listened to it and didn’t understand what the big deal was, you might as well stop reading now. Go read something else. There’s no help for you. This song is perfect.

“Your Racist Friend”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/your-racist-friend.html — This song is as close to gettin’ political as TMBG ever gets. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but Ed’s aforementioned suitemates from college had some cartoon or something on their bulletin board that struck us as not just ill-considered, but downright racist. So for a while Ed was saying that he was going to put this song on auto-repeat, crank the volume way up, and then leave and lock the doors behind him. I don’t recall if he ever did it.

“Particle Man”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/particle-man.html — All TMBG fans remember where they were when they had their first discussion about the ontological nature of Particle Man and Triangle Man. When you get right down to it, that’s Giants philosophy lite, though — a song like “Dead”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/dead.html is far more challenging. Still, it makes a great tune to sing along with if all you have on hand is an accordion, and you’re drunk.

“Road Movie to Berlin”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/road-movie-to-berlin.html — This song contains one of the best TMBG lines of all time:

We were once so close to heaven
Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest
Of the damned

A couple years ago, playing in DC, TMBG opened for themselves as the cover band Sapphire Bullets. They played all the songs in Flood, in order, and when they got to the end of “Road Movie” they spun it out into a ten minute long transcendent jam. It was glorious.

*Apollo 18 (1992)*

I’m torn here. The callous critic in me knows that this album and the next don’t live up to the ones preceding. Some might even call it a slump. But Apollo 18 was the first album to be released after I had discovered the band, and so I devoured it with a ravenous appetite. I still have a hard time pinning down just _why_ it’s not as good; it’s a subset of the difficulty I have in ranking the albums in the first place.

The coolest thing about Apollo 18 is certainly the “Fingertips”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/fingertips.html. They are twenty-one song snippets, each 5-10 seconds long, that appear as individual tracks at the end of the album. The idea (according to the liner notes) is to play the CD on random so that the snippets are sprinkled among the regular songs. All the Fingertips are catchy. Some you wish they had made into full songs. And some (‘darkened corridors,’ anyone?) rank high among TMBG songs all by themselves.

Highlights:

“The Statue Got Me High”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/the-statue-got-me-high.html — The high point of the album, lyrically speaking. What it’s about I’m still not sure, but equally strong arguments can be made that the song refers to “Moliere’s _Don Juan_”:http://www.tmbg.org/band-info/faq/#q28 or “the origin of Dr. Fate”:http://my.execpc.com/~icicle/DRFATE.html. Musically, the song gets at why the whole album is a step below its predecessors — it’s quirky, it’s peppy, but it lacks of the _elegance_ of an “Ana Ng” or a “Birdhouse.”

“Spider”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/spider.html — This is the last anecdote from college, I promise. For a semester or so, Phil Chase and I had a radio show on WCAL, Calvin College’s radio station. And for a while in there, Ed would come by and we’d put on a little improvised radio drama all about the arachnoid superhero implied by this song. Ed even made a “drawing”:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/misc/ehspider.gif for t-shirts that we never got around to making. I don’t know if it was any good, or if anybody was even listening, but we had a blast.

“Turn Around”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/turn-around.html — Each TMBG album has a song about dancing and death.

We were waving our arms out the window
Of a fast moving passenger train
Acting in an irresponsible fashion
Until the engineer whose back had been turned
And who we thought would find us highly amusing
Quickly swiveled his head around
And his face which was a paper-white mask of evil
Sang us this song

It’s that “paper-white mask of evil” that makes the verse, don’t you agree?

*John Henry (1994)*

With this album, They Might Be Giants underwent a sea change, apparent both in their live shows and in their studio releases. They got a band. Up until now, they had been a duo, with their sound coming from the studio tinkering of John & John. Starting with John Henry they actually added some backing musicians to their lineup. Predictably, the people who hadn’t cried “Sellout!” with Flood did so now. And they were still wrong — TMBG was never in it for the money, and have long-since abandoned big-label deals altogether. But admittedly, this is a transitional work by a band still adjusting to things like a horn section and an actual, living drummer. The Johns hit a little bit of a songwriting slump here, too, with duds and filler like “Stomp Box”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/stomp-box.html and “Thermostat”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/thermostat.html.

Highlights:

“No One Knows My Plan”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/no-one-knows-my-plan.html — If “the Brain”:http://www.duryea.org/pinky/ was put into jail and they made a musical out of it, this song would be in it.

“Destination Moon”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/destination-moon.html — For some reason I always get this song and “No One Knows My Plan” mixed up, like maybe they both belong in the same musical. If so, then the Brain has been transferred to the hospital and is plotting an escape by rocket. Or something.

*Factory Showroom (1996)*

Here we have TMBG’s fuller sound, fully realized. The songs are as mainstream as the band has ever gotten, then or since, but they remain unmistakably Giantish, and the lyrics have lost none of their edge. The horns are left behind in favor of a five-guys-in-a-band sound — not garage-y, mind you, but closer to the garage end of the spectrum. The extra three guys that recorded this album with the Johns aren’t the ones that helped the full-band sound reach its apex, though. That honor belongs to the Dans: Dan Hickey on drums, Dan Miller on guitar, Dan Weinkauf on bass. Those are the guys you’ll see up on stage alongside Flansburgh and Linnell these days, and (in no small part because of them) these are the best days in the band’s history to see them up on stage.

Highlights:

“Till My Head Falls Off”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/till-my-head-falls-off.html — My favorite cutting-up-the-dance-floor TMBG song. Their lyrical obsession with death is channeled here into the story of an old man who refuses to give in:

Hitting every pocket on my shirt, pants and overcoat
And I’m hitting them again but I don’t know where I put my notes
Clearing my throat, and gripping the lectern I smile and face my audience
Clearing his throat and smiling with his hands on the bathroom sink

And when I lean my head against the frosted shower stall
I see stuff through the glass that I don’t recognize at all

And I’m not done
And I won’t be till my head falls off
Though it may not be a long way off

When I’m ninety I plan to play this song really really loud and freak out my grandchildren.

“New York City”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/new-york-city.html — One of the few songs not written by either of the Johns that they play regularly. It’s a sweet paean to their hometown. _Gigantic_ has a scene of them singing it at a Tower Records on September 10, 2001. The significance of the date is left unspoken. I suspect they’ve played it at every show since then.

“James K. Polk”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/james-k-polk.html — This song did a lot to encourage the whole “They’re the band with the _wacky_ songs!” meme. “See! They do this crazy song about an obscure American president! How . . . wacky!” In particular I remember a time when Ray Suarez was interviewing them on Talk of the Nation: he asked why they decided to write ‘educational’ songs. “You just don’t get it, do you?” I yelled at the radio. “It’s not because it’s educational. It’s . . . well . . . I can’t really articulate _why_ they do it, but if you get it you get it. Get it? Oh, never mind . . .”

Bonus points if you were aware that this song first appeared as a B-side on the “Istanbul Not Constantinople” single, six years earlier.

“I Can Hear You”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/i-can-hear-you.html — I have been accused by friends of reading way too much into this song. It’s gimmicky in that it was recorded at the Edison Laboratories on Thomas Alva’s 1898 wax cylinder phonograph.

I can hear you
Just barely hear you
I can just barely hear you

This is a warning
Step away from the car
This car is protected by Viper

Guess where I am
I’m calling from the plane
I’ll call you when I get there

You won’t hear a buzz
But I’m buzzing you in
I’m buzzing you in

What’s your order?
I can super-size that
Please bring your car around

I can hear you
Just barely hear you
I can just barely hear you

Obviously, the verses describe a series of situations where the audio is fuzzy and hard-to-understand, just like the song itself. Where I go off the deep end is in seeing a subtext about the fundamental difficulty (and perhaps futility) of human communication through all the noise and static of life. And yet we try. It’s the fourth verse that gets me: “But I’m buzzing you in / I’m buzzing you in.” It may be hard to hear each other, but it is still in us to reach out and open the door . . . I get all weepy just thinking about it. It’s true that the text by itself doesn’t support my interpretation — there’s something in the tone of John’s voice that completes the meaning.

*Mink Car (2001)*

There’s a big chunk of time between Factory Showroom and this album, during which the band went in a lot of different directions. They dropped Elektra and went back to recording independently. They embraced the Internet music revolution by becoming one of the first bands (possibly _the_ first band) to release an online-only mp3 album. They collaborated with “McSweeney’s”:http://www.mcsweeneys.net/. They did music work for a number of TV shows — most people recognize their theme song for Malcolm in the Middle; fewer folks realize that the catchy theme for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is also their handiwork. They did a lot of work on an album of children’s songs, No!; it wasn’t actually released until after Mink Car, though. And they kept up an impressive touring schedule, with the aforementioned Dans backing up the indefatigable Johns.

Mink Car’s release date was September 11, 2001. I picked it up two days later at the Borders in Pentagon City, a quarter-mile from the smoldering Pentagon itself. The two stayed connected in my mind for a while: “The world is turned upside-down, but at least TMBG has another album out.” With time and distance, it’s clear that this is by no means their best work. Even though the Dans were part of the recording, it feels much more like a duo album than a full band effort. It most closely resembles Flood, especially because of the wide variety of musical styles it manages to bring in, but though most of the songs are good, none are truly great. A number of the tracks are remixes of things recorded earlier for other purposes. It pains me to say it, but I think the boys mailed this one in.

Highlights:

“Hopeless Bleak Despair”:http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/Hopeless-Bleak-Despair-lyrics-They-Might-Be-Giants/55EA657889D2162748256B17002B29B0 — Appropriately enough given the title, this is the most depressing TMBG song ever. All the stuff I said earlier about coming out the other side and finding a message of hope doesn’t apply here. The song is just plain depressing. There’s a kind of purity to that.

“Older”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/older.html — This is one of those remixes. It originally appeared on Long Tall Weekend, the mp3 album. It’s an incredibly simple song, and one that perfectly distills the band’s sense of humor and obsession with mortality. You have to hear the relentless rhythm to get the full effect:

You’re older that you’ve ever been
and now you’re even older
and now you’re even older
and now you’re even older

You’re older that you’ve ever been
and now you’re even older
and now you’re older still

time – is marching on
and time – is still marching on

*The Ranking*

It ain’t easy, but running through the albums has helped me see clearly enough to put them in order of merit. Here they are, best to worst:

1. Flood
2. Lincoln
3. Factory Showroom
4. They Might Be Giants
5. Apollo 18
6. John Henry
7. Mink Car

The only real toss-up was between Apollo 18 and the self-entitled album, which are interchangeable in slots 4 & 5 as far as I’m concerned. The rest fell into place rather easily.

*What’s Next?*

They have a new label, and a “new EP”:http://www.barsuk.com/web.cgi?bark035 coming out April 6. This is good news, because it means a new album won’t be too far behind. You can bet I’ll review it here when that time comes.

Bring It On

Bow down before Worch! He is invincible! He rules the sea! All who behold him tremble in their scales!

Worch Oscar Agility 9 | Strength 10 | Stamina 7 Battle Rating 26 Origins Worch was bought at Walmart Can your fishy beat Worch ?

Hat tip to Luke McGuff.

Getting Down and Dirty

I was at a dinner party a couple months ago where the conversation turned toward politics. One guy there, an economist (yeah, it was a really swingin’ party), was a Dean supporter who thought that his guy had a key advantage: once nominated, he could turn to his base and say “OK, Bush has $200 million. We can’t match that with big money donations. But if one million people can donate $200, we’re there.”

If Kerry’s smart he’ll go for a similar approach, though he won’t have as easy a time as Dean would in generating that much grassroots support. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try, though. He could get somewhere with people like me. For the first time in either of our lives, Suanna and I are thinking about donating money to a political campaign. This has nothing to do with Kerry, of course, and everything to do with replacing the current Administration. In the past I’d always thought of donating to a political campaign as a seedy sort of thing to do — if you have the money to spend, wouldn’t it be better spent on a well-run charity? At least that way you know your money is going to have some sort of material effect on a cause you care about. A political donation only increases the _odds_ that your candidate will win. And when you consider the possibility that that candidate, once in office, won’t be able to accomplish everything he or she promises, it’s a double risk.

So it’s kind of like backgammon. Most times it’s a very bad idea to slot a checker that’s under threat by two of your opponent’s checkers, because odds are that one of them will hit you on the next roll. But if by slotting you’re allowing yourself to make a prime or close out your board on the next roll, it may well be worth it. Backgammon strategy is all about balancing risk and reward. So are campaign donations.

This time around, negotiating that balance is a no-brainer. The election will be close enough that a donation isn’t a guaranteed loss. And the benefit if the gamble pays off is high. Even if Kerry fails to do what he hopes to do — if he’s constantly blocked by Congress and ends up being a do-nothing President — he’s preferable to Bush, whose Administration’s actions are actively _hurting_ our prosperity and security.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has “plenty of links”:http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/004856.html#004856 for donating money. My own risk-reward outlook stops short of wanting to support the DNC monetarily, as he advocates. Your mileage may vary.

La Chouette

chouette (Fr.) — (informal adjective) cute, smashing, nice; (noun) owl

I wasn’t aware of the second definition, but it’s the one that best fits the term as it’s used in the game of kings. A chouette is a form of backgammon played by a group of people. On one side is the “box,” playing by herself. On the other is everyone else, headed up by the “captain.” The team is allowed to consult on their moves, and if they win, the box goes to the back of the line in the team and the captain becomes the box for the next game. If the box wins she stays the box and the captain goes to the back of the line. There are plenty of complications and variations that I won’t get into here.

The format always seemed interesting to me, so last weekend I wrangled up some friends to give a chouette a go. It turned out to be quite a bit of fun. The box is at a decided disadvantage since the team has a number of perspectives on the right move — at the very least, the team is never going to fail to make an obvious move because at least one person will always be paying enough attention. But that just makes it that much more thrilling to win when you’re the box. We played with each person making cube decisions individually, and I wouldn’t want to do it any other way — it made for all sorts of gloriously wacky situations. The games end up taking much longer with all the discussion, but in a way the discussion itself is the point. I was surprised to see how many differences of opinion and varieties of play style there were. There’s also a nice social dynamic to the whole thing: the box and the captain are usually focused on the game, but the other team members are standing around with half a mind on the game and the other half on swiggin’ beer and talkin’ trash. (Well, OK, the box and the captain are talkin’ trash too. Backgammon encourages a lot of trash talkin’. Or maybe it’s just us.)