DOCUMENTARIES

This is from tumblr, but spent more than 30 seconds writing it so I am putting it here too ok!

nerd documentaries (that I have seen [in kind of order from favorite to awful]):

Wordplay - CROSSWORD PUZZLES/tournaments. This is really rad and it has Cake and They Might Be Giants songs in it also Jon Stewart and Tyler Hinman the really young crossword genius kid wears a Trogdor shirt at the tournament and Will Shortz is a neat man and all the people the documentary crew follows are cool except for one of them who is a really kind of pathetic woman who reminds me a lot of my old English teacher. Also Merl Reagle. And Bill Clinton makes a cameo, and I find his hands really attractive? In a non-weird way.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns - THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS! I don't think this is an actually good documentary from a layperson standpoint but for super fans of the band it is kind of heaven. Otherwise, I feel like it just comes off as creepy and pretentious and I don't like to see Sarah Vowell speak, or Syd Straw. There're a lot of full and partial live songs in the documentary itself and also a ridiculous amount of bonus features which is great. And the documentary's commentary track is wonderful but I wish Sarah Vowell would really just shut up!

Helvetica - HELVETICA. I love typefaces and Helvetica is a good one in my opinion. Some of the people they interview have very interesting and insightful things to say and some equate Helvetica to George Bush or something. But the designers who aren't wackos are pretty fascinating and made me think a lot about the purpose of typography and how Helvetica became the kind of paragon or zenith- zeitgeist!!!!! of stuff and the complete 180 design and type made around that time (think the frills and curls of 50's ads, the Coca-Cola logo, example, whatever-- to the American Airlines logo which was designed in Helvetica in 1967 and is still the exact same today and is as sleek and modern as ever).

Spellbound - SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE. Does this sound like a musical robot? I love following spelling bees, but I never participated in any other than the basic school-type level; I purposefully misspelled words because I hate attention and those kind of things make me so nervous and awful awful awful. But in 8th grade my friend Sarah won the local and regional things and went to Washington DC and I saw her on ESPN and she spelled facade right and a bunch of other words but missed basenji, a kind of dog that doesn't bark, she spelled it basengee, but she placed 30-somethingth, and it was very exciting. Nerdy kids make me very happy, though some of the ones the crew follows, and a lot of spelling bee kids in general, are unsettlingly dedicated and so socially screwed up it's kind of sad and then there's Harry Altman.

The awful ones:

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - COMPETITIVE DONKEY KONG PLAYING... I just thought this was pathetic. It all seemed so sad and desperate. There are a lot of disputed facts surrounding the whole competition and the documentary lies about/omits important details. You've got a good bad guy in Billy Mitchell though, creepy long haired guy who sells his own brand of hot sauce and is a big jerk to everyone. And his challenger, opponent, down on his luck honest man father husband good guy kind of rookie Steve Wiebe. I don't know, his story was so sad and pathetic and pitiful, it was weird to watch and depressing. He doesn't get a higher score than Billy Mitchell during the tournament and WOE WOE WOE. Then he beats it in his garage by himself later. All star in everyone's hearts true champion real hero fair fighter. Blehgh.

Word Wars - SCRABBLE. This documentary is gross. Most of the people are gross and weird and creepy. There's a black guy who swears all the time but also talks to kids in a classroom about words or something. There's this weird wiry/wired guy who takes a million vitamin supplements and who wears really old shirts that are so torn up they're basically rags, and he's very negative. There is an old unsettling bald guy who talks about his chi and does yoga or whatever the heck it is and balance and forces and energies. There is a bald, frail, fragile, rodent-esque man who has acid reflux who spits up stomach bile into a cloth all the time and hacks and makes a lot of bad noises. It felt like he could throw up or die at any moment. Those were all the people the documentary followed, and they were all too creepy and flawed to root for. I forgot who won the tournament.

can we achieve to destroy by starving it

on john green and unicorns

raocow twitter

"einstein watermelon on a toilet"

"phyllis, this is a spoon"

big big big big big big big fake

blood alone moves the wheels of hystory

hysterical things to say

site:blogspot.com "horse pooping" photo

i can do cartwheels for a mile

rachael ray skydiving deal with valerie

imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

"i don't do anything ever"

"who's your little whosit?"

john green paper towns nerds catfish

a small yet hysterical egg

animated claw marks

chapstick counterproductive

eyeitches inside wats the reason

flansburgh how pathetic our situation

i hate john green

late late show destroyed by bob barker

mario incandenzas police lock

sentence of destroyed

they'll need a crane john linnell crying

what happens if i put hashtags in the 4chan name box with exclamation points

"full to the brim of vitamin b"

a big sentence

Blog about self-sacrificial tuna sandwich and my personal martyrdom. Can't get it worked out the way I want to; sandwich choice saved this dang planet and no one even thanked me.

A DREAM A DREAM

I was at my college, in an English class that I never did the work for and always was ridiculously worried about going to, since I never did the work and sometimes completely forgot about the class until it was going, frequently just skipping class because I didn't remember. It was in a room like my old Bible classroom in high school. Sam and Ashleigh, two people who graduated the year before me in high school in real life, were in the class too, and Ashleigh was sitting to my left and Sam to my right. I don't remember how he came in or was introduced or anything, but then John Flansburgh is there, like he's scouting for a college kid to do a thing, he asks Ashleigh a kind of trivia question about who he is, if she knows who he is. She gets it right and says something about They Might Be Giants, but obviously isn't very familiar with the band. Flans asks the class in general, something like "Okay yes we are TMBG, but more specifically, we are known for one thing, kind of our hallmark." And I'm really confused for a second, and then say Flood; I was a little confused/wondering why he reduced the band to just that or asked that as a question, like out of all the stuff they'd done, he asks that as if it's all they're known for, or something. He smiles, tells me to stand up, and starts asking a few other questions, doing this thing where he stands right right in front of me, really playfully, like I can't even really move because maybe he's stood on the tips of my shoes with the heels of his, and it's fun and funny and just a really playful thing, like something you'd do if you were flirting with someone, only he's not, but it's the same kind of feeling of the whole thing and my face is pretty much in his back and I laugh and keep trying to step backwards to get more balanced or whatever and WHATEVER, he asks me a few more questions, maybe, and then says that he'd like me to come with them and be a/the contestant on Stump the Band (which is an actual segment of the show they used to do, but was completely different from this thing that they are asking me to do, before it was they took requests from the audience for any kind of song, and they'd try to play it, but in my dream it was some kind of thing where they asked ME questions, maybe about the band, maybe about something else, in my dream I never knew exactly what it was I was going to do, but it didn't bother me at all, in the dream, which is weird because normally I'd be a complete wreck if I didn't know). So I go/Flans leads me?to/through a bunch of parts of the college, this really complex trip of endless hallways and narrow corridors. At some part we were in an art supply store, I think, just browsing around, and Linnell was looking for some stuff for Henry, and I told him about this other store, a Pat Catans, that was really good for finding everything you need all at once, and cheaply priced, and was well organized (which is true, it's really a cool store and I got some of my drawing supplies there). We keep going through all these different places until we stop in some open room thing. Linnell and Dan are there now, just them, Linnell's the one that's been leading me around. He smiles and says "Bet you didn't know all this was at your school." And I laugh and say no, I had no idea these rooms/buildings existed, because it's clear that we've been walking for a while and through all these places. I see Danny Weinkauf through a window, in another room, and say something about how he was in my class and how cool he is and etc (my literal actual mind always gets confused or forgets stuff in dreams, and as a result, past dream actions get muddied or mixed up later on, so now instead of Flans being the one there, it's Danny. I actually remember, a little later in the dream, that I got it wrong in my dream, that it was Flans not Danny, like my mind's aware that it made a mistake and it kind of manifests itself and I get worried in the dream that I said that to Danny if he wasn't really there, but at the same time I think, in my dream, "hahaha my brain forgot what happened earlier in the dream" and it's really meta and confusing and I'm getting confused right now typing this so). I go with Linnell and Dan, Linnell is the leader now, we walk some more and talk about things and it's really casual and non-thing-like. We get into a car; Linnell drives, I sit next to him up front, and Dan sits in the back. I'm really excited but at the same time it's super casual and like it's cool and I'm not freaked out like I would be. At one point the car is now a plane in a similar my-brain-forgetting-what's-going-on-in-the-dream thing. Some time during I twitter and say JOHN LINNELL'S ARM IS TOUCHING MY ARM and it is because the car/plane is small and but I'm not freaked out or excited, even, very much, just super happy, (and I am taunting Blaze, with the tweet) and it's a weird and cool vibe. We are flying to their next show, we fly past the Q in Cleveland, don't think it was actually in Cleveland in my dream, and Flans, who is suddenly in the car/plane/in my dream again for just this sentence, says some funny thing about how hah! the place they played at the Q last week and tonight's show is at a bigger place. Which sounds cocky and dumb but it was just funny and whatever in the dream. I talk with Linnell a lot while he flies, he says a bunch of stuff about Henry that I can't remember, but I think he was into art, painting and drawing. He keeps making references to Ohio State and me "putting on the crimson"/"crimson pride" which I actually don't know if that's a phrase or the color of OSU really, even. At some time we are there, or somewhere that is not in a plane/car, and Flansburgh gives me a little paper with instructions of what to do. The first point says to just dress (for the Stump the Band thing, in my dream I'm still not sure what it is that is, but another point on the list is that Danny or Flans, I have a hard time telling them apart in this dream?will explain what I need to do/what it is) the way they suggest and not make a big deal about it because it just has to be that way. I'm instructed to wear "a red suit, a My Bloody Valentine shirt, and jeans." Confused how I'm supposed to wear a suit and jeans but guess they just meant a suit jacket. In reality I have no idea who My Bloody Valentine is other than that they are a band. In the dream I don't know either and think it's weird. Then I woke up.

I've decided a thing!

I think I'm going to post my Picture Every Day Two Words things here in addition to tumblr/flickr. And maybe I'll write a little thing with each one because pictures lend themselves nicely to that kind of blurby writing.

BIG BIG FAKE FAKE LIES

Okay so this was my final research paper for English my senior year. Blogger formatting is terrible; I tried my best etc etc it looks like crap, sorry.

The fantastically amazing people over at tmbw.net, This Might Be A Wiki, used a ton of this for their page about the band, which you can read here. I just kind of put it out there and they edited and linked it all up, and it's really really great.

Here is the Thing That I Wrote About the Rock Band They Might Be Giants Complete With In-Text Citations and Hyperlinked Works Cited Screw You MLA Formatting You Are Terrible and Repressive:

“We like playing fun rock music, for the love of it. We only pretend to have a plan for world domination,” answered John Flansburgh, when asked by an interviewer to set the world straight on the purpose of the band he and his high school friend, John Linnell, had founded in 1982 (Dougherty). That band was They Might Be Giants, and twenty-six years later, the two Johns are still making music. They Might Be Giants, loosely classified as alternative rock, is a prolific, unique, pioneering band whose groundbreaking achievements have helped pave the way for other alternative musicians.

On May 6th, 1960, John Flansburgh was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts to Earl and Louise “Polly” Flansburgh. His father is a successful architect whose firm has designed over two hundred schools. His mother founded Boston-by-Foot, a non-profit organization that gives tours of Boston. He has an older brother, Paxus, who is a political activist. Flansburgh married Robin Goldwasser in 1996. She occasionally provides vocals for the band’s songs.

Flansburgh is half They Might Be Giants’ singing and songwriting power. He plays guitar, left-handedly. He is the “businessman” of the band; he’s greatly involved in orchestrating shows and in the design of much of the art/visual aspect of the band such as music videos and album art. He’s had many side projects, the most notable being his band Mono Puff, which released four EPs and two studio albums.

John Linnell was born June 12th, 1959, in New York. He moved to Lincoln when he was nine. His father, Dr. Zenos M. Linnell, is a retired psychiatrist, and his mother is a poet. Linnell has a brother and sister and possibly other siblings. John Linnell married Karen Brown in 1997, and they have a son, Henry, who was born in 1999. Henry has done vocal work on a few of their children’s albums’ tracks.

In concerts, Linnell mainly sings and plays the keyboards or accordion, but he also plays the saxophone, clarinet, Kaoss Pad, and stylophone. He shares songwriting duties with Flansburgh. Before starting TMBG with Flansburgh, John played keyboards in a new wave band called The Mundanes. Linnell has released three solo EPs and a studio album.

Flansburgh and Linnell both grew up in Lincoln, a small, upper class, suburban town in Massachusetts. Though they went to the same elementary school, they did not know each other. Flansburgh recalls being made to write a get well card for Linnell after an accident: “It was this singularly bogus thing, but because our schoolmate John had to go to the hospital, we all had to write him letters saying ‘Get well soon!’” (Schnack). In high school, Flansburgh somewhat sought Linnell out, showing him a play he’d written in which there were 150 acts, each being one line long. Linnell was a little taken aback by Flansburgh’s outgoingness; while he himself was reserved and quiet, Flans was “gregarious” and “kind of interested in just talking” (Schnack). "John was always calling me up, and I didn't know who he was really. He'd call and go, 'So. Linnell. What's happenin'?” (Weiskopf).

They came to be friends through the school newspaper. John Linnell joined the paper’s staff his freshman year and eventually worked his way up to senior editor. Flansburgh also became involved with the paper, and John and John became good friends spending long weekend nights working on putting the paper together. Both of them also liked to draw and, in addition to submitting cartoons to the newspaper, made comic books to distribute throughout the school.

Some time during high school, Flansburgh acquired a sound-to-sound tape recorder, with which he and John made “electronic recordings. They were very strange and kind of unlistenable in a way” (Schnack). After high school, in 1981, John and John ended up moving into the same apartment building in Brooklyn on the same day. The first actual song they recorded was a Yoko Ono cover, “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow), which they sang with Rod Serling-esque voices (Schnack). They continued their collaboration, writing songs and making recordings.

Their first show was in the summer of 1982 at a Sandinista rally in Central Park. The crowd was almost all Spanish, and the band was introduced as “El Grupo de Rock ’n’ Roll.” Flansburgh played guitar while Linnell played the clarinet and keyboards. In January of 1983, the Johns played their first show under the name They Might Be Giants. They took the name from a George C. Scott film about a millionaire who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. When asked about the origin of their name, Linnell said, “It's the name of a movie. It's not a very interesting answer, unfortunately; it's not a very good movie and it doesn't hold that much significance for us, particularly, except that we thought the name was good” (Throwrug).

In 1984, Linnell broke his wrist in a bike accident, and Flansburgh’s apartment was burglarized. Though they couldn’t perform or play shows, they still wanted to produce more music. Flansburgh started Dial-a-Song, an answering machine that played a song when his phone number, (718)-387-6962, was called. The song would be changed daily; they used Dial-a-Song as a way to motivate themselves to write more songs. In the documentary Gigantic, Flans remarks that “anything with long sustained notes makes it rewind” because the machine would interpret the noise as the end-of-message beep and that most of the songs on their first album were short and staccato, just so they would work on Dial-a-Song. Dial-a-Song lived on through the 80’s,90’s, and 00’s, offering hundreds of demos, song fragments, and exclusive unreleased tracks to the public.

Throughout the early 80’s, Flansburgh and Linnell played different underground places in NYC such as 8BC, Darinka, The Pyramid Club, and CBGB. The Johns relied very heavily on the reel-to-reel tape recorder during their shows - “playing straight through, pressing play and going” (Schnack). With John Flansburgh playing guitar and Linnell playing accordion or saxophone, the tape recorder and drum machine were the third member of the band, supplying backing tracks and percussion. Early shows were very strange, incorporating props like puppets and giant fezzes and “The Stick,” a literal stick with a microphone attached, which would be banged on the floor to produce a reverb percussion. Al Houghton, who helped produce early TMBG releases, said of their shows, “Some musicians just thought they were ridiculous, you know, it was like the antithesis of the musician” (Schnack).

The style of their songs was very diverse, and critics had a hard time pinning down exactly in what genre they belonged. The Johns called themselves a rock group, and in some ways they were, though very few of their songs were technically “rock.” Steve Dougherty described them in People Weekly as a “mock-arty-garage-polka-metal-country rock duo.” Though some wrote them off as a novelty act, they slowly built up a following and produced a full demo tape in 1985, which they sold at shows. The tape caught the attention of Michael Small, who then reviewed the tape in People Weekly. The review was very positive, and ended by saying, “These guys should definitely change their name. It won’t be long before they really are giants.” This gave the Johns their first national exposure and garnered the interest of Bar/None Records.

They Might Be Giants signed on with Bar/None in 1986 and released their first album They Might Be Giants, known to their fans as The Pink Album, later that year. Reviews of the album were generally positive, though some thought They Might Be Giants to be just a quirky, wacky novelty act. In a review for Rolling Stone, critic Jim Farber states, “They're going to have to create a whole new category of weird to contain They Might Be Giants. After all, what other group around these days would release an album with nineteen songs that incorporate genres from art pop to country to polka, all operating under titles like ‘Youth Culture Killed My Dog’? … No matter how far afield the duo ventures, though, huge pop hooks always keep things firmly anchored. Also tying the genre gyrations together is a relentless, distanced irony, accented by hysterically evasive lyrics.”

Earlier that year, video director Adam Bernstein had seen them at Darinka and told John and John that he would direct a music video for them and pay for it. They decided on the song “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” and spent $1500 and two days in Williamsburg shooting it (Schnack). The video mainly consists of John and John lip synching and dancing in the style of the band New Edition (Direct From Brooklyn). The video was played on television, on MTV, a month before their debut album came out. TMBG collaborated again with Adam on a video for “Don’t Let’s Start,” a song with a wonderfully upbeat tempo but dismal and gloomy lyrics - “No one in the world ever gets what they want/And that is beautiful/Everybody dies frustrated and sad/And that is beautiful” (Direct From Brooklyn). With a budget of $5000, the black and white, jerky, almost spastic, sped-up video was the first indie video to go into the regular rotation on MTV. Sue Drew, former employee of Elektra records, said on their MTV exposure: “I think people were absolutely stunned, because here was a band that seemed to be coming from nowhere and had no relation to anything else that was going on musically” (Schnack).

1988 saw the release of They Might Be Giants’ second album, Lincoln. Containing eighteen songs ranging in style from blues to salsa, Lincoln sold well, spending nineteen weeks on “The Billboard 200” chart. One of the singles from the album, “Ana Ng”, became the band’s first charting single, peaking at #11 on “Billboard Modern Rock Tracks” (Lincoln). They Might Be Giants made three music videos for the album, “Ana Ng,” “Purple Toupee,” and “They’ll Need a Crane.”

The video for “Ana Ng” was one of the band’s most popular videos. The song’s narrator laments over the fact that he and his soul mate, Ana Ng, will never meet. Again, the melody is upbeat with profound, depressing lyrics. “Everything sticks like a broken record/Everything sticks until it goes away/And the truth is we don’t know anything” (Direct From Brooklyn). Filmed at fireman training grounds in New York, the video has a strange, really serious, almost military air about it. The Johns and Adam Bernstein decided not to use lip synch in the video; in its place is very stiff synchronized dancing.

Much of They Might Be Giants’ subject matter during their early years was very dark and dismal. TMBG’s manager, Jamie Kitman, summed up their complex lyrical style: “They’re funny, but they’re sad” (Schnack). Flansburgh has noted that their early songs were downers. “There’s a pretty relentless thread in the text of our songs, especially in the first fifteen years of our songwriting that’s pretty relentlessly, you know, kind of earth-shatteringly dower” (Schnack). For the most part, the lyrics of their songs take a back seat, in matters of importance, to the music. Sometimes the Johns, especially Linnell, add words almost as an afterthought, and for them, usually lyrics do not hold deep meaning. When asked about the significance of his lyrics, Linnell says that they are what they are. “People get everything, and the things they think they don’t get don’t exist” (Schnack).

In 1989, the band signed with a major label, Elektra Records. The following year, Flood, their third and best selling album of all time, was released. The album went gold in December of 1993. The record contains three of the songs for which They Might Be Giants are best known, “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Particle Man,” and their cover version of The Four Lads song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” After Flood, They Might Be Giants’ popularity was at its peak. They were frequent guests on many television programs in the US and in the UK, including Top of the Pops, 120 Minutes, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Television Appearances).

“Birdhouse in Your Soul” is the band’s highest-charting single of all time, in the US as well as in the UK. It reached #3 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart and #6 on the UK Singles Chart (Flood). The song is sung from the point of view of a nightlight. It has a beautiful melody and circular, slightly cryptic lyrics such as “I’m your only friend/I’m not your only friend/But I’m a little glowing friend/But really I’m not actually your friend/But I am” (Schnack). The video for the song was filmed at New York County’s Surrogate Courthouse. The song has an anthemic quality to it, and the music video reflects that, with extras wearing placards saying “Stop rock video”, boldly marching in a kind of protest around John Flansburgh and John Linnell, who are on a platform in the middle of a large, ornate room (Direct From Brooklyn).

The songs “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Particle Man” were made into animated music videos for Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures. For many fans, this was their first exposure to They Might Be Giants. John Flansburgh has said that it was strange to him that so many people became fans through the videos because he and John had absolutely nothing to do with their production. Linnell says, “It was the easiest video we ever did” (Direct From Brooklyn).

In 1992, They Might Be Giants released their fourth studio album, Apollo 18. The album, presumably because of its few spacey songs, drew the attention of NASA, who had declared 1992 International Space Year. They Might Be Giants were selected to be “Musical Ambassadors.” The Johns did not know exactly what their role was supposed to be. John Linnell related his uncertainty in an interview with Joab Jackson: “We don't have a super clear idea of what it is we're supposed to be saying about it. … We're supposed to be included on lists of events happening in connection with International Space Year. In other words, on a particular month they'll say in some town there's this lecture about space telescopes and then there's this They Might Be Giants concert. It does seem kind of weird—disconnected to us.” When Flans was asked about what being Musical Ambassadors meant, he replied, “It doesn’t mean anything, actually. We’re like the musical equivalent of Tang” (Guiste).

The album was, on the whole, darker both lyrically and musically that their past efforts. The Johns employed more of an electronic sound than previous records. One of the unique features of the album were the last twenty-one tracks, all short songs, collectively known as “Fingertips.” Typically no more than fifteen or twenty seconds long, they were designed to utilize the shuffle mode on most CD players, being interspersed throughout the album. Two music videos were made from this album - “The Statue Got Me High” and “Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).”

Linnell and Flansburgh had been pressured by Elektra since Flood to expand to a full band and get backing musicians. At first, they were wary of the idea, not wanting to sell out. John Flansburgh said, “And I think our natural response was, you know, just leave us alone, because what do you know…‘What do you know about how to be a success in rock?’ Here we are, barely successful at all…” (Schnack). Some of their faithful, most hardcore fans actually boycotted shows, telling people not to go see them because they’d gotten a backing band. The Johns finally agreed after Apollo 18 and were joined by Kurt Hoffman, Tony Maimone, and Jon Feinberg. They embarked on the “Don't Tread On The Cut-Up Snake World Tour” in 1992, playing over fifty shows.

John Henry, the band’s fifth studio album, was released in 1994. Their first album utilizing a full band, the record is much more horn- and guitar-laden than previous records. Though John Henry spent only 4 weeks on the “Billboard 200”, it reached, at its peak, #64, higher than any of their earlier records (John Henry). There was a music video made for the song “Snail Shell.” The album’s title references the man vs. machine legend of John Henry, referring to the band’s recent switch to “man” (human drummer) from “machine” (drum machine). With twenty songs and nearly an hour’s worth of music, John Henry is TMBG’s longest studio record. The album determined the band’s new, full sound while keeping all the lyrical and musical quirks for which TMBG had become known.

In 1996, the band released the album Factory Showroom. The album only had thirteen tracks, but the individual songs were longer than on previous records. It was their second album with a full band, utilizing the talents of Brian Doherty on the drums, Eric Schermerhorn on lead guitar, and Graham Maby on bass. The album spent two weeks on the “Billboard 200,” peaking at #89 (Factory Showroom). They Might Be Giants left Elektra Entertainment after the release of Factory Showroom and joined Restless Records.

Severe Tire Damage, a live album, was released in 1998. Three of its tracks were studio tracks. The band made one of the studio songs, “Doctor Worm,” into a music video that was directed by John Flansburgh. The album contained seven hidden tracks, each one of them about the film series Planet of the Apes.

They Might Be Giants partnered with eMusic, an online subscription music site, to release the full-length studio album Long Tall Weekend exclusively online. The band was the first major artist to release a full-length album exclusively online, and, as a result, They Might Be Giants were the most downloaded artist on the internet in 1999 and also in 2000 (Schnack). In 2001, they collaborated with eMusic again with TMBG Unlimited, a service in which users could subscribe to monthly albums of live tracks and rarities from the band. TMBG Unlimited lasted until January of 2002 (TMBG Unlimited).

In 2000, They Might Be Giants provided the theme song to the television show Malcolm in the Middle, entitled “Boss of Me,” and written by Flansburgh who called it “a thirty second song I couldn’t finish for a year” (Boss Of Me). The song won the Giants their first Grammy award. They Might Be Giants also wrote and performed all the incidental music for the first two seasons of the show.

TMBG has written and performed theme music for many television shows. The band performs the theme for the fake news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as well as writing all the incidental music for the show. Their song “Dr. Evil” was in the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. The Johns also made music for the following television shows: Resident Life, The Oblongs, Brave New World, Life 360, America’s Most Wanted, Higglytown Heroes, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. More recently, They Might Be Giants wrote over fifteen songs for Dunkin’ Donuts commercials. The band has also contributed songs to numerous movie soundtracks. They also wrote and performed the theme and score for the upcoming Neil Gaiman film Coraline. They Might Be Giants was the subject of the 2003 documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, directed by AJ Schnack.

The band released their eighth album, Mink Car, in 2001. The album’s songs were recorded from 1999 to 2001 in many different studios and had many different producers and guest artists. Because of this, the album is widely viewed as TMBG’s most disjointed.

No!, released in 2002, marked the beginning of They Might Be Giants’ foray into children’s music. The style of the music was consistent with their adult work; the lyrics were made more kid-friendly. John Linnell wittily noted that “Usually on a TMBG record, there’s at least one song that invokes death. Instead of that, there’s a lot of songs about going to sleep” (Quotes). The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard “Top Kid Audio Chart” (No!). It stayed on the chart for eleven weeks. The success of No! led the band to create more children’s music. The Johns released the book and CD set Bed, Bed, Bed in 2003. The same year, a compilation of the band’s music videos, entitled Direct from Brooklyn, was released on DVD.

Clock Radio, a Macromedia Flash-based music streaming application, was released on tmbg.com in 2003. 2004 saw the opening of They Might Be Giants’ online store, one of the first artist-owned internet stores. It also saw the release of the band’s tenth studio album, The Spine. In stark contrast to No!, The Spine is much more “adult” that most of their previous adult records, with darker subject matter and grown-up lyrics. The band collaborated with Mike and Matt Champan, animators of the popular Flash cartoon site homestarrunner.com, to make a video for the song “Experimental Film.” The video drew in many new fans, and the band and the Chapmans filmed several videos, called “Puppet Jams,” with a puppet version of the site’s main character, Homestar.

In 2005, They Might Be Giants released their second children’s album, Here Come the ABCs on the Disney Sound label. The music was accompanied by videos and released on DVD as well as CD. The DVD was a huge commercial success and quickly went gold. Amazon.com named the album the 13th best album of 2005 and the year’s best children’s album.

During their tour in 2004, the Johns decided to write and then play a song about each venue they played at. The band released the results of its Venue Songs project as a CD/DVD set in 2005. The DVD contains music videos for eleven of the songs and is narrated by author and Daily Show resident expert John Hodgman.

At the end of 2005, the They Might Be Giants podcast was born. Consisting of live, rare, and unreleased tracks, the podcast became one of iTunes’ most downloaded podcasts. It has continued on a sometimes-weekly, mostly-monthly basis. As of March 29th, there have been thirty podcasts released, each of them being, on average, twenty minutes in length. The podcast has been seen by many fans as a new, up-to-date replacement for TMBG’s Dial-a-Song service.

They Might Be Giants’ twelfth studio album, The Else, was released in May 2005 on iTunes, in July on CD, and in September on vinyl. Prior to The Else, their last album released in record form was 1990’s Flood. The first edition of the CD came with a bonus disc of podcast songs. The Else also has the distinctions of being the first They Might Be Giants studio album in which every song is over two minutes in length, and the first not to have any accordion. Four animated music videos of the album’s songs were released online. The album’s songs are more aggressive in tone that some of their other work. When asked about this, Linnell replied, “John called it our least cuddly record. Maybe that’s a response to having done two records at once. We also recorded another kids album. Maybe we siphoned the friendlier music to the kids album, and the adult stuff is unalloyed adult material” (Dansby).

Promoting the release of Here Come the 123s, a follow-up to Here Come the ABCs, They Might Be Giants started a video podcast entitled “Friday Night Family Podcast” in late 2007. The podcast consists of music videos from the album and Here Come the ABCs, introduced by puppet versions of the Johns, voiced and puppeteered by themselves. As of the end of March, there have been fourteen episodes. Here Come the 123s was released in early 2008 and enjoyed similar success to the ABCs.

John and John are currently touring with their full band, consisting of Marty Beller on the drums, Dan Miller on guitar, and Danny Weinkauf on bass. They are also presently working on a children’s science album and another adult album.

They Might Be Giants, though once written off as a novelty act, have found a strong foothold in the mainstream music scene. Their innovative use of technology, groundbreaking achievements, longevity, and memorable, unique songs have enabled them to leave an indelible mark on the pages of music’s history.

Works Cited

“Boss Of Me” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/Boss_Of_Me

Dansby, Andrew. “Sleeping Giants? Never.” Houston Chronicle. 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/music/5594602.html

“Dial-A-Song.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Dial-A-Song

Direct From Brooklyn. They Might Be Giants. 2003. DVD. TMB Productions, 2003.

Dougherty, Steve. "They Might Be Giants, who, on the other hand, might just be hot rock and roll nerds from Brooklyn." People Weekly 29.n24 (June 20, 1988): 67(2). General OneFile. Gale. Cleveland Public Library - CLEVNET. 8 Mar. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.cpl.org/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

“Factory Showroom.” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Factory_Showroom

Farber, Jim. “They Might Be Giants.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://rollingstone.com/ Path: Artists; T; They Might Be Giants; Album Reviews; They Might Be Giants.

“Flood.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Flood

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. Dir. AJ Schnack. 2003. DVD. Bonfire Films of America, 2002.

Guiste, Averil. “Giants shoot for the stars on current tour.” Detroit Free Press June 1992. 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.web.archive.org/web/20021204094608/icicle.iblameyou.com/regular/920625detroit.html

Jackson, Joab. “How They Might Be Giants Became the House Band for NASA.” May 1992. 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.joabj.com/Music/9205TheyMightBeGiants.html

“John Henry.” 10 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/John_Henry

“Lincoln.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Lincoln

“No!” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/No%21

“Quotes” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/Quotes

Small, Michael. "They might be giants." People Weekly 25 (June 30, 1986): 24(2). General OneFile. Gale. Cleveland Public Library - CLEVNET. 9 Mar. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.cpl.org/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

“Television Appearances.” 10 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Television_Appearances

“They Might Be Giants interview.” Throwrug #6 (1992). 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.fullmetaljackal.com/throwrug/i-theymightbegiants.html

“TMBG Unlimited” 29 Mar 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/TMBG_Unlimited

Weiskopf, Mike. “Early Years Handbook.” 1996. 4 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbg.org/bandinfo/early-years/

265 in ten~!~

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah i'm typing a thing i'm typing a thing oh gosh i'm going to die irl if i don't aahah words words words michael gary scott is the most depressing lovely sad terrible lonely person. pretty pretty great and good. pam poor pam. poor pam's mom. andy and dwight's feuds or whatever are the best thing; michael's crying is beautiful. half crying half vomiting half wheezing. bluhhhghhhh. it's beyond words. it's incalculable. i can't ah i can't i don't have any more words. the thing is turning red; it's scary i do not like it. absolutely no words are in my head. completely blank. white pure clear. cleaner than the snow in its perfect perfectness. what is this i don't know lol michael ahah kevin oscar everything owns. every day two words. stephen colbert. voyeurism is cool. I STOPPED WRITING AND IT ERASED WHAT I WROTE that is just terrible what is this website D: lol phyllis said holy crap. ahahahahahahahahaha the crying i love the crying. why are you limping i don't know. back to the future is objectively the greatest movie ever made. arka how the heck did you type this much this quickly? this is making me ridiculously nervous, and it's hard to think thoughts. john colbert. stephen stewart. dan linnell john weinkauf marty miller dan flansburgh so many people named john need to write that christmas carol. will do it for this blog thing! i will! someone should record it ftw. dwight so misguided so conniving so completely separated from anything even remotely resembling reality. everything is pretty great and good.