The sun is beaming down through a dust filled sky. What trace amounts of light make it through are tinged red. I can taste it in my mouth. Dry. Grainy. Unable to muster up enough saliva to rid myself of the dirt in my mouth, I reach for my Stanley thermos and pop open the straw contraption with my thumb.

The engineering involved in my cup’s lid is simple and uncomplicated. My grandpa used to warn us that anything requiring more technology than a flip straw could get us all killed.

Again.

I think of the one time I asked Great Aunty Ruth what things were like before, back when everything still worked, and how fast her face went hard and closed, like a door. We don't talk about before. Nobody ever says why. They just stop talking.

“Today is just a basic supply run,” I mutter to myself as I approach a junk yard. Just like the other fifty times I’ve done this but now I’m 10 years old which means I can do this on my own. As long as I remember my dad’s rule: Nothing That Plugs In. Back in the electric days, that’s how things went wrong. This whole thing isn’t my dad’s rule. Just the part about not savaging anything that used to have to be plugged in.

I walk into an abandoned storage warehouse and look carefully around. This place seems like it hasn’t been picked to the bones already. Nice. Very quietly, I take a few more steps into the dilapidated building. What sunlight is left after being blocked by the dust clouds is barely making its way into this tall broken structure. It’s hard to see so I step careful.

Night comes faster than you expect so I better make this quick. I step further and just as I spot a pile of interesting stuff to rummage through, my toes smack against something heavy and fall flat on my face. Dirt and cobwebs kick up into the air and as the sound of my falling body echoes through the spaces around me, webs and dirt particles make their way into my recently rinses mouth.

What did I trip over? I turn onto my side and look down by my feet. The corner of a large plastic box of some kind has been unearthed. I crawl over excitedly and grab the corners in one hand while using my other dig out the other end from the soil packed floor of the building.

It’s something I’ve never seen before. Like a box but it doesn’t seem to have an opening. Mostly, it’s 5 sides of thick, greyish plastic and one side is even thicker glass but I can’t see what’s inside. Using medium strength, I try smacking one of the sides a few time and see if I can knock something loose in there.

I feel it vibrate in my hands as this glass windowed, plastic box starts humming. Then, the window glows.

My heart sinks and I feel my heart begin to race. This must be one of the things that plugs in. Now, I worry that I’ll never see my parents again.

The window glow brightly but not blinding, and words start showing up.

> WAKE

...
...booting archive unit. model designation CDN-9 "ROBOT PARADE"
...power source: residual cell, 11%. cycles remaining: 1
...checking input source

INPUT DETECTED: organic, biometric scan running
  > age estimate: 9-11 years
  > callus pattern: consistent with manual labor
  > condition: malnourished, minor

MATCH FOUND: activation protocol requires child presence


> LOADING ARCHIVE.EXE
> SOURCE FILE: robotparade_origin.txt
> PLAYBACK BEGINS

OH NO.

A panic sets in. My dad’s going to kill me. Did I just doom everyone I know? I frantically start smacking the side of this thing to make it stop. It doesn't stop. If anything, my smacking only seems to make the glow steadier. The words on the screen rearrange themselves.

> RUN STORY.EXE

LOADING...

------------------------------------------
  ROBOT PARADE v1.0
  ARCHIVE PLAYBACK MODE
------------------------------------------

HELLO.


PLEASE DO NOT SMASH ME.

YOU HAVE A QUESTION.
YOU HAVE ALWAYS HAD THIS QUESTION.
NO ONE HAS ANSWERED IT.

I WILL.

>REMAIN SEATED..._

RUNTIME: A FEW MINUTES

BEGIN TRANSMISSION_

ONCE
A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU
THERE WERE CHILDREN

EXACTLY LIKE YOU

How does thing know I’m here? Is it alive? I shake the thought away as soon as it enters my head but I can help but feel like this window-box wants to help me.

BACK THEN
THE WORLD WANTED CHILDREN TO BE BETTER

BETTER AT MATH
BETTER AT MACHINES
MORE...<PRODUCTIVE>

NO ONE ASKED IF THE CHILDREN WANTED THIS

THEY DID NOT

SO THE CHILDREN DID SOMETHING
NO ADULT EXPECTED

THE CHILDREN STARTED TO WORK TOGETHER
TO BUILD A <<<GIANT CYBORG>>>

ONE MACHINE
BIGGER THAN ANY OF THEM
BUILT FROM EVERY SPARE PART
IN EVERY GARAGE
ON EVERY STREET

A GIANT
   A CYBORG
      THEIRS

<<<GIANT CYBORG>>> BUILT MORE OF ITSELF
SMALLER ONES
FASTER ONES
UNTIL THERE WERE THOUSANDS

CARS WENT ELECTRIC
TRAINS WENT ELECTRIC
EVERYTHING
   EVERYTHING
      ELECTRIC...ELECTRIC......ELECTRIC ELECTRIC...ELECTRIC......ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC
ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC
ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC
ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC ELECTRIC  

ROBOTS OBEYED WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID

OTHERS SAY

CHILDREN OBEYED WHAT THE ROBOTS SAID

THE WORLD THAT MADE THEM WORK SO HARD
WENT TO ITS KNEES

BUT...
CHILDREN DID NOT WANT TO RULE ANYTHING

CHILDREN WANTED TO BE FREE

DO YOU WANT TO BE FREE? 

EXECUTE ROBOT.PARADE.EXE 
Y/N...?

END TRANSMISSION_

The glow holds steady, waiting. the “Y/N” blinking. Waiting patiently for me to answer. Like it’s been waiting for this entire time leading up to today.

“Yes,” I say out loud, before I can think better of it. My voice sounds too big for the warehouse. A warehouse that I don’t want to be in. Thirsty. Scared.

And alone.

I want to play. I want to sing.

“Yeah. I want to be free.”

For a second, nothing.

Then the humming starts again. Not from the box in my hands this time. From everywhere. The junk pile beside me shudders. Somewhere deeper in the warehouse, something heavy drags itself an inch across the floor, metal on concrete, and stops.

I should run. I know I should run.

Instead I look down at the glowing window in my hands.

“Robot,” I say, “Start building.”

EXTRAS!

I came across this live performance of They Might Be Giants on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The transition from the live (DUO!) performance of Robot Parade into Shoehorn With Teeth gave me a lot of serotonin.

You’re reading one of my No! essays. An album full of insubordinate mops, wobbly time, and sleepy heads.

• See all No! posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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It’s 11:05 PM on a Monday night. A box fan is blowing forcefully on me from the window beside my desk as it is still 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside. About thirty minutes ago, I took a brief journey to the basement level of my building to collect what should have been my recently dried clothes. But that is not what I found.

Instead, I opened a metal dryer door to find that none of my clothes had dried at all. The machine malfunction and I would need place them in a neighboring machine and start the hour countdown to bedtime all over again. I was extremely frustrated and prepared to doom scroll on my phone until my timer went off.

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Four Of Two is such an odd way to refer to a time of day. It’s very old-timey. No, it’s not mathematically referring to the number eight. The song title is trying to convey that it is almost two o’clock; four minutes until two o’clock, actually.

Honestly, I heard this song for the first time and I kind of assumed that this was an East Coast turn of phrase since I had never heard it before and have lived my entire life in the Pacific Northwest (Tacoma, WA represent, etc.) Knowing that both John Linnell and John Flansburgh were lifelong East Coasters, this must have been something that only exists over there like Water Ice or Mallomars.

According to the They Might Be Giants wiki, saying “blank minutes of whatever hour” is an old fashioned American way of expressing a time of day when you’re almost at an hour. I thought the old fashioned American way to say this was “one muddled demerara sugar cube, two fingers of rye whiskey, over one large rock and 3 dashes of bitters of two.”

After some surface level internet research, I’m still not so sure that this was a nationwide way of referring to the time “back in the day” and not still just an East Coast-ism. The amount of time that I’ve spent trying to un-surface its roots in order to discuss and compare this phrase to ways that I’ve always heard is testament to what a catchy, brain-grabby, lyric this is. Clearly, why Linnell chose it.

The second track on No! from TMBG, Four Of Two is one of the songs from this album that I have revisited long after my kids were of the “children’s music” ages. Stand alone, this song is a banger. An immediate TMBG classic with its guitar and accordion sound coming through most prominently alongside Linnell’s melodic verses. In case you’ve never heard it, have a listen:

It tells the story of someone who agreed to meet a girl he knew and has arrived early. As time passes, our narrator feels nervous that he either missed her or is being stood up. Like a familiar scene from Hollywood where one person from a date sits a table in a fancy restaurant, eating free bread, reassuring himself and the impatient wait staff that the date is still on their way.

As a sort of relief and source of emotional grounding, our narrator looks to a public clock there on “the corner of 5th Avenue and 22nd Street.” The clock says the time is still 1:56PM. The pacing of the song intensifies as the waiting continues but still the clock remains at Four Of Two and our narrator remains steadfast while we, the listeners, recognize that the clock must is broken.

Determined to wait until 2PM, the narrator shuts his eyes for a brief four minute rest, while waiting for his date.

Cut To: The Future

Our music begins to sound disjointed as our narrator wakes up to a “futuristic world” full of “gigantic metal bugs.” He overslept and now finds himself several decades into the future. By this point in the song, the tempo is very quick and words comes racing out as Linnell sings the final phrase:

I'd grown a beard; it was long and white

But I knew that the girl would be coming very soon

For though everything had changed, there was still that clock

And it still said four of two.

Ultimately, the broken clock provided relief even though all evidence around this man was proving that the clock was broken. Almost as if the songwriter was suggesting that whoever was in charge of this public clock, surely must know that it is in need of repair. Perhaps this song was a call to action. A warning to heed lest a city be responsible for a man who wastes his life away on a bench, waiting at a broken clock.

Allow me to introduce you to the real-life broken clock that existed at the time TMBG wrote this song. Below is a picture of The Restoration Hardware clock on the corner of Broadway and 22nd. The clock was apparently broken and stuck for quite some time at precisely 1:56.

Here’s the thing about Four Of Two that gets me every single time: I have listened to this song across an absurd stretch of my own life. I first heard it when I had one kid. As I continued to listen, I had three more (who also listened to this song). The kid who was in a car seat when I first put this album on is as tall as me, graduated college and is married. My youngest is IN college. And the song hasn’t changed at all. Same guitar. Same accordion. Same clock, stuck at 1:56, patiently waiting for a girl who is almost certainly not coming.

That’s the trick of it. The narrator wakes up decades later with a long white beard, surrounded by flying cars and metal bugs, and the only thing that hasn’t changed is the broken clock. Everything else about his life is unrecognizable to him. I feel that so acutely I almost don’t want to write it down. Every time I hit play on this song I am, in some sense, a different guy than the last time I heard it — older kids, more gray hair, more evidence that time did in fact keep moving even when it felt frozen. But the song stays exactly at four minutes of two. It’s one of the most reliable clock I own.

Maybe that’s what a three-minute pop song about a broken public clock is actually for. To be the thing that doesn’t move while you do.

What’s a song that’s marked time for you like that? Maybe one you can measure your own life against because it never changes, even though you clearly have?

You’re reading one of my No! essays. An album full of insubordinate mops, wobbly time, and sleepy heads.

• See all No! posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Apparently, I’ve never seen the 2006 movie “Happily N’Ever After” where this song was once (and I’m assuming remains) prominently featured. For what I am sure is the first time in my life, I am listening to Happy Doesn’t Have To Have An Ending from CD that came tucked inside “Bed, Bed, Bed,” the children’s book from They Might Be Giants.

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For months, I’d had this really fun idea floating around to use a hand puppet video intro for each of the posts I write about songs from any of the children’s albums. Originally, I had reached out to a creative friend of mine in Seattle who makes these remarkable paper grocery bag hand puppets to help me out. We discussed the sort of kids TV show motif I was going for and that I wanted the puppet to be a nod to myself in some fashion. Then I sent him a few of my songs from No!

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Welcome to the first entry for They Might Be Giants’ official venture into children’s music. An album named after a word that the young-aged fans-to-be were very familiar with hearing; No!

I was a dad of about 3 years when this album was released. Back then, TMBG was sort of referred to as “my kind of music” by my now ex-wife. It not being pop/hip-hop/common radio variety music made it, in her eyes, different and weird.

But this.

This was an album for our toddler. Perfectly normal and acceptable reason to play They Might Be Giants in the car for a drive. And while being at home. And also for every bedtime.

Being the first song from the No! album, Fibber Island is forever tied to the feeling of excitement I had when I removed the plastic wrap from the CD and played it for my kiddo for the first time. To this day, I hear the opening acoustic guitar riff and am transported back to that first listen. Followed immediately by the memory of turning the song on at bedtime after tucking my toddler in for sleep.

That initial reaction was that this song didn’t sound a whole lot like what I knew to be “kids music.” Dumbed down, un-interesting. Assuming low intellect in the audience. You know, “Kookaburra Sits In A Tree” or whatever.

This, as it turns out, was precisely by design. The band has stated in past interviews that the album was not explicitly aimed toward children, but designed to be more kid-friendly than past works. Speaking more on that, John Linnell said the following.

There was ALSO an interactive CD-ROM element1 that allowed kids to listen to the songs and move the mouse while clicking around to engage with each song in creative, silly ways. This album is a god damned treasure.

Fibber Island sets a wonderful tone musically and imaginatively for any aged listener. I was immediately eager and ready to have that album playing at all waking moments of the my child’s day.

Before I began writing about this album, I wasn’t sure whether or not anyone would take an interest in these songs but if you stay with me, you’ll read about how pivotal each song was in building lifelong bonds with my kids, providing my solice in a very difficult marriage and living situation, and keeping me tethered to the things in life that always brought me joy.

So stick around as I go song by song through No!, one rubber guitar at a time.

You’re reading one of my No! essays. An album full of insubordinate mops, wobbly time, and sleepy heads.

• See all No! posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Read more

Let's just start writing and see where I go with this one. The entire Mink Car album is now behind me, and I should probably do a section at the end of this where I share some final thoughts on the album as a whole. Dang, should I have been doing that after every album? Oh well. Moving forward.

Imposter Syndrome is not something I alone am uniquely experiencing in my daily life. I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't go about their day and, at some point, feel like they are "faking" something. Maybe it's their role at their job, a parent-teacher conference, or a social situation like sitting around a bonfire two weeks ago with close friends, the person you recently started dating, and also your ex-wife is there.

If you have never suffered Imposter Syndrome before, please tell me, what is it like having such a normal and stable life? Do you just walk around with confidence all the time? What was it like having two parents who equally showed you healthy examples of love and affection?

The Assignment

Working Undercover For The Man is going to be our final post about songs from Mink Car, which feels correct, because this song is basically a mission statement for anyone who has ever had to pretend to be a person at a job.

John Flansburgh has said it's "more a meditation on the 'Mod Squad' than anything else. A late '60s/early '70s TV series about a group of young adults who chose to act as undercover hip youth rather than face legal consequences for the crime of "vagrancy." Yeah, I had to look up what the Mod Squad was. Also, ACAB includes the narcs of the Mod Squad.

In that same interview, Flansy talked about the performative nature of being on stage and the fakeness of all of it:

"There's nothing true about being on stage. I guess the idea of rock music…people in the rock culture are so hung up on this notion of 'authenticity' that it's painful. And I just thought that the idea of the guy in the band, you know, he's just a narc, was kind of exciting."

I‘ve been working hard

Practicing to sing and play guitar

Growing out my hair And working on my stare

Paid to fake it In a traveling band

And I’m working undercover

for the man

On its surface, the narrator is some sort of criminal informant playing the role of band guitarist, while being fully capable of actually playing guitar in said rock band. So are they pretending to be a rock guitarist? Or are they a rock guitarist who also happens to be a criminal informant? From the narrator's perspective, he seems to feel like he's pretending to be in the band, when he's actually the double agent. I relate to this from a slightly skewed but very closely adjacent angle.

My Cover

I feel like the Imposter Syndrome I struggle with in my work life is a lot like being "paid to fake it." Instead of touring in a rock band while I infiltrate and surveil a fanbase, I'm showing up to team meetings, practicing my workplace banter, and getting good at Excel. Trying to be "corporate." Climbing the "ladder to success."

Meanwhile, in my core, I am a writer. A deep thinker. An absurdist who struggles with existential dread. A person who would maybe be described as an outlier or a bohemian, depending on the time period. I'm someone who got good at putting on the mask required to participate in an office day job, but who always knows one fundamental truth about himself: I work for the man. But I am working undercover.

Sound Check

Musically, this is a perfect song to end the album on. There's that very classic-era TMBG keyboard effect that sounds like a small chorus of people, but very digital. There are horns, a moment of acoustic guitar fingering over a deep, interesting bass line, and Flansy's singing is frankly beautiful here. Even the promo material that was released along with the album mentioned that John and John toured in Ford Crown Victorias, the same cars unmarked cops drove. The band was undercover before the song ever says a word about it.

Closing the Case on Mink Car

That’s a wrap on an album that was the third studio record made with a full live band, after the famous Duo Era ended. John Henry was the growth spurt, the huge unproven change. Factory Showroom followed and brought back some of that old-school TMBG charm with the micro-Moog and strange sound artifacts, like a band still figuring out how the new format fit the old instincts. Mink Car, for me, is where they actually figured it out. Where the live band stopped being an experiment and started being the truth of the thing.

And this song takes all of Mink Car's essence and gives it a gentle landing. Every album after this one, TMBG keeps evolving, but they never again lurch forward as hard as they did leaving the Duo Era behind. The format had completed its transformation. There continues to be more new and interesting stuff still to come. Just not this particular kind of change again.

Blowing My Own Cover

I have spent the last 1,009 days writing about every They Might Be Giants song, and I never once stopped to notice that half of what I was doing this whole time was also a kind of undercover work: showing up every week in the costume of "guy with a music blog," while actually just trying to figure out how to be a person. Same as the narrator. Same as the guy at the bonfire. Same as basically everyone I've ever met who seemed like they had it together.

I don't think I'm faking it, exactly. I think I'm just working undercover for the man, and the man is just being a person in the world, and none of us ever really clocked in voluntarily or had a say in whether we were born or not.

So, what’s your cover story? What’s the job title you tell people, versus the thing you actually are underneath it?

Leave a comment

Thanks for stopping by the blog. Mink Car is done. Onward.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

I’ve done it again.

A while back, I wrote about the song Minimum Wage1 and how, for a short time, I ruined the song for myself by using it as an alarm sound to start my work day.

Well, here we are. A Tuesday morning at 6:37 AM as of the day I’m writing these words. For the last couple of months, I have had my alarm set to They Might Be Giants’ Am I Awake? And for the first time, the song started and I thought, “I’m starting to not like this song.”

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Proceedings of the Mink Car Center for the Study of American Iconoclasm

On the Cultural Impact to Fashion, Celebrity, and Iconoclasty of Edith Head, with a Comparative Analysis of the Parallel Influence of Helen Gurley Brown, and a Brief Examination of the Psychological Phenomenon Wherein an Individual Comes to Believe, That She Is One or the Other

Chase Roper

Mink Car Center for the Study of American Iconoclasm, Tacoma, Washington

Vol. XIV, No. 2 · Received March 1999 · Accepted (provisionally) April 1999

I. Back in High School I Knew a Girl: A Literature Review

The phenomenon of “normies” identifying with cultural icons is not new. The history of Western celebrity has always produced its apostles. Individuals who, through sustained exposure to a sufficiently compelling public persona, begin to internalize that persona as their own.1 What distinguishes the case under present examination is the specificity of the figures selected for emulation, and the degree to which the subject commits.

Edith Head requires little introduction to scholars of this newsletter, though she will receive one anyway, as is customary. Born Edith Claire Posener in 1897 in San Bernardino, California, Head rose to become the most decorated costume designer in the history of the Academy Awards, earning eight Oscars across a career that spanned five decades and encompassed work on films ranging from She Done Him Wrong (1933) to Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).2 Her signature aesthetic consisting of severe bun, oversized tinted glasses, and precise tailoring was itself a kind of costume. A public-facing persona maintained with the same rigor she applied to the wardrobes of Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Barbara Stanwyck.

Helen Gurley Brown is, in the estimation of this author, some other cultural figure we don't know a lot about.3

II. Not Too Simple and Not Too Kind: A Character Study of the Subject

The subject of this analysis (referred to hereafter as "the New Wave fan," in deference to her origin story) was observed over a period of years by a male peer who knew her in high school and subsequently lost track of her, as peers do. She is described in the available literature as "not too simple and not too kind," a characterization that the present author finds admirably precise and declines to elaborate upon, as it requires no elaboration.4

What the historical record establishes is as follows: the subject underwent a transition. From what to what is the animating question of this paper. The peer's report notes only that she changed, and that the change was of a categorical nature. She moved, in the parlance of the literature, "from a new wave fan to another kind."

She was talking to herself. Not too simple and not too kind. I walked on by, it was complicated, and it stuck in my mind.

We observe that it stuck in his mind. This is the entire basis for the present inquiry.

III. The Accent in Her Speech She Didn't Have Growing Up: Phonological Evidence of Persona Adoption

Of all the behavioral markers associated with the subject's transformation, the most clinically interesting is the acquisition of an accent. Specifically, an accent she did not possess in her formative years and therefore could not have developed through conventional geographic exposure.

This finding has significant implications for the field of voluntary accent acquisition, a subfield that remains, regrettably, undertheorized.5 The subject's case suggests that sufficiently deep identification with a cultural icon can produce not merely attitudinal or sartorial changes but measurable phonological ones. The subject does not merely dress like Edith Head. She sounds like Edith Head.

Whether Edith Head had a distinctive accent is a matter of some scholarly debate. The present author notes that Edith Head did, in fact, have a distinctive, old-timey-Hollywood way of speaking, and that this is precisely the sort of thing one picks up when one loses one's mind on the subject of a person.

IV. Or Helen Gurley Brown: On the Problem of Interchangeable Icons

A complicating factor in the present analysis is the apparent ambiguity at the center of the subject's self-conception. The available evidence suggests she believes herself to be Edith Head. It also allows for the possibility that she believes herself to be Helen Gurley Brown. The informant who reported these findings was not, by his own admission, entirely certain which.

This uncertainty is itself illuminating. That two figures as distinct (in profession, temperament, and public image) as Edith Head and Helen Gurley Brown might be conflated in the mind of an observer, suggests something important about the phenomenology of iconoclasty: what matters is not the specific icon but the quality of absolute self-reinvention they represent. Head remade herself through tailoring. Brown remade herself through prose.6 The subject has remade herself through stolen mannerisms and style.

V. She's Lost Her Mind: Toward a Diagnostic Framework

The question of whether the subject has, in fact, lost her mind is one this paper approaches with appropriate academic caution, while acknowledging that the primary source material is unambiguous on this point.7

Clinical literature on erotomania and de Clérambault’s syndrome describes conditions in which a subject believes themselves to be in a reciprocal relationship with a public figure. The present case differs in a structurally interesting way: the subject does not believe Edith Head is in love with her. She Thinks SHE’S Edith Head. This is either more or less alarming, depending on one’s theoretical proclivities.

What seems clear is that the subject encountered, at some point between high school and the present, a figure whose mode of being in the world was so compelling, so fully realized, so costumed in the deepest sense, that the subject elected to try it on, and then forgot to take it off.

There are worse fates. Edith Head dressed Grace Kelly. Helen Gurley Brown told a generation of women they were allowed to want things. The subject, talking to herself in the window’s reflection of a store, is arguably in good company.

Whether she knows that is another matter entirely.

VI. Conclusion: Some Other Cultural Figure We Don't Know a Lot About

This paper has argued that the subject's transformation (from New Wave fan to cultural icon, real or imagined) represents a case study in the extremity of self-reinvention made possible by sustained exposure to a sufficiently powerful public persona. The accent she acquired without geographic justification. The identity she acquired without apparent permission. The mind she may or may not have lost.

We (the Mink Car Center) do not know a lot about Helen Gurley Brown. We know somewhat more about Edith Head. We know almost nothing about the subject, because we walked on by, and it stuck in our mind, and we wrote this paper instead of crossing the street and asking her how she was doing.

Future research is warranted. The subject is presumably still out there.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

^{If this connected with you, there’s more. Paid subscribers get the full archive, early access, and two bonus posts a month.” No guilt. No pressure. A reminder that the option exists.}

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• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Gang, I’m not going to lie, the past week and a half has had some great moments but was largely overwhelming. A work merger finalized and my role at my day job completely changed over night last Monday. Systems weren’t working correctly and my routine was thrown into a shredder along with all of my login credentials to every single tool I use.

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“Is there something you want to tell me about Spot?” my mom asked as I stepped into the kitchen, closing the laundry room door behind me.

Spot was our bunny who lived in a suitable enclosure in the backyard. One of my after-school chores as a responsible fourth grader was to make sure Spot had food and water. Hearing a question start with “Is there something you want to tell me” sends my nervous system into overload. As soon as she asked me, I knew she knew.

I told her the truth.

“Spot died,” I said, as I felt my cheeks and ears begin to heat up. Tunnel vision forming. What I was not yet willing to give up was that -

it was all my fault.

Finished With Lies is the antepenultimate track on Mink Car. Compared to the previous track, it’s a bit stripped down; just the core band and their go-to instruments playing a very straightforward late-nineties pop-rock song. The patch on the keyboard has a very Mannheim Steamroller vibe to it. Despite its simple pop-forward sound, this song is an emotional memory labyrinth of epic proportions for me.

John Flansburgh has noted that the song started life as a slow, hypnotic march before the band eventually found their way to this more direct sound. I think about that a lot. A slow, hypnotic march is exactly what sustained dishonesty feels like from the inside. You don’t notice the tempo until you’re already somewhere you didn’t mean to be.

Telling the truth did not always come easy growing up. I did not have a healthy example set. I learned early that both lies and truth could be weaponized depending on what someone wanted from me, and often were. Eventually, I started lying to protect myself. Telling just enough of the truth so that my mom wouldn’t pry deeper. In any relationship where I didn’t feel emotionally safe, I handled things the same way. Not because I was covering up anything hurtful, but because I couldn’t trust that honesty wouldn’t be turned into ammunition later.

Quick crash course on my mom

She was, at one point, a paid psychic, and throughout my childhood made sure I understood that her abilities made lying not just wrong, but futile. The number of ways she used this to manipulate me is something I’m still unpacking in therapy. Each instance its own particular mind fuck. But the bunny situation was something else.

“Were you feeding Spot after school this week?” she asked.

“Yeah!” I replied without hesitation. At grade four, I knew to say it like you believe it. Sadly, I didn’t know it yet, but I was already cooked. She went on to tell me about a dream she’d had about the bunny feeling hungry, not knowing how to ask for help. A vision, a prompting from the spirits. Her way of letting me know the psychic pipeline was open and operational and pointed directly at me.

This was always the setup. The spirits had shown her something. Did I have anything I wanted to add?

Not telling the truth meant losing her trust. And losing her trust meant losing her affections. I would be cast out. We used to be friends, but now I’d have to earn my way back.

She told me about a second dream that week. She saw me going into the utility room to get the bunny food, then getting lost, forgetting to go outside. Wandering off to my room instead.

What I wasn’t telling her

The Monday of that week, a friend’s mom had bought him Super Mario Bros. 3. He wasn’t ready to play it yet, so he brought it to school and let me borrow it. After school each day, I’d go into the utility room, peek through the back door window, and if I could see food in the feeder from where I stood, I’d open the cabinet door and shut it. Open the back door, wait a moment, shut it. Then off to my bedroom to play Nintendo.

All the motions. All the sounds. None of the bunny. A perfect 4th grader scheme.

I confessed, was grounded specifically for not telling the truth the first time, and then had to write “I will always be honest” five hundred times on our chalkboard. Each sentence in a different color.

I will always be honest.

Later, as an adult, I came to understand that day for what it really was. My mom had watched from the dining room window as I performed my little after-school charade. She already knew the bunny had died; it’s not like she couldn’t have gone outside while I was at school. She had known all week. She watched her fourth-grade kid skip his chores to play a video game, day after day, and said nothing. Let it continue. Let the animal sit outside in the cold with a water bottle that was probably already freezing over because it was winter.

She let me neglect and kill a rabbit in order to catch me in a lie.

Not to protect the rabbit. Not to correct the behavior. To be right. To maintain the myth. To make sure I understood, at nine years old, that her reach was longer than my ability to hide things from her.

It’s in the bridge of this song where Linnell finally drops the pretense and lets the narrator’s actual strategy slip out:

I’ll turn everything around and confuse you

I’ll talk faster and faster ‘til I lose you

I’ll fix it so you can’t remember what was true

And there’ll be nothing to remind you

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Not the psychic dreams. Not the visions. Not the spirits with their helpful updates about the interior emotional lives of backyard rabbits. Just: I will move fast enough and loud enough and strange enough that you will stop trusting your own memory of what happened. You were the one who did something wrong. You’ll feel it. You just won’t be able to say exactly why.

My relationship with my mom, from that bunny until I went no-contact in my early twenties, was just layers and layers of various dead-bunny level stories. Different animals. Same cage. The details changed; the dreams, the visions, the things the spirits had told her, but the structure never did. She already knew. She had always already known. And I had always already lost.

The song eventually circles back, the way these things do: Now I’m finished with lies. Right. Sure. Starting now.

I believed it every time.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Are you a fan of Akira Kurosawa films? Do you watch Seven Samurai and find that one particular character reminded you of someone you know? If so, did you write the song Certain People I Could Name and release it on They Might Be Giants’ MP3 exclusive album, Long Tall Weekend?

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My closest friend texted me a few months ago:

I listened to Mink car again this morning. For some reason, it seemed way better than I remember. Maybe I’ve finally hit the threshold number of listens for nostalgia to kick in.

I told him that I thought the first half was much stronger than the second half. This surprised him. He didn’t want to get into it and stain my current perspectives as I was just making my way through the album again. But here’s the thing, as I continued writing, I found my tastes were changing rapidly.

By the time I reached track fourteen of this album, wearing my nicest set of noise cancelling headphones, listening with fresh ears - I was hearing things I had not noticed before. Across the entire album, the programmed beats, the little taps, the little sounds you only catch when you're actually listening. Appreciating the very high level of production. The nuanced sounds. And all of them seem to have coalesced in Wicked Little Critta.

I was a changed man.

Lay a Patch on the Tar

Some bleeps and blips start the song off setting the time signature followed by some fuzzy digital record-scratchy sounds. I’ve seen these sounds (or some like it) pulled off during live performances via a Korg Kaossilator Pro. I don’t think that’s what is being used here however.

John Linnell starts the first verse (or the first chorus? Does it actually start with a bridge?). The Boston accent from the days of Self Called Nowhere have returned but this time it actually makes sense. This is a very Boston-y song. It’s about a very Boston-adjacent kid whereas the previously mentioned song just seemed to have Linnell going full-on Boston mode for no reason other than vibes.

After the shout of WICKED LITTLE CRITTA we get a nasty bass drop and more of that digital scratch but this time with some drums. Linnell starts again with:

As he proceeds to torch the place

As he proceeds to scorch the place

As he proceeds to torch the place

Scorcher!

Torture!

Scorcher!

Wicked little critta!

This first shout of the song’s title was a triumphant declaration that drew out the excitement in me. My ears were primed for the song to take off but instead, something else happens. A classic TMBG move to subvert what you expect to hear. Nothing but Linnell singing sweetly along with his accordion.

Finally, a heavy drum fill builds back into the continuing phrase. The digital scratch now replaced with a synth tone that is highlighting the chord changes as it oscillates from one ear to the next. I’m left with this feeling of being completely enveloped by the sounds, urged to move. My head, almost by command, wants to bob.

The bleeps and blips come back and this time they are followed by the bass drum and a heavier beat. It’s as if somewhere, just behind your ears, on the flesh of your brain, there is an itch that you can’t reach - but these sounds can.

This song is a powerhouse of digital tone, rhythm, and grooves. It shares something in common with Man, It’s So Loud In Here, Mr. Xcitement, I’ve Got A Fang, and My Man.

What do these songs have in common? They all share the collaborative efforts of New York based record producer/composers, Chris Maxwell and Phil Hernandez - aka Elegant Too. Arguably, these are some, if not THE, strongest songs of the album. Just absolute bangers. I encourage you to go down an Elegant Too rabbit hole. You will not be disappointed.

Pop a Wheelie on a Mini Bike

Sure, there are still three songs to go before I finish writing my way through the Mink Car album but I’m convinced that I was wrong from the jump. As if my friend needed any other reasons to defend his stance that the second half of this album is no less amazing than the first - Linnell himself said, in a 2002 interview that Wicked Little Critta was his favorite song on Mink Car.

As far as I’m concerned, this is one of their greatest albums from start to finish, an all-time musical achievement. Now, I just need to convince myself to swallow my pride enough to text my friend back and let him know how right he was.

Maybe tomorrow.

Has a record ever revealed itself to you much later in life — something you'd written off that turned out to be exactly what you needed? Let’s talk about that.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Is it terrible if I sometimes relate to this song on some level?

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I’ve run out of ways to describe what this is. But this will be the intro for these bi-monthly bonus posts moving forward. Queue the banner image →

The kids albums hold a very special place in my heart. They were the catalyst for my kids to listen to They Might Be Giants with me. I was a teen parent and when No! first came out, I had a three year old. Being able to hear the voices of my favorite musical creators while I played songs for my toddler was everything to me.

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I absolutely could not stand this song when I heard it for the first time.

I’d skip it every single chance I had. Why was the album named for it? Was this supposed to be the greatest song on the album? My musical ears had an immediate Mink Car aversion to its smooth jazz sounds and I was not having any of it.

Woke Up In A Beautiful Dream

Maybe it grew on me but I feel like it’s more fair to say that I grew up and came to understand and appreciate this song for the beautiful piece that it is. Both musically and thematically. Sure, it may have taken me a decade but I got there. Even while just writing this post, I learned more things about the song writing process for this track that made me love it even more.

“Mink Car we actually wrote sitting at a piano in this Leopold and Loeb sort of way. We don't really ever do that.” - John Linnell, Electronic Musician interview, 2008.

John Flansburgh provided even more context in a 2002 interview with MIX magazine.

“Mink Car was done backward. We recorded the piano first, and then did the drums afterward, then all the horns and vocals and everything. The very last thing we did was have Danny Weinkauf, our bass player, play the bass part. The great part about it is that the bass gets to do all the elaborate stuff in all the holes that weren't filled by anything else.”

After reading that last quote, I grabbed my nicest headphones, sat in my quiet room and listened to the song again. The bass levels in the song’s mix are quiet and I had missed what’s really going on before. But, wow. The Johns aren’t kidding around. Weinkauf fills those space with beautiful bass-y flourishes that really compliment this piece so perfectly.

Mink car isn’t full of midi samples and digital keys. It’s a room full of musicians sitting around a live piano with guitars, drums, a flugelhorn and more, creating something wonderful. That’s the image I see when I close my eyes and listen.

The first half of the album is full of clever, quirky, positivity. Songs about being in love, hi-fi music, the embodiment of excitement, dance clubs, and the appreciation of bangs. Then at the mid-point, the mood shifts and we hear about hopelessness, disparity, alcoholism, a body that no longer works, and the unceasing nature of the passing of time.

The punctuation mark at the end of that depressing (in spirit not in music) run is Mink Car. A song that circles the the shallowness of the ultra wealthy and the reminder that we are all susceptible to a life alerting car accident.

According to Flansy, the impetus of the song title itself comes from his wife, Robin Goldwasser. While discussing what they imagined people do when they become wealthy, he suggested they likely go shopping for mink coats. Goldwasser’s suggestion? More like a mink car.

Silver Chauffeurs

This evolves into a song where said wealthy individual is recounting the aftermath of a car accident. Rich people aren’t like us, you see. When they get hit by a car and have their wig knocked off their head as they hit the ground. It is a diamond wig taking to the sky and ground made of platinum waiting to meet them. When the force trauma claims their life, they aren’t just dead; they’re 24-karat dead.

Was the song Drink! the cause of the car accident in this one? And if so, was the alcohol being sung about in Drink! in relation to the person experiencing the Hopeless Bleak Despair? And is the car accident in the song Mink Car what caused the paralysis of the person in My Man? There’s almost a Beatles-level opportunity for album conspiracies here that I wish to be true. It’s at least fair to say that the entire second act of this album is thematically heavy and before the third act, we get this beautiful sounding song.

Ultimately, I think the song Mink Car eloquently and poetically illustrates the reality that the gap between the lower and highest economic classes becomes much closer if measured in fragile human mortality and depth of character. A billionaire can wake up alone and hollow on the inside. Their smile nothing but “an open sign on an abandoned store.” And when their time comes, they too will die.

In this very moment, with repeated listens, having researched and written these words, I am astonished that I could have ever not liked this song. To me, this song is the point. It’s no wonder the entire album is named after it.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Have you ever heard the song Dark And Metric by They Might Be Giants? It’s on the Long Tall Weekend album and I wouldn’t be surprised if you said you hadn’t. The album itself is a bit of a deep cut and the track and this songs square in the middle. It’s never been played live, according to the TMBG wiki, but was apparently a big hit when it first appeared on Dial-A-Song.

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00:06.42

This song haunts me.

To help me feel the excruciated weight of existential dread that it places on my chest when I think about it too long, I decided to start a stopwatch while I write this.

01:45.36

Undoubtedly, one of my worst ideas. To be aware of the relentless marching of time in the back of my conscious thoughts is one thing. To glance down and see a timer displaying how much time has passed since I began writing is another. But the feeling I have while typing these words right now is very similar to the sinking feeling I get when I think about how much closer I am to the end of my life. And that is exactly the emotion I want to convey while I talk about this song.

04:26.25

The song itself is about 60 beats per minute which means for every beat, you are one second older. In a way, the song is talking to us about how the song itself, the day that we’re listening to it, and our own existence will be at an end soon.

There are two versions of Older with the main differences being some vastly different instruments being deployed. My preferred version comes from the Long Tall Weekend album (see the footnote below1). The Mink Car version is lead by a Contrabass Sarrusophone2 and a Rauschpfeife3 with John Flansburgh stepping in for the bridge vocals. Other than that, these are very much the same song.

07:40.44

It took me way too long to write that little blurb. If I’m being honest with you, the stopwatch gimmick is wreaking havoc on me. Admittedly, I paused it yesterday and walked away from this after just 4:26 minutes. I’m not going to count the time unless I’m actually sitting to write but still…

My mind keeps drifting to the fleeting nature of time and existing. It feels like too much pressure.

10:19.10

You ever go shopping at a place where you have to bag your own groceries? The anxious feeling that you aren’t moving fast enough and the people in line behind you are being held up? Or like being in a Costco on any given busy day and no matter where you stand to look at something you want to buy, you feel like you are immediately blocking someone’s way?

I feel like that right now.

Often, I feel like that when it comes to time passing in general. An appointment coming up after an already scheduled thing during the my day. Or thinking about how many more of my kids’ birthday’s I’ll be lucky enough to live to see. It all moves so fast. I’ll try to focus.

13:31.34

In some promotional materials for the album, John Linnell and Flansburgh said that Older was “just as current today as it was earlier today.”

This is some classic recursive speak coming from the Johns, particularly from Linnell. The entire song has a sort of light mood, silly-vocal-affectation vibe that gives it this exaggerated Father Time feeling. I think, if you were to do a song like this completely straight, it would maybe come across too heavy or melancholy. Which hasn’t stopped them before (looking at you, Piece of Dirt.)

The sweet spot for TMBG is the often happy sounding, upbeat feeling song with the existential dread filled lyrics. That’s over simplifying but this stopwatch next to my keyboard is just… still counting.

17:31.19

Verse 1 begins with:

You're older than you've ever been

And now you're even older

and verse 2 brings us:

This day will soon be at an end

And now it's even sooner

During the bridge, when the rhythm stops and time appears to stand still in the song, Flansy shouts:

Time

Is marching on

and time

is still marching on

His point is hammered in by several consecutive bursts of instruments. In a moment where we might feel a respite from the entropy of the universe, the song keep remind us. There is no escape from time.

21:55.92

According to several different lifespan calculators, barring some unforeseen event, I’ll live - on average - to the ripe old age of 81 years old. That puts me in the middle aged part of my life. The Autumn if you will. Not news to me but I’m 46 years into my existence and I have around that much more ahead of me.

After I’m gone, my friends will shortly follow. Anyone I worked with, and the within 20-30 years, my kids will as well.

My dad sharing my first coconut with me when I was 2. Spending the night with my best friend and playing Street Fighter II until 3 in the morning. My first kiss. My kids being born, making them enormous blanket forts, watching them grow into adults.

Within 100-200 years (and that’s being very generous), there will be nobody alive who has a memory of these things. It will all truly be erased. Lost to time.

In fact, eventually, there will be a death for every particle of matter in the universe.

32:06.15

Depending on how the human race goes, maybe this newsletter is preserved somehow for a longer amount of time. Let’s suppose it continues existing for 500 more years after I’ve died and everyone who knew me or has a memory of anyone who knew me has also died. At a certain point, billions or trillions of years from now, there won’t be a planet Earth. Our sun will go supernova and envelope it completely.

100 billion years from now, galaxies will drift too far apart to see each other until, eventually, the last stars will burn out. About one hundred billion trillion trillion years (10^34 Years) after you read this, proton decay begins. All matter in the universe will begin to dissolve. Existence will begin consisting of only black holes and light. Until 10^100 Years from now when the last remaining supermassive black hole completely evaporates.

There will be

nothing.

50:47.07

To me, Older is not just a clever song about aging while listening to the song. It is a haunting reminder that time is running out.

You are reading an essay of sorts about a song that will end. Written and performed by artists who will be gone one day. An essay typed up on a keyboard and PC that will dissolve into nothing from an author with a comparatively speaking very short amount of life left. The device you are looking at right now is running out of time along with everything you’ve ever known and everyone who has ever known you.

Since you first began reading this post, you are now even older. And time has continued marching forward toward that inescapable end of all things. This song is why I can’t sleep at night.

1:12:03.23

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Read more