Once per week, I like to share post about songs that are not on one of They Might Be Giants’ major studio released albums with my paid subscribers. These are posts for the B-sides, deep cuts, and rarities. This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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The word “assassin” just looks so silly to me which is weird for a word about murder.

We are continuing our bizarre breakdown of They Might Be Giants’ highly fan-focused EP, The Spine Surfs Alone. Somewhere in the middle at song number four is Fun Assassin.

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I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. Equal parts: Fandom, Personal Reflections and Experimentation on what is tolerable the human reader.

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TO: You, the readers

FROM: Chase, the author behind Kiss Me, Son of Blog

CC: All Future Subscribers and/or Un-subscribers

DATE: October 16, 2026

RE: My Current Mental Health

CLASSIFICATION: Free or Paid Subscribers Only

PRIORITY: Routine TBH

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Once per week, I like to share posts about songs that are not on one of They Might Be Giants’ major studio released albums with my paid subscribers. These are posts for the B-sides, deep cuts, and rarities. This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

As a Scorpio, I feel like this is a song for fellow Scorpios. There have moments in my life when I’ve become aware that someone who had previously hurt or betrayed me is talking about me. Noticing me.

Thinking about me.

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Last night, one of my closest buddies celebrated their 29th birthday with large group friends spanning a wide range of ages. Around fifteen of us poured into the Devil’s Reef tiki bar in Tacoma, WA. A darkly lit, Lovecraftian styled, hidden gem with a cocktail menu that reads more like cosmic horror than a list of drinks. It is one of my favorite spots.

Being the oldest in a group of friends only becomes largely apparent to me when the youngest friend spans decades. I sat at one end of the long table in the back with people who were anywhere from age 30-something to 24. Personally, I think having multi-generational friend groups is incredible and enriching. It’s especially fun to watch them reach their 30’s and relate to me on things that only I’ve understood for years.

Things like sitting on the floor for too long and when you try to get up, your knees hurt. Or sneezing weird and then spending the days that follow with back pain.

A Feelin’ in My Spine

The song I’ve been listening to all throughout this past week is the second track on They Might Be Giants’ album, The Spine. It’s short (coming in at 33 seconds) and called plainly, Spine. It sounds almost as if it flows seamlessly into the song that follows and in live shows has often been played as a medley with that next song (which I’ll write about next week).

On it’s own, Spine is full of eloquently poetic lyrics and set to a simply musical track that I cant help but interpret as a guy who is around my age and is trying to cope with a very bad back. As an almost-forty-seven-year-old tall person, I understand the sinister way an unhappy back can take over your life. When I hear this song, my whole body feels connected to the words being sung.

The complete lyrics:

I’ve been draggin’ my feet across my back

And I’ve been rubbin’ my head against my neck

And I’ve been walkin’ my fingers through my mind

And I’ve been feelin’ this feelin’ in my spine

And I believe I’ll be leavin’ it behind

When I don’t need a spine

Leavin’ It Behind

The first two lines of the song are singing to the physical coping mechanisms being used to try to find some relief from the agony. The next two lines are about the mental and physical toll coming from the chronic back pain and last two are about the moment he will finally surrender. The acceptance that he will finally be leaving this pain in his back behind, when no longer needs his spine - when he’s dead.

The ultimate surrender is knowing that there is no solution to the entropy of our bodies. To the lifelong toll of gravity on our spines. The dull aches, sudden sharp stabs, and ever-present knowledge that our very bones will betray us at the mere thought of sitting on a cushion-less wood chair in a tiki bar, inch ever closer to an end with every passing birthday.

Until we die.

Question: What’s the dumbest way you’ve ever thrown out your back?

Once per week, I like to share post about songs that are not on one of They Might Be Giants’ major studio released albums with my paid subscribers. These are posts for the B-sides, deep cuts, and rarities. This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. Equal parts: Fandom, Personal Reflections and Experimentation on what is tolerable to the human reader. Like a negroni of Nerdom. First time here? Get the next one in your inbox.

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Noisy chatter fills the open space around me. The clanging of coffee cups and crinkling paper wrappers as pastries get stuffed inside.

“Fig mocha, for here!” a barista calls out. That’s mine. I’ve never had a fig mocha before, but it sounds like a nice fall flavored option beside pumpkin spice seasoning. And no hate to pumpkin spice flavors – I’m on that train too. Are figs a fall thing? When do figs ripen? And don’t come into the comments telling me all about the fig wasps that inhabit every fruit, lay eggs inside and die.

Oh, I KNOW about the nightmare-hellscape that is natural growing figs. Oh, I get it. The terrifying science of figs is precisely what must make them appropriate for the spooky season. Ok, moving on.

At the time of writing, today is my three-year anniversary of writing Kiss Me, Son of Blog. Some of you have been checking in and since the beginning of this and I just wanted to say thank you. This came about entirely on a whim while working on a different project. In fact, this newsletter is very much one of those creative endeavors that one starts as a means of distraction from the intended creative project. I continued both at the time, but this one remains and I don’t see myself ever putting it away.

Bluebeard Coffee Roasters in Tacoma, WA is the location I find myself sitting in today. I used to visit my friend Milo at Naomi Joe’s on Saturday mornings to visit and write but they’ve changed their schedule up. I decided today would be the perfect opportunity, as I begin my fourth year of this newsletter, to start a new routine. I’ll visit my friend Lane at work. I arrived and ordered my nightmare coffee drink and a cookie just moments before they walked in the door to start their shift.

There’s no better way to start writing, or even just your entire day, than seeing a good friend and sharing a quick hug. Okay, enough waxing poetic; let’s talk about the song Experimental Film.

Track one from They Might Be Giants’ 2004 release, The Spine. An album that I only ever owned digitally, and not until within the last decade, although I’d end up hearing and loving several songs from it since its release. Back in those days, By 2004, I’d become a dad to a second kiddo and was the only working parent in the house. It would be accurate to say that didn’t have much time that belonged to me anymore. And I wasn’t really allowed to spend money on something for myself, even if I could afford it – which we rarely could.

There will be several albums that I have missed out on (unless it was for the kids) and had to enjoy from afar. Feeling left out of the fandom. As if the band had continued without me. That was the general feeling I had in the years to follow until my oldest kid reached an age in elementary school where he began searching for more TMBG songs online and wondered why I hadn’t shared those as well. I’ll share those stories in later posts.

Homestar Runner

Don’t you love it when one of your favorite creative things collaborates or mentions being a fan of one of your other favorite creative things? It’s so reaffirming and validating that you are tuned into exactly the corner of the universe that you ought to be. That was the case for me with Experimental Film.

Do you any of you remember this early 2000’s Star Wars rap, flash animation1? That’s the first instance I remember seeing something on the internet that seemed like a uniquely internet kind of animation and content. I thought of that comedy rap animation the day I came across homestarrunner.com. I can’t recall how exactly I first saw a Homestar clip, but somebody emailed me a link to something and I was hooked.

For me, and most people who loved visiting the site, it was all about Strong Bad reading his emails. To this day, I still think to myself in a grumbly voice while checking work emails, “checking out the emails,” as I clack away at my keyboard. My inner narrator at work immediately becomes Strong Bad and I don’t know how I could make it through my workday any other way.

But there was an even deeper, funnier element to homestarrunner.com. Deep within the menus there was a series of cruder animation that were supposed to have been drawn and narrated by Strong Bad called, “Teen Girl Squad.” The comedy content that I loved the most was created by the comedy content that I loved. It was so unique for me.

One day, while checking for new Homestar updates, there was an episode where the gang was going to make a movie. Strong Bad and The Cheet wrote and directed an Experimental Film. What followed was a video that was fully animated by the Homestar creators for They Might Be Giants’ newly released single, Experimental Film.

An entire day has passed since I posted the YouTube link above. Rather than focusing on the task at hand, I got pulled into a Homestar Runner rabbit hole of videos. Mostly, Teen Girl Squad, if I’m being honest.

Listening to Experimental film—aside from it being just an absolute banger—takes me back to those fun early internet days. When it felt as if you were always on the verge of discovering the next fun thing. When, one day, you could wake up and find out that your favorite band also really digs the same goofy internet videos that you do.

Once per week, I like to share post about songs that are not on one of They Might Be Giants’ major studio released albums with my paid subscribers. These are posts for the B-sides, deep cuts, and rarities. This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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On July 13, 2004, They Might Be Giants released a new studio album called The Spine. I’ll start posting about songs from that album on the weekend following this post (Friday for paid subs and Saturday for everyone.) Today, I want to start talking about a second album they released on that very same day.

The Spine Surfs Alone.

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Before setting out to write about all of the songs from the No! album, I posed the question to my readers (and maybe to myself) on whether or not I should go song-by-song on the kids’ albums or not. There was definitely thoughts, feelings, and memories surrounding this album but I did I have an essay’s worth of writing for each track?

“Sure!” I thought as I dove in.

Alas, I feel that I am grasping at straws here. Trying to force something that just isn’t meant to be. Not from me anyway.

Instead, we’re going to cover the remaining favorites from myself and my kids in this one epic post so that we can start listening and talking about The Spine.

Let’s begin.

Violin

My oldest kiddo loved this song and it’s probably one of my favorites of the album. The plucking of the violin, the soothing cello, and John Linnell singing math with three quarters of George Washington’s head.

John Lee Supertaster

In the early days of my learning the bass guitar, this song one of the first that I could play along with start to finish. Danny Weinkauf is playing a totally sick groove here. I also took a DNA test a few years ago. One of those Ancestry-at-home cheek swab situations. Amidst the results, I learned that I am extra sensitive to bitter-tasting foods. Not only that, I was also more likely to crave sweet tasting foods as those had a more intensely sweet sensation.

The beginning lyrics to this song go a little like this:

To a Supertaster, bitter fruits taste far more bitter,

and sweets far more sweet.

Turns out, I am a SUPERTASTER.

That amazingly groovy, rubberbandy sound that seems to come straight out of the the grooviest 60’s - 70’s rock? Well, that’s Linnell on the clavinet.1

Clap Your Hands

This was, and will always be, a staple in the Roper household. What a fucking banger. Here’s the version from the album (which also appeared Here Come The ABC’s) and here’s a god damned live version that will blow your TMBG fan-ears away.

If you don’t have the Almanac Live TMBG album, you should absolutely check it out here. Live with swears, its the TMBG National Anthem:

Looking back at the songs from No!, I realize that I’m experiencing a strange sort of nostalgia. They take me back to a time when my kids were either very little or yet-to-be-born. It’s a type of nostalgic reminiscing that makes my heart ache at both the beauty of having them in my lives while watching them grow and the relentlessly passing of time that keeps those moments at ever further lengths away.

I’m incredibly thankful to They Might Be Giants for jumping into the children’s music world when they did. It helped me introduce a creative force that I loved to my kids in such a new and accessible way. Little did I know that so much more was on the horizon and how that would shape us all.

Next weekend, we’ll crack into The Spine as well as its B-Sides counterpart that released alongside it, The Spine Surfs Alone. With Summer behind me, the first kids’ album (mostly) dissected, I’m ready to immerse myself once again.

Thank you for being here.

I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. Equal parts: Fandom, Personal Reflections and Experimentation on what is tolerable for the human reader. First time here? Get the next one in your inbox.

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“This next song is based on a true story.”

I saw They Might Be Giants live in 2002 at the Paramount in Seattle, WA. It was an adult rock show but the touring album was No! - the band’s first children’s album. My best friend was out state by that time and I was stuck going with a friend who 1. Did really know this band and 2. Was not appreciating the number of songs being played that were clearly leaning toward a much younger crowd.

Just before playing the song featured in today’s post, John Flansburgh announced, “This next song is based on a true story,” and kicked off a mostly rocking version of In The Middle, In The Middle, In The Middle.

Coming in at track number six, this song tells the (presumably true) story about the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street. John Linnell is playing a clarinet, bass clarinet, keyboard, and a toy piano. Meanwhile, Flansburgh’s wife Robin Goldwasser is singing vocals. It has a very vintage kids song vibe to it and as I’ve discovered yesterday, this is a cover that is resurrecting a very obscure original song.

In the 1960’s, Vic Mizzy (the creator of The Addams Family theme song), wrote a safety jingle for the New York City Department of Transportation. That jingle was sung by his daughter and we can only assume that it led to a sharp decline in pedestrians being struck by cars after they wantonly ran out into the streets in droves.

If you listen to the original below, it has that definitive 60’s jingle sound and vocal affectation that screams “Mad Men era commercials.” I think TMBG did a great job covering this while adding their own little zhuzh.

Let’s Get A Little More Personal

There was a dark time in my life well over a decade ago when I found myself having a family staycation in Seattle. I guess it’s not really a staycation if we didn’t stay at home but we stayed in a hotel for a weekend where we could have easily spent the day, drove home, and come back the next day. Seattle was only a 30 minute drive.

All four of the kids were in various stages of elementary school and could definitely walk on their own. One of the these kiddos used to require the use of a little monkey backpack that had a very long tail I could wrap around my wrist.

Yes, like a leash. And yes, I’m aware of the opinions about such an accessory for parents and their kids. But this kiddo was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and was very prone to running off in stores, into streets, across a zoo. Like a caged bird being set free, so was my kiddo when leaving the house. The monkey backpack helped me ensure that this didn’t happen.

Once they were able to express a desire to not wear this thing, I had to honor that and give them an opportunity to learn and grow. Thus is the way of a good parent.1 Sometimes, it takes hindsight to recognize that downtown Seattle would be by far an overstimulating place for any kid on the spectrum. And in this case, that hindsight arrived about nine seconds after walking out of the hotel onto the busy sidewalk.

At almost every intersection we had to wait our turn to walk across the street but what we learned very quickly was that this kiddo had a separate, secret, internal waiting clock that began counting down the moment we stopped at a crosswalk. Once that time was up, they would sometimes announce, “OK, I’m done standing,” and go for it. Sometimes, it was safe enough, most of the time it was absolutely not okay to walk.

Happy Song / Complicated Emotional Memory

That was also a time when things between the kids’ mom and I were the worst. Between the tenuous relationship and a child prone to darting into the road, every moment of that weekend felt like someone was walking just behind me while holding an airhorn. My nervous system was preparing for the moment where the trigger was pressed and the airhorn would blow in my ear.

But hey, the kids saw the Space Needle.

I don’t think any amount of playing In The Middle, In The Middle, In The Middle would have prevent that smaller human from making the choices they made but the rest of them always waiting patiently and even though the light turned green, would look both ways. I can’t say that this is all in part to the song but I can’t say that it’s not.

So, job well done song. Job well done.

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I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. Equal parts: Fandom, Personal Reflections and Experimentation on what is tolerable the human reader. Like a negroni of Nerdom. First time here? Get the next one in your inbox.

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This song poses a deeply philosophical question that is surprisingly deep for a kids’ album. Where Do They Make Balloons? The fifth track on They Might Be Giants’ album, No! was written and sung by bassist, Danny Weinkauf which does lend an overall “differentness” to the vibes party.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time writing about trivia or musical composition on this one. Instead, I want to pose a more important question:

Why do they make balloons?

How many balloons need to be gathered in one place for it look exciting? Surely more than one. If I walk into a room, and see a balloon in the corner, my first thought isn’t going to be, “Oh hell yeah we’re partying.” It’s probably more like, “Wait, did someone bring a toddler to this party?”

I don’t think we reach an interesting-peaking number of balloons until at least twenty balloons. Even still, seeing that is still going to make me worry that there are many toddlers at this party. But where do those balloons go after they deflate? There is no other purpose for them other than to become trash. Balloons are boring, wasteful, and I’m still not done complaining about them.

Several years back, my ex and I found ourselves without plans for New Year’s Eve. We decided to buy some last second tickets to a Taylor Swift themed event in town. It was basically a club where a DJ played full tracks of Swift songs with a montage of music video footage projected on the wall behind the table. None of which actually pertained to the song being played or lined up with the music in the slightest.

We walked into that venue, got in line at the bar and I proceeded to order one of the specially crafted cocktails for the night - a Tropical Red Bull with Tequila. As far as dance clubs “cocktails” go, it was “not good,” but I had to when-in-Rome it up.

This brings me to the balloons.

Here’s the thing with balloons in a club or any public space really. A dance floor, covered with red balloons, is theoretically fun. If they have “fuck the patriarchy” written on them? Even more fun. You drink, dance, start smacking balloons up in the air and after about thirty minutes the game becomes a chore that everyone actively pretends not to be avoiding.

“How long do we have to play with these!?”

Before the end of the night, people are stomping on the balloons rather than risk being seen bending over to pick one up and reignite the crowd balloon obligation again.

Most notably, hearing the sounds of balloons popping in a highly attended event is very reminiscent of the always recent bullets-leaving-guns events that are on the news. Nothing sucks the joy out of leaving your home like the immediate reminder that someone might be shooting people.

So maybe balloons have had their day in the sun.

Which is also a much better place for balloons to exist today.

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Hey everyone.

While talking to my therapist last week, I came to a revelation that I might benefit from taking an intentional break from writing. At her mere suggestion that I allow myself a vacation from this, I felt both terrified of losing it and excitement over allowing myself a proper reset.

By the end of September, I will have been writing weekly essays here for three years. Continuing even through the time my now ex-wife walked out the door. Hell, I barely missed a beat when my aneurism almost killed me. This summer has been filled with outdoor activities with friends, nights out, a stint in dating, my youngest living back home after a first year at college, and a merger at my day job. LOTS has been going on.

What I am doing here is important and fulfilling to me but I also need to allow myself some time away. Without that, my labor of love just becomes labor and I already have a 9-5 day job I don’t love.

I’ll be back in September before my three year anniversary and continue writing about my life and fandom through the lens of They Might Be Giants songs. In the meantime, I’ll be camping at Ren Faire, organizing my apartment, seeing some live music, spending more time with friends, playing some video games, and catching up on some reading.

Has my current writing schedule allowed for several banked, pre-written essays so that my time away will go unnoticed? Not at all!

Everything in the archive is unlocked now so this might be a great time to check out past things I’ve published here if there’s something you’ve missed. Here’s a breakdown by album:

I also have some personal favorites that I’ve written. If you missed these, check them out, leave your thoughts and I’ll respond when I return.

My Picks

I promise you, I’ll be back, refreshed, and ready to kick out the rest of the No! album and carry on into the great They Might Be Giants universe and beyond.

See you soon,

Chase

Once per week, I like to share a post about songs that are not on one of They Might Be Giants’ major studio released albums with my paid subscribers. These are posts for the B-sides, deep cuts, and rarities. This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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I’m using voice-to-text while driving to work with a headache from bad air quality drifting over to Tacoma from the Spokane fires. You won’t be able to tell but every other word is followed by coughing. I was never a smoker but I have cigars sometimes, and I know that burning-garbage taste the morning after.

That’s what I woke up with after falling asleep with a fan in my window while the poisonous air came to town overnight. I mention this only because it’s the condition I was in when I started thinking about today’s song, which feels appropriate for a song called No! That’s the exact word that came out of my ash-tasting mouth when I woke up today.

No! sits fourth on the album that shares its name. Track four of seventeen, right after Robot Parade, giving listeners three songs' worth of runway before the title track shows up and makes its whole argument in ninety seconds.

This might be the first album I’ve covered in this project where the album title is also a song on the album. Doing a quick internal fact check; there’s no song called Lincoln. The self-titled album doesn’t have a song called They Might Be Giants (although the Flood album does but that doesn’t count). No! is the first time the John Linnell and John Flansburgh just named the record after one of the songs sitting on it, and I think that’s worth pausing on, because if you’re going to do that exactly once in a three-decade catalog, “No” (the word every kid on Earth hears roughly four thousand times before they turn 5) is a pretty interesting choice to build a whole children’s album name around.

no.

Because think about being a kid. Unless you were the rare spoiled, entitled kind of kid whose parents never told them no (a whole other problem), you heard this word constantly. I was always being marketed to before I could even read: Saturday morning cartoons, the late-afternoon block, toys I didn’t know existed until forty-five seconds ago and now cannot live without. There was always a new thing I felt that I wanted or needed.

But the “no” I remember most isn’t the toy-store no. It’s the way my mom used the word “no.”

can i go?

I realized pretty early that my mom’s no was arbitrary. It was less an answer than a mood. If she was in a good mood, the no could flip to a yes with almost no additional effort on my part. If she wasn’t, the no was just going to be no, and asking why was a waste of breath. I was the kind of kid who asked “why not?” I’d done my chores, I’d cleaned my room, nothing else was going on, the friend’s house was down the street, I’d ridden my bike there a hundred times before. And the answer would still be no.

Just because.

And eventually I figured out that “just because” actually meant something closer to: I’m not in the mood for you to have something that makes you happy, because I’m not happy.

finger pointing, eyebrows low

I figured out fast that if I could get her mood up, the whole atmosphere of the house changed. Happy, laughing mom versus withdrawn, brooding mom. And I don’t think it’s an accident that managing that gap might be some of the earliest groundwork for me becoming a comedian. Get the mood right, and the rules bent. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid’s sense of humor, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew it worked.

When I became a parent, I told my kids no plenty of times. But I tried to make it a no with a reason attached instead of a no with a mood attached. We already bought something this week. I didn’t budget for this one. Here’s how we could save for it. I wanted “yes” and “no” to be a set of rules they could actually learn, not a barometer they had to read.

do this - no!

It didn’t always work either. Once while in a Target, I had to let my autistic 6 year old down when I denied him buying a complete Minecraft encyclopedia. He let me know that if I did buy him that book, he was going to yell “fuck” so loud that everyone would hear it. Including: all the people, God, and Santa Clause.”

I would tell that story on stage to audiences and end it with me saying that I’d read plenty of parenting books by then and knew that I needed to respond in a way that was appropriate not only for his age and intelligence level. So I’d get down on one knee (so that I could be at his same level), place my hand on his shoulder and while speaking kindly, say to him, “Buddy, there is no Santa Clause.” Boom. Power dynamic restored.

The other parent in that dynamic ran closer to my mom’s model, the splurge-then-resent-it version, buying something to fix a mood and then bringing it up later as a debt. But that’s a different essay.

red means stop; do not go

Full credit to mom though for the one “no” she got right and wasn’t tied to her mood at all. She taught me, early and clearly, that there are people who are and are not allowed to touch me or see certain parts of me, parent or doctor only, and only with another parent present. And that even inside those allowed situations, I could still say no if I wasn’t comfortable. If someone didn’t listen, I needed to go get help. That no was not negotiable. It wasn’t mood-dependent. It didn’t flip if she was having a good day. It was MY No.

I applied that everywhere, automatically, the way you do with anything you’re taught early enough that it just becomes part of how you see the world. Everyone gets that no. Nobody gets to override it. Not just that but that everyone else has parts of them that nobody else gets to see or touch without that person’s permission. This simple lesson on that kind of particular “no” taught me about a person’s autonomy.

It’s probably a real reason I turned into the kind of adult who understands consent as a floor, not a suggestion. The reason I gravitated away from those who I could see did not have that same view. So even though my mom’s version of “no” was, most of the time, a weather report on her own mood, that one “no” was the real thing. Unconditional. And it’s the one that actually shaped me. LIke the song lyric says:

No is no. No is always no. If they say “no,” it means a thousand times no.

all no's lead to

I think about that sometimes, still, as a grown adult who has not lived with either of my parents in a very long time: how much of who you become gets decided by which no’s you got. Not whether you were told no. Everyone is, constantly, it’s the most common word in parenting, but which kind. The kind that’s a weather report on someone else’s mood, or the kind that’s just true, all the way down, no matter who’s asking or how good a day anyone’s having. I got both. I’m still sorting out which lessons came from which things.

My mom would probably be surprised to hear that the no she meant as protection is the one that stuck, and the no she meant as control is the one I had to work the hardest to unlearn.

(Mostly she’d be surprised to hear from me at all. It’s been decades.)

Ironically, she taught me a no that doesn’t bend and when that same no eventually got pointed back at her, she couldn’t honor it either. She handed me the one rule she was worst at following, and it turned out to be the one that mattered most. That tracks with most things kids take from their parents: you rarely get to pick which lessons land, or why, or which ones the person teaching you actually meant to be permanent.

QUESTION: What’s a “no” from your childhood that stuck with you? Or even a recent “no” that had a significant impact?

Kiss Me, Son of Blog goes song by song through every They Might Be Giants release. One album, one memory, one uncomfortable truth at a time. Paid subscribers get:

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I’m writing about every song from every full studio album by They Might Be Giants. These posts are for the other songs.

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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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…

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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.

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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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