Everything new is wrong again

The new They Might Be Giants song "Upside Down Frown" (which can be heard on this radio show) includes the lines, "When I'm with you, the landscape goes all weird, black is white, and the rainbow has a beard." I've been told that "the rainbow has a beard" is a reference to a Cream song. But as for the "black is white" line, Weird Al's song "Everything You Know Is Wrong," itself intended as a TMBG style parody, begins its chorus with, "Everything you know is wrong. Black is white, up is down, and short is long." While I'm sure this wasn't intentional on the Johns' part, is this a case of things coming full circle? {g}

And speaking of TMBG, I know I'm not the only one who finds the insistence of some online fans with not having new albums "spoiled" is pretty ridiculous. On the tmbg community, people have been putting lists of TITLES under LJ-cuts. Yes, because an album won't be enjoyable for me if I know the titles of the songs before I listen to them! In one thread, someone was insisting that "Bird Of The Bee Of The Moth" doesn't count as a "new" song because it was performed on the radio. And this isn't a new thing, either. I remember someone saying several years ago that a certain song (I think it might have been "Cyclops Rock") shouldn't be on an album because it was already on a radio promo CD. (This WAS a while ago, so it's possible I'm not remembering the context correctly, but I'm pretty sure it was something like that.) Apparently, to some fans, if one of the Johns is heard whistling a song while walking down the street, it's old hat and should not appear on a future album. Sure, I like to have SOME surprises when hearing an album for the first time, and the fact that pretty much everyone with Internet access had heard the majority of the Mink Car songs before the release of the album was kind of annoying, but come on! Isn't this the band that pretty much always put their songs on Dial-A-Song (back when it worked) before releasing them anywhere? Didn't some of their early songs not see album release until years after their earliest appearances? ("Which Describes How You're Feeling," for instance, was on the 1985 demo tape, but wasn't put on an album until 1992.) Personally, I wouldn't mind hearing a few more tracks from The Else.

Japanese Girls Think Tiny Things Are Cute

Last night's Simpsons episode was probably better than last week's in that it actually had a plot that went somewhere, but it still wasn't great. The lead-up was pretty good, but the main story could be summed up as "Homer gets a new job, does something unethical, and then learns a lesson." Gee, we've never seen THAT before, have we? :P I'm actually surprised it took this long to see Homer as a fireman. On the other hand, we HAVE already seen Apu and Moe as members of the volunteer fire department (in fact, Apu was the chief in "Homer the Heretic"), so there was no need for them to join again. Yeah, I know it's dorky for me to take somewhat obscure continuity errors like that into consideration; but hey, "Homer the Heretic" was one of my all-time favorites, so it's not a good sign if the current writers are forgetting about it.

It seemed to be a night for episodes running short, since The Simpsons had a long intro and couch gag, and Family Guy had another chicken fight sequence. And FG was much weaker overall than last week's. As with the Simpsons episode, it started out all right, but kind of lost steam once the main plot started up. With all of the padding (not just with the chicken, but also the rather drawn-out buttscratcher bit), it seems like the writers weren't entirely sure what to do with this one either.

I did like American Dad, and I kind of share Stan's fear of being criticized by people I know (which isn't to say that I act like him). As for the Steve and Roger subplot, did Steve actually end up with $100,000? I'll bet THAT'S something that's not going to be addressed in future episodes.