What Are We Going to Do Unless They Are?

On Friday night, we saw a much-delayed They Might Be Giants show at the Bowery Ballroom. It was originally delayed from September 2020 because of the pandemic, as many concerts were. Then, last year, right before the day it was rescheduled, John Flansburgh got into an accident caused by a drunk driver. He seems to have recovered well, based on how active he was at this show. It had earlier been advertised as a celebration of the anniversary of Mink Car, but since it ended up as part of a run of shows where they play everything from Flood, that's what it became. They actually didn't play all the songs from that album, as they skipped "Hearing Aid," despite its being on the setlist. And I guess they didn't actually perform the song "They Might Be Giants," but it was their walk-on music, so I'd say that counts. The only one they ended up doing from Mink Car was "Man, It's So Loud in Here," but I understand the song "Mink Car" was part of the set on the following evening. A three-piece horn section made up of Mark Pender (formerly of the Max Weinberg 7) on trumpet, long-time collaborator Dan Levine on trombone, and Stan Harrison on saxophone.

According to Flansburgh, Stan came up with the horn arrangement for "The Darlings of Lumberland." During "Istanbul," all three horn players did extended solos, two at the beginning and the other at the end. One fascinating thing they'd been doing recently is performing "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" backwards, which they recorded and then played back in reverse at the beginning of the second set. That must have taken a lot of practice to get even sort of right, and the finished product this time was pretty much entirely comprehensible. Of course, the band has been experimenting with stuff like that since early in their career. On their setlists, they write it as "Stillub," which I guess is "Bullets" phonetically backwards.

Towards the end of the show, John Linnell had technical problems with his keyboard, so he ended up playing his part of the closer, "New York City," on the accordion. Throughout the concert, a screen behind the band showed occasional animated bits, or sometimes just close-ups of the musicians. At one point, the Johns brought up George Santos, and Linnell shared his theory that he's actually two dogs in a suit. But we never DID find out who ate the babies.


The band strongly recommended N-95 or other medical-grade masks while attending, and this was actually the first time Beth or I had worn those. They're pretty uncomfortable, but I guess someone could get used to them if necessary. I remember seeing some people insisting that cloth masks aren't good enough, and while I'm sure these other masks are more effective, I don't really understand how it would be practical to wear a single-use mask every day during the time when masks were required or highly recommended. Maybe if your work or whatever provides them, it's different. After the show, we stopped to get some food at McDonald's, and we got a Luma Happy Meal toy.

The toys are advertising the upcoming movie, which is presumably an origin story, so it's kind of weird that one of them is of a character (or character type, I suppose) who wasn't introduced until the 2000s.

There's not a whole lot else I can think of to report, aside from stuff about media that I'll cover on WordPress. One thing that has been on my mind is that our refrigerator has been having problems, first getting too warm. We had a guy in to fix it, who shamed me for having too much food (that's weird, right?), but after that it got too cold and a lot of our stuff froze. I like frozen yogurt, but not THAT way!
A different repairman came today, and it seems like the problem is that the thermostat that regulates the temperature wasn't reliable. It looks like it's working normally now, but that did cost kind of a lot.

I've stopped taking guitar lessons for the time being, and that wasn't even really intentional on my part. The place I was taking them seems to have a lot of turnover, and I've had a few different teachers. While I'm not exactly starting from scratch each time, it's hard to explain what I already know. The time I could get wasn't really convenient for me, so I kept having to cancel, and eventually they just didn't schedule lessons for me. I do practice most days, though. And I guess that's about it.