tmbg
“I could shake my tiny fist and swear I wasn’t wrong, but what’s the sense in arguing when you’re all alone?” Many of my friends associate this lyric with me. It’s from a song called “Lucky Ball and Chain” by a band called They Might Be Giants. This band is my very favorite band. I don’t know all the reasons why I like everything They’ve ever done. Their lyrics especially are very important to me. Some of them are incredibly morbid and absurd, but in the most charming ways … much like me.
If you are interested in listening to some TMBG and don’t know where to start, I recommend the album “Severe Tire Damage”. It contains live versions of many of my favorites, although my very favorite song changes daily. I also recommend seeing Them live. They do not disappoint.
Some of my favorite TMBG-related memories have taken place on significant days in my life. On our third date, the MSG and I accompanied my friend David to the “Bed, Bed, Bed” show in San Francisco (pictured at left). At my thirty-first birthday party, the MSG surprised me with a delicious cake with “and now you’re even older” on it (pictured at right). And for my twenty-ninth birthday, my friend Ryan wrote me a poem entirely comprised of TMBG lyrics, and recited it to me at my party. Here it is, Carinah’s 29th Birthday Poem, by Ergazork (courtesy of TMBG):
In my dream she is reaching past my hollow core
Which one of us is the one that we can’t trust?
Careen in tandem, the sea into the landem
Blow my mind your royal flyness I dig your bangs
Tabloid footprints in your hair
Even when I close my eyes your silhouette is smiling at me
Why, why did they send her?
She’s walking ’round wearing all of my clothes
Placental the sister of her brother Marsupial
She’s stuck in my heart now, where my blood belongs.
And in the back of the edge of hearing
Everything’s catching on fire
The evidence will vanish from your charred and smoking chair
I’ve got no one to blame but my fat self
Mysterious whisper
Blew out your pilot light
And sees you softly weeping as some music fills the room
Before the expiration date
I’m interested in things
It scares me so, like I scare myself
Glistening white triangular tooth
Condemned to a life of bleak despair
I kick the rocks beneath me
You declare that I have drowned
My defeated heart keeps beating on
I am not the only dust my mother raised
I was the worst hope of my generation
The colossal mess they’d made of their lives
When they start the love machine and I can love again
I want to raise my freak flag higher and higher
See the spring of the grandfather clock unwinding
Raise a glass and sit and stare
For on the kitchen table I must lie
Someone keeps moving my chair
Soul crushing dirt bike
Why the shrieks of pain
Pour the poison in my ear
One degree shy of sadistic
Was it something you would do for anybody?
I walk along darkened corridors
A place where we could live
I see a broken figure silhouetted on the wall
Does he feel totally worthless?
In your darkest hour, my indolent friends
I promise not to kill you
But really I’m not actually your friend
Children obey what the robots say
Fire alarms go off in your head
And time is still marching on
Last but not least, I’m pleased to see that Pat has reinstated his Karaoke Commute archives, which include his rendition of “Dr. Worm” — just for me!
