My first experience with They Might Be Giants came literally minutes after a nasty breakup. It just wasn’t working out: I thought we both knew it. When she called I stopped her in mid-step and told her. Her hair turned to snakes and she started shouting, snarking, jeering, insulting, crying, begging, shouting some more, insulting some more, and finally, comparing me to him, that slick, slippery, evil con-man creep of an ex-boyfriend with whom she’d associated terrible deeds and with whom I was really starting to relate. I said, “Sweetheart, please don’t do–.”

She cut me off with her best Mephistopheles voice and screamed, “DON’T YOU EVER! CALL ME SWEETHEART! AGAIN!”

Then she hung up on me and called me right back and screamed some more and hung up on me again.

My roommate sympathized and thought I could use some good cheer. I told him that the kind of good cheer I needed wasn’t going to come out of a CD player, but he persisted: there is this great new band! who performs under the unlikely moniker They Might Be Giants. The LP was named Flood. Keep in mind that before he ever pushed the play button I was trying not to throw up:

Also keep in mind that he was just trying to be nice:

Man, this music takes me back. And I don’t mean that as a compliment at all. I’m pretty sure he also played some material from Lincoln:

Anyway, hopefully I haven’t just started a cyber-scrap with a co-blogger. Bygones?

UPDATE: Our official tMiM benefactor told me (offline, mercifully enough) that the “Birdhouse In Your Soul” clip I posted was, by point of fact, not They Might Be Giants. In retrospect it sounded off, but all TMBG material sounds off to me, so again I ask, bygones? I struck “Birdhouse” from the set list and added “Ana Ng,” since our benefactor also reminded me that “Birdhouse” should earn a pass on charm alone: the lyrics are told POV a child’s night light. I have to confess the children’s releases thaw my attitude just a smidge, but after that painful afternoon in 1990, it’s a long row to hoe.