They Might Be Giants -- Flood

8/10

When you live life like I do, you aren't afforded many opportunities to do something the rest of the world would consider "spontaneous" or "random." In May of 2002, when John T Meche III asked me to accompany him on his senior trip to the Imperial Palace in Biloxi, Mississippi, I said "yes." The thing is, I had spoken to John T Meche III maybe five times before I rode in a car with him to the Imperial Palace casino. I had graduated high school two years before, and only ran into Meche III because he and my sister graduated together, and he came to the graduation party. I thought he was joking when he asked me to come, but when I realized he wasn't, I figured, I'm gonna be a college junior in a few months, and will probably die soon, so why not. Thus, I rode in a car with John T Meche III, William Rummler, who was the smartest kid to ever attend False River Academy, Chad Jarreau, who is funny, and Emily, who has a different last name now, from Pointe Coupee Parish, Lousiana to the Imperial Palace casino, where Meche's grandmother had dropped so much dime, she had a free hotel room. The five of us then proceeded to have one of the stranger, more wonderful, and certainly more random weekends of my life, which heavily involved Hypno Bro, billed as the world's funniest black hypnotist, the Beau Rivage Unlimited Buffet, and also me staying in a hotel room with four people I barely knew, one of which was a girl. We quickly developed a bizarre, self-referential, inside-joke heavy, and repetitious variety of shorthand, that often used hotel advertisement buzzlines for Hypno Bro as methods of communication. At one point, we went to a music store, and William picked up a copy of They Might Be Giants' breakout 1990 Flood, referring to it as that album "that has those songs from Tiny Toons." My main interactions with William before this involved him taking away my middle school National Geographic Geography Bee crown, and continuously trouncing me to the point that in my final year in the bee, I answered the final question as "Congratulations William." I took those years of anger out on him on that trip by betting $20 that he couldn't beat me at the hotel's air hockey machine, after pretending I was new to the game, then destroying him over and over again to the point that it wasn't even fun any more, and we felt more than even. He repaid this indignity by reintroducing me to that band who has those songs from Tiny Toons, Tiny Toons being Tiny Toons Adventures, an early 90's cartoon program starring a new batch of Warner Brothers loonies.
As soon as William played the CD, as we drove the car up and down Biloxi's casino-swarmed coast, I immediately remembered this and this.


The trip ended, and led to some interesting fallout, including one of Emily's friends stalking me to the point that she followed my car at night and left notes on it where I'd parked, and sometimes secretly parked her own car and slept in front of my parents' house at night, and also, I'm pretty sure she used witchcraft to put curses on me. It also led to a close friendship with John T Meche III up until the point that he and his wife moved to New Orleans and had enough children to where I don't know what number to put here (I hope you're doing great, though, JTMIII, I miss you), and also, I bought my own copy of They Might Be Giants Flood.
They Might Be Giants' style of music, minimalist, light, catchy, oddball alternative pop, isn't necessarily my cup of tea, but Flood is packed to the gills (that was a fish reference because floods involve water, which is where fish live) with great songs to the point that I can let that go. Sure Tiny Toons' "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" are fun, insanely memorable, momentum-packed songs, but other non-Tiny Toons songs like "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "Whistling in the Dark," featuring those same qualities, maybe even to a stronger degree. Throughout all 19 of Flood's eccentric tracks, and yes 19 is a lot, the John's of this duo, Flansburgh and Linnell (not TMecheIII), pull off some snappy, excellent harmonies, to where 19 songs fly by. I need to stop the review now so that the non-review remains longer.


1990 Elektra 1. Theme from Flood 0:28
2. Birdhouse in Your Soul 3:20
3. Lucky Ball & Chain 2:46
4. Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (written by Jimmy Kennedy, Nat Simon) 2:38
5. Dead 2:58
6. Your Racist Friend 2:54
7. Particle Man 1:59
8. Twisting 1:56
9. We Want a Rock 2:47
10. Someone Keeps Moving My Chair 2:23
11. Hearing Aid 3:26
12. Minimum Wage 0:47
13. Letterbox 1:25
14. Whistling in the Dark 3:25
15. Hot Cha 1:34
16. Women & Men 1:46
17. Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love 1:36
18. They Might Be Giants 2:46
19. Road Movie to Berlin 2:22