Setlist scan, photos and mp3s are ready! (mp3s also linked below)

Clap Your Hands / James K Polk / Twisting / Experimental Film / Spine -> Memo to Human Resources / Stalk of Wheat / New York City / Birdhouse in Your Soul / Why Does the Sun Shine? / Particle Man / Drink! / Doctor Worm / Older / Damn Good Times / She's an Angel / Wearing a Raincoat / John Lee Supertaster / Fingertips / The End of the Tour // Violin / It's Kickin' In / Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Um, I talk too much.

Only about 250 miles roundtrip this time, but then it was a pretty short set. I hadn't been to Cornell since 1990, and I didn't have a car then, but when we got up into Collegetown it was a little weird how familiar everything looked to me. And bless Cornell for its free parking on campus on weekends.

We walked over to the Arts Quad and then wallacecat went his own way and I went down to where the stage was set up. There was a handful of people there; a couple of them invited me to share their blanket, and then when I told them my name another girl, to my surprise and embarrassment, asked me, "Oh, are you the girl who writes those really [long] reviews?" and I was like, um, yeah. And so that was how I met Miriam, lexxy, and cornmo, who cuts hair very well.

I hadn't been there long when it started sprinkling. Then it started raining, and then I decided to go get my umbrella out of the car. While I was walking over there it started pouring, and while I was crossing the street I slipped and fell and got a huge bruise on my knee. What amused me about that was that I had somehow wounded my knee at the Columbus show back in July, which was my first TMBG show of the summer; and so it was a bizarre kind of tidy bookending that I should hurt the same knee at my last show of the summer.

I made it back safely with the umbrella and some of my new friends and I cuddled together under it, which was a little intimate for our first meeting, but the circumstances were exceptional so I figured I could handle a little contact.

When the downpour stopped TMBG's crew came back out and started checking all the gear again. I asked if the show would go on if it was raining, and we were told that if there was lightning, then definitely not. Then, seeing our downcast faces, the guy said they would do their best. Another of the guys (I think it was Will) also gave us some of the street team stickers as our reward for being idiots and stubbornly standing there through the pouring rain.

lexxy returned with some cardboard and since he no longer needed it as protection from the rain he decided to make a sign out of it. I told him to make a BELLER/MILLER '04 sign (since I loved nathew's concept so much) and he did, and then (since I'm bossy) I told him that he should wait until Flans said that Marty was "the next president of the United States" to hold it up. The danger of this was that, though you can usually rely on Flans to say the same thing at 98% of the shows, every once in a while he lets you down and says something new. But it wasn't like lexxy couldn't hold the sign up any time he wanted in that event.

Shortly after that Marty came out to check the drums and I goaded lexxy into holding the sign up right away. When Marty saw it he gave it a big thumbs-up but then he pointed to Dan's corner of the stage and said "he's not gonna like it." And I said, "Who knew Dan Miller was so power-mad?"

The show started pretty late, but eventually Ben Lee came on with his pretty friend Laura. He was all right; there were a couple guys behind me who kept making fun of his lyrics and I felt bad for him. I think it was after that that I met mislih, but we weren't really close enough to say anything but "hi" at that point.

After that there was a brief break. Dan came out onstage to check his pedalboard and since he was about three feet away from me I called out to him. He looked up and smiled and greeted me and then went back to his work; then a minute later he looked up again and was like, "Wait—you live in Chicago, but you're here." So I told him "we're on vacation"—as if that explained anything, but it was a good enough reason for him; he nodded and continued what he was doing. Also, I was pleased to note that the "WE ♥ DAN" that I had written on the edge of the rug in Minneapolis was still there, (perhaps not coincidentally) right in front of the spot where I was standing.

And then it was time.

The intro music finally came on and Marty ran out onstage by himself, so I knew Clap Your Hands was coming. Sure enough, Marty drummed and Flans came out and declared him "the next president of the United States!" and lexxy held up the sign again. Neither Flans nor Linnell seemed to see it, but Marty did and then performed the rather amazing feat of continuing to pound out the beat while simultaneously motioning to Dan to try to get him to look at it. Dan finally did and then, just as Marty had predicted, shook his head in disapproval. "It should be the other way around," he said, just before he had to start rocking out on the guitar. I think the sign was a success. Flans ended the song by directing, "Shy people scream! Disoriented people scream! Shy people, scream at the disoriented people!"

No cannons on Polk today.

After Twisting Flans requested a moment of soundchecking their waterlogged equipment. (It would not be the only episode of technical difficulty during the show.)
JF: To my left, that's MC Squiggles, Mr John Linnell.
JL: How's everybody doing? My name's John, and I'm talking to check the mic.
JF: I can hear a little bit too much of John Linnell's voice in my head—
JL: Hi John!
JF: Hi, how's it goin'?...On the bass, Mr Danny Weinkauf. Just four strings, but so damn sexy. Fellas, he's taken! Ladies, he's taken!

When they were done with that they did Experimental Film. I was very pleased to be in a group of people who joined in on all the "yeah"s with Flans and Dan to back up Linnell.
JL: I felt like we sounded better before we had our check.
JF: Well, that's true, but we'll never get back to that place.

They started to get ready to play Spine but Linnell's keyboard wasn't working, so Flans extemporized for a little while while Dan and Danny did a little jazz waltzing.
JF: It's very exciting to be so close to downtown Ithaca. It's just one long tumble. [Ed note: Cornell is located at the top of an incredibly steep hill.] Is it working, John?
JL: [very casually] No.

Finally they were able to do Spine into Memo and during Memo Flans kept calling out to "Solder" because he was having some kind of technical complaint. He repeated his call again when the song was over and Linnell pointed out that he really meant "Cotter," not "Solder."
JF: Yeah, sorry. Solder is standing directly to my right.
JL: Solder is running a large faction of Iraqis. But he's joined us onstage this afternoon.
Meanwhile Dan had gotten his flexatone in hand while Flans picked up some maracas (new red ones, not the Tom Selleck maraca). He started shaking them wildly.
JF: I need to warm these up. [Dan clangs the flexatone.] Ladies and gentlemen, The Spine is our tenth album and the RIAA regulations insist that you only use the flexatone once every ten albums. It is a restricted instrument, not because it's not versatile, because it's not versatile, it's just that it's a really unsuccessful instrument.

During Birdhouse, before the 2-guitar part, Linnell only said, "All right, you guys, go!" (and Flans and Dan did some spinning) but when they were done he said, "Okay, now me!" to cue himself singing the next verse.

Flans returned to the "estrogen" joke during Why Does the Sun Shine? and then pointed out afterwards, "There's this weird aspect of doing college shows...when you say the word 'estrogen' fifty percent of the audience will always understand what you're talking about, but it's that crucial second fifty percent that's the test. And the recognition factor here was very high. We're very excited to know that we're not playing for a bunch of people who got in on athletic scholarships. Except for that drunk fellow right there that's screaming at me."

After Drink! Dan crossed the stage over to the keyboard for Doctor Worm, but Flans wasn't ready to go on yet.
JF: We've got a paradoxical situation here onstage, I've gotta have a little technical time-out with my friend Will here. [to Will:] The kick drum that's coming through the side fill, every time it happens, it actually gives us all a momentary heart attack. But then the next time it happens, it actually ressuscitates us, so the only reason we're standing here—
JL: —is 'cause he's played an even number of kicks.
JF: Let's just peel that back a little bit before we're actually dead. It's exciting—it's just too exciting.
JL: That's right. Just like fascism.

From now on I'm just going to pretend that Older and Violin don't even exist. Moving on...

Flans put on his slide to do She's an Angel but did not manage to finish (he seemed dissatisfied with the tuning of his guitar). Then during Wearing a Raincoat he went over and said something to Dan, apparently telling him to take over the solo bits that Flans had been doing all the other times I've seen them play this song. Dan appeared rather amused to be pretending he was Flans. I don't know if it's even within his capabilities to play that as badly as Flans does, even when he's trying, but I suppose it sounded kind of similar to Flans's solos.

The show was almost over.
JF: Ladies and gentlemen, we've saved the very best for the near end. It happened a couple of songs ago, did you guys notice? "Good night!"
Fingertips was as usual, except for this goofy moment: Flans called off to the side to say that his "clean" amp wasn't working; then a few fingertips later he realized that in fact the problem was that he'd forgotten to plug in his guitar. (We all laughed.) Also, he's stopped doing the transformers thing and gone back to "H-E-A-R-T attack to you," in case you were wondering.

The Jazz Waltz tonight was one of the funniest I've seen. Flans thanked these people: "Guy in the orange shirt, thank you for coming to our show...other guy in the orange shirt who misunderstood when I was thanking the other guy in the orange shirt, thank you too for coming to our show...lady in the wayback in the orange shirt who's just walking by the show, stick around, what are you looking at, I'm talking to you, thank you for walking by our show...dude in the hat, thank you for rocking our show...peaceful yet strangely aggressive people in the crazy mosh pit, thank you for being peaceful but slightly aggressive for the entire show, and by 'people' I mean that one guy who's freaking out everybody else...They Might Be Giants' crew, thank you for crewing our show...They Might Be Giants' band, thank you for banding the show!...Ezra Cornell, thank you for founding an institution where everybody gets a course of study in something or other, including astronomy..."

I think Flans has been practicing his solo for End of the Tour. The whole song sounded good, but I wish they'd bring back the extra-rocking version they did in St Louis that I haven't heard again since then.

Flans introduced the band one more time before It's Kickin' In. He called Dan "Danny Miller" which sounded really weird to me...as for It's Kickin' In, it appears that the phrase "some disaffected waitress" is no longer part of Flans's vocabulary. Well, "try to appreciate it/in some fake foreign accent" makes as much sense as anything else, anyway.

They made it through that and Flans introduced Dan on the acoustic guitar for the final number. He got us ready by telling us, "There's two parts to this part of the show: the finger-snapping part and the hand-clapping part. The finger-snapping part's a little more subtle; the hand-clapping part's a little more obvious."

Now I have to mention that Dan had capoed his guitar at the first fret, so at first I wasn't even sure they were doing Istanbul—has anyone ever seen him capo on this song before? Have they changed the key? Or maybe Dan just needed to challenge himself more on it after having played hundreds of solos. Anyway he started off with some very lovely, subtle picking, but after just a few seconds he stopped and, looking embarrassed, requested a moment to tune. There was a brief silence, then:
JL: Mr Dan Miller, ladies and gentlemen!
JF: Where were you guys? That's right, the hand-clapping part just left.
Dan came back and started whaling on the guitar but then the sound cut out completely and he threw out his hands and shouted in disbelief, "Oh, come on!" But then it came back and he did this crazy solo where he alternated between the fancy pickin' (the finger-snapping part) and the wild fast chords (the hand-clapping part), switching between one and the other without warning. Marty seemed really into it and stood up behind his drums to lead us in the snapping and clapping.

And that was the last song. While they were leaving Linnell ran into Flans's mic and knocked it off the stand, and he laughed at himself and left the stage holding his head where he'd hit it.

Flans did not come out after the show; Marty was out onstage for a bit afterwards, as was Dan, but not for very long, so I didn't talk to him. The stage was in front of this campus building which was serving as the backstage area, and later we saw Dan hanging out on the steps with a lady who we decided was probably Marty's wife. He came to collect her after he'd finished cleaning up his drums; Dan stood up and then what was in my opinion (and I don't think I was the only one who felt this way) the cutest moment of the whole evening occurred: Marty and Dan hugged. Aww! It was a good long hug, too. Then Marty and Mrs Marty went off, and Dan went inside, and I, won over by the spirit of the evening, hugged my new friends goodbye and went to meet wallacecat and we got out of town without getting lost even once. Good times.