To my dearest darling readers:
To those of you who attended the BlogHer conference in Chicago this past weekend, I hope you enjoyed yourself and had time to stop by the Care.com booth. I wanted to be there. I wanted to meet Belinda and distribute Snarkyfanmail.com bumper stickers and make people become Care.com affiliates, but I’d planned months ago to spend the weekend on the Cape. I don’t particularly like Cape Cod—the beach is too rocky, the water’s too cold, the green-headed flies are vicious, and there’s no boardwalk: basically, it ain’t got nothin’ on the Jersey Shore—but They Might Be Giants was playing the Beachcomber in Wellfleet, and I was desperate to see them. I hadn’t seen them in years, and I figured that if I was ever going to actually meet them and casually mention to bass guitarist Danny Weinkauf that he’s on my list of celebrities with whom I’m allowed to have sex, it would have to be at a tiny, tiny venue like the Beachcomber.
Jim and I got there nice and early, we had dinner and drinks and witnessed soundcheck, and I hovered awkwardly near the tour bus in the parking lot to no avail. Finally it was time for the concert to begin, and Jim and I were right up front. I was curious to see the opening act because I’ve seen some great acts open for TMBG (OK Go years before their treadmill routine, The Moldy Peaches' Kimya Dawson, and Peter Salett of Wet Hot American Summer fame), but I’ve also seen some clunkers (Michael Maxwell played songs with painfully generic song titles like “Darkest Moment” and “The Edge,” and as I recall a tardy-tingle-inducing middle-aged woman played tambourine in his band). The opening act this time was Corn Mo, a one-man band who played piano and accordion and occasionally hit an upside-down cymbal that was on the ground nearby with a drumstick that was tied to his foot. He was awesome. Seriously. This guy manages to combine the pomp and majesty and vibrato of Queen with the quirk and surrealism and varied pop culture references of George Saunders. Brilliant.
Anyhoo. As soon as Corn Mo finished his set, these three horrible people came and stood right in front of me and Jim. There was a tall girl whose unconvincing Buddy Holly glasses gave away her extreme desire to be cool and alternative and these two guys who would later prove to be both terrible dancers and terrible air guitarists. The great thing about having Jim with me at the TMBG show was that he is 6’2”, which is about a full head taller than the average geeky TMBG fan, so he was able to elbow his way up to the front of the crowd. Jim said that it was the first time in his life that he was the toughest guy in the bar. He was sort of hoping someone would pick a fight.
So TMBG came out on stage, and I think they were a little miffed about how small the stage and venue were. At one point Flansy likened playing at the Beachcomber to playing on a crowded subway car. I was right up against the stage, which was only raised a few inches off the ground, and I was so close to John Linnell that I could have easily reached out to his keyboard and played “Heart and Soul” with him. Linnell looks just like my dad and always seems so introverted: I think I may have been invading his personal space. Anyway. The show was good; they interspersed songs from their new album with old standbys. Afterward Jim stole the set list, which had been taped to Linnell’s keyboard and which is pictured below. One of the three geeks who tried to get between me and TMBG tried to scribble in “Nothing’s Gonna Change my Clothes” before their set started, as though Linnell might be fooled by this.
During the show, when Flansy introduced the band, he claimed that the drummer, who is new and NOT named Dan, is the only member of They Might Be Giants who enjoys the adulation of strangers. This was troublesome, as I was attempting to work up the courage to adulate the Johns after the show. When the show ended, I bought a Corn Mo CD from Corn Mo himself and then stood around awkwardly, hoping that maybe the Johns would approach me and tell me that they had noticed me singing and thank me for being such a loyal fan and for having memorized all the lyrics to their songs and then maybe invite me to come on tour with them and sing whenever they happen to need a girl, like if they want to play the song they wrote for the second Austin Powers movie or something, or maybe if they just want to add another voice and need someone who’s made up her own harmonies for their entire discography, or maybe if they need a cellist. But no such luck. The new drummer did hang around a little after the show and chatted with fans out back. I, however, was so nervous about the whole thing that I had become nonverbal by this point. So it was all up to Jim. We saw Flansy (or as Jim calls him, “the guy who looks like the guy from Bare Naked Ladies”) outside the bus, and Jim asked if he would sign a CD but Flansy said he “had to jump” and got on the bus. Sadness. Then Jim tried to stick one of my giant Care.com car magnets on the tour bus, but the bus didn’t seem to be very magnety, so we left.
The evening was not a total loss, however, because the concert was fun, and I got to meet Corn Mo. As for having sex with Danny Weinkauf, I’m almost certain that he and I made eye contact during “Dr. Worm” and that he smiled at me, which I took to mean that he totally, totally wanted to make out. Hooray.
Love,
Lauren
