McSweeney’s vs. They Might Be Giants
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The show itself was less stimulating than all that. Readings by Dave Eggers and other authors published in his independent literary journal, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, alternated with songs from the companion CD that John Linnell and John Flansburgh–they who be Giants–recorded for the sixth issue of the mag. Unfortunately the contest was unfair from the start. The playful ease of TMBG’s goofball pop only showed up the McSweeneyites’ labored cleverness–the harder Eggers and his crew flexed their cerebrums, the more they seemed not just out-brained but downright nasty. When with feigned self-deprecation Eggers described his journal as “strange, esoteric, sometimes coherent, and always poorly copyedited,” he set the tone for his compatriots. That neurotic need to fake awkwardness as a way of proving you really aren’t awkward at all was the main theme of the McSweeney’s dorkface minstrel show.
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, a band who scavenge other people’s unflattering photos and make fun of them onstage, kicked things off with the first instance of a running gag–equipment failure–that would get less funny each time it recurred. Between every act a fumblesome pause lasted long enough to let the densest viewer in on the joke: sure we’ve got plenty of stage techs, but what if this really were a low-budget production? Then the synchronized rainbow light show took over as TMBG played a couple tunes and the McSweeney’s writers launched into their ugly-nerd shtick.
In the first two-thirds of the show, They Might Be Giants got far too little stage time. They sang backup to Eggers’s reading (he rolled his eyes in ironic kinship as, a cappella, they rendered the Spandau Ballet song mentioned in his text) and performed a few songs from the McSweeney’s companion CD. They prefaced one song by saying they were updating it for each performance; Linnell then started the keyboard riff on a wrong note. “Sorry, real mistake,” he said pissily. “I’m continually updating the song by playing it wrong.” Finally–an accident that wasn’t planned. The pop stomp that followed might have been as great as it sounded at the time, or it might have just been a relief from Eggers’s tediously labyrinthine wit.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Yvette Marie Dostatni.
