the birdhouse in my soul

there are times (not many, i'll grant you) when i adore barnes and noble. largely because the great corporate evil, while devouring such venues as my beloved 7th ave books for breakfast, makes a great celebrity petting zoo. it is where i once met neil gaiman, and where, last night, the biscuit and i managed to come face to face with everyones favorite john and john, the boys of they might be giants. they were there to promote their new children's book and cd, "bed bed bed," which naturally entailed a short performance on the 4th floor at union square, complete with wicked trumpet man (whose entire head turned scarlet when he hit the high notes), a trombonist and a tuba player, and a drummer whose kit included a slide whistle and a giant bongo drum.

suffice it to say, it was awesome. we sat about five rows back on house left, and so were about twenty feet away from the johns as they shook and shimmied their way through 'dr. worm,' 'metal detector,' 'birdhouse in your soul,' 'particle man' (which is apparently the TMBG national anthem) and a whole bunch more. i'm fairly certain that my head did not stop bobbing the entire time, as i danced in my seat.

the spectacle attracted a very diverse crowd, from the mistunderstood 15-year-olds discussing james dean behind us to the bistros and babycarriages crowd populating tmbg's own park slope (that's right. one of 'em lives in our neighborhood!). there was also a healthy smattering of NYU students and uber-geeks...in short, a healthy cross-section of my people.

afterwards, we all queued up for the meet and greet; biscuit and i realized early on that we had failed to bring anything useful for the johns to sign--somehow, the prospect of them signing stuff had eluded us, and we had failed to bring any tmbg paraphernalia. so, being the resourceful little critters that we are, we just had them sign what we were carrying around in our bags: edith hamilton's mythology (biscuit) and harry potter 5, british edition (me).

never let it be said that we're not delightfully obtuse at every possible opportunity.