In order to keep my nerd accreditation I had to buy the latest They Might Be Giants album on iTunes, The Else. A couple of the iTunes reviewers were extremely enthustiastic, calling it the best album since Apollo 18—but unfortunately it's actually the worst TMBG album so far. John and John's career has always been dangerously close to a snakehead eating the head on the opposite side, and with The Else they may have finally crossed the line into self-plagiarism, if not outright self-parody.

The album has only one really good song, the last track: "The Mesopotamians," about a Beatlesque pop band from Ancient Mesopotamia.

"We're the Mesopotamians / Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh..."

Buy that song and skip the album.