Songfacts®:

• The opening lines are taken from the beginning of Howl by Allen Ginsberg, a controversial poem from the 1950s: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix..." >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Caleb - Eagle, ID
• In the They Might Be Giants documentary film Gigantic, several comic actors recite TMBG lyrics as poems. Andy Richter recited from this song, and in an interview concerning the film, band co-leader John Linnell commented, "The song is written, it's one of the sort of unreliable narrator lyrics, but [Richter] was reading it in such an earnest way with such a furrowed brow. It almost just became its own thing, just listening to him reading like that. It's just a different experience." >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  David - Mesa, AZ