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I think the biggest wrestling match-up I have is how to respond to the word quirky. Or the alternate, nerdy. Both are essentially benign to the reader, but if you're a writer just sort of involved in your creative process, they seem like very small motivations.

John Flansburgh

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John Flansburgh
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: May 6
Film Director
Guitarist
Musician
Singer
Songwriter
Lincoln
Massachusetts
John Conant Flansburgh
Thinking
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Wrestling
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Small
Essentially
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Bill O'Reilly knew he could just filibuster and enjoy all the airtime that a full interview would give him, and then also grab the sensationalist headlines that he enjoys creating. He used this as fodder for his show for weeks. I wouldn't want to be on the bad side of Bill O'Reilly. But then again, maybe I am now. By giving this interview.
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In an interview John [Linnell] said, 'At a certain point you just get tired of the way the other person breathes,' and I took that pretty hard because I, personally, am infatuated with the way John breathes.
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There have been times I wanted to cry on interview, but it hasn't been because that's what they're trying to conjure. No. I think you have to graduate to some higher level of TV IQ for people to actually want to see you cry.
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You have to define how much of a cultural politician you are as a performer. There are times where I just want to remain a civilian.
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It's hard to tell a shallow person that they should care more about the feelings of the awkward and the alienated.
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Being in a band, a lot of times people think of what you're doing in terms of a competition. They talk about where you are professionally in your career, and all this other stuff. And if you're a lifer, you know it's going to be ups and downs. It's not like anybody is always just steady on.
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I think that the most effective social protest that any artist can do would be things that come naturally and feel obvious. I think the Resist movement will continue among people who believe in science, who believe in rights for women, who believe in civil rights.
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We want to be original. To express our most interesting stuff. But you don't see the word original come up very often to describe big bands. Our job isn't to pigeonhole ourselves or describe where we fit in. Our goal isn't to fit in. Our goal is to be free of all that stuff.
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So we've done science songs. We've done historical songs. A lot of people would like us to do more historical songs. Our history record would probably be like the people's history of the United States, set to music.
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I wrote a thirty-second song that I couldn't finish for a year.
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The simplest app on your smartphone requires 40 peoples' purest imagination. The challenges with people on environment, we just have to open some of that creativity. But I don't think it's necessarily about heating clouds or enormous chemical changes in the atmosphere.
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A lot of times I'll post things on Facebook, and the immediate response will be like, Stick to the music!
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People love fact-based songs, which is a very funny idea.
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Have you heard Alanis Morisette trying to play the harmonica? She doesn't know how to play the harmonica. Well guess what, Alanis, I INVENTED the 'don't-know-how-to-play-harmonica-harmonica-solo.'
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Look, up in the sky! It's the sky!
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There's so many simple things that can be done to change our carbon footprint, and to reduce our carbon footprint.
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I don't lose a lot of sleep worrying about aliens, but I think it seems possible that there's life forms beyond our solar system.
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The main thing that we're doing is thinking we can control anything, which is the biggest false assumption we can make. I think we can figure out how to tread a lot more lightly on the environment, and we'll be a lot better off.
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Every declarative statement that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. It's like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.
John Flansburgh
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I feel like musicians have such a precarious place in the political discourse, because musicians are, sort of just by nature, people-pleasers.
John Flansburgh