I’m mostly talking to the handful of writers on this website who actually understand genre and wield some knowledge of the publishing industry. I also welcome ignorant-but-well-meaning guesses—but please tell me if you’re guessing.

I don’t have a good working title. I’m just calling it Dog Seeks Girl for now.

Here is my Achilles heel: I rarely write in the genre I read most. My ideas take me elsewhere, and I write stories that blend genres. If I have a story, I tell it. Then, I have trouble pinpointing the genre in which I’m working.

That can be a problem, because genres are promises to the reader. I need to know what promise I'm making.

The BOOK

I believe I may be writing historical speculative noir from a dog's perspective.

The protagonist is a real historical dog: Bummer, a Newfoundland who became famous in San Francisco history. Lazarus, his sidekick, is also a real dog from that time.

The novel is written with the dry, satirical voice of a David Attenborough nature documentary, dissecting 1860s human absurdities with clinical distance, while occasionally zooming deep into the visceral, sensory mind of a street dog.

The dogs don't think in words or human concepts, so this is not Watership Down or The Plague Dogs. They are not talking animals. We experience Bummer's senses, emotions, instincts, memories, and understanding of the world, but he does not suddenly acquire a human intellectual framework.

The story opens in 1861 and follows Bummer's five-year quest until his publicly recorded death in 1865. Personally, I prefer stories that take place over hours, days, and weeks, so the four-year span is unusual for me—but this story requires it.

Here is the logline I'm working under:

Bummer, the most loyal dog in California history, canvases the dark underbelly of 1860s San Francisco—from buried-ship saloons to high-society cults—herding the city’s most famous residents into saving his long-lost girl and the city itself from a mass ritual sacrifice to Moloch.

THE STORY

Bummer was raised by a little girl from the age of three weeks to three years. He was an extraordinarily ugly Newfoundland puppy who was nearly subjected to a “mercy drowning.” The little girl saved him, and the two became deeply bonded.

When they arrive in San Francisco, humans separate the girl and her family from Bummer, leaving him astray.

Bummer's central mystery is simple from his perspective:

Where did his girl go?

He spends years investigating.

The reader gets to see the clues and gradually work out what happened to her. Bummer doesn't understand the human conspiracy in the way the reader does. He follows scents, memories, instincts, and the people and animals who lead him toward her.

The investigation takes him into the world of cats, rats, and colorful human characters. Along the way, Bummer repeatedly manages to involve humans in what he has discovered, sometimes by manipulating them and sometimes simply by leading them where they need to go.

Among the historical figures he encounters are Mark Twain and Emperor Norton. Bummer essentially tricks or forces these humans into noticing pieces of a plot that exists beneath the streets of San Francisco.

The novel involves Bummer protecting his girl, but also protecting San Francisco itself. The mystery eventually reveals that the threat is much larger than what happened to one little girl.

HISTORY

I am using real people, real dogs, real places, and real documented events from San Francisco history—mostly.

I’m reasonably good about taking only a few liberties, but there are liberties taken when necessary to serve the story. I am willing to bend the historical rules.

For example, I use the Bohemian Club as inspiration for a group of cultists, although the actual organization didn't yet exist during my 1861–1865 timeframe. In the novel, I call the organization the Secret Circle.

So, I’m not claiming this is strict historical fiction.

MYSTERY

I do think this is a mystery in an important sense.

The reader gets information that Bummer cannot interpret as a human would. We can see the clues and potentially solve what happened to his girl before Bummer understands the significance of what he has discovered.

The structure is therefore somewhat like Chinatown—a long investigation into a hidden conspiracy—but with rats, cats, famous people, satire, and a very different kind of detective.

Bummer is the investigator. He isn't a human detective with a dog's sidekick. (Well, Lazarus is a dog.)

I'M STUCK

The manuscript is complete at about 90,000 words.

My current description is:

A historical speculative noir featuring the deadpan, anthropological perspective of The Gods Must Be Crazy and the emotional drive of Watership Down**.**

But I don't know whether that's actually a useful genre description.

So, my question is:

What genre would you call this if you were trying to shelve or market it?

Is it historical fiction? Historical mystery? Historical noir? Speculative historical fiction? Something else?

Does the speculative element make “historical fiction” the wrong label, or is “historical speculative” a useful distinction?

And if it is a mystery, does that need to be part of the genre description?

Most importantly, what existing books would you tell me to read or study so I can understand the reader expectations I'm making?

(I know. I ask tough questions.)

I need to study the genre carefully enough to make sure I’m not promising the reader an experience the novel doesn't actually deliver.

Please tell me what you think I'm writing—even if your answer is “you've created a genre soup and need to pick a shelf.”

Thank you!

There comes that time in a project when you name someone something the forces you to abandon certain verbs, or any word that creates unwanted alliteration or a rhyme. You must keep the name or the verb or the adjective--but one has got to go. It's just gotsta go!

Carl cannot be allowed to snarl.

I feel that the answer will be no. "Duh, you dumb-ass."

I hate prologues. I've never read a good one.

But what about epilogues? I have a situation where I'm looking at a huge change at the end of the story where you realize your narrator is something other than you thought. An epilogue would allow me to put a button on that.

You might ask, "Why not just make it the last chapter?" Good point. I might. But the narrator feels like the meta story. I want the last chapter to be for the protagonist.

Prologue/epilogue feel like bookends.

So, do you think adding an epilogue without a prologue is a writer sin? Honestly, this is something I never thought I'd have to ask.

===

EDIT

Thank you all for your sobering thoughts. And thank you for not handing my ass to me. I feel silly about even asking at this point, and you could have rubbed it in, but you did not.

Thanks!

I doubt I am having an original thought here, but it's still interesting to think about genre and descriptions over time. Specifically, I am talking about laptops.

If I wrote a story today with this sentence, "He opened his laptop and began to type," you all understand exactly what I mean. I don't have to say any more than that.

But if I were to write that same sentence in 1981, I would have to fully describe what a laptop is or no one could visualize it. I'll bet it would have taken me two paragraphs and a short exposition dump about computerization. Even in 1981, some people might have wondered if they were reading science fiction.

No, this is not a deep thought, but it is fun to think about.

Interestingly, if I were to write historical fiction, I would have to use more words to educate the modern reader about history than I would if I had written the same novel in 1799.

For me, the most bewildering part about writing is being able to read a manuscript I wrote and know intimately only to keep finding mistakes, some glaring. Not grammar as much as style and word choice.

It can look perfect. Then I set it down, come back, and it's not.

I read it aloud and find more mistakes.

I read it on my phone instead of in the word processor, and I find even more mistakes.

And then I think about Steinbeck, Lovecraft, and so many more who worked with pen, paper, and typewriters. Can you imagine how difficult writing was for them? Editing their own work?

And forget about computer-assisted research, baby. They had to walk to the library and save magazine articles and go places and talk to people.

I think we need to take a moment to respect the writers of the 1900s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and so on. If you transported me back to that time, I don't think I could have made it as a writer. I need word processing!

My face has been buried in a word processor for forty years.

I was just thinking of Jaws, a great book, and Jaws, a great movie. In my world, they are among the greatest, both of them.

I am thinking of the ending. Let's start with the movie.

I used to think, "No great white shark is going to jump onto a boat." Thirty years later, I saw a documentary showing great whites jumping onto the rocks to snatch seals for lunch.

Then comes the shark holding air tanks in its mouth. Ain't gonna happen in any time. But what an ending! Wow! I needed that.

The book is anticlimactic. The shark doesn't explode. It just. . .dies. Descends. Is never more.

Our protagonist did not kill the shark! He was just lucky enough to survive.

Reddit would have ripped Peter Benchley a new a-hole!

But I like it. It felt real.

My writing used to simply be bad writing. Black and white. No fuss.

My writing has not changed. I write badly all by myself, and am proud of it.

Now they don't say I'm a bad writer, however, not since the 20th century.

Nowadays, they accuse me of being artificial intelligenc

My editing process.

1. Write it.

2. Make it perfect.

3. Post it online.

4. Suddenly, see everything mistake I made.

5. Quickly edit every mistake, and while doing so, create more typos.

6. Repeat #5.

Only a writer flips through the dictionary with both fear and eagerness while thinking, "Oh, please let 'intimidating' be an intransitive verb. I NEED it to be an intransitive verb!"

Only a writer flips through the dictionary with both fear and eagerness while thinking, "Oh, please let 'intimidating' be an intransitive verb. I NEED it to be an intransitive verb!"

 

I have been brutally critiquing everyone else’s writing.  I don’t expect you to hold back when you critique mine. 

 

However, do please take some time to understand the type of critique I’m looking for.  If it’s not asking too much, will you submit to filling out a form afterward?

---

my project:

 

I am taking a risk here:

 

My story plays like a corrupt-government surveillance novel, a thriller.  It involves superpowers, too, as in Superman/Hulk-type stuff, but this is not a superhero novel.  (It’s closer to the movie Unbreakable.)  It’s a human-oriented road trip across America between a homeless man and a rich girl.  There are so many ways I can screw this up and inspire the reader to stop reading. 

 

To make it worse, I break my own rule: don’t start a story with poetry.  But that’s just what I did, because it made sense to do so.   I open with three paragraphs describing scenery.  That is because the location described in these three paragraphs is the destination of the entire novel.  It makes sense to tease this future destination.   However, I might lose an impatient reader while doing so. 

Note: Gwan calls her phone a hobo phone. That is not explained until later in the chapter.

 

Please read, then comment.

========================

CHAPTER ONE

 

The redwood forest blankets the Mountain to the sea.  Zooming out reveals the image of evening tide, clashing against craggy outcroppings.  The spindrift freezes midair, creating a deluge over numerous rock pools that drip like overflowing cups, frozen in time.  And rising above it all, a Maxfield Parrish sky.

The primary subject is a crescent beach of jagged rocks and dark, sparkling sand.  Five people have been forever caught at sundown in the act of strolling casually from their village.  Away from their white houses.  Away from their church.  Away from their lighthouse and boat launch.  Never to return.  But they cannot ascend the dunes and reach the foreground.  Three decades ago, their futures were stolen with the click of a camera.  They are now and will only ever be a photograph. 

“Welcome to Gull’s Rest, California” is printed on the colorful postcard.

Upon a faint mechanical whirring, the lens of Gull Cam 7’s right eye dilates farther, zooming away from the photograph, revealing two man-fingers, then a complete five-fingered hand with dirty nails.  Although Gull Cam 7 perches only eight feet away on a nautical piling, it fails to record the man’s discrete facial features.  His graying, free-range beard, however, can be seen from every angle.

Zooming out even farther reveals a torn hoodie jacket, a salt-and-pepper mop of hair, a public bench, thirty yards of safety railing along brown, rushing water, and down at the end of the promenade, a yellow sign that says, “Thank you for visiting Historic Arkansas Riverwalk.” 

“Miss?” the man calls out, shuffling after two girls who have recently passed his bench.

Approaching the yellow sign, the young adults peel their attention away from each other, slowly exhibiting awareness of their surroundings.  A gross man is speaking to them.

“You dropped this,” the gross man politely shouts.

The Asian girl checks her undersized Hello Kitty purse, which is completely unzipped, then peers at what his dirty fingers are trying to gift her. 

“Keep it,” she says to the man, and then to her friend, “keep moving, don’t look back.”

“Don’t give him that,” the friend says, “it’s got your address on it.”

“It’ll take more than a homeless guy to get past my dad’s security system.  But I didn’t drop my hobo phone, so let’s just keep walking.”

“Go away!” the friend shouts over a shoulder.

The man gives up pursuit.  He tentatively lowers the postcard, and once he has stopped moving forward, both of his grubby hands share the responsibility of holding it at his midriff as the girls stroll away, snickering to each other.  When they round the hot dog vendor, he brings the postcard to chest level and flips it around.  He returns to the public bench by the Arkansas River.

As he gets closer to the gull cam, facial recognition becomes available.  It takes forty-five seconds to decide that the man is TESCHAUN, HARLAN, 59, CAUCASIAN, KNOWN OR SUSPECTED TERRORIST, HANDLING CODE 3, COTTONTAIL PROGRAM. VANDALISM.  THEFT.  RAPE.  DO NOT ENGAGE.  CONTACT FUSION CENTER FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

He sits on the bench. 

The mechanical whir indicates the gull cam is contracting, zooming in on the back of the postcard.  The card is addressed to 16 Everglades Place, Colorado Springs 80906.  The decorative Little Mermaid stamp has cancellation marks. 

The missive is this:

“Gwan, my new house is here.  I look forward to you paying me a visit when your father allows it.  Won’t that be better than running away?  Happy birthday, btw.  From: Aunt Crystal.”

This textual information has empowered facial recognition to decide that the Asian girl is GAO, GWAN YUK-TOU, 16.  VANDALISM.  IDENTITY THEFT.  PETTY THEFT.  GRAND LARCENY. DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. 

Gwan’s file has been accessed one hundred fifty-nine times over the last three years.  forty-eight of those searches were initiated by her father, billionaire defense contractor Danny Gao.

Harlan lifts a thumb to reveal this tiny-print blurb in the corner:

“Come for the hiking, fishing, tide pools, teaming with life, romantic strolls along black sand, or just plain relaxing from your room with a magnificent view of the wild Pacific Ocean.  The citizens of Gull’s Rest welcome you to Heaven on Earth.  Come sit a while.”

The postcard disappears.  Harlan has disappeared.  Gull Cam 7 tilts its head and zooms out, trying to reestablish a lock.

It locates him walking north, at which time the spy bird switches modes and takes to the air and soars high.  The picture jerks uncontrollably until Gull Cam 7 catches a gentle current above the unsheltered man.  It glides steadily just above and behind his notice.  It tilts its head, and the right-eye camera zooms down upon the top of his unkempt hair. 

 

* * *

 

The image of Harlan Teschaun shrinks as the Control Room J Security Cam lens dilates and all of Monitor 5 comes into view.  Zooming out over Analyst 20’s shoulder and along his shaved head now reveals the entirety of Workstation 20.

And finally, the vantage point farthest back against the wall reveals an ample room of computers.  Analyst 20 occupies the back row of a three-tiered section of twenty-seven workstations.  Twenty-seven people, bathed in the digital aura of tall video banks.  All wearing patches and badges.  All busying themselves all the time, mostly wearing headsets.

Analyst 20 is PFEIFFER, WARREN, 58, AFRICAN-AMERICAN, 5’9”, 235 POUNDS, DIVORCED, SON: DARIUS.  His career has become a topic of conversation in emails between the higher-ups.  They call him “a company man.”

Pfeiffer sits between Workstations 19 and 21.  He gazes up at what originally he called his slot machine, a three-by-three grid of separate images, labeled Monitors 1 through 9.  Harlan Teschaun is the cottontail on Monitor 5. 

Over those first few months here at the Cali-North Regional Intel Center, Pfeiffer began calling his Workstation 20 video bank Hollywood Squares.  But this practice did not last, as he explained to Analyst 21, because he hated Jim J. Bullock, whom Analyst 21 is too young to have heard of.  That’s when it became his Brady Squares, referencing the Brady Bunch opening credits.  Right now, the image of Harlan Teschaun and his Gull’s Rest postcard are showing up right where Alice should be. 

Analyst 19 calls his own video bank Rubik’s Cube.

Analyst 21 does not name her workstation. 

Pfeiffer gives a jolt and moves his mouse cursor to the minus icon and clicks repeatedly to lower the volume in his headset.  A commotion has arisen in Brady Monitor 3, the upper right-hand square.  The screen shows a violent flurry of gray and white feathers—contour, down, semiplume, and electrical wire.  He watches a squabble of seagulls violently mobbing his spy gull.  Government property wheezes and whirs as its two orange legs kick helplessly.

Monitor 3 cuts out.

“Uh, what,” Pfeiffer says, “what-what happened, happened to Gull 13?” 

Analyst 19—Zhang, Todd, 27—glances up and to the right at the blue screen that just seconds ago showed a brutal seagull free-for-all. 

He says, “Your spy bird was pretending to eat breadcrumbs and got crust caught in its throat.  The real seagulls went in after it.”

“I. . .I see,” Pfeiffer says.  “That’s, that behavior is called klepto . . .parasitism.”

“You’re a smart man,” Analyst 21—Ling, Mary, 39—says, tapping into her keyboard.

“I learned it from a cottontail, from watching one.  Harlan, he knows a lot about birds.”

“Ummm, Warren?” Ling says, tapping at her keyboard.  “Friendly advice.  Calling your cottontails by their first names is not good etiquette for Room J.”

“I guess I, it’s just that my AI calls him Harlan.”

“I impart this ancient advice of the venerable shepherd.  Never love a sheep you might have to eat.”

Pfeiffer turns to Zhang and asks if he may have a Twizzler. 

Zhang removes a Twizzler from his left breast pocket and sticks it in Pfeiffer’s left shirt pocket protector next to the pen and pencil.

“What you should be doing,” Ling says, “is watching that girl he just tried to kidnap.”

“Harlan, my cottontail, he didn’t try to kidnap those girls.”

“Oh, please.  The girl just treated him like an inhuman, untouchable thing, which he is.  Mark my words, Warren, this guy, Teschaun, needs to get his mojo back.  And he knows right where to find it.  He is a proven rapist in possession of the teenager’s home address, the one that I believe I just saw him fold and stick in his jacket pocket.  Right near his cold, beating heart.”

Warren pauses for three seconds.

“Has it?  Has it, has it been proven?”

“I’m CIA, Warren.  You bet your fat ass we check our work.”

“How-how long have you been watching?  Harlan Teschaun.”

“I don’t have to be assigned to him to know his type.  I took this job to rid the world of his kind of filth.  Trust me, I wouldn’t ignore that girl, Warren.  She needs government protection.  I don’t want to get in your way, so I hope you do the right thing.”

“No good, I already tried that last year,” Zhang says.  “You need ultra-violet clearance to access anything with the name ‘Gao’ attached.  I’d love to be ultra-violet in that honey’s bathroom.  It’s supposed to be bigger than my apartment.”

“You’re gross,” she replies.

Pfeiffer glances up at his Brady Squares.  Monitors 1 and 2 babysit the Arkansas River on its way through Pueblo.  Monitor 3 is bluescreen.  Monitors 4, 6, 7, and 8 convey live traffic cam footage from California locations.  The image on Monitor 9 arrives courtesy of Housefly Cam 131, somewhere in Idaho. 

In the square where Bobby Brady would be, a woman in a bra pulls down her large panties and plops onto a toilet seat.  She has removed her Catholic cross, rosary beads, and black tunic; and now she takes off the remaining accoutrements of her habit, hanging each on a hook on the bathroom wall.

The woman begins to remove her mismatched bra, and Warren darts his mouse cursor to the power icon and clicks five times, rapidly.  Monitor 4 switches to bluescreen. 

Analyst 19 complains that Warren cut the video stream at the best part.   Analyst 21 tells Analyst 19 to start acting more like Analyst 20.  Analyst 20, Warren Pfeiffer, bites into the Twizzler and checks Center Square and its bird’s-eye view from a perch atop Veteran’s Bridge. 

Two human shadows lurk in the underpass. 

One points at Harlan, coming this way. 

The other says, “About time.”

“Showtime,” Analyst 21 says.  “The bad guy’s about to get a beating.”

“Nope,” Analyst 19 says.  “I just saw Teschaun duck behind a bush.”

Pfeiffer turns up the volume on Monitor 5, but then pulls up a menu on Monitor 3.  He types, “16 Everglades Place, Colorado Springs 80906.  All residents, all devices.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Analyst 19 says.  “It would take an artificial intelligence greater than the one you got in your station to crack Danny Gao.”

Monitor 3 spits back “ACCESS DENIED.”

“Denied?  But,” Pfeiffer says, “I’m, I’m NSA.”

Analyst 19 says, “Join the club,” and hands Pfeiffer another Twizzler.  He places it in Pfeiffer’s palm, not in the pocket protector. 

Analyst 20, Warren Pfeiffer, takes a bite.

 

* * *

================

THANK YOU FOR READING. PLEASE, ANSWER QUESTIONS:

-----------

 

8 QUESTIONS (thank you for answering):

 

#1:  Does the opening seem excessive to you?  This postcard will be the destination of the main characters.  The novel ends at this beach.  Therefore, I have it begin at the beach. . .or rather, an image of it, imbedded in a postcard. 

 

#2: Is the “zooming out” imagery too jarring?  If so, what do you suggest?

 

#3: What was your reaction to the idea that Harlan watches the postcard, the spy gull watches Harlan, Analyst Pfeiffer watches through the gull cam, and a camera in the wall is looking over Pfeiffer’s shoulders?  Was that clear?  I chose a very cinematic transition from the Riverwalk to the SF fusion center.  Did that work for you?  Why/why not?

 

#4: Whare are your opinions about the narrator?  The POV.

 

#5: I leave ambiguity as to who the main character is this early in the novel.  (Hint: it’s Gwan Gao).  That is why I injected her into the story right away.  But I don’t fawn over her yet, as a good novelist should.  I want the reader to think this story could be about Harlan (he’s the McGuffin) or Pfeiffer (more of an observer).  I specifically stopped calling Ling and Zhang by their last names in order to return them to “side character status.”  This story is not about Zhang and Ling.  Does that technique work for you? 

#6: Would you keep reading? Why/why not?

 

#7 If you didn’t like it, you can say so.  My feelings aren’t easily hurt.  I have confidence in what I’m doing.

#8: Anything else?

THEY MIGHT BE RANDOM THOUGHTS: THE WORLD IS TO DIG has replaced John Henry as their overall best studio album. No arguments, please. It's just my opinion. ////// There is a way to listen to TMBG, and that is to just listen. Three times, at least. A comfortable three listens, and you'll be surprised. More listens involves tugging on the string on the sweater and row-by-row unravelling their mysteries. The more you listen, the more you hear. //// I am a lifelong fan. I've loved them longer than my age divided by 2. What I love most is the fact that a song from twenty years ago can have new meaning in the year 2026. /// TMBG is always fun. Always. It's their coda. (What's a "coda"? Is that like a "sleestack"?) // TMBG never disappoints. And their fans range from age 6 to 60. Always. No generational divides. /// I would never want to meet TMBG in person. Because what could I say beyond a simple, "Thanks"?

I'm not privy to the meaning of "bangers."

They say THE WORLD IS TO DIG is all bangers.

After multiple listens, I think I agree. It's all bangers.

Therefore, I define banger as "a great song, the one you'll keep relistening to."

I was maybe twenty-two years old. The busboy I had trained made me a compilation tape that changed my life. This Asian kid I didn't know well enough to respect already knew me all too well. I was hoping to find new music that would make me seem cool. I was expecting hard-core music I'd have to pretend to like in order to strike a Fonzi pose. But on this cassette tape, made by the most interesting person I'd ever trained to be a busboy, I heard the best song of the bunch. It was called Particle Man. I sincerely thought that knowing this song would make me the most sexually desirable wannabe-Goth on the planet.

Well, I was wrong about that last part. But I went out and bought John Henry and became obsessed with the Johns and was never recognized as a Goth, but that's okay.

Back then, we didn't have the Internet. We had liner notes. YOU know the Johns; I knew my impression of them, at best. For me, my love of them was expressed through the music, only. No music theory. No fancy terms. I just loved basking in the music. I'd never known music could be this groovy. I never knew love could be like this.

Ever since, I have disliked every album they have made upon first listen. By the third listen, however, every album has become my favorite.

My favorite.

FAY VOR IT.

I used to sing TMBG songs all the time, especially at work. I am NOT a good singer. Yet, my caterwauls attracted the only other TMBG fan within 1000 miles. I married her, this waitress. We divorced after two years. Fortunately, we didn't need a crane. We shrugged and parted ways, and I gave her some TMBG CDs as severance pay.

I was about twenty-two when I discovered They Might Be Giants. I have rediscovered them every two or three years ever since. I am almost fifty-five years old now.

Listen, folks, I have five heroes in life:

1. They Might Be Giants
2. John Williams. (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, Harry Potter)
3. Regina Spektor
4. Kermit the Frog
5. Mr. Rogers.

No sex scandals, no drugs scandals. These people care about the music.

I just wanted to share.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

Jeff Haines

I've watched a couple of videos, made for the World is to Dig. I notice they're printing the lyrics along with the images. I really like this. TMBG lyrics are the gifts that keep on giving. It's wise for them to italicize them visually. /// I've been a fan for thirty years. I've never (rarely) liked their videos. Back in the old days, videos were meant to help explain songs. TMBG videos were cute but ultimately unsatisfying. I was left more confused. With 2026 come new videos that work for me. Thanks!

They Might Be Giants is the band that kisses you softly on the forehead for loving their latest album, but they can't conform to your expectations. They can't wait for your forehead to present itself if you expect the next album to be the same. You'd best jut out your forehead and run and keep up with TMBG. And isn't that just wonderful? Most fans of bands complain of rehash. TMBG fans either evolve or they shut the heck up.