"Particle Man" is a song by the band They Might Be Giants. It can be found on their 1990 release, Flood. It is about four different "men": Particle Man, a micro-sized man whose personality is deemed "not important" by the band; Triangle Man, a person who hates Particle Man, fights with him, and wins; Universe Man, a gentle man the size of the universe with a watch to go with it (He's got a watch with a minute hand, a millennium hand, and an eon hand); and Person Man, a degraded normal guy who lives in a garbage can, who is also hated by Triangle Man, and is also defeated in a fight by him.
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Video
This song and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" were made into music videos featured on the Warner Bros. animated series Tiny Toon Adventures. In this one, Plucky Duck portrayed Particle Man and Person Man (who was portrayed in the video as Particle Man's secret identity), and the rest were featured as massive wrestlers.
Cultural References
In the Marvel Comics series X-Factor (volume 1), writer Peter David referenced "Particle Man" as the source song for a fictional parody by "Weird Al" Yankovic about the character Multiple Man; only a partial verse was presented, referencing the Multiple Man's ability to create duplicates of himself. The song was also an inspiration of sorts to Terry Pratchett: One of the recurring Discworld characters, Foul Ole Ron, frequently mutters "millennium hand and shrimp"; this was a result of Pratchett feeding various texts to a text-generation computer program, and this phrase was a result of merging this song's lyrics (which mention "millennium hand") with a Chinese takeaway menu.[1] Also, the book Reaper Man features a brief appearance by the "Death of Universes" Azrael who possesses a clock with hands representing every level of time from seconds and minutes to millennia and eons. The song was later used, in part, for advertisements for Geometry Wars: Galaxies, in reference to the nature of Geometry Wars, leaving Person Man out of the song.
References
External links
- Particle Man at This Might Be A Wiki
- Interview with John Flansburgh discussing Particle Man, from Pop Culture Corn.
- Tiny Toons Particle Man Music Video
