anonymous October 1st, 2006 10:51AM  
The name ana ng, believe it or not, is the most common girl's name in the world, and the fact that taking a gun and shooting a globe perpendicular to the hometown to get the nation of the mysterious ana ng tells me that he doesn't really know her in the first place and he is just hoping the there is someone who loves him, even if he will never meet her. Yet like all they might be giants's songs, the meaning(if any)is not meant to be known.

anonymous February 24th, 2007 07:17AM  
I always thought Ana Ng was a political commentary against the Cold War. When I first saw this video in the late 80's I was working as a government contractor in Germany, and some of the lyrics and images immediately struck me as such. The film location looked like a military training facility with numbered facades, the desks that the "Johns" sat at were the epitome of government bureaucracy, and many of us thought that the Soviets didn't want the world, they just wanted our half.

Bearing this in mind, the political climate of the time, and the significant use of the individual/collective name Ana Ng, I theorize that TMBG was lamenting that there were like-minded people on the other side of the globe they would never meet, and would never meet them, because of politics and the threat of mass destruction.

I could be totally wrong, but consider the idea.

anonymous March 1st, 2007 09:42AM  
The facility in the video is the training facility for the New York City Fire Department. Just FYI.

tiggstah April 23rd, 2007 04:00PM  
That's a superb interpretation.

I feel so naive for never really listening to the words and just thinking it was a song about an international pen pal. I'm such a dummy. Good work, your intellect is truly staggering.

What happened to these guys. If you listen to their songs back then they were like this, almost impossible to interpret save for the highly intelligent and informed, now.. I don't know, I'm just disappointed in them.

anonymous May 9th, 2007 01:35PM  
"My apartment looks upside down from there" Its referring to the fact that our view of the southern hemisphere is upside down compared to theirs.

"Water spirals the wrong way out the sink" In the southern hemisphere hurricanes spin in the opposite direction so the supposed sink being the ocean.

Just a couple of things I noticed. I maybe young but I still love TMBG

anonymous May 13th, 2007 03:16PM  
"my apartment looks upside down from there"
could also be a reference to one point when John Flansburgh's apartment was burglarized.

"water spirals the wrong way out the drain"
seems to be a reference to the myth that water going down a sink or toilet drain spins in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.

anonymous July 26th, 2007 10:17PM  
I don't see why this would be about the Cold War. Pen pla seems more likely.

anonymous December 21st, 2007 07:33AM  
The name "Ng" suggests that Ana is Vietnamese. The part about the desktop globe suggests an antipodal position. Most of the antipodal positions on earth are not significant. Land on one side, ocean on another. However, there is land antipodally to Vietnam. It happens to be Bolivia.

The song seems to mock the idea of "Soul Mates," Ana's soul mate being this Bolivian man who she hasn't met and never will.

anonymous February 2nd, 2008 06:10PM  
What I think is the narrator went to the 64 world fair. Met Ana there and began to have a relationship with the narrator. While there, he finds out that everything he had he lost to Ana. There is some Cold War References here. One being "exit wound in a foreign nation" meaning possibly nuclear war. 64 World's Fair is the beginning of modern America and end of the old. "I don't want the world, I just want your half" represents each superpower's bid for other nations. And the Johns represent unity? lol

anonymous February 22nd, 2008 09:27PM  
"Exit wound it a foreign nation" was talking about the bullet hole you'd make shooting the globe at point-blank range. Saying it means nuking it off the face of the map in that context makes little sense...