I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TALLEST MAN ON EARTH-Tiny Desk Concert #26 (September 14, 2009).

I was not aware of The Tallest Man on Earth before hearing him on All Songs Considered.  And then WXPN started playing one of his songs, so he became somewhat familiar to me.  I have since listened to some of his concerts and this Tiny Desk Concert and I really like him a lot.

So the Tallest Man on Earth is Kristian Matsson, a Swedish folksinger with a great guitar picking style and a deep powerful gritty voice.  He plays three songs in this set.  “I Won’t Be Found” has wonderful fast guitar picking that contrasts wonderfully with his simple singing melody.  It’s a great song.  As is “The Gardener” which sounds very different.  This one is largely strummed–a bouncy, jaunty strum. It seems to contain the origin of his unusual stage name (or perhaps it just a fun allusion to it).

“Pistol Dreams” has more great finger picking (and reminds me a little of Richard Thompson).  It’s a sweet song, and his gruff voice once again provides excellent contrast.

I hope to hear more from The Tallest Man on Earth.  Check it out.

[READ: January 30, 2014] “Find the Bad Guy”

This story was surprisingly dark (I don’t think of Eugenides as quite so dark).  It starts out with the narrator talking about the house that he and his wife have owned for 12 years.  And yet they still haven’t gotten the smell of the previous owners completely out of it.  (There’s a nice payoff to this idea later in the story).

But that’s not the point.  The point is that he has recently been kicked out of his house—given a restraining order, in fact.  But since he knows the plans of his house he knows that he can stand right where he is—just inside the front fence—and know that he’s not too close.

The story has trappings of being current—he plays Words with Friends with his daughter (her name is mrsbieber), which I found to be just slightly out of touch.  But that’s irrelevant.

The narrator is Charlie Daniels (not that one—he goes by Charlie D to avoid confusion, especially since he works in music).  He met his wife at a radio station.  She worked at a country station, although she didn’t like country music.  Johanna was from Germany (her name was Lübeck, but everyone pronounced it Lubbock).  But the thing about her was that she was very tall (not that tall in Germany, she said).  And Charlie D was suave, so he asked her clever things like how the weather was up there and if she ever played basketball.  She didn’t fall for this, of course, but then one day she asked if they could get married so she could get a green card.  He said sure.

And they started seeing each other, preparing for the INS.  And in this time his real nature came through and they found that they liked each other quite a bit.  And although their marriage was a green card marriage (something she never failed to point out), it felt real.  Love at fifteenth sight.

After being married for a long time, they started having problems.  But the fighting came to a head when Johanna got a great new job.  They had hired a babysitter, Cheyenne, who was cute young girl of 19.  One day Cheyenne shows up looking filthy and dishevelled.  She reveals that she was kicked out of her house and had been living in her car.  So they invited her to stay with them.  Which meant that he started hanging out with her while Johanna was working.  And, of course, it went where you think it would go.

He confessed what had happened and they went to see a therapist (to his dismay, she was a European woman).  The title of the story comes from their therapist.  It stems from the idea that when you argue with your spouse, both people try to win the argument which naturally means the other loses, and that’s not good for the marriage.

As the story comes to a close, we see Charlie inching closer and closer to the house—he bets she didn’t lock the front door again and suddenly he is inside the house.

Just as there is no winner in a fight, there is no plausible happy ending for this story.  But Eugenides creates a scenario that is rich and believable.  And yet although Charlie D is almost likable, he’s really pretty scummy underneath it all, and no amount of talking will make him see that.