I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MAREN MORRIS-Tiny Desk Concert #603 (March 6, 2017).

Maren Morris is hugely successful, but I had never heard of her.  It turns out that

Four days before the 26-year-old strolled into NPR’s offices, she’d pulled off a mighty duet with Alicia Keys during the 59th annual Grammys ceremony and taken home the evening’s award for Best Country Solo Performance.

Despite the “big, crossover-friendly gestures on her major-label debut,” she’s out of my musical area.  But I can see why people like her–she has major pop leanings in her delivery and its sprinkled with pop country that everyone seems to like.

And that first song is really fun.  Of course, the music sounds so much like Steve Miller’s “The Joker” that that may be why it feels so catchy.  There’s a weird almost hip hop delivery to the song despite its obvious country bass.  I mean check out the words:

Boy I’d be rich, head to toe Prada
Benz in the driveway, yacht in the water
Vegas at the Mandarin, high roller gambling
Me and Diddy drippin’ diamonds like Marilyn
No I wouldn’t be covered in all your IOU’s
Every promise you made me would have some real value
‘Cause all the little lies rolling on your lips
Is money falling from the sky (ka-ching, ka-ching) shit I’d be rich

The blurb continues:

She’s cultivated a soulful, irreverent pop-country aesthetic that trades in trucks, bros and beer for a vintage Mercedes, female friendships and boxed wine — and which owes much of its charm to details that shine in a stripped-down setting. Take, for instance, the cash-register ka-ching that punctuates the chorus of the oh-so-sick burn “Rich,” or the intimate, after-hours raggedness in her voice as she sings of jaded heartache in “I Could Use A Love Song.”

So I can respect that.

“I Could Use A Love Song” feels country but her delivery has a massive pop song styling (that’s the crossover appeal, I guess).

She jokes that this is the quickest show she’s ever done.  She sounds genuinely shocked that she won a Grammy the other night.

The final song “My Church,”  is very country sounding (that bass) and singing that she “cussed on a Sunday.”

It’s my least favorite of the three.  I particularly dislike the R&B inflections at the end which puts my two least favorite musical genres together.

But overall she is adorable and charming and she looks to be about 12 years old up there with those two larger musicians supporting her.  And even if I won’t listen to her, I wish her success because she seems really sweet.

[READ: January 11, 2017] “Most Die Young”

I enjoyed this story quite a lot.  I loved how it was structured and the surprising twists it had.

The title comes from a statement by Professor Cruze: “young” means under the age of 38.  Cruze was referring to a Malaysian tribe known as the Pawong.  The Pawong, she explained, have no defenses or weapons.  They are an easy target.  It doesn’t even occur to them that they could respond to attackers.

The narrator first heard about this tribe from her ex-boyfriend Glauber (Glauber is a name, in case you’re wondering).  He mentioned the Pawong tribe as an insult to her saying that she was ruled by fear and could be made a God of the Pawong tribe.

Professor Cruze explained that shyness, fear and timidity are highly valued among the Powang.  To be angry is not to be human; but to be fearful is.

The narrator is always early–something that drove Glauber crazy as well “nothing horrible will happen if you’re a little late.”  She was early meeting her sister Delphine for lunch.  Her sister, Delphine, hated Glauber and wants her to date anyone else.

While they are eating, she sees a former teacher Professor Allan.  She waves to him–perhaps too excitedly.  She assumes he doesn’t remember her but when she tells of the embarrassing gaffe she made in class he remembers (and then she reminds us that her parents both died from carbon monoxide poisoning while she was a freshman.  People tended to remember that).

They have small talk, but Delphine thinks that her sister is “interested” in him, so she butters up her story a bit. She calls her an essayist (she is actually a journalist for strange magazine with no real focus).  Then she says that she is writing an essay in defense of ancient languages (Allan’s specialty). Delphine then suggests that they have lunch to talk about it.  And Allan is surprisingly interested (even though the narrator is not).

The narrator worries a lot.  She was worried by the look of Professor’s Cruze’s tongue, she was worried last week that she had Parkinson’s.  Glauber told her she worried too much and that nobody on their death bed ever wished that they’d spent more time worrying.  The narrator comes up with an example of when somebody might have.  Which just infuriates him more.

She talks to her sister on the phone and informs Delphine that she must go to Group.  No one has to go to Group, Delphine says and then hung up.

She had met Glauber at Group: a group for people suffering from general anxiety disorder (she left a group for hypochondriacs because it didn’t encompass all her worries).

Glauber’s anxiety had been cured–he was anxious because his father died of cancer, but he was sympathetic to her concerns, it seemed.

We see some of the characters at Group (which is funny and sad at the same time).

But during group, there is a bombing nearby, and this changes the tenor of the story. Although in part, things don’t really change because the anxious people in Group are even more anxious.  Everyone spends then next few minutes texting all of their friends to make sure they are okay  The narrator takes stock of who has the most people to contact.

It turns out that one of the ladies in Group asks if she texted Glabuer.  She knew they had been dating–Glauber told her–and also knew that they broke up.  She was fascinated by their plan that if the apocalypse came they would have some where to meet (and then a backup place in case the first place was blown up).

The rest of the story leaves the narrator with mixed feelings about Glauber, the bomb and Professor Allan, who keeps trying to contact her.

The story is quite funny, but it has a surprisingly sad ending which involves her sister (who is a vet) and one her patients.  (Warning: yes the dog is put down–but if you can get past that, the story is really enjoyable.

I’d like to read more from Bordas.

Although it was pretty tough having the first story of the year (he year in which the worst President in the history of the country was elected by losing the popular vote) be full of fear, anxiety, bombs and dead dogs.  Of course, this fiction is far less scary than the truth of Trump’s America.

#RESIST #ITMFA