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On this edition of Conversations, Matt Geiger joins us to talk about the collection of humorous yet emotionally powerful stories and essays you’ll find in his latest book, Astonishing Tales! (Your Astonishment May Vary). Geiger is an award winning essayist and journalist, who is frequently heard on public radio.
Host Cyrus Webb welcomes author Matt Geiger to Conversations LIVE to discuss his new book ASTONISHING TALES.
Angela Major/WPR
Meet the real John Wick of Mazomanie, Wisconsin
I’m sitting in a roadside diner in Arena, Wisconsin, when John Wick walks through the door. The John Wick.
The John Wick you may be better acquainted with is an assassin in a black suit with matching hair and beard. Over the course of three movies, he has killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 bad guys. Played by an earnest Keanu Reeves, he uses a pencil and a dusty book of Russian fairy tales, among other things, as lethal weapons. The films earned nearly universal praise from movie critics and thrill-seeking audiences alike.
The Case Of The Two-Headed Calf
The Billboard had promised gasoline, sandwiches, and the opportunity to see a two-headed calf named “Heady”.
Standing in The Pit Stop in Mineral Point, I gazed up and scanned for signs it was a hoax. Maybe the deformity was the result of a clever taxidermist’s touch rather than the handiwork of a hilarious, but also cruel and uncaring god?
Boring Death: A Theory Of Midwestern Cemeteries
Graveyards in the American Midwest feel like missed opportunities. The neatly mowed rows of economical, hardy, unpretentious headstones.
To walk through a graveyard in Wisconsin is to see 300 dead people trying desperately not to outdo one another. The markers are neat, tidy, and all nearly identical. You can just see the dearly departed, while still alive, clutching a loved one’s hand as the light inside starts to flicker, wheezing: “Please, when you select my headstone, make sure it’s… unremarkable.”
An Existential Christmas
I judge each child I meet based on her or his merits. I don’t always end up liking them, but at least those who receive my love have done something to deserve it. I’m not the only one who does.
On my daughter’s third Christmas, we marched her down to the Mt. Horeb public library to see Santa, a man famous for judging kids. Child after child plopped down on his lap to ask for an assortment of plastic things. Little did they know Santa wasn’t the only one judging them on that particular morning.
Write-Ups
Essay collection 'The Geiger Counter' radiates humor and insight
ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | rthomas@madison.com | @robt77 | April 24, 2017
In the 44 humorous essays that make up Matt Geiger’s first book “The Geiger Counter,” the Mount Horeb author writes about every stage of his life, from being a kid to being a new parent.
But one theme binds them all together.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Geiger said.
Reviews
Curled Up With a Good Book
DEBORAH STRAW | curledup.com | 2017
Being a comedian or a humor writer is a difficult job. We all have different concepts of what is funny. Isn’t responding to a comic writer or actor based on at least a similar sense of humor, and perhaps on a similar view of the absurdities of life?
My two favorite comedy writers are/were David Sedaris and (sigh) Robin Williams. Both have a somewhat slanted point of view; while Sedaris may write about dysfunctional families and oddities of behavior, Williams could be downright raunchy, as he was in his hilarious, fast-paced, off-color performance DVDs. Suggestive, witty, incredibly fast-paced. Often ad lib, seldom about his life.