We saw David Sedaris at UC Berkeley last night. He read
stories about stuffed owls and taxidermy, longevity and his father’s insistence
that David get a colonoscopy, and then he read his New Yorker article on
socialized medicine. He recommended “The Book of Deadly Animals” by Gordon
Grice, and read some passages from it, all of which illustrated the fact that
many animals are, in fact, complete assholes. Then he read from his diary.
There were two stories from his diary that I particularly
liked:
He was checking in at an airport and the woman at the
counter thought she recognized him. She asked if he was a comedian and he said
no, he was just a writer. But she proceeded to tell him a joke anyway, since
she thought he might like it, but it lacked a punch line. So he told her a joke
about Willie Nelson: “Q. What’s the last thing you want to hear when you’re
blowing Willie Nelson? A. I’m not Willie Nelson.” (Side note: this was a joke
he had made last year when I saw him in San
Francisco and the audience loved it.) But the clerk
didn’t seem to get what was funny, so he proceeded to explain it, telling her
that the only reason you’d ever blow someone who looked like that was because
he was famous, and how distressing it would be to realize you’d made an error. She
just nodded. At that point, he realized he’d broken two of his mother’s rules:
One, never explain a joke, and two, never mention oral sex to a woman at the
airline checkout counter that you’ve just met.
The other diary story was also travel related, and I assume it
must have taken place before the publication of “Squirrel Meets Chipmunk.” He
was sitting next to a woman on an airplane who started to chat with him, and
she told him she’d authored two books on sexual harassment that had done very
well, but for her next book she was venturing into fiction. She said it was
going to be “chick lit” but that was ok because she had the “best title ever.” He
asked what it was. She put both her hands in front of her in a “stop, wait for
this” gesture and said, “Falling…for…Christmas.” David looked at her and said “oh!
uh huh.” So at that point he told her that he also had the title picked out for
his next book: “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.” She asked, “Diabetes? Like
the disease?” “Uh huh” he told her. “With Owls?” “Yes.” She paused for a moment
and then said, “Huh. Well I guess we’d better get started on those books of
ours!”
He also invited questions, and someone asked him about his
favorite TV shows, and he mentioned “Breaking Bad” and “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” He
also mentioned that he had recently seen the movie “Weekend” and really enjoyed
it, but was perplexed to see that the lead actors were not gay (though I think
one of them actually is) and he made a joke about how they couldn’t manage to
find two gay actors for a movie about a relationship between two gay men. He
compared it to casting actors with legs in roles about amputees (for example,
Gary Sinise in Forrest Gump), and how actors without legs must have seen him in
that and thought, “Man, if I can’t get that role, what am I ever going to get?”
Afterward we ran out quickly to get in line and we were
about 20 people back, which was excellent since there were hundreds of people behind
us. We chatted with him for a few minutes about pregnancy and sodomy, got another
book signed, and he gave us a couple of cards, including one that said “Abortions
$3.00.”
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