DAVID SEDARIS = genius

Alex, who is this Mark Leyner?

"I Smell Esther Williams" (despite the great title, not his finest hour).

"Et Tu, Babe?" (his "breakout" work).

"Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog" (my favorite)

"The Teatherballs of Bougainville"

Does this happen often? Is your grandmother Robyn Byrd or something?

He used to do a semi-regular column for Esquire during the mid/late 90s and a few were quite funny.

"In the kingdom of boredom, I wear the royal sweatpants."

I am neither 37 nor is that how "occasion" is spelt.

Lots of older, upper class grandfatherly types and young college indies at the lecture, and both groups laughed heartily, together.

but he does seem like the kind of guys who'd be really funny talking to you in real life.

We organized a variety show tailored to Mrs. Denardo's exotic tastes and practiced for weeks, moving from the song "Getting to Know You" to a dramatic re-enactment of the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

"Your show was a piece of stinking shit," she yelled, surrounded by ana audience of beaming senior citizens. "You don't know fuck about shit, niggers."

who me? i'm not congratulating myself, what are you getting at?

wow, lots more love than i would have imagined. he's so horrible and schticky.

two things in one!

schtickible

hicky

big racist fanbase, no?

kaneclap crit

i've never found him funny or gotten the appeal at ALL.

he's kinda quaint and readable i guess but i really don't get how people can laugh OUT LOUD at his stuff

He has his moments. The story about him teaching the creative writing class has some very good bits in it.

xpost, yeah, he's a smiley aw bless but not really LOL.

i like it though.

and i guess if he told me those stories in real life like in a pub or something i probably will LOL just to be polite.

he and the Coen brothers should collaborate on something, they could call it "The World is a Terrarium, I Look Upon On It and Am Amused"

he's ok in really small doses but good god does he get tiresome after about 30 seconds

Andy Sedaris > David Sedaris

I sometimes read his stuff in The New Yorker. I usually find it mildly amusing but ultimately lacking in energy.

I definitely lol'd at the Rooster bits.

the stories of his i've liked the most are the ones involving his sister

derek sedaris > charlie sedaris > pearl sedaris

I really hate comedy about being hypersensitive to minor annoyances. See also Seinfeld.

I LLOL (LiterallyLOL) at some point during exposure to anything David Sedaris. Genius.

I laugh everytime he uses the words "piping hot".

i've only heard one of his 'this american life' pieces (which was actually something he did live) and read a couple of his NYer articles but i totally do not get this guy

the live thing was pretty unbearable because it was about "ugly americans" in paris with the audience chuckling smugly once in a while ... basically just an inversion of "you might be a redneck if..." and not really any funnier or more intelligent

Sedaris by Kevin Kopelson.

"If I were to read a book on David Sedaris it might be this one." —Paul Reubens

Great blurb.

i kinda understand all the talk about him being mild, but he was pretty brutal in the Barrel Fever days. Stuff like his classic christmas letter short, with the vietnamese daughter and the crack baby in the dryer...hardly "mild" stuff.

Leyner on the other hand, I read My Cousin, Et tu and Corndogs and it's Et Tu, Babe that I always go back to, especially the amazing first couple of pages which it seems I've read over and over again. But I agree that it got played out...I went to a reading with my girlfriend and some guy read a short that was way wacky and crazy and impossible and fantstically and everybody cracked up and all I could think was, he sounds like Mark Leyner.

He has a new book due this year I think. Sedaris , that is

PS xpost he's a racist????

Yeh, I was wondering about that too. A couple of his stories quote other people using the word "nigger" but does that make his fan base racist?

There was the story about his accompanying his brother to buy weed. One of the rednecks he was buying from asked David to pass him the "nigger," which he was supposed to understand meant the TV remote control.

I still fail to see how this makes him - or his 'fan base,' which, it seems to me, is largely comprised of socially liberal NPR types - racist

There was the story about his accompanying his brother to buy weed. One of the rednecks he was buying from asked David to pass him the "nigger," which he was supposed to understand meant the TV remote control.

I read that story. That doesn't make him a racist. If anything, his point of bringing it up was to expose the brand of idiot he was dealing with.

-- roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 19 January 2004 22:06 (4 years ago) Link

The racist bit was about this guy.

Amy Sedaris>>>>>David Sedaris

Okay there was that one where he's working as a paint stripper with this black guy who has completely fucking different personalities around everyone. He's a total over-the-top Stepin Fetchitt around his boss but around David he's all like, "You ever fucked a jewess with a cane?" And quoting that one out of any context would sure as fuck make you sound racist.

But in another he was all making fun of his fourth grade teacher for talking about how a black girl wanted to touch her blonde hair. "That's what they want," she said, "To be like us." As an intro into how he got treated for obviously being little Liberace junior (as he makes it out).

My favorite stuff of his is where he talks about his shit jobs, bcz boy can I fucking relate, and his shit that is just straight-up fucking cruel. His recent stuff has gotten more boring because he has ran out of stories about the cruel & unusual in his past.

I really hate comedy about being hypersensitive to minor annoyances. See also Seinfeld.

HURTING: "People who laugh at David Sedaris - what's THAT about?"

I read some Leyrner (sp?) earlier and it reminded me of Barrel Fever fiction which is my least favorite David Sedaris. Both are sort of entertaining but the incessant wackiness of both gets tiresome. It reminds me of stuff I used to think/write when I smoked a lot of pot (which was probably what Sedaris was doing while writing Barrel Fever).

"You ever fucked a jewess with a cane?"

"You ever pour motor oil all over a college girl's titties?" : D

My friends and I had a Sedaris book that we used to read out loud to each other when we were stoned. Then, when I moved across the country, my sister and I picked up a book-on-tape version to listen to while driving. David Sedaris does not have a good voice to listen to on road trips.

As far as Leyner goes, I'm a Tetherballs of Bougainville fan all the way: "Spit the sun into the sky/I'm so hard I think I'll die!"

I'm kinda glad that he hasn't put out anything in a decade or so though - he went out on top.

What happened to him, anyone? He just seemed to stop writing, period.

I could make something up about his present life, which is what I generally do in these situations. However, I am feeling unusually truthful this morning, so: I don't know.

(re: yesterday's conversation -- I remembered reading this 10 years ago.)

http://www.slate.com/id/3695/entry/24547/

I went early this afternoon to the NPR studio and recorded a Thanksgiving story for Morning Edition. It's always interesting to discover what can and cannot be said on the radio. A few years ago I spent time in Raleigh, N.C., where, on two separate occasions, I heard people say, "This show's boring. Hand me the nigger." The nigger is what they call the remote control, "because it's black and it does the work for you." I find this to be a curious bit of cultural information, but, no matter how hard I try, they won't put it on the radio. Next month I'm supposed to begin a series of recordings for the BBC. Whenever they call, I pick up the phone to hear an urgent voice whispering, "London calling, please hold the line." The producer uses words such as "Jolly" and "Cheerio!" and explains that I'll have to rework a few of the stories to fit what he calls "the British sensibility." I'm hoping that maybe they'll take all the stories I can't get on NPR. Maybe the English will listen, thinking, "Well that's America for you."

i liked the thing in the recent new yorker a lot

genius is overselling it but this guy makes tears roll down my face with laughter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/15/david-sedaris-chinese-food-chicken-toenails

Can't find any release date for C.O.G. in Canada.