The Plague, David Sedaris, Laughing and All That Is

So, the answer to Sophie's drinking strike last week and horrendous number of seizures, including the hideous gelastic ones, is probably a virus. I've been feeling puny and peaked the last few days and am most decidedly not well today. I've got cotton or something in my head and tears pricking at the backs of my eyes -- not the ones of sorrow -- and while I am able to be up and around and doing the daily shit I have to do, I'm ailing. The Brothers went to school, but both are feeling less than perfect, and who knows if The Husband will come down with it as well. It seems like this year has been a bad one for the stealth viruses for our family. I personally haven't felt great since I came back sick from a business trip I took to Washington, D.C. in early January. I think I'm going to blame it on the government.

Last night, I went to hear David Sedaris at UCLA, an annual treat, and as usual he did not disappoint. He read from his new book, told raucous stories, read from his diary and regaled us with the most vulgar jokes you could ever imagine. That man is funny, but he's also incredibly sweet, and I told my friend this morning that I just know he'd love us if he met us. The show was sold out, and the entire auditorium rocked with laughter which, to me, is about the best thing one can do if your heart is aching and you're tired of it all.

The other thing you can do is read a good book, and while I'm making my way through War and Peace, I'm also reading James Salter's novel All That Is. What a book -- the kind of perfect old-fashioned, carefully crafted writing that one rarely reads anymore -- not pretentious and overdone but real Writing. It's not a cheerful book, by any means, and the ambiance is similar to the stifling decadence and glamour of the show Mad Men. I just can't put it down. Here are two lines that stood out the other day enough for me to text them to a friend:

It seemed his manhood had suddenly caught up with him, as if it had been waiting somewhere in the wings.

And:

She looked as if difficulty of any kind was a remote thing.

I can relate to that last one. It's an awesome line, no?

Reader, what are you reading?

David Sedaris made my stomach hurt last night.

This is the book Sedaris recommended this year -- a tradition  on his tour

Yes. I laughed so hard that not only my stomach ached, but my face muscles did, too. In fact, for a second I thought that I'd dislocated my jaw. He read a few new essays, the recent dentist/medical system/socialism essay from The New Yorker, told very dirty jokes, read from his diary and otherwise charmed the audience of thousands at UCLA last night. He dissed animals, particularly dogs (you would have howled, Ms. Moon), and spoke a lot about taxidermy and owls. He is just about the weirdest, sweetest humorist in the world, I think, and I love him. He's definitely the only person who can tell the foulest of jokes and get me to laugh so hard I spit saliva. I've seen him now at least six  times, and each time I'm convinced that if he only knew I was out there in the audience, he'd be one of my best friends.

Here's an excerpt from the recent essay in The New Yorker, titled Dentists Without Borders:

One thing that puzzled me during the American health-care debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented. I don’t know where these people get their ideas, but my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past thirteen years, have all been good. A house call in Paris will run you around fifty dollars. I was tempted to arrange one the last time I had a kidney stone, but waiting even ten minutes seemed out of the question, so instead I took the subway to the nearest hospital. In the center of town, where we’re lucky enough to have an apartment, most of my needs are within arm’s reach. There’s a pharmacy right around the corner, and two blocks further is the office of my physician, Dr. Médioni. Twice I’ve called on a Saturday morning, and, after answering the phone himself, he has told me to come on over. These visits, too, cost around fifty dollars. The last time I went, I had a red thunderbolt bisecting my left eyeball.
The doctor looked at it for a moment, and then took a seat behind his desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “A thing like that, it should be gone in a day or two.”
“Well, where did it come from?” I asked. “How did I get it?”
“How do we get most things?” he answered.
“We buy them?”
The time before that, I was lying in bed and found a lump on my right side, just below my rib cage. It was like a devilled egg tucked beneath my skin. Cancer, I thought. A phone call and twenty minutes later, I was stretched out on the examining table with my shirt raised.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” the doctor said. “A little fatty tumor. Dogs get them all the time.”
I thought of other things dogs have that I don’t want: Dewclaws, for example. Hookworms. “Can I have it removed?”
“I guess you could, but why would you want to?”
He made me feel vain and frivolous for even thinking about it. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ll just pull my bathing suit up a little higher.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/02/120402fa_fact_sedaris#ixzz1tpKc9cAi

The culture vulture's incessant barking

Dah-lings, tonight I'm going to see David Sedaris at UCLA. Every year I buy one ticket to a Writers Word series. I've splurged like this for at least seven or so years, and my seat is third row, center, right end. I know -- it's weird to do this by yourself, but I don't have many real-life friends who love the poetry and the literature like me, and The Husband is from Switzerland, prone to falling asleep at events like these given the workout he gets from The Mistress. Besides, from my high-falutin' seat, I can literally see the writers' pores if I squint, and when I heard John Updike several years ago, I nearly jumped in his lap I fell so in love. Sedaris comes every year, and with the possible exception of one year when he was more caustic than funny, I have rocked in my seat with laughter, holding my stomach, nearly in tears every time. After The Exorcist, a lot of laughter will be a good thing.

Sometimes, there's an empty seat right next to me on the aisle. If you're in the area, come sit and laugh with me.

Monty Python, Satire and David Sedaris for President

Monty Python's famous sketch "The Mouse Problem"

I've seen him four or five times and have laughed so hard that I'm folded over in my seat. I've read nearly all his essays and books. David Sedaris manages to be hysterically funny and poignantly sweet with a good dose of black, black and sometimes over-the-top vulgar humor thrown in. Yesterday I read a brief essay he wrote in Vanity Fair online that made me laugh. As the political process heats up, I'm determined to stay out of it. I'm going to pretend I'm French and not pay any attention until weeks before election day (that's their LAW). C'est dommage pour les autres candidates. But I'll listen to David Sedaris.

Here's my favorite part:

If we want to get out of this mess we’re in, we’ve got to think outside the box. On the one hand, we have immigrants pouring across the border, and on the other, the price of gas is going through the roof! I say we kill two birds with one stone and have illegal Mexicans push our cars. Canadians too, and why not? They’re on our land, so can’t we punish them as we see fit? Another example: You have babies born addicted to crack and meth, kids who will never be able to think straight, no matter how much money we throw at them. At the same time we have streets blighted with potholes. I’m not suggesting that we train these children to fill the potholes, but that we fill the potholes with these children, just stuff them right down there and cover them with asphalt. Then we take the money we’ve saved and put it toward the deficit.


I know, it's rude and outrageous. But I think Sedaris is a satirist in a long line -- Swift, Orwell, Twain, Huxley, Heller, Monty Python, Stewart -- and the satirists always get it right.


If you like your Michelle Bachmanns skewered, read the whole piece here.

David Sedaris

Last night, I had the pleasure of once again hearing David Sedaris at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, an event that I've looked forward to every year for the past five years. I buy a series ticket to the Writer's Word (many of which I've posted about here), and the series culminates in a raucous finale by Sedaris.

When I was a kid I loved the joke:

What goes HA, HA PLOP?


I'll leave the answer at the bottom.

David Sedaris tells his hilarious stories, reads from his travel diaries and tells sometimes disgusting jokes while nearly two thousand people rock the house with laughter. I literally have to bend over in my seat sometimes to catch my breath. If you've never read his work, please do. Especially if you're like me -- beset with near-constant situational anxiety and a tendency to forget that the world is something other than tribulation! The best thing about Sedaris is his brilliant ability to weave a biting, bitter humor with sweetness -- after listening to him talk of his beloved parents, sisters and brother and partner Hugh, I always feel more tolerant toward my own family and all of our complexities -- there's something so powerful about recognizing human frailty and laughing at it --

Answer to riddle:


A man laughing his head off. It still makes me giggle. :)