David Sedaris

For the second night in a row, I'm at another talk at the large auditorium located near my house. And to think, I almost gave up on scholarly talks after the Jamaica Kincaid fiasco.

Truthfully, tonight's talk wasn't as scholarly as it was hilarious. The speaker, David Sedaris, is an amazing humorous essay writer. I want to be Sedaris when I grow up. Unlike for Ralph Nader, the audience was packed and no one left until the very last sentence. And the stage was a masterpiece. The stage featured the scenery for the upcoming Dracula ballet, so Sedaris stood in front of a lovely coffin the entire time.

One of the best parts was his reading on those pee pouches that you can attach to your leg so that you can go to the bathroom in public. In theory, this is the kind of lowbrow humor that is almost too easy for someone as clever as Sedaris. Still, not many people have the adept writing skills to capture precisely what it means to wear one of these devices. He articulates events in a way very few people can.

My favorite part came when Sedaris was describing some book about a person with schizophrenia. He tried to rush through all sorts of background information, as it was not the funny part of the story, but still needed to be told. As he's speeding through, he references, as a parenthetical aside, that some woman was present at the mental hospital (on a day pass). And because that's become my sense of humor, the "(on a day pass)" became the moment I laughed the hardest at, which might be absurd, but whatever Let me try to explain: You know how when people are trying to get to the good part of the story, then in their haste they talk faster than they're thinking and they include all sorts of irrelevant details which then make the introduction that's they're attempting to skip over even longer than if they attempted to say it at a normal pace? Well, that's what Sedaris did. And that's what makes me laugh.

All in all, it was a night of hearty laughter. Though nothing made me giggle in quite the way that Nader's mahjong comment did.