"[M]y notes weren’t always as illuminating as I’d expected them to be. 'What does ‘Alt’ mean?' I asked Hugh over dinner one night."

"He looked down at the page. 'It’s not "Alt,"' he said. 'It’s "A.L.T."' Then I remembered. We’d been out early that morning, observing a short parade of ostriches. It was misty, and I pointed to a vague shape on the horizon. 'What’s that?' I asked Dalton. He followed my finger and told me it was likely an A.L.T. 'Animal-looking thing,' he explained."

I'm so glad to see a new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker, "Notes on a Last-Minute Safari/We saw every animal that was in 'The Lion King' and then some. They were just there, like ants at a picnic, except that they were elephants and giraffes and zebras."

I liked seeing the first syllable of my last name in a new context, but more important was the opportunity to find out David Sedaris's opinion of going on "safari," because I had quite recently asserted, to a complete stranger, that going on safari was really basically the same thing as going to the zoo. These things are packaged. It's not as though you're exploring the authentic natural habitat of elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

"To better accommodate diverse gender identities, some Spanish and Portuguese speakers are increasingly using the -e suffix for some nouns..."

"... such as using 'todes' in addition to 'todos,' both of which mean 'everyone.' Even some government offices in Latin America have adopted using the -e suffix as part of a wider movement for inclusive language. Using Latine (sounds like 'la-TEEN-eh') in the U.S. 'makes sense as an internationally used way of speaking and writing in a less gendered manner,' says Monica Trasandes, director for Spanish language media and representation at GLAAD.... More than half of those polled from states along the U.S.-Mexico border or in the Midwest said the term Latine makes them uncomfortable, and more than 60% of respondents aged 65 and older said the same. There's also pushback in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, with people arguing the term is unnecessary or that it distorts grammar rules...."

From "Latine is the new Latinx" (Axios).

It's hard to imagine how this feels to someone whose native language envisions every noun as either masculine or feminine. I've spent time learning French and Spanish, and I have my feelings about the masculinity and femininity that permeates everything, but these are an outsider's feelings, weighed down by effort it takes to learn a lot of extra and seemingly arbitrary information. If it's your native language, you know what's masculine and what's feminine. Isn't it natural and fluent to you? Isn't it disturbing to be pressured to speak differently and to use made-up words in service to someone else's ideology? Do you feel a sense of loss when the world is not enlivened by the masculinity and femininity of inanimate objects and abstract concepts? I don't come from that world, but from a distance, it feels beautiful, and if I were you, I would want to believe it is beautiful.

David Sedaris is such a great talk-show guest.

Here he's talking about a children's book he spent about 5 minutes writing:

"Kids — they can be nice and stuff, but I don't think they're that bright.... It can't be that hard."

He says his parents never read to him when he was a child. Mine didn't either. Sedaris's parents put the kids to bed with "2 words: 'Shut up.'"

The book's illustrator is Ian Falconer, famous for the "Olivia" books, who died last year, as Sedaris mentions, in a set up to a remark that only he could make.

Falconer is quoted in his NYT obituary: "If I had to say one thing, it would be to not underestimate your audience. Children will figure things out; it’s what they do best — sorting out the world."

You know who did not underestimate his audience? David Sedaris, when he told that joke about Falconer on the late-night talk show.

"Our record is forty-three miles in a single day—ninety-one thousand steps, according to our Fitbits."

From "How to Eat a Tire in a Year/Walking and talking with my friend Dawn," the new David Sedaris story in The New Yorker.

Dawn is, essentially, Sedaris's wife. She was his college girlfriend, in the days before he admitted he is gay, and they spend so much time together that when he returns from his long trips, his life partner Hugh asks "How's your little wife?"

Or so it says here in this story.

"When Trump was president I started every morning by reading the New York Times, followed by the Washington Post, and would track both papers’ websites..."

"... regularly throughout the day. To be less than vigilant was to fall behind.... My friend Mike likened this constant monitoring to having a second job. It was exhausting, and the moment that Biden was sworn in to office I let it all go. When the new president speaks, I feel the way I do on a plane when the pilot announces that after reaching our cruising altitude he will head due north, or take a left at Lake Erie. You don’t need to tell me about your job, I always think. Just, you know, do it. It’s so freeing, no longer listening to political podcasts—no longer being enraged...."

Wrote David Sedaris, in "Happy-Go-Lucky," which came out in 2022 (I earn a commission through that link).

I recalled that passage as I was listening to Monday's NYT "Daily" podcast, "Swing State Voters Are Souring on Biden/A new Times/Siena poll finds Donald Trump leading President Biden in five of six key battlegrounds."

"I don’t trash-pick as often as I’d like to — usually when I’m faced with doing something far more unappealing..."

"... or whenever I need to work off some bad karma. It’s a terrific hobby for me, an anxious putterer with a holier-than-thou bent who writes better when my hands are occupied with something else. (I’m not alone — the humorist David Sedaris is a much more accomplished writer and trash picker than me.) When I do it, though, Bluetooth headphones in my ears and a weed gummy dissolving in my stomach, solicitousness and gratification ripple through me."

Writes Jazmine Hughes, in "The Joy of Picking Up Other People’s Trash/When my neighborhood changed around me, I decided to change it" (NYT).

The neighborhood is not named, but we're told it's in Brooklyn, and the change is gentrification — "turbocharged gentrification." Hughes looks around and sees herself as "the only Black person standing on the corner" while "gaggles of 20-somethings... roam the streets, presumably in search of eyebrows, which none of them seemed to have."

"What if I weren’t a writer? Would I be allowed to repeat a story at a cocktail party? Are comedians allowed to repeat things on stage?"

"How far do the ethics reach? Did my repeating your story ‘steal’ it from you? Did it mean you couldn’t write about it in the future?"

Said David Sedaris, quoted by Gabb Schivone in "The Hot Dogs and the Notebook/How David Sedaris turned me into one of his freaks" (Slate).

I wish there were a comments section over there. Schivone tries so hard to attack Sedaris and to inflate the importance of his anecdote, an anecdote that I won't even repeat... and not because of scruples about theft. It's not something you'd want to hear. Read "Portnoy's Complaint" if you'd like a description of a kid's relationship to a food item.

ADDED: I'm seeing comments there now. They are not supportive of Schivone. A good one: "The hot dog is not a story. Telling Sedaris about the hot dog is a story."

"He doesn’t dispute the fact that people are buried on his land or that the area is steeped in Revolutionary significance..."

"... his vision for the IHOP involves a wait staff in tricorne hats and bonnets. But it was still a bit of a mystery exactly whose bones were buried on his property and who put them there. And, besides, if there really were hundreds of soldiers beneath the ground, Broccoli believed it to be self-evident that he was the one pursuing the vision of life, liberty, and happiness that George Washington’s troops had fought and died for: the right to sell pancakes where they were buried...."

From "The Battle of Fishkill/When Domenic Broccoli set out to expand his IHOP empire upstate, he didn’t expect to find a grave site — or start a war" (NY Magazine).

There's a misplaced modifier — "where they were buried" — but still, I like that passage. I love that a restaurant guy is named Broccoli, but he sells pancakes. And I love that it's IHOP — which is the first place that ever employed me and also iconic in the writings of David Sedaris. And Broccoli's opponents are colorful and sometimes dressed in Revolutionary War outfits.

"What would be the point of hedonism?" — the automatic transcription mistranscribes. He said "heganism."

 

(Yes, 2 David Sedaris posts (almost) in a row. It just happens sometimes. I don't artificially separate posts from other posts.)

"I think that children are like animals that don't have any natural predators left and they're just not afraid of anything...."

"I was in London not long ago and there were these boys breaking the branches off a tree and this woman said, 'You boys stop doing that,' and they said, 'You can't talk to us,' and they were right. You know what I mean? What she was doing was bullying, you know, according to the law, and they knew it."

Said David Sedaris, in conversation with Bill Maher.

Maher added: "That's a sea change from when we were kids when... not only could your parent hit you, the neighbor could hit you.... It was like it takes a village — that was the mentality like any adult could — maybe that's going a little too far — but — I don't know — I think that's better than what we have now.... I mean, I I don't have children, you don't have children and some people say to me, you know, like, 'How do you know?' I'm sentient!..."

Sedaris: "I'm always surprised I meet a teenager and I say... you have to have an after-school job, and the parent, always: "This is Atticus's time to be Atticus.'"

"I always thought when you got to be a certain age, you’d give anything to be younger. But I am so excited to be dead in, like, 20 years. Because there’s not much more of this I can take."

Said David Sedaris — after he was asked about A.I. taking over the jobs of writers — quoted in "Could the Next Great Author Be a Robot? We Asked (Human) Writers. At the PEN America Literary Awards, David Sedaris, Judith Thurman and others discussed the role A.I. could play in literature" (NYT).

When you're young, you want there to be a lot of space between now and where you're picturing your death day. It's never distant enough — and, of course, it's always potentially today — and you cling to a vague fantasy of immortality. But when you are old, you continually notice benefits in the short time line: These problems are not mine to solve. I do not exist much further out on this trajectory.

If you are young, you should know that old people are mostly keeping this secret. We don't want to demoralize you as you shoulder the burdens of life, and we don't want to seem as though we don't care. 

Look how J.K. Rowling got lambasted 2 weeks ago when she said "I do not walk around my house, thinking about my legacy. You know, what a pompous way to live your life walking around thinking, 'What will my legacy be?' Whatever, I’ll be dead. I care about now. I care about the living."

She was saying that she cared about the living and didn't worry about herself or the ghost of a self that would remain out there in the future. Yet that curt "Whatever, I’ll be dead" really hit younger people.

What is David Sedaris reading?

 Click for TikTok video:

I have 7 TikToks selected for you tonight, and I think they kind of go together. In any event, some people love them!

1. The painted face.

2. Elizabeth Taylor on "What's My Line?"

3. The child is perhaps outraged not to be asked to join in.

4. When you, an audiobook user, order a used David Sedaris book so you'll have something for him to sign, and the book that's sent is one that David Sedaris has already signed.

5. The videos David Wain doesn't remember making but obviously did make, in the middle of a sleeping-pill-induced night's sleep.

6. It's Moby's birthday, and he's playing "Happy Birthday" in 5 genres.

7. Copying runway fashion with materials you find around the house.

"Tonight, he perfectly panfried two veal chops the size of snowshoes and served them with risotto and pre-natal zucchini."

"Sage was used, and, as is his habit, he took great care spooning the life-giving drippings onto the meat. Like always, we ate at the table, which was set and had candles on it.... We usually sit down for dinner between 9:30 and ten. I like to eat until I hate myself.... I once ate an entire 12-ounce can [of Aunt Ruby’s peanuts] in one sitting, hoping I’d get eternally sick of them, the way I did with Goldfish crackers when I was 6. No such luck, though. Aunt Ruby’s peanuts are my weakness. I cannot resist them, and so I have to do things like eat salads and fish and diet Jell-O in order to fit them into my life. I have to walk a minimum of 15 miles a day and do these sad little exercises all morning otherwise I would be massively overweight, which is something I like on other people, just not on myself."

From "David Sedaris Eats Until He Hates Himself/'Too much lunch puts me in a stupor, but at night, I really take the gloves off'" by David Sedaris (Grub Street).

I love David Sedaris. I even bought Aunt Ruby's peanuts in the middle of reading the article. Of course, I'm reading his new book — that is, I'm listening to the audiobook for the 4th time. Chapter 9 — "Highfalutin" — was recorded at the show he did here in Madison, so I am personally, minusculely, present in the recording.

Ah! It's finally here: "Yelp Reviews of Xmas" by David Sedaris.

I heard this story read aloud when Sedaris did his show here in Madison 2 weeks ago. He said it would be in The New Yorker "next week," so I've been looking and looking. Finally! I love the whole thing, but the part I've been wanting to quote is beyond humor and startlingly dark.

Oh! The part I've been waiting to tell you about is not in the short bit that The New Yorker published. It was about abortion. It's hard to explain how a harsh view of abortion could have fit into the comical idea of Yelp reviews of Christmas, but let me try. 

The fictional Yelp reviewer criticized Christmas for causing the abortion clinic to be closed and, from there, manifested her outrageously self-centered character. She wanted the abortion for Christmas so she could — am I remembering this correctly?! — give it as a present to her ex. 

It was way over the top, to the point where it would upset pro-abortion readers, because it wasn't just the usual refraining from discussing what is happening to the child as murder. The woman reveled in murdering the child. I thought: I need to see this in print. 

From the version of the story that made it into The New Yorker, there's a 1-star review: "I like Christmas, except it has too many nuts in it and I’m allergic. There are nuts in the cookies—not all, but some—and even in the songs! I don’t think this is fair to people such as myself. Christmas needs to be more inclusive." 

The Overture Center's "Evening With David Sedaris," originally slated for April 27, 2020, finally took place last night.

I adore David Sedaris — and listen to his audiobooks probably more than anyone — so I'd bought 2 tickets, for me and Meade. But when the rescheduled date finally came around, there was some new fine print: "All who enter building must wear a face mask and show proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test with a photo ID." 

It's stuffy inside that mask, and it's harder to laugh out loud. Some of the laughing in an audience is social. You want to be seen to be laughing, enjoying yourself, but if your mouth isn't seen, you don't have to bother with that. You can just laugh in your head, the way you do when you're traipsing around the city, listening to David Sedaris through headphones.

But it was the second part of that fine print that was truly irksome, and that caused the seat next to me to be empty. I was willing to show my papers — photo ID and vaccination card — but Meade was not. We went up to the gate together. I thought we might both make it through, but the gatekeepers performed the duty imposed on them, and Meade stayed behind. We reunited after the show. 

Sedaris did a Q&A with the audience at the end, but I didn't have the nerve to raise this issue with him. He did at one point talk about how he's been traveling since September and has seen 60 different American cities on this tour. Things are different in different places. Milwaukee, he said, was completely open. No masks. But he didn't say what he thought of the sea of masked faces he had to look at here in Madison. He did say — more generally about Covid — that 700,000 Americans had died, and — mournful pause — he didn't get to pick any of them.

About Madison, he said he'd walked along the shore of Lake Mendota and loved the sound of the ice clinking against the shoreline. Here's a video I made on December 20, 2014, recording that sound:

Sedaris said he'd like it if that sound replaced all the Christmas music.

Speaking of delicate smallness replacing vigorous bigness, I loved seeing the diminutive author alone on a stage designed to accommodate operas and Broadway shows. He did nothing to make the show any bigger than an author reading from papers — other than that one point when he stepped out from behind the lectern to display his unusual outfit. It looked like he had an extra jacket or 2 tied around his waist under the jacket he was wearing as a jacket but was really just one multi-layered jacket, all sewn together. He opened the jacket to display his culottes. It seemed like something from a very small-scale circus, an elegant sad-clown costume. Again, one very small man in the spotlight on a huge, dark stage.

The material he read had a lot about his father, who recently died at the age of 98. Sedaris came right out and said he was happy his father had died, and that — except for the last year of his life — his father was always mean. He endured his father's meanness, suffering inside for decades, but eventually got to the point where he found this big audience to laugh and confirm his perceptions of his father. I was glad to help him alleviate the lifelong pain, even if my smiling mouth could not be seen and my dear husband was stranded in the lobby.

"When gay men and lesbians come up, I say, 'Where do you stand on the word "queer"?' The young people are like, 'I love it.' It’s their word. I hate it."

"I read an interview with this woman, and she identifies as queer because she’s tall. People who identify as queer because they feel 'other'? Everybody does at some point in their life. It’s just the rebranding. No one asked me about it. There was not a vote. So now I identify as a straight man. Whatever you identify as, people have to respect that, right? I identify as a straight man because the word 'straight' doesn’t change. I just want some stability.... I’d rather say I’m homosexual than queer. It’s completely strictly generational. That’s what people my age were called, you know? But that’s not the part of it that bothers me. It’s just the rebranding. That’s why now I’m a straight man. And you know what?... I’m going to be a really good spokesperson for straight men too. We’ve been maligned for too long, and we’ve had it. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore."

Said David Sedaris, quoted in "David Sedaris Knows What You’ll Laugh at When No One Is Judging" (NYT).

That interview is so full of quotable stuff, it's hard for me to stop, but I'll stop there.

"British Airways has advised pilots and cabin crew not to refer to passengers as 'ladies and gentlemen' in onboard announcements as the carrier celebrates the 'diversity and inclusion' of its customers...."

The Telegraph reports today.

That caught my eye because I was just reading  a diary entry from 2017 in David Sedaris's new "Carnival of Snackery" about the decision to get rid of "Ladies and gentlemen" in announcements on the London Underground:

There’s something sad about this to me. It’s like a casual Friday for language, only it’s not just on Friday. I rather liked being thought of as a gentleman. Yes, I’d think whenever I heard it, I believe I’m up for this. 

The new announcements, he writes, would begin “Hello, everyone.”  

You know, it's funny that "Ladies and gentlemen" lasted as long as it did. Even 60 years ago, it sounded old fashioned. It was corny announcer-talk. It seemed to imagine an audience that was much more dressed up and proper than the people who'd actually shown up. It added some humorous grandeur or an edge of hucksterism. And that was long before any complicated gender critique bubbled up in the culture. 

ADDED: Milton Berle used to say "Ladies and germs" as a joke.

It's here at last!

Today is the publication date of the new David Sedaris book, "A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)"

I am, I think, the world's biggest fan of the first volume of David Sedaris's diaries, "Theft by Finding," so this is a huge event for me. I've been watching the calendar for months. 

This is funny — It's #1 (and #3) on Amazon's "Best Sellers in Classic Greek Literature":

"'Well, I know that your father did his best.' People love saying this when a parent dies."

"It’s the first thing they reach for. A man can beat his wife with car antennas, can trade his children for drugs or motorcycles, but still, when he finally, mercifully dies, his survivors will have to hear from some know-nothing at the post-funeral dinner that he did his best. This, I’m guessing, is based on the premise that we all give a hundred and ten per cent all the time, in regard to everything: our careers, our relationships, the attention we pay to our appearance, etc. 'Look around,' I want to say. 'Very few people are actually doing the best that they can. That’s why they get fired from their jobs. That’s why they get arrested and divorced. It’s why their teeth fall out. Do you think the "chef" responsible for this waterlogged spanakopita is giving it his all? Is sitting across from me, spouting clichés and platitudes, honestly the best that you can do?'"

Writes David Sedaris in "A Better Place/Why the euphemisms? My father did not 'pass.' Neither did he 'depart.' He died" (The New Yorker).