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David Sedaris talks dirty. That’s the major difference between his New Yorker and This American Life stories and his live events like last night’s at the Fillmore Miami Beach. Diminutively perched behind a professorial podium, Sedaris talked about the human turds covering China, blow jobs, and shitting in your own hand. He had us mesmerized.
As if answering an unspoken vibe, he said that after one of his readings, an offended audience member reprimanded him for such crudeness with I thought you were better than that. His response: Whatever gave you that idea?
He started the night by reading his hilarious essay on language programs from The
New Yorker, and we were a little concerned that we’d hear no new
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material. Yet he followed up the story with explaining how ridiculously
thorough New Yorker fact-checking is and how the language software
company responded to his work by adding I am a homosexual to their list
of common phrases.
Thankfully, the rest of the night was all new material — at least to
our ears. He launched into an essay about the difference between
socialized healthcare where he lives in Paris and the American system.
When Sedaris discovered something the size and consistency of a deviled
egg protruding from his side, his French doctor considered him an alarmist
for bringing it to their attention. As an American, he wanted the doctor to
call it by a scientific name, deliver the news gravely, and then offer an
expensive surgical option.
Sedaris’s cleverness and nasal-tinged delivery sells out theaters. But
when he simply reads his writing, there is very little difference
between his live events and the Sedaris coming out of our radios. And
just when we started hoping he’d be more like Rick Perry and go off the
script a little, he began a piece titled “I’m Not Running for
President.”
This satire of passionate conservatism was like red meat for the NPR
crowd. It contained hyperbolic gems befitting of the Colbert Report: we
should make illegals push our cars to solve both the gas and immigration
problem. Or we should give babies the chance to abort their mothers
through a thumbs up or thumbs down program during ultrasounds.
In the next piece, Sedaris relayed episodes from his childhood that made it
seem like he grew up in the pages of Go the F to Sleep. Instead of good night
neighborhood boy shouts profanity at his mother, an 11-year-old Sedaris
explains to his brother that bitch means “female dog” and also “a crabby
woman who won’t let you be yourself.”
The Fillmore was way too cavernous a venue for the humorist. Ideally,
we’d like to commune with Sedaris in the back corner of a cocktail
party, where he’d regale us with tales from his North Carolina childhood
and offer witty jabs about the rest of the people in the room. As one of
2,000 in the theater, the closest we came to this was when Sedaris read
excerpts from his diary, revealing short outbursts of observational
humor.
As an essayist, he admitted that keeping a diary was an absolute must —
as was collecting the names of folks who’s random anecdotes might one
day make it into his New Yorker pieces. He ended the hour-and-a-half reading
by inviting all to a book signing in the lobby, and if there was anyone
who was like his friend, and pooped in their hands, please come
introduce yourself.
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