An Evening With David Sedaris

Yesterday afternoon, as I was slogging away at work, a friend of mine text and said she had an extra ticket to go see David Sedaris that night and would I be interested.

Hell, yes.

I have a copy of just about every book that he's ever published and he is one of the few people on the planet that can make me laugh until I wet my pants. He wrote a book called, "Holidays on Ice", which is a slim compilation of essays about Christmas. If you are ever having a crap day or just need a break from life, pick up this gem, open it right away to "SantaLand Diaries" and be prepared to have soda shooting out your nose. He is that funny.

To see him in person was better than I could have imagined.

When we arrived at the theatre, he was already signing books and mingling with the natives. I was surprised at how small he was and how self deprecating. He claims to love his book tours and appreciates the fact that we come out to see him. He is especially impressed when teenagers show up because he figures that they have been forced to come and he knows that they would rather be doing something else. So when he signs their book, he likes to gives them an "individually wrapped" token of his appreciation. Sometimes, he gifts those little two pill packs of pain reliever that you find in the gas station. Last night, it was condoms.

After the reading, he took questions from the audience and we quickly learned that his humour is just as nimble when he's thinking on his feet as it is when he wields a pen. A woman in the audience volunteered that she is trying to raise her children in much the same way that David's mum reared her kids. Throughout his books, Sharon Sedaris is hilariously depicted as a no nonsense mother who took a sardonic, resigned approach to child rearing. The entire audience laughed in response and David shared that he thought his mother's philosophies were sound. He briefly mentioned that he couldn't stand to watch the mothers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and how they each dote on their only child, giving him/her the false impression that the world would forever revolve around them.

"Just not practical," he said, "My parents made sure that my siblings and I understood that there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SPECIAL about any of us. My mother's attitude was,

"You're a dime a dozen. I can always have more. Now, shut up and eat your brussel sprouts.""

Just before he left the stage, he plugged a few books that he had recently read that were written by other people. One of them was, "Our Dumb World" brought to us by the folks at The Onion. He read a few bits from this book that amused him and recommended that we buy this and a few others that he had mentioned before purchasing anything he'd ever written. I thought that was refreshingly humble.

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate just how funny, warm and real he was but at the end of the night, my face hurt from laughing. This morning, I heard that he stayed after the show for three hours signing books and chatting with his fans.

Amazing.