David Sedaris spoke at Chapman University Monday night to promote his new book of essays Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, although he more passionately pushed Los Angeles author Bernard Cooper's The Bill From My Father: A Memoir.”
Amy Sedaris' brother was introduced to a packed Memorial Hall by “fellow 36 short” Jim Doti, who may not have a string of
bestsellers and 450-year-old home in England like the author does, but the
pixie-sized Chapman president can brag his name will be on a building going up
next door to the auditorium.
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See also:
David Sedaris to Appear at Chapman University
David Sedaris Top 10 Before Chapman Gig
The I Hate David Sedaris Fan Club
As longtime listeners of This American Life (or readers of books such as Barrel Fever, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) know, Sedaris is best appreciated by the totality of his deliciously twisted monologues and essays. But this is a blog, where brevity and listicles and little black bullets rule the day, so what follows are seven hilarious lines I think I heard last night:
- “Among the irritating expressions Americans overuse is, 'The blind are people, too.'”
- “If you don't believe a mentally ill person has the right to bring a sawed-off shotgun to a church where his ex-girlfriend is getting married, you are part of the problem.”
- “On a recent trip from Tokyo to Beijing, as my lunch tray was being taken away, I remembered I was supposed to learn Mandarin.”
- On his and longtime partner Hugh Hamrick buying a house in an English hamlet where addresses are the names of individual abodes: “The only other house we considered buying was called Faggot Stacks. It's located between the villages of Balls Cross and Titty Hill.”
- “What's the worst thing you can hear Willie Nelson say after giving him a blow job? 'I'm not Willie Nelson.'”
- Written on a t-shirt in Australia: “What do we want?”
“A cure for Tourette's!”
“When do we want it?”
“Cunt.”
- Told Walmart would not carry his book unless the “depressing” cover image was changed: “What I heard you just say is a gun shop doesn't want to carry my book. That's fine. [Pause] Walmart gets to define depressing?”
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.