Hilarious observations recounted
The Chico Performances page (chicoperformances.com/artists/2021-2022/david-sedaris.php) calls David Sedaris an “author and humorist savant.” His appearance at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Chico State’s Laxson Auditorium (tickets $40-$58) comes in the wake of his second volume of diary entries.
“A Carnival Of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)” ($32 in hardcover from Little, Brown; also for Amazon Kindle) takes its main title from the menu offering of an Indian restaurant in London. It’s fitting, of course, for the hundreds of entries that range from poignant (the death of a sister, the dementia of his long-time agent) to preposterous (the lengths some people go to avoid any plopping sound when they use public toilets).
Some of the entries are just jokes, since Sedaris spends multiple hours signing books and hearing the latest funnies — most often of a scatological nature. Not to be outdone, he and his partner, painter and set designer Hugh Hamrick, after noticing some fresh manure spread on a nearby mansion’s lawn, decided to call it “The House at Poo Corner.”
Sedaris is not a conservative Republican (though his dad, in his nineties, is). “Trump won, and I’m in shock. Here it is, not even eight, and already three American friends have written to ask if they can live in our backyard in Sussex.” But mostly he steers away from politics, picking up on human foibles he encounters at his readings all over the world.
Speaking of picking up, he has a few foibles of his own. His obsession is garbage; he constantly picks up litter wherever he goes (and has a garbage truck named after him, as well as a beetle, named by “a Greek entomologist in Tennessee”; “the Darwinilus sedarisi is a predator that eats maggots”).
“I met a guy last night who stays home all day while his wife works. ‘I’m living off the sweat of my Frau,’ he said.” Sedaris suggests a boat be named “Row v. Wave.” “A bear and a pony go to a karaoke bar. ‘Why don’t you sing?’ asks the bear, and the pony explains he’s a little horse.”
Sedaris’ non-sequitur life is filled with profanely hilarious observations, a needed seltzer when life seems a pile of poo.