An evening with David Sedaris

Last night we went to see author David Sedaris, who was speaking at the CHS Performing Arts Center. The Mrs. Colonel gave me a pair of tickets for Christmas, and I decided it would only be fair to choose her as my date for the evening.

Sedaris, who by the way is much shorter than you'd think in real life, read mostly from notes all evening as he shared 3-4 stories and a random collection of his diary entries over the past few years. There was a definite French-theme to his work, as 3 of his stories took place during his time living in France. My particular favorite was his reading of his immortal 'Jesus Shaves,' the story of his beginning French class's attempt [en francais] to explain Easter to a Muslim woman.

I've been a big fan of Sedaris for many years, despite the fact that he and I would disagree on almost every political, social, economic, etc topic there is. It takes a big man to like someone who is his antithesis, and I am that big man.

At the end of the night he promised to stay around and sign books for 'as long as it takes,' and unfortunately everyone believed him and stayed in line. It took us an hour to get to him as we shuffled a few feet every 5-10 minutes. The frustrating part of waiting was the disorganization of the line; it didn't form as much as it was birthed from people gathering around him. Thus even though we [stupidly] went to the back of the line at the beginning, lots of others hung around the sides of the line as the event ended and then slowly absorbed themselves in front of us. There was nothing to be done once it happened, but it was still frustrating and added at least 30 minutes to the wait.

But the wait, as so rarely is the case, was worth it. Sedaris, keenly aware of the large line and the dedication each person had to wait in it, made each person feel welcomed and special. As we got closer and closer we could see that instead of an assembly-line procession of signing, he took the time to engage each person with a mini conversation, asking people "And who are you?" and "Where are you from?" Though annoying as anything when you are standing in a never-ending glob waiting to get to him, once you're there it's pretty cool. He engaged in genuine conversation with each person, with frequent questions and lots of laughter. He's definitely the life of the party, even when you have to pay and then wait in a line to be around him.

And what, pray tell, did we talk about with this world-famous author whom we'd waiting for an hour to meet? Not much of substance, but it was still fun. The Mrs. Colonel started us off with 2 of the 3 phrases she knew in Japanese [he's been living in Tokyo for the past three months]. He saw her bet and he raised her some other phrases. I then mentioned that I had used his material in my classes at the high school, and he smiled. He then followed that up a couple of sneezes, wiping his hands on the table cloth before signing our books. Continuing his Japanese theme, he drew a picture of a turtle with the Japanese word for turtle above it on one book, and then a pumpkin [and why not?] on the other. All in all we were at the table for all of 2-3 minutes, but it was still pretty cool.

In addition, there were many of Cville's most famous citizens in the crowd, including Little Cletus and Devilwoman.

All in all, it was a great night. Was it worth our time? Yep. Was it a great present? Absolutely.