Last night I went to go see that amazingly funny and brilliant writer David Sederis at Kingsbury Hall (U campus). The funny part was that it was like a Democratic fundraiser, the whole 9th and 9th/Avenues crowd was there, even our County Mayor-elect, who got a standing Ovation.
Sederis is not just a great writer, a model for my creative non-fiction class i took as a freshman, but he is also a great reader of his stories.
In the Q and A, though, he really got interesting. He pluged books that he liked (the Columnist), countries to go visit (Germany), and a non-profit (Helping Hands). He learned about Helping Hands he said, when he asked a woman whose book he was signing "when was the last time you played with a monkey?" because he had ran out of things to say. She replied "Oh about 4 minutes ago." So the next time he was in Boston, she gave him a tour. Helping Hands is an organziation where "enslaved monkeys help quadraplegics" and went on and on about all the things these monkeys could do: put on CDs, microwave food, scratch itches, and type.
He read us a story that will soon be in the new yorker, with parts the new yorker didn't want in there (gross decriptions of stuff that came out of his boil).
When folks asked him about the election (the Q was, "any advice for a liberal in Utah?") he talked about how all his friends didn't just vote, they gave money, they drove people to the polls, they registered voters, etc. "But it wasn't enough"
He said he didn't understand why people didn't vote, whose claims were "neither of the candidate spoke to my issues." He said, "Look, I got f-ed up teeth, and neither candidate spoke about my issue, but I still voted."
Sometimes I wondered when reading his pieces if all that crazy stuff really happened to him. And then I found out it did, and it is all the more amazing. What a wierd family, with his funny sister who writes for comedy central, his prankster brother and other crazy family members you read about in "Holidays on Ice"
And I thought my family was a bit odd.
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