David Sedaris
Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Because he was standing right at the door of the plane and he said, can I get you something to drink, young man? And so I just ignored him. And he said, young man? And I ignored him and he said, young man? And I said, I'm not young. Why don't you just say old man? Because that's what you mean. Oh. That's his charm.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
You see it a lot with Bellman at hotels too. Yeah. Can I help you with that bag, young man? Yeah. And they say it to women more. Yeah. They'll say it to like a twisted stick figure with a walker. Hey, young lady. And she's supposed to say, he thinks I'm young.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
new thing. Okay. And again, I go on these tours and that's why I'm traveling and somebody else is paying for my ticket and I'll admit it, I'm in first class. Already you're thinking, you don't have that much to complain about. Look, you're in first class. But the flight attendant kneels and looks at the manifest and says, Mr. David, what would you like?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And I'll say now, oh, can I see the manifest for a second? I say, see, it says David Sedaris. I said, David is my first name. My last name is Sedaris, so I'd be Mr. Sedaris. Because they don't want to take a chance on pronouncing your last name. So they just call you whatever your first name is. That's just laziness.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Part of my job when I sit down and write books is to pronounce people's names when they put them in front of me on a post-it note. And I pride myself on it. You know those Irish names? Someone said, oh, those Irish names, they always look like a Wi-Fi password. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And those can be hard, but if you worked at the airport or something, you'd get them after a while. Chinese names, you'd get them if you took an interest and asked people, and you would say yes whenever you were right about them. So I just object to the laziness.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Buckminster is my first name. My last name is Street. It was interesting when I was in Australia, not a single person waiting for me at the baggage claim to take me into town said, how was your flight? Which I hate. If you ask me how my flight was, you're just dead to me. Yeah. And I've said to people before, that's such a bad icebreaker. I know. Then why do you?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah. At a hotel, not a single person said, welcome in. How are your travels? Right. They would say instead, gosh, that suitcase. How did the wheels work on that? Are those good wheels on the suitcase? You know, the actual question.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah. It just felt more genuine. But like a corporate personality is no personality.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
preferable right i like it if i'm going to the security check at the airport and that person has a personality me too love that tsa guy personality love that everybody i'm happy you know who i don't want to have a personality is the pilot sometimes you're on a southwest flight and they kind of pride themselves on that they make jokes that's not who i want making jokes but
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I was on tour in the fall and I went to Chicago and I was checked in by a woman with Down syndrome.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
She checked me in for my flight and she had a very hard time pronouncing the name of the city I was going to, but it was a difficult name. And a lot of times if you have Down syndrome, your tongue is kind of thick, so it can be hard to say. So I had to ask twice, but I thought, wow, why haven't I seen this before? And then I started thinking they should hire a guy with Down syndrome.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Or it could be a woman dressed in a pilot's uniform to stand at the front of the plane at the beginning of every flight and say, we'll be flying over. And then all the people who get off the plane immediately would be the right people. And then we could just take off. They would be the right people. Just hire people with Down syndrome to pretend they were the pilots. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
It bothered me when people took that and said, well, you're just being ageist. And it's like, no, there are people his age who are vital. He's not vital. And you would just be on the edge of your seat. It's like having your kid in the school play. He's so afraid they're going to fuck up every time he opened his mouth. It was just anxiety.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I was in the Philippines a couple of years ago and I was on a television show called Wow Wow Weed. Like they invited me to be on this show. People there are so desperately poor and people would wait in line for days to get in to give the host money. So he gets a fistful of money and he says, I've got $100 here for the craziest dancer.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And then there'll be like people in their 80s like break dancing, really humiliating themselves in order to get the money. And it was like, I didn't know the show was going to be like this. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I was just brought on and then I gave money to the host to give away. And then I saw what was happening and it was like bum fighting. Yeah, it is a version of that. That seems like it would be in the Bible under things not to do.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Okay, but is this just as bad? So I was in Pakistan. This man came up and he was begging for money. And I said, I will buy your shawl. Then he was like... Oh, I'll give you the shawl. And he was trying to give it to me because that's what people are like there. If you say to somebody, I like your glasses, they give you. And I'm like, no. Luckily, there was someone who could translate.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And I said, you want money from me and I want something from you. So I pay you. I mean, the money I was paying him for a shawl was like 50 times with the shawl. Right, right, right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
But he wanted to give me the shawl. And I was thinking it's nicer for you if it's a transaction too. Because you're not begging me for anything. I'm just a customer buying. Anyway, we finally made that understood. And then we went over here and then we came back and he already had a new shawl on and he was modeling it. And then I was like, I want that one too. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I went to Australia with my friend Dawn. Her dad had a music store, and he would get a lot of letters from prisoners. Oh, can you send me some guitar strings? And he was a lovely man, Dawn's father. So people would get out of prison, and they wouldn't have any place to go. And so Dawn would be at home alone. Oh, no. With someone who'd just gotten out of prison, stole from her jewelry box.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
When I was in Australia a few weeks ago, there was a hotel that had a notice on the desk that said, we are cash free. And then it said, money can contain 163 bacterias, something like that. And then they had written, we charge an X fee for using their credit card. No. Yeah. Anyway, when I was in Egypt, there was this kid selling big balloons.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And they weren't inflated, but you'd inflate them yourself. They were just big. I thought, oh, they'd be good to give away to people at a book signing or something. So I bought all the ones that he had, and I gave him money. And he kissed the money. And the money there, you have to have a big stack of it. Like $100 would be such a big stack of money, you could barely close your wallet.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And it really stinks. Like the money really stinks.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And here was this kid kissing it. And this other place won't even take it. Exactly. Right. And they don't know what stinky money is. Australian money is that plasticky money you could put in the dishwasher if you wanted to and it would come out fine.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I went to England and did something, and then I went to Australia, and that was just a vacation. And then I went to New Zealand, and then I went to Australia, and then I went to Fiji, but that was just a vacation. And then I went to Hawaii, and that was for work.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
When I was in Hawaii, someone told me I was in Hilo on the big island.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And they said it was her 11th child. And she just kept walking. She didn't give a fuck. But you know what? If you had 11, you might be like, eh. It's fine.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I don't do it in front of the mirror. I still can't look at my teeth. I had to go to the dentist the other day and she held up the mirror and I'm like, have we not been through this? I can't look at my mouth.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
During the pandemic, I got those Invisaligns because I had massive gaps. I was at a nice hotel checking in. I would feel them thinking, you don't belong here. It's shocking not to feel that way. Like no one's ever said to me, you have beautiful eyes. Just no one's ever said it to me, right? I don't know what that's like to have beautiful eyes, but I'm fine with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Nobody ever said, oh, you have such a nice smile. And then somebody said it to me after I got my teeth fixed. And I thought, I never in my life thought I would ever hear that from anyone. Did it feel good or did it feel like a cheat? You know, there are women who have magnificent breasts.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Just born with magnificent breasts. Yeah. And then I think if somebody else then has a maid, you know what? This is a better analogy. Okay. I don't know that I still have them, but I used to have magnificent calves. They were like Popeye's arms, like bowling balls. And then people started getting calf implants. Right. And it's like, I have big calves because I'm short.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
It's something you get as a bonus. And because I walk so much. And you just paid to have your big calves. But ultimately, I don't really care.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I was picking up trash in England and I found a strap on penis that was like an inch and a half long. Wow, they sell that. And I thought, who are you going to fuck, a Cabbage Patch doll?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
No, I'd be better with a water creature. It would just be more sanitary, I guess.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
A friend recently showed me a YouTube video and it was Spanish feminists protesting the rape of chickens. And I thought, oh, who would be so low as to rape a chicken? They meant roosters.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And then their point was that if you have free range chickens and a rooster starts raping, the chicken can run away or something. But if they're in close captivity, the chicken doesn't have any. And then I thought, Okay. Yeah, that's fine.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I'm okay with that. A female snapping turtle has no peace. The male is just constantly on top of it. But at least they can try to swim away or try to escape in a way that they couldn't if they were.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
The Pope wanted to meet with humorists and comedians from around the world. Wow. So I was just minding my own business, and then I got an email. I guess it had been sent earlier, but it didn't get to me, and it said, Day after tomorrow, you're invited to meet the Pope. Oh, my God. And I was in England, so it was an easy flight.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
So anyway, I thought, I'm not a Catholic, and I honestly don't care about the Pope, but I thought it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'd be dumb not to do it. So I went, and I met the Pope. There was 100 of you invited? Yeah. When I came back, I was like, I met Chris Rock, because he was wonderful. Oh, wow. That to me was more like, oh, my God, I can't believe I met Chris Rock.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
We went to Egypt a couple months ago. All the postcards were bullshit. I went to Fiji. It was the same thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Most of the comedians were Italian, but they were from all over the world. I met this one woman from Switzerland. There was an Italian woman who was the only person to speak, and I'd met her before. Very well-known Italian comedian. And when I met her, she had just adopted two teenagers from Romania.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
They were taking her canceled checks and selling them because they had her autograph on them.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
They were gypsies. And then she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Anyway, so I asked about the kids and, oh, they're doing great. Oh, they're great. They're in jail. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
She made a speech that was like 45 seconds long. Oh. And then he read a speech, and it was in Italian.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah, they gave us a copy of it. He could have said, laughter makes the world go round, is essentially what he said.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
No, he was just saying like, oh, it helps to laugh.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
But he was saying there was too much faggotry in the seminar, which I thought was just funny. And then he apologized. And then he said it again. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He's 86. He is. And there were people, I can't believe you went. And I would have boycotted. I wouldn't have gone. He said faggotry. But the Pope cannot perform a gay marriage. But he was blessing gay couples about to be married.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah, this one doesn't like you getting his ring kissed.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I got that in Australia, but it was Egypt, and I wished I'd brought it to Egypt.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I cried when the guy from South America spoke in Spanish. He starts off speaking English and then it moves into Spanish. What he said was so beautiful. And the Spanish was so beautiful. And his face. I'm not a religious person and I'm not a Christian, but I thought, I'll follow you.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And what he said was that the church is not the past. He said the church is what happens next. I don't even know what it means. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Here's to my eyes. And I saw it and I rented it. And then I played that again and again and again and again and again and again. I loved it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
The clothes in that movie, I mean, come on. They are remarkable.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Well, because there were 100 people there and you figured every single one of them was going to put it into a routine. So what would my take be? And my take was the clothes. And I went to a place that's been dressing the Pope.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I looked up the names of things because I didn't know those.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Like a cassock, that's pretty simple. But the sash is called a fascia. Yeah. I like it when I read something and there's technical language in there. Me too. Like, not too much, but just some of it. I was trying to describe the clothing as well. And then I went to a place that's been dressing the Pope for 300 years. And I thought they wouldn't sell to a layman. And you went with Julie?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
It takes nine months to have one made. But then they had one that was never picked up for some reason. So anyway, I walked right out the door with it. Off the rack. And then I started wearing it. Stop. Ouch. And it's so interesting. I wore it in London where it's not a Catholic country. With the collar? Yeah, with the collar and everything. Oh my God.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And then would see me from a distance and then look away when they got close. They couldn't look at my face.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Maybe that's it. Oxford Street in London, it's like there's a shift change. And at six o'clock, Christians go home and Muslims take over. Oh, really? Interesting. Even the beggars on the street go home and are replaced by beggars from the Middle East. Wow. And so everybody on Oxford Street after a certain time at night is Muslim.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And often they're dressed in, I don't know the names for the clothes. And they are always treated differently. Their people looked me in the face.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah. They were living a religious life. Yeah. I felt like they were looking at me like, whatever. You know, if you want to believe that, go ahead. Right. We're both wearing black.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
It has 33 or is it 32 buttons, one for each year of Christ's life. Okay. And so you're supposed to think about that every time. Second time you put it on, you're pulling it over your head. Sure. You're wishing that he was crucified at 12. That's what only happens. That is a lot of work. I wore it on stage one night and the lights were really hot. And so I'm trying to unbutton it while I'm reading.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
A man dies and he has a company that sells nails and he turns it over to his son-in-law. And one day he opens a newspaper and he sees a full page ad and it's a picture of Jesus on the cross. And it says, we used Epstein nails. And the guy calls his son-in-law and says, are you out of your mind? This is no way to sell our product, right?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
It says, it's not the first time I've cheated on Hugh, but...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
A couple of days later, he opens a newspaper and he sees a picture of a cross and lying face down in the dust in front of it is Jesus Christ. And the caption says, they didn't use Epstein nails. Oh my God, that's fantastic. What I like about that too is that people think it's a Jewish joke. It's not. It's just a dummy joke. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
The best joke I've heard lately, someone told me at a book signing, was a guy wakes up in the hospital following a horrible accident and says, doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs. And the doctor says, I know, I just amputated both your arms.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Well, there's a place in, is it Savannah or is it Columbia, South Carolina? And it's a coffee shop and everyone who works there has Down syndrome or some people have brain damage, you know, they were in an accident or something like that. It's so funny because they don't take cash because making change is too much.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Okay. He doesn't want postcards. He doesn't want me to text him. He wants letters with stamps on them.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
When you get a coffee, it just takes a really long time to get it and it's filled up to the very top, but you just feel really good.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Someone told me about a place in Dallas called Howdy. And it's an ice cream parlor. And everybody who works there has Down syndrome. And so I said, I'm going.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And we went. And they make the ice cream too. And they had Dr. Pepper ice cream. I would have tried it, but it had chocolate chips in it. And I can't eat chocolate.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
But it's such a good idea for a business because you don't care. I mean, yeah, it takes a little bit longer. You're happy. The Shane guy, is he Southern?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I know what you mean, though, that sometimes I think people hear a word and then you're making a joke at the expense of something. And it's like, no, you weren't really listening. You stopped at the word and you didn't listen to the rest of it. That happens a lot.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
What's it called? Beautiful dogs. Gosh, something you said a second ago. Somebody gave me a rape whistle. It was a red whistle, and it was in a plastic bag that had rape whistle written on it, right? And I thought, oh, I'll give it to a teenager at my book signing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
So I was waiting for the perfect person, and this 17-year-old boy came with his mother, and I gave it to him, and I said, I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I think you're supposed to blow into it the second you start raping someone. Right? And then someone was offended by that, and I thought, no. No. A woman's being raped. She's got her hands full. Why can't the guy?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I mean, it's the least a guy could do is blow into a rape whistle.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
My objection to queer isn't that it used to be a slur. And it really is a generational thing. When I'm signing books, if I meet gay men my age, I say, there's not a right answer. I said, but where do you stand on the word queer? And 90% of them feel the way that I do.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Right. But I don't care that it used to be a slur. It's the fourth time in my life that I've been rebranded and nobody ever asks. I was in Australia not long ago and the flight attendants for Qantas were getting new uniforms. And I just said to one, oh, I love your uniform now. I love the way the navy blue is next to the red is next to the pink. And she said, well, we're getting new uniforms.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And I said, what if you hate them? And she said, we're all getting a chance to vote on them. But nobody did that with queer. The word just changed to queer. And then people say to me, as a queer writer, and I just like, no.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah, I didn't pick it. And also, it's an umbrella term. When I was in Australia, somebody said, oh, I know a nun who identifies as queer because she's married to God, and that is an alternative sexual state. I meet a lot of women who identify as queer that are married to men, but they're open to the idea of a three-way or something, so now they identify as queer.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And I just don't know why I'm on their team. You're like, we're not the same. Right. Somebody lumped us all together. I just want to know, who did the lumping? Or BIPOC? What's BIPOC? Black, indigenous, people of color. If you're like a Native American or you're black.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Right. But somebody decided that it wasn't Native Americans or black people. It was some humanities professor who decided that we're going to invent this word.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I mean, I was just thinking this earlier today. I thought if they were straight people and gay people picking sport teams, gays would say, let's take the trans. I just feel like the genderqueer people would be the last ones on the field. You know what I mean? We already took the nuns. Okay.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I pay the gender queers as well, you know, and they have green hair and their septum rings and they come over to your team where they just complain about everything. I did a little CBS Sunday morning thing about how I don't want to be.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And then I don't ever read anything about myself, but apparently my friend Pamela Paul, who writes for the New York Times, she said, can I quote you for my op-ed piece in the Times? And then the Times ran a letter and it was like somebody went off on that aspect of it and called my...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
position problematic but it's like if I'm gay I think I have a voice I think I should be able to say I don't like that it's not like there are people in Puerto Rico being called something and I say I don't agree with that it's a word people are directing toward me plus I have a problem with problematic if everything's problematic nothing is yeah that word for me is a big it's problematic it's rough
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I wrote an essay in The New Yorker about my close friend Dawn. And I just said in passing that one of her lungs had collapsed. So she was super nervous about COVID. And so she wore her mask long after everybody else. And she and I were at O'Hare Airport. And I said, Dawn, I think it's time to let it go. Look around you. Nobody else. And she took her mask off, immediately got COVID. Oh! Okay.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
But the story was about our almost 50-year-old friendship, right? Yes, of course. So then my publicist called and said, I just think you should know this is happening. And it was like a tidal wave. I was ableist and I bullied a vulnerable person into taking her mask. I hope she never talks to you again. Oh, my God. You almost killed her. I hate people like you. And it never occurred to me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
No one was angrier than Dawn because she doesn't identify as vulnerable. Right. And you can't bully her into anything.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Also, if it's a New Yorker, your editor's like, I don't know about this. No one saw that coming. And then people were so angry about it. I didn't respond to any of it. I didn't read it. Some of it got back to me, but I just thought I'd love to meet one of those people.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I've even written a comment one time, and it was the New York Times did an article about Tom Brown, the fashion designer. And people wrote in, oh, I can't believe who would wear that. I can't believe that's so expensive. And I wrote, you don't have to wear the whole outfit. And if you were to hold this jacket, you would understand why it costs so much.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And also, somebody's being paid well to make that jacket.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And that's all. And then there was something the other day people were going off on. I think sometimes I'm pretty lucky to be my age because I think certain people like Lena Dunham, who I've done a show with and spent a little bit of time with and is a lovely person. Yeah, big time. And talented person. But I think it's hard for her because of her age.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Her audience, her peers rather, grew up online and they fucking are brutal.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah. Amy Schumer, it's the same thing. People are just brutal. Amy Schumer has a new movie.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
But it was funny. And then people like, you know, I wanted to write like, really? I thought it was really funny. But then I thought, when do I become a part of the whole cycle?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
We were just talking last night. We had dinner with somebody. You can name drop. Jennifer Jason Leigh. Oh, my goodness. And then she looked out her window and saw flames, so she had to evacuate, and she didn't grab anything. And so we were talking about what would you grab. Exactly. What did you say?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah, yeah. It was written 20 years ago. It was? More than 20 years ago. And Ian Falconer did the pictures, but it was for a project of cartoons for kids that the art director for The New Yorker put together. And then a couple of years ago, she decided to bring it out as a book. Ian died a couple of months before the book came out.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
We're poor kids. I mean, everybody. Look at every children's book. There's a message and it's not doing any good. There's still us. Like, look at these adults.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
What was the message of brain eggs and ham? I didn't know the message.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Well, You know, it's interesting to me, too, the reviews of children's books now in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, which are publications that review new books. And it was so interesting. It said characters' skin color is the same as the page because they all review the books for diversity. What color are the people and how many? That's a consideration. I don't read children's books, you know.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
Yeah, I don't. There was one that I bought 20 copies of and it's a German book. Oh. And it's a mole and someone shed on its head and it goes to different animals and said, did you do this? And then the horse says, no, my shed looks like this. And the goat says, no, my shed looks like this. This is so German. And it's really beautifully drawn in. It was a great size.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And then it got translated into many different languages. What's the name of that book? I want to get that. It's got the word mole. It's like the little mole who wanted to know who did it on his head.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And there's not a lesson in it, except you see what horse shit looks like. Yeah, you get educated on scat. Yeah, which is important.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
And I was like, that sounds pretty smart. The first time I went to Germany, I thought, What?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
When Hugh just had his hip replaced, I went with him to the hospital. I was with him in this little examining room. And one nurse or one doctor after another came into the room and they asked questions. Each one of them had a personality. And one of them said to Hugh, when was the last time you had a bowel movement? And I said, ah, because... We don't do that. We do not do that.
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David Sedaris #5
We do not talk about that. We do never, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I thought everything could fall apart if I listened to his answer. After 35 years. 35 years, yeah. I'm so impressed.
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David Sedaris #5
No, I think it's good for a relationship. A lot of people think this. Never happened in our house. I mean, I know people who have that relationship. Right.
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David Sedaris #5
No, but if you were to go into the bathroom... I would... Respectfully not go for one. Turn on the TV. Not the TV, but something. It would depend. If there was a bathroom and it had a paper door and he went in there, then I would say, I'm just going to listen to this podcast with these big noise-canceling headphones on.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah, or I would leave. When we lived in Normandy, there was one bedroom and then the bathroom and then the kitchen. And when we had company, he would be out somewhere and I would say, I'm going to go for a walk I would be back in exactly 20 minutes, you know, so people would know.
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David Sedaris #5
Does it ruin it? We had a house guest a while ago who said, oh, I'm going to go downstairs now and take a shit. And I said, why do you even say that? Just go downstairs.
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David Sedaris #5
Right. People who acknowledge it and say it's a part of life.
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David Sedaris #5
There's nothing better. I like your story about shitting in your pants. Was it Home Depot?
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David Sedaris #5
And I have a Franz Kline painting that isn't much bigger. So I could put that in the same tote bag. You're sad.
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David Sedaris #5
I was at the airport a few weeks ago and my friend said, oh, look at that man. He looks so good in his seersucker suit. And he was like in his 70s and I fell in behind him later and he had completely shit in his pants.
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David Sedaris #5
No, I felt contempt for him. Oh. I got really early for my flight to the airport. I knew there was a gift shop. I knew they sold clothing. I'm like, why didn't you go and buy a pair of pants at the gift shop? If you thought this is a nice suit, I'm going to put it in a plastic bag. And I thought, you can't not know. Even if you sat in someone else's shed, you'd be like... Right.
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David Sedaris #5
Then I thought, well, maybe he took his underwear off.
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David Sedaris #5
No, you could see it. And I thought, what would I have done? So I would have bought the shorts. If you're that married to the pants, I would have completely washed them in the sink. It takes some work, but it's seersucker. You could get it done. If they had a hand dryer, you could go through all that and hand dry them and put them on again if you needed to.
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David Sedaris #5
But I wouldn't even feel confident to do that. I would have thrown the pants away or wrap the jacket around your waist.
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David Sedaris #5
I would have gone to the second person in line and I would have said, there's a woman back here who shitted her pants. Do you mind if she goes in front of you? And then when you led her up there, people would look at the back of her pants because they'd want to say, hey. Yeah. I was in life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I probably would have judged her for wearing sweatpants outside the house.
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David Sedaris #5
The shit in the back of it would just be secondary.
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David Sedaris #5
It's really her point of view. You could not get her to put something on there that she doesn't think is funny.
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David Sedaris #5
When Amy's on a talk show, it's different when it's someone in your family because you're like, it's not really her because it seems more maniche. And she's not. One of Amy's best qualities is that she's a really curious person. And I think that's expressed in her Instagram.
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David Sedaris #5
Every now and then I'll go to a play and I'll say, oh, would you put this on the Instagram account? Or they'll say, we want you to be more involved. Then I'll do it for like a day, but then I forget. I don't know. It's just not my thing.
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David Sedaris #5
But it really takes a lot of time. Yeah. I've been watching this thing lately on Instagram and it's people getting sentenced for crimes they committed. So somebody will get 900 years in prison and they'll pass out. So it's just interesting to see.
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David Sedaris #5
But anyway, one of them, I watched not long ago, I don't know what he had done, but the judge is off camera and the judge said, you did this to a child, you would do this to other childs. And I thought, childs?
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David Sedaris #5
But I don't care. I know there are people who struggled for years. Their entire life. And I think this must be just great for them.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah, they're not taking anything from me. Yeah. That's my opinion. It's made such a massive change in so many people's lives and made them happy. And then people say, well, we don't know what the long... No, true, we don't.
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David Sedaris #5
I really care about baths. I want to take a bath. I don't want to take a shower. I look forward to my bath all day.
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David Sedaris #5
Oh, nice. Okay, it's a full session. And I look forward to dinner. And so if I were on a Zempik, then I wouldn't, I can't walk away from food. Last night we were at dinner. I noticed some people had some food on their plate. And normally I would have said, actually pass that over this way.
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David Sedaris #5
Really, even people who think, oh, you can't out-eat me. Yeah. No, I like to eat until I hate myself.
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David Sedaris #5
I think that serves that purpose for a lot of people. Yeah, when the shame sets in mid-meal. My brother and I are exactly the same. And I don't know if it's because having six kids, they tend to corral my plate to keep you away from it. And I just would eat because if you finish first, then maybe you can get second. It's not like I need counseling, but watching my brother eat, I think that's me.
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David Sedaris #5
Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, if you told me that you had a Picasso print, I would be like, that's nice.
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David Sedaris #5
I went to the dinner a couple of nights ago with some very generous people. And what I ordered was so good. I didn't offer anyone a taste because I wanted it all for myself. And they would all say, do you want some of this? Do you want some of this? And I would take their food. Yeah. Never offer. Never reciprocated. Didn't offer any of my own.
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David Sedaris #5
I don't like it sometimes when you go to places with people you don't know that well, and it's a small plate thing that you share. Oh, share plate. Because I want all of it.
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David Sedaris #5
You know what I like to do is when dessert time comes, I like to order more dinner.
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David Sedaris #5
There's a place in Melbourne called Tipo Zero Zero, which is a kind of flour they make pasta out of. And it's one of my favorite places. So I was there for two days. And so I went both days that I was there. And the second day I ordered two pastas.
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David Sedaris #5
You had a Picasso painting. Yeah. I would say, oh, God, I'd love to see it. I don't usually go to museums because what they have, I can't buy it.
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David Sedaris #5
I ate in both all. And I would have eaten dinner there both nights too, but I was doing a show. And I eat dinner while I sign books because otherwise I'm not getting out of there. All the restaurants are going to be closed. I hate having my picture taken. I hate how people take your picture like you're a statue. They don't ask you. It's so rude to me. Anyway, so they have signs up, no pictures.
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David Sedaris #5
And this woman came up and said, after standing in this line watching you eat for 10 minutes, I understand why you don't want any pictures taken. Okay. Because I eat like a caveman.
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David Sedaris #5
But I haven't been to that place. I'll go there. The Four Seasons there has a smoked ribeye.
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David Sedaris #5
We were in Tokyo end of January. And so we went to a teppanyaki restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel. And it was the best steak I've ever had in my life. Really? Unbelievable.
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David Sedaris #5
And I was just sitting there thinking, how many entire cows have I eaten in my life? And this is the best. Wow. And then I like to sit next to somebody who I know doesn't finish their food.
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David Sedaris #5
Plus, Hugh is a really, really good cook. And he's a very generous cook. He'll say, what would you like for dinner? And if it takes four hours to make it, and I'm not saying he'll do this every night, but a lot of times he'll spend four hours.
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David Sedaris #5
It's this manicotti my mother used to make. Other people have tried to make it, and he just makes it perfectly. It just takes me right back to my mother. And most people, they don't make a meat manicotti. And I like the store-bought shells. He started making his own shells, and it's like, no, no, no. I like those ribbed store-bought shells.
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David Sedaris #5
The vagina stuff. Yeah. But I went to a museum somewhere a while ago, and I had time on my hands. And I looked at the Picasso paintings that they had, and he was such a forerunner and such a genius. And the surface of those paintings was so alive. No one can touch that guy. You know, Picasso was an asshole. And when you stand before his paintings... He's a genius. I don't know.
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David Sedaris #5
It would really change our relationship if we didn't have that to do together. We always eat dinner at the table. The only time we're allowed to watch TV is at the Academy Awards. But we eat dinner at the table with candles on the table. It's a lovely thing to have with somebody. Where would we be if we didn't have that?
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David Sedaris #5
I just can't imagine putting anything away. You know, like when you meet people who take three puffs of a cigarette and put it out. Four sips of wine. Right. Or just turn back to their scotch and it's all, all the ice is melted.
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David Sedaris #5
Well, last night at dinner, we split a piece of banana cream pie. But I felt good about that because I could have had a whole piece of banana cream pie for myself. But I need to lose 4.8 pounds by the 28th of March. Okay. What is happening on the 28th? I started a new tour.
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David Sedaris #5
I want to be 145 pounds when I start my tour. That's the only way I do it. I'm just strict with myself and I get out of control and then I kind of reign it. But it's like a five pound range.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah, that's what I feel. That's so funny. My dad would get so mad. What did you have to say that for? But he never understood. My father would say, I love my mother. She was a wonderful woman. What was so great about her? Oh, I loved her. She was wonderful. How was she wonderful? She was a wonderful woman. And it's like, he could say to me, my mother... I was an alcoholic.
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David Sedaris #5
Or my mother pressed my face against the skillet one time to teach me a lesson. And she didn't do any of those things. It wouldn't make me dislike her. It would make her more real to me. Because when you're just saying she was a wonderful woman, you're not telling me anything. If you can include somebody's weaknesses... in something that you write. I wrote something recently.
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David Sedaris #5
When we were kids, we'd have dinner together and my father would leave, go downstairs the second he could. And the rest of us would sit around the table with my mother for hours and hours, 1030 on a school night. And we're still with our mother around the table. I think she really liked having a lot of kids and she liked us and we liked her.
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David Sedaris #5
And she would go to the bathroom and we would follow her to the bathroom and she would throw up every single night. And then she would come out and say, And it wasn't until you're older that you're like, oh, the dental problems, mama's bulimic. Maybe now it would be a bit different, but at the time there wasn't a word for it. That didn't make her a bad mother. No. Right.
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David Sedaris #5
If my goal is to make people love my mother, I don't think that that impedes my goal any.
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David Sedaris #5
The longest one was 10 and a half hours. Oh my God. That was on a book tour.
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David Sedaris #5
Probably, but people are only going to wait in line for 10 and a half hours once. They're not going to do it a second time.
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David Sedaris #5
But usually if it's a lecture tour, it's a different thing because people bought a ticket. I got the longest one I did recently. It's like five hours. But usually I get in the theater and I start signing books immediately because I don't need any prep time. And I'm there at the theater because I got to do sound check. So what am I going to do? Sit in the dressing room.
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David Sedaris #5
So I do it beforehand and then I do it after. And usually you do it an hour before and two hours after.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah, she said I take it off when I come home from work. I don't put it on for anyone. Once it's off, it's off. And it explains so much to me because I found this woman's phone in England and I tracked her down, which is really hard to do. And I knocked on the door and her husband came to the door and I said, I found a telephone. He called over Sherry.
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David Sedaris #5
And then she comes to the door with her arms crossed over her chest as if I stole her phone. And then I realized, oh, she took a bra. Yeah. And her arms are crossed.
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David Sedaris #5
I met a Scottish woman who takes it off on the bus.
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David Sedaris #5
You know, like sometimes you're wearing a pair of shoes that's too tight or something. Yeah. And you come home and you take them off and you're like, oh, the last thing you want to do is put them back on.
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David Sedaris #5
But is that like when I was in Hawaii, I saw people with long sleeve shirts on and then they had hats on and they had things protecting their necks and they had sunblock. But part of me thinks when you're 60, you're going to look 60. Whether you live your life in the shadows. In the shadows.
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David Sedaris #5
But by that reason, then a tight brief would keep your ass firmer than boxer shorts.
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David Sedaris #5
Hey, it's really funny to hear a man say the word panties.
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David Sedaris #5
Because a woman said to me, I had used the word panties in an essay. She said, only men say panties. I don't think that's true.
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David Sedaris #5
personally that if your testicles they look like taffy i'm gonna add that yeah like saltwater taffy if you put an ice cube then the coldness so maybe the heat had something to do with it had an enormous amount to do with it but i'm telling you even ice cubes would not have rectified the situation and i put my clothes on so fast and got out of that trailer you can't imagine have you ever seen kangaroos balls in australia they're just really disturbing
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David Sedaris #5
I absolutely love that you say that. When my second book came out, my first book, it was just stuff I'd written. And the second book, they said, what's your book going to be about? And I said, I'll go to a nudist colony because I'd never read anything about it. And I don't even like walking around my house barefoot. I'm the last person to go to a nudist colony. And I kept putting it off.
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David Sedaris #5
And then my editor found a place. And it turned out to be a senior citizen's nudist trailer park in upstate New York. So I went and I lived in a trailer. So I would get to my trailer and I would put my clothes on. And then someone knocked on the door and I'm like, just a minute. I'm racing to take my clothes off.
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David Sedaris #5
Because if you answered the girl with your clothes on, they'd be like, what's going on here? It was opposite land. Yeah. I was invited to somebody's house for dinner naked. And I went naked and you bring a towel and they're naked. You did that for how long? Ten days. Wow.
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David Sedaris #5
And this is senior citizens. They were playing the tonk a lot, which is a game where you take a metal ball and you toss it. And then the game's over and you go and you bend over and collect. So you were seeing people's assholes. They had a snack bar and the waitress would have a tampon string hanging out.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah. People would come out of the bathroom and they'd have a big ring around their bottom so you would know exactly. Sometimes people go in the bathroom and you think, oh, maybe they needed to wash their hands or something.
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David Sedaris #5
You know, I think being gay and being in a locker room or something, you're always kind of living in fear that someone's going to say, what are you staring at?
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David Sedaris #5
But even with writers like Céline was monstrous. That's the French. Yeah. You can't deny his skill. You can't deny his power as a writer. Another thing is he wrote quite a while ago, so it's not like young people are flocking to read his books. Right now, we're doing something that in 50 years from now is going to be unforgivable. But we can't even imagine it.
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David Sedaris #5
But I always thought people are just wasting their time when they're thinking about like trans women in the bathroom. Hey, there's nothing to look at in the bathroom. And a trans woman is like, that's gay people you don't want in the locker room. You know what I mean? But not that they're going to attack you, but they're going to appreciate, you know, they're going to be looking at you in a way.
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David Sedaris #5
But I haven't read about a single person being attacked in the bathroom. No, no, no.
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David Sedaris #5
You know, when people were ragging on Ellen DeGeneres, and I don't know her, I've never met her, but I think she did so much more for gay rights than most activists because people watched her and people grew to love her, and then she said, I'm a lesbian, and they were like... Okay.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah, and I just think trans people need that because I can't think of a single one that I've met who's like, oh, get that tiresome asshole away from me.
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David Sedaris #5
I just can't think of, and that doesn't mean that they're all lovely, but I was in Australia and I went into a drugstore and there was a trans woman working in the drugstore and she had real personality and she's like, oh, do you want to take that packaging off that before you leave? It hurt me to think that anyone might not wish her the best. Totally agree.
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David Sedaris #5
Because when I said earlier that when dawn, you know, prisoners would come get out of prison and stay at our house. When I saw that movie, I thought I should take prisoners in my house because when he got out of prison at the end, I was so glad to see that his friend was there waiting for him. But.
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David Sedaris #5
I thought, oh, I want him to come and live in my house and then find a job and I'll be that step between. And again, it's not like he was really in prison. It's just that movie made me.
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David Sedaris #5
We're not even thinking, well, it's probably... I already know what it is.
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David Sedaris #5
Well, I want to do my whole next book completely live.
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David Sedaris #5
Well, because sometimes if you record it in the studio, then it can be edited in such a way that it fucks your timing up, but if you're doing it live, then you can't.
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David Sedaris #5
I tried reading something about going to Fiji. I wrote it when Hugh and I were in Hawaii, but I was on tour, but I had a five-day break in the tour. So I read something out loud and then I go back to the room and rewrite it and read it out loud. Because you read it out loud and you think, oh, I thought people could relate. People can't relate to this. So how do I make this more relatable?
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David Sedaris #5
And people are just confused by that. So let's get rid of that. Ultimately, you could have an editor telling you that, but I'd rather you be the editor.
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David Sedaris #5
So I have new stuff. A lot of times people are, oh, you're going to be reading from your books. No, I never do that.
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David Sedaris #5
We pull them. You always come up. I meet so many people who listen to your podcast. In Australia, I even met a lot of people who listen.
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David Sedaris #5
I think maybe fossil fuels will be part of it. Maybe eating meat will be part of it. I think that's going to be a big one. But that's the stuff we can suspect. There's things we cannot even. Truly.
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David Sedaris #5
I have a list on my computer called countries I have been to. Now, my boyfriend, Hugh, criticizes me because he says I just want to go to a place in order to cross it off my list. But, yeah, it's that simple. It means a lot to me, and this is what I want to do. We went to Monte Carlo last year.
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David Sedaris #5
So we went to this Michelin-starred restaurant, and our food just arrived, and three men at the next table lit cigars. And then two men at the other table on the other side of us said, oh, we can smoke cigars. Oh! And then the waiter came and said, how's your meal? And I said, well, now that you mention it, it tastes like ashtrays. And he said, well, we can't say anything.
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David Sedaris #5
And they couldn't say anything because people were so rich. The people smoking the cigars at the next table, it's like, well, we've finished our meal. So the important people have eaten. And I said, can I burn a tire at the table? That's what I would like to do. I've got a little money. Yeah.
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David Sedaris #5
I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was just wondering. Yeah. Was there a time when you couldn't order a drink on an airplane because it was a Sunday?
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David Sedaris #5
That's a great question. Or let's say if you were flying over North Carolina, would they say, you got to finish your drinks in like a minute because they're flying over North Carolina?
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David Sedaris #5
One of the things you don't count on when you write is you're dated so quickly. Even if you write something about people not having exact change for the flight attendant. Because there was a kind of man who would get on a plane and buy a drink with a $20 bill. And he knew the flight attendant wouldn't have change.
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David Sedaris #5
Whereas my mother always taught me, if you have a $20 bill, buy a newspaper, buy some gum, buy something in the airport. So you can have correct change when you order a drink.
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David Sedaris #5
Well, they would, but it's a pain in the ass. Then the flight attendant has to go.
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David Sedaris #5
Yeah. If everybody pays with a 20, the flight attendant's like, fuck. And you know, the flight attendant used to go down the aisle and say, does anybody have any change for us? Right.
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David Sedaris #5
It's so funny, though, how you can be on a plane and have a towering hatred for somebody and they have no idea.
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David Sedaris #5
I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago. They made an announcement. They said the flight to Tasmania is full. So we're asking you to gate check your bag. If you don't care to and you want to bring your bag on the plane, you'll soon find yourself in a situation where there's no room for your bag. We will gladly send it on the four o'clock flight. So that's a way to do it. Yeah, big threat.
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David Sedaris #5
I just had a knapsack, and I had something else under my seat, and I had my knapsack in the overhead bin. So he puts his bag in there, and he's pounding on it. It won't go in all the way because of my knapsack. Yeah. And I said, I think it won't go in there because of my knapsack. So he pulls my knapsack out and puts his bag in and says, what do you want me to do with this now? No, we didn't.
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David Sedaris #5
Stop it. I said, just go. And I was in first class. I said, just wherever you are back there— Just go.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Sedaris #5
I saw a flight attendant once. A guy was pounding on a bag to get it in. The flight attendant turned to me and said, I just thank God it's not a living thing. Yeah. But I had a towering hatred of a flight attendant. Ooh.