David Sedaris - How much background do I need?

My pastor had an extra ticket for his appearance tomorrow night, which will be my first time seeing him. I’ve seen a couple of short blurbs of things he’s written, but I’ve never really read anything of his at length or watched many clips.

Do I need to familiarize myself with his stuff first in order to get it, or would I be spoiling it if I went down the YouTube rabbit hole today?

 

“First Question: How long did it take you and Amy to create the character known as Kim Mulkey?”

 

More seriously, I remember him coming up with “Doesn’t the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?” when writing about his sister’s suicide in the New Yorker and marveling at that.

David Sedaris’s “Now We Are Five”

 

He is okay in small doses. He becomes tiresome, repetitive, and self-absorbed

 

One of the stories in Dress Your Family in Corduroy will always bring me great joy.

I knew that it was just a matter of time before she came into my room and started collecting the candy herself, grabbing indiscriminately, with no regard to my rating system. Had I been thinking straight, I would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth, desperately, like someone in a contest. Most were miniature, which made them easier to accommodate, but still there was only so much room, and it was hard to chew and fit more in at the same time. The headache began immediately, and I chalked it up to tension. ​

My mother told the Tomkeys she needed to check on something, and then she opened the door and stuck her head inside my room. "What the hell are you doing?" she whispered, but my mouth was too full to answer. "I'll just be a moment," she called, and as she closed the door behind her and moved toward my bed, I began breaking the wax lips and candy necklaces pulled from pile no. 2. These were the second-best things I had received, and while it hurt to destroy them, it would have hurt even more to give them away. I had just started to mutilate a miniature box of Red Hots when my mother pried them from my hands, accidentally finishing the job for me. BB-size pellets clattered onto the floor, and as I followed them with my eyes, she snatched up a roll of Necco wafers. ​

"Not those," I pleaded, but rather than words, my mouth expelled chocolate, chewed chocolate, which fell onto the sleeve of her sweater. "Not those. Not those." ​

She shook her arm, and the mound of chocolate dropped like a horrible turd upon my bedspread. "You should look at yourself," she said. "I mean, really look at yourself."
​

 

Big Boy, a short one, is hilarious. Me Talk Pretty One Day, Rooster at the Hitchin’ Post and many others will make your belly hurt from laughing.

I saw him several years ago. Well worth the price of a ticket.