David Sedaris, �Holidays on Ice�
Boy howdy, Sedaris is one popular fellow. We can barely keep his books in the store for more than two days at a time, and I�m continuously asked if we�re secretly stashing books of his that they can�t find. And you can�t help but notice that every one who reads Sedaris is female. Not to play on stereotypes, but to me he seems like the gay guy who has all women friends who hang out with him to bitch about their relationships and talk about shoes.
My Hot Professor saw him speak at a reading and gave me an article he had recently published in Cosmo, or some magazine like that. I read it and it was funny, but he seemed to play the gay card a little too much for my tastes. Like the bad nightclub who can�t do any material more original than �You know, black people are different from white guys,� Sedaris seemed to be switching gay and straight for black and white.
Aside from that, I do have to admit, it was pretty funny. Since I like to know what the women are thinking about (Know thy enemy), I decided to check him out.
�Holidays on Ice� is a small collection of essays loosely tied around the Christmas season, and the first piece, �SantaLand Diaries,� is hysterical. I don�t remember laughing out loud so many times in so few pages in a long time. Unfortunately, this is the apex of his comedy in this book. The other essays are fictional, and they don�t hit home as often as they should.
I think there�s a reason for this. �SantaLand Diaries� is (supposedly) based on a true-life experience, where Sedaris worked as an elf in a shopping mall for Santa�s Village. You can see the horrible families that come to visit. You can visualize the drunken rednecks who think it�s funny to wait in line, sit on Santa�s lap, and ask for a broad with a nice rack. If you�ve ever worked retail, you rejoice reading something like this:
- I�ve had two people say that to me today, �I�m going to have you fired.� Go ahead, be my guest. I�m wearing a green velvet costume. It doesn�t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? �I�m going to have you fired! and I wanted to lean over and say, �I�m going to have you killed.�
But the other pieces, his fiction pieces, simply don�t hold up mostly because they go too far into fiction. Real life is far funnier than fiction. It�s also much more absurd. Consider the guy who came into the store last week who wanted to buy about $40 worth of crappy film history books. He asked me if I could make change for a hundred, and then passed me a bill.
�Uh,� I said, looking at the bill, �I can change a hundred, but only if it�s real.� My co-worker, overhearing the conversation, jumped up, asking how I could tell. She hadn�t seen a counterfeit bill before. I waved the thin, poorly photocopied, black and white piece of paper at her. She sat back down, unimpressed.
Meanwhile, the guy stood there in total disbelief. �It�s not real? How can you tell?�
�Well,� I said, �U.S. currency is printed on a thicker stock. And the color is green, not black and gray. And you see this stuff on the back where it should say, �In God We Trust�? This looks like it�s written in Vietnamese.�
He still couldn�t believe it. �So it�s not real?� He said again.
�No, it�s not real.�
He pulled up a satchel bag. �So none of this is real?� He said, reaching into his bag. He pulled out handfuls of these bills. Stacks upon stacks, clutching fistfuls of bills and waving them frantically in my face.
You know the scene in the gangster movies where they make a payoff? He had that much. In fact, he had counted it all. He told me so. �There�s over $30,000 dollars in here,� he yelped, getting breathy and frantic. �And you�re telling me it�s all fake?�
I spotted a lone bill among the slips of paper. A sad, lonely, crumpled one dollar bill amongst mounds of poorly cut thin paper with Vietnamese writing on it. I snatched out the dollar. �Well, this one is real,� I told him, hoping to calm him down.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked where he got this stash. He said he found it in an alley. I told him if he found it, it wasn�t really his in the first place.
�Nah, whoever put it there didn�t want it,� he said.
�You thought somebody didn�t want $30,000 dollars?�
�Nah, it was just sitting in this bag. Man, I thought I was gonna live off this for a while! What am I supposed to do with it now?�
Now, it does strike me as odd that upon finding $30,000, your first act would be to go a used bookstore to purchase some crappy film books. It also occurred to me that he was hoping I wouldn�t notice the fake, and give him sixty bucks in change. But if that�s true, this guy deserved an Oscar, as he looked heartbroken. He ended up buying a three dollar book, still mumbling about how he didn�t know what he was going to do with all those fake bills.
See, I couldn�t make something up that was that absurd, and if I did, nobody would believe it would actually happen. But weird shit happens to me all the time.
Hell, I came home tonight, only to find out that Rich, my roommate and singer for PTL and The Flames, has been invited to sing the National Anthem at Marine World this Friday for a promotion for the local rock radio station. He doesn�t have musical accompaniment, so he�s invited my friend Droid to play the bagpipes with him on stage.
The trouble is, Droid can�t really play the bagpipes very well, and he doesn�t know the music to The Star Spangled Banner. Instead, he�s going to play �Fools Rush In� and Rich is going to sing along, substituting The National Anthem for Elvis.
And of course, they�ve been practicing this since I got home.
This is why I don�t read science fiction. My life is weird enough.
