David Sedaris - "Santaland Diaries"

[Shoeless]

I heard this again this morning on NPR for the umpteenth time, and it never fails to crack me up.

For those of you who haven't heard it, here's a link (http://www.npr.org/2011/12/23/144136439/david-sedaris-reads-from-his-santaland-diaries).

The bit where he sings "Away In A Manger" in the style of Billie Holiday has me laughing so hard it brings tears to my eyes.

And this bit:

Irate customer: "I'm going to have you fired."

Crumpet the Elf: "I'm going to have you killed."

[Sateryn76]

This has become one of my holiday traditions. Just absolutely fantastic! I love how he frames it with his love of Vicki Buchanan and "One Life to Live"

[Sampiro]

My favorite of his Christmas writings is Six to Eight Black Men (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbJpRLhaSqs).

[Bloodless Turnip]

I don't find this audio funny.

[TreacherousCretin]

The bit where he sings "Away In A Manger" in the style of Billie Holiday has me laughing so hard it brings tears to my eyes.

Don't put away your Kleenex yet. Here's Lady Dave singing "Silent Night."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FXsCo9qTw

[DoctorJ]

"You're an elf, and you'll wear panties like an elf!"

[Kingspades]

I'm not a big fan of Sedaris, but "Santaland" gets a free pass. My girlfriend and I just went to see the local stage show (http://www.horizontheatre.com/showSANTALAND.htm) for the third year in a row - it's quickly become one of our traditions.

[Alan Smithee]

I don't find this audio funny.You should call a doctor. You may be clinically dead.

[carlotta]

So one time, on This American Life probably, I heard a bit of David Sedaris performing live. It wasn't the Santaland Diaries, he was talking about his childhood. I would estimate he was talking about himself at about age 12 and how he had the delusion that he would one day make his living singing advertising jingles in the style of Billie Holiday. This much I had read, it was in one of his books (if I had to guess, I'd guess it was in Naked).

then, in the stage show, he started singing a jingle about North Hills Mall, in the style of Billie Holiday. He was amazing.

And I suddenly realized, Oh my god! He's doing it! He's making his living (in part) singing advertising jingles in the style of Billie Holiday!

And it was then that I knew that there is no dream so strange than it cannot come true.

And I once saw David Sedaris' brother's floor sanding company's van in Raleigh at an intersection.

[Shirley Ujest]

I was sitting in a Borders and picked up Holiday's on Ice to see who the heck Sedaris was.

The first story had me laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face. I had one lady ask me if I was crying and I laughed even harder.


The rest of the book was like driving through Iowa.

[Bob Ducca]

And I once saw David Sedaris' brother's floor sanding company's van in Raleigh at an intersection.

The Rooster!!!

[TreacherousCretin]

And I once saw David Sedaris' brother's floor sanding company's van in Raleigh at an intersection.

The Rooster abides.

.

[carlotta]

The Rooster abides.

.

I think I love you.

[Elendil's Heir]

Oh, man, I love Sedaris! I first heard of him when he did "Santaland Diaries" on NPR 'way back when. I've seen him live on stage three times since, and have read all of his books. Or, more accurately, I should say I've heard them all - hearing his delivery on an audiobook is more than half the fun.

"Snowball just toys with the feelings of elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game."

Heeheehee.

[obfusciatrist]

I love Sedaris audibly but find his books boring when I read them (but then love them when I hear him read the same stuff). I think he has cocaine in his voice.

[Beware of Doug]

Originally Posted by Bloodless Turnip View Post
I don't find this audio funny.

You should call a doctor. You may be clinically dead.There's really no explaining humor, but I'm going to try anyway.

Sometimes, real life - especially market-driven urban life, in a postmodern age where modernist assumptions keep turning up as jarringly and inevitably as smutty ears in a sack of unhusked sweet corn - sometimes, real life is so blatantly absurd to the thinking person that the only response they can honestly give is a kind of deadpan ironic depiction of What Is, ever-so-sparingly laced with darkly humorous fantasies. It is this sensibility at which Sedaris excels, and on which programs like TAL have built a style, an audience, an entire world view.

I'm with you part way. I don't find most of TAL's commentators all that funny, thought-provoking, or relatable. The minimalist, storytelling esthetic has become a reflex, a genre as set and unvarying as Noh plays. Yet Sedaris brings something more. Maybe it's in his voice - a proud flag of a nebbishism as indomitable as Woody Allen's heavy glasses and thinning temples, made still more knowing and grounded by his effeminacy and by a certain delicate concern for his subjects and his reader-listener. The word for this guy, I think, is wry. Not dry, although close to dry, but on the level of, and engaged with, reality - even while observing it and, often, transcending it.