Latest news with #DavidSedaris
USA Today
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Books shape our identities: LGBTQ+ titles we hold close to our hearts
Books shape our identities: LGBTQ+ titles we hold close to our hearts Books are more than just escapist entertainment – reading has the power to transform your outlook and expand your worldview. It's especially important, then, to feel represented in the books we read. For some LGBTQ+ readers, seeing ourselves in literature was the first time we felt permission to be ourselves. Hearing stories from queer elders offers a glimpse at the joy to come for youth who may not feel supported in their families and communities. In celebration of Pride Month, these are the books that raised us as LGBTQ+ journalists. 'Old Enough' by Haley Jakobson This college campus novel is brimming with queer joy while carefully handling topics like mental health, sexual assault and outgrown friendships. 'Old Enough' closely holds anyone who is a survivor of sexual assault, which bisexual women face at disproportionately higher rates. I found so much comfort in Sav's journey. Jakobson is a witty and lyrical contemporary writer and an Instagram must-follow for anyone identifying as bi+. – Clare Mulroy, Books reporter 'Secret City' by James Kirchick I'd read plenty of LGBTQ+ fiction but hadn't dipped my (gay) toe into much nonfiction. This book taught me so much about the city I live in – how queer people's presence and lack thereof shaped presidential administrations, employment decisions and everyone's ability to be openly themselves. Today, as LGBTQ+ rights face pushback across the country, my queer predecessors gave me hope that equality will prevail. – David Oliver, Wellness editor 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' by David Sedaris On one of the final days of 8th grade, my class was given a list of books we could read over the summer. My English teacher recommended "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris. I think it was the first time I'd read anything by a gay author, and one of my first experiences with creative nonfiction as a genre. Aside from humorous essays about his family and his experience living in France with his partner, Sedaris silently confirmed to me that being gay didn't have to mean living a life of shame – a message I certainly wasn't getting otherwise. – Sara Pequeño, Opinion columnist 'Hola Papi' by John Paul Brammer Few memoirs have captured my attention the way John Paul Brammer's "Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons" did. I had known I was gay probably before I had the language to express it (but, seriously, who plays with Barbies as rabidly as I did? Even at 5, it was obvious) and yet I found myself grappling with the same age-old questions of identity and community. Brammer's brilliant, witty memoir gave me a framework of self-compassion to reflect on all the messy, similar-but-different experiences we had. I closed the book feeling as if he had spoken directly to me. – Drew Atkins, Opinion digital producer 'Gay Bar' by Jeremy Atherton Lin "Gay Bar: Why We Went Out" is a beautiful blend of memoir and well-researched queer history, looking at how the closure of LGBTQ+ bars has impacted the queer community. I first read this in 2023 and have plans to read it again soon. Throughout the entire book, I felt as if I were there with Jeremy at the fantastic queer spaces he visited, while feeling simultaneously inspired as a writer of the community. There really is nothing like a hole-in-the-wall bar with permanently sticky floors and stained ceiling tiles. – Greta Cross, national trending reporter 'Delilah Green Doesn't Care' by Ashley Herring Blake I love romance books, and this is one of the first sapphic romance books I read. Just like any of my favorites from the genre, it had me giggling and kicking my feet. It was also so affirming to see a bisexual main character whose community didn't question her sexuality. Plus, I love that the romance trope of opposites attract was alive and well in this book! I recommend the "Bright Falls" series to any romance lover. – Kinsey Crowley, Trump Connect reporter for USA TODAY Network
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Sedaris, aka Crumpet the Elf, will bring live show to Minneapolis and Duluth
David Sedaris, aka Crumpet the Elf, will bring live show to Minneapolis and Duluth originally appeared on Bring Me The News. Dress the family in corduroy and denim; David Sedaris is coming to Minneapolis and Duluth. The humorist and author will head to the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Minneapolis on Oct. 20 for An Evening with David Sedaris. The night before, he'll bring the same show to the NorShor Theatre in Duluth. Known for appearances on NPR and best-selling books like Me Talk Pretty One Day and Holidays on Ice, he'll bring his expansive tour through a big chunk of the Upper Midwest, including stops in Des Moines, Milwaukee, Viroqua, Madison, and Green Bay. Tickets to see the author formerly known as Crumpet the Elf will go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, June story was originally reported by Bring Me The News on Jun 5, 2025, where it first appeared.
Irish Examiner
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Suzanne Harrington: I was at THAT Kneecap gig in London — it was not pro-violence
Are Kneecap terrorists now? Because overnight, that's what the UK establishment has told us to think. Or that they are terrorist adjacent. Ha ha ha, what hilarious nonsense, you might think instead. Except it's not funny. Anyone who has listened to the trio will know that they use hyperbole and humour. They like a theatrical flourish, from comedy balaclavas to showing up to events in ex-RUC vehicles. They use mockery: your sniffer dogs are shite. Get your Brits out. Their lyrics are funny and surreal – like imagining Arlene Foster on ecstasy. They are fantastically irreverent, working on the David Sedaris idea that everything is funny eventually. Harnessing all that intergenerational trauma, reclaiming it, channelling it into blistering performance, half of it in Irish. And amid the deafening silence from the rest of the world, they remain relentlessly and vociferously critical of the genocide in Palestine. For their trouble, the UK establishment wants them deplatformed. You might disagree with Kneecap calling out the mass slaughter of Palestinians – although if you are a sentient human being, that's unlikely – yet in a democracy, you'd still defend their right to say it. Wouldn't you? But ever since Coachella ('Fuck Israel. Free Palestine') there's been a backlash. I don't know the details of their supposed calls to kill an MP – nobody does - but I highly doubt it was anything other than a comedic rant taken out of context. We have seen no evidence of anything in this regard. Nothing, apart from all the sudden tsunami of headlines overusing the word 'alleged'. Kneecap are not advocates of violence - unlike the UK and US establishment busy arming Israel, they repeatedly state that they are radically pro-peace. Suzanne Harrington: Anyone who has listened to the trio will know that they use hyperbole and humour. I was at that gig in London last November where they were alleged to have shouted support for terrorist organisations. If I found myself at a gig where the performers were shouting pro-terrorist slogans, or anything pro-violence, I'd be out the door immediately. Horrified. On October 7 2023, Hamas murdered the very demographic that attend gigs – civilian music lovers. Now Kneecap have Mrs Ozzy 'Prince of bat-eating Darkness' Osbourne calling on Trump to have them banned from entering the US, and a Tory MP calling on Michael Eavis to have them taken off the Glastonbury line up. The Tories already hate them, because Kneecap sued them and won. As British police scrape through performance footage, UK politicians are pressuring venues to cancel sold-out Kneecap events. Some are already capitulating, terrified of being seen to support – what? Terrorism? This is upside-down, inside-out, Orwellian - three young Irish musicians being censured and censored for criticising the murder of tens of thousands of children. Their words are being reviled, while mass slaughter is not. Forty musicians from Paul Weller to Fontaines DC, Christy Moore to Jarvis Cocker to The Pogues, have formally shown support, criticised the UK establishment for 'strategically concocting moral outrage' against Kneecap while ignoring the genocide in Gaza. So, who's next to be Kneecapped – Louis Theroux? How long before Settlers, his documentary about West Bank colonisers, is taken down? Before accusations of anti-Semitism are tossed about? This strategy – calling any criticism of the Israeli government 'anti-Semitic' - worked a treat on deplatforming Jeremy Corbyn. Now they're doing it to Kneecap. Who's next?
San Francisco Chronicle
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
David Sedaris on extreme fashion, meeting the pope and a second Trump term
David Sedaris has the ability to make his readers laugh one minute and then recognize a strange, shared truth the next. The essayist and author of 'Happy Go-Lucky' (2022) and the collected diaries 'A Carnival of Snackery' (2021) also has a love of avant garde clothing by brands like the Japanese house Comme des Garcons: It's fashion that's just as cutting edge and at times, absurd and specific as his writing. 'When I stand in front of the mirror, all I see are the clothes, I don't see me,' Sedaris, 68, said over a phone call from New York. 'It's not something that's ever too young for you, it's not sexy clothing.' More Information David Sedaris: 8 p.m. May 9-10. $136.98-$383.82. Uptown Theatre, 1350 3rd St., Napa. 707-259-0123. Both Sedaris and his sister, performer Amy Sedaris ('At Home with Amy Sedaris'), are both clients of the San Francisco boutique Modern Appealing Clothing, which specializes in innovative fashion. The humorist, who divides his time between England and New York, is touring to the Uptown Theatre in Napa on May 9-10, spoke to the Chronicle about fashion, his visit with the late Pope Francis at the Vatican and his thoughts on the second Trump administration. 'Last night I read that 36% of the population didn't vote,' said Sedaris. 'In a way, it was nice because I thought, 'OK, that's who I blame.' Then I googled people who didn't vote so I could just get a picture in my head of who to hate.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: What attracts you to extreme fashion? A: I guess if you looked at the pieces separately, you'd think, 'Oh that's really silly.' Comme des Garcons to me is like (how) the pope should dress. Well, actually papal clothing is really nice. … Last summer when I went to the Comme des Garcons show in Paris, I had this pair of shorts that I bought that look like you're wearing two pairs of shorts and the second pair is falling down. I thought, I'm going to bring them there and give them to somebody, and there was a young man outside of the hall, there's no way he was getting into the show. I went up to him and I said in French, 'Excuse me, are you poor? Can I give you these shorts?' He said, 'Find someone else.' I've worn them once. Q: There's someone in the world who said no to Comme des Garcons shorts from David Sedaris? A: Yes, but I found this kid in Chicago who came to one of my shows wearing a Comme des Garcons shirt. We're the same size, so I send him stuff all the time now. When you take it to a thrift store, the problem now is so many people buy it just to resell it, so the person who doesn't have any money is never getting it. A: No, and I'm so mad. The best dressed person was Conan O'Brien's wife (Liza Powel O'Brien.) I wore this suit that I bought a couple of years ago because I was in London at the time. I should have just gone full, flat-out wild Comme des Garcons. Q: So many Comme des Garcons pieces already feel papal, so I wasn't surprised to hear you bought a priest's cassock in Rome. A: It's really well made and a great piece of clothing. I wore it one night going out to dinner. It was so interesting the reactions it got. Q: Did you wear the Roman collar? A: Yes. Q: Did people greet you as 'Father?' A: No. People who saw me from a distance, they watched me and as we got up close, they averted their eyes. But I was in England, I wasn't in a Catholic country. Q: One of the things I've admired in your work is how through finding the peculiar detail, you find something universal that people recognize. I wonder if that's the answer to some of our cultural divisions? A: I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago doing a show. I had written in a graduation speech, 'Find one thing to be angry at instead of spreading your anger too thin.' A woman asked, 'What are you angry about?' I said, 'I'm really angry about the way that (Volodymyr) Zelensky was treated in the White House.' So many people came up afterwards, I think they just wanted to be in a room full of people who felt that way. You don't want to preach to the converted. That's what fables are so good for — you can take a step back and you can write about something that's current, and then there comes a point at the end where they think, 'Oh, that's me.' There's a way to sneak up on people, but you have to sneak up on them because I feel like if somebody says what I expect them to, my defenses go up. A: I was reading an article in the New York Times, then I looked at responses. They really take care with it. You get the idea that they are auditioning for a job as an op ed editor. Everyone's heard it all, and outrage isn't comforting to me. How many times can you say, 'This person's a dangerous monster?' I do feel it's interesting right now before we plunge headlong into a recession, that people want to laugh. I don't know what's going to happen if the economy keeps going like this and they won't be able to afford to spend money to laugh, but right now anyway, they see that as a pretty good use of their dollars.
Telegraph
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
We've lost civic pride and the power to chide bad behaviour publicly
David Sedaris is back on Radio 4 in the 6.30pm Tuesday slot, and not before time. I love his desiccated self-deprecation and this week's pensées on his audience with the Pope – risqué jokes included – had me laughing aloud. Will the American satirist-cum-trash-vigilante return to his perennial subject of litter picking in his adopted UK address of West Sussex? I sincerely hope so. Sometimes, it takes an outside voice to deliver home truths. 'You can tell where my territory ends and the rest of England begins,' he wrote in The New Yorker. 'It's like going from the rose arbour in Sissinghurst to Fukushima after the tsunami.' Aged 68, he can still spend many hours a day picking up detritus and has even had a litter truck infelicitously named 'Pig Pen Sedaris' in his honour. His enthusiasm is also undiminished, despite falling foul of Leftie critics when he observed that people who shop in Tesco Metro drop more litter than those who frequent Waitrose, then compounded his class crime by adding that he never found discarded opera tickets by the side of the road. His solution would be draconian: set up roadblocks and fine any motorists with clean cars, his theory being that if there's no rubbish in the footwell or stuffed into the glove compartment, they must have thrown it out the window. All very amusing but whenever he raises the subject, I can't help feeling uncomfortable that more of us don't see it as our duty to police our little patch of civilisation. Not just in terms of litter, but intervening in other respects too: when young people put their feet up on train seats, play music too loud, swear with venom in the presence of children. My bugbear is the more mature traveller whose phone loudly rings and who takes about an hour and a half to fish it out of their pocket or bag, and then, instead of just answering the damn thing, stares at the number. Understandable if it's a call they don't want to take – but it's not. Just as I'm filling in the back story – he's avoiding the bailiffs, she's bunking off work – they answer and proceed to have an excessively jolly exchange with their sister. Irritating, but not grounds for a reprimand. Plus, there's karma to be considered; I too may well be slow and dithery before many more decades have passed. It's the flagrant antisocial excesses of youth that are so dispiriting – and if I'm honest, the collective fear gripping adults like me. A decade ago, I would have had no hesitation in scolding kids making a mess or playing up. I would have considered it my civic duty. Now? Not so much. As a dad I know put it: 'It's one thing to get stabbed for being a have-a-go hero and saving someone from a violent mugging. But I'm not prepared to risk a knife in the ribs over a discarded KFC bag.' Researchers have recently suggested that our terribly English phraseology is baffling to the rest of the world and instead of 'I'm sorry, you seem to have dropped something', we should be far more direct, saying: 'Pick up that half-empty food carton. It's revolting.' A brave move. But a foolhardy one too. It's one thing to chide a gaggle of foreign language students. Quite another to confront a mob of well-oiled football fans after an away loss. So are diminishing civic standards (gasp! With apologies, Sir Keir!) a class issue? Not exclusively, but let's just say I've not yet heard Sedaris recounting how he read the riot act to a bunch of lairy dressage riders…
