Radio: The World Of Simon Rich

I think this comedy of the absurd twoddle may be even funnier than David Sedaris.

Listen up!

David Sedaris: Small In Japan

There are three Kapital stores in Ebisu, and their interior design is as off-putting as their merchandise. Most clothing hangs from the ceiling, though there are a few beaten-up racks and horizontal surfaces that items are strewn across. At one of the shops, the window display consisted of three carved penises arranged from small to large. The most modest was on a par with a Coleman thermos, while the king-size one was as long and thick as a wrestler’s forearm. Amy’s eyes popped out of her head, and before I could stop her she hoisted the middle one out of the window, crying, “Oh, my goodness, it’s teak! I thought from out on the sidewalk that it was mahogany!” As if she were a wood expert, and saw nothing beyond the grain.

The salesman blinked as Amy turned the dildo upside down. Then she positioned her right hand at the base of the testicles, and pretended she was a waitress: “Would anyone care for some freshly ground pepper?”

There are three other branches of Kapital in Tokyo, and we visited them all, staying in each one until our fingerprints were on everything. “My God,” Gretchen said, trying on a hat that seemed to have been modelled on a used toilet brush, before adding it to her pile. “This place is amazing. I had no idea!” ...

My sisters and I refuse to feel bad about shopping. And why should we? Obviously we have some hole we’re trying to fill, but doesn’t everyone? And isn’t filling it with berets the size of toilet-seat covers, if not more practical, then at least healthier than filling it with frosting or heroin or unsafe sex with strangers?

The Perfect Fit: Shopping in Tokyo, David Sedaris, The New Yorker.

Thought For The Day: David Sedaris

The battle for gay marriage was, in essence, the fight to be as square as straight people, to say things like “My husband tells me that the new Spicy Chipotle Burger they’ve got at Bennigan’s is awesome,” and “Here it is, Valentine’s Day less than a week behind us, and already my wife is flying our Easter flag!”

That said, I was all for the struggle, mainly because it so irritated the fundamentalists. I wanted gay people to get the right to marry, and then I wanted none of us to act on it. I wanted it to be ours to spit on. Instead, much to my disappointment, we seem to be all over it...

David Sedaris, A Modest Proposal, The New Yorker.

David and his partner of 24 years, Hugh Hamrick, are now 'engaged, I suppose'.

David Sedaris: We'll Meet Again

Quick reminder that Series 5 of Meet David Sedaris is on at 6.30pm.

PS If you're tired of waiting for the new book, there's plenty of LOLtastic recent essays on David's website.

Do I Sound Gay?: It's The Movie Everyone's Screeching About!

There’s an old expression in the gay community about a macho-looking man who opens his mouth and “a purse falls out”. This sort of “looks Tarzan, sounds Jane” is particular to the gay male community where a high-pitched, lisping voice has been a huge part of the stereotype of what gay men were like ever since Charles Nelson Riley delivered saucy double entendres on The Match Game (or his UK equivalent Larry Grayson exclaimed “Shut that door!” on The Generation Game). [Think the sub should have deleted the baffling American reference].

Usually this “gay voice” isn’t regarded as a positive, either by homophobes making fun of the lisp (usually accompanied by a wrist limper than day-old pasta) or the gay men who notice effeminate tones coming from the mouth of a potential suitor. David Thorpe, a journalist and film-maker, has become an expert on the vocal registers of gay men. His new movie Do I Sound Gay? is out on Friday and looks at the roots of where this particular intonation might have originated and why gay men feel so badly about it. It also charts Thorpe’s own journey to make his voice sound “less gay” through elocution lessons and voice exercises.

Thorpe’s confrontation with the gay voice came in 2010 when riding the ferry to Fire Island Pines, an almost exclusively gay summer enclave popular with New Yorkers. As the men (and it is mainly men) embark for a weekend of sun, sea and sex, the boat can often sound like a flock of seagulls getting ready for a Robyn concert. “I love being gay and flamboyant sometimes but I can get overwhelmed sometimes when I’m in a tizzy,” Thorpe says. “I think that’s what a group of overexcited gay men should be called: a tizzy.”

That ferry ride planted the seed for the project. “I wanted to look at all the thought processes of how a voice could be a symbol for what is wrong with me,” Thorpe says. “So it was looking back at childhood and Paul Lynde and Liberace and having no other role models, and how that affected me when I came out. It was getting to the bottom of misogyny in gay culture – and in culture in general. It’s like an essay or an argument. Here is why I wouldn’t like my voice and here is what I learned when I tried to get the full story.” ...

Brian Moylan, The Guardian.

There's an avalanche of article's about the film in the American (straight!) media, which I don't quite understand.

Bit worried that the director had tried to teach himself out of his fagcent, but I guess he's not the only one...

PS Not sure when it'll be screening in the UK, despite what the Guardian say. According to the official website it'll be available to see online imminently.

Update: New clip starring David Sedaris and Hugh!!!

David Sedaris: The Men That Got Away

It was a Friday night in mid-July, around nine o'clock, and Hugh and I were at the dinner table, eating this spaghetti he makes with sausage in it. We've been together for 23 years, and for some reason I waited until this moment to ask how many people he'd slept with before we became a couple.

Hugh looked at the ceiling, which is crisscrossed with beams, and, to my great consternation, spider webs. I'm vigilant, really I am, but out in the country there's no keeping up with them.

"So?" I said.

"I'm thinking," he told me.

I used to know how many people I'd slept with. After meeting Hugh, though, I took myself off the market and the figure faded from my memory. If I were to slog through all my old diaries I could certainly retrieve it. Twenty eight?

Thirty? Do I include those early gropings? They felt significant at the time, but does it qualify as sex if you never took your clothes off, or actually touched anything with your bare hands? I wanted to ask Hugh, but he was too busy counting. "Thirty two, thirty three..."  

I put down my fork. "You're not finished yet?"

"Shhh," he said. "You're making me lose track."

It shouldn't have surprised me. When you look like Hugh, all you have to do is leave the house and people will approach you, especially gay men, the dogs. His handsomeness was never my own personal opinion, rather, like the roundness of the Earth, something society generally agrees upon. Without my face to use as bait, I had to work a lot harder than he did. There are times, I'll admit it, when I had to beg. That said, some of Hugh's earlier choices seemed poorly thought out to me, especially once Aids came along.  

"Thirty five... thirty six."

Every man ticked off on his fingers was someone I'd been compared to at one point or another, not overtly – he's anything but cruel – but surely it happened. Someone kissed better than me. Someone had more stamina, a more seductive voice. I'm confident enough to compete against a dozen of his exes, but he was moving on to the population of a small town.

"Thirty eight, thirty nine…"

By what miracle had neither of us contacted Aids? How had we gotten away? I don't just mean later, when people knew to be safe, but back in the days when it didn't have a name and no one understood how it spread. One of the men Hugh had lived with – a professor he had in his first year of college – had died of it in the late 80s, and surely there were others, on both my side and his. Yet for some reason we'd escaped, had prospered, even. Now, here we were, the shadows lengthening, our spaghetti growing cold as he hit the half-hundred mark, then blithely sailed beyond it.

Whore.

David Sedaris, pictured with Hugh Hamrick, from a selection of celeb recollections, The One That Got Away in Guardian Weekend.

PS Meet David Sedaris is currently on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra. Yowsah!

The Guardian has a "best of Blind Date" magazine today. Not got it yet, but I imagine it's pages and pages of this. pic.twitter.com/zD7UcoAPxx
— The Guyliner (@theguyliner) August 23, 2014

Film News: Do I Sound Gay?

BFI Flare: The London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Formerly Known As...

Not sure about that new name.
Still you have to hand it to them, for something which is pretty small and niche and a bit of a pretentious middle class wankfest all-round they always get acres of press.
Here's The Independent's (predictably).

Some respondents said use of the words lesbian and gay “was very old fashioned,” festival programmer Brian Robinson said. “It never occurred to me in my life that lesbian and gay could be considered old fashioned and conservative. I guess it shows how far we’ve come as a culture.”

Fagburn's Top 10 Tips: Age Of Consent, Big Joy, Bollywood LGBT Style, COG, Continental, GBF, Life's A Drag, The Man Whose Mind Exploded, The Punk Singer, Will You Dance With Me?

You're welcome!

GBF.

David Sedaris: Stranger Than Fiction

"I was just told this story that's too good to be true. A woman sleeps with this guy at his place. He leaves early to go to work. She defecates in the toilet but realises it's blocked, so she fishes the turd out and puts it in a plastic bag, planning to put it in a trash can after she leaves. Then she writes him a note about what a lovely time she's had and leaves. Just as the door clicks, she realises she's left the turd on the kitchen counter.
"That's what I live for, that kind of story. People keep asking me, 'When are you going to run out of things to write about?' Why would I? I could leave here and get run over and write about that. I'm not afraid of running out of material – no more than a fiction writer would be."

David Sedaris is interviewed in The Guardian.
He's doing some shows at the Edinborrow Festival - not that there'll be any tickets left now.
BBC Radio 4 are currently repeating the third series of Meet David Sedaris on Thursdays - if you listen closely you may hear the sound of Fagburn laughing.

David Sedaris: Freak Out!

I don’t feel I tailor to the crowd. If I write about Hugh, for instance, I write in the sense of trying to make a life with someone in a way everyone can relate to it. I’m not hiding anything. Sex just isn’t my subject. I remember I was in Paris and Edmund White did a reading at this place called the Village Voice Bookshop. The audience was maybe 10% gay people, and when he read you could see people were like, “He just talked about sucking somebody’s dick; I didn’t sign up for this.” I don’t think it’s fair that they freaked out. When a straight couple kisses in a movie you don’t see us go, “ewww.” So, on the one hand, it only seems fair. But I just don’t write that way. In that story, [“A Guy Walks Into a Bar Car”] I felt like anybody could relate. It’s just a story about an opportunity that you didn’t take, and for the rest of your life when things get bad you think, “If only I would’ve picked that person up.” When you’re brooding over an alcoholic straight guy, that’s when you’ve hit bottom.

David Sedaris in an entertaining interview with Lambda Literary.
Much interesting stuff also about his fagcent, his fans and his father.

Thought For The Day: David Sedaris

Here are my thoughts on gay marriage: I wish that gay people would get the right to marry, and then not a-one of them would do it. I wish they'd say, "Fuck you! We don't need your stupid marriage!" You need to listen to me: Nobody wants to go to your wedding. Nobody does. People will give you double gifts if you elope, I guarantee it! Your wedding is not going to be fun. It's just going to be another wedding, and nobody wants to go.

David Sedaris in an otherwise rather boring interview (not the divine David's fault, the journalists's a jerk) on Out.com.

Thought For The Day: David Sedaris

For the first 18 years we were together, I'd give Hugh chocolates for Valentine's Day, and he'd give me a carton of cigarettes. Both of us got exactly what we wanted, and it couldn't have been easier. Then I quit smoking and decided that in place of cigarettes I needed, say, an 18th-century scientific model of the human throat. It was life-size, about 4in long, and, because it was old, handmade, and designed to be taken apart for study, it cost quite a bit of money. "When did Valentine's Day turn into this?" Hugh asked when I told him that he had to buy it for me.
What could I say? Like everything else, holiday gifts escalate. The presents get better and better until one year you decide you don't need anything else and start making donations to animal shelters. Even if you hate dogs and cats, they're somehow always the ones who benefit. "Eventually we'll celebrate by spaying a few dozen kittens," I said, "but until that day comes, I want that throat."

The Observer Magazine.
From an extract from David's new book, Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, published Monday week.
By serendipity, BBC Radio 4 Extra are tonight repeating the episode of Meet David Sedaris where he reads this essay in a high-pitched voice. 
Oh, and there's also a rather sweet interview in today's Sunday Times.*

Nutters love him. They are forever engaging him in inappropriate conversations about sex or throwing hissy fits on aeroplanes. “I think it’s that I’m not threatening in any way,” he says. “Also, I have this ex who had sex with so many people when we were together because he never took his ‘open’ sign down.” Sedaris reckons he has his own version. “My ‘open’ sign says, ‘Got something f***ed-up to say?’” He laughs. “‘Open 24 hours!’” 

PS Here's a short promo video for the book - how modern!

* The Sunday Times have filed Sedaris under 'Books/Fiction', which may be libellous. Your local library should be able to give you a code to get behind the Murdoch paywall. 

David Sedaris: Rambling

This week Claire Balding takes David Sedaris rambling - and litter-picking - near his Sussex home.
It's BBC Radio 4 GOLD!!!

PS Here it is on iPlayer.

Meet David Sedaris: Back Back Back!!!

New series starts tonight on Radio 4 at 7.15!
Yay!

PS He's the funniest (gay) man in the world, if you don't know. And if you don't, then more fool you.

David Sedaris: Jesus Shaves

On the real meaning of Easter...

The Daily Mirror: Problem Of The Week

Dear Coleen,

I’m a straight man but I’ve been having feelings for a male cleaner at the hotel where I work. I think he feels the same but we’ve never spoken about it.
There’s a connection when we speak and I think I’m falling in love with him. We were left alone together in a room and all I wanted to do was kiss him.
But there is one big problem – he’s married with two children and has a third on the way.
Do I keep this bottled up or follow my heart?

Here's Colleen's fascinating answer.

Thought For The Day: David Sedaris

“They did a play in New York of the Santaland Diaries and they got this guy to play me [Timothy Olyphant] and he’s a good actor but he’s really handsome, and from the second he walked on stage it’s shot, it came across as this handsome, smart-ass guy, because you looked at him and thought as a handsome guy it was clear that he had options, and so you’re thinking why are you doing this?
“But I guess in America, if you don’t want to sleep with that person then you’re not going to empathise with them.”

David Sedaris interviewed in The Times.

• David is doing some shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I imagine they'll have sold out yonks ago.
Here's a ten minute interview with Arthur Smith for Edinburgh from Radio 4 Extra.

David Sedaris: The Living End

I'm really enjoying the latest series of Meet David Sedaris on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Perhaps the funniest moment comes at the end of The End Of The Affair - a deeply personal story about David's love for his boyfriend of over 20 years, Hugh - when the BBC Radio 4 Extra announcer SHOUTS; "What a vivid imagination that man has!"
Where do they find these idiots?

Meet David Sedaris: Countdown Is Progressing...

The new series of Meet David Sedaris starts on BBC Radio 4 Extra at 10am.
Exciting!
The station also appear to be repeating the first series - completely at random.
I bet they still won't get anyone to listen to Radio 4 Extra regularly, though.
Did I ever tell you about the time I met David?
He gave me a banana. *SIGHS*

Fagburn: David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde & Me

Fagburn is off to that London today to see David Sedaris sitting in a chair reading from his books in his annoying whiney faggy voice.
David's talking at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, so beforehand Fagburn is going to do a little pilgrimage to another century's funniest gayer, Oscar Wilde.
I guess the Cadogan Hotel must have a bar - if so I'm going to go in and have a weak hock and seltzer for Oscar while making a very sad face.