I Made David Laugh...

and I think it was genuine, not a courtesy laugh.  At a BBC Radio recording last weekend called Meet David Sedaris I sat and listened to David signing books and chatting with the rest of the audience members who stayed behind to get books signed. He was talking about an upcoming flight to Australia and how the reason you have a layover in Hong Kong when you fly to Australia is because there is NOTHING to buy in Australia. He said something like, “Think about it, what do they make there? Ugg boots and Speedos? The thought of those”. And my response was, “And worse yet, think about them worn together”. After sitting for almost an hour and a half while this man made me laugh out loud repeatedly, it felt pretty good to give him a tiny chuckle.

My friend N from the B&B who moved to New Zealand is here for several weeks and he and his girlfriend went with. They thoroughly enjoyed the recording.

To Kill a Mockingbird

The neighboring village has a multi-purpose theatre that shows concerts, plays, and films and the films usually only run for one night. When I was here alone I would go often to see whatever they were showing and what I like about their selection is that it is not usually a Hollywood blockbuster but some quiet world cinema selection. The fact that the movie shows for just one night also makes the experience a little more special than your average cinema experience. I noticed on their website that they were screening To Kill a Mockingbird this week for one night and I told A that I didn’t care if she wanted to go or not she was going with me. I didn’t think I could get her to read the book but because the adaptation is so good, I wanted her to see the film. To Kill A Mockingbird was the first “required reading for school” book that I ever read that I fell in love with. It opened up a whole new world to me and for that reason, I will always love it. I bought a used copy last year here at a charity shop before I went home for Christmas and when I took it to the counter the sarcastic clerk said something to me like “and you always wanted to read it right?” It was blasphemy! Don’t get sarcastic about Atticus Finch!

A was in quite a mood this week, for reasons she wouldn’t share so when the night arrived to go see the film, I gave her the choice of going or not because I didn’t want the experience ruined. She went with me. The movie was being shown as part of a fair-trade film festival and I couldn’t get the connection. Before the film one of the organizers explained that they were showing the film because it was about injustice, but before the film started they wanted to run a short about fair trade cotton production. When the short began I turned to A and said “You studied fair trade at school recently didn’t you?” And her response was, with absolute disgust, “Yeah and it was boring there too”. I started laughing which made her realize just what a pain in the neck she was being which also made her laugh. The mood lightened significantly.

The theatre was packed and in spite of the print of the film being in really poor shape (it even snapped at the crucial Walter Cunningham syrup scene and had to be mended) everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess I was surprised to see so many Brits come out for a movie about injustice in the American South. I got teary eyed during those beautiful opening credits. On the way home A did tell me that she really liked it and was glad she went. Obviously the stories transformative powers worked on her too.

Where The Americans Are...

My work colleague L met me at the Bloomsbury Theatre Wednesday night for an evening with David Sedaris. I was so happy that the two of us could go to the event together since she is just as much a fan as I am. The Bloomsbury Theatre is not a huge venue, but it did sell out for the event. David read “All the Beauty You Will Ever Need” from his latest collection as well as some things he had been working on and some entries from his diary. For an hour straight we laughed our heads off. He then took several questions from the audience, which revealed how many Americans had come to the event. They asked questions like what he most missed and what he most disliked about the American South, what he thought about the presidential election, and whether his family still speaks to him. His answers were all hilarious and some you probably had to be there so I’m not going to write them down here. About the presidential election though, he did comment that he didn’t really think there were undecided voters for this election. He works for NPR some and he said that they were working on an “undecided voter” show. David thought anyone who could not pick a side in this election must just be looking for attention.

He took great care in talking with everyone who wanted a book signed. I got nervous when it was my turn and just babbled I’m sure. We talked about his last visit to St. Louis. David lives in the London and asked L where she lived. She in return asked him and when he said Kensington, she told him that she used to be a librarian at the local library. He said that he visited that library often, and wrote in her book “To L, I wish you were my librarian. David Sedaris.

On the train ride home I of course thought of all the questions I would have liked to have asked.

"Prepare Yourself for a Stampede of Teenage Girls"

A. has been a little depressed since coming back to the UK and missing the constant communication the telephone in the U.S. brings to her friends. So I took a vacation day today so we could go to London for the 8:00am release of the latest book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. If you haven’t heard of these books, they have reached Harry Potter-level popularity, but mostly with teenage girls.

We left the house at 5:30am for our brisk twenty minute walk to the tube station. Is it really August because I could see my breath this morning? We arrived in front of the Oxford Street Borders store at about 7:15am to stand in line with lots of other girls, some in costume. Some people passing on the street asked what we were waiting for.

When the doors opened A. got practically trampled trying to get a copy and stand in line. We then went up to the second floor of the bookstore for Breaking Dawn related events all of the girls were piled on the sofas with their faces buried in their newly acquired copies. I’ve never seen a group read like that before. A. was waiting to start reading hers until we got home. Of course once we got on the train home, she couldn't resist reading a few twenty pages.

Yes, We Are Americans

We skimped on furniture but invested in a good television. I rationalized this by the fact that we will only have one television, two less than we had in Missouri. When the electronics company called and left a message to say that they were delivering the television on Thursday, the guy said at the beginning of the message, “Wow that’s quite an accent”. Funny, I have been focusing so much on everyone else’s accents that I didn’t even think about what I might sound like to others. Of course I had to play my voicemail message to see if I was particularly nasally Midwestern when I recorded it, but actually I think I sound pretty respectable.

The television arrived Thursday. A has been saving her money for about a year for a Nintendo Wii which she got yesterday. Suddenly instead of reading the copy of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities I checked out from the library, I want to sit on the couch and watch music videos with A. Just when I thought my television addiction had faded, it’s back in full force.

Moving Ahead

I was in Utah this week for business, which was good because it has made this last week without the family go by very quickly. We have gone back and forth on this issue but I believe the family is just bringing their luggage and not shipping anything. The new David Sedaris book is out this week so I was able to pick that up to take back with me.

I pick up the keys to our rental house (end of terrace) pictured here on Saturday so I can get some furniture and the utilities taken care of. We will be living in Amersham, the next village over so I can take the bus or the train to work until we get a car. It’s too far to walk and after wrecking my bike when we lived in Germany, I’m a little scared to choose that mode of transportation!

Bank Holiday/Memorial Day

You would think knowing that the family’s arrival is getting so close I’d be able to cope a little bit better but instead I’m falling apart. Here it was Monday, a bank holiday and also Memorial Day in the U.S. feeling hungover from my visit with my friends. Note there was no alcohol involved. I just felt bad all day and the weather was terrible. I checked what the temperature and found out it was 50 degrees and couldn’t believe it. It felt so much colder than that.

Knowing that IKEA runs a shuttle bus from the tube station to their store every half hour I thought I would give that a go and do some preliminary house shopping. I got to the tube station and stood out in the rain with my umbrella with about thirty other people for the shuttle that DOES NOT come every 30 minutes. The rain was basically horizontal due to the wind. After getting on the shuttle to be told to get off with about ten other people because the shuttle was too full, I called it a day and came back to my room, curled back up under the covers in my pajamas, and caught up on some American television via iTunes. I’m also halfway through Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, determined to finish it before the family gets here.

I guess I’ll buy a tea kettle and some beds another day.

A Reading Blog

Blogger has a Blogs of Note section that I like to check out. A few months ago People Reading in San Francisco was on this list. I got to thinking about this blog because a few weeks ago when I was in Utah, some of my work colleagues and I had a lot of conversations revolving around our favorite books, and they both live in San Francisco. One of them gave me a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. I read it on the plane ride home and couldn’t put it down. It is beautifully written and also extremely disturbing at the same time.

I absolutely love the concept of this blog because I often see people on the tube reading a book and wonder why they made that selection. Is it for school, work, pleasure, or some other reason? I saw a young man reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian on the train in the UK and he was laughing out loud. Whenever I see someone reading something and laughing out loud I take note. It is very rare to find a book that can effectively do that. I saw it in a second hand bookstore before I went to Australia and thought I would give it a go. It was an interesting read but I didn’t laugh out loud. I had suspected the laughing out loud was a feeble attempt to flirt with this young man sitting across the aisle from him, and now I am CERTAIN that is why he was doing it.

Now I’m reading Bill Bryson’s Down Under. I’m not ready to let go of Australia yet. After such a beautiful day yesterday, it is rainy and ugly today. After working for a bit, I plan to spend the day reading. Nothing feels better on a rainy day than a good book.

So what are you reading these days?

Into the Wild - Part Two

I thought it was a nice coincidence that the film Into the Wild was being shown on the plane Sunday since that was the book that I read on the trip over when I moved. While the movie was not bad, I thought it stressed some points that were not stressed as heavily in the book, which I think skewed the story a bit. It was quite sympathetic to the subject of the story, and I didn’t quite walk away from the book feeling that way. With that being said, the performances are very good.

David Sedaris

Last week at dinner with the B&B gang we got to talking about book clubs. Everyone living in the house reads a lot and we have a stack of paperbacks that is starting to take over the communal dining area. I told them about the book club that I joined when I first moved to STL to meet people. The woman who was hired by the school district to facilitate the group, didn’t really understand what a facilitator was supposed to do. For the first 20-30 minutes of the meeting we basically got a monologue from her about her life and her kids who were all living the word of God, which was demonstrated by their dedication to one of the most expensive private Catholic schools in St. Louis. The more she talked, the more you realized that she was very close-minded, and in my opinion then not really living in a Christian way, but I digress. You might be wondering, why did I keep going? The rest of the group was wonderful. It was a really mixed bag with an age span from college student to retiree. We actually discussed the book! Maybe it was the evil side of me that when our facilitator asked for “light” recommendations for the month of January, I mentioned David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day, knowing that while our facilitator was bound to hate it, the rest would love it as I do. True to form, she hated it.

When I mentioned this book to the B&B gang, N laughed out loud. He told me he had read that book, not knowing what it was going to be about and found himself laughing out loud. He started quoting the book, especially the first essay, Go Carolina. I told them that I have a copy of that book in my office. So if I’m having a really bad day, I can read a little and it always makes me smile. I brought the book home for H to read and she is enjoying it. Another work colleague is also now reading it. For my David Sedaris loving friends, know that I am spreading the word, and that nothing about his work is lost in translation!

For those of you not familiar with David's work, here's a clip of him reading an essay on Letterman. I remember watching this with H when it originally aired, and even he smiled.