Likewise. I’ve enjoyed his writing since the 90s, but as he became successful, he very slowly crossfaded from punching up to punching down. He never learned to turn off the disdain for other people once there were people below him. I haven’t been able to listen to him lately. He’s becoming kinda insufferable.
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What’s amazing is the level of disconnect on this.
- Sedaris writes it
- A CBS producer/editorial dept approves, amidst all the other ways to fill time for NEWS
- Filmed (how many people involved?)
- Edited
- Reviewed
- Aired
- Tagged to be FEATURED ON TWITTER
- Post on Twitter written
- Post likely moderated and approved (renew steps 4-6)
- Posted on Internet
Likely 30 people involved. Fire all of them!
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Just joking on “fire all of them” but the “take your purse and go home” was about as far as I got into this piece by Sedaris, and I love him. This is a bad bit, likely started cynically with him and Amy in a drunken night that shouldn’t have ever gone anywhere, let alone be filmed.
The misunderstanding that the YMCA lifeguard does not have their own laundry access (or budget to do it at a laundromat) really saddens me.
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After hearing for most of my life how rude the French in general and Parisians specifically allegedly are I went to Paris. I found people there to be incredibly polite and helpful. One person even insisted on walking with me back to my hotel when I asked for directions.
I’m sure there are some rude people, and some people who just snap because they’re having a bad day or whatever, just as you’d find in any large city and most mid-size and small ones too, but whenever someone tells me, “Oh, Parisians are so rude!” my thought is, and how polite were you?
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Dam, Punching down during a pandemic much? Can I call for a citizens dismissal on him?
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That makes me wonder if they’re trying to turn Sedaris into a latter-day Andy Rooney. Rooney was another highly talented and darkly funny writer who was given a regular spot on “60 Minutes” when he was older. After a couple of years his curmudgeon act soured into privileged punching down (not to mention racist incidents) to the point of self-parody.
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I know! I’ve been to places on the US where being rude and intimidating is the actual USP!
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It can be a problem with comedy that comes from anger or irritation. Those rants that after a time the person runs out of material and just starts punching everything. The person starts selecting for the worst impulses and … you end up with a hot mess.
It’s that negative attention cycles we see with YouTubers and morning shock jocks.
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“[insert deity of choice], what an asshole.”
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We’re a weird country, what can I say… and not in the good kind of weird way (though we have plenty of that, too), mostly, but in the “what are you doing” kind of weird.
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I have a relative who is a professional stage actor and he performed Santaland Diaries for a national theater company for several years - at honestly, he was the perfect Crumpet elf. Very, very funny and talented guy.
I was talking to him after a performance and he relayed an experience he had with “the Sedaris People” over improvisations and dialogue changes he wanted to make to the script in order to more personalize his performance. They were adamantly opposed to any alterations to the script or stage directions whatsoever and threatened legal action for copyright infringement if any deviations were made.
I don’t know if this is normal but after hearing this, it really soured me on the perception of Sedaris as a person.
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I like this idea better. It would make shopping a much more pleasant experience.
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To be fair you probably heard that from French people not from Paris! They hate them!
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I’m glad you brought that up, because the companion piece to that is Sedaris at his unfunniest. Read it, you’ll recognise the sneery entitled awfulness of this latest. So it’s not a surprise. He’s not changed. And he’s still the man who wrote ten scenes in the life of an artist and, er, that thing about the parrot. If he comes to London again I hope I’ll get a chance to see him. Ignore the (literal) shit parts and enjoy the stuff about his family. He’s not a very nice man, but he loves his sisters, and he really wants to love his dad; when his work is informed by that it is transformed. Otherwise it is, like this, just horrible.
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That sort of attitude is extremely common in theater, although it’s usually merely the spoken words which are considered sacred. Stage directions one is more commonly given some leeway on.
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We’re still allowed to enjoy their work, right? If Amy Sedaris is up to bad stuff I don’t want to know about it.
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He may or may not have always been a jerk, but it’s perfectly possible to be a funny jerk. Punching down not up is a big part of the failure to be funny here. I think maybe his decades of wealth and popularity have made it hard to relate to ordinary workers, and I’m reminded of when Krusty was bouncing observational humor ideas off of Jay Leno:
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This is most definitely satire. See the late Andy Rooney’s grouchy curmudgeon stories on the same program (CBS Sunday Morning). Maybe it’s not your thing, but that show has a decades-long history of this dry-as-a-bone/straight-faced style of comedy.
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Well, in fairness, this is common with any well known work. Actors are often eager to personalize things, to the detriment of the shape of something. I can side with the script, here - or the company tasked with protecting its lifespan.
No sleight on your friend, but it’s very difficult to deal with actors for this kind of exact request. If I was your friend, I would have just adlibbed and not ask for permission.
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