During his time on air, David Letterman was aware that he was comedy establishment, but this knowledge fueled him, becoming fodder to satirize the fanfare and spectacle that now consumes the late night landscape. Jason Zinoman’s recently released biography, Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night, manages to capture this, and Letterman, in his cutting-edge, […]
Continue ReadingWHAT WILL TODDLERS EAT? Food used to be one of your top five things—remember brunch?—but toddlers ruin food. You try to serve them healthy things, lovingly crafted, only to see them reject or smash them. Just a short bit ago, you were trying so damned hard to get them off the bottle, and now eating […]
Continue ReadingWHAT WILL TODDLERS EAT? Food used to be one of your top five things—remember brunch?—but toddlers ruin food. You try to serve them healthy things, lovingly crafted, only to see them reject or smash them. Just a short bit ago, you were trying so damned hard to get them off the bottle, and now eating […]
Continue ReadingTom Shillue can be seen on FOX News, where he hosted the late late-night comedy panel show, Red Eye, and still appears regularly in other hours, offering his homespun comedic values to the day’s news.Shillue has been featured on Comedy Central’s Broad City, and he can be seen and heard from time to time on […]
Continue ReadingThe dry-witted US essayist talks about how he went from working as an elf in Macy’s to becoming ‘the American Alan Bennett’
David Sedaris’s partner of 25 years, Hugh Hamrick, calls the first chunk of the essayist’s diaries, published under the title Theft By Finding, “David Copperfield Sedaris”. And it’s true, Sedaris concedes, the book – which covers the years from 1977, when he scribbled his first entries on the backs of coffee shop placemats while travelling around, to 2002 – has a certain rags-to-riches quality. In the second volume, on the other hand, “I just go from shopping at Paul Smith to shopping at Comme des Garçons, and I’m on airplanes all the time”. The thought prompts a memory of a recent plane trip, first class from Hawaii to Portland, Oregon. “This woman said, you are so lucky to be seated up front, it’s a great spot for people-watching. And I said, hmm, it could be, but we don’t really count you as people.” He bursts out laughing, and so do I, even though I know I oughtn’t. What on earth did she say? “She laughed, she knew I was kidding. Hugh was horrified. Horrified.”
There’s something about that one-liner that characterises Sedaris’s writing: a flash of directness, even brutality, that threatens the social veneer (especially in first class); the reassuring feeling that of course he’s kidding, with the faint background feeling, “but not entirely”; the spreading realisation that he’s getting at something far more complex about human nature, absurdity and awkwardness. “He’s like an American Alan Bennett,” says the quote (from this newspaper) on the back cover of Theft By Finding. Both writers occupy that space in which their subversiveness and caustic records of daily life run up against the foam blanket of “humour”, as if we can maximise the cuddliness and minimise the edge by focusing on the laughs.
Related: Read extracts from Theft By Finding Volume One – by David Sedaris
Related: Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls review – recollections of a resolute outsider
And I said, could you close the door, please? And he shut the door in her face and I never saw her again
Related: David Sedaris at Edinburgh: ‘I’ll never run out of things to laugh about’
In the lanes of Sussex, he is known as the American who picks up the litter, for which he has a passionate hatred
Continue ReadingSenator and former Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken is the latest esteemed author to be featured in Samantha Bee‘s Ladies Who… MORE
Al Franken is the latest author to join Sam Bee’s “Ladies Who Book” club appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Senator and former Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken is the latest esteemed author to be featured in Samantha Bee‘s Ladies Who… MORE
Al Franken is the latest author to join Sam Bee’s “Ladies Who Book” club appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Kevin Hart has a new memoir out, “I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons,” and he sat down with CBS Sunday Morning to talk about his childhood growing up poor in Philadelphia and finding the funny in his family. Hart will appear this coming weekend at BookCon in New York City for a meet and […]
Continue ReadingLast year, Kevin Hart signed on to write a memoir, and the book – titled I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons, hits stores next week. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s description: It begins in North Philadelphia. He was born an accident, unwanted by his parents. His father was a drug addict who was […]
Continue ReadingLast year, Kevin Hart signed on to write a memoir, and the book – titled I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons, hits stores next week. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s description: It begins in North Philadelphia. He was born an accident, unwanted by his parents. His father was a drug addict who was […]
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