July 19, 2022 • 36 mins
Few artists have the unique voice and talent of David Sedaris, master of satire and social critique – and one of America’s preeminent humor writers. He is the author of numerous bestsellers, including Calypso, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever, having sold 12 million copies of his books, translated into 25 languages. He’s also a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. David Sedaris and Alec discuss Sedaris finding his way to his craft, writing about his father’s passing in his most recent book, Happy-Go-Lucky, and the best advice he’s learned from his thirty-year relationship with his partner.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. There's really only one way
to introduce my guest today, and that's with this. Grew
up in North Carolina and it's hard to get to
attached to a beach house, knowing as you do that
it's unborrowed time. If the hurricane doesn't come this autumn,
(00:26):
it'll likely come the next. The one that claimed our
place the C section in September was Florence. He was devastated.
While my only thought was, what's with the old fashioned
names Irma, Agnes, Bertha Floyd. They sound like finalists in
(00:51):
a pinknuckle tournament. Isn't it time for hurricanes? Madison and Skyler? Yeah?
Where's lit trees? Or Category four? For Dante? Florence, it
(01:11):
was said, gave new meaning to the word namas day
along the North Carolina coast? Are you going to evacuate
n must Day? That is the unmistakable voice and writing
of the one and only David Sedaris. Some humorists today
(01:33):
simply assault the senses with expletives for a laugh, but
David Sedaris is far too clever for that. He seduces
the listener with a quiet, measured tone, sneakily delivering a
wrye observation, or a serbic singer that belies an unmatched wit.
His humor contains the best parts of two storytelling legends,
(01:57):
the incisive social commentary of Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward.
There is simply no one out there like him today.
Sedaris is the author of numerous bestsellers, including Me, Talk
Pretty One Day, and Holidays on Ice. His latest book,
Happy Go Lucky, details his experience in lockdown during the pandemic,
(02:20):
alongside chapters of coming to terms with his father's death.
It's a hilarious and at times heartbreaking collection of essays
that dive deep into Sadari's dysfunctional upbringing and it's continuing repercussions.
I was curious to learn more about his childhood and
the surroundings where he first grew up Western New York
(02:43):
State and moved one of the second grade how How
were were old? You are? At the age of second
grade eight, moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. I spent nine
out of ten summers in Figure eight Island off the
coast of Rightsville Beach because my ex wife had made
a film there, and I spent many summers in North
(03:06):
Carolina and really good to love it. I mean we
would go down there sometimes and have thanks getting down
there and swim in the ocean in late November. Did
you love North Carolina growing up there? No? No, I
didn't want to be there at all. I wanted to
be back in New York State. Why it just it
(03:27):
just hickish to me. I don't know. It's just so
convinced my life would have been so much better if
we had never left. But the town we lived in
western New York State, you know, I mean I didn't
realize that at the time, but all the industry left.
I mean Raleigh, where we moved. Every time you go
to Raleigh, there are another million people living there, and
it just like spilled milk, you know, it gets bigger
(03:49):
and bigger and bigger. Binghamton, where we were living before,
has actually gotten smaller. Population has decreased, you know, Like
sometimes you meet people from West Texas and they're like, oh,
it's so beautiful, and then you think, well, no one's not.
But I think that where you grow up defines beauty
in your mind. So to me, that part of western
(04:10):
New York State. We're driving down the road and then
you know those rock walls and that are kind of
weeping always, and there are creeks on on rock beds.
That's beauty to me. Your childhood, your father had a
good job. He worked for I was at IBM, and
you lived well, sure country club, but you guys with
(04:31):
the girls would go up to remember you describing in
the book, the girls would go up to the buffet,
and you know, and there was life was comfortable well
in the in the South, your life revolved around the
country club. So when we moved to Raleigh, the Carolina
Country Club was the country club, and they didn't allow Yankees,
and they didn't allow Jews, and then they really didn't
(04:52):
know and they also didn't allow Yankees. But the Carolina
Country Club allowed Yankees, and then later Jews were welcome.
And I wrote a story about that for the New Yorker,
and they contacted the fact checkers contact the Caroline Country Club,
and you know, they didn't want to come out and
say that, and they were like, everyone was welcome at
the Carolina Country clup. Really in everyone was welcome at
(05:16):
the Carolina Country clubs. So I had to change it. Too,
if I recall correctly. So when Billie Holiday showed up
at the Caroline talking, they poured her and they poured
her a cold one. Um. I don't want to say
that this is what I read in your piece, but
you can tell me. And I don't want to say
(05:38):
that we have this in common, although the way we might,
and that is I was always made to feel different
in my family because I was the oldest son. My
family mirrors you in terms of you have an older
sister and then there's you. You're the second and you're
the first boy. And in my family, my grandparents, my
father's parents who lived in Brooklyn, who were like a
forty five minute car ride away, we saw them constantly.
(06:00):
We want to see them, like at least a couple
of times a month and go hang out with them.
And I was treated differently from everybody else. I was older,
I was more adult identified. You know, the other kids
are falling asleep on the couch. It's Sunday. We've watched
that Sullivan, We've watched candid Camera. And my grandfather would
point to my to me and look at my father
(06:21):
and go let him stay. And my father was like
Jesus Christ, and he'd carried the other kids down to
the car with my mother put them they were passed out,
and drive and have to come back and get me.
I mean, and uh, I look at my grandfather, go Grandpa,
like seven years old, like, why do you and I?
Why were such pals? Why don't we get along so well? Grandpa?
(06:42):
And he said, because we have a common enemy. And
I was like, what you know? And I was just
treated differently. Yeah, I mean, it was always hard for
me to understand, you know, other people in my family.
My brother, for instance, he was a great guy, but
he ever had any desire to leave Raleigh. Terribly terribly funny,
(07:04):
my brother. And when Amy was the Second City, we
tried to lure Paul to Chicago to get him to
go to Second City. He would have could have could
have done anything, but he wasn't interested. Whatever you think.
I don't know. From from early age, I just wanted
to go. I just wanted to go, and I wanted
to go everywhere I could and get as far away
(07:25):
as possible from the house that I grew up in.
What was the father who was the common enemy though?
That my dad? Yeah, he met my son and your
father we are something we both have concerned. I always
love that with a grandparent, like co opts the child
and tries to tin against my father. But but when
(07:45):
you leave and you don't finished school and then you
go to Chicago to get into the comedy world, you
want to perform. Now. I went to school for a year,
like I mean, like I don't know sees in high school.
And then I went to college. Uh, And I went
to Western Carolina University right in the mountains of North Carolina.
(08:07):
And then I thought, wow, I gotta get out of here.
And so I worked really hard and I made good
grades and then I could transfer out of state, and
so I chose Kent State. But I thought it was
a good school. It was famous because it was a
good school, but it was just famous because people have
been killed there. So that I went to Kent State.
And then I was like super anti drug in high
(08:29):
school and then I just, uh was drug crazy when
I was at Kent State. And then you know how
that is you miss an Italian class and then you
miss five Italian classes and then you're afraid to run
into the teacher. And I was waking bake and then
I just dropped out and then I dropped back in
to school when I was twenty seven, and I went
(08:50):
to the Art Institute. And it was mainly because I
wanted to come to New York. But Chicago seemed like
a good stepping stone, you know, like it is for
many people. Yeah, and it still is, so it was
it was a perfect place to go, really. So I
went to art school and then I took some writing
classes while I was there. I'd been writing already, and
I really cared about writing more than art. But it
(09:11):
was a smart move on my part because they had
really good teachers at the Art Institute, writing teachers, but nobody.
It wasn't a major, and I was the only student
who cared, so the teachers gave me all their attention.
It was like having my own private uh teachers. But
I got a really good education at the Art Institute.
So when you left Kent State and you go back
(09:33):
to finish, what do you do? How many years are
intervening and what do you do during those years? I
did a lot of drugs. I moved back to my
hometown and your house. You got your own place, Yeah,
I got my own place at least, and I just,
you know, on my death bed, if they said, Okay,
what years did you waste? You know, what years would
you like to have back? Those would be the years
(09:55):
from when I was twenty two when I was twenty six.
I mean I I wrote every day, so I was working.
You know, I was never a lazy person that way.
Like well, you know, when I was doing artwork, I
did it every day, and I started writing. And when
I was twenty and then I did it every day.
You know, maybe I didn't have a job job, but
(10:17):
I was doing that stuff every day and reading about it,
and I was on fire, you know. You know, like
when you meet somebody and they say, well, I want
to be a writer or I want to be an artist,
And I say, well, is it all you care about?
Because if it's not, it's gonna be pretty hard for
you. You You know, if you're not on fire. You know,
(10:38):
you meet people like that and you can see him.
It's like it's like opening the door of an oven,
you know, and it's like wow. You know, you take
a step back. And that doesn't mean they're good, but
they're just intense and they're just it's all they think about,
it's all they talk about, it's all they care about.
They don't have relationships. They're not good friends for other people.
(11:00):
This is just but they're yeah for you writing, and
you are and I'm not just saying this. You are
this remarkably talented and gifted writer and very successful writer.
So when you sit down to write, what's the routine?
Is there a usual routine? I just get up and
go to my desk. I don't like to talk beforehand.
(11:21):
I don't want to, you know, talking to the phone
be the worst. But I mean my boyfriend Hugh, you know,
I might say hello, you know, we might say a
few words, but I just rather just save it from
my desk. And then I just go to my desk
every day, you know, not you know, like three and
a half hours in the morning, and then I go
back for another hour, hour and a half at night,
(11:43):
because you're only good for so long. And I do
it every day, like you know, when I'm on tour,
I just get up earlier than normal. Or now after
I quit smoking, then I could do it on airplanes,
and I could do it in the backseats of cars.
So let's just do it, you know. I finally the time,
you know, you always find the time if it's important
to you David Sedaris. If you enjoy conversations with insightful,
(12:12):
observational humorists, check out my episode with Lena Dunham. I
don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought
me an entire trousseau of dresses and so I'm his forever.
Like that's just not the way that I want to
I realize anything. The characters can make mistakes, but they
have to be emotionally responsible for the things that they've done.
I don't ever want to, like have a makeover scenario
(12:34):
where someone's doing better after they've put on a great
dress and you know, straight ironed their hair, Like it's
a really instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling uage.
I want women. This is so kind of hippidip, but
I want them to make their own choices. To hear
more of my conversation with Lena Dunham, go to Here's
the Thing dot Org. After the break, David Sedaris tells
(12:58):
us about how his fraud relationship with his father changed
at the end of his life. I'm Alec Baldwin and
you're listening to hear is the Thing In David Sedaris's
(13:21):
latest book, Happy go Lucky. The author revisits moments of
his life with his ailing father. It's an unflinching look
at some of the darker chapters of their history. I
was curious what the reaction has been to him revealing
these family secrets My father was. I had a book
(13:43):
signing last night, and somebody said, um, you know that
they'd come to see a show that I did a
couple of years ago, and that there was a woman
who worked at the theater whose job it was to
maintain the book signing line, and she kept saying to
everybody who comes by, no one should talk about their
father that way. That's a shame what he was saying
up there about his father. No one should talk about
their father that way. Then, don't be a dick, you
(14:06):
know what I mean? Like, I don't believe that rule
that I was gonna ask you, is that is the
rule that so long as it's true? Yeah, I mean,
I'm feeling like, if you don't, if you want people
to talk about you in a different way, be a
good person, right. I would never I wouldn't write such
things about my mother. I would have no. She was
(14:26):
a lovely person. She was you know, I mean yeah,
she was a one. I was thirty four when my
mother died. But my mother was always my mother, you know,
she and I were crazy about each other. So when
she died, then it was like I was kind of
alone in the family, like I didn't have a parent,
you know, because my father just he just could never
(14:50):
stand me. I mean it was always, you know, from
when I was a kid. And I'm not saying that
in a boo whoey way, because I had my mother,
so it wasn't like I didn't have anybody. But you know,
somebody dislikes you that strongly, and you think, well, i'll
do this and that'll make him like me, and I'll
try this, and and then after a while you realize,
like the thing you can do. But at the very
(15:13):
end of his life, just the very end the past
few months, you know, he started going to the front
desk it is this just a living center and asking
for his mother, right or you'd call and he would say, oh,
the guys from my BM are all here, and we
we I've just been talking to them. And he developed
like the mania, not so that he didn't know who
(15:35):
we were, but he forgot that he was uh, really
difficult person, and he was lovely the last time I
saw him. He was just because before that, like if
my father and I were on the phone, like all
of his conversations were just superficial. How the hell are
(15:57):
you so? How how's your health? How are you? I
mean a lot of the way my dad was. It
was just the way that guys were his age, you know,
I mean, it was pretty normal to slap your kids around.
That was pretty normal. It's pretty normal to just come
home from work and expect them all to shut up
(16:18):
and tiptoe around you. All that stuff I understand. You know,
Um didn't didn't really have any friends, you know, any
male friends, didn't. When my mother died, I worried my
dad would be lonely. And then he had these neighbors,
the Wolfheimer's, and they stepped in and they started inviting
my dad to their house for dinner, and so he
had somebody to hang out with. And then he tripped
(16:40):
on some wet leaves and the driver I go into
their house for dinner, and he sued him and he said,
it's not them, he spanned, it's the insurance company. It's like,
it's not like he broke his leg or anything. Either
you know now, when Happy Go Lucky, did you feel
like you needed that permission from people surviving members of
(17:02):
your family? Did you like run it buy them to
see how they felt, or you don't think about that? No,
I know, I mean I generally do. I mean. There
was an essay that I sent to my sister Lisa
Um and it was called pussy Toes and it was
about my my dad's funeral and I sent it to
her and I had said in there that the coffin
she chose was ugly, right, and and that really hurt
(17:24):
her feelings. And then she responded, you know, I think
you maybe need to stop writing about dad until you
figure some stuff out. And then luckily I had Amy there,
and Amy's like, it was ugly, you know, the coffin
was just you know, but I said good things about
my sister Lisa and it, but like, there's plenty of
(17:45):
good things, so I just the only bad thing I
said was that the coffin. Yeah, that's the only bad thing.
But it doesn't work. You know, if you're just hard
on everybody but you're not hard on yourself, you know,
then that does. Everybody can can smell that a mile
away now, Um, I'm assuming that the main activity for
(18:06):
you as book sales. You're selling books, Well, I'm I
think I'm getting more from going on tour. I have
a lecture agent, so I go on tour. So I usually,
like this past year, I went to like hundred and
twenty cities, you know, in theaters, so I'm reading in theaters.
So but I'm saying that the books that you're promoting
at the time are the center of the appearance. Uh. Well,
(18:29):
usually when I when I go on tour, like I
have new material and I read it out loud, and
then I go back to the room and read yet, No,
it hadn't been published, and I just find it out, yeah,
testing it out and polishing it up, and then then
I usually give it to my editor at the New
York or at the end of a tour. So I
try to learn as much as on my own as
I can before I turn it over to somebody else.
(18:51):
Are there cities that you go to You said you
went to a hundred and twenty gigs last year. Yeah,
I went to seventy four cities in the all and
then I went to Uh, I just finished forty four
more cities, and then I went to some in between.
There two in Canada and on the West coast. But
(19:12):
we'll defined city when you say seventy four cities, are
you right? You know, I was just in Skagway, Alaska. Okay.
I think seven hundred people live in Skagway. A quarter
of the population came to see me, though. I mean,
can you imagine if quarter of the population New York
came to see you, that'd be a pretty big theater,
you know. But I used to listen, remember, you know,
(19:34):
you'd see people on talk shows Johnny Carson or whatever,
and they would say, and I'm gonna be in Oklahoma
City or I'm gonna be in um uh, Salina, Kansas,
And you think, what a loser. But I didn't realize
at the time. If you can sell tickets in Salina,
if you can sell tickets in Oklahoma City, you're doing
pretty good. Of course, you can sell them in Chicago
(19:56):
and San Francisco and Los Angeles, but if you can
play the small all her towns. So I'm getting ready
to go on a UK tour, and I'm going to
a lot of dinky places in the UK because I
have a radio show there, so then people will come.
So you're gonna go to a lot of dinky towns
and in England. Yeah, who who maps this out for you?
(20:16):
Who do sets the whole thing? Yeah? I have a
lecture agent and he just tells me where to go,
and I go, and I don't put up any Skagway, Alaska. Yeah,
And but I'm so glad that I went to Skagway.
Like a lot of those little towns. I went to Alaska,
like there's no place to buy a tie, and everyone
is dressed to kill something and then to bathe in
(20:38):
its blood, right, like everybody is a slum, right, But
there was only some. I met a woman and she
had had she had cancer, and so she was flying.
He had been flying from Skagway to Houston once a
week right for treatment. And she said, well, we have
good you know, we're lucky. We have good health insurance
my husband and and I said, how did you afford
(21:00):
the tickets? And she said the community, She said, when
you live in a place like this, you know, if
your house burns down, everybody builds you a new one.
If you're sick, everybody chips in. Everybody, she said, even
if they don't like you. And I thought, well that's
why people live there, because you know, if my neighbor
downstairs for me in New York, if her apartment caught
(21:21):
on fire, I'd let her stand my guest room, you know,
for a night. But it's a little bit different. We're
not or if she needed something from the grocery store,
I'm happy to go, but we're not from the nearest hospital.
We're not gonna die if our heat goes out on Tuesday.
So it's it's really kind of a beautiful thing, and
it's something I didn't understand, and it's something that people
(21:44):
are willing to It's a fair exchange to them. Like
I'm willing to exchange access to a hospital. I'm willing
to exchange the ability to buy a a bow tie
whenever I want to, for community, for for feeling like
I'm part of a fan way when I walk out
my door every morning and I thought, gosh, how didn't
I how how did I not understand that before? Author
(22:10):
David Sedaris. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend
and be sure to follow here's the thing on the
I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, David Sedaris tells us why we
should never get under the hood of our relationships. I'm
(22:39):
Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the thing.
David Saderis had to pause his normal itinerary of book
tours and speaking engagements due to the pandemic. I wondered
what it was like to resume his schedule in a
changed world. At that point, you still had to most places.
(23:00):
You know, you wore masks, and you wore masks on
the airplane. You wore masks on the airport. But masks
became a campaign button in the United States. And so
one good thing about about dropping mask mandates, because I
don't think it's always good to have a campaign button on.
I don't think it's always good to know where somebody
stands from a distance of twelve feet away. I feel
(23:21):
like that separated us even more. And I would get
on a plane every day there'd be some kind of
a thing on a plane. Somebody would say to the
flight attendant, Oh, let me get this straight, right. So
if I lowered my drink to drink my mask to
drink a coke, you can't get my COVID right, you know.
And of course it doesn't make any sense, you know,
(23:42):
but that's not the flight attendant's fault. So there was
just there was just animosity everywhere, you know, you just
every day. It was in a hotel, it was in
a you know, nobody liked saying to somebody, excuse me,
could you pull your mask up? Nobody liked being told
your mask wasn't up high in off. So but on
(24:02):
this last tour that I went on, things seemed a
lot calmer. But I didn't notice everyone says perfect. Now
do you have you noticed that I'd like to check
out of my hotel. I'm perfect, It's the answer to everything. Perfect.
And have you noticed are more and more people calling
you boss lately? I'd like to check out of my
hotel room? Okay, boss? More coffee? Boss? And I said
(24:25):
to someone a while ago, I said, you know what,
I don't want to be a pain? I said, please,
please don't call me that. What am I supposed to
call you? I said, sir? Would work. I said, that's
what I call you. But I noticed an uptick in that,
and I'm not sure where that comes from. I noticed,
you know, for me, my experience during the COVID which
has made me so yeah, I got a lot of kids.
(24:46):
I got six counts sixty four years old, and my
wife's having another baby. So it's insane. It's insane. I
think that's nice for the kids, So I think, I mean,
I feel no. I can't always feel bad for someone
who's an own child. But if you're one of six,
I think that's the greatest thing. S No. I grew
(25:06):
up with six, and the only thing I find is
that when you're when they're six so tight together, they're
going through these changes so quickly. So someone my son,
they get all this from a TV and we have
every filter on there. You can imagine. Now, my son Romeo,
he's just the most exquisitely beautiful child you've ever seen
(25:27):
in your life. Is gorgeous. I think all my kids
are beautiful. My son Romeo is very sweet and very tender,
and he's very seductive, and everyone's constantly running their fingers
through his hair and massaging him. And he's he's four.
And uh, I said to him, now, I don't want
you to bring these toys to the dinner table because
(25:48):
you don't eat. I said, you're playing with the toys
and you're not eating. I want you to eat, and
then we'll play with the toys. And he looks at
me and he squints, and it was literally like he
literally was mimicking unintentionally Eastwood to me looked at me
and he goes, you're a bit. And my mouth goes
down to the floor of the playroom or we're in
(26:08):
the playroom of our house along and I go and
I'm gonna try not to laugh, and I go, what
did you say? And with this like really tough inflection,
he goes, I call you a bit, Like what are
you going to do about it? And I thought to myself,
and all of them go into a place and right
is one. There's one leaving that phase, one fully in
(26:30):
that phase, the others coming into that phase. So I
got three kids who, in various times of the day,
you're going, fuck you, you know, and I'm I sit
there with my wife and I go, what am I
gonna do? What am I gonna do? Now? A lot
of what you do? I mean Santa Diaries, Santa Lan Diaries,
which everybody knows that piece, and it becomes that's like
(26:50):
the annual classic on the public radio crowd and everybody
loves sant Alan Diaries, and but a lot of it
is due as your performance. You know, a lot of
it is you're you know, you're like this black comedy.
You might as well be Olivier. And I mean, you
just got it down, the readings and the inflections. No
acting for you. You never wanted to act on camera ever.
I was in drama club in high school, and when
(27:14):
I remember in class when we would have to read
out loud before drama club, I would think, oh, call
on me, call on me, and I couldn't believe it
when the teacher would call on somebody and they would
do a shitty job reading out loud from whatever, even
if it was even if it was cold, you know
what I mean. Like, I thought, I can do it,
you know, give it to me. But then on stage,
(27:36):
I never know what to do with my hands, right,
So I'm not. I'm I freeze up physically. And Peter
Fairley Um said to me a couple of years ago,
he said, I'm doing this TV show. I want to
write a part for you. And I said, oh, that's
so sweet of you. I said, but I'm not. I'm
not an actor. And he said, well, I'm gonna make
you one. I said, no, I really am not. I said,
(27:58):
I don't know what to do with my hands on stage.
He said, I'll write apart. You're you'll be somebody who
was born without arms. You're a limbless You're a limbless attorney.
But then I thought, you know, if you were an
actor with no arms, you'd be like, what do you do?
You mean? I didn't get the part, but I like
my little station. You know, I'm just there at my lectern,
and they often say when I get there for the
(28:20):
sound check, you move around. I say, no, I'm just
gonna be here all night, just right here behind mine.
You're a lazy bastard. I don't know if it's lazy.
I just it's not. I don't know, no, I you know,
I always feel like it's important to try to grow
and try new things, But whenever they're presented to me,
I think that's not really my thing. You got a
(28:42):
few houses around the world, New York, North Carolina, the
English countryside, Paris. I mean I always wonder was somebody
like you the home in England and and Paris. There's
places I'd love to go to to live. I really
take my whole family with me. We'll work it out,
we'll figure it out. I don't know. If the schools
are right, we will tell I want to I'd love
(29:03):
to live in London for a couple of years. And
because New York is just such a mess. I mean,
I tell people I go to other countries and you
come back in. New York is the filthiest city in
the world. But no one is motivating people in the
city to be civic minded. No one's saying to them,
we live here, let's do things for the people. And
(29:23):
the people who live here this is their home. They
come last. The people who reside in New York come less.
And that always irks me because other cities I go to,
I'm like they have. I was in Rome shooting a film,
and like places gleaming, it's clean and there's bathrooms too.
This is the hardest city to pan. That's why if
I get when I get old, I want to live
(29:43):
in Tokyo. You've never seen every subway station has a
sparkling clean bathroom, and every there's a seven eleven on
every block or a large room scenario, and every one
of them has a sparkling bathroom, and they invite you
to use. You don't even to buy anything. So when
you're bladder runs out, you know, wears out. That's where
you need to go to Japan. I said to my wife.
(30:06):
I said to it, let's take the kids and go
live in a hotel, a luxury hotel, and we'll go
and live in eight different cities during their childhood, and
we'll move every year. Rome Vienna. I'm dying to go
and we do that. Well, everybody acts like having your
kid changed schools. It's going to traumatize that child forever.
(30:27):
Get used to it. You know, my boyfriend, Hugh, his
dad with the Foreign Service, so he lived all over
Africa when he was growing up, and they moved all
the time. They survived. You met him where in New
York when I very first moved to New York. In
I was doing a painting job with this woman painting
an apartment and we needed a ladder and she knew
a guy who had a ladder. So we went to
(30:49):
his loft and I met him, and I thought, oh,
that's going to be my boyfriend, and maybe might not
happen today, might have happen tomorrow, but I crossed it
off my list, and yeah, and it worked out. You know,
thirty one years, someone's got to stay together, right, that's
(31:11):
a secret. Never to discuss your relationship with each other.
With each other. Yeah, no, you can talk about it
with other people, but you never look under the hood
of your relationship ever. I can't wait to come and
tell my wife. Yeah, never, because my wife is pretty
(31:32):
much lives under the hood. There. She got the lamp
hooked up. Yeah, she got that lamp on a hoop.
That the mechanics have got it all man. Yeah, she
doesn't stop. And then I think one person in the
relationship has to make themselves indispensable. And so Hugh has
(31:52):
done that with cooking and then with I don't open
any envelope, it doesn't look like fan mail. And so
Hugh opens all the mail and takes care of all
that stuff. And you know, there's always something going on
like the you know, or hurricane destroys the beach house
in North Carolina, or you know, there's there's a leak
at the house in Sussex. He takes care of all that.
(32:15):
He's indispensable. No one, I'd have to hire five people
to replace you. Margaret Thatcher's husband. He's taking care of
all the things off stage, and you know, he's got
his own stuff going on as well. I remember my
dad saying one time out of nowhere. We're in the
car and he said, you know, I've never cheated on
(32:36):
your mother. And it came out of nowhere. We weren't
talking about anything, we weren't even talking. He just said it.
And then I thought, well, that makes it sounds like
you have. Right, So when I say I've never cheated
on Hugh, that makes it sound like I have. But
I mean, I think that's part of it too. It's
important to both of us, and so we've always been
(32:56):
able to trust the other person that way, And so
do not stay lucky there. You're lucky. Yeah. The thing
about you that I learned from reading and knowing you
on the air and listening to you and reading your
essays and so forth, is that you're one of those
rare people. And I think you really are one of
those rare people where for the most part, I mean
(33:18):
there might be some amendments, you ended up exactly where
you wanted to be, exactly, You're doing what you want
to do. You live with the person you want to
live with. Your life is this wonderful life, and you're
and it all is like I really would have to
struggle to figure how it could be any better than
it is now. But it's it's exactly the life I
imagine from myself when I was young, And I don't
(33:41):
know what I did to make it happen other than work.
I mean, I was never a hustler that way. I
never tried to get people to, you know, read what
I'd written or allow me to read somewhere. I just
waited for people to ask me and so, and I
would say yes, and then somebody else would ask and
I would say yes and so. But you know, people
(34:02):
like for someone to be their idea, you know, they
don't They don't like to be manipulated. They don't like
to have their arm twisted, you know. But if it's
your idea, people people like helping people, you know, But
let them help you. Don't put it in their ear,
don't make the suggestion. Just be the kind of person
(34:23):
that people want to help and people will help you. Um.
I just want to say thank you so much, thank you.
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio once again, David Sedaris. At that moment,
two E M T s bounded in both young and
(34:44):
bearded like lumberjacks. Each took an elbow and helped my
father to stand. Are we going somewhere? He asked, Back
to the hospital. The woman shouted, all right, My father
said okay. They wheeled them out, and the woman ex
blamed that while the staff would remove bloodstains from the carpet,
it was a family's job to get them off any
(35:06):
privately owned furniture. I can bring you some towels, she suggested.
A few minutes later, another aide walked into the room.
Excuse me, she said, but are you the famous son.
I'm a pretty sorry excuse for famous, I told her,
But yes, I'm his son, So you're Dave Dave Chappelle.
(35:41):
Can I have your autograph? Actually? Can I have to? Uh? Sure?
I said, I just joined Hugh and cleaning the easy chair.
When the woman, who seemed slightly nervous the way you
might be around a world famous comedian who was young
and black and has his whole life ahead of him,
(36:05):
return for two more autographs. H
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. There's really only one way
to introduce my guest today, and that's with this. Grew
up in North Carolina and it's hard to get to
attached to a beach house, knowing as you do that
it's unborrowed time. If the hurricane doesn't come this autumn,
(00:26):
it'll likely come the next. The one that claimed our
place the C section in September was Florence. He was devastated.
While my only thought was, what's with the old fashioned
names Irma, Agnes, Bertha Floyd. They sound like finalists in
(00:51):
a pinknuckle tournament. Isn't it time for hurricanes? Madison and Skyler? Yeah?
Where's lit trees? Or Category four? For Dante? Florence, it
(01:11):
was said, gave new meaning to the word namas day
along the North Carolina coast? Are you going to evacuate
n must Day? That is the unmistakable voice and writing
of the one and only David Sedaris. Some humorists today
(01:33):
simply assault the senses with expletives for a laugh, but
David Sedaris is far too clever for that. He seduces
the listener with a quiet, measured tone, sneakily delivering a
wrye observation, or a serbic singer that belies an unmatched wit.
His humor contains the best parts of two storytelling legends,
(01:57):
the incisive social commentary of Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward.
There is simply no one out there like him today.
Sedaris is the author of numerous bestsellers, including Me, Talk
Pretty One Day, and Holidays on Ice. His latest book,
Happy Go Lucky, details his experience in lockdown during the pandemic,
(02:20):
alongside chapters of coming to terms with his father's death.
It's a hilarious and at times heartbreaking collection of essays
that dive deep into Sadari's dysfunctional upbringing and it's continuing repercussions.
I was curious to learn more about his childhood and
the surroundings where he first grew up Western New York
(02:43):
State and moved one of the second grade how How
were were old? You are? At the age of second
grade eight, moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. I spent nine
out of ten summers in Figure eight Island off the
coast of Rightsville Beach because my ex wife had made
a film there, and I spent many summers in North
(03:06):
Carolina and really good to love it. I mean we
would go down there sometimes and have thanks getting down
there and swim in the ocean in late November. Did
you love North Carolina growing up there? No? No, I
didn't want to be there at all. I wanted to
be back in New York State. Why it just it
(03:27):
just hickish to me. I don't know. It's just so
convinced my life would have been so much better if
we had never left. But the town we lived in
western New York State, you know, I mean I didn't
realize that at the time, but all the industry left.
I mean Raleigh, where we moved. Every time you go
to Raleigh, there are another million people living there, and
it just like spilled milk, you know, it gets bigger
(03:49):
and bigger and bigger. Binghamton, where we were living before,
has actually gotten smaller. Population has decreased, you know, Like
sometimes you meet people from West Texas and they're like, oh,
it's so beautiful, and then you think, well, no one's not.
But I think that where you grow up defines beauty
in your mind. So to me, that part of western
(04:10):
New York State. We're driving down the road and then
you know those rock walls and that are kind of
weeping always, and there are creeks on on rock beds.
That's beauty to me. Your childhood, your father had a
good job. He worked for I was at IBM, and
you lived well, sure country club, but you guys with
(04:31):
the girls would go up to remember you describing in
the book, the girls would go up to the buffet,
and you know, and there was life was comfortable well
in the in the South, your life revolved around the
country club. So when we moved to Raleigh, the Carolina
Country Club was the country club, and they didn't allow Yankees,
and they didn't allow Jews, and then they really didn't
(04:52):
know and they also didn't allow Yankees. But the Carolina
Country Club allowed Yankees, and then later Jews were welcome.
And I wrote a story about that for the New Yorker,
and they contacted the fact checkers contact the Caroline Country Club,
and you know, they didn't want to come out and
say that, and they were like, everyone was welcome at
the Carolina Country clup. Really in everyone was welcome at
(05:16):
the Carolina Country clubs. So I had to change it. Too,
if I recall correctly. So when Billie Holiday showed up
at the Caroline talking, they poured her and they poured
her a cold one. Um. I don't want to say
that this is what I read in your piece, but
you can tell me. And I don't want to say
(05:38):
that we have this in common, although the way we might,
and that is I was always made to feel different
in my family because I was the oldest son. My
family mirrors you in terms of you have an older
sister and then there's you. You're the second and you're
the first boy. And in my family, my grandparents, my
father's parents who lived in Brooklyn, who were like a
forty five minute car ride away, we saw them constantly.
(06:00):
We want to see them, like at least a couple
of times a month and go hang out with them.
And I was treated differently from everybody else. I was older,
I was more adult identified. You know, the other kids
are falling asleep on the couch. It's Sunday. We've watched
that Sullivan, We've watched candid Camera. And my grandfather would
point to my to me and look at my father
(06:21):
and go let him stay. And my father was like
Jesus Christ, and he'd carried the other kids down to
the car with my mother put them they were passed out,
and drive and have to come back and get me.
I mean, and uh, I look at my grandfather, go Grandpa,
like seven years old, like, why do you and I?
Why were such pals? Why don't we get along so well? Grandpa?
(06:42):
And he said, because we have a common enemy. And
I was like, what you know? And I was just
treated differently. Yeah, I mean, it was always hard for
me to understand, you know, other people in my family.
My brother, for instance, he was a great guy, but
he ever had any desire to leave Raleigh. Terribly terribly funny,
(07:04):
my brother. And when Amy was the Second City, we
tried to lure Paul to Chicago to get him to
go to Second City. He would have could have could
have done anything, but he wasn't interested. Whatever you think.
I don't know. From from early age, I just wanted
to go. I just wanted to go, and I wanted
to go everywhere I could and get as far away
(07:25):
as possible from the house that I grew up in.
What was the father who was the common enemy though?
That my dad? Yeah, he met my son and your
father we are something we both have concerned. I always
love that with a grandparent, like co opts the child
and tries to tin against my father. But but when
(07:45):
you leave and you don't finished school and then you
go to Chicago to get into the comedy world, you
want to perform. Now. I went to school for a year,
like I mean, like I don't know sees in high school.
And then I went to college. Uh, And I went
to Western Carolina University right in the mountains of North Carolina.
(08:07):
And then I thought, wow, I gotta get out of here.
And so I worked really hard and I made good
grades and then I could transfer out of state, and
so I chose Kent State. But I thought it was
a good school. It was famous because it was a
good school, but it was just famous because people have
been killed there. So that I went to Kent State.
And then I was like super anti drug in high
(08:29):
school and then I just, uh was drug crazy when
I was at Kent State. And then you know how
that is you miss an Italian class and then you
miss five Italian classes and then you're afraid to run
into the teacher. And I was waking bake and then
I just dropped out and then I dropped back in
to school when I was twenty seven, and I went
(08:50):
to the Art Institute. And it was mainly because I
wanted to come to New York. But Chicago seemed like
a good stepping stone, you know, like it is for
many people. Yeah, and it still is, so it was
it was a perfect place to go, really. So I
went to art school and then I took some writing
classes while I was there. I'd been writing already, and
I really cared about writing more than art. But it
(09:11):
was a smart move on my part because they had
really good teachers at the Art Institute, writing teachers, but nobody.
It wasn't a major, and I was the only student
who cared, so the teachers gave me all their attention.
It was like having my own private uh teachers. But
I got a really good education at the Art Institute.
So when you left Kent State and you go back
(09:33):
to finish, what do you do? How many years are
intervening and what do you do during those years? I
did a lot of drugs. I moved back to my
hometown and your house. You got your own place, Yeah,
I got my own place at least, and I just,
you know, on my death bed, if they said, Okay,
what years did you waste? You know, what years would
you like to have back? Those would be the years
(09:55):
from when I was twenty two when I was twenty six.
I mean I I wrote every day, so I was working.
You know, I was never a lazy person that way.
Like well, you know, when I was doing artwork, I
did it every day, and I started writing. And when
I was twenty and then I did it every day.
You know, maybe I didn't have a job job, but
(10:17):
I was doing that stuff every day and reading about it,
and I was on fire, you know. You know, like
when you meet somebody and they say, well, I want
to be a writer or I want to be an artist,
And I say, well, is it all you care about?
Because if it's not, it's gonna be pretty hard for
you. You You know, if you're not on fire. You know,
(10:38):
you meet people like that and you can see him.
It's like it's like opening the door of an oven,
you know, and it's like wow. You know, you take
a step back. And that doesn't mean they're good, but
they're just intense and they're just it's all they think about,
it's all they talk about, it's all they care about.
They don't have relationships. They're not good friends for other people.
(11:00):
This is just but they're yeah for you writing, and
you are and I'm not just saying this. You are
this remarkably talented and gifted writer and very successful writer.
So when you sit down to write, what's the routine?
Is there a usual routine? I just get up and
go to my desk. I don't like to talk beforehand.
(11:21):
I don't want to, you know, talking to the phone
be the worst. But I mean my boyfriend Hugh, you know,
I might say hello, you know, we might say a
few words, but I just rather just save it from
my desk. And then I just go to my desk
every day, you know, not you know, like three and
a half hours in the morning, and then I go
back for another hour, hour and a half at night,
(11:43):
because you're only good for so long. And I do
it every day, like you know, when I'm on tour,
I just get up earlier than normal. Or now after
I quit smoking, then I could do it on airplanes,
and I could do it in the backseats of cars.
So let's just do it, you know. I finally the time,
you know, you always find the time if it's important
to you David Sedaris. If you enjoy conversations with insightful,
(12:12):
observational humorists, check out my episode with Lena Dunham. I
don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought
me an entire trousseau of dresses and so I'm his forever.
Like that's just not the way that I want to
I realize anything. The characters can make mistakes, but they
have to be emotionally responsible for the things that they've done.
I don't ever want to, like have a makeover scenario
(12:34):
where someone's doing better after they've put on a great
dress and you know, straight ironed their hair, Like it's
a really instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling uage.
I want women. This is so kind of hippidip, but
I want them to make their own choices. To hear
more of my conversation with Lena Dunham, go to Here's
the Thing dot Org. After the break, David Sedaris tells
(12:58):
us about how his fraud relationship with his father changed
at the end of his life. I'm Alec Baldwin and
you're listening to hear is the Thing In David Sedaris's
(13:21):
latest book, Happy go Lucky. The author revisits moments of
his life with his ailing father. It's an unflinching look
at some of the darker chapters of their history. I
was curious what the reaction has been to him revealing
these family secrets My father was. I had a book
(13:43):
signing last night, and somebody said, um, you know that
they'd come to see a show that I did a
couple of years ago, and that there was a woman
who worked at the theater whose job it was to
maintain the book signing line, and she kept saying to
everybody who comes by, no one should talk about their
father that way. That's a shame what he was saying
up there about his father. No one should talk about
their father that way. Then, don't be a dick, you
(14:06):
know what I mean? Like, I don't believe that rule
that I was gonna ask you, is that is the
rule that so long as it's true? Yeah, I mean,
I'm feeling like, if you don't, if you want people
to talk about you in a different way, be a
good person, right. I would never I wouldn't write such
things about my mother. I would have no. She was
(14:26):
a lovely person. She was you know, I mean yeah,
she was a one. I was thirty four when my
mother died. But my mother was always my mother, you know,
she and I were crazy about each other. So when
she died, then it was like I was kind of
alone in the family, like I didn't have a parent,
you know, because my father just he just could never
(14:50):
stand me. I mean it was always, you know, from
when I was a kid. And I'm not saying that
in a boo whoey way, because I had my mother,
so it wasn't like I didn't have anybody. But you know,
somebody dislikes you that strongly, and you think, well, i'll
do this and that'll make him like me, and I'll
try this, and and then after a while you realize,
like the thing you can do. But at the very
(15:13):
end of his life, just the very end the past
few months, you know, he started going to the front
desk it is this just a living center and asking
for his mother, right or you'd call and he would say, oh,
the guys from my BM are all here, and we
we I've just been talking to them. And he developed
like the mania, not so that he didn't know who
(15:35):
we were, but he forgot that he was uh, really
difficult person, and he was lovely the last time I
saw him. He was just because before that, like if
my father and I were on the phone, like all
of his conversations were just superficial. How the hell are
(15:57):
you so? How how's your health? How are you? I
mean a lot of the way my dad was. It
was just the way that guys were his age, you know,
I mean, it was pretty normal to slap your kids around.
That was pretty normal. It's pretty normal to just come
home from work and expect them all to shut up
(16:18):
and tiptoe around you. All that stuff I understand. You know,
Um didn't didn't really have any friends, you know, any
male friends, didn't. When my mother died, I worried my
dad would be lonely. And then he had these neighbors,
the Wolfheimer's, and they stepped in and they started inviting
my dad to their house for dinner, and so he
had somebody to hang out with. And then he tripped
(16:40):
on some wet leaves and the driver I go into
their house for dinner, and he sued him and he said,
it's not them, he spanned, it's the insurance company. It's like,
it's not like he broke his leg or anything. Either
you know now, when Happy Go Lucky, did you feel
like you needed that permission from people surviving members of
(17:02):
your family? Did you like run it buy them to
see how they felt, or you don't think about that? No,
I know, I mean I generally do. I mean. There
was an essay that I sent to my sister Lisa
Um and it was called pussy Toes and it was
about my my dad's funeral and I sent it to
her and I had said in there that the coffin
she chose was ugly, right, and and that really hurt
(17:24):
her feelings. And then she responded, you know, I think
you maybe need to stop writing about dad until you
figure some stuff out. And then luckily I had Amy there,
and Amy's like, it was ugly, you know, the coffin
was just you know, but I said good things about
my sister Lisa and it, but like, there's plenty of
(17:45):
good things, so I just the only bad thing I
said was that the coffin. Yeah, that's the only bad thing.
But it doesn't work. You know, if you're just hard
on everybody but you're not hard on yourself, you know,
then that does. Everybody can can smell that a mile
away now, Um, I'm assuming that the main activity for
(18:06):
you as book sales. You're selling books, Well, I'm I
think I'm getting more from going on tour. I have
a lecture agent, so I go on tour. So I usually,
like this past year, I went to like hundred and
twenty cities, you know, in theaters, so I'm reading in theaters.
So but I'm saying that the books that you're promoting
at the time are the center of the appearance. Uh. Well,
(18:29):
usually when I when I go on tour, like I
have new material and I read it out loud, and
then I go back to the room and read yet, No,
it hadn't been published, and I just find it out, yeah,
testing it out and polishing it up, and then then
I usually give it to my editor at the New
York or at the end of a tour. So I
try to learn as much as on my own as
I can before I turn it over to somebody else.
(18:51):
Are there cities that you go to You said you
went to a hundred and twenty gigs last year. Yeah,
I went to seventy four cities in the all and
then I went to Uh, I just finished forty four
more cities, and then I went to some in between.
There two in Canada and on the West coast. But
(19:12):
we'll defined city when you say seventy four cities, are
you right? You know, I was just in Skagway, Alaska. Okay.
I think seven hundred people live in Skagway. A quarter
of the population came to see me, though. I mean,
can you imagine if quarter of the population New York
came to see you, that'd be a pretty big theater,
you know. But I used to listen, remember, you know,
(19:34):
you'd see people on talk shows Johnny Carson or whatever,
and they would say, and I'm gonna be in Oklahoma
City or I'm gonna be in um uh, Salina, Kansas,
And you think, what a loser. But I didn't realize
at the time. If you can sell tickets in Salina,
if you can sell tickets in Oklahoma City, you're doing
pretty good. Of course, you can sell them in Chicago
(19:56):
and San Francisco and Los Angeles, but if you can
play the small all her towns. So I'm getting ready
to go on a UK tour, and I'm going to
a lot of dinky places in the UK because I
have a radio show there, so then people will come.
So you're gonna go to a lot of dinky towns
and in England. Yeah, who who maps this out for you?
(20:16):
Who do sets the whole thing? Yeah? I have a
lecture agent and he just tells me where to go,
and I go, and I don't put up any Skagway, Alaska. Yeah,
And but I'm so glad that I went to Skagway.
Like a lot of those little towns. I went to Alaska,
like there's no place to buy a tie, and everyone
is dressed to kill something and then to bathe in
(20:38):
its blood, right, like everybody is a slum, right, But
there was only some. I met a woman and she
had had she had cancer, and so she was flying.
He had been flying from Skagway to Houston once a
week right for treatment. And she said, well, we have
good you know, we're lucky. We have good health insurance
my husband and and I said, how did you afford
(21:00):
the tickets? And she said the community, She said, when
you live in a place like this, you know, if
your house burns down, everybody builds you a new one.
If you're sick, everybody chips in. Everybody, she said, even
if they don't like you. And I thought, well that's
why people live there, because you know, if my neighbor
downstairs for me in New York, if her apartment caught
(21:21):
on fire, I'd let her stand my guest room, you know,
for a night. But it's a little bit different. We're
not or if she needed something from the grocery store,
I'm happy to go, but we're not from the nearest hospital.
We're not gonna die if our heat goes out on Tuesday.
So it's it's really kind of a beautiful thing, and
it's something I didn't understand, and it's something that people
(21:44):
are willing to It's a fair exchange to them. Like
I'm willing to exchange access to a hospital. I'm willing
to exchange the ability to buy a a bow tie
whenever I want to, for community, for for feeling like
I'm part of a fan way when I walk out
my door every morning and I thought, gosh, how didn't
I how how did I not understand that before? Author
(22:10):
David Sedaris. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend
and be sure to follow here's the thing on the
I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, David Sedaris tells us why we
should never get under the hood of our relationships. I'm
(22:39):
Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the thing.
David Saderis had to pause his normal itinerary of book
tours and speaking engagements due to the pandemic. I wondered
what it was like to resume his schedule in a
changed world. At that point, you still had to most places.
(23:00):
You know, you wore masks, and you wore masks on
the airplane. You wore masks on the airport. But masks
became a campaign button in the United States. And so
one good thing about about dropping mask mandates, because I
don't think it's always good to have a campaign button on.
I don't think it's always good to know where somebody
stands from a distance of twelve feet away. I feel
(23:21):
like that separated us even more. And I would get
on a plane every day there'd be some kind of
a thing on a plane. Somebody would say to the
flight attendant, Oh, let me get this straight, right. So
if I lowered my drink to drink my mask to
drink a coke, you can't get my COVID right, you know.
And of course it doesn't make any sense, you know,
(23:42):
but that's not the flight attendant's fault. So there was
just there was just animosity everywhere, you know, you just
every day. It was in a hotel, it was in
a you know, nobody liked saying to somebody, excuse me,
could you pull your mask up? Nobody liked being told
your mask wasn't up high in off. So but on
(24:02):
this last tour that I went on, things seemed a
lot calmer. But I didn't notice everyone says perfect. Now
do you have you noticed that I'd like to check
out of my hotel. I'm perfect, It's the answer to everything. Perfect.
And have you noticed are more and more people calling
you boss lately? I'd like to check out of my
hotel room? Okay, boss? More coffee? Boss? And I said
(24:25):
to someone a while ago, I said, you know what,
I don't want to be a pain? I said, please,
please don't call me that. What am I supposed to
call you? I said, sir? Would work. I said, that's
what I call you. But I noticed an uptick in that,
and I'm not sure where that comes from. I noticed,
you know, for me, my experience during the COVID which
has made me so yeah, I got a lot of kids.
(24:46):
I got six counts sixty four years old, and my
wife's having another baby. So it's insane. It's insane. I
think that's nice for the kids, So I think, I mean,
I feel no. I can't always feel bad for someone
who's an own child. But if you're one of six,
I think that's the greatest thing. S No. I grew
(25:06):
up with six, and the only thing I find is
that when you're when they're six so tight together, they're
going through these changes so quickly. So someone my son,
they get all this from a TV and we have
every filter on there. You can imagine. Now, my son Romeo,
he's just the most exquisitely beautiful child you've ever seen
(25:27):
in your life. Is gorgeous. I think all my kids
are beautiful. My son Romeo is very sweet and very tender,
and he's very seductive, and everyone's constantly running their fingers
through his hair and massaging him. And he's he's four.
And uh, I said to him, now, I don't want
you to bring these toys to the dinner table because
(25:48):
you don't eat. I said, you're playing with the toys
and you're not eating. I want you to eat, and
then we'll play with the toys. And he looks at
me and he squints, and it was literally like he
literally was mimicking unintentionally Eastwood to me looked at me
and he goes, you're a bit. And my mouth goes
down to the floor of the playroom or we're in
(26:08):
the playroom of our house along and I go and
I'm gonna try not to laugh, and I go, what
did you say? And with this like really tough inflection,
he goes, I call you a bit, Like what are
you going to do about it? And I thought to myself,
and all of them go into a place and right
is one. There's one leaving that phase, one fully in
(26:30):
that phase, the others coming into that phase. So I
got three kids who, in various times of the day,
you're going, fuck you, you know, and I'm I sit
there with my wife and I go, what am I
gonna do? What am I gonna do? Now? A lot
of what you do? I mean Santa Diaries, Santa Lan Diaries,
which everybody knows that piece, and it becomes that's like
(26:50):
the annual classic on the public radio crowd and everybody
loves sant Alan Diaries, and but a lot of it
is due as your performance. You know, a lot of
it is you're you know, you're like this black comedy.
You might as well be Olivier. And I mean, you
just got it down, the readings and the inflections. No
acting for you. You never wanted to act on camera ever.
I was in drama club in high school, and when
(27:14):
I remember in class when we would have to read
out loud before drama club, I would think, oh, call
on me, call on me, and I couldn't believe it
when the teacher would call on somebody and they would
do a shitty job reading out loud from whatever, even
if it was even if it was cold, you know
what I mean. Like, I thought, I can do it,
you know, give it to me. But then on stage,
(27:36):
I never know what to do with my hands, right,
So I'm not. I'm I freeze up physically. And Peter
Fairley Um said to me a couple of years ago,
he said, I'm doing this TV show. I want to
write a part for you. And I said, oh, that's
so sweet of you. I said, but I'm not. I'm
not an actor. And he said, well, I'm gonna make
you one. I said, no, I really am not. I said,
(27:58):
I don't know what to do with my hands on stage.
He said, I'll write apart. You're you'll be somebody who
was born without arms. You're a limbless You're a limbless attorney.
But then I thought, you know, if you were an
actor with no arms, you'd be like, what do you do?
You mean? I didn't get the part, but I like
my little station. You know, I'm just there at my lectern,
and they often say when I get there for the
(28:20):
sound check, you move around. I say, no, I'm just
gonna be here all night, just right here behind mine.
You're a lazy bastard. I don't know if it's lazy.
I just it's not. I don't know, no, I you know,
I always feel like it's important to try to grow
and try new things, But whenever they're presented to me,
I think that's not really my thing. You got a
(28:42):
few houses around the world, New York, North Carolina, the
English countryside, Paris. I mean I always wonder was somebody
like you the home in England and and Paris. There's
places I'd love to go to to live. I really
take my whole family with me. We'll work it out,
we'll figure it out. I don't know. If the schools
are right, we will tell I want to I'd love
(29:03):
to live in London for a couple of years. And
because New York is just such a mess. I mean,
I tell people I go to other countries and you
come back in. New York is the filthiest city in
the world. But no one is motivating people in the
city to be civic minded. No one's saying to them,
we live here, let's do things for the people. And
(29:23):
the people who live here this is their home. They
come last. The people who reside in New York come less.
And that always irks me because other cities I go to,
I'm like they have. I was in Rome shooting a film,
and like places gleaming, it's clean and there's bathrooms too.
This is the hardest city to pan. That's why if
I get when I get old, I want to live
(29:43):
in Tokyo. You've never seen every subway station has a
sparkling clean bathroom, and every there's a seven eleven on
every block or a large room scenario, and every one
of them has a sparkling bathroom, and they invite you
to use. You don't even to buy anything. So when
you're bladder runs out, you know, wears out. That's where
you need to go to Japan. I said to my wife.
(30:06):
I said to it, let's take the kids and go
live in a hotel, a luxury hotel, and we'll go
and live in eight different cities during their childhood, and
we'll move every year. Rome Vienna. I'm dying to go
and we do that. Well, everybody acts like having your
kid changed schools. It's going to traumatize that child forever.
(30:27):
Get used to it. You know, my boyfriend, Hugh, his
dad with the Foreign Service, so he lived all over
Africa when he was growing up, and they moved all
the time. They survived. You met him where in New
York when I very first moved to New York. In
I was doing a painting job with this woman painting
an apartment and we needed a ladder and she knew
a guy who had a ladder. So we went to
(30:49):
his loft and I met him, and I thought, oh,
that's going to be my boyfriend, and maybe might not
happen today, might have happen tomorrow, but I crossed it
off my list, and yeah, and it worked out. You know,
thirty one years, someone's got to stay together, right, that's
(31:11):
a secret. Never to discuss your relationship with each other.
With each other. Yeah, no, you can talk about it
with other people, but you never look under the hood
of your relationship ever. I can't wait to come and
tell my wife. Yeah, never, because my wife is pretty
(31:32):
much lives under the hood. There. She got the lamp
hooked up. Yeah, she got that lamp on a hoop.
That the mechanics have got it all man. Yeah, she
doesn't stop. And then I think one person in the
relationship has to make themselves indispensable. And so Hugh has
(31:52):
done that with cooking and then with I don't open
any envelope, it doesn't look like fan mail. And so
Hugh opens all the mail and takes care of all
that stuff. And you know, there's always something going on
like the you know, or hurricane destroys the beach house
in North Carolina, or you know, there's there's a leak
at the house in Sussex. He takes care of all that.
(32:15):
He's indispensable. No one, I'd have to hire five people
to replace you. Margaret Thatcher's husband. He's taking care of
all the things off stage, and you know, he's got
his own stuff going on as well. I remember my
dad saying one time out of nowhere. We're in the
car and he said, you know, I've never cheated on
(32:36):
your mother. And it came out of nowhere. We weren't
talking about anything, we weren't even talking. He just said it.
And then I thought, well, that makes it sounds like
you have. Right, So when I say I've never cheated
on Hugh, that makes it sound like I have. But
I mean, I think that's part of it too. It's
important to both of us, and so we've always been
(32:56):
able to trust the other person that way, And so
do not stay lucky there. You're lucky. Yeah. The thing
about you that I learned from reading and knowing you
on the air and listening to you and reading your
essays and so forth, is that you're one of those
rare people. And I think you really are one of
those rare people where for the most part, I mean
(33:18):
there might be some amendments, you ended up exactly where
you wanted to be, exactly, You're doing what you want
to do. You live with the person you want to
live with. Your life is this wonderful life, and you're
and it all is like I really would have to
struggle to figure how it could be any better than
it is now. But it's it's exactly the life I
imagine from myself when I was young, And I don't
(33:41):
know what I did to make it happen other than work.
I mean, I was never a hustler that way. I
never tried to get people to, you know, read what
I'd written or allow me to read somewhere. I just
waited for people to ask me and so, and I
would say yes, and then somebody else would ask and
I would say yes and so. But you know, people
(34:02):
like for someone to be their idea, you know, they
don't They don't like to be manipulated. They don't like
to have their arm twisted, you know. But if it's
your idea, people people like helping people, you know, But
let them help you. Don't put it in their ear,
don't make the suggestion. Just be the kind of person
(34:23):
that people want to help and people will help you. Um.
I just want to say thank you so much, thank you.
I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you
by iHeart Radio once again, David Sedaris. At that moment,
two E M T s bounded in both young and
(34:44):
bearded like lumberjacks. Each took an elbow and helped my
father to stand. Are we going somewhere? He asked, Back
to the hospital. The woman shouted, all right, My father
said okay. They wheeled them out, and the woman ex
blamed that while the staff would remove bloodstains from the carpet,
it was a family's job to get them off any
(35:06):
privately owned furniture. I can bring you some towels, she suggested.
A few minutes later, another aide walked into the room.
Excuse me, she said, but are you the famous son.
I'm a pretty sorry excuse for famous, I told her,
But yes, I'm his son, So you're Dave Dave Chappelle.
(35:41):
Can I have your autograph? Actually? Can I have to? Uh? Sure?
I said, I just joined Hugh and cleaning the easy chair.
When the woman, who seemed slightly nervous the way you
might be around a world famous comedian who was young
and black and has his whole life ahead of him,
(36:05):
return for two more autographs. H
Host
Alec Baldwin
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