My Sedaris Review

The assignment seemed like it was going to be easy enough. It had two options. One was to write a review of a live event.

“I could do that.” I thought to myself.

I had been writing restaurant reviews for one of the school papers for nearly two years. It was an assignment that had been foisted on me by the arts and entertainment editor. I was nervous at first, but as it had turned out, it combined two of my passions: writing and eating.

I had gotten a lot of practice writing restaurant reviews and I felt I had gotten pretty good at them. But then, I had the necessary skill set to accurately critique a restaurant: years of cooking experience had made me able to spot the difference between an over-whelmed waitstaff and simply a bad one, and that same work experience had given me the knowledge to identify the difference between bad food and food that might not be good, but had potential.

However, the class assignment required that we went to a live performance. I hadn’t worked as a live performer, musical or otherwise. And unless it was some sort of cooking demonstration, my previous work experience was not going to help me.

Undaunted, I began to keep an eye out for an event to critique.

The combination of being tight-fisted and jaded by the current musical scene made it difficult to find something to see. On top of that, my wife and I had just bought our first house and it was a considerable amount of work. I was hesitant to spend a whole evening out having fun when there was work to be done.

Then it was announced.

My favorite living author, David Sedaris, was coming to town. The satirical humorist had been one of my favorites since a friend had told me some of my writing reminded him of Sedaris. I read one of Sedaris’ books and was hooked. His writing is hilarious and friends that were familiar with his work said it was even better when he read it aloud.

And he was coming to Riverside Theatre.

I asked a friend of mine who was as big of a fan as I was to go. She said she had to do some budget juggling, but she would be able to join me.
A few days later my wife asked me why I hadn’t bought tickets yet.
I told her that I was apprehensive that with all the other expenses, we couldn’t afford it.

“Well, you need to see something for your class, don’t you?” She said.

“Yeah.” I replied. “But the tickets are expensive.”

“We’ll be okay. Just go.”

So I bought the tickets and anxiously waited.

On the night of the show I went to catch the bus and arrived at the theatre an hour early. Eventually my friend Gretchen showed up and we went inside. Our seats were in the balcony so we went upstairs.

When we arrived at the first landing the usher looked at our tickets.

“These are upstairs.” He said, pointing at another set of stairs.
We climbed the stairs to the next landing where another usher was waiting.

“Yeah, you want to go up those stairs.” The second usher said, pointing at another set of stairs.

Finally, when we could go no further, we found our seats in the very last row of the balcony. When Sedaris came out he was a tiny speck, far below on the stage.
He read some of his works, told some stories and took questions from the audience.

I laughed so hard that I cried.


After the show, my friend waited in line with me for an hour so that I could get one of my books signed. I gave her implicit instructions to make sure I didn’t freeze up when it was our turn.

Then we were up.

I don’t remember exactly what I said but I know it came rushing out in a torrential gush of fawning adoration.

Mr. Sedaris took it all in stride. He asked me what I did and I told him that I was going to school to be a writer. I added that his writing was very inspirational to me. He was gracious and recommended some books for me to read. He signed my book, stating that he was looking forward to reading my book.

I floated out to the street on a cloud. My favorite author, besides being talented, was also a really nice guy.

As I thought about writing a review of the show, journalistic ethics reared its ugly head.

There was no way I could write a review of the show that was in any way unbiased.
Sedaris had could have come out onto the stage, belched loudly, and walked back off and I still would have thought it was great. Well, maybe not great, but certainly pretty good.

It just didn’t feel right to write a critique that was little more than fan-worship.



Fortunately, the assignment’s second option was to write a column.