David Sedaris Live in Anchorage

It's May in Anchorage, so the sun was still high as we went into the Performing Arts Center at 7:45pm tonight.













Mr. Sedaris was in the lobby signing books before (and after) the show.








We went in as the auditorium was filling up. Bede Trantina, the program director of KSKA, the local NPR station that sponsored the evening, whose cheery voice has greeted Anchorage at 9am on Fridays since about 1978 with "Yipee, it's Friday" got loud and sustained applause as she walked out to introduce Mr. Sedaris. And he got a rip roaring greeting when he walked out. And then he started reading. He is funny, and he sounds just like he does on the radio. But... Authors on book tours do readings in book stores. It's usually free. Somehow I thought he'd be actually talking to us.

Alaska is a red state. Our Supreme Court had to rule that the state had to pay health benefits for same sex domestic partners of state employees despite a Constitutional Amendment saying marriage is between one man and one woman only, so gays couldn't get married to get the benefits. And an advisory vote last month to prohibit the benefits through a Constitutional Amendment did pass, though not by an overwhelming majority. And it's only advisory. All the poeple at the PAC tonight must have voted no. The full house was right with Sedaris as he talked about being asked - not just by the girl friend in the trailer park of his pot supplier in North Carolina, but also by so called liberals - which of you 'is the woman?" ["Were both men, that's what homosexual means."] But he then went on a riff to describe the 'male' and 'female' roles his partner Hugh performs.

Eventually he stopped reading and talked about his recent trip to Japan where he 'finished' smoking, studied Japanese, and got a haircut. And he plugged the book The Zombie Survival Guide (Yeah, go ahead and click, it's a fun website) that he explained was written by someone he doesn't know, a Max Brooks. Most Zombie survival strategies, he told us, 'are just common sense." And then he answered questions.

I'm still mulling over the reading thing. After all, he's a writer, so reading his work sort of makes sense. But I'm guessing that he's scratching his head about us paying money to hear him read too. He did say one reason he stopped smoking was so he could stay in the $700 hotel rooms people put him up in. He thought it was kind of crazy but he wasn't going to argue since they were paying. Someone else told me it was also a fundraiser for KSKA, so it's ok. And he did some talking too.