Latest news with #DavidSedaris
Irish Examiner
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Suzanne Harrington: I was at THAT Kneecap gig in London — it was not pro-violence
Are Kneecap terrorists now? Because overnight, that's what the UK establishment has told us to think. Or that they are terrorist adjacent. Ha ha ha, what hilarious nonsense, you might think instead. Except it's not funny. Anyone who has listened to the trio will know that they use hyperbole and humour. They like a theatrical flourish, from comedy balaclavas to showing up to events in ex-RUC vehicles. They use mockery: your sniffer dogs are shite. Get your Brits out. Their lyrics are funny and surreal – like imagining Arlene Foster on ecstasy. They are fantastically irreverent, working on the David Sedaris idea that everything is funny eventually. Harnessing all that intergenerational trauma, reclaiming it, channelling it into blistering performance, half of it in Irish. And amid the deafening silence from the rest of the world, they remain relentlessly and vociferously critical of the genocide in Palestine. For their trouble, the UK establishment wants them deplatformed. You might disagree with Kneecap calling out the mass slaughter of Palestinians – although if you are a sentient human being, that's unlikely – yet in a democracy, you'd still defend their right to say it. Wouldn't you? But ever since Coachella ('Fuck Israel. Free Palestine') there's been a backlash. I don't know the details of their supposed calls to kill an MP – nobody does - but I highly doubt it was anything other than a comedic rant taken out of context. We have seen no evidence of anything in this regard. Nothing, apart from all the sudden tsunami of headlines overusing the word 'alleged'. Kneecap are not advocates of violence - unlike the UK and US establishment busy arming Israel, they repeatedly state that they are radically pro-peace. Suzanne Harrington: Anyone who has listened to the trio will know that they use hyperbole and humour. I was at that gig in London last November where they were alleged to have shouted support for terrorist organisations. If I found myself at a gig where the performers were shouting pro-terrorist slogans, or anything pro-violence, I'd be out the door immediately. Horrified. On October 7 2023, Hamas murdered the very demographic that attend gigs – civilian music lovers. Now Kneecap have Mrs Ozzy 'Prince of bat-eating Darkness' Osbourne calling on Trump to have them banned from entering the US, and a Tory MP calling on Michael Eavis to have them taken off the Glastonbury line up. The Tories already hate them, because Kneecap sued them and won. As British police scrape through performance footage, UK politicians are pressuring venues to cancel sold-out Kneecap events. Some are already capitulating, terrified of being seen to support – what? Terrorism? This is upside-down, inside-out, Orwellian - three young Irish musicians being censured and censored for criticising the murder of tens of thousands of children. Their words are being reviled, while mass slaughter is not. Forty musicians from Paul Weller to Fontaines DC, Christy Moore to Jarvis Cocker to The Pogues, have formally shown support, criticised the UK establishment for 'strategically concocting moral outrage' against Kneecap while ignoring the genocide in Gaza. So, who's next to be Kneecapped – Louis Theroux? How long before Settlers, his documentary about West Bank colonisers, is taken down? Before accusations of anti-Semitism are tossed about? This strategy – calling any criticism of the Israeli government 'anti-Semitic' - worked a treat on deplatforming Jeremy Corbyn. Now they're doing it to Kneecap. Who's next?
San Francisco Chronicle
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
David Sedaris on extreme fashion, meeting the pope and a second Trump term
David Sedaris has the ability to make his readers laugh one minute and then recognize a strange, shared truth the next. The essayist and author of 'Happy Go-Lucky' (2022) and the collected diaries 'A Carnival of Snackery' (2021) also has a love of avant garde clothing by brands like the Japanese house Comme des Garcons: It's fashion that's just as cutting edge and at times, absurd and specific as his writing. 'When I stand in front of the mirror, all I see are the clothes, I don't see me,' Sedaris, 68, said over a phone call from New York. 'It's not something that's ever too young for you, it's not sexy clothing.' More Information David Sedaris: 8 p.m. May 9-10. $136.98-$383.82. Uptown Theatre, 1350 3rd St., Napa. 707-259-0123. Both Sedaris and his sister, performer Amy Sedaris ('At Home with Amy Sedaris'), are both clients of the San Francisco boutique Modern Appealing Clothing, which specializes in innovative fashion. The humorist, who divides his time between England and New York, is touring to the Uptown Theatre in Napa on May 9-10, spoke to the Chronicle about fashion, his visit with the late Pope Francis at the Vatican and his thoughts on the second Trump administration. 'Last night I read that 36% of the population didn't vote,' said Sedaris. 'In a way, it was nice because I thought, 'OK, that's who I blame.' Then I googled people who didn't vote so I could just get a picture in my head of who to hate.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: What attracts you to extreme fashion? A: I guess if you looked at the pieces separately, you'd think, 'Oh that's really silly.' Comme des Garcons to me is like (how) the pope should dress. Well, actually papal clothing is really nice. … Last summer when I went to the Comme des Garcons show in Paris, I had this pair of shorts that I bought that look like you're wearing two pairs of shorts and the second pair is falling down. I thought, I'm going to bring them there and give them to somebody, and there was a young man outside of the hall, there's no way he was getting into the show. I went up to him and I said in French, 'Excuse me, are you poor? Can I give you these shorts?' He said, 'Find someone else.' I've worn them once. Q: There's someone in the world who said no to Comme des Garcons shorts from David Sedaris? A: Yes, but I found this kid in Chicago who came to one of my shows wearing a Comme des Garcons shirt. We're the same size, so I send him stuff all the time now. When you take it to a thrift store, the problem now is so many people buy it just to resell it, so the person who doesn't have any money is never getting it. A: No, and I'm so mad. The best dressed person was Conan O'Brien's wife (Liza Powel O'Brien.) I wore this suit that I bought a couple of years ago because I was in London at the time. I should have just gone full, flat-out wild Comme des Garcons. Q: So many Comme des Garcons pieces already feel papal, so I wasn't surprised to hear you bought a priest's cassock in Rome. A: It's really well made and a great piece of clothing. I wore it one night going out to dinner. It was so interesting the reactions it got. Q: Did you wear the Roman collar? A: Yes. Q: Did people greet you as 'Father?' A: No. People who saw me from a distance, they watched me and as we got up close, they averted their eyes. But I was in England, I wasn't in a Catholic country. Q: One of the things I've admired in your work is how through finding the peculiar detail, you find something universal that people recognize. I wonder if that's the answer to some of our cultural divisions? A: I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago doing a show. I had written in a graduation speech, 'Find one thing to be angry at instead of spreading your anger too thin.' A woman asked, 'What are you angry about?' I said, 'I'm really angry about the way that (Volodymyr) Zelensky was treated in the White House.' So many people came up afterwards, I think they just wanted to be in a room full of people who felt that way. You don't want to preach to the converted. That's what fables are so good for — you can take a step back and you can write about something that's current, and then there comes a point at the end where they think, 'Oh, that's me.' There's a way to sneak up on people, but you have to sneak up on them because I feel like if somebody says what I expect them to, my defenses go up. A: I was reading an article in the New York Times, then I looked at responses. They really take care with it. You get the idea that they are auditioning for a job as an op ed editor. Everyone's heard it all, and outrage isn't comforting to me. How many times can you say, 'This person's a dangerous monster?' I do feel it's interesting right now before we plunge headlong into a recession, that people want to laugh. I don't know what's going to happen if the economy keeps going like this and they won't be able to afford to spend money to laugh, but right now anyway, they see that as a pretty good use of their dollars.
Telegraph
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
We've lost civic pride and the power to chide bad behaviour publicly
David Sedaris is back on Radio 4 in the 6.30pm Tuesday slot, and not before time. I love his desiccated self-deprecation and this week's pensées on his audience with the Pope – risqué jokes included – had me laughing aloud. Will the American satirist-cum-trash-vigilante return to his perennial subject of litter picking in his adopted UK address of West Sussex? I sincerely hope so. Sometimes, it takes an outside voice to deliver home truths. 'You can tell where my territory ends and the rest of England begins,' he wrote in The New Yorker. 'It's like going from the rose arbour in Sissinghurst to Fukushima after the tsunami.' Aged 68, he can still spend many hours a day picking up detritus and has even had a litter truck infelicitously named 'Pig Pen Sedaris' in his honour. His enthusiasm is also undiminished, despite falling foul of Leftie critics when he observed that people who shop in Tesco Metro drop more litter than those who frequent Waitrose, then compounded his class crime by adding that he never found discarded opera tickets by the side of the road. His solution would be draconian: set up roadblocks and fine any motorists with clean cars, his theory being that if there's no rubbish in the footwell or stuffed into the glove compartment, they must have thrown it out the window. All very amusing but whenever he raises the subject, I can't help feeling uncomfortable that more of us don't see it as our duty to police our little patch of civilisation. Not just in terms of litter, but intervening in other respects too: when young people put their feet up on train seats, play music too loud, swear with venom in the presence of children. My bugbear is the more mature traveller whose phone loudly rings and who takes about an hour and a half to fish it out of their pocket or bag, and then, instead of just answering the damn thing, stares at the number. Understandable if it's a call they don't want to take – but it's not. Just as I'm filling in the back story – he's avoiding the bailiffs, she's bunking off work – they answer and proceed to have an excessively jolly exchange with their sister. Irritating, but not grounds for a reprimand. Plus, there's karma to be considered; I too may well be slow and dithery before many more decades have passed. It's the flagrant antisocial excesses of youth that are so dispiriting – and if I'm honest, the collective fear gripping adults like me. A decade ago, I would have had no hesitation in scolding kids making a mess or playing up. I would have considered it my civic duty. Now? Not so much. As a dad I know put it: 'It's one thing to get stabbed for being a have-a-go hero and saving someone from a violent mugging. But I'm not prepared to risk a knife in the ribs over a discarded KFC bag.' Researchers have recently suggested that our terribly English phraseology is baffling to the rest of the world and instead of 'I'm sorry, you seem to have dropped something', we should be far more direct, saying: 'Pick up that half-empty food carton. It's revolting.' A brave move. But a foolhardy one too. It's one thing to chide a gaggle of foreign language students. Quite another to confront a mob of well-oiled football fans after an away loss. So are diminishing civic standards (gasp! With apologies, Sir Keir!) a class issue? Not exclusively, but let's just say I've not yet heard Sedaris recounting how he read the riot act to a bunch of lairy dressage riders…
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Invisible Made Visible
On This Week's Episode: An episode performed live onstage, with stories about trying to take things that are normally invisible (unspoken feelings, secret lives, radio hosts) and make them visible. It features David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton and David Rakoff, months before his death. This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in May 2012. New York Times Audio is home to the 'This American Life' archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jonathan LaPaglia: ‘My muscles are T-shirt muscles – they don't do anything'
What's your biggest takeaway about human behaviour from hosting Australian Survivor for 10 years? What I've learned is that there's a really deep seated desire to belong. It's interesting to watch how people struggle with that. Because the conceit of the game is that you're trying to vote out one of your own, right? And the best way to do that is to blindside them … and so when you get voted out, I think it's quite confronting – even though it's a game, and everyone goes in knowing it's a game. I think we inherently want to belong. If you auditioned for Survivor, would you pick the Brains or the Brawn team? Well, my muscles are T-shirt muscles – they don't do anything, they're just there for looks – so I think they'd be kind of useless. And I'm somewhat of a thinker, so I probably would gravitate toward the brains tribe. That being said, people have been known to say that I overthink things, so I might end up being useless for both tribes. I think I have to be the host, because I'd be hopeless as a player. If you had to appear as a contestant on a reality TV show tomorrow, which one would it be? The Great Australian Bake Off? There's something kind of goofy about that which appeals, I don't know why. I can't bake at all. I'm terrible. But if I could provide comedy just for one episode, that would be good. You studied medicine in Adelaide and worked in emergency rooms for a few years; when was the last time you used your medical training? Professionally, maybe 30 years ago. Actually, I picked up the books again in Covid and started studying to sit the medical board [examinations] here in the US. And I don't know why – I didn't really think it through, because I don't know who would employ me at my age. But for a couple of months, I hit the books – and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, trying to recall information from 35 years ago. Because a lot of the stuff I had to learn was from my first years as a medical student. So iIt was a lot of basic sciences and stuff, and trying to dredge up that information was physically painful. What book do you always return to, and why? I usually don't read books again, but the one book I've returned to is The House of God by Samuel Shem, from 1978. I've read it a bunch of times, and maybe it's because of my medical background, because he was a doctor and he wrote this book about being an intern. But it's very sardonic in its approach, it has a very David Sedaris tone to it. I felt as if he nailed the whole experience of being a medical intern, but in a very entertaining, humorous way. What's the oldest thing you own, and why do you still have it? Maybe my 1967 Pontiac GTO. I've owned it for 20 or 25 years. I don't use it much, and I keep thinking I should sell it, but every time I pull it out, it's such a work of art that I just can't get myself to part with it yet. If you could only drive one car for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? I have a 1973 Dodge Challenger that I built myself. It's a bit of a Frankenstein – it has a new motor gearbox, all that sort of stuff. And even though it's not perfect, it really has an appeal because my hands created it. What's the best lesson you learned from someone you've worked with? I don't know where I got it from, but the philosophy that I have is: you're better off dying on your feet than living on your knees. Stand up and do what you think is right in the moment, rather than acquiescing to someone else or playing it safe. What are you secretly really good at? I'm good at watchmaking. It started when I was doing an Aussie show called Love Child, a period drama set in the late 60s. They gave me a watch from that period, and it really piqued my interest in watches – particularly from the 60s and 70s – even though it didn't work. At the end of the show they gave it to me, and I took it to a local watchmaker who just kind of buggered it up – basically, I was going back and forth for six months, and it never really worked properly. So then, because I've always had an interest in anything mechanical, I decided to figure it out. I bought toolsand books, I went online, and I started teaching myself through trial and error, stumbling my way through. It just kind of snowballed from there. And now I have too many tools. If you had to fight a famous person, who would it be, how would you fight them and who would win? Maybe Will Ferrell, just because I think he's hilarious. A thumb wrestle. And I think he'd probably win, because there's no way I could keep my shit together. I would lose it. Australian Survivor: Brains V Brawn premieres 17 February on 10 and 10 Play.
