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