I get nervous at these events. Sometimes this goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.

This book signing time, Jackie asked him about restaurants again and brought up the restaurant Seasons, a restaurant I’ve yet to hear anyone say anything about beyond “it’s expensive.” He thought it was good. At one point he asked Jackie if she was poor. He drew pictures of us as 90 year old naked women while signing, which fazed me not a bit at this point. Jackie said “the look on the escort’s face...and the people in line were mad he was talking to us for so long.” I said I hoped he didn’t remember me. He also pulled out a fake and pretended he’d had an accident to amuse us, which was adorable. “He was in a good mood this time!” Jackie said. Certainly true.

As for the reading, he came out in a pair of culottes (he did not have these on earlier in the book signing), said he has five pairs, loves them, and does not care when someone else told him not to wear them. “I'm just being frank with you, those culottes look terrible." "I think they look fantastic."

(Note: after writing this entry and attempting to see if anything he read that night was online, I found this review from Cal Poly, which does a much better job of recapping than I did. I was scribbling notes in the dark on my program and hoo boy, can you not read them so well now.)

Story 1: "Letter from Santa's Mailbag." This is an amazing yet sick story from the same guy who brought you the Dunbars. A kid named Kent is writing a second letter to Santa--I apologize for calling you lazy for getting me a suit for my mom's wedding instead of what I really wanted. He’s apologizing now, though. Anyway, Kent hates his latest stepdad, the lazy slacker Cornelius who cut off three of his fingers doing chainsaw art. Kent is thanking Santa for when Santa picked him up when he was walking by the side of the road. He knew it was him because of the beard. This Santa, however, also has tattoos and mentions trying to reunite with a daughter that he hopes got off the "math." As Santa was dropping an unharmed Kent off at home, Cornelius staggered out. I’m not entirely sure what was Cornelius's motivation (in retrospect), but Santa beat Cornelius to near-death with a baseball bat and Kent left him to die and went in to watch the TV he wanted for a change and played dumb when the cops came. Thanks, Santa! I have more people you could go after, I wore that suit to the funeral, and oh, my mom is on the phone with my biker grandpa who just got out of jail and he’s coming over now....

Story 2: This was a story about Sedaris making friends with and taming a fox that lives in his neighborhood in England. It was adorable. He said he doesn’t ever look at the Facebook page for himself (“I choose to live instead”), but if you want to look for it, there should be some fox pictures there.

Story 3: This was another follow-up in his series on his family and their beach house (The Sea Section), and it talked about his relatives getting into hippie stuff--Amy saw a medium so she could talk to their dead sister Gretchen and Paul (The Rooster, of all people) has now taken up colonics. Sedaris was all, “you have to draw the line somewhere and for me, it’s my anus.” I also found out that Black Friday--er, BROWN FRIDAY-- is the biggest day for plumbers.

He also recommended a book called “Eileen” which is apparently SUPER DARK and he read to us a page about her having agonizing constipation, ending in the line, “Those were the good times.” It’s recommended by John Waters. I will probably not be reading it.

The Q&A was entertaining--someone asked him who was the worst person to work with at NPR and he said he wouldn’t say, but “it’s the ones that you think are so sweet but they are a MONSTER.”

He got invited to a “do-gooder party” at Buckingham Palace for his hobby of picking up trash for 4-10 hours a day.

He got to meet Whoopi Goldberg and was starstruck.

He tries to “keep it normal” while signing books--uh, however you define THAT, folks--and said at one point he’d asked someone if they made their own pita bread. He also mentioned the time he wrote something really foul at someone’s request for their mother.

And at the end of the night, someone asked about the election. He pointed out that Obama’s not retiring to the golf course and praised him in general, said that “you know Cher’s going through this too,” and when he gets asked this in England he’s just going to bring up Brexit (“you got kicked in the balls twice this year”).

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