I didn’t know David Sedaris was such a fan of monkeys before we went to see him at Symphony Hall tonight, but it was certainly clear by the end that he’d be happy to have a monkey make him toast, rummage through his pockets, and scratch his forehead if it itched. The last time we saw him, he was on his Dress Your Family book tour, and I guess this was yet another leg of that tour, only in front of a much larger crowd. He read “Baby Einstein” again, as well as the amazing boil story, plus more selections from his diary, some repeats and some new. It’s amazing how a crowd makes things more funny, or how a few thousand people laughing makes it easier to laugh. As he read the boil story, which he said would appear in The New Yorker soon, I imagined reading it on the page, and I found myself laughing at things he read (and yes, it’s partly his voice) that I couldn’t imagine laughing out loud at if I read them on the page. It’s all degrees of hilarious, though; no argument that he was wonderfully funny and always great to see.

He once again talked up Adrian LeBlanc’s Random Family (which Aimee read after hearing him recommend it the first time) as well as Jeffrey Frank’s The Columnist (“Lying and cheating your way to the top and refusing to admit you ever did anything wrong aren’t qualities I like in a president, but in a conservative columnist, they’re a lot of fun”). There was also a new addition to his suggestion list, Germany. Not a book, but the country itself, as a welcome and friendly destination for travel. Toll!

We had hoped that the more stately surroundings would have meant we’d have to do away with the q & a period at the end (rats!), but no, they managed to put up the lights and he fielded a few questions anyway. They weren’t too bad, though, and he even informed everyone of the score of the World Series game in progress: “It’s inning three, and the score is Cardinals zero, Boston three.” That’s a score read by a person who’s never watched a baseball game if I’ve ever heard it. We headed briskly back to Aimee’s to drive me home and avoid the post-game self-identity meltdown/anarchy that is sure to follow; lucky it’s an away game. The lunar eclipse was a nice touch, too.