{"id":152,"date":"2004-06-01T16:04:50","date_gmt":"2004-06-01T23:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/06\/01\/humorist_funny.html"},"modified":"2004-06-01T16:04:50","modified_gmt":"2004-06-01T23:04:50","slug":"humorist_funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/06\/01\/humorist_funny.html","title":{"rendered":"Humorist, Funny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A full Iceland update will follow, but first, something that happened this morning. <a title=\"David Sedaris - The Steven Barclay Agency\" href=\"http:\/\/www.barclayagency.com\/sedaris.html\">David Sedaris<\/a>&#8216; new <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/cgi-bin\/biblio?inkey=62-0316143464-0\">book<\/A> was released today, and the <a title=\"Brookline Booksmith on the web... An independant bookstore for independent minds.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklinebooksmith.com\/\">Brookline Booksmith<\/a>, in order to sell books and promote Sedaris&#8217; June 15th reading and book signing at their store, gave away free tickets to the appearance with the purchase of a book, one per book and four books maximum per customer.  <\/p>\n<p>I walked with Aimee to her car at around 7:00 this morning, and found no one outside the Booksmith, so I headed to <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.peets.com\/stores\/store_locator.asp?StoreID=503&#038;StoreAction=map\">Peet&#8217;s<\/A> for breakfast.  After 45 minutes of <I>New Yorker<\/I> catch-up, I headed back over and found myself number eight in line, as I was told by someone running the show, who was not in fact an employee, but someone interested to an even higher degree than the other overly-interested people who were lining up outside a bookstore before 8 am.  Myself included, naturally.  <\/p>\n<p>Anytime I line up for something that isn&#8217;t completely obvious, I&#8217;m always entertained by passersby who inquire and members of the line who try to explain the situation.  This morning was no exception.  &#8220;He&#8217;s a writer, funny.&#8221; &#8220;A humorist, a satirist.&#8221; And then a response: &#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know, I heard about a writer who writes on various topics, but I don&#8217;t know.  I&#8217;m interested in people other people have never heard of, too.  Well, I don&#8217;t do much reading, but I watch a little tv, but shows aren&#8217;t as good as they used to be.&#8221;  He really needed someone to talk to.<\/p>\n<p>Some members of the line, which had grown to at least fifty by the time the store opened its doors at 8:30, seemed to take a measure of those asking about the line to see whether or not they needed any context.  A thirty-ish guy with nice glasses and a laptop bag? He received the brief reply, &#8220;David Sedaris tickets.&#8221;  The old couple?  &#8220;Tickets to see David Sedaris, he&#8217;s a writer.&#8221;  &#8220;Ohh, David Sadarris tickets, honey, he&#8217;s apparently a writer.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>The doors finally opened, and we streamed in, in quiet, orderly NPR-listener fashion, and started buying books.  Most people bought more than one, so I&#8217;m not even sure if the fifty people in line at the time were able to get tickets.  The space downstairs is limited to 150, which seems like a lot for the size, and according to Josh, they were sold out of the tickets by 8:45.  As I bought the tickets, I thought back to four years ago this month, when we saw Sedaris read from <I>Me Talk Pretty One Day<\/I> in the basement of the Booksmith, one of the first things Aimee and I did together the week I moved to Boston.  I made my way out with four copies plus four nicely screen-printed tickets, and headed to the No. 66 bus and back home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A full Iceland update will follow, but first, something that happened this morning. David Sedaris&#8216; new book was released today, and the Brookline Booksmith, in order to sell books and promote Sedaris&#8217; June 15th reading and book signing at their store, gave away free tickets to the appearance with the purchase of a book, one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}