I’ve been recently re-reading David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, a book that my friend Dmitri gave me in Italy two years ago and had me laughing out loud – crying even – on a crowded beach, lots of Italian hunks and hunk-esses disturbed by the barking American.

It all started with this story: ‘You Can’t Kill The Rooster.’ If you haven’t read it, do so now and be careful: it’s hilarious.

Incidentally, here’s a great interview with Sedaris.

Q: You work very hard. S: And I get a reward. I get to go on a book tour. And 200 people are going to stand in line and they’re going to tell me how much they love me. That’s not work. That’s great. I don’t believe it. You can’t let it affect you. But it’s just fun. And people will tell you whatever you want to know. Like you’ll say: Are those your real breasts? [Laughs] And they’ll answer any question.

Also, from a Playboy interview with Sedaris:

[My sister] Amy and I did a play this winter in New York, and Amy’s character is sort of an Amish woman, but we don’t say Amish. She’s a Squeamish woman. She lives in this pre-industrial community and she leaves and goes out into the world for the first time. At one point, she’s in a doctor’s office. Never been to a doctor’s office. And we see this screen, the doctor’s screen. And Amy comes from behind the screen and hands the doctor a cup. And the doctor says, ‘Oh, Liz, I’m sorry. When I said for you to go to the bathroom, I meant for you to urinate.’ And I laughed out loud when I wrote that, just the image of somebody defecating into a little paper cup.