When you are engulfed

Funny how as I've grown older I'm doing more of the things that I used to despise as a teenager. I used to hate writing. Those book reports and those essays on such esoteric topics were the bane of my high-school existence. To be sure, I still hate writing those things, along with the lab reports and the abstracts and research papers. I suppose we all dread things that we find difficult.

Strange then that I'm writing now. Stranger still is that I intend this post to be about a book I've recently finished reading.... funny how things work out. My rationale? In doing this, I don't have to be grammatically correct, make any valid literary connections or any scientific sense... in fact, I don't have to make any sense AT ALL if I so choose! Too good to pass up, in my opinion.

When You're Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris is one of those self-deprecating yet witty essay collection. He's a bit of a hot essayist at the moment with a few #1 Bestsellers under his belt. This is my first book of his, and it seems mean to say, but I was disappointed. Having read numerous rave reviews about this book and hearing the hysterics people were in after reading, I expected to be in hysterics too. In fact, I only LOL'ed once... okay maybe twice. My favorite has to be "That's Amore" - an essay about Helen, the embarrassingly tactless, racist loudmouth who was David's apartment neighbor.

"It seemed that she had been at her window, surveying the scene below, and when the super in the building across the street threw a lit cigarette into our trash can, she yelled at him with such force that she blew her lower plate right out of her mouth. 'Ich in da schwubs,' she said. 'Go giddit.' " ----- I think laughed so hard I snorted.

And then there was the bit about the Stadium Pal, an external catheter of sort that guys can use to pee without the hassle of visiting a urinal. Grossly amusing, no sarcasm intended. I had to Google the Stadium Pal to confirm its existence, and indeed, such thing exists.

Not to discredit his talent any, because absolutely the guy is talented. A witty gay man with the uncanny ability to put into prose his skewed version of the mundane? I dare you to name 5, besides Augusten Burroughs. Perhaps I read too many reviews and got my expectations too high (this happens more often than I care for), so it would only be natural that I was disappointed. Still though, this book offers some very interesting stories, that if I remember, can make for good cocktail party conversations. How many cocktail parties do I attend? Between 0 and 1, but more to the 0 end. But should I EVER be invited to one, I'll be good to go.