Very short review: Tim Burton’s new film Dark Shadows is rubbish. “The term ‘hot mess’ was probably invented just to describe this film” rubbish.

Somewhat longer review: I feel like I’m pretty qualified to dub it rubbish. In the last couple months I’ve watched many many episodes of the original 1960s soap opera the film is based on, and I’ve watched the short-lived 1991 revival. (This makes me the second biggest Dark Shadows fan I know; the biggest fan I know is my friend Mat, who’s watched more than 24 hours of the original series – which, no shit, is still only a tiny fraction of the whole thing. There is a lot of it.)

The ’60s series is a tricky thing to pin down: it revolves around the Collins family, proprietors of a spooky old manor, and their servants, friends and enemies. Usual soap stuff. On the one hand, the show is shoddily made guff rife with laughable dialogue, cardboard characters, and plots that are somehow ludicrous and tedious. On the other hand, those things are what makes it so amazing. It’s camp, but not knowingly “ha ha look how funny we are” camp. It’s stupid, but endearingly so. And it’s really, actually kind of twisted – characters get murdered and kidnapped and mind-fucked. It’s a lot of fun!

Dark Shadows was, apparently, a pop-culture phenomenon in its time – it really took off after the introduction of the Collins’ vampire ancestor Barnabas (Jonathan Frid, RIP!), who ushered in an era of stupidly brilliant supernatural storylines. (Think Passions, in black-and-white.) It’s weird hardly anyone nowadays has heard of the show! And it’s a super-shame Tim Burton’s mishmash is the first introduction most people will have to it.

If you’ve seen any of Burton’s films in the last five years you know what to expect: first, Johnny Depp, who plays Barnabas, doing his Johnny-Depp-acts-kooky thing. Johnny Depp is good at acting kooky! But spaghetti tastes good, and nobody wants to eat it every night, right? Try something else, Depp! Second: Helena Bonham Carter… who is actually pretty great, so. Third: lavish cinematography, sets and costumes. The film looks stunning – but it looks identical to every other Burton flick (at least it’s not in 3D, I guess), and those beautiful visuals are really let down by…

Fourth: a rotten script. Really, truly, honestly lousy. Dark Shadows doesn’t have a storyline; it has a string of dumb, plodding scenes and never-very-funny jokes that limp towards a climax so stupendously boneheaded you’ll wonder whether the filmmakers actually watched the original series or if they just scanned the Wikipedia page in an airport lounge this one time.

Look, the original Dark Shadows is not Shakespeare. It really isn’t. It had its share of dumb, plodding scenes. But there are things I’ll forgive in an low-budget soap from the late ’60s that I can’t forgive in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster released in 2012. Avoid the film, pick up the TV show and a bottle of vodka, have a really great night.

Screenshot evidence

These are all 100 percent real names (of fake Twitter spambots). My favourites are highlighted in bold. Praise be to whatever amazing algorithm is generating all these whimsical wonders…

Blakeway Bush

Orrin Schlemmer

Roxie Glines

Lonnie Marcellus

Fidelia Altaras

Aleida Hnatow [sic]

Fernando Wickline

Hermine Rottner

Roslyn Schmeling

Diedre Dearmore

Elinor Fritsche

Carline Aichele

Cassassa Little

Duchesne Usher

Sau Plair

Vera Piel

Harmer Tilly

Gossow Dalles

Rocio Schadel

Kostohryz Edinburgh

Alita Sligir

Tania Gunkel

Marks St. Croix

Nutcharee Mascall

Borsh Garthman

Esperanza Watts

Fernando Kondo

Gangy Ockerby

Rutman Moon

Swinton Hayes

Larabee Kint

Vernita Okula

Stalls Smithers

Peart Oakes

Hartlen Summers

Piatek Pepper

Flom Wessex

Jacqui Encarnacion

Schwipps Boone

Fay Vadya

Lorenza Riling

Clinton Otterson

Katy Lino

Previously: Twitter spam accounts with unusual names

(I’ve read Catcher several times now and every time I get stuck in a lousy/crummy/phony loop for a couple weeks after, so bear with me here.)

So my review of this book is: this is a terrific book. But really this post is: if you haven’t read this book, read this book. Buy it. Borrow it from the library. Pirate the ebook. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of teenage protagonist Holden and maybe you won’t – whether you like him is almost beside the point. His despair and loneliness and hopeful desperation vibrate truth, and pretty much every angsty young character since is just a pale Holden imitation.

(Also – and maybe I’m projecting here, but again, it’s my blog and I do what I like – Holden is absolutely a homosexual. Yes he is.)

Read Catcher in the Rye. Read it. (At the very least, you’ll be able to casually mention to people you hardly know that you just finished The Catcher in the Rye and they’ll think you’re literary, which is honestly the best reason to read literature.)

Immediately after finishing Catcher I moved on to Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero, a novel that pretty explicitly follows on from Salinger’s: both are about rich, disaffected young men struggling against the realisation that life – or, more accurately, enduring life – is hard.

(By the way: I don’t recommend reading these books in tandem. The themes are too much. It’s depressing.)

First: Ellis published this when he was 21. So fuck you for writing so good when you were 21, Bret Easton Ellis. Second: like I said, Ellis is a great writer. But his style is (infamously) brutally nihilistic, and sometimes it wavers close to brutal nihilism for the sake of brutal nihilism. This obscures the portrait of his protagonist Clay, who’s hard enough to know as it is. (Astoundingly, Wikipedia alleges that Zero‘s first draft was “incredibly emotional and over-wrought”, which is so un-Ellis-ish and bizarre.)

Previously: Book review: Exit Through the Wound, North Morgan

Here are some of those Springfieldianites who could have broken out, but never did. (Note that, generally, I didn’t include characters voiced by celebrity guest stars. Characters who only had lines in one episode are noted as such – a couple of them pop up in the background of later episodes.)

Dr Wolfe, the Simpsons’ dentist (‘Last Exit to Springfield’. “Dental plan!”). I’m surprised this character (who was intended to be voiced by Anthony Perkins, who died before he could record the part) never came back – Hank Azaria’s delivery of “Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?” at least deserved Jasper-level recurrence.

The Simpsons’ veterinarian (‘Dog of Death), who flunked out of dental school. (Apparently he’s based on Ben Casey, a character from the ’60s medical drama of the same name - the eyebrows are certainly the same).

The Seven Duffs: Tipsy, Queasy, Surly, Sleazy, Edgy, Dizzy and Remorseful (a Simpsons fan who can list all seven off the top of his head truly has something to be proud of). Oh sure – you might say there was no possible way to expand on a pretty shallow beer mascot joke. To which I reply: Duffman.

Dewey Largo, Springfield Elementary’s (apparently pretty mediocre) music teacher. He’s had a couple of memorable scenes: “This is not a dream!”, the forbidden music, and “Ew, a bug!” The writers did attempt to flesh out Largo’s character  bit: Bill Oakley revealed that the original script for ‘Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Badasssss Song’ included a line implying the teacher is married and closeted.

Amber Dempsey (‘Lisa the Beauty Queen’). “Not. In. Paraguay.”

The Happy Little Elves. These critters, it turns out, have names: they include Moldy, Bubbles, and Yendor (?). The Elves featured heavily in very early episodes of The Simpsons, but eventually appeared less and less as Itchy and Scratchy became the show’s go-to cartoon satire.

Arthur Bouvier (‘The Boy Who Knew Too Much’). Marge’s brother – yes, Marge has a brother, though he’s never been seen and was only mentioned once. Marge tells Bart “[his] uncle Arthur used to have a saying: ‘Shoot ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out’. Unfortunately, one day put his theory into practice. It took 75 federal marshalls to bring him down. Now let’s never speak of him again.” They never did.

Sam and Larry, two barflies who frequent Moe’s Tavern. (Sam is the one with the green trucker hat. I first learned his name via an old issue of Simpsons Illustrated¹, and it stuck for obvious reasons.) As far as I can recall, neither of them have ever had any of their own lines in the show.

Gerald, the baby with the one eyebrow. Who is Gerald? Why do he and Maggie hate each other so much? Why does he get into so much mischief? I guess we’ll never know.

Raphael, the sarcastic guy. I actually had no idea this guy even had a name – apparently he earned it in a season 12 episode – till I started this post. (It’s also spelled Rafael, depending on the source.) He’s recurred many, many times during the series, having worked pretty much everywhere in Springfield, though he’s never been more than a minor character (and a terrifically droll foil).

Joey Joe-Joe Junior Shabbadoo (‘The Last Temptation of Homer’). “Come back, Joey Joe-Joe!” But he never did…

The Very Tall Man(’22 Short Films About Springfield’. His appearance while driving his automobile was indeed comical, though the “doing things while tall” joke would’ve worn thin had he recurred. Probably.

Worker and Parasite (‘Krusty Gets Kancelled’), the Eastern-bloc cat-and-mouse duo who all-too-briefly replace Itchy and Scratchy. A Salon.com article describes Worker and Parasite (Worker is the mouse, according to in-depth Googling) as an animators’ “inside” joke, though I don’t think it is. Even knowing nothing about Cold War politics or animation history – as I didn’t when I first watched this episode sometime in the early ’90s – these characters are delightfully strange.

The Happiest Man in Springfield (‘Hurricane Neddy’). What’s with this guy? Why is he so happy? Does it even matter? I guess we’ll never know.

Mrs Glick. One day I’ll host a Simpsons trivia night, and one of the questions will be “In which Springfield resident did Dr Hibbert once confesses to leaving his car keys?” I adore her mistreatment of Bart in ‘Three Men and a Comic Book’, her first appearance. Anyway, apparently she’ll never be back, because she died in a season 23 episode (deep in Zombie Simpsons territory, so you can hardly blame me for not knowing that).

Scott Christian. Kent Brockman is Springfield’s go-to newsreader, so no surprise that his bizarrely haired co-anchor Scott Christian never really registered.

Ms Sinclair, of the Ayn Rand School for Tots (‘A Streetcar Named Marge’). The Simpsons could have probably benefitted from more recurring female characters, and I’d've preferred to have seen more of Ms Sinclair than some of Jon Lovitz’s other characters (ie, Artie Ziff – blergh). An extra point in her favour: her daycare centre apparently influenced the creation of Rugrats, so.

Aristotle Amadopolis (‘Homer Defined’). Another Lovitz character, Aristotle would’ve been an ideal foil for Mr Burns; I’m surprised their rivalry never popped up again.

Rex (‘I Love Lisa’). “Everyone knows I’m the best actor in this school!”

Skincare consultant Rowena (‘Mr Lisa Goes to Washington’). There is something deeply hilarious about this. No, I don’t know quite what.

Miss Lois Pennycandy (‘Like Father Like Clown’). Miss Pennycandy is one of The Simpsons‘ ultimate dropped characters – there was potential around the unrequited-love-for-Krusty thing, except the writers apparently forgot about her. (Also in the “forgotten Krusty associates” category: Corporal Punishment and Tina Ballerina. What were their stories?)

Springfield Elementary’s other teachers. Google-fu turns up no names for any of these guys. I particularly like the middle one, another cynical Doris Grau character who’s sceptical of Skinner’s plan to hold unruly students in place with magnets in ‘Dog of Death’. The hippie-looking one on the right, by the way, is the teacher responsible for the famous “Purple monkey dishwasher” line.

Della, Lionel Hutz’s assistant (‘Bart Gets Hit by a Car’). Yet another cynical Doris Grau character, and reader of Popular Secretary magazine.

Ms Albright, the Sunday school teacher at the First Church of Springfield.

“Just Stamp the Ticket” Man, aka, the biggest asshole in Springfield. This guy has no apparent name, and only one apparent character trait: jerk. His nickname came about after his first appearance in the series, after he rudely dismissed Flanders’ cheerfulness by demanding to have his parking validated.

Leopold. What is Leopold’s job, anyway?

Gulliver Dark (‘Homer’s Night Out’), the lounge singer at the Sapphire Lounge where Princess Cashmere works. What’s kind of interesting about Gulliver – aside from his name – is that he was voiced by Sam McMurray, who played the live-action version of the character in The Tracey Ullman Show. Simpsons trivia! Gulliver returns as the singer in Tito Puente’s band in ‘Who Shot Mr Burns – Part 2′, though he wasn’t voiced by McMurray second time around.

Mr and Mrs Winfield. They were the Simpsons’ neighbours on the non-Flanders side. The reason they never reappeared: they departed Springfield in the episode ‘New Kid on the Block’, apparently because they disliked the Simpsons so much.

And here’s a pretty definitive list of Simpsons characters to round things out.

1. Remember Simpsons Illustrated?!?!

But it is true that there are beloved relics of childhood best left in childhood. There’s probably a multi-syllable German word for the “I enjoyed this?” emotion aroused when you attempt to sit through a once-loved now-tacky TV show/movie/book. (Maybe… like… kindheitschade? Thanks for that one, Google Translate.)

When I was 10 one of my favourite books was A Tale of Time City, by Diana Wynne Jones – the first thing of hers I ever read. The story is more or less what it says on the tin: it’s about a city that exists outside history, and its mix of the legendary and the futuristic proved so appealing I must’ve read it five or six times in the years after I bought it. I dug that copy out of a box not long ago – that’s its creased, scuffed cover up there – and decided to read it again.

So: does A Tale of Time City stand the test of time?

Yes! Largely because Jones was (RIP) incredible. Christ, what a brilliant and inventive writer. Her mind must’ve been a bubbling spinning miracle of alchemy: here it produced Vivian Smith, an English schoolgirl who’s whisked out of London on the eve of World War II to live safely in the countryside.

Or not. Vivian swiftly is kidnapped by Jonathan and Sam, boys her age who take her to their home in the fantastic, glittering, aeon-spanning Time City. The boys are convinced Vivian is destined to play a vital role in rescuing the city from impending destruction, and she’s swept up in their quest as she tries to figure out how she’s going to get back home.

One of Jones’s great talents was digging right inside her protagonists’ heads, crafting characters who are vivid and true despite their fantastic backgrounds. In Time City, Jonathan is lordly in the exact way of entitled boys, Sam is grubby and hungry and loud, and Vivian approaches her predicament with an endearing mix of trepidation and gusto. Examining her with an adult eye, she emerges as a strong female character – and all the stronger for not being blessed with any special talents or powers. She really is just an ordinary person dropped into extraordinary circumstances, and she just keeps calm and carries on.

But that adult eye also exposes Time City‘s flaws. The time-hopping, jargon-heavy story is dazzlingly complex – admirably complex, proving young readers shouldn’t be pandered to – and for the first two-thirds or so Jones does a top job holding her plot together. But it’s that last third where it comes apart: all the elements of a satisfying conclusion are there, but there’s a harried, sometimes slapdash touch to the way they’re hashed together in the climax. The baddies are exposed, the goodies save Time City, and everything wraps up just like that.

Another of Jones’s novels, Howl’s Moving Castle, was adapted into a stunning animated film by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. A Tale of Time City is ripe for the same treatment – its extrahistorical setting is a pretty thrilling place of glass and stone. That Jones realises it so fully on the page is a testament to her skill.

Instagram filters in the Yemen

You know, the lack of a hyphen between “salmon” and “fishing” kind of indicates that this film’s about salmon that fish in the Yemen, not salmon that are fished in the Yemen. Aren’t ambiguities like that just the worst?

Anyway. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen‘s title maybe isn’t grammatical, but it is literal: the film is really actually about salmon-fishing in the Yemen. You think of fishing as either a quietly compelling hobby or an inoffensive but dull way to pass the time, and I reckon audiences will in turn  think of Salmon Fishing as either quietly compelling or inoffensively dull. It’s a sweet, pleasant movie – but it’s so nothing. You walk away feeling like you’ve spent all afternoon standing waist-deep in a river without catching a fish.

If you’ve seen the trailer you know what to expect. There aren’t any surprises in the plot: Ewan McGregor is Fred, a public servant and fishing enthusiast (a total riot, in other words) who’s forced to help out on the Sheikh of Yemen’s (Amr Waked) so-stupid-it-just-might-work dream to introduce salmon to his country. Yemen, oh by the way, is mostly desert. This doesn’t faze the Sheikh’s chipper financial consultant Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt, who’s both delightful and just one stomach flu away from her goal weight), who connects with Fred as the project begins to become a reality.

It’s not Salmon Fishing‘s polite predictability that’s the problem.  It’s the plot’s super-low stakes. The strongest emotion the Sheikh’s epic ambition ever arouses is: “Oh. That’s nice.” You know something’s amiss when Fred drinking cold water from a well in Yemen is a key moment in the plot.

(Some minor spoilers ahead.)

The screenplay throws up a few hurdles. The Sheikh’s plans are opposed by rebels. Harriet has a soldier boyfriend (Tom Mison) who goes missing-in-action in Afghanistan and resurfaces just in time to thwart her burgeoning romance with Fred. Kristin Scott Thomas plays a press secretary who’s preposterously manipulative even by the preposterously manipulative standards of real-life spin doctors.

But there’s still never much sense everything won’t work out okay in the end: the rebels’ motives aren’t defined beyond “We hate the Sheikh because he hates God or something!”; Harriet and her soldier boy only dated for three weeks before he was posted so remind me why we’re meant to care about their relationship?; and Scott Thomas drops in every now and then to say something zany then choofs off again.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen probably would’ve been better if it was about salmon that fish in the Yemen. It could’ve been animated. There could’ve been songs!

Remember those silly, campy, lots-of-zany-”boing!”-sound-effects bits near the start of Moulin Rouge? Mirror Mirror is basically an entire movie of that.

This is Snow White, but not as you “snow” (ha) it: Mirror Mirror takes the classic fairy tale, shatters it, puts it back together with the dexterity of a blind street urchin on a sugar high. The story’s most familiar elements remain mostly intact. A wicked queen (Julia Roberts, who’s having FUN) terrorises her fairest-of-them-all stepdaughter Snow White (Lily Collins, who’s got EYEBROWS. Lord, has this girl got eyebrows), casting her into a spooky forest where she’s adopted by seven dwarves¹ who each embody a different quirky character trait, like Fat, or Frowny, or Short.

The notable departure from that original is, now that we’ve solved sexism, you can’t just have a handsome prince sweeping in to save the helpless pure maiden from an evil older woman who symbolises icky female sexuality. Mirror Mirror gets around this by making its handsome prince, Alcott (Armie Hammer), a buffoon who’s rescued by Snow White as much as she rescues him. (He remains, however, extremely handsome. And frequently shirtless!) Handily, Snow White gains both skills with a sword and a chic haircut (presumably given to her by the Fashionable dwarf), allowing her to fight alongside her prince and defeat the queen together.

You need to be in a certain frame of mind to enjoy this movie. Approach it one way, it’s fluffy fun. Approach it another way, there’s a desperation to convince you that everyone onscreen is having such fun (nowhere is this more obvious than the inexplicable, wildly off-key, isn’t-this-so-such-fun Bollywood dance sequence that plays over the closing credits. No, really).

Eyebrows eyebrows, on the face/You're really distracting, like whoa

In the film’s favour, Roberts gets off some good one-liners (even if she does say them in an accent she apparently learned watching high-schoolers perform Shakespeare), while Hammer throws himself into the thing with admirable energy (and handsomeness. Though it’s a shame his identical twin brother couldn’t star in this one too). The weak link is Collins, a sweet lick of nothing who never makes much of an impression… aside from those eyebrows of hers.

Given it’s directed by Tarsem Singh, Mirror Mirror isn’t as visually over-the-top as I expected. There’s a smallness to the look of the film – I swear that isn’t a coded dwarf joke – which focuses the sense this is a ultimately a children’s film that adults might enjoy.

1. Tolkein spelling, yeah!

These are the lessons of You Are Not So Smart, a book based on a well-known blog that explores our cognitive biases (is the intelligent-sounding way of putting it) and self-delusions (is the accurate way of putting it).

And yet, this book isn’t terrifying. It’s fascinating, and more importantly, it’s liberating. Yes, us humans procrastinate. Yes, we’re easy targets for manipulation. Yes, we’re worringly good at ignoring reality. But we’re just born that way.

Each chapter presents us with a new mental foible, documented by author David McRaney in a clear, easy manner that connects everyday human behaviour with scientific studies. The short, easy-to-summarise-at-dinner-parties essays are ideal ebook material. After a while it reads less like a psychology textbook and more like a self-help book without the self-help: the traps built into our brains are unavoidable, McRaney argues, but an awareness of provokes a strange sense of humility. Your perspective on the world is not fixed and absolute but this strange, nebulous thing that sometimes needs to be questioned. When it’s not, bad things can happen: you make crappy snap judgements, you prefer one brand over an identical one for no rational reason, and – worst case scenario – you walk robot-like down evil paths.

The central message of You Are Not So Smart isn’t “Human consciousness is not a wonderful thing”; it’s “Human consciousness is a wonderful thing, but…” We’re loaded with so many mental shortcuts and biases it’s incredible we manage to function at all. Ironically, if everyone read this book on why none of us are as smart as we think, we’d probably be a whole lot smarter.

I read Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games two years ago (way before it was cool, may I smugly point out), and since then I’ve loudly insisted the movie adaptation will be way better than the book. I enjoy being right!

But it’s a pretty good book, with a simple and disturbing idea at its core. By now The Hunger Games (more accurately, The Hunger Games‘ marketing team) has penetrated pop culture deep enough that everyone knows the plot basics, but here they are again: the overlords of a cruel post-apocalyptic dystopia force teenage “tributes” to battle to the death in an annual spectacle called the Hunger Games.

It’s a story that demands to be told visually, and it becomes much more powerful after its freed from the first-person-narrative trappings of Collins’ book. It’s counter-intuitive to say so but our heroine Katniss really is much more evocative, much more badass, when we only see her from the outside - which is largely down to a fuck-off-amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. She owns this film. Her Katniss is strong and brave and mature, and sympathetic and believable and feminine, and lots of other wonderful things.

The other great advantage of tossing aside the book’s first-person perspective is that it allows director Gary Ross to take us behind the scenes of the Hunger Games – and even in this far-flung post-global-warming post-nuclear-apocalypse future, reality TV is still heavily manipulated. Watching Head Gamemaker Seneca (Wes Bentley – who seems to have been in a lot of movies lately? Maybe he got a new agent) and his team plot so casually to destroy the Tributes for the entertainment of the Capitol’s extravagantly dressed residents makes the entire pageant even more sadistic.

The Hunger Games takes a while – at least an hour – to get to its actual Hunger Games. But the suspense and tension of that build-up is important in capturing what a monstrous event Katniss is participating in. The Games are horrible. But… also morbidly voyeuristic. I mean, c’mon: if you’ve read the book or seen the movie, you were super-impatient for the Games to get started so you could get to the killin’, right? You are as awful as everyone in the Capitol (though maybe better dressed).

Much has been made – in Australia, at least – of Liam Hemsworth’s role as Katniss’s District 12 squeeze Gale. He’s hardly in the film. The supporting cast’s shining stars are Elizabeth Banks, who’s grotesquely made-up and just terrific as Katniss’s fussy chaperone Effie, who insists on good manners as she prepares her Tributes for a battle royale; and Woody Harrelson, playing drunkard-with-a-heart-of-gold Haymitch, a former Games winner tasked with guiding Katniss and her fellow District 12-er Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) to victory.

The pace sags in the lead-up to the bloody climax, and the plot relies too heavily on sloppy exposition from Games commentators Caesar and Claudius (Stanley Tucci, who’s brilliant, FYI, and Toby Jones), who drop in every now and again to helpfully explain something to us dummies in the audience, then just eject out again.

But the bigger weakness is that The Hunger Games is too light - and I’m not talking about the teenagers-murdering-each-other violence, which is pretty skilfully handled. Plot-wise, this is an edgy film; thematically, it should have been edgier. The satire of media machinations needed more sting (sadly, Katniss’s memorable makeover scene from the book lasts barely 10 seconds in the film), and the exploration of the politics of the Capitol and the Districts needed more depth. Perhaps they will in the inevitable sequel. “It’s aimed at young adults” isn’t a convincing-enough excuse.

Previously: Book review: The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins; Book review: Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

(Important clarification: I had read plenty of David Sedaris’s writing before. Just not collected in book form. So everyone calm down.)

The appeal of Sedaris’s style is that his neuroses and hyperboles read so effortlessly. “I could write insightful, laugh-out-loud funny essays like these!”, you think, and then you actually try to do it, and it’s really really hard. Damn your deceptive talents, Sedaris! His writing is unaffected, his metaphors unexpected and delightful, his turns-of-phrase hilarious. (The best one-liner in Me Talk Pretty is probably the one about the “Future Homosexuals of America”. In future I am only befriending people who have no read this book, so I can pass that joke off as my own.)

This is a pretty perfect book for the iPad generation: each essay is short, so you can finish it in the time it takes to commute to your tedious office job, or between Twitter checks. Plus, if you casually mention you’re reading David Sedaris, folks who think they’re smart will think you’re smart!