Buy a Soul, Bitch

On Saturday night, 10/24/09, David Sedaris had a reading at the Capitol Theatre here in Salt Lake City. John, Jason, and I represented the store and sold his books in the lobby. Along with his own numerous titles, Sedaris was recommending Our Dumb World from The Onion so we were selling that too. We got there early, set up, and waited for the masses to arrive. We sold a few things pre-show and, as usual, Sedaris did a small pre-show signing to cut down on how long we'd have to wait around after. Since we all had seen him read before, the three of us stayed in the lobby, flipping through the fabulously offensive Our Dumb World and talking about videos we like on Youtube. We could semi see/hear the reading on a closed-circuit television hanging on the wall near the auditorium entrance, and the crowd was eating it up. They absolutely loved him; it's hard not to. I think the best part was the fact that the stage and lighting was still set up for Macbeth, the Capitol Theatre's current show. On the television, with the spotlight on him washing out his outline, Sedaris looked like some kind of hat-less pope on a very dramatic blue stage preaching to his hundreds of disciples. As soon as it was over, we got slammed. His books were flying off the table left and right along with Our Dumb World, which no one bought before the show but we couldn't keep on the table after. No one can sell someone else's book quite like David Sedaris. Then it was time to wait while Sedaris signed books for everyone. One of my favorite things about him is that he will sign for as long as it takes for everyone in line to get their book signed, no matter how long that takes. He told us later that he once signed for seven hours straight, it's amazing he doesn't have some severe carpal tunnel going on.

It was the last girl in line's birthday so Sedaris gave her a lesbian iPod holder from his bag of goodies. The bag generally contains hotel shampoos and soaps, travel packs of ibuprofen and Advil, and condoms. After the birthday girl left, we got some stock signed and Sedaris asked us out to dinner. We said yes. We went across the street to the Bay Leaf. Dinner was filled with delicious food and great conversations about the book industry and how digital readers could change things for us booksellers who like a good old fashioned hold-in-your-hand, real live book. I need to mention the food for a moment. We had black eyes peas and fried pickles (yum!) for appetizers, Sedaris and John had blackened catfish, Steve had the meatloaf, and I had corned beef hash. Then it was dessert time. We got peach cobbler and apple brown betty, both a-la-mode. When Sedaris, Steve, and I were waiting outside while John was making his way out, a youngish guy walked past and told us we were "buying into a lesser society". Sedaris and I looked at eachother in surprise with perfect O faces as the guy kept mumbling things at us. I rather sarcastically told him "thanks, have a good night" to which he responded "buy a soul, bitch". I then asked Sedaris if I could borrow some money to buy a soul and he said that maybe if we hadn't ordered dessert, we could afford one.