David Rakoff on The Daily Show

[southpaw]

Essayist David Rakoff was a guest on The Daily Show a couple of weeks ago. I had never heard of Mr. Rakoff before, but after watching him on TDS, I'm now one of his biggest fans.

I bought 'Don't Get Too Comfortable' the day after seeing him on TDS, and I have 'Fraud', his first collection of essays, on order.

Check him out. He is a riot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQYG39MrVU

[Tyrone Slothrop]

1. "Fraud" was great

Haven't read his new one yet.

I think he's much better than David Sedaris. (And I loves me some Dave S.!)

[southpaw]

2. Yeah... I can certainly see the similarities

between Rakoff and Sedaris.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

3. I actually picked up "Fraud"

Because one of the blurbs on it was from Sedaris: he called Rakoff the funniest writer alive or something to that effect.

[buddhamama]

4. I love David

one of my faves stories of his is about his getting hired by a nature mag. to interview a man who hiked the same mountain in NH every day. funny stuff.

another fave is when he got a job at Macy's during the x-mas season; not to play Santa but Freud, in one of their window displays.

You can find a lot of his material archived on 'This American Life'
the radio show where i first heard him yrs ago, David Sedaris too, can be there. ( I also love Sedaris)

[southpaw]

5. I do plan to seek out his uncollected writings...

I'll have to check out 'This American Life' archives.

From the new book ('Don't Get Too Comfortable'), my favorites are the essay on the Log Cabin Republicans that he mentions in the Stewart interview, and a peice about becoming a U.S. citizen. There is a lot of subtle humor there, punctuated by the occasional zinger. For instance, he makes reference to Barbara Bush, and stops to point out that he is referring to the wife of GHW and the mother of W, not "W's liquor swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter." He then apologizes for being unfair to the younger Barbara, as he is not sure whether she smokes or not.