Flavorwire » Amy Sedaris

Trailer Park: Shakespeare, Santa, and Spacey

Jason Bailey — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:00:11 +0000

Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week, we’ve got eight new ones—everything from cancer comedies to Shakespearean dramas to, God help us, holiday fare. Check ‘em all out after the jump.

Abduction

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” we wrote of Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton recently, and if you’d like proof, check out this new trailer for his fall “action thriller.” Where to start with this one? Well, first of all, who’s this baby-voiced 12-year old in the lead? Another Twilight kid, you say? Why are these people infecting other movies? His big action line at the end (“Not if I find you first!”) is delivered with the intensity (and pitch — seriously kid, put some bass in your voice) of a fourth grader in a game of hide and seek. And that little gasp at the :17 mark—what is that supposed to be, acting? Singleton, we’ve come to expect this from you, and this Taylor Lautner person probably doesn’t know any better. But Alfred Molina and Sigourney Weaver: how could you?

What Are Your Favorite Audiobooks?

Kathleen Massara — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:30:07 +0000

This week over at HTML Giant, David Fishkind writes about his summer job as a farm hand and how he began listening to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy on his iPod in order to deal with the monotony that comes with moving piles of dirt around. Richard Poe (aka Gul Evek in Star Trek: The Next Generation) reads from McCarthy’s novel, Fishkind writes, “slowly in an ambiguous old man accent, altering his voice slightly for different characters. He made The Kid sound inquisitive and defensive and The Judge powerful and funny.” He continues, “Blood Meridian put a lot of things in context for me. When I felt fatigued, at least I’d gotten seven hours of sleep instead of riding a horse through the night to avoid bloodthirsty Apaches.”

Do you ever listen to audiobooks at work, readers? I used to listen to David Sedaris read from his novels, but I could never get any work done, and my constant laughter embarrassed me. Same for Ben Karlin’s essay collection, Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, (e.g., Lesson #43: Don’t Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College: You Will Lose to Lesbians). I’ve also tried Nick Cave reading The Death of Bunny Munroe, which took all the lasciviousness out of it and added some strange element I can’t quite put our finger on. And there’s always the other famous Sedaris, Amy, whose clear, homey delivery on I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence will always alarm me. What about you, dear reader? What audiobooks do you love? Who was the narrator, and how did the voice or tone alter your appreciation of the work?

How to Get Insulted by Authors

Emily Temple — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:00:16 +0000

It’s official: we’ve found our new favorite blog. Bill Ryan, a New York based book lover, is collecting insults from his literary heroes. It all started around six years ago at a book signing at the excellent BookCourt, when on a whim, Ryan asked Maggie Pouncey to inscribe his book with an insult instead of a dedication. Now, in his wonderfully entertaining blog, Insulted By Authors, Ryan documents his adventures getting insulted by – or not getting insulted by, as the case may be – his favorite authors, and displays the creatively rude missives for our enjoyment. Click through for some of our favorite insults from Ryan’s collection, but be warned – these are word people, and some of their language is quite colorful. Perhaps it is redundant to say, but the faint of heart should not read Amy Sedaris’s contribution.

Ryan also writes book reviews in his aforementioned blog and kind of has the exact same taste in fiction as we do, so that’s positive. He is also one of the few reviewers who can write about the readings he attends in a way that is palatable – nay, pleasant! – to read for someone who wasn’t there. In fact, often more interesting than the insults themselves are Ryan’s wry anecdotes about his interactions with the insult-bestowing authors. We recommend particularly the Rick Moody and Jonathan Safran Foer evenings.

After all, as Ryan told the LA Times,

Part of the fun is seeing how the authors react. It’s not fair to spring it on them, but there it is. It is fun. It’s like sneaking my way into a Presidential press conference and tossing a curveball in with all those softballs the reporters throw; or, maybe more like tossing a water balloon alongside the softballs. Not sure. I get the same smug or horrified looks from the people behind me in line as I’d likely get from the press pool for asking President Obama what his favorite ice cream is. People love looking down on effort and sincerity.

Some authors take it in stride, some love the idea, some hate it but grit their teeth, some roll their eyes, some love showing me how stupid the idea is (and by proxy, how stupid I am), some can’t deal with it and flat-out reject. It’s the last group who I can’t understand. I mean, it’s their prerogative; no one owes me a damn thing. But -– really? You can’t play along?

Thank goodness (for us, at least), there are many people who could play along:

Karen Russell

David Mitchell

Jennifer Egan

Wells Tower

Amy Sedaris

Tao Lin

Rick Moody

Tom McCarthy

Make sure to check out Insulted by Authors for even more delicious antagonism and apt book reviewing!

What’s On At Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds In Our Office

Caroline Stanley — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:00:15 +0000

Today at Flavorpill, we were mesmerized by Amy Sedaris’s new YouTube Channel. We got a look at the first image of the cast of X-Men: First Class and the first action shot from the new Spider-Man movie. We got a good chuckle out of one of the entries in the city’s Taxi of Tomorrow competition — a suicidal design that requires cyclists to pass through a “taxi tunnel.” We learned about Ben Affleck’s favorite heist films and Amy Poehler’s favorite sad movies. We were sad to see that hoarders are not as much fun in real life as they are on TV. We got all warm and fuzzy looking at this photo of Elton John and his husband David Furnish posing with their new baby boy. We feared Rob Lowe. We wondered if a film adaptation of O will do better than Primary Colors did. And finally, we loved The Hairpin’s take on where the now 30-something members of the Baby-sitters Club would be today — particularly Claudia Kishi and Logan Bruno.

10 Literary Family Dynasties

Chelsea Bauch — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:32:14 +0000

Although we’re no longer bound to become blacksmiths or bakers based on our parents’ jobs, there are some professional skills that persist from one generation to the next. We’ve recently seen the power of artistic genetics with the release of Sophie Crumb’s first book (edited by her father Robert, no less), but it seems that literary DNA is particularly potent. With the holiday season now upon us — and with it, inevitable reunions with close family and distant relatives alike — here’s a toast to ten families for whom writing is part of the inherited legacy.

Kingsley and Martin Amis

Prominent icons of their respective literary generations, this British duo embodies the classic “like father, like son” adage. Sir Kingsley was a prolific novelist, poet, and critic, who wrote more than 20 novels in addition to short stories, radio and TV scripts, literary criticism, a memoir, and six volumes of poetry. His son Martin, meanwhile, is an award-winning and best-selling novelist closely associated with peers Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. Both Kingsley and Martin were ranked on The Times’ list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Daily Dose Pick: Inventory

Leah Taylor — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:09:14 +0000

With Inventory, the Onion‘s pop-cultural critics at the A.V. Club provide a hilarious compendium of their ultra-specific weekly lists.

From a dozen songs about how much public transportation sucks and ten movie franchises that never were to 25 sure signs that a sitcom is terrible, Inventory provides an exhaustive collection of esoteric knowledge. It also includes special book-only sections and lists penned by non-Onion funny people like John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris.

Additionally, there’s an intro by the always engaging Chuck Klosterman (who recently revealed to us his own list of albums to beat writer’s block). The best part: The book’s full of recommendations and forgotten titles that will send you to Amazon or Netflix with a quickness.

Learn more about Inventory, read a list of entries that didn’t make it into the book, learn about five truly useful websites, and buy a copy for yourself.

Illustrations by Danny Hellman