Tag Archives: David Sedaris

A ‘Fantastical Holiday Adventure’ at the Muskegon Museum of Art, Nov. 21-Dec. 2

Citizen Journalism, Entertainment, Holidays, Kids Activities, Recreation, Upcoming Events, , ,
Muskegon Museum of Art (Courtesy photo)

By Marguerite Curran, Muskegon Museum of Art

 

The Muskegon Museum of Art’s 14th Festival of Trees runs Nov. 21 through Dec. 2, 2018. Each year, MMA volunteers and staff transform gallery spaces with festively designed Christmas trees and decorations, many of which can be purchased through the silent auction during the Festival. The Festival has become a local community holiday tradition that offers special events, holiday music, visits with Santa, Money Tree and special gift raffles, and holiday shopping. Festival of Trees looks different every year; this year’s theme is “A Fantastical Holiday Adventure.”

 

Funds raised through tree and decoration sales, raffles, sponsorships, and ticket sales benefit the museum. For information on sponsoring an event or tree in 2019, call 231.720.2573.

 

Hours

The Festival will be open Wednesday, Nov. 21 through Sunday, Dec. 2 and will be closed on Thanksgiving. Open daily 10am to 5pm and Sundays noon to 5pm.

 

Admission
Purchase tickets at the door: $10 Adult, $5 MMA Member, $3 child 3-17 years (under 3 free); $15 Every-Day Festival Pass. To purchase gift passes, call 231.720.2580 or purchase at the Museum Store.

Special Festival of Trees Events

First Day Food Drive — Wednesday, Nov. 21

 

Special half-off adult admission: $5 with a food donation for Loaves and Fishes food pantry, just in time for the holidays. Regular adult admission: $10.

 

Family Day — Friday, Nov. 23, 10am-5pm

 

Santa will stop in for a visit from 2-4pm and the fun will include a kids’ craft activity, scavenger hunt, and performances from The Nutcracker by the Michigan Youth Ballet Theatre from 1-3pm. Call 231.720.2571 for group bookings. Special Family Day half-off adult ticket price: $5.

 

Teddy Bear Breakfast — Saturday, Nov. 24, 8:30–10:30am

 

Teddy Bear Breakfast is especially fun for kids ages 3 to 8 years old, with a full family breakfast; visit with Santa, teddy bear checkup (by a certified teddy bear nurse), Teddy Bear Parade, and more.

 

Tickets: Adults $15, Kids 12 and younger $8. Tickets include breakfast, all activities, and Festival of Trees admission. Tickets are limited and sell out early. Call 231.720.2580 to purchase tickets in advance.

 

Deck Your Halls: DIY Holiday Project Demo — Sunday, Nov. 25, 1–3pm

 

Floral designers Deb Moon from Lefleur Shoppe and Skeeter Parkhouse from Wasserman’s Flowers and Gifts will demo how to create unique holiday décor during this event. Ticket includes a take-home DIY kit, refreshments, and Festival of Trees admission. Items created during the demo will be raffled to the audience. Holiday Cheer, from 1:00 to 1:30 pm, will include a light snack, coffee, and cash bar.

 

Space is limited.

 

Advance Tickets: $35 per person/$30 MMA member. Call 231.720.2580 to purchase. Purchase tickets by Nov. 18.

 

Senior Day — Tuesday, Nov. 27, 10am-5pm

 

Special Senior Day half-off ticket price: $5 for ages 65+. Free coffee and cookies, vendor samples, door prizes, and more. For large groups, call 231.720.2571.

 

THE SANTALAND DIARIES by David Sedaris, Presented by Andrew Zahrt
Friday, Nov. 30 & Saturday, Dec. 1, 6:30pm Cocktail Hour | 7:30pm Performance

 

(ADULT CONTENT: For mature elves only). THE SANTALAND DIARIES is the story of a Macy’s elf during the holiday crunch. At first, the job is simply humiliating, but once the thousands of visitors start pouring through Santa’s workshop, he becomes battle-weary and bitter. When a new Santa is ushered into the workshop, one who seems to care about and love the children who come to see him, our hero experiences an uncharacteristic moment of goodwill, just before his employment runs out. Arranged by Joe Mantello

 

Ticket includes cocktail hour with a complimentary drink and refreshments in the Festival of Trees galleries. $12 adult, $10 MMA Member, $15 at the door.

 

Call 231.720.2580 to order advance tickets.

 

Santa at Festival of Trees
Santa will be at the museum on Family Day and on Saturdays during Festival of Trees:

  • Family Day Friday, Nov. 23, 2–4pm
  • Saturday, Nov. 24, 12–2pm
  • Saturday, Dec. 1, 2–4pm

The Muskegon Museum of Art is located at 296 W. Webster Ave. in downtown Muskegon. Visitor information at www.muskegonartmuseum.org or 231.720.2570. Membership information: 231.720.2571. Museum Store and Event Ticket Sales: 231.720.2580.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the shelf: ‘Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls’ By David Sedaris

Books, Entertainment, Reviews, , , ,

By Lisa Boss, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main Branch

 

I love any writer that can make me laugh — it’s a difficult skill to master, and without it, a writer can’t hold my attention. I recently tried to read a book combining three of my favorite subjects, touted as “hilarious”, but the humor was so poorly written that I could label each remark as to category, and why it fell flat.

 

This made me all the more grateful that David Sedaris is still writing books. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls is wonderful, making me think of him as some sort of wine or cheese,  mellowing out over time, and developing more complex flavors.

 

Great humorists are often philosophers at heart. Surprised and pained by the outrages of life, they offer us a way to carry on. Some, like Sedaris, give vent to our worst thoughts, while also demonstrating restraint in action, which serves for a convoluted moral instruction. Something about his style, combining a self-deprecating narrator, with a wishful homicidal one, rings true. He writes about long lines at the airport, his take on the European healthcare system,  picking up trash along the road…

 

This book is a better, more even read than his previous Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, perhaps because there’s no need to use animals to illustrate human quirks and conceits — we can do that well enough by ourselves.

 

I liked the fact that Sedaris doesn’t try to go after a younger audience per se, he writes about his life now, but also dips back into the past, where his family has always provided plenty of material. And O magazine still calls him, “the funniest man in America”.

#1 NYT Bestselling author David Sedaris to visit Schuler Books on June 5th

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, Upcoming Events, ,

By Whitney Spotts, Schuler Books

Schuler Books welcomes David Sedaris back for his first bookstore tour in years, on Monday, June 5, for the release of one of the most anticipated books of the season, Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002).

The humorist tells all in a book that is, literally, a lifetime in the making.

Sedaris has kept a diary for 40 years. In his diaries, he’s recorded everything that has captured his attention — overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his nest work, and with them he has honed his self-deprecation and learned to craft his cunning, surprising sentences.

Now, for the first time, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world in Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977- 2002. This is the first-person account of how a drug-abusing dropout with a weakness for the International House of Pancakes and a chronic inability to hold down a real job became one of the funniest people on the planet.

Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre, the beautiful, and the uncomfortable, and with a generosity of spirit that even a misanthropic sense of humor can’t fully disguise, Theft By Finding proves that Sedaris is one of our great modern observers.

Ticketing Info

This will be a ticketed event, with tickets available via pre-order of Theft by Finding from www.SchulerBooks.com beginning at 10 am on Monday, May 1st. Pre-sales will end on Sunday, May 28. Ticket sales will resume IN-STORE ONLY at the 28th St. location on Tuesday, May 30th at 9am.

Who:   #1 NYT Bestselling Author DAVID SEDARIS

What:  Talk & Signing

Where:  Schuler Books & Music, 2660 28th St. SE, Grand Rapids 49512

When:  Monday, June 5 @ 7pm

Full event details available at www.SchulerBooks.com.

About the Author

David Sedaris is the author of the books: Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. He lives in England.

Praise for Theft By Finding

“Sedaris fans will thrill to this opportunity to poke around in the writer’s personal diaries, which he has faithfully kept for four decades and used as raw material for his hilarious nonfiction as well as his performances.”―Paul S. Makishima, Boston Globe

“Scintillating… Sedaris is a latter-day Charlie Chaplin: droll, put-upon but not innocent, and besieged by all sorts of obstreperous or menacing folks… Sedaris’s storytelling, even in diary jottings, is so consistently well-crafted and hilarious that few will care whether it’s embroidered.”―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Raw glimpses of the humorist’s personal life as he clambered from starving artist to household name… though the mood is usually light, the book is also a more serious look into his travails as an artist and per- son… A surprisingly poignant portrait of the artist as a young to middle-aged man.”

―Kirkus (starred review)

On the Shelf Book Review: ‘When You Are Engulfed in Flames’, by David Sedaris

Books, Citizen Journalism, Entertainment, , , , ,
when-you-are-engulfed-in-flamesOn the Shelf Book Review
By Lisa Boss, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main

When David Sedaris, the famous humorist, was in Grand Rapids last spring, the Grand Rapids Press reviewer summed up his type of comedy as “NPR funny”— an excellent term, which perfectly describes an addictive style that touches on the poignant absurdity of life.

Along the lines of Woody Allen and James Thurber, with a bit of Jack Benny and Phillip Roth thrown in, Sedaris takes the melancholy and self-absorbed male to new heights. He’s honed an intense, but not mean-spirited voice over the years, and it is quite unique.

With a self-depreciating eye, he looks over topics like his childhood, family life, a checkered career path, being obsessive, being gay, travel, and his long-term relationship with his partner, Hugh, among others. If the topics seem a little mundane, it’s really about what he does with them.

If you haven’t discovered Sedaris yet, try a couple of his more recent works. One of my favorites is Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, which has the small chapter, The End of the Affair, where David and Hugh take in a movie. It becomes clear to Sedaris that watching romantic movies is just plain dangerous, for reasons that may not have ever occurred to you. These four pages alone are worth the price of the book, and of course his works are available in print or audio at the library for free.