• David Sedaris on the trials and tribulations of business class.

• Jossip's Rebecca Aronauer talks to a journalist who lived to tell about Iraq.

• Queen Latifah again denies she's a lesbian, destroys our wedding dreams.

CONTINUED »

If you're looking for some afternoon reading (besides us, of course), surf on over to The New Yorker, where David Sedaris (pictured), one of our top lit-crushes, has a piece.

Filled with his typical self-aware wit, it recalls his experience as a semi-lingual French Speaker who combats a poor vocabulary by saying D'accord, which translates to 'okay', to everyone and everything. So, where does it get him?

Here's a sample:

It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. Suicide comes up, but, just as you embrace it as a viable option, you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain.

We've ended up nearly nude before strangers more than once, but rarely does suicide cross our minds. That usually comes after we leave.

Princeton students graduating this year can look forward to gay author David Sedaris speaking at their commencement. We hope he tells some funny stories about anal sex for the benefit of all the Ivy League parents, but he might just stick to non-sexual poop-related stories. He is currently testing out parts of his speech on a speaking tour, where he is hawking his not-really-new-anymore book Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim.

We agree with David's assessment that reading excerpts from your own writing is "the laziest form of entertainment there is," but he is a funny guy beloved by the gays, so go see him when he comes to your city if you need a good chuckle.

Sedaris tries out Ivy-League material at Powell [STLtoday]
David Sedaris 2006 Tour Schedule [Official Site]

All that clubbing can leave one feeling oh-so-shallow (well sometimes), thus, we turn our attention to that most high brow of pursuits: literature. Gays and Lesbians have always been high on the list when it comes to top authors, and this year's no different.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil scribe John Berendt is back celebrating another city full of eccentrics (this time Venice) with The City of Falling Angels. Granted, there's no fabulous Lady Chablis, but it's still a must-read.

David Rakoff has a hysterical book out of short stories, Don't Get too Comfortable, in which he subjects himself to misery upon misery. Kinda like the withdrawal we all felt when Sex in the City was taken from us last year. Rakoff is slowly proving himself to more than just David Sedaris' best friend with a writing style that's just as funny, but all his own. And of course Sedaris' Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is now available in paperback for you cheap bitches.

In the short story realm, we've just discovered Freshyarn, which features stories and essays from book, film, and TV writers that are usually hysterical and poignant. We love Six Feet Under writer Jill Soloway's essay Diamonds, wherein she asks what exactly are these straight women doing to get these huge rocks on their hands, but it's Jason Micallef's twisted tale of his bisexual grade school bus driver that had us spitting up our latte all over our new monitor.