Courtesy David Sedaris will bust out some new material, sans the green velvet costume, when he performs at the Majestic Theatre.

Fans of David Sedaris, the wry commentator whose accounts of his own foibles and his family's quirkiness are a mainstay on National Public Radio and the bestseller lists, might want to go hear the humorist live when he's in San Antonio next week.

But Sedaris, for one, doesn't know why.

“I don't know,” he said, when asked why folks should see his show. “It just gets them out of the house.”
When Sedaris — who calls himself a “typist” not a writer — walks out on stage, he said, his first thought is “What are you doing here?”

He's not asking it of himself, but of the audience. “I don't understand it,” he said. “I don't mean I don't give a f**k about being here, so why should you. I very much give a f**k about being there. I'm just surprised about them being there.”

And yet, there they are.

Since bursting on the scene with the “Santaland Diaries,” a chronicling of his time spent as Crumpet the holiday elf at Macy's — in which, crazed Santa-fans threaten to have him fired, and he thinks “Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn't get any worse than this” — Sedaris has crafted a niche for himself as a writer/comic who can pack a house. He's performed on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” several of his books of commentary have been bestsellers, and his recordings of his work have earned him two Grammy nominations.

At Sedaris' San Antonio show, he'll be trying out some new material, some of which is slated for his June 2008 book, “Indefinite Leave to Remain.”
 
He'll be on stage at the Majestic Theatre, a fancy setting that he hopes doesn't freak out fans. “I think of it like Carnegie Hall,” he said. “You always hear that you have to work and scrape to get to Carnegie Hall. But the thing is you can really probably rent it out for a Bar Mitzvah.”

Jennifer Roolf Laster | 210SA