Slog - Comments on Smoked Out

Comment by David Schmader

David Schmader — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:20:23 -0800

Whoa. This is major. I was working at Bailey/Coy when he did his first two smoke-filled readings there, and the way he asked if he could please please please smoke made it impossible to say no. (I also got the sense cigarettes diverted him from becoming a semi-functional pile of tics.)

Comment by Robin Sparkles

Robin Sparkles — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:27:47 -0800

I hate the smell too. If cigarettes smelled like pot, I wouldn't care where they were smoked.

Comment by LMSW

LMSW — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:29:21 -0800

Yeah, before he smoked didn't he bang his nose repeatedly against the car window?

Comment by Cato the Younger Younger

Cato the Younger Younger — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:35:35 -0800

Is David Sedaris well hung?

Comment by Fifty-Two-Eighty

Fifty-Two-Eighty — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:37:44 -0800

That's nice. (Now, excuse me while I light a cigarette.)

Comment by Mike in MO

Mike in MO — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:50:09 -0800

I'm almost 6 months tobacco free. I just want to brag!

Comment by Queen Vidor

Queen Vidor — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:51:38 -0800

I was very surprised by the New Yorker article as well. When asked why he moved to France, his response was, "For the smoking."

Comment by I Got Nuthin'

I Got Nuthin' — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:53:02 -0800

I always laugh to myself when I hear of smokers who have contracted cancer.

Comment by daniel

daniel — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:57:58 -0800

When I saw him at Bailey Coy he brought his own ashtray.

Comment by Fnarf

Fnarf — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:14:22 -0800

France is enacting smoking bans too. Someday the only place you'll be able to smoke in bars is Uzbekistan, and no one wants to live there.

Comment by It's Mark Mitchell

It's Mark Mitchell — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:14:32 -0800

I quit just over a year ago after thirty years of smoking pleasure. It was the rather serious case of pneumonia that I smoked all the way through that got me to stop.

I'm slow, but I get it eventually.

Comment by Johnny

Johnny — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:17:24 -0800

As a child I begged and pleaded with my mother to quit smoking. Now she has COPD. The interesting thing is that she says alchohol is just as bad and that alcohol companies should be sued the way cigarette manufacturers have been. She doesn't understand that the alcohol industry has never claimed that their products won't make you drunk. They have never claimed that alcoholics don't exist. What the cigarette industry did, however, was hide all the research that showed that cigarettes were addictive and could cause health problems.

Comment by bucket

bucket — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:24:51 -0800

Looks like you and I have something in common, Dan. Yes, it was my parent's nasty habit that put me at a distance from them growing up. They both still smoke at the table. When I visit them (once every other year) I have to open the bedroom windows and block the under-door-draft with a rolled-up towel. Regardless, I wake with a sore throat.
I beg and plead with them, trying to get them to quit. My mother told me that she would quit smoking "when you start dating girls." I guess I should go out and buy them both a carton.
My brother, I think, has quit smoking. He used to chew tobacco - the site of someone doing that brings bile to the top of my throat. I told him "you'll put that shit in your mouth but you won't put a cock in there?" Hearing this, my mother would glare at me.

Kudos to David - I wonder if his tics will come back?

Comment by unarata

unarata — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:40:13 -0800

what a fucking quitter.

Comment by w7ngman

w7ngman — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:04:38 -0800

Minor point: the smell *is* the smoke.

Comment by Dougsf

Dougsf — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:20:04 -0800

#15 - totally correct. If you can smell it, you're inhaling some level of its particulate. I smoked heavily for about 10+ years, my father smoked as well, but was banished to the basement with his smokeless ashtrays.

A few years ago I finally figured out I have asthma as well. Haven't touched one since I that day.

Comment by JenK

JenK — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:26:50 -0800

Me too, Dan ... I remember the nurses telling me "Well, if your dad quit smoking you wouldn't need allergy shots." Yeah, way to encourage closeness with the parent - remind the allergic 10 / 11-year old that she's getting a shot each week for 18 months because of her father.

I was 12 when another Girl Scout asked if I wanted to try smoking because it's cool. Poor kid. "My DAD does that!" I shouted with all the disdain a 12-yr-old can muster. "How can something my DAD does be cool?"

I've progressed to exercise-induced asthma now: using my inhaler beforehand makes walking upstairs or uphill a breeze; without I'm gasping like a fish out of water. Once a smoker reminded me on the stairs that if I lost weight I wouldn't get so winded. Right.

@2 wrote: If cigarettes smelled like pot, I wouldn't care where they were smoked.

Both make me nauseous, but pot more so.

Comment by JenK

JenK — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:30:17 -0800

I can't do incense, either ... I quit going to St Mark's annual start-of-Advent service because of it.

Comment by MrEdCT

MrEdCT — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:45:16 -0800

I am approaching 16 years smoke free; I washed shocked when I realized, at 30, that I had smoked for 14 years. At pne point all my parents, one brother, two sisters (only one sister did not), smoked. We all have quit!

David Sedaris did not smoke while he performed when I saw him at Woolsey Hall at Yale, or the Shubert THeater in New Haven.

Comment by Reverse Polarity

Reverse Polarity — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:56:08 -0800

When I was a little boy in the 1960s, I vaguely remember hearing about cancer in grade school. I didn't really understand it, but I knew my mother smoked, and I thought she was going to die. Like, within weeks. I was terrified. I cried for weeks. Mom was mortified by my admittedly hysterical reaction, and quit in overwhelming guilt.

Yes, it was a ridiculous childhood drama/trauma. But it worked. My mother is still alive and cancer free, now in her 70s.

I've always despised that picture if Sedaris, even if I thought he was pretty funny. I'm glad he quit.

Comment by Take that fatty

Take that fatty — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:43:06 -0800

@8 - I hope you die of colon cancer, heart disease or diabetes, because I bet your a big fat fuck whose only addiction is eating.

Comment by Lucky Pierre

Lucky Pierre — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:45:11 -0800

Holy smoke!

Comment by lucky strike means fine tobacco

lucky strike means fine tobacco — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:52:52 -0800

My dad always smoked, but my mother wouldn't let him smoke in the house, and that was that. In the winter, he'd go smoke in his car after dinner.

Comment by UNPAID BLOGGER

UNPAID BLOGGER — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:07:09 -0800

He's absolutely right you know- To call it "quitting" is to link the act of nicotine cessation to a word that is inherently negative. "Broke free" is a better description, this coming from someone who has been fighting smoking for years... people who've never smoked don't realize just what it does to someone's brain chemistry; People start smoking as teens not knowing any better, then when you try to stop it feels like a vital piece of your well being has been taken away and all you need to do to get it back is to light up.

Oh, and #8? You are an apathetic piece of shit.

Comment by unPC

unPC — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:23:17 -0800

How about "I've decided to let the nicotine receptors in my brain shrivel up and die. They aren't really me, and they just grew there because the tobacco a/k/a nicotine addiciton companies figured out how to make me smoke, and their smoke included nicotine, which is drug that changes my brain and makes it grow nicotine receptors everywhere. They're kind of like salesmen for the tobacco a/k/a/ nictoine addiciton companies because all day long they sream for more nicotine and made me sick if I didn't get any. So I am tired of being sick with nicotine addiction. I am going to stop and I am going to kill off those nicotine receptors. They're working for the nicotine addiction companies -- they are not working for me."

That's how I did it. Then you wait ten years and only then you have the same lung cancer risk as someone who didnt' smoke.
OR so they told me about 14 years ago.

Good luck to Sedaris on the next years!

Comment by Leyland

Leyland — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:05:42 -0800

Sucking cigs has a connection to sucking cock.

Fussy experts wonder why gay men smoke - lets tell them.

I do not smoke, have no problems with smoke or smokers, love the smell of pipe smoking, a mechanic is greasy coveralls and who smokes is a delicious combo suck off.

Some of the anti smokers have found a new compulsion to blame the world's ills on ... very American middle class.

Adults do have a right to vices.

Comment by ellarosa

ellarosa — Sat, 03 May 2008 12:08:40 -0800

the sign of a hard-core smoker is someone who smokes while eating. i always marvel at that ability. *shiver*

Comment by Sondari

Sondari — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:30:11 -0800

Hooray for #20! I had exactly the same experience with my mother, a three-pack-a-day person, and she too is still alive and still blasting Eric Clapton in her Lexus as she barrels down the highway at 75 years old. Go, Mom!!

Comment by Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Smoke 'em if you got 'em — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:22:00 -0800

All these comments - what a convenient (cough, cough) "smokescreen" for the most important fact : Sedaris is a ludicrously overrated, hit-and-miss at best writer. I hold him more or less personally responsible for the unpleasasnt glut of "Let me tell you all about me, and (what I consider to be) my oh-so-interesting life" (cough, cough) "writers" around today.

But then again, now that I think about it - maybethe kind of people that think his smoking habits are worthy of discussion are getting just what they need from him.

Comment by Jim

Jim — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:53:51 -0800

That picture is glamorous? I seriously thought it was some sort of freak show picture where he was expelling smoke from his eye ducts.

Also, if you don't like Sedaris writing about himself, you should actively avoid his fiction. His personally oriented essays are funny. His fiction makes you want to break his fingers so that he can't write any more of it.