- Sarah Vowell! She so leeeetle! (Photo by Jerry Becker.)
Sarah Vowell is fifty flavors of short, wry awesome: this fact is proved by science; religion; NPR; The NYT Best Seller list; Laws of Irony; and the bajillion or so Vowell-worshipers who packed themselves into the sold-out Town Hall last night to moon, fawn, and beam their laser-like adulation at the prolific author and This American Life star (and voice of “Violet” from The Incredibles!!) in the flesh.
She read from her newest book, Unfamiliar Fishes, which is about Hawaii, and missionaries, and American imperialism. (But mostly Hawaii.) In three minutes flat she drew astonishing parallels between the dubious imprisonment of Queen Liliuokani, American forces dragging filthy, beardy Saddam Hussein out of his hidey hole in Iraq a hundred years later, Puritans, FDR, and odd food combinations.
It doesn’t strain the brain to correctly imagine the crowd at a Vowell reading: liberal, thinky Jon-Stewart-watchers, Old Grandpa Backyard Farmer men and their Old Gramma Backyard Farmer wives (both in work flannel and with nicely developed gray beards), coiffed Dance Major-looking creatures in fussy scarves with their Asian boyfriends (with FLAWLESS eyeglasses, I might add), middle aged ladies with Maroon Sunset dye jobs who are obviously gallery owners, sun-starved intellectuals, homos: all gathered to share the warm and singular pleasure of basking in the presence of an extraordinary woman.
More after the jump…
Firstly: Sarah read from Chapter One, in which she pretty much boiled down the miscegenetic history and character of that most Pele-rich, poy-ridden, and-lava-covered of “American” States to two ironic and incongruous elements—soy sauce and mayonnaise. Paraphrased wildly for brevity: Sarah is contemplating her basic Hawaiian “plate lunch” under the shade of a banyan tree. On the lunch plate sits two soy-drenched lumps of Japanese rice, a down-home, church-picnicy square of chunky macaroni salad, and some teriyaki chicken on a stick (or similar). And what do all of these things—the freakish tree, the peculiar lunch combo, and Sarah Vowell—all have in common? Not one of these things is even remotely Hawaiian. And the real-and-fer-true reason of how they all came to be there can be surprising, fascinating, and bitterly horrible. (Poor Queen Liliuokani!)
Secondly: People asked her stoopid questions. This was the highlight of the event*. A crowd-working expert of unparalleled skill, she skewered every stoopid, stoopid question (yes, all of the questions were stoopid) with a cool panache that was droll, wry, and just plain dry. Also, hilarious.
Stoopid Guy #1: “What parallels do you see between the US’s annexation of Hawaii and China’s occupation of Tibet?”
Sarah Vowell: “That’s what we Art History Majors call a “compare and contrast.” (Obvious subtext, “The GODDAMN BOOK IS ABOUT HAWAII: Please to knock-off your silly hippie bullshit .”) Big laughs.
Stoopid Guy #2: “With your unique approach to didacticism, blah blah blah…”
Sarah Vowell: “Did you really just say, “My unique approach to didacticism?” (Obvious subtext, “Did you really just try to out-brain Sarah Vowell with your godddamn toilet-paper-dictionary-word-o’-the-day, Mr. Man? Honestly?”) Big laughs.
Stoopid Girl #1: “What is you favorite website?”
Sarah Vowell: “www.Myaveragelife.com…Good! There have been a lot of strike-outs in this Q & A!”
Indeed. Brilliant, wonderful strike-outs.
(*Note: I lied, the highlight of the event was when the introducer lady who introduced Sarah Vowell last night promised us that Sarah would be touching upon “key moments” in Hawaii’s surprisingly weird and twisted path to American statehood, but she was nervous, her inflections got all weird, and I swear to God what she said was, “Sarah will be exploring CHEMO MINTS”—as in, “Breath smell like terminal cancer? Try new CHEMO MINTS!” Bwahahahaha! Okay, maybe it’s just me.)
You mean “coiffed”.
At least I don’t have to say it.
But, still, is that the first thing everyone notices about the article?
His name is Jon Stewart
“Liliuokalani”
Liliʻuokalani was the name of the imprisoned Queen.
POI DAMMIT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poi_%28food…
Queen Liliuokalani is certainly a tragic figure and the overthrow/annexation/statehood will be an everlasting point of discussion, debate, speculation, anger, etc. but other Hawaiian royals probably had a larger impact and lasting effect on Hawai’i past, present and future.
For instance, Kuhio day just happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_K%C5%…
And how about that Bishop Estate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernice_Pau…
I think the longer review said the book mentioned the end of Kapu (in a weird way):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ai_Noa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keopuolani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka%27ahuman…
I think a previous review of Vowell’s book mentioned some of them, but the longer review of her book made it sound like the style is armchair mainland haole speculation about plate lunch and the history of Hawai’i, which I’ve heard (and generated) way too much… it gets old and masturbatory. Now I’m more curious since she sounds like an interesting person. Or I could just read Mark Twain instead.
I will consider myself really lucky if I ever get to sit next to you on a plane, Mr. Ryan. I have a feeling you would be very entertaining. You, however, may not be similarly impressed.
“With their Asian boyfriends”? Ew, what the fuck? You think that sounds clever or something, asshole?
My favorite stoopid question came from the last guy who asked her about some obscure argument from some obscure book that she hadn’t read. I think people were trying really hard to prove they were smart, and… yeah. It didn’t work. It just made her Seattle fans look dumb.
@7 I sat next to Mr. Ryan during Ms. Vowell’s appearance. And, yes, he was entertaining and great company. 🙂 Dinner at Tavern Law afterward was even better. Oh, and next time, I’ll loan him a spellchecker before he hits “publish” on a SLOG post.
Thanks for writing this up, Adrian. I missed getting to Dan’s Town Hall thing tonight, so at least nice to hear what’s been up there recently – shit, I haven’t been since Margaret Atwood, and that was aaaaages ago…
Sarah Vowell = Sarah Silverman for prudes.
I tried to go, but I was an idiot and did not buy tickets in advance. I was hoping maybe it was a dismal failure and I hadn’t missed anything. Now I’m gonna go cry.
@10 Now I’m jealous….
Oh, gus, I’m sorry you weren’t able to go 🙁
Hope your friend is okay…
“I think people were trying really hard to prove they were smart, and… yeah. It didn’t work.”
Isn’t this basically Seattle in a nutshell anyway?
I love Sarah Vowell’s history books (haven’t got the new one yet) but I’d say my favorite would still have to be “Take the Canolli,” I wish she’d do another one like that sometime too.
You know where there were some really smart questions- downstairs at the Quantum Physics talk. 🙂
But really, there were some people at our lecture bringing up obscure papers to try to impress the scientist. Luckily our guy seemed as deft at deflecting these poseurs as your gal upstairs. Great night at Town Hall it seems.
Aw hell, Canuck, she is, but try telling her that…some of the nicest people can be such crappy patients. Thanks for asking after her.
@17 I had to come up with a new question on the spot after he mentioned in his answer to the previous question that things become un-entangled once they’re measured (which I did not know). But yeah, after the third entanglement pun from a questioner I was about ready to hurl my chair at the mic stand.
She was indeed brilliant, and all the questions were stupid. I wish I could have helped but all I would have asked her was “want to get a drink at a gay bar after this?”
Truer words, gus, truer words….I’ve experienced that once or twice, myself.
Alas, your Michael K debut will have to wait… 🙁
she can work a crowd, obvious from the daily show last week, but that book is getting terrible reviews from people with valued opinions
aka not you
@19 Ha! I thought I recognized someone.
What I got annoyed by were the people who asked his opinion on something not really related to the topic- like that kid who brought up the Israeli experiment, unnecessary. There was plenty to tease out from the doctor’s lecture without going on so many tangents.
I want to know how to send info into the past.
@23 Hell yeah. I bought the book and am definitely, definitely looking forward to that chapter. And now I’m wondering if there would be a way to make FTL communication work by creating a whole mess of entangled particle pairs, separating the pairs and putting them each in a box, having an inactivated sensor attached to the sender box and a passive sensor attached to the receiver box. Then you’d turn the inactivated sensor on the sender box off and on in Morse code, so that over at the receive box the passive sensor would see particles “resolving themselves out of quantum flux” or what have you, randomly like he said and not carrying any information… but the information would be in the rate at which particles we’re resolving.
If only I had thought of this Monday night! I’m sure he could find a big hole in my idea, but now I’m going to have to read the book first to try and find it.
So is warp drive possible or not?
Only if you have a very vivid imagination.
But I’ll bet you do.