So far, my book tour for Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom has included reunions with old friends, a podcast interview in a garage, and the opportunity to sign a hot girl's boobs. Come with me on my voyage, won't you? I've got pictures!
Book signings are fun because you get to meet people who've only interacted with your work on the page or on the computer screen before. I also enjoy coming up with innovative ways to sign the copies that the bookstores offer to folks who couldn't make it to the reading.
My right hand sometimes gets a little tired from signing, but that's a good thing, right?
So after a jaunt to my home county in NJ, my first real on-the-road book tour stop was at Book Soup in delightful West Hollywood, California. I spent part of my three-night stay at the house where I always hang out. It happens to be located right next door to a monastery!
But my publishing company put me up at a fancypants hotel for one night. It looks like the sort of place where European people do cocaine immediately after donning tight pleather pants. In fact, I think it is definitely one of those types of places, because it features room decor like what you see below.
I went to Marc Maron's house and did his podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, in his garage out back. I'm pretty sure it's overall the most popular comedy podcast on iTunes and therefore The World (TM), and this terrifies me because Marc really got inside my head and walked around, and now many people will hear it. I mean, I invited him into my head because I forgot to lock the gate, and he's so damn good as an interviewer that you just end up letting your guard down and telling him all sorts of inappropriate things, like how maybe your parents had some issues they needed to work out when they were younger, so you sort of grew up along with them. His show is always deep and kind of sad/funny all at once, and afterwards my friend Rebecca (who owns a comedy club and who was also out in LA visiting) said, "What did you expect? Have you ever listened to any episode?" She's right.
Anyway, I will tell you when the show is up (the current episode features Diablo Cody) and hopefully I won't sound like an asshole or a dummy on it. Marc should be a therapist or a shaman or a wizard or a warlock if he gets tired of being a famous comedian.
In LA, my awesome friend Rob Delaney (plus my friends Sarah Thyre and Kevin Avery, who also are awesome) talked at my book signing before I did a reading. He is kind and good and smart, and if you don't follow him on the Twitterz, you are missing out on some actual comedic genius.
The morning after my LA reading, I flew to Boston, and did a reading at Brookline Booksmith that night. It's a legendary bookstore where they also sell matzoh ties and accoutrements, as evidenced below.
Then the morning after my Boston reading, I went to my beloved Asheville, North Carolina, a place where I am thinking about moving again in order to change the direction of my life (if I don't move to Los Angeles in order to further my life's current direction -- more on that in a future post, because I need your advice) and stopped by my favorite bookstore in the entire world, Malaprop's. Which is where the greatest thing ever happened.
A fan had me sign her boobs! BOOBS! As you will note, she is very pretty. I felt like I was in a rock and roll band in the 1970s! Which also probably would have involved cocaine! (I did not do any cocaine on this trip. I have never done cocaine. I like my septum too much.)
Later, I saw her out of the corner of my eye at a bar, but I did not go over and say hi because I felt like that would have been off-putting. Then I thought about it later and was like, "She has SARA BENINCASA written on her tits in Sharpie. It obviously would have been fine if I went over to her and her friends and said hello. Duh." But I didn't because I wasn't sure what the etiquette was in that situation. It is something Emily Post never addressed.
So now I'm in North Carolina, eating grits and planning on throwing down some scrambled egg whites made from the unbabies of the chickens that live in my friend's backyard. I'm doing some more dates on this book tour in Chapel Hill, Brooklyn, Houston, Austin, Portland and Denver, so you should definitely come out and say hi. I will sign your boobs, if you want! And I am available to sign other body parts, like your face or the top of your bum. Ask and ye shall (probably) receive!
