I didn't care much for the overtly fictional essays (or dog poetry) in this collection, but the autobiographical stuff (even if it's not 100% true!) is pretty great. Classic Sedaris stuff. Of course the colonoscopy one was hilarious, and the bit about Costco... omg, I was crying. 
 But what surprised me here were the moments of thoughtfulness and nostalgia. One of my favorites was from the essay about meeting a stranger in the "bar car" of a train, and remembering a man with whom he briefly traveled when he was young, and how he wished he'd been a little more daring, taken a chance. 
 Bashir got off with his three big suitcases and became a perennial lump in my throat, one that rises whenever I hear the word "Lebanon" or see its jittery outline on the evening news. Is that where you went back to? I wonder. Do I ever cross your mind? Are you even still alive? 
 Given the short amount of time we spent together, it's silly how often, and how tenderly, I think of him. [...] When you're young it's easy to believe that such an opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one. Instead of a Lebanese guy in Italy it might be a Nigerian one in Belgium, or maybe a Pole in Turkey. You tell yourself if you traveled alone to Europe this summer you could surely do the same thing next year, and the year after that. Of course you don't, though, and the next thing you know you're an aging, unemployed elf so desperate for love you spend your evening mooning over a straight alcoholic. 
 I'm looking forward to more of that side of Sedaris, as the next books come along. More like this is always good, too: 
 An American dentist would have referred me to an orthodontist, but, to Dr. Barras, I was just being hysterical. "You have what we in France call 'good time teeth,'" she said. "Why on earth would you want to change them?" 
 "Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?" 
 "Hey," she said, "enough with the flossing. You have better ways to spend your evenings." 
 I guess that's where the good times come in.