Comedian Amy Sedaris dishes out advice on entertaining

Through her winning personality, a boundless well of creativity and a wit as quick as it is twisted, Amy Sedaris has cobbled together a life that grows more interesting by the day.

Monday, when she visited Seattle as part of the tour for her first book, "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" (Warner Books, 304 pages, $27.99), the normally peppy and always unusual comedian was tuckered out -- and in jeans and a cardigan. Usually she wears resplendent retro-hostess dresses, all full skirts and heels. "But I didn't have a steamer -- I didn't know what to wear. And then the buckle on my shoe broke," she said. "You would never see my mom in pants growing up, so this is different for me."

In casual Seattle, she blended right in. Following a segment on KOMO/4's "Northwest Afternoon," Sedaris, 45, had several radio appearances, a to-do at Starbucks, ending the night at Neumo's. After that, time to drive to Portland.

Obviously people hunger for her help. Her book debuts at No. 10 on next Sunday's New York Times' list of non-fiction bestsellers. Buyers are either jonesing for the tips or for Todd Oldham's naughty photo inside the dust cover, which shows Sedaris wearing little more than whipped cream, sprinkles and a smile.

When Sedaris isn't playing world's best last-minute guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman" or zipping through a whirlwind national book tour, she bakes cupcakes to sell at a neighborhood coffee shop, using the funds to care for her beloved rabbit, Dusty. The actor and occasional waitress also markets homemade cheese balls through New York's Gourmet Garage.

She also maintains a plastic meat collection, fashions outfits for her taxidermied squirrel, keeps her relationship with the ghost of her imaginary boyfriend, Ricky, alive and exciting, and relaxes by the fake fireplace in her apartment. She's not quite a renaissance woman; whether she can be accurately categorized is doubtful. Hospitality author will simply have to do. And, yes, she is David Sedaris' sister.

"I Like You" is filled with hysterical true stories that double as examples of dos and don'ts for hosts and guests. (For example, do try to make money off guests by selling photos and items you'd like to rid yourself of for a quarter, and don't gift the host with turtles, bamboo or sunflowers.)

This is in addition to numerous useful tips found in no other entertaining tome, including a how-to on intimate hygiene, tips on what to cook for lumberjacks or rich uncles who drop by for a visit, and how to care for the sick, the grieving, the elderly or the stoned.

Better yet, all the recipes are genuine. Her favorites include Chicken of the Taverns and spanakopita, both learned from her mother, and other recipes from relatives, friends and old cookbooks, which she finds far more useful than newer ones.

Scoring an invite to one of her get-togethers at the small, one-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment of the star of "Strangers With Candy" may become a new status symbol. Good luck with that. Her exclusive guest lists include close pals such as David Rakoff, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and her leisure time is filled.

Anyway, parties are on the back burner for now; it's enough of a task to be the new go-to woman for entertaining tips. Even sidesplitting ones.

P-I: How often do you entertain per year?

Sedaris: I don't entertain as much as I used to. When David, my brother, lived in New York, I entertained more and I had larger affairs. But when he moved, I threw smaller events. Now it's more about what you can do for me. ... And it's been more last-minute.

What was the last "entertaining with useful friends" party that you did, as an example?

When I finished the book, my apartment was a mess. ... So I took everything off the walls, repainted and then had people come over and help me rearrange the artwork, decide what was going to go up and what I was going to put in storage.

All the sets, everything was done in your apartment. If you don't mind my asking, how large is it?

It's only one bedroom. It's not that big. I don't know the square footage. So I had to rotate people. ... I had to decide who was going to work what day. There were cables everywhere, and then I had a rabbit hopping around the apartment, the oven's on 400, and it was summertime. So that's why everything's melting (in the photos). It was tough.

Let's get to the entertaining part. In a way, it has come back in vogue for a lot of people. But why do you think that real entertaining was out for such a long time?

I don't know. I mean, I live in New York, so I think it's for different reasons. People don't have the space or the time, really. It's so easy to just go to a restaurant in New York. For me, I noticed because I came from North Carolina, where there were always events. I was just trying to get across that it's really simple. You don't have to have a whole lot of space, and if you don't cook, that's OK. You could order in and just have a group of people together that doesn't require watching TV or listening to the words in the songs. ...

Everything just seems to be about taking you farther and farther from talking to people. All of those new gadgets. You don't really need them.

But for me, the book was more for the guests, you know. People who entertain and read the book, they already know it all. It's for those people we invite who don't entertain. I think it's important for those to realize what we go through. If you're throwing a party, we all know the dos and don'ts.

I'm not sure about that. The chapter on "Cooking Under the Influence" had a lot of useful tips. There are times when you're sitting there hosting and you say to yourself: "Hmm, that drunk person's stumbling over to my living room corner. What do I do?"

It's so annoying, isn't it? I don't rely on alcohol and drugs to make my parties because a lot of times -- you know, when I say dinner's at 7, it's at 7. I don't have that cocktail hour beforehand. We eat, and then we sit around and talk and craft, or whatever we want to do.

Our parents entertained much more extravagantly than hosts today do. Did the way your mom and dad entertain influence what you do now?

My parents didn't have a big extravagant to-do either. When I think of extravagance, I think of -- remember "Far From Heaven"? Oh! That, to me, is the kind of entertaining I love. Everyone chipped in, she borrowed people's chafing dishes, she had that huge display table with the hams on it. I could watch stuff like that forever. My parents, more like, we had things in the basement. We had a bar down there. ...

When the party was over and it was 3 in the morning, we would all go down there and re-create the party ... imitating them smoking, and making our own drinks out of the ends of adult drinks.

What do you think is your most successful event that you can remember?

Well, like I've said, I like the rush of a last-minute plan. ... So it's always the people who will just say yes, and they'll come over and they'll say, "I brought felt!" Or, "I brought tissue paper." So it's kind of they're bringing the fun. I provide the food and drinks and whatever, and they can provide the activities. Those are the kind of parties I like.

That's interesting -- when people think about parties, they don't think about activities, or if they do, they think of it in terms of a board game or a movie. In a way, it's almost kind of like a party that you would go to when you were a kid or a teenager, where you actually have something to do.

Right. I hate it when you go over to someone's house and they just want to play charades. Again, it takes away from the conversation. I don't like games, I don't like gimmicks, I don't like themes. Anything that you can sit around and continue to have a conversation and it's creative, then I always think those are the most fun. For me, anyway. Because then they always leave the stuff at my apartment. I gain.

And then you can sell it.

Exactly.

Funny, when you look at other party etiquette books, there's never anything in there about selling things.

I like the transaction of that. It's something I learned from Girl Scouts. You have a product to sell, and people want to buy. ... And you'll be happy with it. It's not like I'm giving boring presents. It's usually good.

Anything like that if I just need to get rid of it, and I think that I don't want to throw it out because it's really good, or something I got from someone's gift bag when I'm doing a movie that, you know -- I hate gift bags. That stuff immediately goes on the "for sale" table. I have an iPod that gets to go on my next 25-cent sale table, because I already have one. That'll be a perfect thing to sell.

My God. What does someone have to do to get invited to one of your parties?

I mean, I usually have the same people over and over again. Or I invite a friend of somebody else who I've invited a lot. I wouldn't invite a complete stranger who didn't know anybody else unless I really thought you'd fit in. Even in my clubs, the clubs that I have are really exclusive, you're not allowed to bring anybody, that's rule No. 1. I'm pretty persnickety about that.

What clubs do you have right now?

The Crafty Beavers is still a club that I have. We haven't met in a long time. We have the Creative Daze team for the book. I don't know if that'll end or not, since that was an exclusive for the book. I have a book club. I have a, um, we call ourselves the HIVs because it's two people that I know that were both taking care of people who were sick in the hospital. That was one of those things where they would come over and we'd made stuff for the nurse station. That was a fun club. Again, I don't know if it'll last.

And I have something called the Nitwits, which again is a club that I'm always trying to get out of. We don't do anything but sit around and talk about nothing. Drives me nuts. It's Sarah Jessica and Matthew Broderick and Kristen Johnson.

It's one of those parties where you sit around and you gossip, or somebody will turn the TV on because there's a game, which completely ruins it. I'm always like, "You guys, you don't even know how to have a club. I don't need this club anymore." It was based on knitting because Sarah was knitting something at the time. I said, "Hey, let's start a club like the Nitwits or the Skein Brains!" So then it turned into that but nobody's ever pulled out a needle or anything.

What are three tips for good guest behavior?

Show up on time or 15 minutes late. If you said you're going to bring something, bring it. And third, come in full spirit. "You don't want to walk in the door complaining, or you don't want to walk in the door saying, "Oh I've got to show you this really quick." Anything that's going to take the hostess out of circulation is a bad idea. A good guest will just come, and if I hired you because I know you're funny and outgoing, then you were probably cast for a reason. Hopefully you'll bring that energy to the party.

You cast parties, huh?

You have to, you know what I mean? It has to be perfect. You think, this woman will be perfect. She's single, she's attractive, I've got a lot of straight and single guys here -- that girl will be perfect to invite. I have a girl like that. She's a perfect little tool for any party. She's fun, she's cute, she's single and guys like that.

Lastly, if you could invite the perfect party guest from anywhere -- even throughout time -- who would it be?

I always say Juliette Low, who founded the Girl Scouts, only because I was a Girl Scout up to my senior year of high school. ... I would just like to tell her that it was a good idea and it's still going on. She's someone I'd really like to talk to. Just the two of us. A little lunch, me and Juliette Low.

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