David Sedaris fans, this is a quick one for you.  Here, Sedaris reads from his newish book, When You are Engulfed in Flames. The sto­ry is called “Of Mice and Men” (his sto­ry, not Stein­beck­’s), and you can lis­ten to it here or via iTunes.

And just for good mea­sure, I’m throw­ing in a pret­ty good Sedaris imper­son­ation. Call it “David Sedaris Deliv­ers a Piz­za.”

A fun­ny lit­tle piece from The Onion. Thanks to JB for send­ing this along. Keep send­ing us good items @openculture on Twit­ter, or via email at ma**@oc******.com

Woody Allen has a new com­ic piece in The New York­er that weaves togeth­er lob­sters, exis­ten­tial­ism and Bernie Mad­off. It starts:

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was rein­car­nat­ed as a lob­ster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Man­hat­tan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restau­rant. In the tank there were sev­er­al oth­er lob­sters, one of whom rec­og­nized him. “Abe, is that you?” the crea­ture asked, his anten­nae perk­ing up “Who’s that? Who’s talk­ing to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mys­ti­cal slam-bang post­mortem that had trans­mo­gri­fied him into a crus­tacean. “It’s me, Moe Sil­ver­man,” the oth­er lob­ster said. “O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, rec­og­niz­ing the voice of an old gin-rum­my col­league. “What’s going on?” “We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a cou­ple of two-pounders.”.

Get the rest of the joke here.