Get Lit! ends with Alexie stand-up comedy, emotion

Sherman Alexie closed out the ninth Get Lit! by charming a packed house Sunday afternoon at the Bing Crosby Theater.

Alexie, whose appearances are often more theater and stand-up comedy than they are literary readings, entertained the crowd for a full 40 minutes before he read the first chapter of his new novel, “Flight.”

Introduced by Jess Walter, who made fun of Alexie’s basketball skills, Alexie riffed on a number of topics similar to those he touched on when he appeared at Gonzaga University in late January. And he found some new areas to explore.

He railed against experienced air travelers who don’t untie their shoes until the last moment before heading into the security. Against people who wear those plastic shows called Crocs : “They’re gardening shows, people!”

He talked about holding hands across the aisle with an attractive woman who was crying because there was so much turbulence and then being ashamed of having shown such emotion. “It would have been so much easier if we’d had sex in the bathroom,” he said. “Sharing fluids is one thing, but sharing fears is something else.”

Referring to his “ambiguous ethnicity,” which often has caused him to be searched at airports, he said, “I’m a Native American. I’m not going to terrorize you. I may, though, give you a handful of poker chips.”

Why don’t Indians make good suicide bombers? he asked. “To be a suicide bomber,” he said, “you have to have a notion of the apocalypse in your theology. And No. 2, suicide bombing involves being on time.”

He talked about hearing a couple in a hotel room having sex and how he stood at the Crosby’s curtain, miming his listening at the door. “Now, I haven’t had that many partners, which is unusual for a Spokane Indian,” he said. “But it’s just right for a Coeur d’Alene.”

“Being liberal in Spokane is like being Barry Goldwater in Seattle,” he said.

He got serious when he referred to the shootings at Virginia Tech, throwing his wrath at the broadcasting “talking heads” – both liberal and conservative – who talked about the incident in terms of their pet interests instead of dealing with the issue of someone having created the killer.

He quoted from the film “Manhunter,” Michael Mann’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel “Red Dragon.” He quoted the character of FBI profiler Will Graham, who was telling his boss, Jack Crawford, about the pain that the serial killer had gone through as a boy.

“Have you gone soft on me?” Crawford asks. “The man should be put down,” Graham says. “But I weep for the boy.”

And then Alexie read from his book, which tells the story of a 15-year-old Indian boy nicknamed “Zits” who is filled with toxic shame.

During the Q&A, he talked about meeting Bill Clinton, about using Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s bathroom, about loving his iPod “in a way that is probably completely inappropriate. And he told about the young Indian boy who, years ago, who came up to him in the Spokane Airport.

“You’re that Indian poet,” the boy said.

Alexie agreed.

“My mom doesn’t like you,” the boy said. “But I like some of your poems.”

With that, Alexie said, the boy ran away.

And as the applause swept through the room, Get Lit! 2007 was over.