Eddie Izzard

Ten years ago, at a New Year's Eve party (yes, that New Year's Eve party), I watched about a half hour of Eddie Izzard's Dressed to Kill comedy special on HBO.

I was completely enamored.

His blend of absurd and surreal story-telling and editorializing was the funniest thing I'd seen in a good long well. So I found out what it was and scoured HBO looking for show-times, which I could never find. Ultimately, I was able to buy a crappy VHS tape of the show off eBay, and it jittered and sputtered, but the humor was intact.

I finally ended up with a copy of the DVD a few years ago, and it has been through many viewings in the ol' DVD player. My friends have all seen it, and we frequently make references to it: "Fuh-lag", or "Hookah, hookah, hookah... lobster" or "Cake or death?" or "Ciao"... etc...

So Saturday we went to see Mr. Izzard at the Fox for a stop on his "Stripped Too: The Big Intimacy" tour. It started around 8:15 and wrapped up at around a quarter to 11, with about a twenty-five minute intermission in the middle. He started with how Apples are better than PC's, went straight into how there is no god.

A man after my own heart, in other words.

From there the jokes just got weirder and weirder, culminating with Buzz Aldren on the moon where he met God, a giant squid, the squirrel that survived Noah's Ark (after the lions and tigers ate the rest), and a jazz quartet consisting of a chicken, a donkey, a frog, and a Persian cat, managed by a velocirapter.

Highlights included the aforementioned "Jazz chicken", "Charles Darwin's Great Expectations, about an amoeba named Pip", a whole bit on velociraptors, how to sing opera, and perhaps the best line of the show: "Go amuse yourself with sponges."

Good times,

]{p