Last weekend we saw British comedian Eddie Izzard perform downtown. This was just the 4th stop on his 34 city tour of the US – the largest tour of his career. Eddie’s mostly known now for his role on the FX series The Riches, but he was first and foremost a touring comedian before landing television and film roles. D and I first were introduced to him with HBO’s showing of his 1998 tour “Dressed to Kill”. He no longer performs in drag (at least not this tour – he wore jeans and a tux coat with tails), but his comedy is as spot on as ever.
Eddie started the show by telling us he’d be talking about everything that’s ever happened…ever. Turns out, he wasn’t far off. Eddie started out with bits about his #1 source of information…wikipedia (“which is all written by three guys on toilets”), how we’re all a bunch of lairs for checking “yes” to having read software terms and conditions, and how Bill Gates gives away billions…but he keeps Billions. From there, he went way back to the creation of the Earth, God’s shitty track record, the 150 million years of monsters, paleontologists vs. geologists, playing Scrabble before language, hunting Bison and the beginning of the stone age, hunters vs. the gatherers, the weather report in Ancient Egypt (“let’s see tomorrow…eye, eye, feet, mostly and over here, wolf’s head, eye, man pointing sideways, eye, feet, eye…”), Noah’s challenges with loading the arc, Moses and toad-blindness, then quickly through the Greeks and Romans, and on up to landing on the moon. Yeah, Eddie covered A LOT of ground. He picked on Christianity throughout (“Why would our Creator choose to live in the cold, damp clouds?”) and the crowd didn’t seem to mind a bit. The highlight for me was his routine about monsters going to church (I won’t ruin it for those that will see it eventually).
This show will keep me laughing for months. Can’t wait till he makes a DVD of it.
Tags: concerts
