Cake or Death

This weekend I went to go see Eddie Izzard’s new show “Stripped”. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the name, he is a British comedian and one of my favorites. If you aren’t familiar with his stand-up, you may be familiar with his recent film and television work. He has had a recurring role in the Ocean’s 12 and 13 movies, and he just wrapped his second season on The Riches which shows on FX.

If you are familiar with his stand-up, then you realize the strange and wondrous diversity between his stage and film work. In short Eddie is a transvestite, however; not just any man that likes to occasionally dress as a woman. In his own words he is an “executive transvestite.” In my own unfunny retelling, it means he likes to do normal guy stuff just with fantastic make-up.

Anyway, he was playing this weekend at the Palms. I bought my ticket several months ago so I had forgotten where my seat was located. I was delighted to find that not only did I have a floor seat; I was in the third row. Yay!!! I was so excited. My friend Jeff was in town with his family and they also had tickets to the show. I sent him a text from my seat and gloated over my good fortune. He responded by saying they were one row away from the back wall (hee hee).

The routine was great. Eddie’s preferred method of comedy is sort of a weird conversation with miming. He gives the impression that he is still working on the material when he pretends to make notes on his hand about jokes that fall flat with the audience. It’s a crazy stream of consciousness that can be a little hard to follow. You often think that he has gone off on some random tangent only to have him bring it back to his point. His comedy is a weird blend of anticipated audience ignorance and intelligence. Clearly, Eddie is well read and super smart. There are times when he expects people to get the reference and times when he knows that no one gets the reference. He is fascinated with world history and religion as well as pop culture and his comedy reflects that.

Some of his funniest work in my opinion is in the show “Dressed to Kill.” It is his most celebrated show to date and he won 2 Emmy’s for writing and performance. For more information I would recommend his web site as well as his Wikipedia page.

After the show, I bought some Eddie swag as well. I ended up with a Program and a coffee mug. I love the mug! It says “Cake or Death” on it. This is a bit from “Dressed to Kill” about if the Church of England ran the Inquisition. Very funny stuff.

Ok, new Top 5 List. Top 5 Favorite Eddie Izzard comedy bits:

1. Deathstar Canteen (Circle)
2. Engelbert Humperdinck (Dressed to Kill)
3. Do you have a flag? (Dressed to Kill)
4. Jesus and the Dinosaurs (Circle)
5. Noah’s Ark (Stripped)

4th of July

Another year, another 4th of July. Unlike last year, my mood was considerably more pleasant. Once again I spent the day with Heidi and her family. It was so nice to spend the day in the pool, especially since the temperatures were over 110. About the only time I left the pool was to reapply my sunscreen. (SPF 50 these days)

The fireworks display in the neighborhood was off the scale crazy again this year. The Strip does not generally offer any sort of fireworks display; they tend to save that for New Year’s Eve when we aren’t in the middle of fire season. Smaller neighborhoods do put on some shows, but I swear they are few and far between. I have stated before that Las Vegas does not have a very strong community feel to it and holidays such as this have a way of showcasing that.

What seems to end up happening is that people buy their own fireworks and end up launching them in their neighborhoods. It is completely insane. While we have our little stash of “safe and sane” fireworks that look more like large sparklers, there are crazy people out there with professional fireworks that sound like missiles being launched overhead. Once again, it felt like we were in the middle of a war zone. The noise of the launch was scarier than the noise of the firework itself.

It was with a horrified fascination that I stood watching a man, who was surely in the running for this year’s Darwin Award, casually stand directly over the firework as he lit them. These fireworks probably stood as tall as his knees. He would stand over them as he tried to light them and then walk away to get another one without even watching the result. Adding to this spectacle were his next door neighbors sitting in lawn chairs less than 20 feet away from the launching point. Can you imagine what could have happened if these things had tipped over? The kids were terrified of the noise, so we went back inside and out to the backyard. Last year we found ashes in the pool. This year I kept waiting to see my license plate come falling from the sky. Luckily that didn’t happen, but there’s always next year.