Current mood:	jubilant
Entry tags:	eddie izzard, literature, quote

Eddie Izzard, Coronet Theatre, 27 October 2007 (And this time I met him!)
In a completely unprecedented set of events, some of my friends and I spontaneously decided to see Eddie Izzard this Saturday. Granted, I had seen his show only days before, but I justified the whole thing as an exceptional circumstance because Cora was coming to visit all the way from San Francisco. Not only that, but Sumner (who I had not seen since the Westmont/Lit Moon production of Richard II) also showed up with some friends, making the whole thing an even more memorable event.

The show was actually quite different this time: Eddie departed from his standard routine quite a bit to adlib and once again had discussions with the audience (most notably, one of the audience members made the distinction between Sumerians and Babylonians, while multiple members of the audience argued with Eddie about the contributions of the Egyptian civlization). At times, he would run with a joke and suddenly forget what he was talking about or realize the absurdity of the whole bit; consequently, he lost it a few times and started laughing (which was pretty fun to watch).

Following the performance Sumner's friends, Sumner, Cora and I stayed at the theatre with roughly a dozen other people to hang out with Eddie for a bit. I was surprised and pleased to discover that he has conversations with anyone who wants to talk: Cora talked with him about The Riches, Sumner talked with him about Egyptian culture, and one of Sumner's friends asked him about his entry on Wikipedia. My conversation with him had more to do with my confusion over the picture he had drawn on the corner of my autographed postcard (I realized after the fact that he was attempting to sketch a face using some pen scribbles he had made earlier, which I thought was nice).

Not bad for a last-minute trip to Los Angeles, in my opinion.

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Here are some memorable parts of last night's show:

-"You know Little Miss Sunshine? You know all the people in the van in that movie? I think that the majority of Americans are the people in that van. I'm trying to tell the rest of the world this, because right now they think you're all like the people at the beauty pageant."

-Dialogue between Eddie and various audience members:
E: As far as I can tell, the Egyptians didn't do anything.
A: Yes, they did.
E: Like what?
A: Mummification. And they did the pyramids.
E: Yeah, they essentially came up with ways of dying. What else?
A: They invented paper.
E: Not good enough!
A: They made beer.
E: So?
A: Isn't beer good enough?
A: They made cosmetics!
E: Okay, so beer and cosmetics. [At this point, he began miming a person drinking beer as he put on makeup and ordered more pyramids built]

-Allusion to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness/Francis Ford Coppolla's Apocalypse Now: Whilst portraying a child on his first fox hunt, he looks at the blood on his fingers and whispers ominously, "The horror! The horror!" (I only mention this because I was proud of myself for noticing, which I suppose is a silly reason for mentioning such things)

Me and Eddie Izzard