Displaced

Finally tracked down my favorite set of Fiona’s on Crackle. Sorry about the intro advert – apparently unavoidable.

In case you didn’t know, Eddie Izzard is in town. Right now. He’s here in San Francisco (that’s me with him a few years ago in the photo) and you should go see him if you can. As far as I can tell, the shows are sold out but there’s still hope on craigslist, which is where we sold two inexplicably extra tickets we had.

If you don’t know Eddie Izzard, you should rent Dress to Kill, which is his best act so far. Or you can rent the first season of The Riches, which is very good but, except for the bizarre premise of the series, doesn’t much resemble his stand-up work. Or his British accent. (Minnie Driver is excellent in it as well, so you should rent it whether or not you agree with me about Eddie. You can stream it on Hulu.com if you don’t have Netflix.)

“Stand-up” is not quite what his work is. It is comedy and, and as such you will laugh, but it’s got more of a story line than most stand-up and generally it’s more polished, although not always. I’ll rush to say that it’s not a one-man show though either. Although he is one man and he’s all there is. One-man shows always make me think of terrible, self-involved middle-aged men mounting shows with their own money and talking about how they can’t get dates, which is always perfectly understandable to me since they’re repellent in every way and why did they have to waste my evening telling me what I could have told them after five minutes?

I like to think I found Eddie before most of America the same way I like to think I caught The Flight of the Conchords before everyone else, but while I was an early adopter and an enthusiastic evangelist to everyone in my circle (none of whom knew about either of them), it can’t be true that I was the first since I saw both of them on late, late night HBO. So someone at HBO was definitely ahead of me. By a little bit.

Anyway, now he’s famous and successful but his act is still outstanding, which is more than I can say for a lot of famous comedians. If you can’t snag tickets, he’s in Vegas next week and there are plenty of seats available, so you can head to the desert in the middle of July (lucky you!), get a massage, bet on things AND catch a great live act all in one weekend.

The Onion: Local Man Vows Revenge Against Atlantic Ocean

How could Fiona O’Loughlin NOT make the Last Comic Standing finals? Check out this set on You Tube.

And finally, more McSweeney’s Lists: Topics of Conversation at My Cousin’s House on Any Given Holiday.