By Jonathan McNamara
Six rows away from me, wearing a ring master's coat and miming his way across the stage, Eddie Izzard looked up "Phoenix" on Wikipedia using his Iphone.
"It's got a picture of you looking hot," he said.
A similar heat related joke told to any Phoenix resident would come off as trite, but somehow Izzard's impish grin and predilection to inserting F-bombs in his charming British way makes even a joke about how hot it is in Phoenix seem new again. Fried egg, anyone?
Izzard exposed the audience to his rambling, comedic style for nearly two hours sometimes forgoing speaking entirely to get jokes across with exaggerated body movement and sound effects produced using only a microphone.
The one coherent message Izzard through into his rant-filled routine was also the most succinct thing he said all night:
"You've got an election this year. Don't fuck it up. Vote for Barack Obama; then you'll be able to travel the world and not pretend you're Canadian."
But Lewis Black this was not and while Izzard did inject a few political musings into his act, the majority consisted of jazz chickens, the existence (or lack thereof) of God, mime routines, dinosaurs, boats and of course Charles Darwin's famous book "Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey You".
And it is from this obscure assortment of topics from the night's show that we present to you the top 10 things Eddie Izzard said last night that make even less sense taken out of context. Truth the be told, they didn't make that much more sense last night, but they did have the Orpheum's audience in stitches.
10. "You can't mime a religion"
9. "No one does air oboe, do they?"
8. Speaking about dinosaurs: "We're pretty sure 'Ah, fuck it' was the last thing they said."
7. "One thing was big before language and that was Scrabble. No one lost!"
6. "I'm not actually a transvestite, it was a tax thing that I did."
5. "You are an oxymoron...without the front bit."
4. "Then we'll kill gophers, helicopters and the color indigo."
3. As God: "Then we film it and make snuff spider movies."
2. "We're gonna kill you. I'm sorry. If you've got a Kit-Kat you can just go."
1. Speaking about elephants: "Squirrels in toasters? Yeah, a bit like that."
