Ding, Dong, The Witch (of Green Bay) is Dead, uWink, And Eddie Izzard’s “Stripped” at the Kodak Theatre
No quick-hitters tonight.
My jaw is still hurting from Stripped.
- Today was a great day. One day after clamoring for a Diva Favre trade to the New York Jets, it actually happened!!!
I feel like a kid in a candy store…on Christmas Day. In fact, I was so happy when I heard this news that I declared myself a Patriots’ fan for two days: Sunday, September 14, and Thursday, November 13.
(Soon after I typed that, I started hyperventilating. I may need to re-think that idea.)
Let me rephrase: on those two days, I will be cheering heavily AGAINST the Jets.
(That’s better.)
I’m not even going to waste my time analyzing the events of today; I’ll just let my new favorite sports writer express his feelings, and I’ll agree with him 100%.
- We took off for the Kodak Theatre at around 5:45PM, and got there at around 6:15PM. We decided to have dinner at uWink, frankly because it was the only restaurant nearby that 1) wasn’t Quiznos, and 2) didn’t have a line extending out of it.
(Fun facts: apparently this uWink opened back in May of 2008. In addition, the founder of uWink also founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese:
Following the success of the first location in Woodland Hills, Nolan Bushnell, former CEO and founder of both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese…)
The concept of the restaurant is pretty cool: the menus are digitalized, using a touch-screen terminal at each table. You enter each diner’s name, enter the order for each person, and then you simply “send” the entire order to the kitchen. Most food items are completely customizable (examples: types of bread, doneness, types of cheese, etc., for your burgers), and you could even order drink refills from the touch-screen. The terminals also offer various games to pass the time.
(Apparently, these terminals run MacOS. How do I know? Our console crashed, and when it was rebooted, I immediately recognized the MacOS screen :P).
Food was pretty good—we all had cheeseburgers, mine with Bleu Cheese and bacon, Nancy with sweet potato fries—but the service was S L O W, and therefore, our food came pretty cold. We sat down around 6:50PM, and didn’t get our food until nearly 7:20PM, not giving us much time to eat. It’s a good thing that the Kodak Theatre was literally next door. At least my drink refill came pretty quickly.
- I won’t go into too much detail about Stripped, but let me summarize the night with this tidbit: both myself and the guy sitting two seats to my right were crying during the performance…TEN MINUTES IN.
(Too bad he started nearly 20 minutes late, which in Los Angeles time, means he started ten minutes early.)
Izzard started off with a bang, hitting on two easy targets: Los Angeles itself (remember Dress to Kill, where he made fun of San Francisco?) and George W. Bush. I was kinda shocked, actually, when he not once, but three times (by my count) insisted that we all vote for Barack Obama.
As usual, religion, language, and animals dominated the show. In almost George Carlin-esque fashion, he questioned the 6,000 year old Earth theory, opined about Noah’s Ark (poor squirrel!), and ribbed the Ten Commandments (”Thou shall cover thy neighbor’s ox???”). Language—even animal communication!—also occupied a good part of the routine, and in typical Eddie Izzard fashion, he veered way off-topic several times.
Of course, what Eddie Izzard stand-up routine would be complete without his constant gyrating about, coupled with his facial expressions? Too bad I was way up in the nosebleeds, so I couldn’t get a good look at his face. I could imagine how dumb he looked at times, though :P.
My two favorite moments:
1) The image of a soldier being impaled by a Hoplite, then pulling himself forward on the spear, pushing himself back and again pulling himself forward right before dying, will forever be burned into my retinas.
The sadistic “ha-HA” after each pull will not be soon forgotten either.
2) Izzard’s demonstration of how man went from a four-legged creature to a two-legged creature was just stupid funny. While he got winded after that act, the crowd got winded from all the laughing. I couldn’t see right for the next two minutes, as I had to wipe tears off my face.
Oh yeah, and as I correctly predicted, he tossed in a reference to his FX show, The Riches, which got a loud ovation from the crowd.
Damn bloke!
[…] - This is a very cool Eddie Izzard fan site, which I found via Google Analytics shortly after I posted my Stripped mini-review. […]