Occam’s Razor

Thoroughly Eddie

Have you seen Eddie Izzard yet? Izzard is an eccentric 46-year-old British comedian who comes to the states occasionally and gives sold out performances to fans of his very skewed British humor. He has quite a following among a certain class of people like, say, my wife and daughter. No one would mistake his popularity for that of more mainstream comedians like Jerry Seinfeld. He could not fill the Verizon Center. Nevertheless, he can draw a big crowd even if his latest show could not merit a Washington Post review. We found him at DAR Constitution Hall last night. The show started fifteen minutes late to accommodate the many late arriving patrons. However, by the time all were seated, at least 95% of the hall’s 3,702 seats were filled with very enthusiastic Eddie Izzard fans. The raucous welcome he received when he came on stage would make any politician drool.

Based on the demographics of the audience, Izzard draws a nearly exclusively white, generally young and certainly liberal audience. He is not afraid to swear or to poke fun at sacrosanct topics that would make most Americans squirm, such as religion and The Bible. His current tour “Stripped” attempts to condense the four and a half billion years of the Earth’s history into a two-hour gig, with overflowing amounts of skewed and erudite humor. For a change, Eddie does not appear in drag. Izzard is quite open about his transvestitism. Like most transvestites, he is heterosexual.

As a fan of Monty Python and other forms of British humor, I would be a natural candidate for Eddie Izzard’s humor. Our family has a collection of his videos that I have sampled. For some reason I rarely found myself laughing along. Since Eddie Izzard looms large in the life of my family, I figured it would be sporting of me to attend with my wife and daughter. Perhaps a two-hour show would make me appreciate Eddie more.

And I might have appreciated him more if we had closer seats. DAR Constitution Hall is huge, as concert halls go, and our seats were in the right balcony near the back, which meant we had to twist our necks and spines to watch him perform. Despite the brilliant stage lights, he was hard to see any detail, but he was easy enough to see prancing all around the stage. Izzard is a one-person show. His only prop is a microphone.

Unquestionably, Izzard is very well educated, which is the source of both his humor and his relatively understated popularity. He appeals to rebellious bookworms and geeks, the sort of people who know far too much obscure knowledge that has little practical applications, such as Liberal Arts majors. Thus, you are probably not going to find too many NASCAR fans at Eddie Izzard shows.

Izzard’s gentle antipathy toward organized religion was on fine display last night. He sliced and diced through conventional notions of God and many of the great Bible stories. He is quite irreverent and delighted poking fun at many of the stories in the Bible. He humorously retold the story of Moses’ flight from Egypt and Noah’s Ark and pointed out the many logical fallacies of both these legends and many others. Of course, the theme of “Stripped” constantly meandered off subject, resulting in a show that felt like potpourri. This is no matter of concern for Izzard fans, of course, and part of his charm. He can take any topic and turn it inside out, making it a topic of both laughter and derision.

Izzard is one of these comedians who have no problem prancing around the entire stage. Only a small part of his humor is verbal. Much of it is intonation, much of it is body language and a significant part of it comes from his ability to make the microphone behave in unusual ways.

For a non-fan like myself, I felt much like a Non-Jew at a Jewish wedding. In truth, I did find myself laughing on occasion. I think part of the reason I cannot appreciate Izzard more is that his comedic style is to go at the speed of light. I could hardly get in one humorous idea and decide whether it was something worth laughing over before he was on to the next humorous snippet. I felt like a 300-baud modem trying to translate a signal at 9600 baud. Clearly, the brains of most of the audience are much more agile than mine, which must plod along at a serene clip.

Therefore, it is unlikely that I will be an Eddie Izzard groupie, although our daughter was one of the stage door Johnnies who waited for him after the show. Nonetheless, I am glad I went. I have not ruled out attending other Eddie Izzard events in the future. If you enjoy British humor and particularly if you find yourself thinking unconventional thoughts then you should check out his shows if they come to your city, or try renting some of his DVDs and see if his brand of humor appeals to you.

May 3rd, 2008 at 03:18pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | 2 comments

In Step with The Capitol Steps

There are a whole list of things that I as a Washingtonian should have done over the nearly thirty years I have lived here but have not done. Tourists often imagine Washingtonians as constantly down on the Mall or attending concerts at the Kennedy Center. The truth is few of us have that kind of money. In addition, most of us live far enough away from the center of the city where it is rarely worth either the cost or hassle to beat the traffic into the city, unless it is on the weekend. Moreover, since many of us work in the city during the week, the last thing we want to do on the weekend is drive back into it.

Therefore, I miss lots of fabulous Smithsonian exhibitions and concerts. By this time, I should have taken a White House tour. It remains on my list of nebulous things to do. I have been to the top of the Washington Monument twice, but only once as a Washingtonian. (The first visit was in 1967, when I visited as a boy scout.) Shear Madness has been playing forever in the Kennedy Center’s Theater Lab. I could never could be bothered. Mark Russell plays regularly at the Omni Shoreham on Calvert Street N.W. I have only seen him on Public TV during membership weeks. Ah, but The Capitol Steps; I can finally cross them off my list.

The Capitol Steps are loosely to Washington D.C. what The Rockettes are to New York City. In 1981, for Senator Charles Percy’s Christmas party three staffers decided to create parody songs and skits based on the topical political headlines of the day. They must have been good because they kept being asked to do other gigs. At some point, they gave up their day jobs and became part of the Washington kudzu. Now, twenty-seven years later it is hard to imagine a time when they were not around. Whereas there used to be just three founding members, now there are thirty of them. Whereas they used to do one gig at a time, now they travel in groups of five or six and do multiple gigs at the same time. They even travel the country trying to meet demand. Political singing and skits now provide them with a steady income. I bet they have 401-Ks and health insurance like the rest of us. Moreover, I would not be surprised if they belonged to a local actor’s union.

I am not sure how the performers who came out to Reston on Sunday night compared with the rest of the troupe. (If they are not being hosted locally, you can find them Friday and Saturday nights at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. That’s at the Federal Triangle metro station.) However, they come out to Reston, Virginia once a year for an annual benefit for Reston Interfaith. Since I give money to the charity, live three miles away and the Unitarian Universalist Church I attend has a member who makes getting tickets easy, I felt I had no more reason to procrastinate.

I probably would have enjoyed the show more if we had not been at a table in a far corner of the Hyatt Regency’s ballroom. Our tickets, $75 each, did not get us stellar seating. The premier tables, sponsored by local IT companies, got a much better view. Nevertheless, I did not feel too put out. My view was reasonably clear and the acoustics in the ballroom were okay. A fancy dessert and all the wine we could guzzle came with admission. Also present were a host of Fairfax County luminaries who hitherto I had rarely seen outside of newspaper photos, including two supervisors, our state senator and the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly.

Even though attending a regular show of The Capitol Steps costs $35, I felt like we definitely got our money’s worth. The Capitol Steps of course exist to skewer politicians. Politicians were not only skewered, but also roasted over a rotisserie for long periods. The predictable results are many hilarious sketches and song parodies like this one, which skewers poor Senator Larry Craig and who by this time must be riddled with political buckshot.

Our particular show was fast paced. I do not know how long our show was compared to most of their shows. We got about ninety minutes of material, which was padded out to a bit more than two hours with an intermission and a benefit raffle. Virtually every presidential candidate was lampooned, often multiple times. A number of sketches would not work well outside the Beltway simply because the political figures (like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) are not names that trip off the tongue of most Americans. Yet he was one of many foreign politicians also stepped on by The Capitol Steps.

The humor of course must be topical and lowbrow. Sometimes the tunes they choose to parody are a little obscure. (I doubt that many Americans are that familiar with Springtime for Hitler.) The Steps assume though that if you are going to fork over $35 to see them, you must be politically savvy. Consequently, while the Steps will probably never appear on Broadway, they earn their money. Their songs and skits must constantly be created and reworked to keep up with current events. One of their signatures is their “Lirty Dies” segment where they do a backwards talk. This gives them a convenient way to say things you generally cannot say in polite company. You may find as I did that sometimes you cannot translate their backwards talk fast enough to laugh along.

The Capitol Steps were good enough for me to want to see them again some year. Perhaps someday I can drag a politically savvy sibling or friend into D.C. to see one of their regular shows. While I have yet to see Shear Pleasure, our perennial local lowbrow comedy, I strongly suspect The Capitol Steps are equally as lowbrow, but funnier.

January 30th, 2008 at 08:58pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Review: Borat

Am I the last person on the planet to have seen Borat? If so, this review will not garner many hits.

It is rare for me at my advanced age (I am 50) to see any movie and truthfully say, “I’ve never seen anything like that before!” The last time I said this about a movie was back in 2004 when I saw What the Bleep Do We Know? What the heck was it? As a movie, it truly sucked, but as a film that explains string theory from a metaphysical perspective it was unique and quite fascinating.

Borat can at least be categorized. It is a comedy. This movie is so funny that unless you are humor impaired you should find yourself laughing hysterically. Do not be surprised if you are so busy laughing that you find snot is running out of your nose. Wow! How funny is Borat? It is funnier than my previously all time favorite funny movie, the classic 1980 comedy Airplane!

Okay, the real name of the movie is not Borat but Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. That is too long for billboards so the rest of us call it Borat. As you probably know, it stars the hitherto largely unknown comic Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat Sagdiyev. Borat is ostensibly a reporter for the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. For the first ten minutes or so, we get an introduction to Borat’s wonderful life and family in Kazakhstan, which is a former republic of the Soviet Union. Borat’s family comes complete with a forty something mother who looks seventy something, an ugly and controlling wife and an annoying next-door neighbor. Amusements in Borat’s town include the annual Running of the Jews. At least in Kazakhstan, the “Jews” are in costume and are not literally paraded down the city streets and pierced with spears, as was true of Rome in Michelangelo’s time. Suffice to say that Jews, as well as Gypsies are viewed with great suspicion in Borat’s Kazakhstan.

Soon we learn that Borat along with his extremely obese partner from the media ministry Azamat (Ken Davitian) are selected by the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan to visit the United States. Borat and Azamat are to create a documentary of their experiences in America. The humor of the movie comes from the unusual way it was done. Both Baron Cohen and Davitian are in character yet interact with real Americans who for the most part have no idea that they are in character.

Life in Borat’s Kazakhstan is much, much different from life in the United States. This of course is principally its source of humor. Values too are often greatly different. Consequently, virtually any interaction with ordinary Americans is full of humorous possibilities. Baron Cohen though makes the most of each encounter. Yet somehow, he comes across as plausible. For example, he seeks advice from a coach on American etiquette and manages to say the strangest extemporaneous things to her yet he never loses character. Nor do the people he encounters have any idea that he is putting on an act. From trying to kiss men in the New York City subway (apparently a routine event in Borat’s Kazakhstan) to carrying a chicken around in your suitcase (how else would you get fresh eggs?) it is impossible not to laugh.

If, like my wife, you are the sort who could not watch old I Love Lucy shows because it made you feel terribly embarrassed, Borat is not for you. You will have to watch it through cracks between your fingers. Let’s be clear: Borat’s source of humor is quite pedestrian. It is Animal House kind of humor. It is crude. It is often vile. It is not afraid to offend. It is over the top shocking. Frankly, it reaches some level beyond mere hilarity.

Perhaps the subtitle to the movie should have been “Borat’s search for Pamela Anderson.” It does not take him very long after settling in to his New York City hotel room before he discovers Baywatch on television. This transformational event, along with a timely telegram that informs him that his reviled wife has met an untimely demise, provides his motivation to persuade Azamat they should go to Los Angeles. There he plans to find Pamela Anderson and ask her to marry him. In Borat’s Kazakhstan, this apparently involves putting a specially embroidered bag over the woman’s head and dragging her away.

Obviously, I do not want to reveal too much of this convoluted plot. Suffice to say you will laugh until you cry. You will be awed at the overwhelming audacity of Baron Cohen. Watching this movie must be something like lighting a dozen firecrackers inside a tin shed. You probably have an idea of what the experience would be like, but unless you actually do it, you would not really know. That is Borat’s appeal. It is a singular experience and it is unlike anything you have seen on film before. Maybe you have seen what you thought were weird films like John Water’s Pink Flamingos. Step aside, John Waters. You have been outdone.

If you hated I Love Lucy, you will hate this movie. In fact, you will probably walk out after the first few minutes. Otherwise, be prepared to laugh until your lungs are about to collapse. Aside from saying that Borat is the funniest movie I have ever seen, I will not rate it. If this kind of funny movie appeals to you, you simply dare not pass it up.

January 8th, 2008 at 09:35pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | one comment

Review: The Simpsons Movie

It is hard to believe, but The Simpsons are twenty years old! Equally odd is that this longest continuously syndicated animated cartoon in American history went twenty years without hitting the big screen. If Simpsons fans were anxious, then their long nightmarish wait is thankfully over. Moreover, I can report that I literally cannot recall ever laughing harder at a full-length animated movie than I did at The Simpsons Movie.

It helps of course to have such an established cast of characters that we all know and love. Yes, we know and love them all, from Sideshow Bob to Crusty the Clown to Moe the Bartender. This 87-minute movie works pretty much all of them in, although some characters like Mr. Burns shows up only tangentially. The writers wisely chose to go for lots and lots of gags rather than worry about whether all their characters get sufficient screen time. From the 20th Century Fox credits at the beginning where Martin Prince shows up singing along with the tune (from the middle of the zero) to the closing credits (stick around until the end) the laughs rarely stop. The Simpsons are on steroids in this movie, if that is possible.

I confess that I am a very sporadic viewer of The Simpsons television show. I lost my interest in watching episodic TV years ago. Like any animated cartoon, The Simpsons had its good episodes and weak episodes. In any event, it was not a compelling enough cartoon for me to watch religiously, particularly once the Internet age began. Besides, it was on Fox. Nuff said.

The producers could have taken the easy route making this movie. Thankfully, they decided to use the opportunity to its fullest. What you get is not just what make the Simpsons brilliant, but much, much more of what made them brilliant. Admittedly, when blown up on the big screen the things you tend not to notice when on TV, like the yellow skin of all the Simpson characters, can be distracting. Most likely, you will be too busy laughing to care.

The plot does not matter, but just in case you are curious, it goes something like this: Despite Lisa Simpson’s earnest efforts as Springfield’s top environmentalist, the residents are environmentally hostile. They turn Springfield into the most polluted city in America. After a decision by President Schwarzenegger, the EPA covers Springfield in an unbreakable plastic cone, dooming the trapped residents of Springfield. Maggie discovers a sinkhole in their backyard, which lets the Simpsons escape. This is good because after Homer disposes of his pet pig’s toxic waste in Lake Springfield (the final straw that brings down the EPA’s wrath) the town is out to lynch them. They move to the promised “country” of Alaska. Marital disharmony ensues. Eventually Homer figures the only way to redeem himself is to return and save Springfield. It is the usual nonsensical plot but of course serves an effective frame for the hilarity this movie is rife with.

If you are American, you have to love The Simpsons. At this point, the Simpsons are more American than apple pie. Almost every character is a gloriously memorable stereotype. The TV show is offensive and crass but the movie is much more offensive and crass. This is of course one of the keys to its success. Ironically, The Simpsons Movie, rather than being mediocre, is probably one of the best examples of an animated comedy in the last couple of decades. I cannot imagine being a devoted Simpsons fan and not owning a DVD of the movie. Even as a casual fan I am tempted to own the movie. Like most Simpsons TV shows, it is full of allusions to other movies and shows. I feel like I need repeated viewings to catalog all of them. Given a little time and distance, perhaps The Simpsons Movie will achieve something like cult status.

I was offended but loved every minute of it. The Simpsons and the crazy cast of characters populating the city of Springfield are all national treasures. They deserve immortalization in the Smithsonian right next to Archie Bunker’s chair.

It feels odd to rate a movie like this. As a comedy, it is in the top ten percent of those I have seen. Of course, if you are not a Simpson fan you probably will not like the movie as much. I give it 3.3 on my 4.0 scale.

August 6th, 2007 at 08:29pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments