This show is almost historical to me. I remember coming home from work one late summer day in 1999. I had dinner, went into the living room and sat down in front of the big-screen TV. The channel happened to be on HBO but I wasn't particularly interested in watching, I mainly wanted to nap. There was a guy on TV dressed kind of unusual doing a stand-up comedy routine. I had no idea who or what it was, but the guy did seem kind of cool. As a lark I turned up the sound and watched a little. At this point I completely forgot about my nap. I started laughing. He was hilarious. Then came a skit that made me laugh so hard that I found it hard to catch my breath. Then the humor came like rapid fire, one after the other, each more unbelievably hilarious than the previous. I was laughing so uncontrollably that I started to feel pain in my lungs and started to choke, I felt like I was going to hurl! Get this; I actually had to make the reluctant decision to turn off the TV because I was afraid I was going to suffocate! I couldn't breathe, my chest was throbbing in pain; and I'm in very good shape! I couldn't help thinking that this was the Monty Python death joke in real life! I'm actually hard to make laugh, but this guy is a phenomenon, a secret weapon, arguably the greatest comedian of all time (not to mention very intelligent and educated). After recovering I immediately looked up the next HBO airing of that show, and set up my VCR to record it. I'd never heard of Eddie Izzard prior to that day, but I immediately became a permanent and devoted fan!

As a break from long form narrative, I have been watching a lot of films of standup comics. It is one of the most puzzling things I have done recently. Nothing tells you more in a short time about someone than what they find funny. Part of that is the structure of the humor, the core of what I've been studying. But it is worth remarking that some component is what we want to believe is funny. Some of that is physical group dynamics; we join in groups in order to laugh. A related affiliation is incorporated into the humor -- race and class comedians exploit this. Sometimes you leave just feeling dirty afterwards by the association.I think Chris Rock brilliantly exploits this by alternately seducing us into joining a group and then allowing us to make fun of ourselves for doing so. Izzard works with a quite different sort of humor. I think I will characterize it as similar to Rock, but instead of joining a group, he tricks us into joining a narrative or reminding us of a narrative we already joined. Then instead of directly making fun of it or us, he takes it seriously to an extreme. This allows us to think we are laughing at him rather than ourselves, removing that barrier of ironic self-loathing. Underscoring this is his persona as a self-hating, ugly transvestite. Being a successful standup comic must be one of the hardest, most fragile things you can do. If you can do it and have the audience leave actually feeling better -- well, that is a gift.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

A bit of Trivia b/c I can't figure out how to submit Trivia: In the backdrop of this performance, one of the images isGeorge Serat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" painting (seen best in chapter 18), this painting is the subject of a Sonheim musical Sunday in the Park with George.A bit of Trivia b/c I can't figure out how to submit Trivia: In the backdrop of this performance, one of the images isGeorge Serat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" painting (seen best in chapter 18), this painting is the subject of a Sonheim musical Sunday in the Park with George.

Eddie Izzard is nothing short of a comedic genius, and this is Eddie at his very best. His material is extremely witty and hilarious, and his delivery is some of the best ever witnessed on stage. Instead of insulting the audience's intelligence, he relies on it to draw humor from his wardrobe preferences, Hitler, the moon landing, and the British. With so many memorable laughs, one can't help but repeat some of his lines. Forever more, "Do you have a flag?" should be considered one of the funniest lines ever delivered in a standup routine. Every fan of top notch standup comedy needs to see "Dress to Kill". By far the best British standup comedian I've ever witnessed, Eddie Izzard has struggled for success off of the live stage. However, his lack of commercial success in film should not be indicative of how extremely talented he genuinely is. "Dress to Kill" is a treasure, one that luckily has found its way to home video, and can and should be enjoyed again and again.