...For instance, it's hard to imagine anyone but the cross-dressing Izzard -- an "action transvestite," as he refers to himself -- discussing the peculiar awkwardness a man can experience when one of his prosthetic breasts explodes in the middle of a conversation with the stranger sitting next to him on an airliner. Who but Izzard might imagine the challenges Medusa's coiffeur faced when the snake-haired Gorgon came in for highlights? (This during an exegesis on the Iliad, the Odyssey and the ax murder of a Greek king -- or what Izzard described as "Agamemnon in emergency-chicken mode.")
On Monday night, topics came up as they tend to in Izzard's shows -- seemingly apropos of nothing. One minute he was explaining in Izzardian fashion the parallels between superheroes and transvestites. "Both have to change clothes in order to help people. Only thing is, transvestites don't help people. Other than that, we're quite similar." The next minute, he was describing the origin of fire and its resemblance -- previously unnoticed, one suspects -- to masturbation. Somewhere in between came insights into the War of 1812, the reasons why one dies from gangrene as opposed to gangblue and, among countless other things, the way cats thrown from a car might have influenced Doppler to make his observation about sound waves...
On Monday night, topics came up as they tend to in Izzard's shows -- seemingly apropos of nothing. One minute he was explaining in Izzardian fashion the parallels between superheroes and transvestites. "Both have to change clothes in order to help people. Only thing is, transvestites don't help people. Other than that, we're quite similar." The next minute, he was describing the origin of fire and its resemblance -- previously unnoticed, one suspects -- to masturbation. Somewhere in between came insights into the War of 1812, the reasons why one dies from gangrene as opposed to gangblue and, among countless other things, the way cats thrown from a car might have influenced Doppler to make his observation about sound waves...