Eddie

Pittsburgh is a strangely experienced kind of place. I've been there numerous times, and I still never get over the excitement of seeing the city.

See, when you're driving into the city, from my vantage point, anyway, which is coming north from the sticks, up through West Virginia, into Pennsylvania, through rural land past coal towns, till you start getting close to the city, it works this way.

Seeing as how the drive always takes about 6 hours, and I always leave at about the same time, I-279 is always congested with late afternoon traffic by the time I get to the crucial point. And that crucial point is going through the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

See, that's where the excitement comes in. After going down, down, down the long, slow incline of business-and-residential road that leads to the Fort Pitt Tunnel, you enter and make your way through the tunnel and - voila! - the big fat hulking city of Pittsburgh is staring you right in the face. You go from nothingness to the heart of a major city in 1/4 of a tunneled mile. Exiting that tunnel produces a great giddy feeling.

And yesterday, through the dark and driving rain, I was just as giddy as ever exiting the tunnel and saying hello to Pittsburgh. Because I was there for a reason. I was there to see Eddie!

It took us forever to get to our outskirts-of-the-city hotel, due to a combination of extreme traffic and the rain/wind/thunderstorm from hell. But we finally crept our way in, had a slight rest and change, and headed back towards the city in plenty of time to get rained on, blown away, and, most of all, lost.

Which, amazingly enough, we didn't. Get lost, I mean. We had our map and some instructions from the net, and found our way there in no time, and miracle of miracles for Pittsburgh, City of No Available Parking, there was a parking building right across the street from the Byham Theater. (And kudos to Mr M for the bitchin' left-hand turn into the building he made in front of a taxicab speeding at us from the opposite direction. It was a true city driving move.)

Since we were so early, we milled around the area a bit, went and had a coffee (him), a root beer (me), and a cookie (both of us), and by then it was time to head back and into the theater. And so we walked in and to our seats on the second row. And I was excited.

It took a while for the place to fill, in fact I was a bit worried at one point, but in due time it was full to the rafters. And after sitting and listening to about 40 minutes of Tom Jones numbers on the sound system, the lights lowered and it was time for Eddie Izzard's arrival.

There in the dark, very loud techno music blared through the speakers and abstract animation flashed on the stage. And out he came.

I'd been wondering about his wardrobe. Of course, the talk on this tour was that Eddie had been doing the full-out drag thing. When Stennie & Flipsy saw him in LA he was in a dress. But that's LA; this was Pittsburgh. Would he do it?

The answer was a resounding "yes." Eddie strutted out onto the stage in a knee-length black skirt, red bustier, black stockings, and knee-high black pointy-toed stiletto-heeled boots. And over that, he wore a knee-length military-style jacket that was too cool for words.

When I was asking Stennie about particulars of Eddie's LA show, she said, "I can't really remember anything specific he did, but I can just tell you to be prepared to laugh yourself silly." And she was right. His first 25 or so minutes of the show were a complete off-the-cuff rant and adlib about the Pittsburgh storm, twisters, hecklers, and God-knows-what else, all one leading to the next to the next. I was honestly having trouble taking it all in at first because I was too busy thinking, "My God! I'm seeing Eddie Izzard. I'm sitting thisfuckingclose to Eddie Izzard!"

How his mind works is a marvel to me. Stuff he was ad-libbing at the beginning of the concert, he was remembering well enough to stick into punchlines at the end. He could pick a subject, say, superheroes ("Martian Boy, oh Martian Boy, 15 fingers on each hand~"), go off on a tear that would include 17 different topics, and still pull it back to the original subject, superheroes, at hand.

There were three things that really stick out in my memory as having me absolutely rolling. Two were very long and involved mimes about 1) How we could solve the gun problem if we allowed people to have guns, but only non-motorized field artillery, and 2) Had the neanderthals somehow beat out the homosapiens, and ended up ruling the world. Which led to a whole thing about watching "Trading Spaces" if everyone involved was a neanderthal. The third was a swift one liner about T.E. Lawrence. Who, when he had his vaudeville act, was called T. Hee Lawrence. I don't know, it made me laugh. Lots.

As if the original outfit wasn't good enough, after the intermission, Eddie re-emerged wearing a black bustier, a black sparkly skirt slit right up to his manhood (I'm sure this has to be the skirt Flipsycab was describing from the LA show), no jacket, with the stockings and boots.

All told, he was up there about 2 1/2 hours. It was amazing. I couldn't have been happier. Well, the only way I could have been happier was in getting a James Mason impersonation. But I shan't complain. We got a Christopher Walken, and a Sean Connery - Sean Connery in French, no less.

Oh, and I was right. Eddie is about as short as I thought he was.

Anyway, after the show we made it back to the hotel as easily as we'd gotten into the city. The map gods must have been with us. After I was back in the room, I realized we'd not had any dinner, and it was well after midnight. So I threw caution to the wind and raided the room's mini-bar. My delicious meal consisted of some potato chips - well, Pringle's, which in all actuality are not potato chips at all - a soft drink, and, because I'd wanted a drink all night and had been denied three different times during the evening - at the hotel bar, the Byham Theater going into the show, and the theater during intermission - I got myself a tiny bottle of wine for 5 bucks. Probably spent nine bucks on a soft drink, potato chipettes, and a glass of wine.

Who cares. It was the best expensive glass of cheap wine I believe I've ever had.

And after a good sleep, it was this morning, and time to head back to reality.

And that's the flipside of the strangely experienced city of Pittsburgh. You get packed, you drive back through the great hulking (and I can't help it, I think it's pretty) city, then into the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and *pbbbbbbbbbt*. On the other side of the tunnel is nothingness, coal towns, rural scenes, the sticks, and on back home.