Eddie Izzard says that G-d doesn’t love Los Angeles. Then again, he also says that he just performed in Las Vegas and Phoenix and those folks would find Hell a mild summer day. From a temperature perspective anyway. Apparently Phoenix gets jokes about squids and ink faster or possibly it is just easier to get a Phoenix audience to show appreciation aloud. Eddie Izzard performs two more nights this week in Slowsquidwritingjokesville (aka Hollywood) to finish out his Stripped tour in La-la-land.

My friend writer Maria Alexander invited me out to the sold out Eddie Izzard show at the Kodak Theatre. At least, I think it was sold out because it was insanely crowded and took me an hour to get home (once I found my car) even though I live down the street. Despite the fact that a non-Angeleno might consider my home walking distance from the Kodak Theatre, I had never been there before, although of course I’ve seen it on television like anyone else. In person, even the non-box seats are staggered in such a way that everyone gets a clear view of the stage. The ushers are courteous and helpful. The bathroom lines move almost alarmingly fast. The only oddity is that they don’t really show you the nosebleed seats on TV. The venue is like twice the size I thought it was and there are definitely seats farther away from the stage, even box seats, than might be ideal. Our seats were a bit far back, but we had a really awesome straight down the center view I enjoyed. I had to do four laps around three levels of the parking garage at Hollywood and Highland after the show because I am less organized than Maria Alexander, so I only remembered what color level I thought I was on. Turned out I did have the color right and it was just crazy hard to find a black Lincoln Town Car in a super crowded garage packed with black Lincoln Town Cars.

I love Eddie Izzard because he manages to mix being incredibly intelligent and funny, while carrying himself perfectly, and saying fuck a lot. He told the audience tonight that PR people say that response to what one says is 70% what you look like, 20% how you say it, and 10% what you say. Now, I can understand small amounts of French after hearing it exclusively for a number of hours. I can speak French (quite badly) after being immersed for three days. Yet I still laughed myself sick at a joke Eddie Izzard told on a previous tour where he told the whole thing in French. So he is a genius in the how-you-tell-it department. Nonetheless, I admit that my eyes glazed over a bit tonight when he spoke in grunts for too many minutes in a row. Then again, he also made a hypnosis reference at one point, so perhaps he was trying to make me very sleepy in that moment.

At any rate, Eddie Izzard presented his political views with humor, taught a little history as he is wont to do, distilled the nature of religion and ox coveting, and told jokes about dinosaurs. You pretty much can’t go wrong with dinosaur comedy. Well, Eddie Izzard, in his brilliance, can’t go wrong with dinosaur comedy.

The comedian came attired in a dark tailcoat with reddish magenta lining, a red striped buttoned down shirt, and some surprisingly sex blue jeans. I hope he was wearing a lot of eyeliner, but I truthfully was not close enough to be sure if he was or if, with the distance to our seats, my brain just filled that in with my personal preferences. Eddie Izzard did a little bit where he talked about people coming up to him and accusing him of not really being a transvestite. He said of all the things he never thought he would have to defend, he never thought he would have to vigorously insist that he is too a transvestite, even if he has been wearing pants a lot lately. He does play a pretty butch manly man on The Riches on FX and he does a great job of that too. I chalk that up to talent and versatility, rather than secretly not being a transvestite, especially given The Riches’ sensitive portrayal of the youngest child’s burgeoning transvestism and the trantastically fabulous party in the second season finale of the show.

All of my dyslexic pals will be pleased to know that Eddie Izzard says he is dyslexic and just memorizes his shows rather than writing them down and, from here on in, dyslexia shall be referred to as kat spelled with a k. I have a complex theory about why so many flamboyantly unusual and artistic people are dyslexic, but it is long, so I’ll save it for another time. As Eddie Izzard has nothing to prove, I’m going to assume he really is dyslexic and really is a transvestite from the heart and isn’t just claiming such things so people will think he is creative or talented.

Eddie Izzard closed out his performance talking about living on the dark side of the moon with Darth Vader, Pink Floyd and a squirrel. You really have to hear him do it because only Eddie Izzard’s performance can do it justice.

I’ve been meaning to go to one of the Media Bistro shindigs for media professionals, like yours truly, for ages. After seeing Laurel Toby speak, I even moved the post-it reminder a bit higher up on my monitor. I finally managed to roll over to one a couple of weeks ago. Horror author and poet Maria Alexander and I rolled over to the Luxe Hotel on Rodeo Drive, which is a fairly swanky, if odd, location for a book party. Aside from just hanging out being, you know, media-like, the Media Bistro party was also to celebrate the release of Gabe Rotter’s first novel Duck Duck Wally. Maria and I missed the hotel the first time we drove by because it is a boutique hotel and thus not very hotel-looking, so it blended into the landscape. I almost always stay in boutique hotels when I travel. The service and the suites always feel more personal than in like a Hilton or whatever. And there are usually bowls of green apples, no matter which boutique hotel it is. As I live in Los Angeles, I don’t stay in hotels here and neither Maria nor I had been to anything thrown by this particular organization before. We both went with mildly dressy professional and black. I know the color scheme is a shocker. When I saw that the hotel was actually next door to the Michael Kors store on Rodeo, I thought it was perhaps some sort of weird psychic flash which had caused me to just buy a bunch of black Michael Kors clothing this season. A good omen.

The party was fun. Maria and I chatted with a variety of interesting people. It seemed like the screening process for the guest list had not done much to weed out PR folks, but everyone was nice, if a bit aggressive about what everyone else’s writing credits were. People at the party kept grilling me on various resume points and I kept having to answer, yeah, I’ve done that too, until even I noticed that maybe I’ve accomplished one or two things. I had the epiphany that I’ve been published kind of a lot. I sort of thought I would have written the Great American Novel by now. And I haven’t. So I don’t usually think of myself as someone who gets my words out there as much as I guess I do. I didn’t meet the Media Bistro hostess Michelle Thatcher even though I’d Googled her photo beforehand, but the man of the hour, author Gabe Rotter, was gracious and pleasant. Maria found him smug, but I like that in other people. I aspire to be more aware of the good stuff in my own world, so I feel smug people are onto something there.

I just finished reading Duck Duck Wally and it is a brisk and entertaining read. The basic story is about a guy who gets caught up as collateral damage in an extortion plot after years ghost-writing lyrics for an extremely popular rapper. It is a funny and clever book with a humorous cast of characters. The book was probably intended to be more earnest than it comes off, but it is an enjoyable read.

Not everyone shared my take on the book, although, let’s face it, the blogosphere does not exactly have a dearth of people willing to write up books they have never read. Someone named Josh over at Gawker started a thread which objected partly to the style of PR used to hype the book and objected most strenuously to the racial stereotyping. I think Josh is the nick for Gawker’s After Hours Editor Joshua David Stein. Gawker commenters point out that they believe they have seen fake rave reviews of the book around the net before it was even released. Apparently publisher Simon and Schuster is really behind the book and handed out fake gold chains as promo at the East Coast launch party for the book.

“That the book tells the story of a short white Jewish dude who ghostwrites rhymes on the DL for a rap artist named Oral B only somewhat excused the charged racial implications,” Gawker’s Josh writes, “Like the novel’s protagonist, its author Gabe Rotter is a short Jewish guy himself. Yesterday we got a “tip”—probably just deep cover publicist shill—that though the book was sold as a novel, “The rapper in the book is based on a few of the MAJOR rap stars, who really do have some fat white Jewish dude writing most if not ALL of their rhymes.””

First of all, I’ve said it before and I’ll most likely say it again, but the music industry needs to deal with its obnoxious attempts to pass off one person’s work as another’s. Maybe it takes more than one person to make a good record. Duh. There is nothing wrong with that and I am sick to death of the music industry’s attempts to belittle the contributions of most members of any team that actually puts something good together.

Secondly, I honestly was made a bit uncomfortable by how hard the author hit his ethnic characterizations of Indian, Jewish, Black, etc. characters, but they did all mostly have characterization beyond race or heritage and I didn’t find any of them terribly unrealistic. I was able to overlook it because I enjoyed the writing, but, in general, I find people who go on too much about their background tiresome. I don’t care if they are Daughters of the American Revolution or just have a second cousin once removed who is a famous actor. I am interested in the person and what the individual does and I don’t think background counts for either much extra credit or a get out of jail free card.

Lastly, the notion that Duck Duck Wally is somewhat autobiographical is obvious, but that it is wholly autobiographical is kinda silly. I mean, Gabe’s bio says he comes from Long Island and his character is from Westchester. (For those who have never lived in New York, this is a joke; for those who have not, it’s not like a really big belly laugh or anything.) Duck Ducky Wally is entertaining enough to stand on its own without some publicity flack trying to convince the world that Gabe Rotter secretly writes for 50 Cent. Apart from everything else, in the real world, this sort of thing is done with contracts and NDA’s and overcontrolling press access. It is not done with shoeboxes of cash and mini-uzis. Publicity BS which tries to push the idea that maybe Gabe Rotter really is the protagonist Wally Moscowitz kinda messes up some of my enjoyment of the fiction, because it makes me start thinking about which areas were not 100% realistic. For one thing, I’ve stood right next to Gabe and, I admit he was not naked, but, if he is fat, he is one hell of a dresser. I hope that, in real life, Gabe Rotter owns a dog and loves it as much as his character loves his. I’m not going to ask him, though, because the expression of dog love in the book should be a work which can stand on its own.

The Luxe Hotel, by the way, is no exception to the rule that all boutique hotels must feature bowls of green apples. I took one for the road on the way out. Oh, and it turns out that, when I was choosing between black dresses to go in, the dress I actually chose was Alfani and not Michael Kors. Good thing I don’t put that much stock in omens.