My Amy Winehouse pictures get favourited a lot on Flickr. Mostly by women. Does Amy, like Sinead, scare the hell out of most boys?

A friend invited me to facebook. I had previously decided not to join, but what the hell, I click on the link and fill in the registration form…

… and I’m informed my name ‘contains too many words’.

I hooked up an old HD to my computer yesterday, and found the most recent backup of the site, made just before I took the site off line in 2000. Among the files were two original pieces I wrote. They are a review and an interview, both of which I’d like to share with you again, starting with the review.

I’ve also put part of the site back online, not originally created by me, but given to me to host. It gives me great pleasure to present: Pantscat!, an early Izzard creation.

The review follows after the break. I haven’t followed Izzard’s career the past five years. I stopped ‘believing’ and thought he was a bit too calculating, too eager in the quest for fame. Not a lot of soul. Then I just lost interest. But this was written at the height of my comparatively brief obsession with the man who said ‘Jam!’

Eddie Izzard – Unrepeatable
Nieuwe De La Mar, Amsterdam
April 19th 1995

A whirlwind affair, this. First time I saw Mr Izzard was on tv and I was wondering who the hell he was. I thought I knew most British comedians. Wrong. I knew all the British comedians who show their face on tv: the Elton’s , the Connoly’s, the Enfield’s… And Mr Izzard has devised a cunning plan for himself – not to appear on television other than to proclaim his show will never go on television. Calculating man. I think it was ‘Have I got news for you’. He irritated me, which is always a good sign. I’d rather have someone bug me than that I’m left completely indifferent. But there was immediate respect as well.

He may have been wearing make-up, or there was somet hing else that made him stand out and you got have guts to dare to be different on television. Then I read an interview with him in Attitude. Interesting article. Made me want to see him. Which I figured would never happen, with me in Holland, he in the U K. The article gave me some idea of who this bloke was. So he’s tv. Okay cool. Gotta thing about men in dresses. Like it.

Come April ’95, friend sends me video of Eddie’s show for my birthday. And this is where it gets weird. I stick the video in the VCR, walk to the kitchen for a bite to eat, flip open the papers and hey presto: an ad. Eddie’s playing Amsterdam on my birthd ay. How many British comedians ever play Holland? Uh… not a whole lot? So I get the tickets.

On the night, the first thing that strikes me is the pearly shine coming from his fingernails. Nice touch. TV in the broadest sense. Eddie mixes it up. The way people should – if they had any sense. Then the shoes, hah – he has taste – black lacquer jobs, like mine on the night. Only mine are more masculine, his have heels the size of London bridge. Makes him in command of things, coming on like a peacock. Scarlet suit, no shirt, rather funky. Bright red lips, too. Brings a smile to my face.

My male friend fixates on the – he says – curious arrangement in Mr Izzard’s pants. He can’t figure it out. He asks me. Well, how would I know about wobbly dangly bits? ‘He has two,’ I whisper in his ear. We come to an agreement. Meanwhile, Eddie makes us laugh. And I’d like to tell you how, but I don’t remember what it was he said. Unrepeatable, you see.

There were thimbles, clarinets, singes sur des arbres, dickhead men and lots of times when he seemed – but then that could be totally planned – to lose his way in his own fantasy world: – sudden silence, ‘I’ve forgotten who I am now …’ and on again, down some unexpected alley. His jokes are the ones we all make. Not terribly clever, no pearls of wisdom, but the silly, childish pranks you play among friends, when you share a particular framework and are close enough to act like a kid again. Others might not understand.

Eddie’s talent is that he can make you part of his framework within a couple of minutes. You just let go and ride upon the cliches made funny again and the everyday silliness of life that Eddie dishes out. And somewhere, reading between the laughs, I sensed a vulnerability. Kids can be cruel. Adults even more cruel, cause they should have more sense by then. And aren’t fantasy worlds created as places you can hide in? Eddie’s the crazy kid down the road that makes people laugh.

It was more than just a bucket of laughs. It was like putting on a record that makes you feel all right, or getting out that book that tells your story. So we left feeling groovy – the ultimate Izzard word – not just for having laughed, but for having recognised. We wandered off, my friend and I, for a late meal. Talking about how we felt about the night, feeling closer for having had the same thoughts and experience. And if videos and newspaper ads isn’t enough for coincidences, Eddie walks into our restaurant.

‘You picked the right place to eat,’ I tell him and – totally uncool – ask him to sign my programme. I haven’t got a pen, and it isn’t for myself. All the wrong words. Eddie’s cooler than me, probably quite used to this kind of BS. I send the programme off to the friend who sent the video, which leaves him gasping and me pining for a souvenir.

‘Come back,’ I told Eddie. He would.

Did I mention I got caught without a ticket on the Metro the night before? 37 euro fine.

I’m stuck at home with no food and no money and a hell of a temper.

It’s a wonderful world.

Whedonesque.com was named ‘Blog of the week’ at The Times today and in the comments on the post announcing it, a number of our users ask why Whedonesque is a blog. Before I can answer, Joss Whedon himself pipes in and declares Whedonesque not a blog.

I try to explain that perhaps people’s interpretation of the world blog has changed somewhat over the last five years and that Whedonesque has all the characteristics of a weblog. Joss seems to call me pedantic, dismissing my reasoning and telling me language evolves, ergo, my blog no longer a blog. He seems to think I’m ‘nerd girl’ who needs to be taught a lesson in language.

Welcome to bizarro world.

He’d already left when I finally came up with the ‘let’s say in 10 years time, a tv series is something that has a jury and televoting, so sorry, your work is now called ‘fanfic” analogy. I am a crappy debater.

It seems most of our users have no idea the site is a weblog. I guess they’ve never gone near our About page.

I’m quite baffled.

4 comments

Caroline, you were the first person to link to my first weblog back in 1999, so I’ll always have your back. But even if I didn’t, I’d still think that you know what you’re talking about. You make great points all around.

I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago. But I wouldn’t call the word “evolving” so much as “being beaten around so much people don’t even know what it means anymore.” The linguistic examples he gave didn’t have to undergo the machinations of mass media. “Blog” seems to have a certain magic that marketers and product people latch on to and slap on their product to give it some extra oomph. There’s a radio station here in SF that has a woman reading entertainment gossip on their morning show, and they call that her “entertainment blog.” What the hell?

But then again, I’ve been around this scene almost as long as you, so I’m going to have a similar viewpoint and amount of emotional investment.

The one question I didn’t see anyone ask Joss was, “Okay, so if Whedonesque is not a blog, what is it?”
Jason (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:13

‘I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago.’

I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean that what it meant before is no longer valid. How about this one: ‘Your child is no longer a child, but an adult. You should stop calling it your child.’ It makes no sense at all.
Caroline (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:27

Indeed, agreed.
Jason (link) – 05 March 2006 – 03:06

This is crying out for a good pun but I can’t think of one.

When is a blog, not a blog? When it’s ajar… nope… rubbish.

Anyway, there are two thoughts on this – 1. aside from the award do you care whether it’s seen as a blog, or not? 2. As Jason asks “If it’s not a blog, what is it?! A content-rich, frequently updated website?

Spade and all that.
Gordon (link) – 06 March 2006 – 18:34

But I have no words for what’s going down in New Orleans.

Bush smiling, playing guitar when seven kinds of hell descend on the gulf coast. Ms Rice shopping for shoes in NYC. Refusing foreign aid. Sending in troops with orders to shoot to kill.

Young in New Orleans – Bukowski

After the verdict, he said he needed to find a job but would first go “cowboying.”

“Cowboying is when you get in a motor home or a van and you just let the air blow in your hair,” he said. “And you wind up in some little bar in Arizona someplace, and you shoot a game of one-hand nine-ball with some 90-year-old Portuguese woman that beats the hell out of you.

“And the next day you wind up in a park someplace playing chess with somebody, and you go see a high school play where they’re doing ‘West Side Story.’

“And you just roam around and get some revitalization, that there are human beings in the world, that there are people living their lives that have no agenda.”

Maybe he could write a book about it all.

(Nobody knows who Robert Blake is anymore. I’m the oldest at work and in my circle of friends. It means that nobody remembers the stuff I grew up with. In fact, they don’t know or remember stuff they should have grown up with. Lately that’s making me a little sad.)

well I’m six weeks older than you, and I certainly remember him from my youth too. were you surprised by the verdict? I certainly was.
ModSue – 17 March 2005 – 17:32

they can’t F-O-R-G-E-T, either.
elmo (link) – 18 March 2005 – 02:42

I’ve now written a little more about this album and the song that first woke me up and then took my breath away on a bus journey from Dingle to Dublin:

U2log.com editors recommend // Declan O’Rourke – Since Kyabram

This album’s seriously making me consider buying an (any) MP3 player because I don’t want to be without it while I commute.