Eddie Izzard Meets H.P. Lovecraft

by Chriss Cornish written on: February 21, 2010 No Comments

So, if you’re familiar with both these individuals, you’re probably raising an eyebrow or shouting, “how is that even possible!” at your computer. If you’re doing the latter, calm down. Deep breaths. Put the coffee away. It’s a metaphorical ‘meeting’. Jump to the point ?.

For those of you may be familiar with only one, or neither, of these names, here’s a quick orientation on where this is going.

Eddie Izzard: Well known British comedian and very funny dude who defines himself in one bit as an “executive transvestite”. His most hilarious routines tend to involve history. He’s been in the movie Ocean’s 11 and has an HBO series called The Riches. In an interview with John Stewart on The Daily Show, Izzard went from the Revolutionary War to iTunes in one sentence.

H.P. Lovecraft: Wrote horror novels in the 20′s and 30′s and is credited with the creation of the Cthulu mythos, though there were several writers contributing at the time to what eventually became known as that mythos. He wrote almost excursively short stores, so you can’t really point at a single book. Lovecraft is considered one of those iconic classics of the genre. His horror leans a little towards science fiction, since his plots all tend to involve some otherworldly horror from beyond the stars. No one really wins his works, except the monsters (maybe), and those who survive usually end up a tad touched in the head.

The prime difference between them is that Mr. Izzard is a comedian and Mr. Lovecraft is a deceased author.

The Point, Already

One of the bits we tend to quote from Eddie Izzard’s act is from a bit he does on thimbles. Izzard points out that there had to be a time when there weren’t thimbles. That people must have been stabbing themselves in the brain via their fingers and that there mus have newspaper headlines like, ‘Whole Family Needle Death’. ‘Oh’, says man”.

Our friend Robin was reading an H.P. Lovecraft anthology he’d borrowed from John and he came in one day with the book and a thoughtful look on his face. He said he’d just realized that every single Lovecraft plot could be summed up with, “Whole Family Needle Death, ‘oh’ says man”.

And we all realized it was true.

Come on, if you’ve ever read Lovecraft or you’re familiar with his work you know you just said something like, “oh my, you’re right”.