An evening with John Oliver

We shed our proud-townie status for a couple hours last Friday and headed over to campus -- pardon me, "Grounds" -- to hear Daily Show correspondent and real-live British person John Oliver deliver a fine set of stand-up (happily, we were not the oldest people in the room; a fair number of other grownups attended too).

Now, writing about a comedy performance and trying to impart just how funny the guy was is probably an exercise in futility. Even if I had perfect recall or had surreptitiously taped the show, transcribing his bit about how he updated the Wikipedia entries for several political figures ("Sen. Richard Lugar could have been the greatest swimmer in Olympic history but for the fact that he's soluble in water") wouldn't come across quite as funny on the screen.

Nor could I do justice to his story about the moment that he realized he would be a comic, and not an athlete (it involved a 400-meter race, a cool breeze and a flap on the front of his shorts) . Because you still couldn't have seen the look on his face as he recounted the horrible tale, coming off like Harry Potter's hangdog older brother.

And I really don't know how to describe his partner-in-comedy Andy Zaltzman, with whom he hosts a podcast for The Times of London and did a show for BBC Radio called The Department.

What I can tell you, though, that if John Oliver comes to your town, you should go see him. Dude was really, really funny.

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All the old familiar places

It's been six months and a couple of days since I was last in Los Angeles. That's not that long, really, but in that time I've managed to forget just how freakin' big this place is. I'm on the plane, maybe a half-hour away from landing, and I look out the window. Hmm, I wonder if that's Big Bear down there.

Turns out it was -- and then I just kind of sat there for the rest of the flight and marveled at the unbroken spring of urban/suburban/industrial development that stretched from Lake Arrowhead all the way to the coast. Living in L.A., you sort of tend to stay in your bubble, and while you bitch about the traffic and know sort of implicitly that all those people live somewhere, it's easy to forget how the Southland stretches on and on and on.

So, yeah, it's nice to be back. And also a little odd.

Not in a bad way, though. More in this kind of way: Driving in from LAX, I take note of the old hotel on Lincoln that's been boutiqued and see that Playa Vista looks even more monolithic and out of place than when I last drove by. A couple new facades on the little shops near the office, a new shmancy blonde-wood door on the entrance to our suite.

As I leave, I remind myself that I'm driving to my hotel in Marina del Rey and not my old apartment. I've already sussed out a back way to avoid the traffic on Lincoln; it works. Pavilions still has the sandwich I like, so that's dinner. I sit and watch Super Tuesday returns in the state where I no longer vote; my primary is next week, and it looks like it'll still count, which is cool.

Nothing is all that different, but still it feels a degree or two off. Maybe it's a location thing -- I'm in a perfectly nice but nondescript hotel in Marina del Rey for the next six days, eating at places I haven't visited since I was fighting monsters. It's going to be great seeing my friends here again (already has been, with regard to my co-workers). And this will be my home again soon enough. Right now, though? Just passin' through.

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