Meet and tweet

Last week, I hung out with my friend Jay D, who I met almost three years ago at Writers Boot Camp. It’s funny who you stay in touch with. We’ve probably seen each other three times in three years – his wife thinks I’m his imaginary friend - but they recently moved to my neighbourhood so now we have lots of opportunity to play catch up.

After arranging and re-arranging the evening a few times, we eventually found a date we could both do. Not an easy feat in this town I can tell you.

Sitting in a booth under a giant moose’s head, we downed a few beers at the Bigfoot Lodge in Los Feliz, which was playing a disturbing amount of Bon Jovi (interspersed with music by new bands I’d never heard of which made me feel old, thanks guys).

Jay D’s a film-maker and talking to him consolidated my thoughts that I should learn Final Cut Pro. I want to make another short film this year but I also want to edit it too.

It feels like there’s so much to do and so little time. I tweeted the other day that I need to clone half a dozen Lisa’s just to get through all my work. And by that I don’t mean paid work, just the creative projects I want to throw out into the world.

Speaking of Twitter. You can follow me here but for all those who grumble about it, I would suggest you go to an Eddie Izzard gig.

I saw his new show, ‘The Big Intimacy Tour: Stripped Too’, at the Nokia Theatre Live in downtown LA last Friday and although the venue is pretty soul-less, Eddie had two giant screens up in the auditiorium before the show featuring his live Twitter feed.

This meant you could tweet @eddieizzard and your message would appear on the screen for all to see. It was very amusing, especially as it was scrolling gently to a classical music soundtrack.

There were lots of Brits in the house: I saw a friend’s name appear, who I then texted and she texted back to say she’d also seen my name. (You see, it connects people too!) But the older couple seated behind me were somewhat baffled by the whole experience and kept saying everybody’s names out loud, including mine which made me chuckle (’And look there’s a Lisa Marks’). I imagine Twitter got a few more subscribers that night.

I loved the show. The man is a total genius. I saw him perform at Wembley Arena on his ‘Sexie Tour’ in 2003, a year before I did my first stand up. I love his fearlessness and the fact that he mentioned Swansea, chip shops and squirrels called Kevin.

Most people don’t realise how much work goes into a show like that (maybe there are six Eddies?) but stand ups are constantly honing their work. Russell Brand did a tiny gig at the UCB in Hollywood last Thursday – the venue holds about 100 people if that, but he was trying out new material.

I would have gone but I decided to hang out with Jay D instead. Sometimes you’ve got to stay in touch the old fashioned way.