Getting Spanked & Then Mind Fucked

Pan & the Nymphs. 
Photo by Vishnu Hoff, 2010.

Waaahooo!!! Saturday night's show at Coco De Mer was spectacular, grand, and so much fun. Most of the audiences in my show are non-burlesque performers and almost every time, they are new to the art form. I love performing and producing for this audience, because I always remember that feeling of enthrallment and excitement when I saw Little Brooklyn & Creamy Steven's Starshine Burlesque show at Rififi's about 6 years ago. I, too, want to create that feeling, atmosphere, thrill and excitement for other people so that I will be immortalized in their minds! Mwa Ha ha!! I'm just kidding. In all seriousness though, one does remember the moment true inspiration happens to you. Burlesque in its theatricality, campiness, and ostentatiousness seems to be the intersection of all my various, random lifelong interests and obsessions. When I encountered it, it all fell in places these disparate parts of my life that I didn't know why I was interested in.

Pan showing the silly nymphs how to really use the sex toys!
Photo by Vishnu Hoff, 2010.

The pictures you see is from our group finale conceived by Dame Cuchifrita with me and Pandora. Dame is the goddess Pan and Pandora and I are the nymphs cavorting in the forest. This act is SO on point and captures the cheeky British humour that is very much Coco De Mer. It was brilliantly executed and the music was both hysterical and beautiful at the same time. It was so much fun doing this act! I hope we can find another appropriate venue to do this act again because its wicked!!! And Dame REALLY did spank me hard with the vinyl paddle!

The nymphs discover Pan and their sexual desires.
Photo by Vishnu Hoff, 2010.

We sold out again this weekend, but the next "Spreading the Curtains" show will be Saturday, September 11. We are taking August off because it's a slow show month with people away on vacation, etc. I, for one, will be in Mexico again for a week!

Me at Coco De Mer with 42Below. Thank you 42Below!
Photo by Vishnu Hoff, 2010.

I also saw Inception this weekend. It is brilliant and sophisticated. I loved the metaphors: the projections, the subconscious, the falling backwards, etc etc. It's funny that Leonardo di Caprio has done two films back-to-back on a similar subject, the unreliability of reality. Shutter Island was also about the telescoping of realities, dream state versus non-dream state. I was anticipating that twist all the way through Inception and voilá! I was right. I did like how they incorporated the idea of "paradox" in architecture and used MC Escher's famous "Penrose stairs" as an example. There were many other references to dreaming and dreams. It's a good movie to watch if you like thinking about dreams, lucid dreaming, and various mysteries of dream vs. reality. They must have talked to tons of people to collect similarities we all have while dreaming such as the sensation of falling. Inception follows a grand sci-fi tradition on the timeless topic of mind-body dualism that, as of late, popular culture has become more fascinated by. The Matrix, Ghost in the Machine, and Avatar are more examples of the separation of mind and body. In Inception, one of the conundrums was whether one could believe one's "perceived reality" versus a "real" reality. I think I would just pick one and stick with it instead of torturing myself about whether I'm sleeping or dreaming. This kind of attitude got me a D+ in my Philosophy 101 class at Cornell which this movie reminded me of. I had to write a paper on Descartian dualism. I can't recall what I wrote but I remember citing many science fiction writings as well as zombies. I did not like Professor Wood. This is not a sexual pun!!! I was really bad at writing papers for philosophy classes. It seemed like writing about nothing and talking to nobody! After that, I tried Sleep Psychology and Abnormal Psychology and even the Magic Mushrooms and Mischievous Molds class from the Plant Pathology Department, and I did SO much better in those classes. Guess I am more interested in people's minds than the ethereal nothingness... But anyway, more excitingly, is that before the movie, I saw the trailers for Resident Evil 4: Afterlife AND Tron Legacy!! How did I not know about the remake of Tron!? The Resident Evil trailer looked super fun and I can't wait to see it cause Milla is fierce!!

I have an easy week this week hooray! Just Nurse Bettie so I can actually see some friends and maybe have a small dinner party too, if I'm really ambitious. Next week though... shows every night and Albert Cadabra's Skullduggery And Skin Show in DC at the Palace of Wonders! I've never done this show before and I'm psyched to take the Subaru Outback on the road with Albert and Gigi Lafemme!