"Drunken Dragon Nights" Oct 24 & "Drinks & Inks" Oct 25

Please note that both events have strict RSVPs. If you plan to attend and I hope you do cause both are going to be very popular, please RSVP ASAP. I love you all, but I can't get everyone in if you don't click that little email button and hit send. Cheerio!

It's back!!

I will be performing along with Gal Friday & Hazel Honeysuckle. Kittening by Sydney Sunrise.

The Dirty Rice in the Dirty South

I was in New Orleans to perform in the 3rd Annual New Orleans Burlesque Festival a couple of weeks ago. I was in the Friday night "Bad Girls of Burlesque" show at the House of Blues. Not only did I met amazingly talented women and men alike but I got to experience the city of New Orleans for the first time! There were things I loved and not loved about this infamous city. I loved the charming architecture, the enchanting history and music culture, and the rich air that was palpable with folklore and mystery the minute you set foot in the French Quarter. As soon as my boyfriend and I checked in the Westin (the official festival hotel) we dumped our bags and went exploring. Naturally, the first stop was where all the strip bars were on Bourbon Street!

Strip clubs on Bourbon Street!

There were some skeevy men hanging out in front of every strip club but I did enjoy oogling the black girls in metallic bikinis doing their New Orleans "bounce". Bounce describes a popular dance trend and a type of party where all the girls bounce their booty up and down and all over the place making it all jiggly. The music usually goes something like this, "Make the booty bounce, make the booty bounce, Make the booty bounce!" and "Up, down, up, down, up, down!"








Obviously I could never master the bounce cause I have flat Asian booty as seen here which is all the more reason why I love watching other performers do butt tricks. The two NYC performers who in my humble opinion are the reigning booty-queens are Gal Friday and Peekaboo Pointe. It's hypnotizing to watch them shake their booty. It just reverberates like an earthquake in my eyeballs and I can't look away!




So after quickly experiencing the drunken fraternity atrocity that is Bourbon Street we made our way to Cafe Amelie where I had the best shrimp and grits and crabcakes I've ever eaten! This was just the beginning of me saying "the best (fill in the blank) I've ever eaten" for the rest of the week. Sure enough the next night, Thursday, we went to the famous Vaughn's Lounge where Kermit Ruffins have played for over ten years! Kermit is famous for being a jazz musician, a chef, and a regular on HBO's show Treme. Everyone I talked to knew who he was. That night was an extra special night because Kermit was cooking for everyone and playing with his brass band. HBO and FoodTV were there to film the line of people queuing up for his food. I was so glad that Armitage Shanks (from Seattle who was also the MC for my show on Friday night) told me about it and Peekaboo Pointe went with us that night. Kermit made dirty rice and beans, grilled some crazy delicious andouille sausage, salmon, sweet potato, and Peekaboo's favorite, grilled quail! I was to find out more about Peek's bold culinary tastes on this trip too...

Peekaboo Pointe & I at Vaughns Lounge

After seeing Kermit play we went to the 2nd after-party that Rick Delaup (producer of the NOBF) organized for all the performers. We also went to the Wednesday night party in his suite at the Westin, and like the Thursday night party at Broussard's, it was a very fun and open bar event. The Wednesday night one was actually curtailed because hotel guests complained about the noise we were making.

Thursday After Party at Broussards with Lou Lou D'vil, Bettina May, Mina Mechante, Deidre Doll, Charlotte Treuse

What I liked most about these parties is meeting in person people I know from Facebook. For instance I finally got to meet met Burgundy Brixx from Vancouver. She produces Kitty Nights there and I've heard so much about her through Fem Appeal. I also met Betsy Bottomdollar from Victoria (also in Canada) and she is SO fun and a total riot! We all went to the Carousel Bar in Hotel Monteleon after Broussards where the bar rotates ever....so......slowly...... while you sip away at your cocktail. There was a vampire convention at the Monteleon so it was really funny to see all these "vampiric" Twilight-to-be's hanging out at the bar drinking. Betsy said that these "vampires" have a system of gestural language to communicate amongst each other. For instance, if you cross your arms and put them across your chest, it means you are "invisible". If you raise your arms above your head, it means you've transformed into a werewolf! Hahahahahahahahah. I can't wait to be "invisible" next time I rob a bank or don't pick up Chewie's poop on the street.

Me and Betsy Bottomdollar

Friday was my show day and I usually take it pretty easy so we didn't go walking around for hours in the New Orleans sun. I went to tech/sound check at The House of Blues in the afternooon, and I was very impressed with how organized, on time, professional and nice everyone were.

Show Setlist for "Bad Girls of Burlesque"!

Everything from day one has been running like a well-oiled machine and that's major kudos to Rick Delaup. It's a three day festival with a lot of people coming from all over the place. The show was beautiful and I met even MORE women backstage. There were hot food provided for us too. Rice and beans and grilled chicken. My favorite combination. Gimme a bit of Tabasco, I can eat this every day!

Here are some of my favorite photos from the "Bad Girls" show and Saturday night's "Queen of Burlesque" show.

Iva Handful, sodomizer of fan dance

Medianoche who competed in Saturday night's Queen of Burlesque

With Angi Bee-Lovely from Dallas. She does beautiful aerial work!

I would have spraypainted this plastic astronaut helmet silver and developed an act to "Space Oddity" by David Bowie

Saturday was my official day off! We spent the day walking up and down Magazine Street shopping and had brunch at Slim Goodies Diner. There were great vintage shopping and I almost bought this astronaut helmet. I didn't because I still had to go to Dallas, Texas after New Orleans plus my fans to carry...USAirways charged $25 per luggage! And you know what all airlines now charge to travel with an in-cabin pet? $125 EACH WAY!!! It's totally fucked up. It used to be $80 each way for Chewie, but every year, they unreasonably raise the price for carrying a pet who doesn't even sit in a chair so they are NOT taking up extra room other than the pet owner having to share their feet space. On top of that, you can't use your miles to pay for your pet. It's totally a greedy way for the airlines to make more money. Traveling nowadays is definitely NOT fun or glamorous like the show Pan Am...it's just stress and sheer boredom and annoying strange men trying to strike up conversations with you even after you make a big show of putting on your headphones.

We also took the tram on Saturday after stumbling around Magazine Street and going into Commander's Palace in our shorts (ooops). They were in-between brunch and dinner so Michael took some impromptu "hair" photos across the street in front of Lafayette Cementery. He took quite a few great shots that I love on the street, not "burlesquey" pictures but regular, more fashion-inspired shots since that is his day job and background. You can see them here on my Facebook page.

Some fun outtakes

Earlier I mentioned how enchanted I was with the architecture in New Orleans. It seemed like every porch and every corner house with open balcony windows beckoned to me to leave NYC and come spend balmy nights sipping a chilled Sazerac on the porch with perhaps a vintage palm-leafed fan lazily spinning on the ceiling...aaah. We even looked at some real estate rental listings and talked to a couple friendly locals on the street who gave us some pointers. It's a lot cheaper to live in NO, obviously it's a lot cheaper to live anywhere other than NYC! I just realized during this trip to the south that I've been in New York since 1998 - that's 13 grubby years! These thoughts and more have become more frequent the last 5 years. Thoughts about leaving NY, where to go, why to go... these  beautiful buildings in their silent majesty and power can evoke strong feelings of longing for something unknown... New Orleans is indeed magical in this sense.

Sunday was our last day in NO. We went back to Mothers which was just down the street cause I become obsessed with their crawfish etouffe. It was the best thing I've ever eaten! We also discovered a casual, cheap taqueria called Felipe by the hotel that was surprisingly delicious! We went there almost every day for their fish tacos that were $1.85 a piece and seasoned so perfectly. We also went on the free cocktail tour that Rick had so kindly organized for out-of-towners given by the very knowledgeable and fun Brian Huff. He took us to 4 different places: Sylvaine (I had a Moscow Mule), Pirates Alley Cat Cafe (I drank Absinthe but couldn't finish it...hate the taste), Court of Two Sisters (Pimms Cup), and the last stop was Arnaud's where I had the French75. Peekaboo met us here at the end of the tour, ravenous. We all ordered nibbles to eat and she ordered turtle soup! I was impressed that a white girl was ordering like a Chinese person, a turtle soup! Holy reptiles. Arnaud's was most interesting because of the rich family history that is full of twists and turns. The daughter of Arnaud, Germaine, was a notorious figure among many other things. The restaurant has a non-publicized mardi gras museum upstairs displaying several of Germaine's opulent mardi gras gowns from decades past. This was an amazing spectacle and I'm so glad Jo Boobs told me to check it out. Besides the amazing craftsmanship and devotion to the annual event, the museum is supposedly HAUNTED! If you see unexplained reflections in these photos that's probably why...

  

In my zeal for haunted history I convinced Betsy and Paul, Lucy Sky Diamond, and Peekaboo Pointe to go on a haunted tour called "Ghosts & Vampires" with me Sunday night. Our tour guide was a kooky old lady who was very...animated. I felt bad that I made everyone spend $20 on a tour that was not what we expected. We were expecting more of a historical fact tour about locations, buildings, and landmarks. Not a comedic re-enactment full of ghost noises. It would have been perfect for a younger group, just not for us. But - she did take us in front of a building where a ghost named "Julie" haunts the roof where she froze to death trying to prove her love to her lover. She said that by the fourth shot on an automatic camera you will get light globes and sure enough, three people in our group of about 15 captures light globes in their photos of all different sizes and locations. That was pretty scary and that wrapped up my trip!

The next morning Michael went back to NYC and I went to Dallas. I was booked to perform in Vivienne Vermouth's show "The Orient Express" at The Bone in Deep Ellum that week, and it was something I was really looking forward to. Three of my high school friends came with 3-4 of their friends. My brother and sister-in-law came with 4 of their friends. My mom and my aunt came. And an old childhood friend came with her husband. It was an amazing night and my first time performing in Texas! I made my brother go out to smoke a cigarette when I performed, and he did! Haha. I met several people including the beautiful pin-up model Angela Ryan who I met last year in NYC when she came to my Thursday show at Nurse Bettie. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the show. That's the end of this posting! Now that I've taken off TWO whole months from my day job, the job that pays for my rent and my rhinestones, I am going to buckle down for the fall/winter and save some money!

Steve McQueen talks about SHAME at Toronto International Film Festival 2011

Remember when I went in to do the threesome scene with Michael Fassbender with my friend DeeDeeLuxe in that film SHAME by British director Steve McQueen? Well, the film got picked up by FoxSearchlight for US distribution at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend which bodes only one thing in film language = Oscar run 2011! Not only that by Fassbender won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival the weekend prior too. The film is coming to the New York Film Festival 2011 on October 7 and 9th at Lincoln Center and believe you me, DeeDee and I are planning a big night out of this screening. My friend Minx in Toronto has already seen the film as well as my tweeter friend @MFOnline - and both have given me the same reaction "powerful" "intense" "beautifully shot" - so I'm really excited to see what Steve has done with our scene. I heard there were a lot of soft focus and bouncing. DeeDee and I are credited as "Late Night Lover #1" and "Late Night Lover #2". It seems like SHAME is the most controversial and highly regarded film to be out in the festival season this year, and here's a clip of Steve talking about the film at TIFF Q&A this weekend. Jump to 17:53 to hear a nice little shout out to us from Steve himself!

Fassbender portrays sex addict in new film 'Shame'

Toronto International Film Festival 2011 | CTV.ca Fassbender portrays sex addict in new film 'Shame'

My Episode on Oddities!

Did I mention that I haven't had TV in my house for 6 years until recently? Now I have cable TV but I still don't watch it regularly. I like watching movies off of NetFlix and there are some sitcoms that I like. One of which is the show Oddities on Discovery Channel or Science Channel. The show is about the antique shop Obscura in the East Village of Manhattan in NYC and the various objects they sell and the eccentric people that come through the shop in their search for... well, oddities. The show had me hooked from the first time I laid eyes on it. I have been inside Obscura many years ago. They've been in the East Village for years. So now I'll be on the show! This week I went for my call time and filmed my segment. I can't divulge what the object that I bought is until the episode airs (sometime in Nov/Dec) but I can say that it was very fun working with the small, tight knit camera crew, and it was really fun to talk to Mike and Evan, the owners of the shop. Turns out that Evan used to play in the alt rock band at Mother's "Click & Drag" parties!! Yes, I've been in NYC for over ten years and I'm referencing a defunct club. Anyway, "Click & Drag" was a cyber-fetish party. This was in the haydays of dotcom craziness when films such as Synthetic Pleasures I and II were big deals. Evan was in the house band. So cool! I also saw a newspaper clipping of Evan from 20008 in NYTimes' style section for a gothic ball party she attended. She's a fucking cool ass lady! My episode has to do with the scar on my stomach and the surgery. The object they found for me is related to the abdomen. When I first saw it, I was like, "What the hell is this thing?" It looked like something from a Victorian insane asylum. That's all I'm gonna say! You'll have to watch the episode when it airs!

Not used to getting up so early... coffee first

Doing the on-the-street interviews

Outside the shop

Evan and I

Here's a clip from another episode to give you a sense of how awesome this show is:


PS: This reminds me of an old show called "Friday the 13th" starring a redheaded actress named Robie. The show was also about an antique shop that burned down or something and all the objects were cursed and let out to the world. So the three main characters' job were to find these objects again. I used to watch it all the time. I loved it.

Performing for Brooke Shields & the Cast of Addams Family

The Maine Attraction, Brooke, me

I am so proud of myself! Not because I had the opportunity to organize and perform in a private show for the beautiful and super-accomplished Brooke Shields and the cast of The Addams Family (currently on broadway), but because I successfully kept it a secret! We were all under agreement to keep things private so that she could enjoy a night out on the town with her cast members without dealing with paparazzi.

We closed down Nurse Bettie for them and there were trays and trays of delicious Taiwanese baos from Bao Haus. Everyone started arriving around 1130pm and we started the show at midnight with a beaming Brooke sitting right in the front. Brooke asked for a classics-only show so we only did the best, most glamorous and fantastical costumes. Medianoche did her honeysuckle, floral act. Maine Attraction did her famous Sing, Sing, Sing number while Tansy did her comedic Snow White rendition. Bettina May did a classic green gown strip, Broadway Brassy sang 2 songs, and I did my red Dusk Til Dawn fan dance. They were a fantastic audience - totally into everything and needless to say, smart about the theater performance experience. Brooke is so nice and gracious and has a wicked sense of humour. It makes me so happy when I meet a celebrity and they are actually like-able! I had the displeasure of sitting next to Emily Haines from indie band Metric once at a local cafe, and I am (or was, I should say) the BIGGEST Metric fan. I saw them twice in NYC and once in Seattle. But she was SO annoying - and it was obvious that the guy she was with was just completely stricken with her and she knew it too. Her conversation consisted entirely of herself, on and on about the most trivial things that this guy unfortunately licked up every single word like she was preachin the gospel truth or something! To make it worse, the guy sitting next to them on the other side got sucked into her vortex too so her ego trippin became worse! Ever since then, I stopped listening to Metric.

Anyway so Brooke was not like that at all. She's genuine and very much a cool, down to earth person. Considering that she's been famous since she was 10 years old, take a lesson from her Emily Haines and other egotistical, talk-about-oneself all the time, budding performers/entertainers! During the dance-off competition, two of her cast members came up and one girl busted out the worm on the floor! Holy insects, I've never seen that move done at NB ever! It was an amazing night. Thanks to Tina Turnbow who created the opportunity for the performers and the venue, I was so happy that I got a chance to entertain someone who entertained me growing up.

Roger Rees (Gomez)

Bettina May, Brooke, Medianoche

To Drag or Not to Drag

A couple of my fans have asked me if I ever do drag which got me thinking, "Why don't I have any drag acts?" By "drag", Susan Sontag's theories on camp and convoluted academic theories aside, the street definition simply means dressing up as the opposite sex. There are quite a few burlesque performers who have drag acts dressed as a man. Drag done well is a transformation that I enjoy watching on stage. I admire it but I don't think I can or would ever be able to pull it off. I am too attached to my long hair to cut it, shave it, or wig it short. My figure is also too curve-y (34-27-34) to pull off the androgynous look that performers like Stormy Leather do so very well. But most importantly I would not feel pretty or powerful as a man or even dressed as a man in costume. When I was five years old, my family went away camping somewhere for the weekend and I didn't have enough underwear to wear. So my mom made me wear a pair of clean boy underwear that belonged to my older brother. I was mortified and felt so gross and not myself the whole day. I also had a really short hair cut as a child and for some reason I wanted to get a perm (I also insisted on owning a pair of white cowboy boots too). My mom obliged me but I ended up with a tight 'fro and whenever we went to the market, noisey vendors asked me if I was a boy or a girl! I wasn't a total girlie girl as a child and I was pretty hyperactive and bold. But I definitely resented being mistaken for a boy. I felt so embarrassed and couldn't wait for the perm to go away and my hair to grow long again. So why do other performers don drag with such aplomb and panache when I can't even imagine it? I asked some of my performer friends on their take, and I was surprised to find that most performers have quite the opposite reaction than I have.

Stormy Leather (below) who, in my opinion, does amazing drag has quite a few acts that either touch on her bisexuality or exist in the realm of role-play. In "I'm Your Man" (Leonard Cohen), "I hand out roses and strip out of my suit to reveal my breasts wrapped and men's undergarments.  And then I take a lady by the hand, twirl and dip her, and then lay a big kiss on her." She poignantly adds that this act is "a tribute to my bisexuality and the way I feel about women sometimes. That if I could be your man, I would. I really really would." 

 In "Daddy's Home", a controversial act that Stormy only performs at The Box, she starts out as a convincing looking man and end up as a broken woman who "puts a condom on a gun and aims it at her vagina." It's a piece created under The Box's creative direction and "many people I know have differing views on this piece. While some see it as a story about identity confusion or penis envy, others have been quite offended." But in the end, Stormy says, it's an act "about being unhappy with who you are." And that is relate-able on an universal level, how the trappings of gender, sexuality, and identity can succeed or fail to define who we are.

StormyLeatherNYC.com

StormyLeatherNYC.com

One of the things I admire about Stormy doing drag acts is the confidence she exudes as a pretend-man. She walks different, stands differently, and as she says, "When I dress in drag everything about me changes. My walk, the way I stand, how I smoke a cigarette, how I talk to women or men." One can see that transformation in her performance and I also think that her lithe physique goes a long way in being convincing. Ironically, her svelte figure (all muscle, no fat, all angles and lean lines) is what gay men are envious of, straight men obsessed with (I've witnessed it), and straight and gay women admire sometimes makes her feel self-conscious when she is not in drag. "When I'm in drag, I'm less self conscious about what my body looks like when I'm stripping. I'm not worried about looking too skinny or missing a spot with the moisturizer.  I don't have to wear makeup and I don't care what I look like without it when I'm a man."

StormyLeatherNYC.com

Another performer Strawberry Fields, who is on hiatus, used to do a drag act at the first show I ever produced called "Dim Sum Burlesque" in 2009. Her song of choice is "Glory Box" by Portishead. She describes her act as being inspired by the lyrics (Give me a reason to love you...give me a reason to be a woman...I just want to be a woman) which "conjured up the imagery of being a man - in man's clothing, facial hair, masculine stance... all of the armor of man... and little by little stripping that away...peeling those layers off...to reveal a hot sexy woman-goddess."

Strawberry Fields doing "Glory Box" at Dim Sum Burlesque, 2009

 

The word "armor" is an interesting choice of words. Whereas Stormy Leather revels in being a man for sexual-political reasons when she says, "As many women, even today I'm faced with the double standard between the sexes.  And it drives me bat shit crazy.  Sometimes I wonder how much more I could accomplish if I simply had that extra appendage.  It is a little bit of penis envy for me I guess. Not that I want to really have one, but that I can see where it would be beneficial", Strawberry Fields has a spiritual explanation for how she feels when she is in drag. "It is empowering to act/feel/embody a man... the masculine energy I put out in drag is very different than my playful feminine energy... it feels very different... I tense my muscles in my arms, face, brow." Strawberry then adds that she does "imagine having a penis (a big dominating one) and it fuels a male confidence that feels completely different that my feminine goddess energy confidence."

The struggle of finding that mythical liminality state that encompasses both masculine and feminine is perhaps what motivates and inspires my fellow performers to do drag. I am less evolved in my exploration of sensuality than they are, because I can't embrace, or rather I refuse to investigate the masculine in me. If there is a masculine energy in me it must express itself in other facets of my life, perhaps through my ambition and ball-busting. On stage as a persona, I just can't muster it because I don't find myself "sexy" when I look man-ish, boy-ish, masculine. So what it comes down to, for me, at least, is that I perform for myself. I perform what I think is seductive, sexy, erotic - it is narcissistic but art is self-indulgent... at least I'm not writing an autobiography! Not yet, at least. Oh like having a blog is any better. :)

Echoing my sentiment is what performer Dame Cuchifrita says about why she does drag acts. "I also happen to believe when it comes to my personal view on what is sexy, it is always about attaining a balance between the male and female energy. Androgyny would be the ideal form of beauty  in my eye. I don’t usually find anything that is too female or too male as sexy, but a combination of both when found in one person is utterly irresistible," she says. In her drag acts/personalities, she will often depict what she calls "warrior" qualities through figures such as a bullfighter, a Chinese emperor, Hitler to Galliano. I've worked with Dame a lot and I can attest to her penchant for dressing as a man. When we modeled for Dr. Sketchy's for "Peking Opera" she would not stop playing with and idolizing her fake beard! However her motivation is not trying to be convincing as a man (a big thing in drag culture achieving "realness") or to complete the transformation process. She revels in existing in that in-between space that I discussed earlier, straddling that strange and at times mesmerizing figure that appears female (she is also curve-y) but the movements and gestures suggest otherwise. When asked if she feels differently when she is in drag, she says, "In my spirit resides a warrior, strong male energy that I find very sexy when combined with my womanly figure. Perhaps because being physically big and strong is something I could never attain, therefore the yearning becomes almost erotic." 

Dame Cuchifrita at Dr. Sketchy's. Photo by Justin Lussier.

Dame Cuchifrita (right). Photo by Adrian Buckmaster.

I thought it would be interesting to get the opinion from the opposite side and asked our Number One burlesque fan and supporter who everyone knows: Caprice Bellefleur. Caprice is a burlesque staple. You will often see her out in the audience dressed to the nines and sporting a short bob, sometimes it is blonde and lately it's been a black bob. She must be out every single night and she has probably attended every single regular burlesque show in NYC. She describes herself on her blog as "a 62 year old retiree enjoying life in the Big Apple. I'm a mixed-gender male-bodied person. This makes me a transgender person, trans for short. If you call me a crossdresser, I won't object, but crossdressing is just an activity I do to express part of my identity." I have never seen Caprice as non-Caprice and I honestly don't think I would recognize her as him. So why the crossdressing or "en femme"-ing? She started very young at the age of 9 trying on her sister's and mother's clothes. She recalls, "when I was in summer day camp at age 9, and they had 'Backwards Day.' Most of us just put on our camp T-shirts backwards, but one boy came in a dress. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I wanted to be wearing that dress so badly." The desire to express both masculine and feminine aspects of her personality amplified through the years until her 40s' when putting on one of two items in private no longer fulfilled and "the desire to be seen as a woman by others began to grow. By then the internet existed, and I began corresponding with other crossdressers. I bought more clothes, some make-up and jewelry, and the items I needed to give the appearance of having a female figure. On November 11, 1998 I bought a wig (I never had one before) and attended my first crossdressers' club meeting."

Reina Terror (left), Caprice (center), Bambi Galore (right) at Burlesque Hall of Fame 2011.

Women can often feel bolder and more confident when dressed as a man, so what does Caprice feel when presenting herself as a woman? Does she feel less ballsy (excuse the pun), soft-spoken, timid, or less confident? Interestingly she says, "I think I'm less shy when presenting as a woman. I don't know why. Is it because I'm hiding behind an alternate, invented identity, with an alternate appearance, that I can shed when it's convenient? I'll let the shrinks debate that."