Month: October 2017

I hadn’t heard about Naughty Noir before, so I was glad to see a new show. This show has more of a rock’n’roll/biker bar vibe, with a lot of gogo dancing inbetween a few performances. Puss-N-Boots is the host, and the show is after midnight.

It seemed to be a place where other performers come as well. I saw Logan Laveau in the audience, and Ms Puss n Boots announced that Velvetina Taylor was in there too, celebrating her birthday!

Ms Boots introduced the first performer by calling her her favorite ass in burlesque. “I mean, I’m biased, I like everything about everyone. But I’m partial to her. I’m her friend so she sends me nudes, saying ‘this is what I look like in the morning'”. Dandy Dillinger came out wearing a mask and big hair, and flowers in her hair. A lot of work went into that costume, it looked like! After five songs of gogo, Penny Wren was next. I really liked her black and white triangles dress. Puss-N-Boots was last, and I can’t remember whether it was during her act or during gogo that she took a pony ride on one of the photographers (and it seems there were many).

Surprise host tonight – it’s Stache Novak, the Friday early edition! Stache kicks it off at 21.40 with a few zingers, such as “was a taint, now it’s a twasn’t”, or calling himself a “gentleman of negotiable affections.”

Gal Friday is the first performer of the night, railroading us through a classic purple routine of hers. I don’t know if it’s because of the act evolving over time or if I only just noticed the parallel, but this time I see the act as a five year prequel to Peekaboo Pointe‘s Lazy Stripper act – sort of the “I no longer give a fuck” version.

“Gal Friday – the love of my life, my future wife”, rhymes Stache after staring at her uncomfortably from the side of the stage during her act, earning him a few middle fingers.

Next up is Chipps Cooney, stunning the audience by giving away the secrets of the trade, and making it look so easy that he’s the Velvet Underground of magicians – everyone who sees him perform is sure to become a magician as a result. Stache agrees: “The illusion is perfect!”

Stache is throwing around the jokes and the one-liners – “He was so lazy, he married a pregnant woman!”

Seedy Edie provides relief from the comic relief, showing us that even the devil has a softer side, dancing to a song she shares with Emily Shephard.

I am a sucker for aerial, and there are few as good as Lucy Licious, displaying equal parts strength, control and grace. The song she picked is a beautiful plaintive piano tune that somehow reminded me of Eternal Sunshine.

Stache manages to pull us out of the contemplative mood Lucy put us in to by ragging on Los Angeles: “In LA, if you want to hide your money, put it in a book.”

He did so to introduce the next performer, who calls LA home: Coco Ono. She comes out in a nun’s habit, as a Foreigner to New York, and answers the age-old question we all want to know – what love is – with a toss-up between “love is a man handing you bananas from the side of the stage” and “love is giving away bananas so you can let them let you bite the banana that feeds”. Coco’s act ends with a Canadian double-fisting and lit-up pasties, so this act covered a lot of ground in only a few minutes.

Time to get awkward – Stache does an audience competition, where the winner gets a classic Bill poem recited, and the loser gets a lap dance – and this time the loser witnessed Stache completely naked save for a bandana and a strategic ball-cup, one of which was removed right before the curtain fell.

What a way to introduce the break, where Seedy Edie goes around with the tip bucket, and Coco Ono and Lucy Licious take turns on the gogo box.

The second half starts off a little confusing, with Chipps Cooney doing an actual burlesque act, with a single chest tassel. Gal Friday pulls us out of our confusion with another classic Gal routine, walking on by and flicking her vajayjay magic into the audience.

Wilfredo treats us to his version of “Those were the days”, shaking his perfect Spanish rump and swaying to the music.

Lucy goes for rope for her second act, at times hanging from a single foot or hand, making the audience watch with baited breath.

Seedy Edie picks the best songs for her acts – this time Ella Fitzgerald morphs into Karen O and Trent Reznor’s reworking of Immigrant song, as Edie is dressed in black with bird feathers.

Coco Ono counters with one of the least obvious songs for a Burlesque act – Paranoid Android by Radiohead, a late nineties Bohemian Rhapsody. Ballsy! She comes out in a freshly delivered Japanese schoolgirl outfit, and walks us through the song’s four acts with increasing intensity, taking off a garter belt that’s actually a ball gag and wearing it, then revealing the rope tied around her waist, handing part of it to the audience (who proceed to pull a little harder than expected in their excitement), and finally ending with a good old-fashioned transparent paddling. Gal Friday and Seedy Edie were peeking from the side of the stage.

And with that, the early set is over! Gal comes out on the gogo, gives a civilian Cheeky Lane a good old-fashioned spanking, and also pulls Coco Ono in for a full mounty.

Since the midnight show is hosted by my favorite host, Bastard Keith, I stick around for a bit longer. He starts off by singing “BK wants to make love to you.”, humping the side of the stage while proclaiming: “The proscenium is my friend. I’m not just going to say ‘hey, it’s fuck o’clock.’ I want to take my time!”

Looks like it’s Radiohead night at the Slipper Room tonight, as Joshua Dean does his rope loop aerial number to Creep, pulling some incredible moves and performing more spins than I thought were humanly possible.

Rosie Cheeks comes out in black, trying to figure out who’s done it to the tune of Perry Mason, and just like BK gets intimate with the proscenium.

“How many of your masturbate?” asks the bastard, and after a quick show of hands, “So many truth sayers… and two liars!”

Things get a little bit more blurry after that, but I see The Maine Attraction, GoGo Gadget performing an act with three songs and a beak, and Darlinda Just Darlinda who performed her patriotic duty by removing a stray 45 from her grabbed pussy and ripping it up. She keeps it political by going into the break with a tip bucket and a shirt that reads “Thank God for abortion!”

After tipping, I scoot off with friends to the Meatball shop across the street for a favorite late night snack. Good night, Slipper Room!

It’s a busy thursday night at Nurse Bettie – the bar is packed and it’s tough making your way to the front.

Tonight I have a special role – I’m a… show runner… best boy grip? In short, I get to provide food for use in an act! I take my job seriously and go to the McDonalds on Delancey, only to find out that they’ve decided to renovate and the closest alternative is on Sixth Avenue. Uh, no. I try out a local old school burger place called Mikey’s instead, and add a second set of fries by request for the backstage to share.

The go-go starts at 10 past 10, and Coco Ono, visiting NYC from Los Angeles this weekend, climbs on the window ledge for six songs and a few fistfuls of dollars. It’s worth it pushing through the crowd from my pretty decent third row position by the stage and go all the way to the back and back again. Luckily my spot is still there when I get back – or maybe that’s just the result of the steady air conditioning leak dripping on me? I almost wonder if the show’s producer, Calamity Chang, is gently ribbing Coco by putting on “Going Back to Cali” as the last go-go song, but if it is it’s meant in good fun.

Calamity kicks off the show at 10.30pm, mentioning that this show has been going for eight years. “When I talk to my Chinese mother, and I tell her that, the first thing she asks me is: how much money are you making? And when I tell her, she answers, you could have gotten two PhD’s in that time!”

Calamity introduces the first act, and I like that we head straight away into slaying the patriarchy. Petite Renard comes out as a suffragette, showing off the big guns, and donning sunglasses for the second half where she switches gears and demonstrates they’ll be just fine without us men.

Lady Mabuhay is new to me, but the way she deftly invites the audience to ride her pony with her suggests that that was mostly my mistake.

Nina La Voix turns Ariana Grande into a decidedly more grown-up experience, ending with a glove-fueled hint of asphyxiation.

Time for the break, and Petite Renard takes the gogo position in the window while Nina LaVoix goes around with the tip bucket.

Calamity opens the second half of the show with an old-fashioned dance-off, which not surprisingly is handily won by the woman in the pair.

And then it’s the act I ran show for – Coco Ono takes a big bite out of the Lower East Side – or at least that part of the LES that gets served at Mikey’s. I had never heard Tina Turner’s version of Whole Lotta Love, but I think it is now actually my favorite. She starts off with a box in hand, peeks into it, and then opens it to empty it of its contents. And Coco certainly wins over the crowd tonight, feeding fries to the first two rows, and striking poses with burger and shake.

Aphrodite Rose came out in a full-body kaleidoscopic tiger suit (words I’d never imagine being in such close proximity to each other, like, ever). Her shoe came off (or started off off) quickly and made its way to her face, as a telephone – yet another sign that the nineties called and wanted their act back. It was a confusing experience, like all the best Burlesque acts. Calamity agreed, I think, quipping “Now I know if I ever commit murder, I want do it with you!”

Nina took over the mic to introduce the host of the show who’s also doing the final act: Calamity Chang, coming out in a many-tasseled outfit, getting some help from Nina in the front, and showing off some intricate lacing work in the back!

And with that final act, the night at Nurse Bettie is over, and I get a chance to debrief the show with Wang Newton.

I arrive at City Winery at 23.45 sharp, and luckily the show starts slightly less sharp so I have just enough time to be ushered to my seat at a table with three people I don’t know. Right on cue, my favorite mancee appears from behind the curtain – it’s Bastard Keith, who on this night has the right setting to let more of his nerd flag fly (although there were still plenty of dicks to be had, in case you were worried)

Bastard Keith gets straight down to business by singing “I gotta be me”, then introduces the audience to some principles of Burletiquette: “Keep your hands to yourself, but let everything else out – hoot, holler, yell, whistle.”

The producer of the show, Dangrrr Doll, is the first performer on stage, performing as Sonic the Hedgehog. The stack of bangles on her wrist that she throws over her shoulder, making them bounce and tinkle just like in the game, is a very nice touch, setting the tone of detail orientation for the rest of the night.

Teo doesn’t need more than a light brown Federation shirt to evoke Captain Kirk. He brings out a big balloon which he sticks his head in. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not, but when Teo puts more of his body in the balloon, it pops. It does look like the act finished a little bit before the music ended.

Maki Roll, a DC-based performer, comes out as the perfect Storm – even having the milky white eyes Storm has in the movies when she uses her powers. The LED lights on her cloud-like fan streamers evoke the lightning she throws at the audience.

Bastard Keith gives kudos to DJ Stormageddon, and invites the audience to tweet him some nerd sex positions by listing a few of his own favorites:

• the Pennywise: you make your genitals look like a clown. Bonus points for painting your ass like a spider.

• The Wonder Woman: it’s so fucking good! You had no reason to believe it would be, but it is.

• The Justice league: an orgy with too many bodies and you didn’t build up to it. But you’re going to do it anyway.

Quite the buildup, but the next act deserves it, as tonight is her final night as a burlesque performer. Stella Chuu comes out dressed as a Japanese school girl: Yuki Nonaka from The Testament of Sister New Devil – a seemingly innocent enough start, but somewhere in the middle Stella reveals the rope dress she’s wearing underneath, and Dangrrr Doll comes out again and gets intimate with Stella, and immediately after Bastard Keith and Teo run to the other side of the stage and start making out with each other in response. The performance ends with a green snake between her legs that shoots white streams of something sticky into the audience, leaving it to wonder what the hell just happened.

There’s really only one way to follow this up – and that’s with a break.

When the break ends, Hazel begins, and to the stratospheric sounds of Rush she does an act from the Hobbit. I finally get to see Hazel perform on stilts for the first time, and she’s clearly had practice, as she pulls off some daring moves stalking around the stage. Her outfit is immaculately impressive too – a beautiful tree, with two smaller tree people puppets hiding somewhere in her bountiful foliage. Given the 50% extra fabric required to pull this off, this act showcases Hazel’s dedication to the craft. While Hazel was billed to perform as Zatanna, I doubt that would have worked better than the act she chose to give us instead.

Topher Bousquet brings us Voldo from the SoulCalibur games – a great choice for his flexible contortion work. The knives for hands is a nice touch too.

Bastard Keith pleads ignorance: “I don’t play anything above eight bit.” I would love to see him get a perfect score on my Atari VCS 2600’s Pitfall – but let’s not get my fantasies get in the way of a finish for this review.

BK declares a winner for the Nerd sex positions competition after mentioning some honorable runners-up. “The Stan Lee: you jack off in the corner during a threesome, but you still get all the credit anyway.”

After that, a Cylon comes out, scanning red eye light included. Various pieces of the costume move – the quality of the outfits this year is truly impressive. Halfway through, the Cylon loses enough armor to reveal the humanoid underneath: Stormy Leather, sporting a skin-colored patch running up and down her back, with a running led light there as well, to great effect. I finally get what it means to be in love with a strict machine.

We’re nearing the end of the show, but luckily, the two forces of nature behind this show since the beginning are each performing a second act. “It’s about to get *really* nerdy”, Bastard Keith promises. Dangrrr’s act starts with a gold coffin on the floor, from which she emerges a little bit into the act as a Mimic from Dungeons & Dragons. I think a big chunk of the audience are taking their mental image of this particular treasure chest home tonight.

And then, last but not least, and for the last time ever, she returns: Stella Chuu, performing as D.Va from the game Overwatch, which now puts me personally effectively in uncharted territory. Stella catches me up quickly though, so that I now understand that this character involves Dorito’s (kudo’s for the big Dorito’s used as fans, that was hilarious!), fed to the audience, as well as a big can of Mountain Dew, which somehow magically makes it out of several cups onto her hair and body, and strangely enough even the rest of the Dorito’s are no help at all in cleaning the mess up. Stella leaves another explosion on stage in her wake – going out with a bang.

They must have been very good Dorito’s too, because both Dangrrr Doll and Bastard Keith eat some from the floor after the curtain call.

What a great night – if only we didn’t have to wait a whole year for the next one!