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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!

On this rainy Wednesday I make haste from Nurse Bettie to the Slipper Room.

Walt Whitman is on stage, and introduces Sean Blue, who deftly throws a whole lot of rings around. That takes us to the intermission already, and Stormy Leather comes out with the tip bucket while Puss-N-Boots starts of the go-go in green, followed by Madame Rosebud, who, apart from swallowing a full hand holding a bill, keeps it uncharacteristically low-key on the gogo box tonight. Madame Rosebud was an unannounced performer tonight, most likely falling in for Emily Shephard who was on the bill but did not show up tonight.

There is royalty in the audience tonight – I spot Albert Cadabra, Gigi Bon Bon, Ellie Steingraeber, Cassandra Rosebeetle and Lucy Licious all in attendance.

For the second set, Go goat boy replaces Walt Whitman. I don’t think I’ve seen Goat Boy before, because I think I would remember, because this act still needs some work to stitch the performances together – the audience clearly appreciated the performances more than the MC. Maybe with more time and less obvious jokes it could be a good act.

Anyway, we came for the performances, and Puss-N-Boots certainly delivered as The Cat Woman – a shame I can’t find The Marketts song on Spotify.

Chipps Cooney showed us why the Magician’s Guild has threatened to take his license away. I certainly appreciate his deadpan delivery of magic trick explanations.

I had never seen Broody Valentino perform before, but I like what I saw and he would make a great addition to the monthly Boylesque nights! The audience certainly enjoyed the performance.

Rosebud does her David Bowie tribute, and while Freddie Mercury had no trouble coming after David Bowie, he would probably not have enjoyed the pantomimed pan flute rendition of “I want to break free” that Goat Boy gives us. At least it expresses what we all feel in the moment, and I have a feeling that was the whole point of the act.

Sean Blue is a welcome return, this time showering the audience in balls, and actually stripping while keeping his juggle going. At one point, he goes into the audience to ask for help to unbuckle his belt, and then when he’s just in his underwear he goes around the room sitting on people’s laps while keeping his balls in the air. He ends his act by juggling the clothes he just took off.

Stormy Leather closes the night with her amazing “Mrs. Robinson” act, ending naked save for the rope dress she just fit to her body. A classic.

I come in and Hoodoo Hussy is manning the windowsill for the pre-show gogo.

It’s a rainy Wednesday so Nurse Bettie is a little more empty than it usually is. But that doesn’t matter to Shelly Watson, a consummate professional who early on introduces one of the patrons to her balcony. Shelly kicks off the night by singing Night and Day, and then introduces us to the first act: Hazel Honeysuckle is back from a short trip to Venice and Los Angeles, and delights us with her B-O-O-B-S song, adapted for the occasion to feature references to Shelly, the host.

Shelly mentions she read something on “Face Libre – that’s Italian for Facebook everyone!”

For the next act, she asks if anyone in the room is an Arrested Development fan? She introduces someone debuting at Nurse Bettie – and Peachy Kink comes out dressed like a Bluth banana to Abba.

“She popped her cherry here tonight, everyone! Incidentally, I told my last lover that I popped it a while ago, but that I still have the box it came in!”

Shelly introduces the third act of the night – Hoodoo Hussy, who was doing the gogo before, in a classic white and green outfit accompanied by Harry Belafonte.

Shelly sings “Moderate Spender” for a different take on the classic, and as Hazel goes around with the tip bucket, Shelly serenades her with “Whatever Hazel Wants”, and as a result Hazel takes the stage again for the intermission gogo.

I couldn’t stay after the break for Tutu Toussaint and Lillian Bustle – next time.

After going to see Wasabassco’s Hellfire Club, we moved on to Slipper Room and arrived at the end of the earlier show.

Bastard Keith was talking to two girls on stage, one a UFC fighter, the other a chef. One of them was from England, and about to get married. “What is going to be your new surname? And surname in England is the name we give to a sir.” “You’re going to love this”, she replied. “It’s Handside hyphen Dick.”

I think she temporarily broke Bastard Keith. I haven’t often seen him at a loss of words due to a fit of laughter before, but she sure did it.

Bastard brought out Jonathan Nosan, a contortionist, who wowed the crowd bending every which way.

Then The Maine Attraction the came out, dancing with fire on her hands, ending her act by setting her pasties on fire.
With that, the first show ended, and Cheeky Lane took the gogo box, inviting people to send her dick pics, and showing them to passersby as they came in.

Wilfredo was our host for the second show, and started off the night with his song for all seasons, throwing flowers into the audience.

Madame Rosebud came out in a gorgeous gold dress, performing a perfectly undercooled act, causing Wilfredo to inform us that we all just nibbled on the nipple of excitement.

Ellie Steingraeber let us in on her all-American aerobics routine, and seeing all those hoops definitely got us excited.

Wilfredo introduced Jonathan again, saying “He’s just trying to make ends meet.” Jonathan did a long act where he essentially ripped up a newspaper, then made it whole again – an interesting twist for a contortionist.

Wilfredo was in fine form tonight, throwing out zingers like “I see you taking a look at my Lower East Side!”

Cassandra Rosebeetle was a bride in white, a convincing ball and chain.

Zero Boy was next, bringing his one-man sound effect comedy to the Slipper Room. Afterwards Wilfredo asked him about his upcoming show, but not before he commented “You’re so tall your wife must go up on you.”

Peekaboo Pointe gave us her salty salute to “Nobody Does It Better”

Cassandra came out for the gogo intermission as a blood red nurse.

Wilfredo took us back into the show for the second half with his rendition of “Those were the days”. Rosebud paid tribute to David Bowie with “Wild is the Wind”.

Ellie brought us hoop aerial, contorting in the hoop and bringing the eighties back.

Cassandra had both hands red with candle until she poured the wax out over herself.

And Peekaboo gave us the ultimate send-off with her Lazy Stripper act, telling us all to “go away!” and asking us “Why are you still here? Urgh!”

Uncle Earl came out for the traditional Saturday night “Sweet Caroline” singalong (which saw two patrons dive into the backstage and join the dancers on stage to fill it up, as some of the performers had left already on this late night). And then Wilfredo came back out too, and they did a duet to “Theme from New York” to close off the show.

Wilfredo wanted to bring someone out for gogo, but didn’t know who was next (and frankly, there weren’t any dancers left that hadn’t taken the gogo box yet). He asked the DJ to get creative, and the DJ announced “On the gogo box, it’s your host – Wilfredo!” Good move, and Wilfredo obliged, and I made sure to make it worth his while.

It had been a while since we had closed the Slipper Room together, but this was a perfect way to celebrate our four years in New York!

Once every few months, Wasabassco hosts a burlesque show where the performers go all the way. We had seen it at the Kraine Theatre in the East Village, but since then the event has moved to the Gemini & Scorpio Loft in Brooklyn and changed slightly to have a dress code and only allow pre-sale ticket entrance, which we assume helps to keep it classy and filled with people who really wanted to be there.

We arrived about fifteen minutes before the show’s start, and there was already gogo action on the stage. Logan Laveau and Puss-N-Boots were bar bunnies on duty, Sapphire Jones walked among the patrons as hospitality, and we spotted both Gigi Bon Bon and photographer Ellen Stagg in attendance.

At 9 sharp, Nasty Canasta bookended her sleazy Nightrain routine inbetween two slivers of classic burlesque music for the parts where she kept her pasties on.

Tiger Bay commanded us to comply with her futuristic permafrost act, dressed in black like a female robocop oozing control with a baseball bat held with those black leather thumbless gloves that sadly were about the only thing that didn’t come off by the end. Her icy death stare dominated the audience throughout, and this act was a definite highlight.

Sydni Deveraux brought back the nineties in a bubblegum school outfit going to the beach, spreading out a bathing towel and putting the cream back in suncream, accentuating her youthful transgressions with “oops,I didn’t mean to do that” looks.

This first triad took us to the break, which ended with Nina La Voix coming out sitting at a table dressed in long lilac feather boa’s (which were hard to avoid stepping on later in the break for some patrons, as it turns out).

Qualms Galore took it back to the seventies with Donna Summer.

Delysia La Chatte took the stage dressed only in a large black sheet, which she, after revealing it all in the opening, expertly used to draw sharply outlined partial views of her body. That is, until she brought out a skull, proceeded to make out with it, and then had it nibble on her breasts before disappearing it between her legs. The act pulled off both funny and erotic at once, and my partner and I both agreed this was the highlight act for the evening for us.

I used the second break to unclog one of only two bathrooms in the loft to speed up the proceedings. After that, Gigi La Femme (who moved out of New York, but was back for the week) performed an act to Dimitri From Paris’s “Une Very Stylish Fille”, which I sadly can’t find on Spotify.

Jenny C’est Quoi usually has acts that go just a little bit more out there, and this time was no exception. We couldn’t really see what happened exactly, but it seemed she slid something between her legs, took out her phone, and handed it to a woman in the audience to play with. We were guessing that the phone controlled the something. A little bit later, she passed the phone to a man on the other side, who gingerly said “Watch out!”. At the end she took out the something and pretended it was a phone as well, talking to an imaginary someone on the other side as she walked off.

The show ended with the traditional unwrapping of Amanda Whip: Amanda takes a seat, and performers one by one come up to remove an article of clothing as suggestively as possible. Gigi made off with a necklace, and Sydni and Qualms came up together, allowing me to settle the burning question of “which of them is taller?” (answer: they both are, as far as I could tell).

And with that, the show was over, the gogo started again, and we mingled with the guests for a bit before buying a Hellfire Club photo book and making our way back to Manhattan to the Slipper Room.