I'm Already Pretty Good At This, Actually

I am really busy writing a paper for class this week. (I am also really busy freaking out about it because I don't remember how to write a fucking paper without swearing or sarcasm. See?) So my NaBloPoMo posts this week are going to be pretty shitty, at least until Friday. In the meantime, please enjoy the new Reverend Horton Heat Video, which stars my dance teacher Michelle L'Amour and some of the Chicago Starlets, two of whom are friends from my student show class who I am very proud of:

Reverend Horton Heat - Let Me Teach You How to Eat

Back At My Home On Whore Island

As I've mentioned before, I live on an island in the Thames on the outskirts of a very posh town I clearly don't belong in. The island is populated mostly by retirees and posh lunatics, or posh retirees who are lunatics. And it's not just an island, it's a community - there are organized functions and progressive dinners and notes slipped through your door inviting you to "supper". I was sure I was going to get thrown out.

Until Sunday, which was the day of the island's official bonfire party. £5 buys you a chance to stand next to a large fire, a sausage roll, and all the mulled wine you can drink. The fire wasn't lit yet when we got there, so we went to get some mulled wine and said hello to our next door neighbor - a 93 year old man who just spent most of the summer driving around France on his own, going from pub to pub, meeting new people and generally being more adventurous than I was at 20. He introduced us to another neighbor, an older lady who he claimed owns 10 Alfa Romeos but she corrected him - she has pared that down to "only" two. We chatted with them for a while until we noticed someone had lit the bonfire, so we walked over to check that out and to laugh at the men in charge of it, who were busily throwing all the things in the piles of wood meant to feed the bonfire through the night into it at once.

In the 15 minutes it took them to use up all the fuel for the fire, it had started to rain pretty hard, and people started wandering back to the garage where the wine and the sausage rolls were being distributed. It was there that I was introduced to the pilot. The pilot is a woman who does not live on the island, but just across the bridge from it so is kind of an honorary islander. As per my naming her the pilot, she flies passenger jets for a living. That's what she does now anyway; she used to be a veterinarian. Which is a hell of a career change, I thought, to which she replied, "Well, once you've wanked off a dog for 30 minutes to find out why none of his mates are being impregnated, you realize it might be time for a new career." I decided to just stand next to her all night. This turned out to be a good decision: I got to watch her give a sex education lecture to a grown man using his sausage roll ("You have a sausage, and I have a...roll.") (also, I got to add, in answer to his query of what the tomato sauce* represented, "Oh, that's just a timing issue.") and hear how much she loves Chicago (she used to fly there when she did transatlantic flights).

And then, somehow, and I swear to Xenu you guys, I was NOT the one who started it, there came a point in the conversation where she told us of her wish to learn to twirl nipple tassels in different directions. Obviously it was my obligation to tell her both that I knew exactly how to do that and that it was actually much easier than getting them to twirl in the same direction. And obviously they wanted to know why and I explained about the burlesque and the student show and that I even knew how to make them myself. The pilot was VERY excited, and before I knew it two things had happened: she'd told virtually everyone on the island that I was an expert at stripping, and she'd gotten half a dozen retired and semi-retired women to agree to a girly night at her house wherein, it seems, I will be teaching them to make and twirl nipple tassels. There was also some talk of me teaching them a general burlesque workshop and/or a basic burlesque class at the fitness center just next to the island.

So..... that happened.

I think I might fit in here better than I thought.

*ketchup.

Meep Meep

I've just realized I never blogged about my student show over the summer, which is incredibly convenient as I had no idea what I was going to write about today (I am at StereoNinja's office right now as both of us needed to get some work done. It is not very exciting, despite there being a flamingo standing in the corner and goofy little puppets everywhere. Though the arm fell off one of them and we did turn it into a penis.)

I ended up going with a temporary stage name that I came up with myself, Phoebe Moon, after Saturn's irregular and probably captured satellite, because I am a massive, massive geek.

Phoebe. Sexy as FUCK

I also got StereoNinja to edit my music and add the Merrie Melodies theme to the beginning and end of my song (Bo Diddley's Roadrunner): at the beginning to compliment the title cards for my number that StereoNinja designed for me, and at the end for maximum ridiculousness whilst twirling the tassels on my pasties (followed immediately by a cartwheel. Seriously.)

Sorry, Warner Brothers.

I'd had a bit of trouble pulling the costume together. The woman I hired on Etsy to make my bustier and frilly panties did a beautiful job, but the fabric wasn't the right color, which is exactly why you don't try to color match things over the internet. I bought another cheap, shitty bustier that the zipper immediately fell off of, and took it to the world's most incredible tailor to cover in appropriately colored fabric and sew a better zipper on, which he accomplished with less than three days turn around (finding a new zipper in the correct color and length was also an adventure and ended with me in the basement of L Z Fabrics poking around in the zipper over stock section, a portion of the store I had no idea was there until that exact moment). My biggest costuming issue was my tail and how to attach it to me. The final solution was to wig tape it to my ass, the process of which is the least attractive thing ever to happen to stripping. I also had to spray paint some heels orange since the first pair I bought was far too high to dance in comfortably, let alone do a cartwheel. Similarly, I ended up dying several pairs of fishnets before I got them to the correct orange for the roadrunner's legs.

My legs are blurry because I am running REALLY FAST. Because, you know, roadrunner.

StereoNinja and the cake master both flew into town for the show, and BrownsFan and her husband, my former boss and his partner, and the CEO all came as well, because the first time you take all your clothes off in public, you should definitely invite all of your former co-workers. I was the last solo act to go on (StereoNinja says it's because I was one of the best acts, but I think it's just because it was the most ridiculous) before the finale group act, which was 10 women dancing to the Scissor Sisters' Filthy Gorgeous doing the choreography from Michael Jackson's beat it video and opening up our legs like Christmas, among other things. I can't show you my number because my normally rule flouting boyfriend was afraid to video it after Michelle said not to (in fairness, she is a bit terrifying), but I do remember everyone laughing in all the right places and audible surprise over the cartwheel (I had decided I was doing a cartwheel long before I decided what my number was going to be).

Wile E. Coyote knew something the kiddies did not, evidently. 

After the show, the bar was having a 90's hip hop party, which some of us stayed for, and during which I recited all the words to The Humpty Dance from memory approximately 10 minutes before they played the song because I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.

I haven't performed since I moved to the U.K., in part because I'm still waiting for the shipping company to send me my things, one of which is my tail, but allegedly it will be here next week, if anyone knows of a burlesque show they think I should try to get booked for. I've also been working on a BDSM themed number with a flogger because of course I have.

(All show photos by the wonderful Ethan Coal. He recently took some other photos of me, but they are in no way appropriate for a general audience or anyone not into soft core porn. But if I know and trust you, email me and I might give you the password to the online gallery. Maybe.)

This Post Will Not Be Funny

I just wanted to point out here that it was in no way my intention to write a post saying I was back from hiatus and then immediately disappear for another month. I had thought that when my job ended and I had all kinds of free time, I would fall right back into regular blogging just like old times. What I neglected to take into account is that stress and depression are fabulous at inducing writer's block whilst simultaneously making even the smallest task seem like such a gargantuan effort that you are already exhausted before you even begin.

Here's a thing they don't really tell you when you are being treated for depression on a long term basis - being properly medicated and being able to cope with life for long periods of time can cause you to develop a false sense of security about yourself. This only becomes a problem when you get into situations in your life that you aren't able to effectively cope with, and something that would have been a really bad low before you  got help and learned how to deal with things becomes even worse because you know, logically, that you are over-reacting and yet you still can't make it stop. The whole thing becomes one big downward slide into a pool of self hatred and an inner monologue is telling you that you KNOW what the problem is, so just fucking FIX it, but you can't fix it, so obviously you are a COMPLETE FAILURE AT EVERYTHING. And since you are a complete failure at everything, you start to reason that no one likes you because WHY SHOULD THEY SINCE YOU SUCK, and you fail to reach out to the people who love you and could help you back. But again, you KNOW, logically, that this is stupid and it's just the depression talking, and of course you should have reached out and asked for help, dumbass, but you're stupid and now you've let everyone down AGAIN because you are a COMPLETE FAILURE. Et cetera, et cetera, until either you crash and have a public meltdown on Twitter, or someone close to you calls you out on your poorly hidden breakdown and forces you to let them help you. Or both (I have amazing and supportive Twitter followers and the most incredible boyfriend on the planet, THANK YOU).

Anyway, enough of that. My point is, being done with work did absolutely nothing to alleviate the stress of moving to another country, or going back to school in the hope of starting over from scratch with a completely different career, or choreographing and costuming a solo burlesque dance routine for the first time, or, as I finally got around to yesterday, breaking the news to an emotionally fragile and somewhat dependent roommate that I am moving 4,000 miles away from him and he's on his own (it is not going very well). And that's why I disappeared again and why I can't promise you that it won't happen yet again right after this post either. But I'm trying. And I have plans. One of which is that I am thinking about reviewing another horrible book for NaBloPoMo this year. If you think this is a good idea, feel free to leave me some suggestions on what you think I would really hate (excluding Twilight because Mark over at Mark Reads has already done that as brilliantly as it will ever be done). I WILL get back to where I remember how to do this and be funny at it, I just can't promise you exactly when. I am really hoping it's now.

Unintentional Hiatus FAQ

Were you kidnapped and killed at the 50 Shades meet up?

No, no one has been kidnapped and nobody died. Unless you mean OF LAUGHTER. We had an absolutely awesome time, once we completely abandoned the 50 Shades party game, which sucked horse cadaver balls, and switched to Cards Against Humanity (which is also when we found out that we are all terrible people). I am excited about the real post when I will actually tell you about it.

In that case, where the hell have you been?

All over the place, both mentally and figuratively. I was in England and in France for a good while, during which I was somehow remarkably busy, and then I came back to Chicago to an unbelievable amount of crap going on. I have so much to do that sometimes I get overwhelmed and I call up StereoNinja and cry at him. Not to him. AT him.

What kind of crap?

Oh well, let's see...there's the part where I'm losing my job at the end of this month and I'm frantically putting together notes for the handover to the people who are going to start doing my job and also my boss is panicking and making me INSANE and also BrownsFan is already gone and I CANNOT COPE WITHOUT HER. There's also the thing where I spent Sunday to Wednesday of this week systematically calling everyone in my family and telling them that a) I am leaving forever in a few months, and b) I have been hiding information and/or lying to them for MONTHS now, for a very good reason but lying nonetheless, which fortunately they were all really, really, REALLY understanding and very nice about. And let's not forget the part where I'm making up a dance and a costume and a new name so I can get on stage in less than three months and take my clothes of to music, which reminds me...in related news, I seem to have become involved with a group of very nice people who spend their Tuesday nights drawing pictures of a naked person for two hours. (The naked person is me.)

What ever happened to that thing where you claimed you were moving to England?

Well, that's actually the thing that is taking up all of my time and energy and preventing me from blogging. I can tell you now that I have been accepted into my first choice of graduate school, which is in London, and will be starting my program in October. Which means that in between now and then I have to get rid of 95% of my earthly belongings, sort out shipping and/or storage for the other 5%, gather all the cash up front that I will need for both tuition and living expenses and then prove to both the school and the British government that I have it just sitting there in cash and that they won't have to support my freeloading American ass through social services, apply for a visa, go to an interview for said visa, buy a plane ticket, and literally dozens of other tasks both big and small that come with the decision to move to a different country.

Are you ever going to blog again?

YES OH MY GOD YES. I miss it so, so much, I can't even describe it. But seriously, I am completely wiped out right now. I think if you guys can just give me til the end of April, I can get back to more regular posting and shenanigans. I'll still have all this moving and dance stuff to do, but I won't have a job anymore starting May 1, so that should free up some time, stress, and brain space for the shit I actually LIKE doing.
Don't get me wrong - everything is GREAT right now and I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life. It's just that there's TONS of work involved with my life being this great, and a looming deadline to get all of that work done. I'm trying really hard to get back here, I really miss you guys.

Name That Stripper

So, one of the things that is going on in my life right now, which has recently been FILLED with things that have lead to my genuinely not having time to read and/or blog, is that I have made it into the advanced burlesque or "show" class and am preparing for my debut performance as a solo burlesque dancer at the end of June (something I am starting to think of as a marketable job skill given the advice I've received from all my UK peeps on the availability of actual jobs). There's a lot more that goes into this class than just showing up and shaking your ass around. For example there's developing a critical eye for performance (an ongoing homework assignment that basically involves watching ALL of the things), learning how to choreograph something that is not just standing there taking off your clothes whilst otherwise being exceptionally boring (something I am starting to notice a remarkable amount of now that I've developed a critical eye for performance by watching ALL the things), and, perhaps most importantly, deciding who you plan to be as a burlesque dancer (what your style is going to be, who is your character, how do you interact with the audience, etc.)

Part of that last thing is literal: our very first assignment in class was to start thinking about what our name was going to be. This is actually way harder than it seems because there's a lot more to think about than is immediately apparent. Your stage name should be all of the following things:

• Reflective of the character you want to be. The very first thing the audience knows about you is your name, and it will determine what they expect to see.
• Not easily misconstrued. Michelle told us a story in class that I am not allowed to repeat here, but suffice it to say, don't pick a word that can be pronounced in several ways, especially if one of those ways is unflattering.
• Per Michelle, not something tired and overdone that practically every other burlesque dancer or stripper has done to death, i.e. anything using kitty or another variation of "cat", anything that starts with "Miss" (Miss Anthrope, Miss Demeanor - these are both actual names people are using. Seriously.), anything with "Von" or "Vaughn" in it, anything using the word cherry.
• Not already being used by someone else, or too similar to something being used by someone else. Either they will get VERY angry with you or you will constantly be mistaken for a porn star.

In the case of our particular class, there is a further criteria in that Michelle has to not hate it. The name I had fallen in love with YEARS ago, Poppy Coxx, has two major problems. One is that, in between googling it when I thought of it and googling it again just to double check, someone else decided to start going by Poppy Cox and is touring around the country doing a show about "bicycle porn". The other is that in hesitating about how to alter it in a way that Michelle wouldn't instantly veto (Poppy Cok? Poppy Coq?), I waited too long and now another girl in my class has chosen a name that starts with Poppy, and it would be kind of ridiculous to have two performers named Poppy. Since finding that part out about a week ago, I have been brainstorming names with StereoNinja and BrownsFan, and we've collectively come up with, well, basically nothing. Every good idea we've had (Boobie Fett!) is already taken. "The problem," I said to BrownsFan, "is that lots of other people are clever."

And then I remembered something important. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE READING MY BLOG EVERY DAY AND THEY ARE ALSO CLEVER! So, with that in mind, I'm putting it to you guys: what should my stage name be? The best thing we've come up with so far is Bloomy Madd. It's ok, and you should definitely let me know if you like it, but I think you guys can beat that. What say you?

(StereoNinja adds that we'll give a free t-shirt to the person to comes up with the best name, however, that will probably seem like much more of an incentive when we actually design some t-shirts.)