You know, this burlesque influenza, strafing the USA at the moment, is starting to make me want to file back my horns with a crucifix, gargle a vatful of holy water, and consider making peace with the Vatican.
I mean, that old art of Salome’s striptease was originally conceived by my forefathers as a satanic fun-ride of lust. A never-ending instalment of delicious terror. But now, burlesque and the art of the strip has been cellophaned into no more than a pentecostal peep-a-rama kind of naughtiness playing at the sin.
It seems every girl out there now has a mail order tattoo, a myspace page purporting to be a pin-up hotrod queen, or burlesque dancer. One performance and they’re acting as veteran divas.
It’s just another corporate conceit. I mean, these dimestore Salomes dance like they have straight day jobs. You can tell they either sell real estate or mortgage bonds. Their sex is just another incidental portfolio.
You maybe thinks that dis dimestore Lucifer protest too much? So let me take you on a psychoanalytical tour of the new burlesque queens. The fakeeroo lulus. The bad-assed bombazines who are cluttering up the nightclub stages, with z-rate ripped and cribbed MGM schtick.
I won’t strip them to bare flesh, but I’ll strip the spirit of their psyche, so to speak, for all of you to see. It ain’t pretty my friends, it ain’t pretty.
1. BETTIE PAGE DOPPELGANGER
- Spawned out of the so-called punk-a-billy scene
- Sailor Jerry is rumoured to be her natural father
- Injects Clairol black hair dye nightly to keep her bangs au naturalle midnight noire
- Miss BPDG has zilch talent — all tattitude
- No background in showbiz
- Can fake a coupla shimmys
- Learnt dance from Something Weird videos of Bettie Page
- Swears she’s channelling Bettie
- Hasn’t realized that Bettie is still alive and well in LA
- Miss BPDG is essentially an underwear act
- Her routine is her lingerie
- Best described as 100 percent polyester
- The label on her fringe net panties have more personality
FUTURE:
Will set up a management agency for burlesque dancers, and inevitably rip them off blind, to get even with them and the damned burlesque business that never recognised her genius talent in the first place.
2. THE TROUPE….THE MACK TRUCK-TEASERS.
- All over 40 years of age
- Not aware that their moniker also happens to be the name of a popular dildo manufactured in Bangkok
- Their first under-rehearsed gig at the opening of a White Castles burger outlet in the valley is such a smashing success, that they decide to go professional
- By which, they simply set up a myspace website, and matching panties with stars on their butts
The troupe usually comprises:
The Redhead
- A studious dancer with a background in summer stock, and hides her scorching ambition behind a chilled insouciance
- Cannot, however, do it on her own
- Uses the trio to hitch’n’rail towards a solo career
- Insists on twenty rehearsals a week
- Organizes all publicity
- Is media savvy, will have a great relationship with local press, T.V. and national magazines, and will ‘forget’ to tell her sisters about pre-planned interviews, and thus ensure that it is only her photo and quotes that get prime exposure
- Appears at the opening/closing of either supermarkets or morgues, just to get her name and face in print
- Also acts as the booker, thus ensuring an extra 20% cut for herself on top of the other 50% skim off the troupes fee that she claims with bogus receipts
- Has registered the troupe’s name, under her own
- Has set up a separate company with the other two members of the troupe as head directors and leaves them liable for imprisonment for non payment of federal taxes from gig payments
The Blonde
- The second member of the troupe — just got married
- Encouraged by her husband to get into the burlesque business
- Both are virgins, both excommunicated Mormons
- He has just bought her a How to strip for your husband cd book, to spice up their rather dull sex life
- He is convinced that she is this next generations Anne Corio
- The Blonde couldn’t care less, will do anything to turn her husband on, just so he can get her pregnant and she can have a baby
The Brunette
- Likes to fix dragsters
- Periodic petrol sniffer
- Does not shave legs or her hare lip
- Always flexing the wrong muscles
- Her g-string looks too packed with extras
- Feels embarassed by the burlesque biz and does all she can do to hide her shadow exotic life, as she does not want to lose the respect of the people she works with at the local paramedic station
The Bluenette
- The punkette of the troupe
- Kicked out after first gig, after the others found out she went to Hollywood for a covert audition for the Suicide Girls
- Fails
- Returns home to her parents mansion in Beverly Hills
- Tearful reunion on stage
- Is placed on a ‘probation’ by the troupe, and enlisted as a snap girl
- Is promised that she will be reinstated as a fully fledged member of the troupe if they manage to score an appearance on the New York Burlesque Festival
- Pontani Sisters calls
- New York Burlesque Festival offer
- The troupe hide the news from her
- Night before the troupe’s New York debut, the Bluenette has fire-bombed their tour bus with all their music, wardrobe and publicity going up in smithereens
- Returns to Hollywood
- Auditions for Suicide Girls
FUTURE:
- The Brunette — Undergoes a sex change, and becomes a man AND Paramedic of the Year 2034.
- The Blonde — Seven marriages. Childless. Barren ovaries.
- The Redhead — Investigated by the IRS for fraud. Prison time. Sets up a dance school for prison inmates at Techahapi Female Prison. Marries her parole officer.
- The Bluenette — After failing audition for Suicide girls, suicides.
3. THE IMITATOR/TRIBUTE ACT.
- Thinks she is DITA VON TEESE
- Swears Dita Von Teese stole her life in a mistaken pastie swap backstage at the Teaseorama convention in 2001
- Dated Marilyn Manson for two weeks in 1991, when she was holidaying in Fort Lauderdale with her Jewish grandparents
- Set up a myspace tribute page to herself calling it the Original Dita Von Teese fan club
- Claims she not only invented the champagne bubble glass act that Dita specialises in, but lays claim to the original patent on the shock-proof perspex
- DITA VON TEESE attorneys order her to cease and desist
- Changes her name to VITA DON TEESE
- DITA VON TEESE attorneys order her to cease and desist
FUTURE:
- In five years, leaves the Burlesque business
- Retires to Minnesota and changes her name to Heather Sweet
- Invents and launches a new kitchen appliance for the Fox Shopping channel called GRATER DON CHEESE which is a best seller in Italian restaurants across the nation
- Makes millions and disappears
4. THE ICON OF THE BURLESQUE MOVEMENT… DITA VON TEESE
In less than ten years our beloved and venerated MISS DITA will retire to resume her former incarnation of Heather Sweet from Michigan, but will find Heather no longer resides in that state and has left no forwarding address.
