I still can't get no respect: adventures in clubland

Greetings, my dears!

Last Thursday, I performed in a burlesque/fashion show featuring garments designed and fabricated by the lovely and talented Ashley for her line Provocouture. For the majority of the month of August our motley crew of saucy dames assembled on the weekends to choreograph routines, to get fitted for outfits and to glue sequins and tassels to pasties. We worked our butts off to make this event work- especially Boo who was the organizer of the whole shebang.

The venue selected was a monstrous downtown nightclub, a haven for lecherous schmucks and drunk, drab girls looking to “hookup”. (Ugg… I shudder at the thought.) The joint was huge. There were two floors with several differently decorated rooms. I swear to god, one of them was done up like a less pornographic version of the Kordova milk bar from a Clockwork Orange. I don’t know about you, but I always thought that a film featuring gang rapes and savage beatings would make a kicky theme for a bar. How quaint! Ashley had chosen this den of run-of-the-mill sin for her show because the spot boasted that it supports local designers by hosting fashion events on Thursdays. Isn’t that nice of them, to provide a swank venue to hold fashion events? Caveat emptor, my dears- even when the venue’s free, it doesn’t mean you won’t pay for it in the end. When we showed up the Sunday before the big night to do our dress rehearsal, not only was the owner late to let us in, he also had no idea that there was even an event booked for that Thursday. We really needed to actually be in the space to rehearse, since the “stage” was located in the middle of the main room, was about three feet wide and contained several poles and mirrored pillars that needed to be factored into dance routines. Our rehearsal was cut short by a live-to-air hip-hop night that we had not been warned about (the club was usually closed on Sundays). But this was only the beginning…

The night of the big show, they were once again late to let us in. We had between 7 and 10 to run through our numbers before the club opened for the night. We weren’t on ‘till midnight, so we still had ample time to get ready, do our hair and make-up and down a couple of drinks to whack up the ol’ ginger. It was during this time that the owner suddenly decided that he had a problem with our nudity. I guess the word “burlesque” didn’t tip him off any more that watching our rehearsals did that there would be ladies disrobing as the main feature of the event. What a maroon! After some bickering, Ashley convinced him that our numbers would be tasteful, and we were allowed to go on. This was already the second time that night that the management had complained about the content of our show. Apparently the d.j. didn’t like our choices of music and would have preferred to play the same shitty house music he’d been subjecting us to for the rest of the evening. I can tell you, I didn’t spend a month figuring out the sexiest way to take my gear off to a Depeche Mode song to have some dude substitute in crap that makes Mariah Carey sound avant-garde… you catch my drift? We got to play our own tunes, and the first half of the event went off without a hitch. I’d expected the crowd of bar-sluts and ginos to be far from the ideal audience, but they were ok. They watched and cheered and didn’t throw anything at any of the performers. That’s the best one can hope for in that environment.

Then we had an intermission. It was during this time that the owner told us to trim our second act down to ten minutes. We had twenty minutes of material to get through. He said that our little act was taking away from bar sales. We compromised and whittled the thing down to 15 minutes. He agreed and we quickly set about shaving thirty-ish seconds off every number. I can’t believe that bastard would give us grief about a measly five minutes! We did our best- in spite of the d.j. getting on the mike in the middle of some numbers and saying encouraging stuff like “don’t worry folks, only one more girl ‘till you can dance again!” Thanks, buddy. He cut us off in the middle of our grand finale to crank up the world’s most generic dancehall. Then they released all the hoochies in Old Navy tank tops back onto the stage so that they could show off their best MTV moves in the hopes of finding intoxicated bank employees to give lackluster blowjobs to. Finally, order was restored and clubland was no longer subjected to tattooed dominatrix or large girls with self-confidence.

As I pealed the sequins off my nipples and packed up my garter belts and leopard-print platform shoes, I once again vowed to never return to the vacuous dancefloors of “the entertainment district”.

Please feel free to drag the name of the club “Metro” through whatever mud you happen to come across. They were very rude, unprofessional, chauvinistic and disrespectful to a very nice group of special ladies. They are, as we say in the French, assholes.

The end of an era

Darlings,

So... I'm trying to quit smoking. It's a bitch. Trust me.

I am serious this time- I'm on the patch and everything. Just like Carrie Bradshaw, and it worked for her. If it's good enough for fictional t.v. characters, it's good enough for me (I mean, we're talking HBO here...)

It's been 15 years since I took up the habit. Glad to know that I'm paying for a mistake I made at the ripe old age of thirteen. It's amazing that, all this time, I've managed to hide my smoking from my family. Oh, what a master of deception am I! I mean, for five of those years I lived in the same house as them. I guess it'll be a moot point if I quit. There's no reason to bring it to their attention now. What they never knew about won't hurt them. Let's just keep this little secret to ourselves for the heck of it, ok?

Quitting smoking is the pits. I have moved through several distinct phases of withdrawal thus far. Allow me to list them for you in chronological order:

Day 1. the urge to punch babies. I actually wanted to actively search out babies to punch. I felt like a total basket-case, a very very hostile case of baskets. This was the day I realized that 110% of the earth's population smokes- children, the elderly, cartoon cats... everyone's hanging around, hacking a butt like Humphrey Bogart, taunting me with their seductive tendrils of wispy grey smoke. Aaarg!

Day 2. the urge to kick dogs. Just punt them like footballs. Yell at everyone. anger, frustration, more anger, desperation, hostility and more frustration.

Day 3. the urge to stab people in the face. Everything's fine so long as I don't leave the house. Went out to rock show. Bad idea. Picked fights, complained, pouted. Very ladylike.

Day 4. realization that everything stinks/ tastes dreadful. Labbat's 50 tastes like old gym socks and everyone smells like sweaty farts. When does this get better? Also, every toxin my body has ever absorbed is now trying to escape in the form of a zit. My skin hasn't looked this bad since junior high. Hooray!

Day 5. Have I mentioned how hungry I am all the time? All I want to do is eat and eat and eat. It is revolting how many pizza slices and burgers and candy bars I have consumed in the past few days. They say the average smoker gains between five and ten pounds if they eat like normal when they quit. I however, am eating like a hog. I mean, I'm still real skinny, but I'm not thinking that the Big Mac will do wonders for my figure.

And yet still, despite how dreadful the torture of quitting is, I am determined to be victorious. Now that I've made this promise and chronicled my progress in my blog, I am bound to my pledge. Failure is not an option. I don't want to let down my community of internet friends. Lord only knows what would happen if I did.

Wish me luck...

enemy invasion

Oh, My Dears,

The war is on. It is me vs. the lowly fruit fly. They congregate by my sink, I thwack them with a rolled up copy of the Summerworks theater festival guide. Battalions of winged insects are crushed beneath my mighty weapon, and yet there always seem to be more to replace their fallen comrades. My tactics are ineffective and yet, out of a sense of frustration and determination, I persist with my futile attack. Though they are but specks, they have me outnumbered and surrounded. I make sure to do the dishes, take out the trash, compost and recycling, thus destroying their supply lines. This seems to have no effect on fruit fly morale. The relentless barrage of tiny bugs contaminates the air like a miniature Luftwaffe, driving me to distraction. They bob and weave, landing on my drying dishes for a moment and then take off to hover in the air inches in front of my nose, taunting me.

Oh, fruit fly... I know you live on this earth for but one day, but that is one day too long for me. I will do everything in my power to ensure that the sun sets early for you and your kind. It's on.

You have been warned.

know your retro: Diana Vreeland

“Never fear being vulgar, just boring”
Diana Vreeland

I guess I have a bottomless interest in finding out how people considered to be authorities on matters of style, taste and culture got their foot in the door. More often than not, it seems that they simply wowed the right people with their unique and spellbinding selves. Far as I can tell, there aren’t any courses one can take in “how to be an interesting person”. No self-help books can make a dull drip of a person into an eye-catching character. Either you got it, or you don’t- ain’t much you can do ‘bout it.

One person who had it in spades was Diana Vreeland. Through her work at Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, she influenced the direction of fashion more than anyone. She introduced the clothes-wearing public to innovations ranging from zippers on women’s dresses to man-made fabrics to sportswear for everyday use. She made grand proclamations such as "The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb." When she spoke, the fashion world and its consumers, listened.

But how oh how did Diana Vreeland become this authority on style and trends? Well… she managed to infiltrate society life and had everyone drawn to her chic elegance. She hung around with folks like Coco Chanel and the Duke of Windsor. Fashion designers loved her and gave her free clothes because she looked so striking- she had that jolie/laide thing that is always captivating. When she moved to New York, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Caramel Snow, suggested that she could actually get paid to be fashionable and gave her the style column. She was in her mid thirties. She had never worked before.

I love stories like this so much because it gives me hope. I like to believe that just being a phenomenally interesting person is enough, and that eventually people will notice and listen. Certainly one can’t just sit around, waiting for magazine editors to say, “you’re cool, here’s a column”. But it is comforting to know that, from time to time, some folks are actually rewarded for their wit and elegance.

My dream of public transit.

“…If you are riding on a bus, you will soon win through to capture your love.”

“…A bus symbolizes an ambition or determination to get advancement in work. Riding on a bus: you are satisfied, but still too attached to your old points of view…”

“Ambition Civilize order. Culture. Conclusion of hopes.”

“Traveling by bus indicates progress toward your heart's desire; waiting for a bus signifies setbacks which will be very temporary…”

My Dears,

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was taking the bus in Montreal. It was such a vivid, albeit boring, dream that I felt compelled to rush to the ol’ computer as soon as I awoke to see if I could figure out more details about my nocturnal vision. My dream was so specific that I knew that I could figure out exactly where I’d been if I looked through some online maps of the city and its bus routes. After about an hour, I had it: I’d been on the 80 Ave. du Parc from st. Viateur to Place des Arts. And there you have it folks…

It’s not all that strange to dream of taking the bus- I am one of those types who often dreams of exceptionally mundane things like brushing my teeth or making a cup of coffee or whatnot. It’s also not very odd to dream of Montreal since I am once again embarking on an attempt to get into school there and will more than likely be living in the belle ville de Montréal by this time next year. It is a little strange that the dream was so exacting, that I could pinpoint the precise bus I’d been on. But, let’s be honest, gazing out the window on a subconscious bus isn’t exactly high drama.

The thing that I did find sorta neat-o is the results I got when I looked up “bus” in some internet dream interpretation dictionaries, which you will find listed above. If online psychics are to be believed, everything will work out just the way I want it to. And, could there be any higher and more omnipotently clairvoyant authority than the online psychic? I don’t think so.

Perhaps it’s not really all that interesting after all; hearing about other people’s dreams seldom is. Sorry.

I can't get no respect.

So, the performance is over. It went well, mostly due to the phenomenal assistance of my brilliant team. I had a headache that made my noggin feel like it was being busted into like a coconut by the celestial mallet of a grumpy god, and my stomach felt like it contained choppy seas and angry bees. (Most likely heatstroke from scampering around town in the mid-day sun to fetch all the items required for the performance.) This did not make it easy to get through the evening, so I relied heavily on the folks I’d assembled to be part of the action. In fact, he whole thing would have been an astounding disaster if my friends had not rallied round, risen to the occasion and generally given their all. Bravo and kudos and one million thank yous to the men and women who made my wacky vision come to life.

I waited around on Friday to go back to the gallery to pick up the props and supplies I left behind in a frantic desire to get home before the nausea bubbled up to breaking point. All day, there was a fondue pot with crusted cheese quietly becoming increasingly gross sitting in the back of the gallery. Unfortunately, the chap who runs the joint didn’t pick up his phone until late in the afternoon. By the time I got to the gallery, the chappy was tired and cranky and kept complaining about how long it too me to scrub the burnt cheese out of the pot. I’m there, up to my elbows in steel wool and congealed Emmenthaler, and he’s bitching about how he wants to get home to lounge around and sip wine on his patio with his statuesque fiancée. Well, la di da…

It’s funny how dudes who run commercial galleries don’t really “get” all the details that go into making a performance run smoothly. Every time I had a question the night of the show about where we could store our stuff, or what to do with our set up after the thing was over, he was too busy to help, instead schmoozing with fancy-pants scenesters or selling “edgy” paintings to decorate urban loft apartments. Since I make art that has no “product” to sell, galleries like that don’t have much time for work like mine. To that crowd, it’s just a fun thing to make an opening more exciting, but the content of the work doesn’t matter in the least. I could have pulled a bunch of flowers out of my ass while singing the national anthem and it would have been fine. I’m pretty sick of having my work treated like a circus side show to amuse disinterested yuppies. Oh well, what was I to expect?

At least I had my awesome bunch of friends acting as my team to validate the experience. I send buckets of love from the bottom of my heart to everyone who was there to support me. Xoxo, my dears.

Caution: Artist At Work

Darlings,

I have a performance to do at an art opening on Thursday, so I’m frantically busy. It’s at a rather posh uptown joint- not exactly the most receptive crowd to the performance thing, but what can you do? The thing that’s got my knickers twisted is that The Loathsome Ex is also exhibiting in this show (undoubtedly he’ll produce something oh so hostile and desperately aggressive). It’s the first time our names have been included in the same list of artists since his current lady-friend punched me in the head all those years ago. Not a word or even glance of recognition has passed between us in almost three years. It's not that I really care all that much, I just want to be able to pull off that whole living well being the best revenge routine and do something triumphantly fabulous. I guess that’s always my goal, but it just means more in this context.

Other than that, I did get a new chair. It’s bright lime green and has wheels and is quite comfy. I went and picked it up yesterday in the midst of a downpour so torrentially vicious it caused an airplane to crash. (Now that’s what I call rain!)