If I haven’t given you enough evidence of how awesome my sister-in-law Erin is, she took me to Coney Island for a burlesque show. Not just any burlesque show… but Colonel Cornstar’s Cuntry Fair. Complete with a heavy petting zoo.
Yes, a farm themed burlesque show. You know it had to be awesome.
But the cherry on top was the celebrity sighting we had there. We were standing in line waiting to get in when someone walked by who looked oddly familiar. I thought maybe I was seeing things, since 1) he was way more stubbly looking than usual and 2) we had just talked about seeing celebrities not an hour before, so maybe I just had celebrities on the brain. I peered at him as he was buying a drink two feet away, and eventually poked Erin, and she confirmed.
It was Ted Allen of Chopped, Food Detectives, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy! I’m a Food Network fan and he’s my favorite persona (well, tied with Alton Brown), not to mention my favorite one from the Fab Five. He was there with his boyfriend and a couple of friends. I definitely flailed with glee. By pure luck I ended up sitting about two seats away from him.
The show itself was hilarious and awesome. I loved the pig who was covered in balloons, popped them with her tail, and then jumped in a bucket of “mud.” Ted Allen appeared to really get a kick out of the I Want Candy bit:
As the night went on, the skits became more bizarre and less farm themed. They included:
- A conservative homophobic uber Christian coming out looking like Hester Prynne, stripping down as she has a crisis of faith, and then pulling fifteen feet of rainbow rope out of her vagina. If you think I’m making this up, there’s a NSFW video here.
- A “white trash” girl screwed herself with one of those long skinny spiral lollipops. Yes, literally. I have no idea why or what that had to do with the rest of the show, but it definitely got a reaction out of the audience.
- The inspiration for all of my future nightmares. She came out wearing a terrifying clown mask and 6 inch heels, and threw squirt guns into the audience while holding a sign that said “Shoot the Freak.”
Here she is:
And here’s Ted Allen shooting the freak:
Unfortunately he was always busy with his friends or getting a picture taken with the naked Pig Girl, so I didn’t get a chance to butt in and awkwardly ask for a photo. I didn’t realize until later that he was also a Purdue alumni – I could have had a good intro! Ah well. The experience alone was worth it. I mean, how many people get to say they watched a burlesque show with Ted Allen?
Delightfully bizarre.
(Videos via Year in Dance, the blog of the dancer with the magical rainbow rope hiding vagina)
A famous quote springs to mind; I forget who said it:”Candy’s dandy, but sex won’t rot your teeth!”
Girl you are gonna LOVE Seattle!
What is burlesque anyway? The shows I’ve seen seem to attract a mixed crowd and I don’t think the men find them very erotic. It’s definitely different from stripping at a typical strip club.
well, burlesque use to be sorta high flalootin strip shows for the rich and ultra debonair,ya know,tastefully done sex shows without the sex.now well,they seem to pretend to be high art.but maybe i’m too poor to enjoy them :D
From Wikipedia: Burlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction.Technically, that would probably make most drag shows a form of burlesque, which makes sense; “The World Famous BOB” in the above video is actually the world’s first female drag queen…
Wow! I wish I’d been there!
Wow, I don’t even want to think of how that rope must have felt all crammed in there. Crazy.
Sex, sex, sex. What’s wrong with you darn kids today? :pOT, but drive safely to Seattle and enjoy the adventure.
We did the I-90 drive some years back from Boston to Seattle. The coffee is pretty miserable until you get to Montana. South Dakota is pretty weird. We were planning to stay at a motel on the Missouri River, but got caught in a snowstorm and wound up in Mitchell, the home of the Corn Palace, a famous mural redone annually using colored corn kernels. My parents went there before I-90 on their honeymoon (on their way west to Yellowstone). We had a great steak in Gillette, WY. at Prime Rib. They even had snails on the menu, and for those who couldn’t eat escargot, they had artigot, artichokes cooked in the manner of snails. (We eat snails.) Montana was serious culture shock, but Butte had a certain homey touch. We bought, and lived on, a couple of oversized beef pasties. Butte seems to be the Austin of Montana. In Washington, try the resort at Moses Lake if you can’t push on. If nothing else the coffee is good. We had another few hours to go after Seattle. I-90 doesn’t get you all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it’s an amazing road.