Best Birthday Ever
And there you were thinking that my most recent return to blogging had flagged already. Oh ye of little faith.
Anyway, last week was the Special One's birthday. Now, a bit of context: in the weeks leading up to it, she'd quit her pub job, as you know, and so we'd been having a pretty lean month. With this in mind, we'd kind of agreed that her trip to France to see her friends would count as her birthday present, since it fell (just about) within two weeks of her birthday. Happily, we sorted out our money woes far earlier than expected, and so I could afford a proper present.
Now, normally, I'll spend weeks, nay, months thinking of the perfect present for the Special One's birthday. This year, it had seemed that I was off the hook. There's always a down-side to coming into money, isn't there.
Completely bereft of ideas, I went out to Camden and picked up five or six smallish presents, things that I knew the Special One wanted or would like: books, a t-shirt with a piglet on it (not content with a cat, she also wants a pet pig...), etc. Still, it all seemed to lack impact, so I did what any self-respecting 28-year-old would do for his fianceé and made her a treasure hunt for when she got home from work. However, the Special One's joy soon furrowed into a frown; for all her skill at crosswords (the grown-up, cryptic ones you'd find in the Times, etc) she and I seem to have very, very different ideas as to what actually constitutes a cryptic clue: while I thought 'the deepest depth a man can go' woul quickly lead her to find a clue in a Six Feet Under box set, the Special One, after much hair-pulling, was considering pulling up a manhole and investigating the drains. Nonetheless, we got there in the end.
The next evening, the day of her birthday, was spent on the couch with popcorn and Coke, watching Ghostbusters, one of her treasure hunt presents. What, no piss-up? Well, it's not that we're getting sensible in our old age, but the Special One in particular feels no need to go out and get wrecked just because it's the form thing to do.
The night after was the big night out, anyway. I don't think a show or gig counts as a birthday present, because you've nothing to show after it - it's more a birthday treat - but she'd already had her presents, so going to see Immodesty Blaize and her burlesque revue in the Bloomsbury Ballroom was the icing on the cake. And what icing too. For those of you afraid to follow the link, Immodesty Blaize is Britain's premier burlesque artist, and the Bloomsbury Ballroom is the kind of place you pay £8 for a G&T and a coke. So, dressing to kill was in order. Even before the show started, the audience was a sight to behold: dapper suits, spats, fedoras for the guys; corsets, feather boas and blood-red lipstick for the dolls.
And what a show. I find strip clubs, lap-dancing clubs, etc, quite unsexy, downright depressing in fact. It's not that I have anything against admiring naked bodies, but there's such a soulless, perfunctory arrangement regarding money and nudity. There's not a hint of personality, of performance, of enjoyment, and while that might be fine for some, I find it hard to see the point. You might as well be watching porn, but without the privacy of your own home that makes it in any way worthwhile. Burlsque, however, is an entirely different beast. For one, while there's a fair bit of exposed flesh, there's no actual nudity per se: nipple tassels and g-strings stay firmly in place (I asked the Special One about the glue, but she had no answers). More importantly, burlesque is entirely about theatre, about performance, and is enormously entertaining. In one sense, it's not actually about sex at all, but only inasmuch as it's coy, teasing, titiliating. In another sense, obviously, it's entirely about sex, but the pretence is what gives it its charm.
The evening was compered by drag king Mr Murray Hill - think a Rat Pack Benny Hill - who goes under the epitaph of 'the hardest working middle-aged man in showbusiness', and while I'm not going to get into the yawnsome 'size zero' debate here, it should suffice to say that the performers were hot, whatever their dress size. There was Miss Dirty Martini, a big woman who spent her five-minute slot en pointe - the Special One, who now works with a lot of dancers, was particularly impressed; there was Miss Exotic World 2006, the otherworldly Julie Atlas Muz - big eyes and head, palest of skin and very thin, she looked like a Tim Burton mermaid - who first did the 'climbing inside a balloon trick' and then, in the second act, came on wrapped in heavy rope and thrashed around until free (it sounds line undergraduate feminist performance art, but it was captivating). Incidentally, Wiki lists both as 'notable neo-burlesque performers'.
Finally, as befits the headline act, Immodesty Blaize was amazing. She's about six foot tall - taller in the obligatory killer heels, of course - with a 36E bust and a 27-inch waist corsetted down to 20 inches. Dressed in black and carrying big black fans, she rode a giant black rocking horse, looking for all the world like a vaudeville valkyrie, all to the sound of the O Fortuna chorus from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana: style, attitude, costume, sex, performance, charm and music all coming together.
Any suggestions of a Homer present - I looked at tits while the Special One looked at fashion - will be firmly refuted. And if you find yourself short of brownie points in the coming weeks, well, you know who to come to.
Anyway, last week was the Special One's birthday. Now, a bit of context: in the weeks leading up to it, she'd quit her pub job, as you know, and so we'd been having a pretty lean month. With this in mind, we'd kind of agreed that her trip to France to see her friends would count as her birthday present, since it fell (just about) within two weeks of her birthday. Happily, we sorted out our money woes far earlier than expected, and so I could afford a proper present.
Now, normally, I'll spend weeks, nay, months thinking of the perfect present for the Special One's birthday. This year, it had seemed that I was off the hook. There's always a down-side to coming into money, isn't there.
Completely bereft of ideas, I went out to Camden and picked up five or six smallish presents, things that I knew the Special One wanted or would like: books, a t-shirt with a piglet on it (not content with a cat, she also wants a pet pig...), etc. Still, it all seemed to lack impact, so I did what any self-respecting 28-year-old would do for his fianceé and made her a treasure hunt for when she got home from work. However, the Special One's joy soon furrowed into a frown; for all her skill at crosswords (the grown-up, cryptic ones you'd find in the Times, etc) she and I seem to have very, very different ideas as to what actually constitutes a cryptic clue: while I thought 'the deepest depth a man can go' woul quickly lead her to find a clue in a Six Feet Under box set, the Special One, after much hair-pulling, was considering pulling up a manhole and investigating the drains. Nonetheless, we got there in the end.
The next evening, the day of her birthday, was spent on the couch with popcorn and Coke, watching Ghostbusters, one of her treasure hunt presents. What, no piss-up? Well, it's not that we're getting sensible in our old age, but the Special One in particular feels no need to go out and get wrecked just because it's the form thing to do.
The night after was the big night out, anyway. I don't think a show or gig counts as a birthday present, because you've nothing to show after it - it's more a birthday treat - but she'd already had her presents, so going to see Immodesty Blaize and her burlesque revue in the Bloomsbury Ballroom was the icing on the cake. And what icing too. For those of you afraid to follow the link, Immodesty Blaize is Britain's premier burlesque artist, and the Bloomsbury Ballroom is the kind of place you pay £8 for a G&T and a coke. So, dressing to kill was in order. Even before the show started, the audience was a sight to behold: dapper suits, spats, fedoras for the guys; corsets, feather boas and blood-red lipstick for the dolls.
And what a show. I find strip clubs, lap-dancing clubs, etc, quite unsexy, downright depressing in fact. It's not that I have anything against admiring naked bodies, but there's such a soulless, perfunctory arrangement regarding money and nudity. There's not a hint of personality, of performance, of enjoyment, and while that might be fine for some, I find it hard to see the point. You might as well be watching porn, but without the privacy of your own home that makes it in any way worthwhile. Burlsque, however, is an entirely different beast. For one, while there's a fair bit of exposed flesh, there's no actual nudity per se: nipple tassels and g-strings stay firmly in place (I asked the Special One about the glue, but she had no answers). More importantly, burlesque is entirely about theatre, about performance, and is enormously entertaining. In one sense, it's not actually about sex at all, but only inasmuch as it's coy, teasing, titiliating. In another sense, obviously, it's entirely about sex, but the pretence is what gives it its charm.
The evening was compered by drag king Mr Murray Hill - think a Rat Pack Benny Hill - who goes under the epitaph of 'the hardest working middle-aged man in showbusiness', and while I'm not going to get into the yawnsome 'size zero' debate here, it should suffice to say that the performers were hot, whatever their dress size. There was Miss Dirty Martini, a big woman who spent her five-minute slot en pointe - the Special One, who now works with a lot of dancers, was particularly impressed; there was Miss Exotic World 2006, the otherworldly Julie Atlas Muz - big eyes and head, palest of skin and very thin, she looked like a Tim Burton mermaid - who first did the 'climbing inside a balloon trick' and then, in the second act, came on wrapped in heavy rope and thrashed around until free (it sounds line undergraduate feminist performance art, but it was captivating). Incidentally, Wiki lists both as 'notable neo-burlesque performers'.
Finally, as befits the headline act, Immodesty Blaize was amazing. She's about six foot tall - taller in the obligatory killer heels, of course - with a 36E bust and a 27-inch waist corsetted down to 20 inches. Dressed in black and carrying big black fans, she rode a giant black rocking horse, looking for all the world like a vaudeville valkyrie, all to the sound of the O Fortuna chorus from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana: style, attitude, costume, sex, performance, charm and music all coming together.
Any suggestions of a Homer present - I looked at tits while the Special One looked at fashion - will be firmly refuted. And if you find yourself short of brownie points in the coming weeks, well, you know who to come to.
posted by exileonpatrickstreet at 1:31 pm
1 Comments:
You´re a bit of an ol romantic all the same, aren´t ya Samuel? Very good stuff. Shows the kind of imagination needed for a good birthday; I agree with the no-pub rule. I´ll be onto you for advice one of these days...
Post a Comment
<< Home