Friday, July 2, 2010

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Is Burlesque Art?"

Thursday (again, that’s Thursday), July 8 at 8pm:

“Is Burlesque Art?”

featuring:

Monty Leman, photographer (with photographs)

VS.

Michel Evanchik, grumpus

Moderated by Todd Seavey

WHERE: basement level of Lolita Bar at 266 Broome St. at the corner of Allen St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. F, J, M, Z subway stop.

Are participants in burlesque artistes or little better than Montreal-dwelling strippers?  You get to cast the deciding vote at the end of next week’s thrilling discussion.

And coming up later this month: my Book Selection entry about Victorian Norwich, my own old home town as it was in the nineteenth century, complete with riverboat prostitutes, apparently.  Today, by contrast, the town is wholesome (and still Victorian) enough that when a friend who was planning a bachelor party at nearby Foxwoods Casino asked me where he could hire strippers, I had to ask my mom — who knew, oddly enough (you talk to Billy at the Log and Lantern Tavern down at the bottom of the hill, or at least did at the time).  I don’t know why mom knew that, nor why she was quicker than I was to realize that the “papers” we were being offered in Washington Square Park once were rolling papers for leaves of the dreaded marijuana plant.

Mom has also been enjoying Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch (the show I write for), hosted by Judge Andrew Napolitano, and she watched three out of four airings of the premiere episode (on which Sarah Palin, as you may have heard, admitted that arresting pot smokers should not be a police priority).  Surely you can watch the show at at least one of its four broadcast times: Sat. 10am and 8pm, Sun. 7pm and 11pm (with this week’s having Bob Barr, Gary Johnson, Geraldo Rivera, Steve Horwitz, Peter Schiff, Connie Mack, and other guests).

And, hey, Nat Hentoff likes the show.

7 comments:

Gerard said...

Hey, there’s a feather in your cap!

Nat Hentoff is probably the sole remaining reason to pick up a copy of the Village Voice, especially now that Norah Vincent isn’t writing for it any longer.

D------ said...

I don’t know if Gerard is being sarcastic, but the Voice fired Hentoff in early 2009. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/nyregion/09nyc.html

Todd Seavey said...

[...] her subscription to Commentary — so here's hoping that in addition to enjoying our drag-like debate about burlesque this coming Thursday, she will enjoy our tentatively-planned August debate about "benign imperialism," a topic partly [...]

Todd Seavey said...

[...] Eric Metaxas or a public relations man for Opus Dei, as I was at a party last week), I organize debates like the one this Thursday on burlesque.  I’m even moderating this one, so join [...]

Gerard said...

I stand corrected.

Well, I guess now it’s down to the apartment listings and quasi-legal erotic services advertisements.

Todd Seavey said...

[...] entry may have been grimmer than befits the week of tonight’s fun-filled Debate at Lolita Bar about burlesque (8pm), so today a link to something much more entertaining and closely related to burlesque: an article [...]

Todd Seavey said...

[...] yet a third media coincidence, mere hours after I criticized the music of Lady Gaga (at last night’s Debate at Lolita Bar, about whether burlesque is art, to which the audience says the answer is yes), I found myself literally trapped in a crowd of gaga [...]