So I went to my first Burlesque show tonight. And to be more specific--The Burlesque Nutcracker. I had originally planned to go with one of my good friends coming in from Spokane, but he bailed pretty out of the gate and so I ended up taking my sister along for a night of Christmas titties.
I decided I wanted to get up to Seattle early before the show so I could walk around the big festive city at least once during my final trip back to Washington for a while. Ended up getting there around 3:45 p.m, and in a normal Washington fashion, it immediately started raining on our parade. Parking is a usual bitch, but we finally end up finding a place temporarily so we can sit down for a nice warm dinner to chill ourselves up from the cold and rain. After unsuccessfully trying to frequent several Vietnamese Pho places, [why nothing is opened at 4 pm on the Saturday before Christmas is beyond me], we end up on a mad chase trying to find the nearest sanctuary of noodle heaven. I'm suggesting other places just so we can go inside, but Ashley insists that our labors will not be in vain and is determined towards hunting down another pho establishment. At this point, Ashley is getting very vocal about her frustration. "I'm hella pissed bro" she's telling me over and over again, "I aint trying to look all janky ass walking in this rain with the wind trifln up my weave."
I'd like to interrupt this broadcast to take a little intermission and do some translation and clarification. 1) My sister is Caucasian 2) Yes, really. 3) I promise, she actually did say this. To translate ashleyspeak into normal standard English one might say that Ashley's comment went a little something like this: "I am very upset sister about the unfortunate weather conditions which are causing me to look less than satisfactory and are causing great distress to my chosen extended hairstyle." ADVERT: For any white-middle class person in the Thurston/Lewis county area I highly suggest looking up Ashley Odell as your Ebonics guru. The girl has skill.
And we're back. So as Ashley is complaining as we are trying to follow her iphone's directions towards our restaurant of choice, silently contemplating about which of us is going to be the sacrificial bait for the homeless men leering at us in the sketch alley way so the other can go on to living a long and fulfilling life. When we finally get to the place after about a ten minute walk, its empty. And in a basement. At this point we are convinced sudden death is upon us anyways, so we slink into our chairs and order some beef pho already over the whole experience. Although not the best, it was rather decent for the price and location, minus the copious amounts of fat chunks that we found floating in it which I'm guessing was supposedly added in for flavor.
We finish up dinner, re-park the car closer to the venue, and head inside to pick up my tickets at will call. For anyone looking to have a swanky night out on the town in Seattle, I highly recommend 'The Triple Door.' While a little bit on the pricier side, you do pay for a quality experience. I kicked myself the entire time that I was not in fact 21 and couldn't slink up onto one of the bar stools and soak in the true ambiance of it all. but most specifically, our seats for the show were phenomenal just far back enough to get the full effect but centered enough so that we didn't have any warped angle of the performance.
As for the show, I'm not sure what I thought I was expecting. Maybe I figured since women would be taking their clothes off, and the pair of tickets cost me 90 bucks, that the women would have left me self consciously in tears by the end of the night or at least decently aroused. But we slowly came to realize through the course of the show that the performers closely mirrored the clientele and perhaps we were the ones with unrealistic expectations.
To our surprise we were probably the youngest people in that venue of around 300 people. I never thought a burlesque show was a haven for Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas date night, but hey. Learn something new everyday. Way to go old people for keeping things interesting even in old age.
The women, albeit beautiful, were also very...real. Bit of pooch there, visible cellulite there, thick thighs there. There were perhaps one or two stereotypically "beautiful and fit" girls, but the rest could have been people picked out of the audience. I thought it was simultaneously brilliant and confusing, considering these women even in their empowering roles of seduction and real life representation were still made into traditionally passive roles in their dances. I know I can't have my cake and eat it too--attend a burlesque show and then talk about gender inequality--because I just helped perpetuate it, but it was blatantly there.
Overall, I'd say it was a fair experience though probably not one that I would replicate again. Another notch on the old belt of knowledge at least? It may be the only Christmas outing I'll have this season which is rather sad as well. It's alright, one day I will have enthusiastic friends/money to do everything in the winter season that I want to. Until then, there's always the memory of the Christmas titties.
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