Booty Bouncing Burlesque

Last weekend, Jen and I went to Tassels Off Burlesque at Hell's Kitchen. It's been a long time since we caught a burlesque show.  Go back far enough, and you'll see my blog littered with them, including a burlesque-specific trip to Chicago with Jen and Kyle.  Amusingly, we saw some familiar acts, including Tila Von Twirl who we've seen both in Minneapolis and Chicago, Foxy Tan who is always amazing as both announcer and dancer, and...Gollum! Several others as well. I would posit that it's nice everyone is getting older along with us, but that seems unnecessarily mean. I hope they stay young forever. There were a few new ... faces ... in the show as well. It was fun, even if we're on the older end of the crowd now, and I've missed it after so long, including the covid gap.

I think one of my favorite acts was a dancer vaguely dressed in 70's era men's clothes who did a number to Everything I Own with a guitar case and other props.  Jen wanted to know why they were tassel twirling bags of bread and aggressively chewing on a loaf.  Check the link if you're unsure why.

That tall dancer closest in frame performed to a dance mix of the song Period Sex.  Darn funny.  

Others included: "Glitter Cakes, Texas Teacakes, juggler Derrick Jermaine Harper, Phoenix De La Rosa, Plum Ridiculous, Raja James, Trisha Spectacle, Pedi Bourgeois, and special guest hosts Tre Da Marc, and Sparkle Du Jour! Your bra flinging producers Musette the Mistress of Mischief, Kitson Sass and Pistol Prudence pinky swear a night to remember for one and all."  Derrick Jermaine Harper didn't disappoint all glittered up on his unicycle.

My understanding is they were raising funds for a glamping adventure in the Wisconsin wilderness.  Sort of the camping / learning thing I've seen folks like Actualol do, except he did it for board gaming, not burlesque [as far as I know].  That must be a bit of a surprise for anyone randomly traipsing about in the wilderness.

I see Black Hearts is coming to Hell's Kitchen on February 10.  Kyle, Ming, and I once caught their act near the U  of MN with Fat Leonard [he's not really fat].  The dancer doing the Portal-related game dance threw cake and booze at the audience members in the front, ala The Cake is a Lie.  They're a fun act.

 

Bicycling Has Started

I went out both Thursday and Saturday last week.  While the rides wouldn't qualify as sprints, I would say they were "aggressive" for early spring for me.  I did 17.75 on Thursday, biking down to the St. Paul Yacht Club, and then climbing back out of the valley to home.  And on Saturday, I did almost 36 miles, biking into Minneapolis to meet Ming at Hell's Kitchen, and then bicycling home.  That was a lot of hills.  I was running a bit ragged by the time I got home and I don't think I really recovered even by Sunday.  Erik felt bad that my wife had to wake me up to answer his page about whether I could drive him to Code Camp on Sunday.

The St. Paul Yacht Club. Most of the time I bike under the bridge and along the river.  Not exactly possible this year.  I noticed on Saturday that the trail that goes down around the base of Fort Snelling was flooded as well, which I've never seen.  I usually take the trail that doesn't take me down a big hill and back up, but I've been down there enough that it was surprising.

Thursday.  The snow was not yet gone.  On the way back, I saw a couple of co-workers at Lucky's.  I waved and yelled hello, but I don't think they quite identified me as the crazy cyclist out so early in the spring.  Note the orange Specialized bicycle!  I've had it out twice in the potholes without destroying the rims.  The new rims and weight loss are working well.  I'm 50# under my heaviest at the moment and 40# under what I was sometime around Christmas.  That's a lot less stress on a back wheel.  The ride on Saturday burned over 2000 calories, so it's exciting to go into the bicycling season with a low enough weight that I can drink 10-20 beers a week without so much as a blip on my calorie counting.

Saturday morning by the river.  Very high.  It might have been on the banks if not for the cement barriers.  Right after this a particularly attractive woman was dragging a "road closed" sign across the shallower road out of the river valley, so I had to take the steep path up to Carlson School of Management (after stopping to watch her drag the sign.  I didn't want to get in her way).  The people who are jogging, dragging road closed signs, and helping staff early morning marathon training booths, at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning are a somewhat attractive lot overall.  I never thought to ride around the river early, when I was single, to find someone who fit my early morning habits.  If I had, I would have never met Pooteewheet unless I was looking across the river through her window (her dorm was almost exactly across the river from here, and that fairly open grassy field you can see is where she dumped me while we sat on a picnic table and bunnies frolicked, or something similar starting with the letter f, nearby).

This really surprised me.  Grandma's!  It's a big hole in the ground full of concrete.  There are pictures on this blog of me standing on the far edge of that parking ramp taking pictures of the collapsed I35 bridge.  And I think there are stories of Kyle and I getting absolutely ill on Special Export at Grandma's, and how I was too hungover to stay awake during class, but had to go because they were giving out the info for the final test, and that I stopped by Hardee's (also gone) on the way back, bumped into Mike R. from high school (whose sister lived with Kim W., my high school crush, in an apartment below Kyle and I when we lived in Cedar Riverside, crack towers as the complex is sometimes known), got a whole bag of roast beef sandwiches and, to the best of my memory, nearly made Kyle heave by repeatedly offering him multiple roast beef sandwiches while he tried to clear his system of the Special Export dregs I'd voided several hours earlier.  Of course, I haven't been back there in forever as Town Hall is only a few hundred feet away.

Busy Days Off

I have this week, and almost all of next week, off to stay home with Eryn while she's on Christmas vacation. I thought it would be relaxing and, for the most part, it is. But so far we've had our family pictures taken for a few hours at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Had lunch at Macy's followed by checking out the Christmas exhibit - a day in the life of Santa's elves. Took a trip to St. Peter to visit Klund, his wife, and kids and drop off a 15 year old espresso maker that I probably could have had shipped to his house for cheaper than the gas to get it there. But Eryn and I had fun visiting the murder of Klunds (or is it a pod?), and we can't do that if we send things by mail. To put icing on the trip we sang along to Christmas songs on the radio for 2.5 hours and managed to stop at the stoplight in Burnsville right next to this:

"Some residents of the Burncliff Apartments will be allowed to return home this afternoon after fire destroyed one building and forced the evacuation of the other at the complex. Nearly 200 people were left temporarily homeless, but no one was injured."

When we stopped, fire was starting to shoot out of the eaves in one area, and by the time the light changed, there was a great big fire shooting out of the roof. Eryn was particularly worried that one of her teachers, who said she lives in an apartment, might live in that apartment (complex) as it wasn't too far from Tesseract.

And then this morning we got up at 6:15 a.m. to head downtown and have breakfast with Erik at the new Hell's Kitchen digs. They're quite the step up from the old restaurant, and the art with the guy trying to push his way out of the wall fascinated Eryn. Not this guy. A different, faceless, scarier guy. It was a great morning for bison sausage and lemon ricotta pancakes topped with mixed berries. I drank caffeine despite my no-to-little caffeine rule that's supposed to keep the restless legs issue lessened, because who wants to have a gourmet breakfast and drink decaf?

I think we're now officially resting, however. Me typing blog posts and working on a novel. Eryn playing with Microsoft Word, Crayola Model Magic clay, and Santa Clause 3 on Netflix instant streaming. Both of us waiting anxiously for the first round of presents tomorrow.