A Wink and a Smile

A Wink and a Smile has been accepted to this year's SIFF!!! Congratulations Deirdre!!

The bad news is that I won't be there for its premiere. For those that don't know, I'm in an upcoming documentary on Seattle's burlesque scene- in particular, Miss Indigo Blue's Academy of Burlesque, which I graduated from last October. :) The 10 of us women who enrolled in the fall session were filmed in class, at rehearsals, in private sessions, at home, out on the town, etc. It was a nerve-wracking, amazing experience and I'll save the big, explanatory essay for later. A new trailer will be ready on May 6 and I'll post it as soon as I can. I'm thrilled to join the ranks of other recent Northwest documentary subjects i.e. Blood on the Flat Track, about the Rat City Rollergirls, and Girls Rock!, about Portland's Rock & Roll Camp for Girls, where Carrie Brownstein and Beth Ditto are teachers! Of course in this scenario I'm a camper, and the stars are the teachers like Indigo and the rest of Seattle's glittering professional scene. I look forward to seeing those profiles and that footage.

I don't know what I was thinking going out of town when I'm about to be in a movie! I was looking forward to getting glammed up and partying with the girls at the premiere. What a moment to miss out on...it makes me sad...but life is about moving forward. Can't break my stride, can't hold me down, I guess!

Anyway, taking the class was my project, and the film is Deirdre's. I don't know how good of a subject I was, because I felt a journalistic kinship with her and approached everything with that detached/analytical eye. Meeting her through this was inspirational. Besides sharing an interest in burlesque, she was that woman with big, audacious ideas, and follow-through, that I strive to be.

There's a .pdf version of the latest OnScreen magazine, which has a great Q & A with Deirdre on the film (Mom, I meant to send you the hard copy ages ago, naturally). And there's an interview with her on KUOW here.

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I'm going dancing tonight, damn it. Says a blog of Cross Club: "Rotating and twinkling statues; lights with shining, octopus-like tentacles; Bar chairs with tank shafts; numerous corridors with orientation maps; tables with four-stroke engines; the interiors look just like the inside of a huge sci-fi robotic whale. To grasp the genus loci of that place is quite impossible – maybe by this: It cannot be compared to anything from our world."

Sisson told me it was the perfect place to hear drum and bass. Sigma is playing tonight and they're on DJ Zinc's label Bingo Beats. Jenna G's "Woe" is on there, and D. Kay, whose "Desire" was the last hard-edged d & b track I could deal with in recent times. All you have to do to please this lady is drop an "oh yeah" in with your wobbly bass and too-much-snare-drum. So...most of ya'll know I was a raver in college, and d & b was the final frontier, the last genre I could still dance my heart out to, and I had a mini-renaissance in 2005. I discovered BBC 1xtra radio, and began a book idea that I'm still not done with. I met Kid Hops (expand your website Kyle!), and Tanya, who wasn't quite done with the genre either. I got Jess and Brian to go out with me. I kissed a hot Brazilian guy at the Marky show. You know. And I resisted the nonsense of being "too old" for the "boys club" as long as possible. You really want to say "give me a break" when it comes to gender, but the last few times I went out, I had to admit I felt completely alienated. I can still dig this music and talk about it with people but is the dancing aspect of my enjoyment really over? Well, I'll try again in Prague. Will everyone be 17, and male? Will I be ignored? Here goes.

I just had a killer idea.