Based in Melbourne, Prior travels to international burlesque shows and photographs the dancers on and offstage, capturing the joy of performance as well as the athleticism involved in keeping those pasties from launching into the crowd.

His new book "Titzen Blitzen!" is an available-light travelogue through London's week-long Burlesque Festival, which drew an international roster of dancers. Sado vamps to naughty maids play to crowds that range from elegant to rowdy, which says a lot about burlesque's place as a living art form, as a "body type"-neutral treat, and as a mirror of class structure.

And that's all well and good, but I liked the women.

Prior's site also contains a wealth of studio shots of burlesque performers without those awkward nipple-obscuring impediments.

· Michael Prior (michaelprior.com)

. . .

· Lo-Fi Saint Louis #229 Naughti Gras, an Erotic Art Show (lofistl.com)
· Naughti Gras 2008 (stlnaughtigras.moonfruit.com)

. . .

· GwenMedia (gwenmedia.com)

Read about the "Mortified" phenomenon after the gap.

. . .

"As much as we know it runs our adult lives, sexuality is the number one thing kids write about," said David Nadelberg, creator and founding producer of a series of stage shows called "Mortified", in which brave (or terminally narcissistic) adults share their adolescent journal entries, poems, lyrics, videos, and comics in cities across America. "(Sex is) this thing they're not having, and when they do have it, it's this thing that makes them miserable."

While the content of the nine stage shows, two books, and "Mortified Shoebox" webisodes is not limited to sex, that subject is the river that runs through the often poignant, hilarious, and cringeworthy true-life tales of "Mortified"'s contributors, from summer camp crushes, straight and gay blowjob primers, real sex with the football coach to porn fantasies featuring Duran Duran and the foiled masturbatory imagery of Tori Spelling and Anna Nicole Smith (writes contributor MCC, "When Anna Nicole Smith didn't work, I knew I was gay").

And when the teen crush is unrequited (as it most often is) or when things go horribly wrong (as they most often do), readers and viewers can take comfort in the fact that the author has lived to tell the tale. In that way, Nadelberg said, "the happy ending is built in."

But confessional isn't the only criterion, said executive producer Neil Katcher.

"If it isn't both funny and fascinating," he said, "we can't use it."

Local producers solicit and develop submissions from authors who've rediscovered their freshman diaries or shoeboxes of Bon Jovi tickets. Some find their way to the web, stage, and page, and others are best suited for just one medium.

"Some people are natural performers," Katcher said, "where others are shy." Still, Nadelberg said, 85 percent of the books started on stage.

Nadelberg and Katcher also make sure no one "jokes the joke", undermining the efficacy of the tender source material with too many adult asides. "We have to preserve the tenderness, and the humor is a byproduct," Nadelberg said.

"I thought girls had two holes; one for urination and one for sex," reads Leonard Hyman from something he wrote at age 12. "Wrong! The vagina!"

The Mortified stage show launched in Los Angeles in 2002 and was followed by counterparts in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Austin, Portland, Chicago, and Malmo, Sweden in the next five years. The most recent Mortified book, subtitled "Love Is A Battlefield", was released this month.

And the demographics are not restricted to the Livejournal generation. While contributors are mostly in their 20s and 30s, Mortified boasts both performers and contributors in their seventies, and the appeal spans gender and sexual orientation.

"We've seen some amazing and heroic coming out stories," Nadelberg said, pointing out that straight men aren't big contributors of journals, often preferring power chord rock lyrics instead, "but the gay guys are diary-happy."

Katcher added that, while Mortified is often a "manly show", what with its many stories focusing on late 80s/early 90s heavy metal and hair bands, "I am aware that I am involved in the girliest project of my generation."

This does not stop monthly sellout crowds of diverse and delighted voyeurs at the Mortified stage shows, sharing a little bit of the performers' triumph.

"They made it through the rain," Nadelberg said.

· Mortified (getmortified.com)

· Photos by Autumn Sonnischen (autumnsonnichsen.com)

See also:
· Darenzia
· Miss Kendra James
· Miss Maya
· Ruby Luster

Previously: FetishCon 2007: Florida Heat, Anastasia Pierce Does Rubberdoll (And Vice Versa)

Read more about the festivities after the gap. - GP

- - -

For those unexposed to the drag king phenomenon, imagine if the members of the Village People were women and inhabited those male stereotypes more convincingly than actual cowboys, construction workers, and leathermen. And that's just a thumbnail.

"We have every kind of drag from suits to fruits; studs to puds," continued Frottage. "Everything from Elvis impersonators to Leather Daddies, Wrestlers, Contortionists, Hillbillies, Clowns, Jocks, and their female counterparts. It's a mind-boggling, dress-to-impress occasion, where part of the fun is just trying tell the performers and audience members apart."

As if the onstage entertainment wasn't enough, Frottage, known as "The Man with the Biggest Balls in Show Business" will be joined by The Indra, a "bi-sexual, bi-polar, half male, half female character" as Master and 1/2 Mistress of Ceremonies.

We think we're pretty pan-sexual around here, but still we gained insight from The Indra's words: "My motto," The Indra said, "If it doesn't look phallic enough, turn it sideways."

The 12th annual San Francisco Drag King Contest will take place Saturday, August 18, at SomArts on Brannan Street. Tickets range from $15 to $35.

· San Francisco Drag King Contest (sfdragkingcontest.com)

Previously: Drag Archive

Is there really anything better one can do with a prosthetic paper-maché cavern of simulated ladyness than to strap it on and make performance art with it? We don't think so—and neither does performer, artist, and erotic provocateur Patrick Bucklew, the one-legged muse for fiction writer Jonathan Ames. Citing his own genital-related psychoses and his urge to expose his balls at Dunkin' Donuts, over the last few years Bucklew has created codpieces with outsized, colorful, and somewhat spooky looking vaginas molded and painted into them ... and then he gets naked (save for the mangina codpiece) with assorted similarly-festooned friends and shows up at various parties, galleries, performance venues, and events in New York City and beyond.. That's art at its finest as far as we're concerned. -AR

· The Mangina (mangina.com; see also LiveJournal)

Previously: Zumanity's Vadge Pasty, How To: See Your Vagina ... From The Inside!, Pussy Power: The Remix, When Dildos Attack!, "Without Your Vagina, There's No You!"

Lusiciously long legged Chicago-based pro domina and performer VonLivid is a writer and until recently was an assistant director for the Women of Color in BDSM Photography Project; no hollow theorist she, however, she also puts her money where her mouth is (or maybe we should say her stilleto heels where your mouth is?) with plenty of time in front of the camera for such photographers as the inimitable Bob Coulter on the soon-to-be-launched paysite AgentFetish.com, where we'll all be treated to more of her enviable ways with all things tight, shiny, lacy, latexed, and corseted. Until then, she invites you to make her your own "visual muse" via her free gallery of sexy photos on her current website, where you can also stay up to date on her many appearances at fetish and burlesque appearances the world over. (How do all these foxy renaissance women find the time anyway?)

· VonLivid: The Visionista (vonlivid.com)
· Agent Fetish (agentfetish.com)
· Thumbnail by Bob Coulter (bobcoulter.com)

Attending the Sex Workers' Art Show is becoming something like making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca ... well, at least for those among us who hunger to hear (and see) tales from the hard-working pros in the sex trade trenches. Started by the flame-haired Annie Oakley in Olympia, Washington in 1998, the show has become an annual national tour with nine different performers who straddle the lines between theater, titty show, and political performance. Chances are good that the troupe of hookers, strippers, porn performers, dominatrices, and other professions that you may or may not have imagined are coming to a town near you before the tour is over in March—and if they aren't, you can get a behind the scenes look through Jo Weldon's Livejournal, where she's sharing tales from the road as well as her lovely photographs. -AR

· Sex Workers' Art Show (bios and tour dates @ sexworkersartshow.com)
· Eau de Jo (Jo Weldon's blog and photos @ gstringgirl.livejournal.com)

Pixel Pussy is an aggressive live stage experience with "retinal-wrecking projections", "eardrum-pumpin' beats", industrial mayhem, lots of sparks, and hot girls in fetishwear in a show that combines a little sex and kinky violence with a whole lot of old-fashioned neo-burlesque goodness—and since any one of these things on their own gets our motors running, the combination is a sure bet to please. To get the full effect of performers Maya Sinstress, Miss Nix, Krysten Corruption and Brain Blender's artistry, you'll have to catch them starting next month when they kick off their 2007 touring season in Milwaukee. The live performance photos on their website give only a tantalizing taste of what their shows are like, but since we don't plan on being in Milwaukee anytime soon we guess they're the next best things to being there. - AR

· Pixel Pussy (pixelpussy.tv)

Previously: Lucha Va Voom: Burlesque Wrestling, Burlesque Podcast, Camp Burlesque, Burlesque Bitch

While here in the US we have an annual traveling troupe of sex worker performance artists called the Sex Workers Art Show, the Australians have Debby Doesn't Do it For Free, an aggressively political but also very funny group with a name inspired by smut classic "Debbie Does Dallas." Their team of workers (all dubbed Debby, of course) includes a group of Hooker Scouts who identify good hooker skills in civilians and a Debby who does does a Joan Jett schtick with a song called "I Love Hockin' My Hole". Oh, and they do karaoke too. Is it too much to hope that they'll plan a North American tour one of these days?-AR

· Debby Doesn't Do It For Free (debbydoesntdoitforfree.org)

Previously: Daspu: Sex Worker Fashion, Meet Bruna Surfistinha (aka Rachel Pacheco), The Aphrodite Project, Diario da Putaria, Sex Work Matters, Strippers of London, Meet Elle Wakefield, Slut Suzie: Diary of a UK Prostitute

Erotic pain, sex, and spectacle: if things like suspensions, mummification, blood and nudity are your thing when it comes to theatre, the decade old Polish performance group Suka Off has got your number. Most of their performances are live stage shows, though the troupe was kind enough to photographically document most of the six different pieces they performed in 2006. They've also been making videos for the past six years that are chock full of their trademark mummified-in-the-right-places nudity (= leave the boobs bare!) and things like simulated cannibalism, dead animals, wax torture, and fetish elements "based on Japanese horror films" ... all set to a thumping industrial soundtrack. Totally better than "Cats" if you ask us.-AR

· Sukaoff (sukaoff.com)

When is a gangbang video not porn? Why, when it's art, of course. So don't visit this archive of clips from a film project by Chicago-based filmmaker and artist Kristie Alshaibi hoping for some cheap thrills: near as we can make out, the four videos from her "Other People's Mirrors" that have been posted recently on Insane Films deal with themes like submission, identity, capitalism, religion, joyless anonymous sex, and zit picking. (Yes, each one is introduced by producers who worked on the project, but who has time to listen when we're trying to get to the dirty stuff?) Conceived in 1999 as a web-based "community-online-editing-station-web-cam-performance" experiment, the film was released on DVD in 2004 and spawned a series of websites featuring Alsahibi's sex worker and camgirl alter ego "Echo Transgression" before she gave up on the project citing "mental collapse"; given the fact that what we've seen of the final product (which screened at the CineKink festival in New York last week) is rather muddled and not terribly sexy, perhaps it's just as well, even if its original premise of creating a participatory kind of erotic spectacle is one worth exploring further. And if nothing else, there's always that joyless boardroom gangbang video to get creeped out over.

· "Other People's Mirrors" (video excerpts @ insanefilms.com - thanks Matt)

See also:
· "Other People's Mirrors" (film project site and director's statement @ 12taboos.com)
· Echo Transgression (Wikipedia)
· Echo Transgression and Objectify Me (echotransgression.com + objectifyme.com)
· Artvamp (artvamp.com)
· Learn Dirty Movies (Kristie Alshaibi's filmmaking class info @ learndirtymovies.com)

Previously: Usama Alshaibi Photography, Michele Capozzi: "Pornology", Berlin Porn Film Festival, "Psychopathia Sexualis", Cinekink Kickoff Party

Have we ever mentioned that we admire artists who get a little (or a lot) pornographic—and porn that gets a little (or a lot) artsy? (Well, maybe we did mention it once or twice.) Shawn and Jez, twincesters bound by "bloodpissshitcumspittears" (to quote the title of one of their video works), deliver that mix of art and porn that makes us tingle down there ... and up here too. If you're a fan of last year's Pink and White Productions'"The Crash Pad," in our humble opinion 2005's best lesbian porn flick, you'll probably recognize them as the boyish squirting pair. Their art is a peculiar mix of dance, naked performance, and celebration of the body and its fluids—and it kind of makes you feel like they are going to kidnap you, mess you up real good and blow your mind. We're happy to come along for the ride.
- AR

· Twincest (twincest.net)

Previously: Podcast: Pink and White Productions Interview

Lube or no lube, there's (alas) no way we'll be getting on a plane to England anytime soon, which means we'll miss out on the UK Erotic Awards ceremony taking place this weekend. This charity event not only raises money for a worthy cause, it honors the artists, performers, activists and inventors who strive to make our lives a whole lot sexier. It also doesn't hurt that the ceremony itself is part of the Sex Maniacs Ball, an erotic cabaret show which kicks in after the winners are presented with their hand-carved "golden flying penis trophies". Sounds like fun, but if you're grounded like us you still can check out the nominees at the Erotic Awards and Sex Maniacs Ball websites, and then start making your travel plans for next year.

· The Erotic Awards + 2006 Finalists (erotic-awards.co.uk)
· Sex Maniacs Ball: The Night of the Senses (sex-maniacs-ball.com)
· "The Erotic Awards Are Here Again!" + Erotic Awards Exhibition (midnightsextalk.com, via sexe.fluctuat.net )

Previously: When Gina Lynns Collide!, 2006 AVN Awards: Relive the Magic!, Porn Awards Buildup, Eroticon 2006 Photos, Alva Bernadine: Four Hundred & One Blows

Our favorite thing about postmodern feminists (really, what's not to like?) is their willingness to put both boobs and brains into the equation when challenging stereotypes, and Asian Princess Artifacts has this strategy down to a T. In that vein, performance artist Gennifer Hirano has been a stripper and a fake porn starlet—and unlike most of everyone's favorite peroxide blonde and balloon-boobed real porn starlets, she did it to make a point about objectification and stereotypes and not just for the cash. But just because her website says "It's not about sex" (which she later follows up by emphasizing that "it's about power") doesn't mean that there aren't a few good nudie pictures of Gennifer's various performances and fine art projects. In addition to the fake porn starlet project, Gennifer has made a pinup inspired flip book, dressed up like Marilyn Monroe, and made a calendar featuring her posing on a car while wearing a bikini and eating a bowl of rice. Call it art if you want to; we just think it manages to be both smart and sexy.
- AR

· Asian Princess Artifacts (asianprincessartifacts.com)

Previously: Rudegirls, Naked Ambition, "Anti-Porn 'Feminists' Hold Conference", Nina Hartley Strikes Back, Pro-Porn Women, Women and Porn, To Asia, With love

A world traveller, accomplished performer and self-taught firebreather, Lucifier is a force to be reckoned with on the burlesque and freakshow circuit. Now based in London, she'll be touring Europe with the Fire Tusk Pain Proof Circus from May to June. In the meantime, browse her galleries of performance photos, check in on her Live Journal, or listen to some sample tracks from her "zombie swing" band The Flaming Doo Dits. She could just be the hardest workin' woman in showboobness.- J. West

Lucifire (lucifire.com, via Unscathed Corpse)

Previously: Camp Burlesque, “The Notorious Bettie Page”, Exotic World Burlesque Museum, Burlesque Bitch, Flickr Burlesque Clusters, This or That TV, Meet Miss Delirium Tremens, BadAss Burlesque, Burlesque Films

As students of burlesque are well aware, you can't just put pasties on a pretty girl, give her some Sally Rand-style fans, and tell her to dance; there's both an art and a science to the mixture of striptease, humor and titillating talents that the connoisseur expects from the medium. Burlesque Bitch has profiles on dozens of girls and troupes who will satisfy even the most discriminating connoiseeur—including their Fall Queen, Little Brooklyn. With a name like that, she's going straight to the top — maybe to the Catskills even!- J. West

Burlesque Bitch (saturnite.50megs.com)

Previously: Flickr Burlesque Clusters, This or That TV, Meet Miss Delirium Tremens, BadAss Burlesque, Burlesque Films