Video of the Week

All The News That's Fit To Strip

Carmen Electra shimmied and shook with Les Femmes Cheries in a combination of cabaret, striptease and fashion show at the Key Club in Hollywood. But who wants to talk about it? TMZ has the video.

In other news ...

Mary Elizabeth Winstead put in a month of ten hour days "dancing, dancing, dancing" to get ready for burlesque flick Make It Happen.

Congressman Pete Sessions defends his fundraiser at the burlesque club Forty Deuce in Las Vegas.

Scandalesque auditions new members who try to be sexually alluring without being tasteless.

Want to wait tables at Spiegelworld, the "lavish, naughty, vaudeville-inspired circus" that begins Wednesday in New York? Get ready to demonstrate your pole dancing skills.

A new biography takes a peek at Candy Barr and Pleasant Gehman reviews Gilded Lili.

Glasgow is home to the world’s biggest burlesque club night, which can pull in up to 2,000 people.

If you're in New York, don't miss Deep Fried Honeys: Countrified Burlesque! on Monday, August 11 at The Fortune Cookie Cabaret at Lucky Cheng's. The evening's unforgettable ecdysiasts include Honi Harlow, Veronica Varlow, The Lady Aye and Shelly Watson.

The Name Game

This morning, David Brooks got me thinking about names. I'm sure the New York Times reporter meant for me to consider my own, but the names that came to mind were Kalani Kokonuts, Lucy Fur and Immodesty Blaize

Burlesque names seem to fall into several categories. There are those that hint at the performer's body in some way -- Fanny Tastic, Trixie Little, Jo Boobs. Some names like Dita Von Teese and Michelle L'Amour play to the desired effect. There are lots of food-related names -- Candy Barr, Della Delicious, Bonbon Vivant. And some that are simply fun whether it's because of a double entendre or how it rolls off the tongue -- Lola Pearl, Panty Raid, Harvest Moon, Lux LaCroix.

And if like me, you've had trouble coming up with a suitable burlesque name there's a name generator which spits out things like Ginger Spice, Antoinette Parfait, Caresse Frou-Frou, Miss Ecstasy Deluxe, Vivienne diVine.

All the News That's Fit To Strip

Apparently writer Duane Adler is working on a dance trifecta. After bringing us Save the Last Dance and Step Up he scores his hat trick with Make It Happen, a film about a small-town girl who moves to Chicago with dreams of entering the Chicago School of Dance but winds up shimmying through a burlesque club. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who most recently starred in Live Free or Die Hard, told Trailer Park:

"I feel like a lot of the dance movies that have come out in the last 10 years, not all, but some of them have been airy, sweet and simple. I’m just hoping to bring a more realistic edge to the character and show the more real-life…things that happen when you’re trying to become a dancer ... I just want to show the less sweet side to it even though it will be a classic dance movie, a feel good girl movie. But I think we give it a little more interesting edge to it as well. It’s a challenge I’m taking on and I’ll see whether I can run with it."

Winstead, by the way, is No. 92 on Maxim's Hot List.

In other news:

According to the Daily Briefing Ohio Dem Chair Chris Redfern called off a meeting because Dems were "distracted" by a local "spat" involving flashing strippers on a golf course.

Are striptease-inspired classes "a healthy reawakening of the seductress innate in every female" OR "further evidence of the ... 'stripperization' of American girls and women."

Broadway's Legally Blonde director and choreogrpaher Jerry Mitchell's career "took a major turn when he performed a striptease at the gay bar Splash for the AIDS charity Broadway Cares."

A Vermont town "famous for its strip-and-let-strip attitude" is considering banning public nudity.

Learn how to make a corset-style t-shirt.

Forget Britney and Top 40 sounds, burlesque rocks out to punk.

Fleshbot fills us in on good news for Scottsdale City residents and bad news for Vegas.

Missy Malone, one of Scotland's top burlesque dancers, is all about "secrets and teasing."

The world's best candy bars? Try this Candy Barr.