Matt’s 2nd attempt to time travel to the summer of 2000 was unsuccessful. Our condolences go out to him and our prayers are with him and our manhood is inside him. Deep.
You may yet reach your dream.
Thank you
1st Amendment? Next stop: Totalitarian Fundamentalist Militarized Society. ALL ABOOARD!
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121809dnmetpleasant.3c17082.html
A short-sleeved squabble ended suddenly Thursday when Town East Mall security raided a kiosk and seized a stash of T-shirts that had southeast Dallas business owners up in arms.
KYE R. LEE/DMN
This design was one of three on T-shirts that were confiscated from a kiosk in Town East Mall after complaints.
Half an hour after the raid, a half-dozen Pleasant Grove business owners gathered at the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce and celebrated a medium-sized victory.
In the center of the room, draped across the back of a chair like a pelt, was one of the vanquished T-shirts:
“Welcome to Pleasant Grove,” it read – below a silkscreen image of a man tossing a body into the trunk of an old Buick.
Like everyone in the room, Pleasant Grove pawnshop owner Joy Vosburg praised the Mesquite mall’s quick action.
“It’s fantastic,” she said. “I don’t think any city should be portrayed like that.”
Vosburg had first spotted the T-shirts during a Monday evening shopping trip.
“It was horrible,” she recalled. “I would have bought them just to get rid of them. But I didn’t want to give them money.”
Instead, she said, she asked the clerk: “How can you sell those?”
“She just looked at me and said, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ ”
What’s wrong with it, Vosburg said, is that it perpetuates a violent stereotype of Pleasant Grove – a blue-collar neighborhood in the heart of southeastern Dallas – that the chamber has been working overtime to abolish.
In October, it kicked off a re-branding campaign, including “GroveFest” and “Hands Across the Grove,” when residents linked hands along South Buckner Boulevard.
The chamber will even move out of its old digs above the Diaper Store in a neighborhood strip mall and into the brand-new Eastfield College branch up the road.
“We’re doing so much trying to get Pleasant Grove built back,” Vosburg said. “And then to walk into the mall and see that.”
Vosburg complained about the shirts to the chamber’s chairman the day after she saw them. The chairman complained to mall officials, and that afternoon they told the kiosk vendor to shelve the shirts.
On Wednesday, the T-shirts had been concealed under their more innocuous brethren. A second style that read, “Pleasant Grove. Only the strong survive,” was curtained off behind “World’s Greatest Dad.”
A style that read “Pleasant Grove,” with the L and R transformed into pistols, was also hidden. The clerk refused to sell any shirts to a reporter.
A different clerk was working on Thursday morning when Vosburg returned to the kiosk, having decided it was worth giving $36 to the other side for evidence of the offense.
About an hour after the mall learned of the sale, security and management personnel surrounded the kiosk, riffling through every shelf and peeking behind every hanger.
The clerk, who said she had not known about the warning, mostly ignored the raid. She stared serenely into her till as mall staff filled a cardboard box with the contraband.
“They’ve all been confiscated,” the mall’s community-relations director, Debbie Screws, said afterward.
She said she did not know who designed the shirts, as did the kiosk vendors.
Screws said the kiosk owner could pick up the confiscated shirts later but probably would have to pay a fine.
That’s a light sentence, given Dallas’ history with shirt scandals.
Four years ago, a kiosk vendor was kicked out of Valley View Center for selling a shirt with a nearly identical image – another body in a trunk, in a slightly different style.
“Welcome to Oak Cliff,” it read.
Language teachers Alini Brito, Cindy Mauro caught by janitor having naked romp in HS classroom
Who’s hot for teacher? Looks like the other teacher.
Two female Romance language instructors were tossed out of their Brooklyn high school after being caught “undressed” in an empty classroom, sources told the Daily News Tuesday.
Students at James Madison High School in Midwood were watching a talent show in the auditorium while Alini Brito and Cindy Mauro were speaking the international language of love, sources said.
A janitor stumbled on French teacher Mauro, 33, and Brito, 29, a married Spanish instructor, and tattled to school officials on Nov. 20.
Both tenured teachers were removed from the classroom and sent to Education Department “rubber rooms” while they’re investigated for misconduct, sources said.
The episode is the talk of the school. Students even set up a Facebook group to discuss the shenanigans – and it already has more than 500 fans.
“Now you guys wished we installed cameras in our classrooms after all hmm?” wrote one student.
Janitor Robert Colantuoni refused to comment Tuesday. “I can’t talk about it, I’m sorry,” he said.
Brito’s husband, reached by phone, said he was unaware of the accusations, but denied them.
“The school district has not informed my wife of these allegations and they are untrue,” he said.
Students said both teachers were popular.
“[Ms. Mauro] was pretty fun,” said junior Eddie Ramirez, 18.
“She dressed like a teenage girl – she’d wear low-cut tops, shorts, three-quarter length jeans. She was kinda sexy.
“You could see that she was the kind of person who would flirt.”
Students said Mauro dyed some of her hair pink over the summer and has an array of sexy tattoos: a sun on her lower back, a flower on her leg, and a star on her foot.
Brito opted for more demure attire.
“She’s pretty,” said one 17-year-old who took French with her.
“Mrs. Brito was good-looking. Oh, yeah!”
A 16-year-old sophomore said Brito was a teacher students would come to with problems.
“She usually dresses elegant, looks smart,” he said. “She’s good-looking. And she was friendly, not flirty, just friendly.”
Students said gossip about the romp was flying through the school, where staff members were trying to keep a lid on it.
“The teachers don’t even want you to bring it up because they say they’ll get in trouble if we’re talking about it in class,” Eddie Ramirez said.
“They just say, ‘Let it go.’”
Teachers and administrators at James Madison would not comment yesterday, but the Education Department confirmed the probe.
“There was an incident in the evening when there was a school performance,” department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said.
“The two teachers have been reassigned pending the outcome of [an Education Department] investigation.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvSiskWiXpY]
(For some reason www.dfw.com does not seem to archive their older posts… This article orginally appeared on their site but it is now gone.)
With sequins and seductive grins, a new generation discovers the pleasures of burlesque.
By Joanna Cattanach
The lights are dimmed. A jazz horn wails. And out walks Ginger Valentine, nibbling at her fingers, a saucy smile and sweep of her lashes tossed to the audience. Elegant in an evening gown, elbow-length white gloves, and a white flower in her hair, she turns her back to the crowd, hot and antsy in their seats.
The smell of sweat and seduction hang over the stage.
Down slips one dress strap, then another. Slowly, she bends over and peels off her gown, revealing sparkly fringe panties and a matching bra that cling to her curves. She shimmies, she shakes, fringe fluttering, and then, voila!
Rhinestone tassel pasties are spinning wildly.
Undone, her fans roar, women laugh at her audacity. They have to earn the panties. They cheer them off, revealing another layer — a barely there thong, and it’s all Ginger Valentine, butt cheeks quivering to the howls of the crowd.
The 29-year-old ballerina turned “very classic burlesque” dancer knows how to move. She makes a living feeling sexy on and off the stage. When she’s not performing, she teaches young women the fine art of seduction at her Burlesque Charm School.
“Bump out, out, out,” the curvy girl in front of the mirror says this day as she demonstrates the tush-push move. “Whatever makes you feel sexy,” the raven-haired beauty encourages her students. “I don’t care as long as you keep your ass moving.”
Valentine is one of a growing number of young women in the Metroplex drawn to the hootchy-kootchy lifestyle. It’s addictive. One show, and you’re usually hooked. There’s something about all the legs, the boobs and booze, the tassels and nakedness — like public foreplay without the finish.
Part art form, part strip tease, American burlesque was popularized by 20th-century mavens like Gypsy Rose Lee and pinups like the late Bettie Page. It’s bawdy live entertainment that often involves elaborate costumes, choreographed music, dancing, singing and even fire-breathing mixed with saucy strip routines that almost-show-you-everything-except-for-these-2-inches-of-cloth-covering, well, you get the picture.
Today’s burlesque performers range from regimented dance groups with hip-hop music, to vaudeville troops with juggling routines, to feather-fluttering jazz performers.
The retro comeback has found a strong female fan base among people like artist Alison Aldridge, 27, of Dallas, who’s equally intrigued with the fashion — fishnet stockings, feather headbands, corsets, ribbons and lace. “Ultrafeminine,” she calls it.
The lean redhead in a black leotard and pants follows Valentine’s instructions to “milk it, milk it,” during a recent Level 1 burlesque class at The Girls Room — a dance studio on lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas that also offers pole-dancing classes. The burlesque class caters to women like Aldridge who want to draw out their sexier side, something her boyfriend is “totally psyched” about, says Alridge as she practices rocking her hips and pouting in the mirror.
With Valentine leading the class, it’s easy for first-timers to lose their inhibitions. She encourages her students to feel their body, to find their own rhythm. “It is important for women to have this,” she says. Not all women posses a natural naughtiness or hip-swaying swagger that makes men weak, says Valentine.
“Everyone is a little shy” at the first class says Valentine, red lipstick still unsmeared after a sweaty session. “But they lose that shyness so fast it shocks me.”
But even Valentine, who can seduce crowds with a roll of her shoulder, a smoldering stare or hands slowly sliding up her thighs, has limits. Her dad is still coming to terms with her new career. “It’s hard for him to have to watch his only little girl take a sexual role,” she says.
The Lollie Bombs
Trixi Toxic, 23, with the Lollie Bombs, doesn’t have that problem. Her parents and brother are her biggest fans. The tattoo-covered, funky girl with short black hair has wild routines that include “whipcreamage.”
At their South Ervay Street studio in Dallas, the Lollies, who range in age from 23 to 38, talked about their sometimes political, dark, seductive themes. It’s burlesque “with a kick.”
While more classic performers like Valentine bring audiences to a slow simmer, the Lollies are much more in your face. They break things, throw things and are more like your crazy girlfriends who make parties fun and ex-boyfriends scared.
“You can tell every one of our personalities onstage,” said Miss Malicious, 29, a short, angry, redhead who’s been with the group two years.
“There’s a real tease in burlesque that you don’t get in a strip club,” Black Mariah said.
But calls of “take it off” and “show us your boobs” are common. The art form is lost on crowds more interested in a cheap peep show than female empowerment. But Black Mariah, 31, a voluptuous woman who’s been with the Lollies for about three years, is used to the raunchy remarks. She uses feather fans and a coquettish smile to lure her audience, even the drunken hornballs.
‘My creative outlet’
Honey Cocoa Bordeauxx with Denton’s Vixens of Vaudeville Revue is new to the burlesque scene, but the 23-year-old senior sociology major and sorority president has already made a name for herself.
“It’s my creative outlet,” she said.
In February, Honey and her outlets wowed a standing-room-only crowd at the 2009 Dallas Burlesque Festival. Knees bent, laid flat on her back, head toward the crowd, she rocked her shoulders and her pasties back and forth to the roars and whistles of onlookers who packed the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.
Her name is a reflection of her lifestyle. “I’m really drawn to things that are really sweet and delicious,” she says during a coffeehouse interview.
Burlesque is about the “power in a woman,” she continues. “The mainstream sees burlesque as the Pussycat Dolls,” say Honey, one of only a few minority women who perform locally. She’s proud of her curves, her waistline, her imperfections and “jiggly fat” and looks to performers like the late Josephine Baker and singer/actress Eartha Kitt for inspiration.
Women shouldn’t need liquid courage and the lights to go out to get their groove on, says Honey. It’s more sexy, more empowering, she says, to be uninhibited in nothing but pasties and a G-string, “that’s how [women] should feel all the time.”
That doesn’t mean you have to transform yourself into someone you’re not, it’s about embracing someone you are — a liberated librarian, a taunting teacher, or a hardworking free-lance writer who’s secretly attending burlesque shows for sex tips, who’s never bought a garter belt but does own a girdle and paid 10 bucks for pasties that are still in the bottom of her panty drawer.
Like most burlesque dancers, Honey works as a solo performer and with a group. “We’re very DIY,” she says, do it yourself. “For us it’s not very lucrative.” Groups and solo performers can make $150 a show — maybe less, maybe more. It depends on the location, the performer.
For most it barely covers the cost of costumes. Like the Lollies, the Vixens have day jobs and make their own costumes and pasties. This June, they’re attending the Miss Exotic World competition in Las Vegas. It’s the Super Bowl of burlesque, says Honey, and it’s a dream of hers to be crowned the Reigning Queen of Burlesque.
Honey says she’s thought about doing other things, but she’s not ready to give up dancing. Her mom, who also acts as the Lollies’ manager, has asked Honey to consider what being topless onstage in sparkly panties and bra might mean for her future.
“Is this going to have an effect on me getting a job? I’m just not a 9-to-5 kind of girl,” she says, “If I could be a burlesque performer for the rest of my life, I would be OK with it.”
“There’s a real tease in burlesque that you don’t get in a strip club.” Black Mariah
The tentative date is October 10th, 2010.