The Broadway singers were singing, the costumed dancers were dancing, I was mixing, and the whole shtick was extremely campy and very much like the big musical numbers with Carmen Miranda from a 1940s Busby Berkeley cinema extravaganza.
The person running the event told me that there would be some cues to follow and led me to a costumed woman who she said introduced as the choreographer. She gave me a list of musical cues, and I asked her if she did much choreography for Broadway shows.
"I don't," she replied, "I would like to do more, but mostly I do burlesque."
I was a bit taken aback, considering how burlesque seems like such an antiquated art form, and asked if there were many burlesque houses that still existed in New York City. She replied that there are indeed quite a few burlesque houses in the city since burlesque has made such a huge comeback. Still curious, and aware of my lack of trend-setting knowledge, I rummaged through the attic I call my brain for a piece of stored information regarding current burlesque houses in Manhattan and came up with nothing. I blurted out the name of a popular East Village club and inquired if one would consider it a burlesque house. She looked at me as if I were from Mars and replied, "I shit on the stage there."
Speechless
For those of you who know me and talk about me when I am not in the room, I would venture to say that "Speechless" is definitely not a description that gets used in conjunction with the name Baker Lee. Yet, regardless of all the other colorful adjectives I may attract, there I was, speechless. My lack of response was not as much shock as it was my furious attempt to figure out which one of the many thoughts crowding my mind I should express verbally. There were literally so many questions that popped up at the same time that my brain experienced a logjam, which prevented any of my thoughts to exit through my mouth.
For example: 1. Are you booked specifically to shit on stage? 2. Do you get paid to perform this act? 3. Do you have a rider? 4. Is it a hospitality rider or just a technical rider? 5. Do you get your own dressing room, or do you share one? 6. Do you clean up the stage afterwards, or is that the responsibility of the club? 7. Do you have a clean-up tech? 8. Do you perform this act in supper clubs or just bars? 9. Do you have a large following? 10. Why? 11. Do you get called for encores? 12. Do the shows differ, and is one ever better than the other? 13. Do you need to practice, or is this a natural talent? 14. Do you dance and sing first and then take a shit, or do you just walk out on stage and do your act? 15. Do you get reviewed in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section? 16. If there were a review, would they review in the same way they review a symphony? "The piece was masterful, especially the second movement, which was robust and colorful, yet delivered with a tender urgency."
At the same time that all these questions were running through my head, I was also thinking, "Jeez, I've been married for 23 years and miles away from the dating scene – maybe she has just handed me a come-on line with a very specific response that's required such as, "That's nice, I piss on poodles." While I truly wanted to have a hip response, I was also ready to tell her that when my dog poops on the floor I hit him with a rolled up newspaper, but bearing in mind my lack of knowledge regarding current dating etiquette, I opted to very coolly ask, "So that's burlesque?" "No!" She replied curtly as she turned and walked away, "That's performance art!"
Mixed Messages
Call me old fashioned, but art, to me, in any given medium, is a discipline that one masters and performs to express inner emotion and ideas. Taking a dump on stage may be a performance of expression, and even if I miss the point, who cares? She's allowed to express herself in any shitty way she desires considering that she is merely exercising her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution. I speak, of course, of The First Amendment, which was adopted on December 15, 1791. The Amendment states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Not much in there about crapping on stage in front of an audience, but if you read between the lines, you'll find it wedged in there alongside the many other things that might be considered of questionable taste – though accepted under constitutional law. The irony is that the wise men who wrote The First Amendment were of a higher-mind set and were writing in reference to religious and political freedom of thought and speech. A free press was sanctioned as a way in which to keep the government honest, not as a means to show nude pictures of young starlets. Paradoxically, these same men who structured the First Amendment probably would have tarred and feathered most of the people who now enjoy its protection, but there is no accounting for taste, and when they wrote the Bill of Rights, I'm guessing that it never even crossed their minds that one would want to defecate on stage and call it an art form – or pay for admission to watch it.
Rights and Wrongs
Unfortunately, along with a great deal of the entertainment that is presented to us, so much of the protest and dialogue in today's modern world is seemingly more like performance art rather than an artistic performance. Take, for example, a case currently going to the Supreme Court which has as its lead antagonist a Fred Phelps, the founder of Westboro Baptist church in Topeka, KS, who sends his people to protest at private military funerals. Albert Snyder, of York Pennsylvania brought suit because in 2006 the Phelps crew showed up at Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder's funeral with signs bearing such slogans as, "You're going to hell," "God hates fags," "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "Thank God for 911."
Matt Snyder was killed in the line of duty while honorably serving in Iraq and was not gay, yet Phelps chooses to picket at a military funerals to protest the Army for allowing gay soldiers to serve. Phelps' interpretation of the Bible is that God hates not only gays, but Catholics (for sanctioning pedophiles), Jews (for killing Christ) and America (because all the aforementioned degenerates live there). Snyder sued Phelps and unleashed a battle over First Amendment rights. Yet they both have equal rights and, though tactless, Phelps' right to freedom of speech will go up against Snyder's rights to freedom of religion and peaceful assembly. It's a case that should make quite a few lawyers extremely wealthy and will most likely be resolved with some point other than freedom of speech. My personal opinion is that Phelps took a shit on Snyder's stage and will end up with a high-paying reality T.V. show espousing, as Phelps, "God's Hate." It's not fair, but the First Amendment did not account for bad taste.
A Newly-Minted Name
Anyway, as always, I have a solution to this whole equal rights debate that may make it easier to grasp in the real world. The first thing we should do is stop calling U.S. currency "Dollars" and change the name to what they really are – "Equal Rights." Since the inception of our country, our high ideals have always been in conflict with our lust for cash, and as far as I can tell, cash is winning out over high ideals. So at least if we call a spade a spade, we will all have a better understanding of how we all fit in this great big jigsaw puzzle we call America. Therefore, by renaming the currency in which we trade from "Dollars" to "Equal Rights," it will make it easier to decide some of the trickier questions posed to us by our constitution. For example, if I have ten thousand equal rights and you have a million equal rights, then it's pretty obvious who has more equal rights. Maybe the government won't be so quick to give away billions of the taxpayers' equal rights to big business. Maybe when big business pays back those equal rights, with interest, the taxpayers will then enjoy the fruits of their loan.
It would be nice if people invested in equal rights, but I'm sure there would still be those predator investors who would take more than their fair share of equal rights and sell them as derivatives. Although it might just come to pass that consumers won't be as eager to spend so many of their equal rights on frivolous items, or to borrow so many equal rights which they just might lose if they can't make the payments. Maybe criminals like Bernie Madoff would think twice of stealing so many people's equal rights. Possibly more people will take pride in earning their equal rights. Maybe people will be more generous in giving their equal rights as charitable donations to those who aren't blessed with the same amount of equal rights. Hey, it might just be that one would not be allowed to shit on someone else's stage or funeral unless they have more equal rights than that person. Then again, maybe one wouldn't do that to someone with fewer equal rights because it might be considered in bad taste to do so.
