What's Goin' On...

For what happened at Naked Girl's Reading Toronto Launch:

http://nakedgirlsreadingblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/tanyas-post/

Watch here for new article at 21st Century Pinups: http://www.pinup.me.uk/the-grand-burlesque-show-6310-poutine-and-champagne/ See ya soon!

Monkey Sea, Monkey Hairdo

Where was my beautiful family of Sea Monkeys? Those slim pink androgynous bodies for both males and females. The only distinguishing feature being a blonde Marlo Thomas flip on the females. I patiently awaited my new family's arrival after ordering them from the back of my Betty & Veronica digest. These amazing live Sea Monkeys boasted that , yes, they could even be trained! Something I had not succeeded in doing with my dysfunctional five piece Haligonian family. By gosh, I could even transport my pets into a watch or necklace and wear the little darlings for the day! All for an extra $6.99, plus shipping and handling! I wringed my Tinkerbell polished and splattered hands in fiendish anticipation.

I had some kind of fetish when I was little to hold a miniature family captive in their dollhouse or a jar. I would punish the mother and the father in a trapdoor dungeon and bestow the children with gifts, great hairdos and adoration. It started with Fisher Price little people and continued over to Barbies. I'm sure a shrink would've had a field day with this cruel mini word! I had no such desire to torture the Sea Monkey Family, look at their smiles- they were perfect and oh so happy!

The package arrived unceremoniously in the mail and I realized that I had to wait a full 24 hours to purify the water before I emptied the Sea Monkey egg packet into the bubbled plastic container. A sleepless night followed with me tossing around to a Sea Monkey castle fantasy. Next morning eggs into the water. The little critters were supposed to hatch instantly and swim around. All I could see in the containers magnified bubbles was what look liked cloudy water. My mom told me to wait a couple days and to feed them, see what happens. A couple of days later I could see something swimming around but did they look like the beautiful family promised in the comics ad? No, they were transparent, squiggly and boring! Not a Marlo Thomas flip among them, hell not even a Cindy Brady Braid! I didn't know what these things were but they looked suspiciously like fish food! Disillusioned once again I went back to stuffing my cats into doll clothes.

A couple days later the unattractive artemia sat listless on the bookshelf. My dad cam home from wherever, and picked the plastic aquarium up and declared them a rip off and nothing more than brine shrimp and proceeded to drink my underwater family in one east coast gulp! I was horrified but forgot about it next day as I tied my legs together with jump rope. It was Mermaid time!

Many years and pets later, still enchanted with the vision of the Sea Monkey visage in the comic book, I set about with my friend Christabel 3000 and made the Sea Monkey Queen costume. Many yards of nude fabric, a 6ft tail, a Sea Monkey vagina all covered in hundreds of dollars in Swarovski crystal, a perfect blonde Marlo Thomas flip. I swallowed the childhood weirdness and spit it out whole in the form of a burlesque routine. What others spend on therapy, I spend on rhinestones. Does it help? Do you know any mini families that want to be held captive? Looking for victims.