Last night I went to see The Burlesque Hour for Antonia's birthday. It RULED. Oh yeah. Was totally rad. I urge you all to go and see it. Antonia says its entire season has sold out, but I would check up on that if I were you, just in case. I mean, I only booked my ticket last Friday and managed to make it to the opening night, so there might still be hope. Because, really. You want to see this show.

I didn't know much going into it. I was like, yeah, a show, some burlesque, cool. But I started getting clues in the afternoon that it might be a bit special when I was asked what I was doing that night and I said, "I'm gonna see the Burlesque Hour" and people just kind of stopped in shock and went things like "Ooooh" and "Wow" and "Do you know if it's sold out yet?" etc. And I was like, I don't know anything. I just bought a ticket last week because my friend said that we were going to see it on Thursday. Anyway, when I sat down at the Spiegeltent last night and the announcer said that The Town Bikes were appearing as special guests, I got a bit excited. But then when I spotted Charlie Pickering in the audience I started scanning the room a bit for any other recognisable faces to see if maybe it wasn't proper for me to be there. Maybe I had accidentally crashed my way into tonight's Melbourne scenester event. But throughout the show I noticed some nearby dirty old wino-faced men leering at the girls, so I figured I was okay. Which made me disappointed that it wasn't in fact my innate sense of cool that had pulled me inexorably to be there that night. It was just that I had bought a ticket.

Anyway, I just want to emphasise as much as possible how FUCKING GREAT the show is. It is so damn cool. The costumes, the ideas, the performances. Yay, expressive. The switching from masculine to feminine to masculine to feminine, all that playful shit. Amazing. My favourite bits were; the opening "I Touch Myself" one, the bearded lady/ strong man/ sexy coquette one, the one where she wears the black Victorian dress, the buto girl when she danced crazy and then threw her undies into the crowd and they landed on my head, and the fantastic bit with the pearls and the 'turn around' ha ha "Total Eclipse of the Heart". I never realised that song was one you could clench your fists to and scream out the lyrics. Whoever sings that version, I love it. What else? Oooh yeah, the balloons finale. Awesome. I think the best costume was the "To Bring You My Love" one. That ripped up stocking-ness ruled. Of The Town Bikes' performances, the nun-chuk dance was gold, but my favourite was the last one. I loved the way their epaulettes flapped on their shoulders, and also the comedic value of when they'd go nuts grabbing themselves to the rock music. Excellence.

Anyway, I don't want to ruin this with talk. Just go and see it, if you can. You'll love it for sure.