August 24, 2006
Postcards From The Strip:...and I do mean "Strip!
It's appropriate that I would see "American Storm," my first ever strip show, with my college buddy and fellow first-timer Anne, because eight years ago we narrowly escaped the strippers at our friend Patty's bachelorette party. (It involved a dive called The Hangar Club off the highway in southern Maryland, and, no doubt, some guys with Patrick Swayze mullets named Lex with leopard-skin Speedos. Can't be sure. Didn't go. But I'm convinced that's what we missed.)
Still, we willingly submitted to the allure of "American Storm," whose dancers are the winners of VH1's "Strip Search" show. It takes place nightly in the Riviera's Le Bistro club, after the more family friendly fare of Jay White's Neil Diamond show. The crowd is mostly screaming ladies and the couple of husbands that got dragged in. The dancers are a multi-ethnic, non-mulletty crew of good-looking, non-threatening chaps, who involve the audience in a series of cheerily cheesy solo numbers. Oh, look, it's a soldier number! And now it's a naughty businessman and his...briefs! Aack! Yet...can...not...look...away...
The guys were constantly looking for audience participation (ahem) so Anne and I spent a lot of time avoiding eye contact and rolling our chairs out of the way, because while we didn't mind seeing the show, we had no interest in being the show. I'm a professional, you know. A professional what, I'm still trying to figure out.
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