The city of Bellevue, Wash., is trying to force Papagayo's Cantina--which, by the way, is an excellent topless bar if you ever get up that way--to make its stage "wheelchair-accessible.''
In case any handicapped topless dancers decide to buy G-strings.
Let me pause here for a moment so you can ask yourself the question, "Is Joe Bob lying to me?"
God's honest truth. Here's a quote from Wayne Tanaka, representing Bellevue's Cultural Diversity Task Force:
"It's hard for me to picture somebody in a wheelchair doing what those performers are doing. But for all I know, maybe somebody would want to do that. It would surprise me, but we live in amazing times.''
All right. Let's go with this. It's topless dancing, right? Not bottomless. So, yeah, all right, I guess you could do it in a wheelchair.
But it's topless dancing, right? There's that pesky dancing part. But, yeah, OK, we have wheelchair races in the New York Marathon. Maybe somebody could twirl one of those mothers around up there while the DJ played "Stairway to Heaven.''
And I'm not saying the club owners wouldn't do it. Because let's face it, if there's money in it, they'd put in Iron Lung Dancing.
Shoot, they're liable to put a sign out on the street: "Table Dancing, Shower Dancing, Lap Dancing and--new this week--Wheelchair Dancing!"
And you know how topless dancers copy one another. So if these crippled girls started making the big bucks, you'd have every busty blonde in a Spandex miniskirt trading in her 6-inch spiked heels for a set of wheels.
Within two weeks they'd have little pockets on the side of the wheelchair for you to stick dollar bills in as they rolled by.
Within three weeks they'd have nekkid girls in wheelchairs fighting in a mud bog.
Come to think of it, why limit this to topless bars? The last time I checked, there wasn't a single wheelchair-bound member of the New York City Ballet.
As far as I know, there's not a single NBA team that has signed a player in a wheelchair, even though wheelchair basketball has been around for at least 20 years.
And when was the last time you saw a wheelchair in a Janet Jackson video?
It's not enough to pop your top anymore. You've gotta pop a wheelie, too.
I love this country.
And speaking of preserving our heritage, a guy named Michael Randall just made a flick in the style of the great Russ Meyer.
It's a tribute to the 1960s master who invented the outrageous bazoomafest sex flick, the guy who's been having a resurgence this year with the screening of classics like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
To show you what a legend Meyer has become, here's a picture that tries to copy him--and does a pretty dang good job of it, too, right down to the groovy saxophone soundtrack and the go-go girls in hot pants.
Girlquake! is the story of five Amazons from the center of the Earth who erupt into the desert one day and start doing the Pony on a mountaintop.
They end up wasting four guys in the local diner after finding out they're 2,000 miles from their destination--Coney Island-- where they hope to meet up with their queen and devote themselves to her service.
Pretty soon you have five babes in brown loincloths and halter tops bopping up out of the New York City subway and hanging out at a strip club, where they announce: "We've come to see the queen! Ruler of the deepest parts! Our queen!"
And so the bartender sends 'em over to meet Ginger, "the queen of the double-D cups." They scrounge up a few singles to make an "offering," then tell her they'll serve her forever.
"I know my act is good, but it's not that good," she says.
"Where are you girls from?"
They say, "We're from the deepest, blackest hole in the earth."
"Oh yeah?" says the stripper. "I got friends in Jersey."
You get the idea--Amazon bimbos schlepping all over New York looking for the queen, so they can start the war for all womanhood.
They find a Queen Zahara at a Coney Island freak show, a drag queen in a Greenwich Village nightclub, a queen of dominance in an underground leather dungeon, as well as various hookers and gang members who get in their way and inspire that staple of all Russ Meyer flicks--the eye-gouging, hair-pulling catfight.
In other words, the ultimate '60s retro-exploitation flick, complete with corny music, corny photography, corny fight sequences, corny dialogue and a buxom babe in every frame.
I loved it.
Five dead bodies. Two breasts. Head crushed between thighs.
Head smothered by multiple bosoms. Death by hamburger-meat suffocation.
Two catfighting brawls. Fire-eating. Gratuitous go-go dancing in leather bikinis.
Kung Fu. Bimbo Fu. Cat-o'-Nine-Tails Fu.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...
*Lana Bergen, as the blonde bimbo who comes up out of the Times Square subway and says, "So this is Coney Island!"
*Etoile Bijou, as the sideshow psychic who says, "All the queens I know hang out in Greenwich Village."
