AS SEEN ON ERNEST DOBBIN'S BUMPER >>>

"Studly seeks righteous babe 566-4137."

If this personal ad is a little low on details, that's because it's written - in black marker - on the bumper of Ernest Dobbins's old white Thunderbird.

Dobbins, of Olympia, resorted to the bumper method because newspaper personal ads are getting too pricey.

What about Craigslist? "I don't have a computer. I don't know how to run one," he says. "I'm old-fashioned and outdated and I'll die that way."

The woman he's looking for, he says, isn't "some fly-by-night woman."

"I don't mean religious," he says. "I mean righteous. If it's the right thing to do, you do it."

The ad has been on his bumper for a couple of months - rain won't wash it off, he says - and he's gotten a few calls, but no dates.

His hope, though, rolls on: Halfway through the interview, he asks: "So what about you? What's your shape and size?"

Once he understands I'm not looking for a date, Dobbins, 60, invites me to publish his phone number.

Asked what a righteous date might want to know about him, he says: "I don't go out drinking or anything like that. I do go to buffets."

ONLINE CHATTER >>>

While there were several shoutouts for our interview with Macklemore, today's comment of the day comes from Bill Schlanbusch in regard to our Spew post fishing for categories for our Most Sexy Issue in June.

Schlanbusch, the 10 foot two lead singer of The Plastards - and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet - writes:

How about Sexiest Barfly? Just sayin'.

We'll have to give that some serious thought Bill since that describes 90 percent of our editorial staff.

FORMER EVERGREEN PROF'S BURLESQUE DOCUMENTARY >>>

Two years ago Red Vaughan Tremmel taught a course called "Gender and Sexuality: History, Culture, and Politics" at The Evergreen State College - typical Evergreen stuff. Now he's teaching at Tulane University and he's a fellow of Columbia College's Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media Fellowship Program. He's a very busy man. Plus, he's a filmmaker working on an exciting project. Vaughan is in the midst of creating a documentary film on the history of burlesque centered around the world's first and only museum dedicated to the art of the striptease.

The film is called Exotic World & the Burlesque Revival. Lots of footage has already been shot, and there is information, including sample footage, online.

"We just finished doing the voice-over with Margaret Cho and hope to have (the film) completed by this June," he tells me via e-mail.

Burlesque performer Jennie Lee, known as "The Bazoom Girl," and her husband began preparing to build the museum in the Mojave Desert by collecting photos, props, stories and other materials from retired strippers beginning in the late 1950s, but it didn't really come together until the 1980s when she teamed up with another exotic dancer, Dixie Evans, known as "The Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque." The museum was located in an old goat farm in the desert. It was named Exotic World.

Jennie invited strippers to come to the museum and share their experiences. An annual retreat became something of a Mecca for exotic dancers.

Jennie died in 1990, but her husband and Evans kept the museum alive. The annual reunion of strippers that Jennie had started continued and gained fame. Young performers and older retired strippers began to flock to the annual reunions turning the unique museum at the old goat ranch off Route 66 into a national phenomenon. It sparked an international revival of the art of burlesque.

In Exotic World & the Burlesque Revival Red Tremmel has documented the history of burlesque and the revival of the art as seen through the museum.

Exotic World has now been renamed The Burlesque Hall of Fame.

THURSDAY, DEC. 23, 2010 >>

1. Tacoma's new burlesque troupe Gritty City Sirens will make its debut performance at at 9 p.m. inside The Swiss Dec. 23. Ava D'Jor, Tizzy Van Tassel, Rosie Cheexx, Funny Face Fanny and Polly Puckerup will offer "a night of glitz, glamor, humor and plenty of T&A!" says Van Tassel. Read our special burlesque report here.

2. John Fisher's prints are terrific. The colors and shapes are electric. They are photographs, but he calls them and the show Algorithmic Drawings. The photos are of industrial scenes with streaks and bursts of light created by long exposures of moving lights and perhaps other techniques. The photos were all taken in Seattle and Tacoma. Alec Clayton reviewed the show here. Check it out from noon to 5 p.m. at Mineral gallery in Tacoma.

3. You're sick and tired of driving through the neighborhood looking at the homes of people who think they deserve an award for their light displays. You deserve to take a night to go see ZooLights, which is lit from 5-9 p.m. tonight. Billed as the region's biggest walk-through light show, ZooLights at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium includes animated light sculptures, live entertainment, snacks, animal encounters, and the Paul Titus Carousel. While enjoying your stroll, be thankful you're not in charge of this holiday light display.

4. Dream of line dancing the Chasse, the Grapevine or the Weave? Or, do you have high hopes of being swept off the dance floor by that special someone? Big Whisky Saloon offers beginner and intermediate dance lessons every Thursday Night starting at 7:30 p.m. $5 gets you a drink and a lesson. Who knows, you might be paired with a cutie-pie.

5. The holidays are traditionally a time for giving back, and in that spirit, Hell's Kitchen is hosting their annual "Customer Appreciation Night." Beleaguered, cash-strapped attendees will be pleased to hear that admission tonight will be free, food will be free and drinks will be sold at preposterously low prices - $3 for well drinks and beers. (Ho, ho, ho.) Live music will include I Defy, Neutralboy, South 11th, Psycho 78 and Klondike Kate beginning at 8 p.m.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Happy hour!

AND OTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF WILLIAM N. COPLEY'S WORK >>>

While reading an article in the New York Times online a little sidebar caught my eye. It was a cartoon-like painting of a woman's face with a saucy expression. She was wearing a snazzy, red and green tartan cap. The caption was "Renegade Painters." Naturally, I couldn't resist clicking on the link. It took me to a slide show featuring art from two different exhibitions: William N. Copley's X-Rated paintings from 1973-74 at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea, and a 50-year survey of Peter Saul at Haunch of Venison in midtown Manhattan.

I've been a Peter Saul fan for a long time. I'd have a hard time justifying my enjoyment of his paintings by any established aesthetic criteria. I just like them. They're strange, funny and very colorful. Copley, on the other hand, evokes contradictory responses.

I've never heard of William N. Copley. That's the trouble with being an art lover far from any major art center. You miss out on too much. But that's a lousy excuse. I was living in New York in the late ‘70s and somehow missed out on him. His paintings are fascinating in many ways, especially when comparing those in the Times slide show with the ones pictured on the Kasmin Gallery Website. I loved some of the ones in the Times slide show but was not at all impressed with the Kasmin pictures. Ironically, the difference is due to the fact that the Times censored his paintings. It's a family newspaper. They can't show things like graphic sex and big bushy vaginas. And as much as I dislike censorship, it actually improved the paintings in this case. The painting of the woman with the tartan cap was actually a cropped section of a much larger painting of a harlot splayed open-legged on a couch and wearing nothing but the cap and matching socks. The pose was a knockoff of an odalisque by Matisse. But the Times used an installation shot taken in the gallery when a man happened to be standing in front of the painting blocking her breasts and crotch. Frankly, if the guy hadn't been standing there I would have probably been so mesmerized by the sex parts that I wouldn't have noticed her expression and the lively contrasts of patterns in her hat and socks, and the plaid couch and pillow and wallpaper.

Times critic Roberta Smith wrote glowingly of "the rigorous balancing of the erotic and the decorative." Another painting that used this balance to great effect was Rain, another naked woman, this one sitting on a caned chair with marvelous contrasting patterns of hair, fishnet stockings, chair caning and red and blue striped wallpaper. It reminded me a lot of recent Phillip Pearlstein paintings, only more comical and sexual.

The paintings shown on the Kasmin website are not censored, and at the risk of sounding prudish, they are pretty gross and crude. They're like some 12-year-old boy's idea of dirty pictures. They make sex anything but attractive, and the images all depict a decidedly male point of view.

Come to think of it, I liked only two of the Copley paintings, and I think Pearlstein is better than either of these guys.

"LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS" OPENS WEDNESDAY >>>

Because we know how much he loves romantic comedies, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and anything involving erections lasting longer than four hours, we recently sent our in-house film critic, the Rev. Adam McKinney, out to a screening of Love and Other Drugs - which opens Wednesday at theaters in the area.

While you'll have to wait until this week's Volcano hits the street to read McKinney's full review, until then here's the movie's cheesy trailer to get your rom-com blood pumping.

BRING ON THE WEEKEND >>>

Honestly, it would probably be best to let this week slide - to mysteriously (and probably unnoticed) duck out of my regular Prefunk obligations. The South Sound has already been forced to endure nearly 10,000 words from me this week (most with the expert help of Paul Schrag), and coming of that high of quasi-journalistic indulgence, a quick 500 words on ways you can get fucked up this weekend seems a little uncalled for.

But, shit.  We're almost halfway now there.  Might as well get rolling with another fine installment of The Prefunk, a weekend primer for you and your liver (with a picture of an alcoholic household pet thrown in for good measure).

110th U.S. Amateur Championship

Continues through Saturday and Sunday at Chamber's Bay Golf Course (Ladenburg Links)

So, Tiger Woods got a divorce and - by god! - golf is exciting again.  I don't follow golf religiously (as I think guys that do that are a little out there), but last I heard Tiger was tied for first place at Barclays, hitting the ball "flush" for the first time since, well, lots of broads were hitting his balls flush. (Oh snap!)

Now, don't get me wrong.  Tiger Woods will not be at finale of this week's 110th U.S. Amateur Championship, which has been going on all week at Chambers Bay Golf Course.  He wont be anywhere near it, in fact. Tiger woods hasn't been an amateur since...  Damn!  These jokes work a lot better when the precluding sentence includes the words "balls" and "flush."

Anyway, there will be plenty of uber-talented golfers at Chambers Bay for the culmination of what's been an impressive week of play - even if none of them are named Tiger Woods.  Much like catching the next big band in some small club before they break, you could find yourself watching the NEXT Tiger Woods tee off - young, innocent, not gross, golf yet to have scored them even one BJ. It's golf the way it was intended: pure, unadulterated, and largely unexciting. 

PREFUNK: Did someone say Perkins waitress!?!

Sadly, however, the closest Perkins restaurant is in Ellensburg.

In a pinch, though, I hear a Sharis waitress will do - and there's a Sharis at 3902 Bridgeport Way, W.

What!?! What!?! Just sayin'.

See you next week.

PLAN AHEAD: DON'T LOOK AND ACCESS DENIED ART SHOWS WILL BE WORTH A PEEK>>>

"Is ... Is that a peephole?" you whisper under your breath, halting your walking tour of Tacoma. You look left, then right. It definitely looks like a peephole.

Supporting your body weight with your hand you peer through the hole, drilled into a building along Puyallup Avenue. Your eyes adjust. You believe you're gazing at ... yes, it's some sort of boudoir. Yes, most certainly - with carefully posed shadows and selectively chosen props occupying a brightly illuminated but shallow space surrounded by mood lighting. The tightly staged vignette in a single scene suggesting a certain narrative and thematic possibility, but resists being reduced to one storyline.

You pull away from the peephole. Then lean back into it. You repeat several times. "This is bizarre," you think to yourself.

A bit dizzy, you carefully continue down the sidewalk only to stop again a few feet later when your eye catches a space full of... what? Seriously? chastity belts!?! This is getting ridiculous.

"Good lord," you say to no one in particular. "What is going down in my city?"

And then you remember reading this post. Ah, yes. The Madera Architectural Elements artists are behind the boudoir vignettes, combing their artisan interior and exterior building skills into single scenes as part of the Don't Look group show. And the chastity belts are actually another round of the Denied art shows at Mineral gallery, with new artists - the original of which drew rave reviews last summer as Entrance Denied at the same gallery.

You turn the corner onto Pacific Avenue and head north, processing what you've seen. You've peeped into ladies dressing rooms. You've ogled ladies underwear. On an unrelated note, you also saw a young couple making out at the Sound Transit stop across the srteet.

Then you come to a halt - having reached some sort of epiphanic conclusion over what you have witnessed. And an opportunity has presented itself. You slowly spell out your thoughts for all to see in Tollefson Plaza.

Don't Look

Saturday, Aug. 14-Sept. 14 anytime from the sidewalk
Preview events: Saturday, Aug. 14, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday Aug. 19,  5-8 p.m.
Gallery 301, 301 Puyallup Ave., Tacoma
253.396.0774

Access Denied

Saturday, Aug. 14-Sept. 14 noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday
Preview events: Saturday, Aug. 14, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday Aug. 19, 5-8 p.m.
Mineral, 301 Puyallup Ave., Tacoma
253.396.0774

VOTE NOW >>>

Once again, the Volcano's readers' poll will be the engine that drives Best of Tacoma 2010. Think you know the best band, restaurant, politician, blog or thrift store? Want to help spread the word about the best bike shop, make-out spot or bar in our area? Cast your vote here. The results of our ultra-scientific survey will be published in the Weekly Volcano Best of Tacoma issue July 29, 2010.

And yes, we did say "our area" - as in Pierce County, not just T-Town. In a shocking turn of events, we've opened up the voting to all of Pierce County this year. You'll get the same Grit-City-style coverage you've come to expect from the Volcano Best of Tacoma, but our Best Of readers' poll net will be cast even further. It should make for some interesting competitions.  If you say the best restaurant is in Gig Harbor, so be it. If the best villain is in Lakewood, then vote it so.

THE PRIZE!

All ballots must be received by Wednesday, June 30 at 5 p.m. Those that arrive before the deadline will be eligible to win a $200 gift certificate to El Gaucho restaurant and a night at the Hotel Murano. The winning ballot will be chose at random. We'll announce the winner of our random drawing, as well as the winners of this survey at the Best of Tacoma Premiere Party Wednesday, July 28 at Masa restaurant on Sixth Avenue.

Person in Tacoma you most want to make-out with? Cast your vote here.

The Best of Tacoma 2010 is sponsored by Click Cable TV.

WHAT WE HAVE FOUND TODAY >>>

New study says that eating celery makes men more attractive to women.

The Supreme Court ruled that teenagers can't be locked up in prison for life with no chance of parole if they have not killed anyone

Finally some success in stopping the Gulf Coast oil slick.

Fox News believes that Robin Hood was the first Tea Party activist.

What the eff is butt-chugging?

Ronnie James Dio died yesterday.