Awesome Cabarets Album and Music Offers

Skits and bits from A Prairie Home Companion celebrate the secret society of men and women who possess excellent spelling and punctuation skills.

ENGLISH MAJORS. You know who you are and here is a double-CD celebrating the secret society of those who, though they may be chauffeuring kids to swim lessons or writing Unix programs or frying cheeseburgers, still could, if need be, write a term paper on the water imagery in The Waste Land.

Includes the Six-Minute Hamlet, the Ten-Minute MacBeth,tributes to Hawthorne and Kerouac and Emily Dickinson, a Guy Noir adventure that exposes an M.F.A. scam, the Ballad of John Henry ('John Henry was an English major and poetry was his line. He sat by the window with his yellow legal pad and he wrote one sentence at a time.'), and more.

With guest appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Billy Collins, Roy Blount Jr., Robert Bly, Donald Hall, and Calvin Trillin.

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Price: $15.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

On one side, Dita Von Teese shares the beauty of the burlesque world, with bubblegum dreams and show tunes to strip to. Flip over for fantasies in fetish with dramatic costumes and the allure of submission

Burlesque and the Art of the Teese

"I advocate glamour. Every day. Every minute."

I'm a good dancer and a nice girl, but I'm a great showgirl. I sell, in a word, magic. Burlesque is a world of illusion and dreams and of course, the striptease. Whether I am bathing in my martini glass, riding my sparkling carousel horse, or emerging from my giant gold powder compact, I live out my most glamorous fantasies by bringing nostalgic imagery to life.

Let me show you my world of gorgeous pin-ups, tantalizing stripteases, and femmes fatales. I'll give you a glimpse into my life, but a lady never reveals all.

Fetish and the Art of the Teese

You may have come for the fetish. Or you may just be sneaking a peek at this mysterious and peculiar other side. No matter what you've come for, there is something for you to indulge in.

My world of fetish may not be the one that you would expect. As a burlesque performer, I entice my audience, bringing their minds closer and closer to sex and then -- as good temptress must -- snatching it away. As a fetish star, I apply the same techniques. . . .

An opera-length kid leather glove, a strict wasp waist, an impossibly high patent leather heel, a severely painted red lip. . . . Come with me into my world of decadent fetishism..
Price: $24.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Decreed by David Letterman (tongue in cheek) on CBS TV’s The Late Show to be the pick of “Dave’s Book Club 2006,” Candy Girl is the story of a young writer who dared to bare it all as a stripper At the age of twenty-four, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. She soon managed to find inspiration from a most unlikely source— amateur night at the seedy Skyway Lounge. While she doesn’t take home the prize that night, Diablo discovers to her surprise the act of stripping is an absolute thrill.

This is Diablo’s captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen’s clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer’s keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband..
Price: $2.03 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town…." Each week, more than four million radio listeners hear these words, and settle in for some old-fashioned, up-to-the-minute storytelling

During live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor takes us to "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve," where "the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." These expertly crafted tales touch the heart and tickle the funnybone. Warm, poignant, often hilarious, each is a classic of live storytelling, full of gentle humor, genuine emotion, and (more often than not) surprising insights into family, community, love, faith, and hope..
Price: $13.92 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Marx Brother who never spoke--Harpo Marx--expounds upon his life and times in Hollywood and on the vaudeville stage in this funny, affectionate, and poignant autobiography as told to journalist Rowland Barber..
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Murder Was Never So Much Fun!

When Disco Bloodbath was first published, it created a storm of controversy for its startlingly vivid, strikingly fresh, and outrageously funny depiction of the hedonistic world of the New York City club kids, for whom nothing was too outré -- including murder. Nominated for the Edgar Award for best true-crime book of the year, it also marked the debut of an audaciously talented writer, James St. James, who himself had been a club kid and close friend and confidant of Michael Alig, the young man convicted of killing the drug dealer known as Angel.

Now the book has been brought to the screen as Party Monster, with Macaulay Culkin playing killer Michael Alig and Seth Green as author/celebutante James St. James..
Price: $4.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Emmy and Grammy Award-winner's candid, spectacularly amusing memoir of his years in stand-up

In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up In 1981 he quit forever Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away."

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times: the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies..
Price: $9.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Countering the misperceptions about Broadway performers leading glamorous lives, the words of more than 150 Broadway stars provide unprecedented insight into their struggle for stardom. With an introduction by Jason Alexander and candid interviews with today's most celebrated Broadway stars, this book offers stories to entertain and astonish theater lovers, as well as serve as a sobering reality check for those considering careers on the stage. This book shares firsthand accounts of professional actors' difficult yet fulfilling journeys to Broadway: moving to New York, finding survival jobs, auditioning, landing roles, avoiding pitfalls, forging a family life, and much more..
Price: $7.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For the first time, stunning images of the women of the burlesque stage are gathered together in one great volume. In period photographs the timeless beauty of those exotic women who titillated, teased, and sometimes tortured their audiences is captured and celebrated. These memorable images make it clear that, when it comes to a beautiful body and a gorgeous face, tastes change very little. And just as in the past, the imagination is encouraged to run wild and ponder what might have been. This is a book to relax with and enjoy over and over again. Its rich, nostalgic view of a bygone era in American entertainment will please everyone, men and women alike. A "revealing" piece of Americana!.
Price: $13.57 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Liz Goldwyn's lifelong fascination with the inimitable glamour of classic burlesque inspired her to spend the past eight years corresponding with, visiting, interviewing, receiving striptease lessons from, and forming close relationships with the last generation of the great American burlesque queeens. Goldwyn invites us to step back into an era when the hourglass figure was in vogue and striptease was a true art form.

Meet Betty "Ball of Fire" Rowland, who was known for her flaming red hair and bump–and–grind routines. (It turns out she once sued the author's grandfather, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., for using her stage name and costume in his Hollywood picture, Ball of Fire.)

Meet Sherry Britton, who, with her long black hair and curvy, trim physique, was among the most stunning of the burlesque stars before Mayor LaGuardia outlawed burlesque in New York.

Meet Zorita, whose sexually explicit "Consummation of the Wedding of the Snake" dance (performed with a live snake) and other daring performances earned her legendary status.

Goldwyn draws back the curtain to reveal the personal journeys of yesteryear's icons of female sexuality and power, restoring their legacy to an age that has all but forgotten them–despite today's resurgence of burlesque.

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Price: $24.64 [Notify me when price goes down.]