Recently Channel 4 broadcast a 3 episode documentary entitled, Strippers. It filmed inside a few strip clubs in the 3 main cities in Scotland. I watched it for educational purposes, just the same as when I watched a video in Biology class where a scientist blew through a hose into a set of cow lungs, inflating them on the wooden bench, because - just as I had never seen a man blow into a set of cow lungs - I have never ever been to strip club.
It's not as if I have not had the chance. In fact I had an excellent chance when Dylan's Bar no more than 600 yards from my wooden door introduced their "lap dance luncheons" weekdays 12:15 to 2pm.
Despite my imagination being in pretty good condition, not even it could imagine this as involving high-class, born and bred on fruit, oats and Vitamin D infused exotic dancers with teeth whiter than fresh alpine snow in July. Not even my imagination can disconnect the obvious fact Dylan's Bar was offering less Lap Dance Fantasy Palace with Pimms Jelly with cucumber sorbet on the menu and more Titty-bar with deep fried scampi and oven chips. This is mainly because Dylan's Bar has no windows - or least it did, once, but they were bricked up, and painted black. Like the rest of the outside of Dylan's Bar. And, from what I will bet, the inside. This and the advertisement of "lap dance luncheons" was daubed on one of the bricked up windows in fluorescent pink marker. And it said: "Topless women and £2.50 toasties - 12:15 to 2pm, weekdays" with a poster stock image of a gold lined silhouetted girl sliding down a pole stuck next to it.
My only point of reference for lap dance bars, go-go bars or strip joints has been CSI.
It is a law of physics that every 3rd episode of CSI has a scene in lap dance club. These cool neon lit venues where the lingerie fitted women spin around poles raised on plinths in slow motion, shot behind giant fish tanks like adult lava lamps, as the owner claims to never have seen "Armando" and knows nothing about why he had the club's business card taped to his penis, has been my sole idea of these places.
So, to have a programme which not only will show real life strip bars, but show them close to where I live, made it an easy choice to get a more accurate and candid take on them.
The show did touch on the darker side of the industry: the occasions where the girls have to dance for undesirable men and abuse they have to endure as well as the issues in maintaining romances - but only briefly. The show didn't discuss the alleged added "extras" which I have somehow heard are supposedly on offer behind closed doors at all. But the show, otherwise provided a very straight laced view of these places, the customers and dancers.
And so this is all what I learnt.
The first thing I learned was there is no putting a paper green-back in a girl's thong as she crawls past on a wet stage. There is very little open pole dancing. There is nothing much of a free sample. The whole process appeared very business like, with money paid upfront for a transaction of service between customer and trader.
The girls are their own business, with the venue taking a cut of their earnings to allow them to trade. This means the girls are not simply passively providing some titillating ambiance to the venue - they are actively touting. They approach men and talk at the tables or in the corner or up at the bars hoping to persuade them to part with £10 for 3 minutes for a personal dance.
The girls' earnings vary hugely. Sometimes when the bar is quiet or the girl chooses to be not too active, the takings are few (£20 a night) whereas other girls appear to be laser attuned in removing £10s from wallets, with one enthusiastic dancer talking about earning £400 a night.
I learned the girls are generally non-careerist dancers. Often the job is a means to put themselves through education, or a stop-gap between jobs or even countries. However, lap dancing is not always conducive to meet ambitions. The attraction of going out clubbing for a living can be too much of a draw to give up and ambitions are always in danger of being discarded quicker than a bra in a corner of a club.
I learned the customers are quite frank about what they want when entering a strip club: soulless interaction. It is perhaps difficult to think of any other reason why someone would, but there were a few who were not just all about getting a girl to writhe at a significant amount of nakedness on them for a few minutes. Some men claimed they went to a particular bar because it was just their pub.
Do you pay for a dance? "Oh, no. I would never degrade the girls like that. I like them too much. I like to look at them in the bar but that's it."
Which, in the scheme of my learning seems, well, wrong. These girls are there just to make money. That's why they are standing in their underwear, in a predominantly male populated bar talking to men they've never met, willing to dance for money.
Going just to look almost seems immoral. A bit like wandering into DFS Furniture every night and sitting on one of their sale chairs because you like waiting on the bus in comfort instead of sitting on the bar at the bus stop outside. Sort of.
I learned also the major lesson from the programme: the science of a dance cycle. There were several examples shown of the dance cycle so there was a chance to take an average, and therefore most normal, result. Like when the scientist blew into the cow lungs for a second time. Just to be... sure? Anyway...
The girl will approach a group of men and ask if any of them are interested in a dance by her. The customer will down the last quarter of his drink, tell his friends he's "going in for a dance" and, handing over a brown-back note to her, follows the girl to a semi-walled private cubicle where she explains he must not move his palms from the red plastic seat fabric: otherwise a bouncer who is kind of watching at the side will throw him out. The girl shimmys, removes the important clothes involved and jiggles well inside the comfort zone, brushing his jeans and sweater. The customer will look awkward - the look of a man who bragged about wanting to drive a sports car but now behind the wheel fears he will crash into the first available tree. Then the time's up the dance stops mid hip revolution and the customer nods a thanks and goes back to his friends, leaving as the girl quickly re-attaches her attire to start again.
This "normalisation" troubles me. Leaving your friends at the bar talking about the big match for a 3 minute cigarette break is one thing, breaking from the conversation because you've paid to be sexually aroused for 3 minutes is another. I am not sure I could do it and look at my friends quite in the same way again.
So! After all this then, with my new found broader horizon - what has been my ultimate lesson learned from this 3 episode series, Strippers? Well it is this:
If I was to go to Dylan's Bar now I would go utterly alone, lying about my whereabouts to friends and family, order two cheese and tomato toasties and pay for a dance from every single stripper there. That's not seedy, it's morally and ethically sound. Like nudie upper-thighed fair trade coffee.
Saturday 29 March 2014
Tuesday 25 March 2014
Space TV
There was a tension around the large, executive table. All of us round it were waiting on item 5 on the meeting agenda. We skittered over the other stuff as quickly as we could without giving the game away. It was item 5 where we wanted to take our time. Item 5: Budget Cuts.
Item 5. Our attention, if not all our eyes, rested on the end, or head, of the table.
"Now we come to item 5." Our manager spoke calmly, trying not to startle us. "Times are hard for the company. There is no doubt we will need to continue to keep costs from rising again this year. There is no point in delaying any further in telling you I have also been asked by the curators to make proposals to cut the budget of the department further."
All breath became a prisoner to us.
"If any of you have any thoughts, feel free to voice them now."
Some of us chose to look at our notes, one of us decided to polish a blemish of the reflective panelling of the table with their sleeve. I spoke.
"Could" a clearing throat cough came next, "I mean, couldn't we... cut our BBC3?"
"What?"
"Well, if we cut our BBC3 then we would save 10% just like that. It is a viable business tactic. All the companies making cutbacks are doing it."
Apparently it is only the BBC who can use it as a viable business tactic. Not everyone has a BBC3 hidden away. Who knew?
I can't help but feel slightly responsible for BBC3 going. I did write one or two slightly less than glowing reviews of it's in-house programming in this very blog over the years.
Because I am in a guilty mood - I am here to try and make up for my part in the shutting down of BBC3 by offering up what could go in it's place.
I watched Space Live last week on Channel 4. It was truly awesome. It confirmed there is nothing I won't watch if it is in space. I watched a man crank a jar of liquids to mix them. For 3 minutes. Just because he was doing it in space. I didn't want to blink in case I missed any of the ants' reactions when they were released into a sealed tub and experienced weightlessness. And ants, generally, are used to weighing next to nothing. I even watched when one of the spacemen took the rubbish out. Although it would have been better if he threw it hurtling towards the Sun, but still - it was still somehow cool.
Despite it being anchored by Dermot O'Leary, a man who is both Ant AND Dec should Ant and Dec ever merge fleshily into one another like a real life Station from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Space Live was hugely watchable.
This is the sort of programming which should be shown on the grave of BBC3. Forget all that Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents and Snog, Marry Avoid - Space and astronauts is what people aged 16-32 should be watching.
We should certainly, if any excuse is really necessary, stop watching Gogglebox, ironically also a Channel 4 production, where viewers watching TV are filmed to be watched on TV. One infinity loop episode was focussed on Space Live, incidentally, and proved as stark a contrast as one can imagine. As they watched some of the most amazing footage of our planet being beamed and streamed instantaneously to their "gogglebox" by amazing human beings the viewers (us, not the viewers on the scree- oh forget it) were treated - instead of simply more footage of soul nourishing space views - to a woman gazing at us through the screen with the expression of just realising the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is the same as the tune to singing the Alphabet, asking:
"So Russia, China, Britain... they're all on that planet?" Yes you idiot - it's Earth! Where you're house is! If she sees the Statue of Liberty we are done for.
The scientists and pilots on the International Space Station (ISS) are aspirational figures. Highly intelligent, brave and motivated as well as being genuinely enthusiastic and articulate in their work. These are the types of core elements we should all aspire towards.
It helps, obviously, that you are doing your work in space. What must it be like to be orbiting in space knowing any scientist, any philosopher any king, queen or emperor and school child that has ever been would want to swop places with you, and you are just doing the weekly vacuuming because it is your turn on the ROTA?
They are lab technicians as submariners, working in a space submarine straight from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. That is pretty cool by my definition.
The programming on Channel 4 included views from the ISS of Earth. It was humbling. It is easy to see why it is conscious altering.
The astronauts talked of beautiful lightening storm displays across thousands of miles ("Like fireworks, but below you") seeing the thin layer of atmosphere keeping us alive, the utter lack of border lines on the land. They mentioned Heaven. Seeing the planet in this way should surely change the wars and hurt 250 miles below and at a much slower pace (the ISS witnesses 16 sun rises and sun sets per 24 hours) if the warpigs were able to take it all in from the viewing bubble of the ISS. But there is not enough room for them all up there.
More than this, though, it gave me an idea for the gap in the transmissions from pulling the plug of a TV channel which broadcast Coming Of Age (why did I never review that on this blog? Because I watched 14 minutes of it and I swear it reduced my lifespan by 8 months, that's why). Instead of BBC3, simply film the Earth as it slides by out the ISS window: no time lapse, no hurry - there is no need, it is going by at 17,100 miles an hour. The Red Button could offer a selection of music. I would choose Debussy to watch the world go by.
My God, it would be glorious.
YOU CALLED?
Er... God?
YES - YOU MENTIONED MY NAME?
Ah right... I did...
YOU WERE JUST EXCLAIMING WEREN'T YOU? FOR EFFECT.
Yes.
THAT'S WHY I MADE BLASPHEMY A THING - IT USED TO BE I COULD BE SURE PEOPLE WERE SAYING MY NAME BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY WANTED ME FOR SOMETHING IN A PRAYER. THESE DAYS IT'S ALL "JESUS" THIS AND "MY GOD" THAT, "BY THE VIRGIN MOTHER MARY'S SWEET COCK" THE OTHER...
Sorry about this. But to make it a bit better, since you're here now, can I ask you something?
SHOOT.
What was the deal with dinosaurs? I mean that was weird, no?
THE WHOLE DINOSAUR THING WAS, WHAT, 232 MILLION YEARS AGO. I WAS YOUNGER THEN. WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG EVERYONE IS INTO DINOSUARS.
So it was just a phase?
YEAH. I GREW OUT OF IT AND CAME UP WITH A DIFFERENT DIRECTION FOR EVOLUTION TO TAKE.
Which brings me onto my next question - why biology? Why create life with death?
RANDOMNESS. MATHEMATICS. I EMBODDIED EVERY LIVING THING WITH DEATH IN ORDER THAT CHANCE MAY TAKE EFFECT. LIVING THINGS ACT DIFFERENTLY WHEN THEY CAN DIE. IT MAKES LIFE INTERESTING. IT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIANT IN CREATION.
But don't you know everything already?
DO YOU THINK IF I KNEW ALL THAT WAS, ALL THAT IS AND ALL THAT SHALL BE, I WOULDN'T SIMPLY CEASE TO BE WITHIN THE NANO SECOND OF MY EXISTENCE? WHAT IS THE POINT OF KNOWING EVERYTHING. SURE I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW AND WHAT HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED, BUT THE FUTURE NO ONE CAN PREDICT. YOU THINK EVERYTHING IS PREDETERMINED, BUT IT IS NOT. ALTHOUGH I DO HAVE A PLAN.
So... you probably get this all the time... but... what's the
REASON FOR ALL THIS? THE MEANING OF LIFE?
Yes. Why create life and then maroon it on a planet? A cruel terrarium in the universe.
WELL, SINCE IT'S YOU GREVILLE, AND YOU OWE ME ONE - SMILEY WINKY FACE - THE MEANING OF LIFE IS THE FOLLOWING:
AS WELL AS DEATH AND RISK, IN MANKIND I EMBUED AMBITION AND DESIRE AND SENSE OF PURPOSE TO ADAPT AND PROGRESS.
THE PLANET YOU STAY ON HAS MANY HARDSHIPS AND YOU STRIVE TO OVERCOME AND CONQUER THEM. MANKIND CONQUERED THE LANDS, THE SEAS AND THE VERY SKIES ABOVE. SURE THERE ARE THOSE WHO LET THEIR AMBITION AND DESIRE DICTATE AND HORRIBLE WARS AND SADNESS OCCURED. BUT MANKIND KEPT PROGRESSING AND ADAPTING AND NOW YOU ARE AT THE FINAL, HARDEST OBSTACLE I SET: SPACE.
So Earth was designed as a testing ground - a krypton factor to accomplish - with the sole outcome to get to space?
YES. AND NOW MANKIND IS CLOSE TO THE END. THE MOON, MARS AND THEN THE COSMOS. SOON YOU WILL WANT TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE VAST COLD AND FIND ME, GOD, WITH YOUR SPACE CRAFT. YOU, OF ALL LIFE, WILL HAVE ACHIEVED THE FINALITY OF MY EXPERIMENT. AND I WILL GREET YOU AND HAVE YOUR SPACE TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY.
So, all this, all this, is for you to have space travel invented for you?
YES
What does God need with a starship?
What are you doing?
I'm asking a question, Bones.
Er... I may have digressed a little there. I think I got away with it. No one will have noticed. Anyway, the point is BBC3 should be replaced with 10 hours a day of footage of the Earth. The BBC should call it the Space Station and should not go with their instincts to let the One Show presenters anywhere within 360,000 light years near it.
Item 5. Our attention, if not all our eyes, rested on the end, or head, of the table.
"Now we come to item 5." Our manager spoke calmly, trying not to startle us. "Times are hard for the company. There is no doubt we will need to continue to keep costs from rising again this year. There is no point in delaying any further in telling you I have also been asked by the curators to make proposals to cut the budget of the department further."
All breath became a prisoner to us.
"If any of you have any thoughts, feel free to voice them now."
Some of us chose to look at our notes, one of us decided to polish a blemish of the reflective panelling of the table with their sleeve. I spoke.
"Could" a clearing throat cough came next, "I mean, couldn't we... cut our BBC3?"
"What?"
"Well, if we cut our BBC3 then we would save 10% just like that. It is a viable business tactic. All the companies making cutbacks are doing it."
Apparently it is only the BBC who can use it as a viable business tactic. Not everyone has a BBC3 hidden away. Who knew?
I can't help but feel slightly responsible for BBC3 going. I did write one or two slightly less than glowing reviews of it's in-house programming in this very blog over the years.
Because I am in a guilty mood - I am here to try and make up for my part in the shutting down of BBC3 by offering up what could go in it's place.
I watched Space Live last week on Channel 4. It was truly awesome. It confirmed there is nothing I won't watch if it is in space. I watched a man crank a jar of liquids to mix them. For 3 minutes. Just because he was doing it in space. I didn't want to blink in case I missed any of the ants' reactions when they were released into a sealed tub and experienced weightlessness. And ants, generally, are used to weighing next to nothing. I even watched when one of the spacemen took the rubbish out. Although it would have been better if he threw it hurtling towards the Sun, but still - it was still somehow cool.
Despite it being anchored by Dermot O'Leary, a man who is both Ant AND Dec should Ant and Dec ever merge fleshily into one another like a real life Station from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Space Live was hugely watchable.
This is the sort of programming which should be shown on the grave of BBC3. Forget all that Sun, Sea and Suspicious Parents and Snog, Marry Avoid - Space and astronauts is what people aged 16-32 should be watching.
We should certainly, if any excuse is really necessary, stop watching Gogglebox, ironically also a Channel 4 production, where viewers watching TV are filmed to be watched on TV. One infinity loop episode was focussed on Space Live, incidentally, and proved as stark a contrast as one can imagine. As they watched some of the most amazing footage of our planet being beamed and streamed instantaneously to their "gogglebox" by amazing human beings the viewers (us, not the viewers on the scree- oh forget it) were treated - instead of simply more footage of soul nourishing space views - to a woman gazing at us through the screen with the expression of just realising the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is the same as the tune to singing the Alphabet, asking:
"So Russia, China, Britain... they're all on that planet?" Yes you idiot - it's Earth! Where you're house is! If she sees the Statue of Liberty we are done for.
The scientists and pilots on the International Space Station (ISS) are aspirational figures. Highly intelligent, brave and motivated as well as being genuinely enthusiastic and articulate in their work. These are the types of core elements we should all aspire towards.
It helps, obviously, that you are doing your work in space. What must it be like to be orbiting in space knowing any scientist, any philosopher any king, queen or emperor and school child that has ever been would want to swop places with you, and you are just doing the weekly vacuuming because it is your turn on the ROTA?
They are lab technicians as submariners, working in a space submarine straight from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. That is pretty cool by my definition.
The programming on Channel 4 included views from the ISS of Earth. It was humbling. It is easy to see why it is conscious altering.
The astronauts talked of beautiful lightening storm displays across thousands of miles ("Like fireworks, but below you") seeing the thin layer of atmosphere keeping us alive, the utter lack of border lines on the land. They mentioned Heaven. Seeing the planet in this way should surely change the wars and hurt 250 miles below and at a much slower pace (the ISS witnesses 16 sun rises and sun sets per 24 hours) if the warpigs were able to take it all in from the viewing bubble of the ISS. But there is not enough room for them all up there.
More than this, though, it gave me an idea for the gap in the transmissions from pulling the plug of a TV channel which broadcast Coming Of Age (why did I never review that on this blog? Because I watched 14 minutes of it and I swear it reduced my lifespan by 8 months, that's why). Instead of BBC3, simply film the Earth as it slides by out the ISS window: no time lapse, no hurry - there is no need, it is going by at 17,100 miles an hour. The Red Button could offer a selection of music. I would choose Debussy to watch the world go by.
My God, it would be glorious.
YOU CALLED?
Er... God?
YES - YOU MENTIONED MY NAME?
Ah right... I did...
YOU WERE JUST EXCLAIMING WEREN'T YOU? FOR EFFECT.
Yes.
THAT'S WHY I MADE BLASPHEMY A THING - IT USED TO BE I COULD BE SURE PEOPLE WERE SAYING MY NAME BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY WANTED ME FOR SOMETHING IN A PRAYER. THESE DAYS IT'S ALL "JESUS" THIS AND "MY GOD" THAT, "BY THE VIRGIN MOTHER MARY'S SWEET COCK" THE OTHER...
Sorry about this. But to make it a bit better, since you're here now, can I ask you something?
SHOOT.
What was the deal with dinosaurs? I mean that was weird, no?
THE WHOLE DINOSAUR THING WAS, WHAT, 232 MILLION YEARS AGO. I WAS YOUNGER THEN. WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG EVERYONE IS INTO DINOSUARS.
So it was just a phase?
YEAH. I GREW OUT OF IT AND CAME UP WITH A DIFFERENT DIRECTION FOR EVOLUTION TO TAKE.
Which brings me onto my next question - why biology? Why create life with death?
RANDOMNESS. MATHEMATICS. I EMBODDIED EVERY LIVING THING WITH DEATH IN ORDER THAT CHANCE MAY TAKE EFFECT. LIVING THINGS ACT DIFFERENTLY WHEN THEY CAN DIE. IT MAKES LIFE INTERESTING. IT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIANT IN CREATION.
But don't you know everything already?
DO YOU THINK IF I KNEW ALL THAT WAS, ALL THAT IS AND ALL THAT SHALL BE, I WOULDN'T SIMPLY CEASE TO BE WITHIN THE NANO SECOND OF MY EXISTENCE? WHAT IS THE POINT OF KNOWING EVERYTHING. SURE I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW AND WHAT HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED, BUT THE FUTURE NO ONE CAN PREDICT. YOU THINK EVERYTHING IS PREDETERMINED, BUT IT IS NOT. ALTHOUGH I DO HAVE A PLAN.
So... you probably get this all the time... but... what's the
REASON FOR ALL THIS? THE MEANING OF LIFE?
Yes. Why create life and then maroon it on a planet? A cruel terrarium in the universe.
WELL, SINCE IT'S YOU GREVILLE, AND YOU OWE ME ONE - SMILEY WINKY FACE - THE MEANING OF LIFE IS THE FOLLOWING:
AS WELL AS DEATH AND RISK, IN MANKIND I EMBUED AMBITION AND DESIRE AND SENSE OF PURPOSE TO ADAPT AND PROGRESS.
THE PLANET YOU STAY ON HAS MANY HARDSHIPS AND YOU STRIVE TO OVERCOME AND CONQUER THEM. MANKIND CONQUERED THE LANDS, THE SEAS AND THE VERY SKIES ABOVE. SURE THERE ARE THOSE WHO LET THEIR AMBITION AND DESIRE DICTATE AND HORRIBLE WARS AND SADNESS OCCURED. BUT MANKIND KEPT PROGRESSING AND ADAPTING AND NOW YOU ARE AT THE FINAL, HARDEST OBSTACLE I SET: SPACE.
So Earth was designed as a testing ground - a krypton factor to accomplish - with the sole outcome to get to space?
YES. AND NOW MANKIND IS CLOSE TO THE END. THE MOON, MARS AND THEN THE COSMOS. SOON YOU WILL WANT TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE VAST COLD AND FIND ME, GOD, WITH YOUR SPACE CRAFT. YOU, OF ALL LIFE, WILL HAVE ACHIEVED THE FINALITY OF MY EXPERIMENT. AND I WILL GREET YOU AND HAVE YOUR SPACE TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY.
So, all this, all this, is for you to have space travel invented for you?
YES
What does God need with a starship?
What are you doing?
I'm asking a question, Bones.
Er... I may have digressed a little there. I think I got away with it. No one will have noticed. Anyway, the point is BBC3 should be replaced with 10 hours a day of footage of the Earth. The BBC should call it the Space Station and should not go with their instincts to let the One Show presenters anywhere within 360,000 light years near it.
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