Burlesque, Beer and PowerPoint

Recently Mary Mann published this interesting article about the use of PowerPoint in the middle of a beer session. Here is an excerpt and you can read the full entry in the URL at the bottom of the post.

On a Tuesday night in February, it’s standing room only to watch a series of PowerPoint presentations. At least a hundred people have gathered at Public Assembly to drink the cocktail of the evening (the Valentine’s Day Massacre—a five dollar whiskey and juice concoction) and be lectured on history… sexy history.

Because when discussing love and/or sex, there is no juicier, saucier, steamier, or frankly more disgusting source than our own human history. The Society for the Advancement of Social Studies (a k a S.A.S.S., an offshoot of Brooklyn Brainery) banked on the appeal of sexy history when they planned this mid-winter event—one of six since the organization’s first in September 2011. In that short time, they’ve made everything from the Russian Revolution to the Mayan calendar to the Holy Crusades seem, well, kind of fun.

The first presentation, A Brief History of Marriage dances around the racy edges of history: the ancient Greeks being down with gay marriage; Mormons staying out of the Civil War in order to avoid federal crackdown on their polygamy habits; and the fact that Einstein, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Darwin were all, as the presenter Josh Levie puts it, “cousin fuckers.”

The phrase shocked no one. In fact, when Levie casually mentions finger banging, someone in the crowd shouts “Digitus crepitus!” Which, if you haven’t brushed up on your dead languages lately, is Latin for finger banging.

But the night is just beginning, and no sooner has Levie left the stage than a 1920s-sounding song starts up and the applause is replaced by hoots and whistles. Dottie Dynamo, that “lovable bundle of tits n’ trouble,” has begun to dance.

Read the full story in www.brooklynrail.org