Today's stripping has as much to do with its parent art of burlesque as the Republican Party of Bush has with that of Lincoln. The current model is a thoughtless debasement unfit to windmill its progenitor's tassles. So even though her act doesn't shy from the doffing of clothes in close syncopation to music, burlesque queen Emily Lauren (aka Sugar Puppy), her Lovely Dumplings and a full Folly's worth of other bawdy characters for damn sure ain't no strippers. "Given the choice, I'd be a comedienne," Lauren says. And pasties or not, the show bears her out. It's as much lampoon as tease, a witty evisceration of modern sexual norms rooted in the satiric tradition of old burlesque. The jokes are nastier than the disrobing, which is to her credit -- everyone knows that funny girls are the sexiest.
