Just got back from Margaret Cho's amazing new show, The Sensuous Woman. It was an absolutely brilliant performance, with everything from stand-up comedy, burlesque, belly dancing, rap, musical performances, etc. Anyone who knows me knows that I fucking idolize this woman, but I've never had the opportunity to see her before. When I heard she was coming to Chicago with this unique show my friend Joe and I immediately got tickets. We got to the theatre really early and ended up sitting front-row center!

The Notorious CHO came out and did some excellent stand-up, then told us to enjoy the show. There were amazing performances and excellent comedy routines. The whole point of the night was to make people realize we're all beautiful, no matter our size, gender, sexuality, etc. and it completely succeeded!

One of my favourite performances was by Miss Dirty Martini, who came out in a floor-length and form-fitting gown decked out in red, white and blue sequins, complete with stars and stripes. She held two buckets on chains in either hand to represent a scale. Dancing to "Proud to Be an American", she proceeded to drop both "buckets" to the ground, spilling a lot of coins, which she greedily went after. As she slowly stripped off more and more pieces of clothing she revealed dollar bills tucked into her bra, gloves, panties, etc. that she threw into the air and danced around in. Eventually she started to gather as much of it as she could and shove it into her mouth. Finally she was only left in a thong and pasties at the end of the song, and she turned around, bent over, and pulled a LONG "streamer" of dollar bills from her ass, then danced around while twirling it around her, and finally ending the song and dance number by flipping everyone off. It was an amazing protrayal of our society and the greed we all have!

There was also an awesome performance by Kelly! She sang "Shoes" and "Let Me Borrow That Top", and came back at the end of the show to perform a mock version of "Shoes" that Margaret Cho had spoofed Mexican-style. It was a sing-off between "Choos" and "Shoes" that totally rocked and had everyone back on stage and the audience rolling.

At one point they started playing a song by "Prince" and one of the guys came walking up the aisles decked out like Prince circa 1985. He started dancing seductively on the stage, then stripped off his outfit and wore nothing but a leopard leotard thing. More seductive and funny dancing, and then he started straddling the edge of the stage... and then jumped off the stage and INTO MY LAP. The whole audience was going nuts and I was red as hell and laughing so hard. He started jumping over the rows and dancing on random people before finishing his number on stage.

So many more amazing performances that I can't even remember all of. I wish I could have had the whole night on video! After the show we all stood out in the lobby talking and eventually the performers came out and everyone congratulated them on an amazing job. When Margaret came out everyone started cheering and applauding, and she was so sweet and stayed to talk with everyone. I got to saunter on over and all I wanted to do was say hi and thank her, but when I got near her I started shaking like mad. I told her how much I love her and that this show really spoke to me because it made me realize I need to feel more comfortable with the way I look and that I highly respected her for doing this. She was so sweet and hugged me, signed my ticket stub (it was the only thing I had on me), and posed for a photo with me. I didn't bring my camera (dumbass) but Joe was able to get a pic with his phone. I was startin to get all teary-eyed and she hugged me again and a few people around us were like, "awww." I didn't want to hog the goddess all to myself so I thanked her again and went to lean on the wall to regain my composure. Such an amazingly sweet woman!

And just to make the night COMPLETE, I got to hear the new Alanis Morissette song, "Underneath" - the video reduced me to tears again and gave me chills for a good 15 minutes.

Amazing night.