Hi Sugarplums!
I'm getting SO excited for the Portland show! Today, I thought I'd tell you a little about my history with Portland and why its so dear to me, and include some links to videos/websites for a couple of the performers that you'll see at "Lucky's DeLuxe Giggle-n-Grind" on March 22nd at Harvey's Comedy Club.
Note: This is a really abbreviated version of the whole story. I'm skipping a lot of details. If you want the whole long, long story, you can coax it out of me with cocktails some night...
In 2003, I was living in hell. I was unhappily married, we had moved from Kansas City to Cave Junction, OR. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Cave Junction, it is a very small town, similar to Mayberry, but with a shitload of meth and Hep C. It was too remote and cut-off for me to effectively continue the comedy career that I'd enjoyed since '96, which was the most important thing in my life, and the bulk of how I identified myself. The only form of entertainment in town was watching the locals sing karaoke twice a week at the Red Garter Saloon. There was no full-time police force, the library was open 3 days a week. Yes, Public Enemy, 911 was a joke in my town. I passed the time by trying to rid the house we were living in of fleas, formulating escape plans, fantasizing about my husband's taller cousin, and smoking. I was working 2 jobs since my husband was working none (couldn't pass the drug test to get hired at the local grocery store): clerk at the town's first porn store, and Tree Fairy at a treehouse resort just outside of town. Tree Fairy was not as cool as the title indicates. Tree Fairy meant 'maid'. Tree Fairies did not wear wings, they freshened bedding and emptied chamberpots. The owner would regularly take out her tie-dye displacement aggression by screaming at us in the basement of the main house. My own house had its charms, like a toilet that didn't function, rendering it useless for things that humans need to do on a regular basis (translation: I had to walk a couple blocks to the park to 'read a book'. If the urge struck in the middle of the night, I was just shit-out-of-luck, so to speak.), no lock on the front door, and a half-crazy dog living in the backyard that the previous tenants had left for us. Life was unpleasant, to be sure. I was pretty sure I would die in that fucking town, probably and hopefully by my own device.
After one particularly awesome evening of drinking cheap vodka and tempering my husband's most recent psychotic break, I hit my limit. I was broken into pieces of my former person-with-a-promising-future, and needed to at least make one more effort to save myself from this beartrap of a fate. So I called my friend Kristine. She was the only person I knew in the Pacific NW. She invited me to come up and stay in PDX for a few days, to check it out. The feeling of driving into PDX for the first time is one I can't easily explain. Imagine the bus ride home from the worst summer camp experience of your life, pulling into the parking lot and seeing your parent waiting to drive you home, away from the nightmare. I think I cried upon pulling into Kristine's driveway. I knew before getting out of the car that I was moving to PDX. Cut to one month later, I had moved to PDX. Kristine took me out, showed me the town. Introduced me to the local comics and comedy scene. They treated me well, I felt immediately accepted and safer than I'd felt since leaving KC. To this day, I have never had a comedy or burlesque experience in Portland that has left a bad taste in my mouth.
I believe that moving to Portland saved my life, and I will always love it for at least that reason. This is also why it is important to me to offer my audiences the best performances I can give. Portlandians, Portlandites, PDX-ers gave me life again, the least I can do is give them a show to remember. So, my dearest PDX, on March 22nd, come out to "Lucky's DeLuxe Giggle-n-Grind" at Harvey's Comedy Club. I owe you a show. And a hug.
Awesome Blogsite for Kristine Levine: www.pornclerk.com
Preview Of Lucky Lucy O'Rebel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3UheA4NEKY
More previews of other performers posted in a couple days...
xoxo,
Lucky
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