Nadia Essex, Striptease and Toybox

Last week: Nadia Essex liked my tweet correcting her grammar. 

I finished reading Striptease by Carl Hiaasen last week. I picked it up in Oxfam years ago, and dived into it recently mainly because it was the smallest book in my to-read pile. I remember the movie being terrible, but the studios must have had some faith in it originally, so I gave it a shot.

Erin Grant, fired from her legal secretarial job, is working as a stripper to make ends meet, all the while locked in a bitter custody battle with her daughter's wheelchair-stealing hick father (her connection to him the reason for her firing). During a particularly violent night at her workplace (charmingly called The Eager Beaver), local congressman and drunken liability David Dilbeck rolls in and makes an embarrassment out of himself. Infatuated with Erin, he seeks her out, but as he knows the judge in her case, she strings him along.

It's a well written book with convincing characters, although the cliché of the antagonist being a drug addict and the implausibility of the judge granting him custody didn't sit right with me. A lot of what kept my attention was the author's observations of the characters, their little nuances and backstories that made characters likeable and three-dimensional- pretty much of which couldn't be transferred to the screen.

I bought the 1996 Demi Moore adaptation while I was in 5^th form (garnering somewhat of a reputation having spent 15 bastard quid on it, which was a lot back then). I returned to it having finished the book, to see what went wrong- every cliché was slapped over the screen, every joke fell flat, and the clunkiness of the source story stood out like a bikini-clad mother in a courtroom. What a waste of fine actors like Ving Rhames, Armand Assante and the late Burt Reynolds.

This coming weekend has two events.

Manchester Depression and Bipolar Group meet for drinks and talking on Friday night in Albert Square Chop House. This is looking like being a weekly event for the group, where we can meet like-minded people, swap advice and get something to eat.

Saturday night is a treat that I've organised. Manchester Cool Bars are heading to Toybox, one of the newest clubs in the city centre. Made to rival the likes of Panacea and LIV,  Toybox is already popular with the Love Island crowd and the like. We're starting in Australasia.