Blaze Starr

You fell for the tease, and now you want more. Luckily, time hasn't quite forgotten the golden age of real burlesque, an underworld peopled with glamour girls, graft and secret arts thriving on the edges of daylight society. A number of great resources can take you deeper into the tale of the tease. From live revival shows to strange desert gatherings to academic treatises, a whole noir culture lies just behind that velvet curtain. Local Live Shows The Velvet Hammer.

Nine-year-old Trey Skains sat in the dirt with Steele, scratching the dog's belly and bragging about the spotted pooch with bright blue eyes. "He's a pretty dang good dog," Trey said. "He's won me a lot of trophies." Trey and Steele are players in hog baying, in which dogs go into a ring to round up a wild hog. At Uncle Earl's 13th Annual Hog Dog Trials in March, they got the chance to show their stuff in a competition billed as both a Southern and a family tradition.

Her films were crass, coarse and camp, and fell into such exploitation categories as "nudies," "roughies," "chesties" and "slashers"--perfect fodder for a cult following. But nobody was more surprised at such film-festival idolatry that developed over the last 20 years than the woman at its center--independent filmmaker Doris Wishman. The best of her 30 films with the bargain-basement budgets and racy titles is generally acknowledged to be 1965's "Bad Girls Go to Hell."

New Orleans has always been a good place to hold two things--an oyster and a Super Bowl. Why? Two reasons. One, New Orleans is a fun town. In my opinion, New Orleans is more fun than any town should be allowed to be. And two, New Orleans is a neutral site. The NFL takes it on faith that the New Orleans Saints might play inside a Superdome, but will never actually be in a Super Bowl. Most of the New Orleans teams that we have seen over the years would have had trouble winning a Bud Bowl.

Robert De Niro teams with director Penny Marshall on Columbia's "Awakenings," the story of a man frozen in the '60s as a result of an unspecified disease and de-iced 20 years later. Steve Zaillian's drama confronts the character's readjustment and supposed new lease on life. Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker produce with filming planned for the early fall. . . . Barbara Hershey has been cast in the title role of Cinecom's "Aunt Julia," a bizarre romantic fantasy based on the Mario Vargas Llosa novel.

On a bright summer day, with a slight breeze swaying the dogwood trees, a gaggle of tourists prepares to board a sightseeing bus on Massachusetts Avenue. The bus driver introduces himself: "Hi, I'm John Hinckley, and since I got a weekend pass from prison, I'm your driver." Immediately after this unsettling news, a woman bearing a startling resemblance to Marilyn Monroe sashays toward the bus. Once inside, the sex symbol practices a vaporous rendition of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

For the merchants and the poor hill farmers around this economically depressed town of 7,200, the spirit of Huey P. Long, the local boy who rose to become a lightning rod of social protest in the 1930s, has returned, offering salvation. "Almost everyone in town is pulling together on this," said George Wyatt, the executive director of Winnfield's Chamber of Commerce.

When a tennis player such as Pam Shriver becomes an author as well, she can be sure she will be in particular demand as a talk-show guest both in and out of the world of sports. This is fine with the gregarious Shriver, who is as at home in front of a microphone as she is at the net. On Sunday, Shriver was in New York promoting her recently released book, "Passing Shots." Monday, it was Seattle. Tuesday, San Francisco. Wednesday, Los Angeles. And Wednesday night, San Diego.

They had wrapped up three days in Ventura County on the front lines of a 24,175-acre fire when the visiting firefighters got the bad news. Instead of heading home, fire crews from Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Brea, Newport Beach and Fullerton were told Saturday to detour to Burbank to help fight a 1,100-acre wildfire there. There were groans from among some on the Brea Fire Department pumper truck. "We were released from the Topanga fire and on our way home," said firefighter Kyle Houk.

Ever since he made his directorial debut with "Bull Durham," Ron Shelton has displayed a winning way of taking us into the contemporary world of sports--even for those whose interest in them is minimal at best.