"Very progressive. Very horny."
Many of you may know that I earned a precedent-setting green card for burlesque back in September of 2012, something I worked really hard for, and in many ways it changed my life. I'm always a person who is looking forward, focused on the things I have yet to achieve, so I often forget to look back on the things I have accomplished. So when I hear from a friend that I'm being name-dropped by Dax Shepard on his super popular Armchair Expert podcast recently, it shocked me.
I'm a big fan of this podcast, have listened to many of his episodes in the past, so I'm very familiar with it. If you haven't heard his show, he interviews people of note, in this case Lupita Nyong'o, the Mexican/Kenyan actor of Black Panther fame etc, who earned the same green card as me after winning her Academy Award. At the end of his shows he always does some fact-checking with his co-host Monica Padman, and she looked up the type of green card we both have for some info on it, and finds a list of other notable recipients, and can you believe that my name was the first on this list? It turns out the list she was looking at is the actual Alien of Extraordinary Ability Wikipedia entry, and there it is, my name at the top of the list for the EB-1A recipients, above sports icons, scientists and even John Lennon!
The best part of the podcast, in my opinion (listen to the whole thing, but skip ahead to the 2h 4m mark to hear my mention), is after Monica lists my work, she says "Very progressive!" Dax then adds, "Very horny!" You just can't ask for a better pull quote than that, my own spicy version of that "very demure, very mindful" tiktok thing. Is there any better way to sum up everything that I have worked towards? Thank you Dax and Monica! I've put the link to the video below if you want to check it out now.
It's funny, the timing of this, because I also got a mention last month in India's Outlook, a current affairs magazine talking about ways to immigrate to the US, and I was wondering how they found me for that, and I think that wikipedia entry must be the source.
My Press page has a lot of the hilarious headlines and articles that came out back when news of my green card and the precedent it set, making burlesque and pin-up new artistic classifications and paving the way for other artists in these fields to apply for similar visas. Here are some of my favourites though, let me know what you think:
Which is your fave quote?
"Jiggling Genius"
"Girlie dancer shimmies way to green card"
"Very progressive! Very horny!"
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