IT WAS FUN WHILE IT BLASTED

As the Lady’s clock ticks down the hours to her permanent close, the punnery on her marquee hints no longer at what’s to come, but reminisces about what came before. Depending on your willingness to stretch common slang, the meaning of this signage is either uncharacteristically juvenile and asexual, or overtly graphic in its allusion to action over object. Further, as the sign eulogizes the Lady’s glory days, the pun is less an invitation for passersby to peak behind the glass, and more an explanation – a boast even – for why the glass was there in the first place.

NO-DRESS CODE

“How strange,” you’re thinking. “The Lady has sacrificed a perfectly clear double entendre in order to make its risque meaning not only obvious but obligatory. This is very unlike her; she is not in the habit of dumbing down her wordplay for the sake of the dimmest possible pedestrian. So what’s up with that hyphen?” Here’s what’s up. The Lady inserted the hyphen (and compromised her craft) as a show of support for her favorite Australian Mariner, Ryan “Hyphen” Rowland-Smith, who has been struggling mightily ever since the Lady announced her retirement. The hyphen represents the eternal bond between rugged Aussies and saucy American ladies.

THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES

Here we have an exceptional pun based on an exquisite feminine rhyme. Let’s start peeling. First, it’s a loving tribute to the evolutionary adaptations that have made the females of the Lusty so delectable (and selectable). Second, it’s a sobering reminder that the muse of 1st Avenue will soon be closed (and clothed). And finally, it’s a subtle hint to WHY she will soon be closed: crowdsourcing. You see, after the Lady announced her retirement, this exact pun emerged from the comment sections of all the Seattle blogs. It was the inevitable opus of a hundred amateur punsmiths. And by putting it up on her marquee, the Lady is acknowledging that there are finally enough monkeys out there banging at keyboards to replace her.

AVATART

With her retirement now less than two months away, the Lusty Lady has chosen to focus her remaining wordplay on movie titles, her bread and butter. Impressively, her efforts have yielded quite literally bread and butter. Within twelve hours of this pun going up on the Lady’s marquee, QFC announced a new dessert item in its bakery section: the Avatart. Of course, QFC’s official reason for introducing this new turquoise confection is the Blu-ray release of Avatar. But one look at the topless Na’vi in the icing and it’s clear that the real inspiration for this gaudy double layered sheet cake is the bawdy double entendre currently adorning the Lusty Lady. Just another example of how life imitates tart.

CLASH OF THE TIGHT BUNS

This week the Lusty Lady announced that the Internet, with its glut of free pornography and free pun engines, has rendered her obsolete. So it’s fitting that the Lady’s current marquee pun refers to another legend that is being killed off by new technology. We are of course referring to the classic 1981 film based on the legend of Perseus, ‘Clash of the Tight Buns’, which has been remade for the sole purpose of showing off the adult film industry’s newest technology, 3D. The myth’s plot, characters, and pace have all been sacrificed for the sake of sticking in 3D wherever possible. There is even a pointless 4D scene featuring a CGI cameo by Linda Lovelace. Worst yet, unlike the internet T&A which is displacing the Lusty Lady, this excess of D is definitely not free.

ERIN GO BRAUGH-LESS

Rather than produce any new content on this, the most saucy of holidays, the Lady has opted to just recycle last year’s pun. Actually, she did make one minor edit; she added an unnecessary hyphen. No doubt this allows her to extend the copyright another year.

THE SKIRT LOCKER

Ever since No Country for Old Men won Best Picture in 2007, people have claimed that Oscar voting is heavily influenced by the erotic pun potential of the nominees. The fact that the ‘most popular film of all time’, Avatar, was overlooked in favor of the the more obscure but more wordplay friendly Hurt Locker, lends support to this suspicion. But it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. On the other hand, the fact that the Lusty Lady put THE SKIRT LOCKER up two hours BEFORE the winner was actually announced, well, that’s pretty much enough to strip Meryl Streep of all of her awards.

MELUSTY LATTE

The Lusty Lady has grown weary of cranking out successful, but ultimately repetitive, pop erotic wordplay. So she is moving on to more experimental smut. Here she has written a sex pun in an invented dialect. Notice how ‘me lusty latte’ parallels another famous line of broken english, ‘me love you long time’, from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”. It’s a commentary on how the Vietnamese hookers of FMJ, who revive burned-out soldiers, fill the same role as the strippers of the Lusty Lady, who revive burned-out civilians. Indeed, resurrection is a recurring theme in this pun. ‘Latte’, of course, refers to the staple pick-me-up of Seattle, our own ‘water of life’, which functions, like the whiskey of Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”, as a…Oh! Now I get it, MELUSTY LATTE! Hahaha. Never mind.

JUST THE RIGHT SIGHS

This pun, along with its co-pun, WHERE EVERY MISS IS A HIT, alludes to a question that has baffled Lusty Lady patrons for years : How did the Lusty Lady experience become so perfect? In other words, doesn’t it seem odd that every sigh is just right and that every miss is a hit? This is known as the Goldilocks Enigma, and it has led many to conclude that there must be an intelligent designer behind the peep show. But the real answer lies in the application of the anthropic principle, which states that it is not odd that we observe the Earth to be the perfect distance from the sun, or the universe to be the perfect density, or the Lusty Lady dancers to be perfectly endowed, because were these things not perfect, we wouldn’t be around to observe them at all. Does that make sense?

WHERE EVERY MISS IS A HIT(2)

Since the Lusty Lady prefers her topless wordplay to be topical, we usually see this classic marquee in August, when the boys of summer are a few thousand hits deep into the baseball season. So to see this racy pun nowhere near a pennant race is a bit unexpected. We can only assume that the Lady is expressing her approval for the titillating off-season moves of new Mariner’s GM, Jack Zduriencik. She must believe that Chone Figgins’ fleet feet will revive a flaccid offense, and that Cliff Lee’s lively arm will finish the job. She is certainly an eternal optimist. Or is that optiMISS?

KISS ME UNDER THE CAMELTOE

This pun actually dates back to December 17th, 2009, but we have been hesitant to post it because its authorship is in dispute. Although most scholars believe it to be composed by the Bardess of Belltown, there is a growing faction of the erotic wordplay community that questions its authenticity. Their doubt primarily stems from the pun’s uncharacteristic use of vulgarity, modern vernacular, and bizarre imagery. The detractors have put forward Showgirls as an alternative candidate for the pun’s author, but as the pro-Lusty Lady side has been quick to point out, this theory has its own nontrivial problems.

HAPPY NUDE YEAR

A simple Google search reveals that this pun is not a Lusty Lady original but just a cover of an English classic. The first instance of the pun dates back to 1654 when a Scottish sign writer, Richard Burns, used it to announce the reopening of the town bath, which had been closed during the Christmas plague season. Ironically, Burns was burned at the stake by angry Presbyterians who accused him of using ‘the black art of punnery’ to corrupt the minds of the town’s youth. Nowadays the pun is annually recycled by peep shows around the country who, in desperate need of lewd holiday wordplay, resort to mining the public domain.

SQUEEZINS GREETINGS

This is what’s known in the peep show industry as a ‘soft release’ — rather than issue a full press announcement when a new feature is made public, the establishment puts out a more subtle, semi-announcement, usually in the form of a pun. Couched in this pun is the exciting news that the Lusty Lady has finally mounted insulation gloves, much like the kind you would see in a nuclear power plant, in her peeping booths. These will allow the booth’s operator to perform any necessary groping tasks while still keeping the strippers protected from potential contaminants. Of course, being in beta, there are some issues to work out, especially concerning the misuse of the gloves as ‘gloves’.

JIGGLE BELLS*

On its own this marquee appears to be a straight forward play on ‘Jingle Bells’ and inertially disturbed breasts. But when considered next to last week’s marquee (JINGLE BALLS) it takes on an odd deja vu quality. Why would the Lady reuse ‘Jingle Bells’ when there are plenty of unused holiday songs ripe for erotic wordplay (e.g. ‘Jingle Bell Rock’)? Experts believe these twin puns must contain a secret message. For instance, in each marquee only one letter is changed in ‘Jingle Bells’: an ‘e’ to an ‘a’, and an ‘n’ to a ‘g’. This gives you Ne (neon, a noble gas) changing to Ag (silver, a noble metal). In other words, ‘nobility transcends form’, which of course is the tag line for the latest semi-solid menu offering at Dairy Queen. *Actually JIGGLE BELLES. We must have been distracted.

JINGLE BALLS

The Lusty Lady has taken strict precautions to conceal the secrets of her pun-writing process, but experts have long hypothesized that it involves a custom built rhyming dictionary and the collected works of Andrew Dice Clay. This marquee would seem to support that hypothesis. It hearkens back to a time before the emergence of Jerry Seinfeld and observational comedy: when insight was a bawdy pararhyme, when cleverness was a vulgarized holiday jingle, when humor was the mere mention of ‘balls’. So Merry XXX-mas, Dice. Your work was seminal. Oooooo!

LOOK TO THE THIGHS

In these uncertain times, even the most sexual soul is in need of some spiritual healing. Remember, The Church of Our Lady of Lust’s doors are open to all of God’s children (except children). So drop that burden, weary pilgrim, and surrender your load to a higher power. Let the head priestess lead you to a confessional booth where you can spill the contents of your conscience. An offering of 25 cents will even get you a consultation with the Oracle. Of course, interpreting her cryptic undulations is notoriously difficult so just remember: Look to the thighs.

WE GIVE RAISES

Once again the Lusty Lady deftly uses wordplay to combine two of her siren songs into one tidy little verse. She entices potential customers with promises of incrementing their penile blood pressure, and she lures potential employees with insinuations of engorging their paychecks. Such efficiency! Of course, nowhere in the pun’s many meanings is there any mention that these enlargements may only be temporary, that both erections and wages may rapidly deflate after the current erotic service bubble bursts. To include such caveats would be asking too much of our lovely and economical wordsmith.

ALL CLOTHING 100 PERCENT OFF

Oh the trials and tribulations of this ailing economy. First Tubs Hydrotherapy powers down its primordial hot tubs, and now the Lusty Lady is reduced to giving away her clothes to cut overhead costs. Her ample bust is undoubtedly the only thing keeping her afloat. Poor girl, probably doesn’t even have two quarters to rub together. We should help her out…Wait a minute! It’s a scam. The classic bait and switch. The first clothes are a 100% off, but you’re locked into the undergarments at only 20% off. We should have read the pun’s fine print. Now WE’RE hard up for quarters. Damn you Lusty Lady!

FALL FLASHINS

Once more the Lusty Lady generously shares her sartorial secrets with the schlubs who plod 1st Avenue. Her advice this fall: lose the garments ladies. That’s right, forget the power frock, the business thong, the legal tights and the presentation bra. This fall it’s all about the birthday suit. Flesh is the new black. If you must drape yourself in something, go with a neutral vinyl trench, preferably see-through, definitely no buttons. This isn’t to say you can’t accessorize. Your favorite belly button heirloom or a personalized tramp stamp can help make this look your own. For more ideas, head down to the Lusty Lady where Brook, Destiny and Crystal will be on the runway showing off the latest in the Lady’s eponymous line of women’s fully-naked wear.

PINK IS THE CURE

Though she is best known for her revolutionary pay-as-you-peep business model, the Lusty Lady is far more than just a savvy exhibitionist. She’s also a philanthropist. In addition to the vast, undisclosed sums she gives to the Girl Scouts and the free services she provides to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Lady also donates her valuable marquee space to worthy charities. Here she raises awareness for the fight against breast cancer, appropriate considering how much she owes to those magnificent organs. It’s likewise appropriate that the pun pivots on a vulgar pseudo-euphemism for a woman’s vagina (pink). It reminds us that no matter which side of the one-way mirror we’re on, we’re all just fragile flesh and bone.