It’s been over a week since I’ve returned from the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend and I’m still basking in the glitter and sexiness of it!

Babeland donated Silver Bullets for the performer goody bags that were given to all the performers. It was a joy to see the Legends of Burlesque pick out the Silver Bullets from their goody bags and giggle, while the neo-burlesque performers were so delighted to get a free vibrator!

The weekend started with a Thursday night bowling tournament and a burlesque show with 23 acts from all over the world! Friday was the Legends Night staring the burlesque legends of yesteryear!

Saturday was the competition and the winners were . . .
Legend of the Year Honor: Satan’s Angel
Reigning Queen of Burlesque: Kalani Kokonuts (Las Vegas)
First runner up: Roxi D’Lite (Ontario, Canada)
Second runner up: Perle Noir (New Orleans)
Best Boylesque: Hot Toddy (Chicago)
Most Dazzling: Kalani Kokonuts (Las Vegas)
Most Comical: Little Brooklyn (Brooklyn, USA)
Most Classic: Knicker Kittens (Stockholm, Sweden)
Best Debut: Melody Mangler (Vancouver, Canada)
Most Innovative: Arabelle trapeze (Brooklyn, USA)
Best Troupe/Group: Nanda (Portland, OR)
Best Variety: Gigi and Pop (Brooklyn, USA)

All in all it was a FANTASTIC WEEKEND! If you are a burlesque lover I highly recommend attending next years Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend !!

Here I am(Darlinda Just Darlinda) with Seattle’s Babeland favorites Von Foxies and Indigo Blue!

We are huge fans of Belladonna here at Babeland. If you haven’t seen Fashionistas, Fucking Girls, Girl Train, or Pirates II, you must. You can visit Belladonna at her website and follow her on Twitter to learn about her new projects.

Belladonna recently shared some of her thoughts on safer sex in the porn industry (inspired by the recent HIV positive diagnosis in the industry) with the Babeland blog and we’re posting them here so everyone can read them. So, without further delay, here is Bella in her first Babeland blog post!

First of all, I’d like to say that I am thankful that the adult industry has become exceptionally safer since I first started performing back in 1999. Back then, testing for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea was not required, which I found to be ridiculous since those were the most common STDs. However, I do believe that if the 30 day window were shortened to at MOST, 7 days, we could BETTER prevent the spread of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea, not to mention HIV.

Since I started testing people that I have sex with 3 days prior to our engagement, it has been over 5 years since I’ve contracted Chlamydia or Gonorrhea. I knowingly caught over a handful of performers with STDs by using this rule. As a female in this industry, I can say it feels DAMN good to not have to spend every week at the doctor’s office clearing up an STD and being out of work. I feel like I’m more excited about having sex and performing, knowing that I’m going to be STD free. I also think it would be smart for new performers in the business to be required to get a full panel test, prior to performing, not only for themselves to see where they stand, but for our industry as well. I think a lot of performers get into the business and already have the herpes virus and don’t know about it and then try to blame it on the industry.

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Here’s what’s going on in the blogosphere this week – lots of really fantastic stuff:

First, some Babeland press:

Rachel and Claire are in this year’s GO Magazine “100 Women We Love“. We love them too.

Next, some sex ed:

Cory over at About.com writes about sex toy injuries. I’m thinking maybe people need a lot more information about sticking things up their asses, no?

A fantastic article at Alternet about 15 sex laws and their harmful effects on Americans.

Em & Lo have a very timely article covering what our fathers taught us about sex. Happy Father’s Day!

Think you know everything about penises? I guarantee that you’ll learn something from this article on The Frisky.

Brokelyn (very cute name) ruminates on the relationship between sex and money and thinks Babeland might be able to help.

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