Are People Without Clothes Like, Um, Emperors Without Clothes?

New York has entirely too many activities — from writing to dancing — that involve nudity, and frankly I’m pretty damn tired of every third creative activity in the City having some “burlesque” component, as if “indie” = “Weimar.”  Enough already.  And, while I have some lovely and talented writer friends who fall into this next category, the world does not need any more sex columnists, especially not attractive young female ones.  If an elderly fat man wants to write a sex column for some alternative newspaper, maybe we’ve got something novel and useful, though I won’t read it because he’s an elderly fat man.

That being said, I have to admire excellent cartoonist and weary artist model Molly Crabapple for realizing that two things that had been kept artificially separate throughout history — artist modeling and burlesque — could be combined (into her “Dr. Sketchy” classes) so that customers are consciously drawing naughty people instead of, as in most art classes, pretending not to have naughty thoughts (I praised the idea in my countdown of useful comics as my September 2007 Book Selection of the Month).

And you can — and should — hear Molly Crabapple explain “How to Draw the Female Figure” tomorrow (Wed., April 23) at 7pm at 75 Ninth Avenue (between 15th and 16th St.) at Chelsea Market Mind Games, the new weekly live interview hosted by Jen Dziura (whose guest one week later, on April 30, will be yours truly, Todd Seavey, on “How to Detect Bogus Health Stories”).