This Saturday: Brooklyn’s First Inner-Beauty Pageant

Punderdome impresario Jo Firestone has a new project in the works. While her competitive punning events — co-hosted with her St. Louis-based, Rodney Dangerfield-impersonating dad (obviously) — are quickly becoming a Brooklyn institution (at least, to a certain set of Brooklynites), Firestone isn’t content to rest on her laurels thinking of groaners about technology/popular allergies/the periodic table. A girl can’t live on convoluted punchlines alone!

And so, guided by an enviable sense of the BK zeitgeist/general pluck, she’s launched Brooklyn’s first-ever real-life Inner Beauty Pageant. Our beauty queens have been recognized. Our inner-beauty queens remain unsung. Until now.

This Saturday night at 8, Firestone will host the “very funky show,” featuring a motley crew of “quirky (read: confident) individuals” duking it out for the title of “most inner beautiful.” Some of the contestants are comedians; others have been culled from Craigslist, flyers, and word-of-mouth. All of them are inner-beautiful. But only one is the most inner-beautiful. To separate the inner-beautiful wheat from the inner-beautiful chaff, there will be talent acts, interviews about world peace, and a homemade swimsuit competition.

“I’m telling you, it’s gonna be just like a beauty pageant,” she says. “Only it’s not about beauty. It’s about people. It’s a people pageant. There’s even going to be pet giveaways. Just like they do for the beautiful pageant-toddlers.”

The winner will be chosen by the crowd, Punderdome-style. “You get to vote on who wins!  Just like democracy!  America!  Inner Beauty!” Unlike at the Punderdome, however, the pageant is going to be Clap-O-Meter-free: they’ll use silent audience voting “so we don’t hurt anybody’s feelings too much.”

The whole night goes down at the Film Biz Recycling Prop Shop (540 President St — technically Gowanus) on Saturday, August 18th, at 8pm (doors at 7:30.) Despite what the poster says, tickets are $10, cash only.