TeeHeeLawrence 
Junior Member
Registration Date: 05-07-2010
Posts: 16
Location: New York City
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Remember, if you will, the celebrated early-30’s movie, GRAND HOTEL. It was made by the rich and powerful MGM, which filled it with some of its top stars, including the legendary Greta Garbo and the young and (now infamous mommie) Joan Crawford.
GRAND HOTEL interweaved the stories of guests and workers at a swanky Berlin hotel. Included were a depressed diva ballerina, a desperate jewel thief, a dying man on a last holiday, a ruthless magnate, a concierge nervously awaiting news about the birth of his child, and a stenographer hoping to score a rich husband.
What makes the movie work is how deftly the disparate characters’ stories parallel each other and intersect as they build to their respective climaxes. It’s such a clever tapestry that one imagines that pulling out one strand--the ballerina and the jewel thief, say--while it would still entertain, would cause it to lose the significance of drama-in-context, not to mention undermine the work as a whole. Excerpts from GRAND HOTEL don’t do the whole movie justice.
This brings me to the swanky Hotel Plaza of your tickle tapestry, HOTEL COOCHIE COO, and its tantalizing bevy of scheming, lusting, teasing, manipulating, and tickling beauties, all, quite happily, clad in nylon stockings, easily rendered shoeless, and eventually proven spectacularly ticklish. As of yet, I haven’t had the pleasure of reading the work in toto. I’ve only viewed MAIDS IN DISTRESS, one of the two extractions from your tickling tapestry. MAIDS is fun and sexy, but it’s obvious that, stripped from the whole, it’s not as much fun, or as satisfying dramatically.
Those of us on, ah, limited budgets, who have to approach such a magnum opus in installments, will simply have to make the best of it until we can appreciate the whole. And there is much to appreciate in MAIDS, even as it’s clear that it’s only part of a cornucopia of tickling turnabouts.
There’s the usual affectionate and mischievous byplay between Aynur and Hatice, each one manipulating the other (and clearly allowing herself to be manipulated) into ticklish situations. Their regular Cinderella routine is becoming endearing. I suspect that I would be disappointed if they appeared and it didn’t happen. (I envision a gag panel in a future tale showing either Cinderella’s shoe closet, conspicuously displaying numerous single shoes.)
Portia’s coming to Hatice’s rescue is certainly the action highlight of the episode. Her google-eyed expression when her advantage over the clever Aynur is quickly gone with her pump tickled this reader.
Portia’s readiness to join in the tickling fun (and her own susceptibility) makes her small role in the excerpt maddeningly tantalizing.
In this overall light-hearted episode, Martina’s entrance is like that of the Wicked Witch of the West in the movie THE WIZARD OF OZ. Her “interview†with Hatice is not unlike the frightening scene in OZ when, having kidnapped Dorothy to her castle, the Witch demands the ruby slippers. Martina’s a domineering woman who positively sneers when she tickles, and thus is guaranteed to be subjected to it later.
I see why you had to include this scene in the extraction (how Hatice lost HER shoe and why she later so quickly scoots under the bed in the suite), but, unresolved, it does clash with the antics in the hotel suite.
In this extract, Nadja is a cipher. Her rather half-hearted defense of the bullied Hatice, tho’, does make one wish the stylish lawyer her own ticklish nightmare. And sure enough, I see, that’s what you have in store for her in the overall story and the other extract…
In fetish terms, MAIDS is vivid and generous, in your usual manner and vernacular:
Stylish shoes are teasingly removed... nylon-clad tootsies are lovingly revealed. Add to those erotically-exciting elements a feather duster, which never fails to tickle the imagination of this reader. And characters who verbally tease with “coochie coochie coo†will ALWAYS sing to me.
Thus, though it be sadly pulled from its larger ticklish context (most apparent in the Hatice/Martina confrontation), MAIDS IN DISTRESS is a puckish and playful diversion.
I do have a few quibbles. I’ve never done computer rendering of the human form, so I can’t speak as to how challenging it is. But, clearly more than renders of pencil, ink, and brush, it seems to lead the artist to pursue realism more easily, in the manner of photography. Most of the time in MAIDS, this realism is conveyed acceptably. When a nylon-clad foot is lovingly depicted (as in page 12, panel 2 and page 24, panels 3 & 5), it’s considerably MORE.
There a few shots, tho’, where the anatomy seems a bit, well, stretched. Aynur‘s arms make like Plastic Man‘s in a couple of jarring places (page 2, panel 1; page 23, panel 2).
But these ARE minor quibbles in a tale where the body language is usually expressively spot-on.
Since I’m indulging in quibbles, I can’t help feel that an opportunity was lost to further the fun of the situation promised by the third panel of pg. 25, with Portia’s RHT sole in hand and Hatice’s fetchingly-upturned sole so handy. If only Aynur had been allowed to catch Hatice’s ankle in her own single leg lock, she might have continued to aggressively tickle Portia into helplessness AND do the same for Hatice. It might have made for another page of Aynur ever so briefly bettering her two bigger, stronger “wrestling†foes.
But I can hear you groaning. The story, after all, as a whole is 129 pages long as it is!
Hmm…129 pages, eh? That’s a LOT of coochie coo. Can an eager ticklephile fond of nylon-clad tootsies survive the full story? Stay tuned…
(BTW, as MAIDS clearly shows, HOTEL COOCHIE COO has more giggles and cute nylon tootsies by far than the venerable GRAND HOTEL. Take THAT, MGM!)
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