so you were a stripper?

did that get your attention? thought so. even though my name sounds perfect for a dancer (i mean can't you just hear it? "ladies & gents, get your dollar bills out for the dance stylings of shellaine"), it's not my name that inspires this question but what i do for a living. what do i do, you ask? you'll just have to muddle through my blog to find out!

first off, HELLO!!

second, everyone's kids are sooooooooooooooooo effing cute! probably some of the cutest offspring i have seen are right here.

last, has it really been 20yrs? can we get some confirmation on this? a friend just emailed me a pic of a guy who's fashion sense leaves ALOT to be desired & i telling you, it's still 1987 out there. somewhere.

so what happened to me & where have i been? read on, my fellow alums, read on.

after graduation, i had several lapses in good judgment. fashion school? not so much if patternmaking & sewing are not your thing. although i have to admit this $16,844 mistake paid for itself when the hubman & i realized that our 10 month old son resembled, wait for it, a mini bob's big boy. i scoured the internet for a bbb costume to no avail. with my trusty FIDM education, i was able to craft one mighty fine bbb costume. see pic to your left.

what else?

living in montrose - who lives in montrose? working for a jewelry company in pacoima (of all places) whose owner embezzled the CA state unemployment funds of all 743 employees. freelance designing for 1928 jewelry - the operative word being "free". and most regrettably, not working on the first "matrix" film.

when it was all over, it was 1996 & i somehow made it through the wilderness (can you name the song that line comes from?). tired of the fashion game, i took some classes digital imaging classes at AFI. i landed an internship at duck soup produckions (i swear that is how they spell it) where i became a technical director for kids cereal commercials & later a department supervisor. my next leap was into the film industry. i talked my way onto perhaps the monumentally worst film of all time & ended up making an insane amount of money for digitally making babies talk. everyone remembers their first & for me this would be "baby geniuses" which IMDB has ranked as the 40th worst movie in the history of movies. i worked for another digital effects house in santa monica & did FX for another handful of movies - making dogs talk, background, ahem "enhancement", sharks, a giant monster named godzilla & a scary house movie as well some christian doomsday flick. with this impressive resume (& i am being facetious here), academy award winning effects house rhythm & hues added me to their staff as a compositor. compositing is taking film elements (the background, actors, etc) & melding them with 3D computer generated elements to create a seamless intergration so that the viewer would never in a million years guess that that spaceship was never actually there when will smith was filmed.

the stripper thing is coming, i swear. hang with me.

so, that was my job, making the world a better place, pixel by pixel. one year i had the distinct pleasure of working on 5 of the 6 film nominees for nope, not the academy awards but the razzies: dr dolittle, little nicky, battlefield earth, flintstones: viva rock vegas & of course, my beloved, baby geniuses, all vying for worst movie of the year. although i do have an awesome tornado & f-14 sequence in X-Men:X2 that i am quite proud of.

in 1999, i launched a jewelry company called trophy girl, which supplied the majority of semi-precious jewelry for just about every show on TV at that time. trophy girl's success has been interrupted by a totally life changing event. no, not the stripper thing but we're getting warmer keep reading.

one thing about working in the FX industry: despite the crazy salaries one gets paid to pixel f*** film frames all day, it doesn't leave much time for a personal life. this leads to dating your co-workers. which inevitably happens even though you say it won't. always. & sometimes it has consequences. with that said, the hubman & i met, fell madly in love & he makes me laugh ALL the time. he is some kind of funny - a stand-up comedian & sometime screenwriter as well as an art director. we married in italy. siena, italy, in fact. under the gaze of the mayor of siena in a "office" so amazingly beautiful that i can't believe italian officials meet here to discuss bi-monthly trash pickup. we rented a villa in chiusi/chianciano & 18 of our nearest & dearest flew out to help celebrate our day as well as take in the tuscan countryside. we stayed in italia for 5 weeks & lived la dolce vita. i swear we will live there someday, even if i have to sell fruit on the side of the road in positano!

i have retired from the FX biz & these days teach pole dancing. yes, you read right, pole dancing. hence the question about being a former stripper. i teach classes at sheila kelley's S Factor in los angeles. about 5 years ago, a friend introduced me to sheila & i started taking classes out of her husband's office. 6 levels & a year & a half later i was looking to get out of FX so the hubman & i could focus on the babymakin' as having him on location in australia & me here working all nighters does not a baby make. sheila asked if i wanted to teach. i did & within a month left rhythm & hues.

besides teaching classes at the S Factor, i also train actresses for film roles. i worked with teri hatcher & choreographed some moves for her to demo on jay leno. i can do some crazy, flipalicious cirque du soliel-esque pole tricks while hanging from my big toe suspended 15 feet in the air. i love love love the S Factor & can't say enough good things about it! the positive influence the "S" has in women's lives is a cause that lives close to my heart. it's an absolutely amazing movement that, despite the press we've received from oprah, goes far beyond "a strip for your man" class. it's a journey that will hopefully lead students to love & accept their bodies as they are, not by the standards set by men or society. through the S Factor community, i have had the chance to meet some of the most
amazing/interesting/intellingent/passionate/awesome women & have had the chance to participate in programs that will allow girls of the future to stand up & confidently have a voice for themselves.

as an aside, the pole dancing/lapdancing really works wonders for getting knocked up. and when i say knocked up, i mean knocked up in a BIG way: on november 12th, 2005 we joyously welcomed fraternal boy/girl twins. dignan edward (extra points if you can name the movie that has a character called dignan) was born 1 minute before his sister gemma genevieve sprang out on his heels. they are almost 2 & extremely HI-larious. so here they are: gemma at the carousel, trying on her best "miss personality" poses. dignan is getting his best billy idol impression on, because he's a little comedian, just like daddy!

these days are full with my time split between playing mama to my awesome twins, getting some alone time with the hubman, teaching at 2 S Factor locations (LA & SM) & trying to get my jewelry company, trophy girl back on track. it's busy but definitely a fantastic place to be! thanks for reading.

shellaine corwel

p.s. and yes, we do have a pole in our house. the neighborhood kids think (wink wink nudge nudge) that i am a some kind of volunteer firefighter & that we have the BEST house for playdates!

Shellaine