My friend Natasha Wang is a kickass National Championship-winning pole dancer [Updated]

Pole Cricket Reigns Supreme

Every time I look at this picture, I think "Holy shitsnacks! She's got crazy legs!"

Last month, one of my BFFs4Lyfe¹ won the United States Pole Dancing Federation pole-off. (Dance-off? I don’t know. She’s number one and that’s all that matters. ::raises foam finger::)

As a result she’s been thrust into the spotlight. She was featured in Huffington Post (which I won’t link because bite me, Arianna; but if you use the Googlez, you can find it quickly enough); she’s been contacted by TMZ, she’s going to perform on The View*** next week (I’m going to try to convince her to slip some Colon Blow in to Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s coffee — she’d never do it though. She plays by the rules); and this past Monday she performed on Good Day LA.

I have seen Natasha perform at competitions a bunch of times and I have never seen her fall, nor have I been nervous that she might fall. So when my neighbor Rio texted me “Your friend is on Good Day LA. She fell but she played it off really well…Would have seemed like less but the stupid news casters rushed over and were like “r u ok” a billion times..idiots” I thought, “Oh noes!”

I rushed to turn on the TV, but of course, I missed the performance and only caught the tail end of her trying to convince the newscasters that she was fine. I then rushed to call her and she was, as she had reiterated to the newscasters, totally fine. A bit embarrassed, but fine. I told her she looks hot on TV. I don’t think that really helped at the moment.

I wanted to blog about this yesterday, including a funny picture that she took in the Green Room [after the jump] which demonstrates that she has an awesome sense of humor about her “so not a big deal” fall, but I was too nervous to watch the Good Day LA video. What if it was a total face plant? Like one of those “Greg Louganis hits his head on the diving board” moments that will replay in my mind FO-EVAH. (I’m not kidding about ol’ Louganis. He went from “hot” to “damn, he busted his head” in two seconds flat — two seconds of video that would be replayed ad nauseum during the 1980-whatever Olympics.  LEAVE LOUGANIS ALOOOOOONE!!)

Finally I decided I had to watch the video. So, I just did — nervously, I might add. Every time her feet left the floor, I winced. When she hangs off the pole with her leg, I winced. When she does that crazy ass move where she’s perpendicular to the floor clinging to the pole, seemingly by her fingernails only, I winced.

And when I saw The Fall, I was relieved.

IT AIN’T THAT BAD.

It certainly ain’t Greg Louganis bad.

Bah!

In a year that, I imagine, pole dancing muckity mucks will begin making more noise about pole dancing being featured at the Olympics (if snowboarding is an Olympic sport, then pole dancing sure as hell is an Olympic sport), I’m proud that Natasha will be the face of USPDF.  She’s smart as a whip.  She’s also an accomplished poet (I know — she rubs your face in her awesomeness; it’s a bit much, really.)

As for pole dancing, she didn’t start until she was 29.   She is not nor has she ever been a stripper or an exotic dancer.  She prefers to do her routines barefoot rather than in crazy shoes (have you seen those shoes?  THEY ARE BANANAS!)

If you watch these videos, you will be absolutely amazed at Natasha’s athleticism and artistic ability, and the grace she exudes. So graceful is my dear friend Natasha, that she even falls gracefully.

***UPDATE: I started to write this post a couple weeks ago, and as I am wont to do got distracted because I — oooh shiny!  But after I originally started to write this post, Miss Thang redeemed herself on Good Day LA.  So here’s Natasha’s redemption video — I’m certain it has erased all memory of The Fall Heard Round the News Studio that caused the newscasters to suffer an acute case of the vapors.  “Mah, mah, mah, did you see that poor dear fall offa that pole.  I do declayah!  Somebody fetch me mah smellin’ salts.”

And here, you can watch Natasha showing the ladies on The View a thing or two about a thing or two:

Yup.  That’s my friend.  SHE’S SO CUTE ON TV.

Finally, here’s the outtake shot from the Good Day LA shenanigans:

UPDATE AGAIN: This video is one of my favorites. It’s her first win last summer, and that is me (and her fiance) yelling in the background:

Love her. LOVE.

¹ If one person makes a joke about her last name because “ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! Her name is Wang!”, I’m going to stab you where you stand.  I mean, really people: do you know how many Wangs there are in China?²

² (Okay, that just made me giggle because I’m four years old.  I’ll go get my stabbing knives.  Self-stabulation is never pleasant, but I should have heeded my own warning.)