from www.burbankleader.com – Staring at the wooden rod like a math problem she needed to solve, Leilani Caluya tugged at her snug jeans, arched her back, and shimmied beneath the 3-foot-high limbo challenge to an earsplitting ovation.

“I used to be a hula dancer,” said the former adult movie actress known as Lani Lei as she clutched her first-place prize — a $40 restaurant gift certificate and free porn.

Welcome to another Tuesday night at Sardo’s Grill and Lounge in Burbank.

Each week, throngs of men and women fill the 41-year-old restaurant to ogle a favorite pastime among adult entertainers — karaoke. Begun six years ago this week, Porn Star Karaoke draws industry veterans and up-and-comers to show off their other talents — singing and dancing.

Crowd capacity for Sardo’s is 100 people, and Porn Star Karaoke packed them in Tuesday, bellies to backs.

Sporting a dress that fit her like shrink-wrap, adult industry actress Nicki Hunter explained that the weekly event is a combination reunion and networking opportunity. She hosted Porn Star Karaoke in 2006, until she was diagnosed with leukemia. With her cancer in remission, Hunter beamed about being back to host Tuesday night’s anniversary celebration.

“These people are my family,” she said, stopped short by Sardo’s Manager Seymour Satin, who sought her out to hand back the Blackberry she had dropped. “See what I mean!”

It was Satin who first brought regular karaoke to Sardo’s six years ago. He offered children’s karaoke and family night, as well as karaoke for the singles crowd. Then, one Tuesday night in 2003, a handful of porn stars popped in to have a few drinks and kick back after a hard day’s work. Being none too shy, the adult entertainers signed up to sing almost immediately, Satin said.

With all eyes on them, the buxom actresses gripped the microphone, flaunted their attributes and belted lyrics to song favorites such as “Super Freak” by Rick James and Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” They had so much fun they brought their friends the next week.

And so did the patrons.

“You never know what to expect,” the bespectacled Satin said smiling, as a line of tight-topped gals clipped by in stiletto heels, each stopping to plant a kiss on his cheek.

Outside, Satin smoked his umpteenth Capri cigarette and said he neither watches nor participates in pornography. He classified the adult entertainers as “dear friends,” but polices the parking lot more on Tuesdays than other nights, noting it’s usually the fans, not the talent, who can become too rowdy.

“They seem to be pretty well-behaved,” Burbank Sgt. Robert Quesada said of the scantily dressed regulars at Sardo’s. Quesada added that officers have asked patrons to smoke farther away from the entrance, but “we haven’t had any reports of anything out of the ordinary.”

According to the Adult Industry News website, Porn Star Karaoke is the longest running weekly industry event in the history of adult entertainment. It has attracted porn stars Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson, as well as mainstream celebrities, such as Jeff Conaway, best known for his roles in the movie, “Grease” and 1970s television show, “Taxi.”

“I like coming here. These are real down-to-earth folks,” Conaway said several Tuesdays ago, when he sang David Bowie’s “Space Odyssey.”

Hollywood resident Ed Trucco described the adult entertainers as “cool people” who just want to have fun.

“There’s a misconception that because they’re porn stars they’re going to take their clothes off [everywhere],” he said.

Patron Chris Lawrence wouldn’t have minded a little disrobing. Hopeful, the 32-year-old North Hollywood resident stayed into the wee hours on a recent Tuesday, but had only the actresses’ karaoke skills to admire.

Or not.

“She didn’t sing that great but she was smokin’ hot,” he said, noting he plans to return with more friends.