SOMEBODY Has Been In the Back Room

Annie Drogyny send me this video, stating that she's the blonde one and I'm the brunette. As incorrect as I think that is in so many ways, it's still an interesting -- though sort of surface-only -- look at the "ugly" side of drag queen dynamics. It's "Sing Me Spanish Techno" by The New Pornographers.




I WAS hoping for a raunchy sex scene -- that would certainly wake them up at MuchMusic (or whatever it's called nowadays -- but instead we got a pretty accurate time compression of:

1. Drag mother adopts drag daughter in a sort of possessive way.
   
2. Drag daughter does her best to upstage drag mother (that isn't really played out in the video, maybe the daughter is just supposed to be doing her best).
3. Drag mother silently resents drag daughter.
4. Drag daughter moves on.
   

In my defense, I don't think I've ever actually HAD a drag daughter. Drag PEERS yes, but I've never taken anybody home and -- for example -- pulled my feathery top off my shoulders and plucked their eyebrows. It's too much trouble and it's sort of like having a child...one who borrows your clothes.

And I don't think I've ever resented anybody because I thought they were BETTER than me...there are lots of people out there who are better than me and I honestly wish them luck (if they're good people!)

What the video DOESN'T show -- after this petty drama -- is the endless back-and-forth wrangling as the two of them vie for control over a tiny piece of drag-land. The piece of drag-land is usually pretty crappy, but in the tunnel vision world of drag performance all that matters is that you've got it.

As an aside, I enjoyed the display of two very typical styles of drag performance: the "I'm so jaded and sly" style and the "wacky wide-eyed, wide-mouthed" style. Though this may also have something to do with the way certain men look in makeup...since drag is about exaggeration, usually the most prominent facial features get blown up in a sort of monstrous way. If you've got a big mouth, it looks even bigger in lipstick, and even BIGGER if you're doing an over-the-top lip-sync of The New Pornographers.

PS: If this post is odd it's because I was listening to "Shorty Blackwell" by The Monkees. It's Mickey Dolenz's attempt at topping Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. You can imagine what THAT sounds like.