RuPaul's Drag Race Season is Off and Running

RuPaul, RuPaul, RuPaul. Drag. Fierce. Mama. Hey, fake ladies! Face, face, face... Ay, loca! Work! Tranny. Chicken cutlets. Extravaganza eleganza! May the best woman win. If you don't love yourself, how'n the hell you gon' love somebody else? Bitch, I am from Chi•kaaa•go!

Uh... Can I get an amen up in here?

Ding ding! RuPaul's Drag Race is back for a second round in the battle of the network reality shows. And she's a-comin' out swingin'. It's a hit in the press. It's a ratings bonanza. Logo is playing reruns ad nauseam. And it's hooking new fans who hadn't seen season one.

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Season two is bigger, brighter, bitchier — boozier. No kidding. There's a back-stage bar now (stocked with Absolut) to fuel those behind-the-scenes histrionics — which have been spun off into a completely separate and equally delightful smack-down, Untucked.

Lifetime might want to rethink Models of the Runway.

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The only thing that has not changed this year — thank heaven — is dear old Ru. (Well, except that there's maybe a little less Vaseline on the lens this time!) Tough-love runway judge and insightful, avuncular workroom mentor — although, he's a little less "Make it work," and a little more "Make it. Work!"

Back to that bar. What a great job to be the bartender in the Interior Illusions Lounge! But what do the girls tip him with? Eyeliner secrets? I can imagine he'll come in handy as the numbers thin out over the coming weeks. Half-drunk queens, leaning off their bar stools, slurring complaints and tales of woe and loneliness into their barkeep's ear.

"An' annnother thing..."

The first episode is always a little overwhelming. We get to meet all the new girly boys. We get just a dash of backstory. (Two of the ladies are fathers!) The stage and the workroom are new and improved. Ru has enormous shoes. Merle is looking thinner and thinner. And before you know it, they're straddling a cannon, flapping their lashes, scratching each other's eyes out over window dressings, breaking sewing machines, and marching up and down the main stage. They don't waste any time. And a lot of the girls don't get much screen time at all. (You might want to check out the bonus scenes from the workroom.)

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It's tempting to draw comparisons to season one. Raven is a little Nina Flowers and a little Shannel. Pandora Boxx is giving us some Tammie Brown kookiness. We think we get a sense of who we like and who we hate, but honestly, it's way too early. And this thing is edited. I don't think "Mystique is a mistake." Morgan can't be that mean all the time. I have high hopes of all of them.

There's a fun new dynamic in this season: Some of the girls know each other. There are three sets of two who have... [wicked grin] a history. Those drag circles are closing in a bit, it seems. I think we'll see them compete against each other in ways they hadn't dreamed of.

It played out for the first time very early when college buddies Sahara Davenport and baby-queen Shangela Laquifa Wadley went head to head in the lipsynch for their lives. Sahara did not belong in the bottom two. (A-hem, Mystique Summer Madison, anyone?) And I didn't want Shangela to be sent home, either, but someone has to go. Skirts fly. Wigs flip. Those hot-glue gowns don't stand a chance out there! Sahara takes a flying drop split and breaks her umbrella...

Oh, but what delightful drag carnage!

It's always hard to see the first person cut. Poor Shangela. But guest judge Mike Ruiz is right: We're looking for the next drag superstar now, not in five years. I liked Shangela's energy and positive attitude and the way she tries to keep the peace during the Morgan/Mystique celebrity death match. The others were worried that she would be a burden, being so new, but I think she surprised them. Anyway, I'm holding out hope that they'll bring Shangela back in a later episode. It's one of my favorite elimination show stunts.

As for Mystique? It would have sucked to lose the big girl in the first episode like poor Porkchop from last year. But why is there only one — again? Poor Mystique has to represent all on her own. (And I'm not sure she's the best representative. I hope to be proven wrong.) She's going to have to pull more than a drop split out of her handbag if she things she's gonna win this thing.

There are a lot of supersize — even middleweight — drag queens working for Beer Nuts in clubs across the United States. Why so many skinny bitches this season? Out of all the big, beautiful queens, Mystique is the best? We'll see. I'm hoping for better things from her in the coming weeks.

Fish and Slips

Here is a piece of subway art that's had me distracted and bothered for some time now.

As you can see, it depicts a subway car as a zeppelin-cum-flying fish.

The fish, transporting all kinds of bizarre characters, floats gracefully above some version of New York City. There's a knight, a couple of aliens, a guy playing the saxophone, a woman in a red dress with a giant lizard on a leash, a boy and a girl making out, a painter, a couple of punk rockers, a ballet dancer, a guy reading the newspaper, and a business man falling out an open door.

I've seen every one of those characters on the subway before. Almost. OK, so substitute a soldier for the knight, and a couple of clowns in full make-up instead of aliens. Plus, anything goes on Halloween. And it wasn't a woman with a lizard, but I did once see a man pull a lizard out from his pant leg and try to get some teenage girls to play with it, eventually by tossing it at one of them. (That's not a euphemism. I am talking about a reptile. It bounced off the girl and landed on its back on the floor.)

I know this is supposed to be a representation of the width and breadth of humanity that depends on New York City public transportation. (Oh, look at those characters. Isn't New York a wacky place? Aren't we crazy? We love us! And there's an echo of Atomic Age futurism and industrial hope. But there's something about that businessman that bothers me.

Forget about what it might mean, e.g., the recent failures of American finance, artistic hostility toward briefcases. I'm talking about the execution of the cartoon itself. It's very stylistic. The artist was clearly careful in his or her choices, holding to certain ideas of perspective and geometry: the mechanical shine to the fish, the shapes of the buildings and bridges, the boats on the river.

But look at the businessman's arm.

He's reaching into the car, grasping a pole fixed to the center of the floor. There's no way he could have a grip on that post and be hanging completely out of the car. His arm would have to be double its present length!

It's a trick of perspective; three dimensional reasoning intruding on a two-dimensional image. It's a mistake.

Yet the artist seems to be so deliberate about everything else. I might conversely assume it's intentional. But that just seems worse. Why ruin the order of the whole thing to achieve that single sight gag? It seems so imprecise, careless. Almost lazy.

A joke told poorly sucks, no matter how good the punchline is supposed to be.

Madonna's 'Celebration' (of abs)

Madonna released her newest video, for the title single from her forthcoming retrospective album Celebration, today for free on iTunes.

The song itself is kind of a yawn, even in this remixed form, but the video features several shirtless dancers whose perky nipples and ripped abs make it all so very worthwhile.

Par exemple:







They must be so cold in the winter!

In Memoriam: Joey Ruggiero

It's one of life's great cliches that everyone comes into your life for a reason. It does not always follow, however, that they go out of your life for a reason, too. Sometimes they just go, and it's cruel, and it's brutal.

I did not know Joey well. We met in January, and he was gone by mid-April. Every time I saw him in those brief months, he brought some new delight into my life — a fun, clever friend of his; a fabulous place for brunch; a ceramic two-tiered deviled egg serving tray.

Since his death, I have been remembering all of the "lasts." You always remember those: the last tweet, the last Facebook update, the last photo I took of him, the last time he was at my house, the last time I was in his disastrously messy car.

Everything around me is a reminder, as if a trace of life is left behind everywhere he went, like a scent. Whenever I'm on South Street, I remember the last time he got new plugs for his ear lobes. RuPaul reminds me of him. Britney Spears reminds me of him. Blood oranges, enchiladas, Hello Kitty.

Our lasts were, in most cases, also firsts. The last meal we shared was at our annual Easter party, which we thought would be the first of many he would attend. It was at that party, he told us, that he had his first-ever green bean casserole. Also his last.

The lasts hurt so much because they're a reminder of the obliterated potential. You decide to let someone into your life as a friend, and you can imagine how things will be years on: the holidays and birthdays, the summers and winters, the drunken nights out, the drunken nights in.

We have the lasts to be grateful for, but we can't help but feel robbed of an undiscovered future and memories we never had a chance to make. And then we remember that the future that's gone is his. We still have ours, and that's more to be grateful for.

Sometimes I think we don't really lose anybody. We just find them somewhere else. I find Joey continuously in the friends we inherited from him.

Joey collected people, and he carried a whole world with him. His was an exuberant life that spilled over into everyone around him. Like all is other possessions, we are left behind to be redistributed or to be gathered closer. We have chosen the latter.

Last week would have been his birthday. We had cake and champagne in his honor. And I saw once again how lucky we were to know him, and how grateful we should be for the people he brought to our lives.

We are all so different, and we all knew him for different reasons, but we all fit together. And wherever we go, he goes.

Rest in peace, friend.

Bare Bottoms or Bear Bottoms?

Why does so much toilet paper packaging feature pictures of babies? Clouds, yes. Fuzzy, anthropomorphized forest creatures, sure. They conjure images of softness, lightness, cleanliness. And they are a momentary distraction from the essential business of toilet paper.

I suppose babies are soft. They're clean, if you make them clean. But anyone who has stood in line at the post office with a kid on the hip knows they are not light. I don't associate infants with toilet paper. They can't even use the stuff. If we could get babies to use toilet paper, parenthood would be a far less messy enterprise.

Make it Work!

Isaac Mizrahi reveals the contents of his head. Without surgery!

The competition is getting fiercer and fiercer on The Fashion Show. With only eight contestants broken up into teams of two — and only four designs to judge this week — it's getting pretty hard to sort the haute couture from the clearance rack.

This week, Isaac sits out the mini challenge so he can make a dramatic entrance later as the inspiration for this week's assignment: design a dress for his collection! They're on the job this week — and appropriately they have an eight-hour day to complete their finished designs.

As if that's not bad enough, Daniella gets randomly assigned to work with Reco. Not only do they have to deal with each other (or not deal, as the case may be), but their colleagues, and we the audience, are treated once again to their bickering.

Daniella and Reco (don't) feel the love. More importantly, what IS Merlin wearing? He looks like an extra from the Mos Eisley cantina scene in Star Wars.

There is a ray of light, however, when the producers pull Becky Newton (Amanda from Ugly Betty) out from behind the curtain to judge the mini-challenge.

Previously... on Ugly Betty...

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Eat Your Heart Out, Trekkies!