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Faux-bulosity

The Faux Queen Contest: it's probably the most cheeseball, most entertaining, most only-in-San-Francisco, most you-had-to-be-there event I've seen in a loooong time. A Faux Queen, you see, is a drag queen trapped in a woman's body...or more comprehensibly, a woman dressed like a man dressed like a woman. Simple! Fun! Ripe for outrageousness!

The thirteen contestants ran the gamut from Bride of Chucky to Southern hot stuff to just-too-cute.

-The first contestant, Ann Ziety (think about it) (but not too hard), came out wearing freak-show makeup and twirling batons while lip-synching "Miss World" by Hole. I was cheering like mad. It got better...

-Contestant #2, Anita Cocktail, was my early-on pick to win. (She did. Amid giant heaving sobs. No suspense for you!) Sporting a giant martini glass, styrofoam olives coming out of her bouffant, a dress with more olives implied all around, and a voice midway between a gravel crusher and Darth Vader, she had the attitude down ("I will kill you, bitch!"). She sang (Yes, sang! Damn good singing voice, too.) a medley of highly (boldface doesn't do it justice) salacious songs (something about licking and screwing and W-O-M-A-N), all the while demonstrating an agility of tongue that put Gene Simmons to shame. Really. She made over $100 in tips (for SF Sex Info and the Women's Community Center--oh yeah! it's a charity event, by the way!), whereas everyone else hovered in the high 20s.

-The contrast between Anita and the third contestant (no name necessary) was beyong marked. 'My talent is...I have breasts! And I can't lip sync!' Ugh. (She won second runner-up and I felt sick.)

Other highlights:

-One woman did a really cute comedy routine as an on-air personality for the Psychic Shopping Network. ("Here we have the all-seeing third eye, for 20-20-20 vision!") She put a lot of work into it, had the drag queen look down, and the props were great (especially the crystal ball-phone--too bad she couldn't accept a collect call from the afterlife). I tipped her, since no one else seemed to.

-Winner of the "Too Fish" award (i.e. last place, as the contestant who sadly presents herself most like a real woman) did a number from Cabaret. Whatever. The judges announced this was her second year straight winning it. Sheesh.

-Runner-up (and easy crowd-favorite) was the not-exactly-aptly-named Rat Bitch, a total goth girl who came out on stage with two Beetlejuice-looking backup dancers carrying red candles. Black and purple clothes, white makeup with lips seemingly tied together. Damn good costumes. She stood there looking forlorn as some vaguely industrial music started...the tune changed (hey, that sounds oddly familiar...but I couldn't place it), and they put their candles down and started busting out. The vocal track began, and damned if RB didn't maintain her Siouxsie aspect all the way through Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now." Brought down the house, she did.

-The Judges' Award went to one of the two most bizarre performances of the evening (the other I had a personal connection to, as you'll see, dear reader). I forget the poor dear's name, but she definitely has a career in avant-garde art out there. The song was a Dolly Parton number, I think. (Dolly or Tammy or another of those underrated country goddesses who seemed to dominate the evening--Windy Plains, last year's winner, also did a couple of performances that night, one to a rousing patriotic country hymn called "United States of America" accompanied by two gayboys in vaguely Boy-Scout-looking attire, waving big American flags.) ...the gist was "it's great that feminists are making waves in the cities, but I'm a country girl looking after a couple of kids and I've got another on the way." The stage was set up with a vaguely kitchen-setting: table, bottle of Jack Daniels, phone, etc. Our darling was wearing a long curly blond wig, bad make-up (of course), and a big fake pregnant belly under a sundress. OK, fine, cute, everything's going well...the song is starting to wind down, when suddenly she picks up a butcher's knife and performs a C-section on herself! Fake blood and placenta spill everywhere, she reaches in and grabs a plastic baby doll, and tosses it out to the crowd. Ho-ly-crap. (Note: when the awards are announced later, she is wearing a bikini and is very, very thin.

-Then there was Asian Princess. She must have known she was not going to win anything, because she definitely was the most laissez-faire about her act. She started out in a cowboy hat and some unmemorable outfit, dancing with a guy in a gorilla suit (also with cowboy hat), singing along with to Shania Twain's "Man, I Feel Like a Woman." So far, so blah. Then she leapt off the stage, gorilla following, and sauntered through the crowd right past me, turned on her heel, and made a beeline for the stage again, surreptitiously grabbing my pal Hao's wrist (somebody had to drive me there, kids--and why wouldn't an Asian Princess want an Asian Prince?), and reascending with him in tow. As she lassoed Hao and sat him down on a rockinghorse, the gorilla tied his hands behind him. They put a boa around his neck, smeared lipstick all over his face, and plopped a (de rigueur) cowboy hat on his head, while making him rock and (at one point) sing. I really wish I'd had my camera with me, instead of just a priceless memory and a blog to announce it to the world. Ah, well. I was laughing on the floor.

There were also a Macy Gray look-alike (no comment) and a hilarious bug-eyed baby-doll girl who performed Cyndi Lauper's "Hole in my Heart That Goes All the Way to China," filling it with increasingly more blooper sound-effects to which she reacted in terror. Beat-the-ground funny. But the real hero of the evening was the woman at the SFSI table who dumped condoms (male and famale!), lube, and lollies into my hands, proclaiming that the more I took, the less she had to carry home. Too kind.
peachy as always, Mike at 5:22 PM