Dragqueen(dot)Racing

 In April of this year, the year of our lord, two thousand and twenty-four, a YouTube content creator named Kat Blaque was presented with an opportunity by her management firm to appear on reality TV star Travis Kelce's podcast.  As part of the preparation for the upcoming appearance, Kat Blaque participated in a technology preparation call to ensure that she could be interviewed for Taylor Swift's boyfriend Travis Kelce's podcast without technical problems or poor audio quality.  During this call, Kat Blaque was asked to add a permission to her Facebook business page that would allow the podcast livestream to take place via Facebook.  After concluding the technical preparation call, Kat Blaque went back to work on her content creation and awaited a scheduling call to finalize the details for her appearance on barbecue sauce entrepreneur Travis Kelce's podcast.   Several days later, however, she noticed that her Facebook account was no longer under her cont...

  In 1570, Queen Elizabeth I was facing massive pressure from her advisors, foreign monarchs, the Vatican, and most of Europe to choose a husband.     I will spare you a deeper discussion of the geo-political intrigue of the era to say that Elizabeth was subjected to relentless harassment because she was a female monarch and that carried the social expectation forcing women to respond to “May I speak to the man of the house, please,” and not even royalty was exempt.     One of the leading contenders (at least on paper) for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage was Henry, Duke of Anjou.    Though he would later become Henry III, king of France, he was the fourth son of Henry II and therefore not seriously considered in line for the throne in 1570 when he began courting Elizabeth.    Royals further away from succession have historically enjoyed more freedom from court and many earned reputations as hedonistic and lascivious, to say nothing of the drunke...

 By 1958, Marilyn Monroe was no longer a functioning drug addict.  She had taken two years off from acting as her drug addiction intensified during her marriage to Arthur Miller, but executives at 20th Century Fox enticed Marilyn to return to work regardless to take the role of Sugar in Some Like It Hot by offering her 10% of the film's profits in addition to her salary.  She ultimately agreed when her husband pushed her to take the studio's offer.  The production of Some Like It Hot was difficult for everyone involved due to Marilyn's state of addiction.  She was consistently late to set or missed filming days altogether.  She frequently argued with the director, Billy Wilder, and her co-star Tony Curtis.  She struggled so badly to remember or deliver her lines that she reportedly took 60 takes to get the line "Where's that bourbon?" even with the help of cue cards.  She was clearly unwell and needed help, but she was surrounded by enablers and p...

For the release of his third album of greatest hits, deceptively titled Greatest Hits Volume II, country music megastar Alan Jackson included two brand new tracks, something of a rarity for greatest hits compilation albums.  The first of these is It's Five O'clock Somewhere, a beachside bar anthem featuring legendary flip-flop enthusiast Jimmy Buffett.  The other song, Remember When, plots a much different emotional course through the listener's ears, en route to the depths of human existence.  There is no description of this song that can adequately explain the internal anguish Remember When inflicts upon the listener.  It's a song that isn't heard so much as experienced, and that experience is pain - an excruciating and lingering pain that refuses to leave you even when the tears have dried and the mascara has been reapplied.   Remember When tells the life story of a generic romantic couple from the first-person plural perspective.  It chronicles the...

 In September 2022, a teacher at a public high school in Ontario Canada began wearing an obvious blonde wig, eyeglasses that are typically associated with elderly women, brightly colored spandex clothing, and, most notably, comically oversized Z-cup prosthetic breasts.  In the few interviews found online, this teacher stated that the breasts were real and simply the result of a genetic condition, and that this teacher also was intersex, having XX chromosomes but male primary and secondary sex characteristics.  Because the local school board had recently adopted policies that allowed transgender teachers to dress as their lived gender, this teacher was allowed to continue wearing the wig and prosthetics to work.  These gender affirming policies, it seemed, had a glaring fault that was much too dangerous to leave unmitigated.  How could such a person be allowed around the children?  Surely the powerless and debaucherous Ontario school board's inaction was a s...

It’s 8:00pm on a Monday.  I’m watching the 1995 film Empire Records because it’s Rex Manning Day.  If you’re not familiar with that cult classic movie, an aging pop star named Rex Manning makes a stop at locally owned Empire Records for an autograph signing in an effort to restart his career.  Years after the film had mostly faded into obscurity, internet irony junkies noticed that the date listed on the posters advertising Rex Manning’s in-store appearance is April 8.  The characters in the film also refer to the day as “Rex Manning Day” with both excitement and revulsion.  In the theatrical release version of the film, Rex Manning is forced to leave the store in disgrace after traumatizing one adoring and naive employee, having a back office tryst with another employee, and then getting into a physical altercation with yet another.  On his way out he unrepentantly hurls one last insult at the fine young employees of Empire records and is not seen again....

In February of 1994, Jim Carrey was still a D-list celebrity known primarily for his recurring characters from In Living Color.  One of those characters, Vera de Milo, was a buffoonish female body builder who chewed mouthfuls of steroid pills, spoke with a deep, raspy lisp, and whinnied like a horse for some reason (I assume this was an allusion to the fact that many body building steroids were derived from steroids given to racehorses).  The humor behind the character was a slapstick blend of mockery and ridicule.  Male characters in each sketch were repulsed by her overtly sexual advances.  Vera's bikini top was often stripped from her, revealing Jim Carrey's bare male chest.  There was no subtext or social commentary, no layers or comedic depth to the presentation of the character.  The laughs came from the cruelty.  Look at this freak and laugh.  Isn't she disgusting? By the end of 1994, Jim Carrey had starred in three films in that one year t...