Drag Contest: Vote on the Best Marilyn Monroe

We don't think Jimmy James will be there, but he sets a high standard for those who will.
When Michelle Williams was cast as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, the blogosphere lit up with outrage and petulant assertions that "even drag queens" could do it better. Well, duh. When it comes to larger-than-life female sexuality, drag queens always do it better.

A contest Wednesday night at the Eureka Theatre called Marilyn Madness will prove which one does it best. Theater company 42nd Street Moon has invited a parade of Blonde Bombshells to pout, heave, and flutter their bedroom eyes for the cameras prior to the staging of Sugar (whose director, Dyan McBride, we interviewed last week), a musical comedy based on the screenplay Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. (While this 40th anniversary production features a real-live girl in the title role, don't hold it against her; Joe and Jerry still get dolled up.)

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Photos: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Crown Hunky Jesus 2012

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Michael Devin
In an act of unprecedented sacrilege, Funky Jesus gives the devil horns as he's crowned Hunky Jesus 2012.
Bonnets and bunny ears were among the various kinky and religion-bending outfits and accessories populating Dolores Park on Sunday as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence led hundreds through a San Francisco-style Easter celebration, but it was Funky Jesus -- playing a cross-shaped guitar -- who won top honors. He was crowned Hunky Jesus 2012 in a contest that marked the order's 33rd birthday.

During the full day of events, champagne bottles were uncorked at every turn and the smell of marijuana filled the air. The Red Hots Burlesque started the celebration, which also included a contest for the most elaborately decorated bonnet.

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Oh, Jesus! The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Turn Easter on Its Head

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Kere Keys
Hunky Jesus? Yes please.
​It's hard to believe that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are "ruining it for everyone," as some detractors have claimed. Over 33 years, they've raised untold amounts of money for charitable causes, crusaded against bigotry and hatred, and for a few years they even brought order and focus to Halloween in the Castro. All this while holding a prominent spot on the pope's official list of heretics. The Sisters again invite the community to converge this Sunday on the birthplace of their order, Dolores Park, for their annual birthday party and Easter celebration.

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Thrillpeddlers Gender-Bends History With Another Cockettes Musical: Hot Greeks

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David Wilson
What do you get when you cross an ancient comedy with high-school football and gender-bending humor? Hot Greeks.
​Thrillpeddlers continues its revival of original Cockettes musicals this week with the more-than-suggestively titled Hot Greeks. Scrumbly Koldewyn, an original member of the Cockettes, San Francisco's gender-bending theater troupe of the late 1960s and early '70s, joins artistic director Russell Blackwood to restore the original 1972 play, an absurdist adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. In the earliest days of satire, Aristophanes railed against the protracted Peloponnesian War in the comedic play by suggesting that the women deny men any sex until they ended the war. Hot Greeks is loosely based on the play, but it isn't about ending a war. Instead, it's set in the World War II era, and we're thrust into the middle of a college football rivalry. In their quest for victory on the gridiron, the heroes bounce to a 1940s soundtrack as they make their way to the Oracle of Delphi (in this case, "The Hot Twat of Tangier").

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"Female Trouble" Explores the Flipside of Masculinity via Film

Categories: Drag

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A still from Zackary Drucker's Fish
​The monthlong series at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, "Bros Before Hos," explores "masculinity and its discontent" via avenues such as vintage stag movies, the bonding experience between men in Finnish saunas, and the life of strongman Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun. Sunday's short-film program "Female Trouble" navigates the twisting prism of feminine roles.

In Every Woman, lissome New York performance artist Narcissister does a reverse striptease to Chaka Khan music, donning clothes removed from her own orifices. (The always-masked Narcissister made a splash on last season's America's Got Talent with cartwheels that revealed a third head under her petticoats, but she is a longtime favorite within the downtown art world.)

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Queer Performance Art Series The News Starts Strong at SOMArts

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Josue Rivera
DIAmanda Kallas I Dia Dear
​Queer performance art series The News made a powerful debut Tuesday night at SOMArts. The evening offered an array of queer narratives, made even more timely and poignant by the federal appeals court ruling on Proposition 8 handed down that morning. Giving intense performances and showing works-in-progress were DIAmanda Kallas | Dia Dear, La Chica Boom, Peter Max Lawrence, Rotimi Agbabiaka, and Shaunna Vella. We also saw the Brontez Purnell Dance Company and Magic Meals.

Host Kolmel WithLove, a filmmaker and performer who curates The News, started things with her own performance in the gallery space of SOMArts. DIAmanda Kallas and La Chica Boom gave show-stopping performances that truly blew us away.

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Thrillpeddlers Opens Its Season Debaucherously with Vice Palace

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Tony Wichowski and Leigh Crow in Vice Palace
​We can't get enough of Thrillpeddlers, San Francisco's theater of fetish, the grotesque, and the ridiculous. Starting their 2012 season Friday night, Thrillpeddlers revive two of their recent musicals originally written by the Cockettes, a gender-bending San Francisco troupe from the late 1960s and early '70s. Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical runs Jan. 27 through March 3, and Hot Greeks runs March 22 through May 5. The latter is restored from the cut version that played in 2010 to a full-length musical revue.

Were it not for artistic director Russell Blackwood, his dedicated cast (most of whom will reprise their original roles), and his Theatre du Grand Guignol-inspired venue, the Hypnodrome, the Cockettes' absurdist musical revues might well be lost to history. But thanks to his partnership with composer Scrumbly Koldewyn, a founding member of the Cockettes, the rollicking pieces will enjoy one final celebratory run before the group moves on to new projects.

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The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Prepare for a Fabulous Apocalypse

Categories: Drag, Fashion

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Kate Conger
Monistat performs the opening number at Project Nunway
​The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence lived up to the extravagance of their name last weekend at the third annual Project Nunway, a decadent fashion show thrown to raise money for the order's community outreach projects. Local designers teamed up with sisters to design their 2012-inspired ensembles, crafted from recycled materials. The nuns strutted in two runway shows, punctuated by an endearing rendition of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by transgender performer Cassandra Cass.

As a lover of all things "end times," I was smitten with the show. Click through to check out some of the most outstanding looks of the apocalyptic evening.

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Attend the Folsom Street Fair on Sunday -- and Make a Conservative Angry

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Mark I. Chester
An image from the exhibit "Fear No Art" that runs concurrently with the Folsom Street Fair
​Do you enjoy pleasure? Read on: You may not be ready to truss up your balls and ride a lifeguard into the heart of Folsom Street Fair, but that does not leave you out of this deeply and delightfully deviant party. (We've described this gathering as what Newt Gingrich probably thinks of when he hears the words "gay sex.") Sure, there will be the usual dangling wangs, slapping crops, firm buns, sagging boobs under leather vests, and expert rope-handling. You will see things you never expected to see in your life, and things that have become unexpectedly familiar. For you are a person of the world! There will be three stages for live bands, dance areas with an exhaustive list of DJs, an art show, and plenty of fetish exhibition.

Renowned "gay radical sex photographer" Mark I. Chester and Shilo McCabe co-curated "Fear No Art," a group show of aesthetically disparate artists working in the erotic and the sexual. Read on for more about the fair and more images from the exhibit.

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Drama Fuels the Fabulousness as Queens from Rupaul's Drag Race Visit GlamaZONE

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Yara Sofia: Oh, the calamity!
​We've said before that any drag queen worth her foundation needs a dose of calamity to keep her fabulousness from getting complacent. Drama and tragedy, after all, fuel the glitter-enhanced package. Take Yara Sofia, a Puerto Rican who made it onto season three of Rupaul's Drag Race. Online columnist John Gascot said she's "like Charo on mood elevators," and praised her for not only having a combination of dynamite makeup, costumes, and characters (including Lady Gaga), but also for having "squealed and pranced her way into the heart of every Drag Race fan."

And then calamity showed up. Sofia had an emotional breakdown during a lip-synch contest, dropping her to fourth overall. It's where she finished. "But she had already won hearts around the world," says Pollo Del Mar, host of GlamaZONE, a recurring show at the Cafe where Sofia headlines Sunday. "Yara always stood out to me."

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