So was the 1st Annual Charlie McGraw Land Cruise cursed from the start?

The event which was to take place down in Warwick at a marina this year was subjected to the first full day of rain that we’ve received in Rhode Island this month. This obviously sucks because nobody wants to sit and eat a half-pound lobster tail in the rain — however, those planning the benefit were at least smart enough to allow for a rain date the following week, should such shitty weather occur. So we get up Sunday afternoon like everyone else and look outside and it’s raining, and so we ditched our plans to venture to Warwick and begin looking forward to the rain date next Sunday on the 29th. Honest, we were totally going to go! After the shit that went down last year, how could we resist?!

So obviously on a rainy Sunday we get caught up with Facebook and TV and whatnot, and by 4pm we start seeing little notes pop up about the AIDS Care benefit in Warwick, including a few pictures of the event looking not so hot…

So they went on and had the event anyway? So then what’s in store for the people who bought tickets and stayed home in order to attend this fundraiser next week? Will there be TWO 1st Annual Charlie McGraw land cruises?!

One thing’s for sure, these fund-raising power-houses are likely to do anything to keep from actually losing money on this thing, so watch out for the bullshit creative solutions to be employed in order to at least break even!

Okay, so it’s been over two weeks since our last post, and quite a lot has happened in Providence!

You know it, we know it, the wigs know it.

Unfortunately since our ongoing time line is kind of shot, we’re just going to start anywhere. And the first thing that comes to mind is The Litter! Mostly because we saw her puttering around Club Hell last night during a quick visit with Miss Sarah Beyers & one Jackie Grenga over a drink served up by the lovely LaDiva Jonz. While there, we remarked how Club Hell just never seems to have trouble drawing people, adding to what Mr. Chris Harris told us years ago about Hell being the most profitable night spot in the entire city by far (sales vs. square footage). So Beyers chatted with Litter for a while before we headed off to watch another summertime FailRetro at Mirabar.

The reason we bring up the Litter is because she’s been running around the city over the last few weeks claiming that she’s taking a break from the scene for a while to concentrate on personal matters, which is probably a good idea. We’re all sick of looking at her same old head shots pasted into various block party and event posters, all featuring that time-honored, ancient battle cry “all donations go to benefit ACOS”. Of course she’ll still be around for special events and whatnot, because cash flow can’t be totally halted, obviously. She even went so far as to make some grand announcement claiming all of the above last week at the Trailer Park Block Party, and making a special point about how there’s a rumor that she had a big blow-out with Dark Lady’s Rande over some such nonsense, and that it was “100% not the reason” for her going into hiding. Not that we cared about any of that, all of that sappy goodbye shit doesn’t work on us, and the whole speech resulted in a few golf claps anyway.

But why even bring up a fight between the Litter and the Lady? And in front of the few all of those people present? Why even bother?

Well, probably because it was true! We won’t go into specifics, because as usual, time will tell. Let’s see how much more involved Kitty will be over at Mirabar in the next few weeks, fundraising (always fundraising) and MCing and so on. We say that her hiatus is only from Dark Lady, not the scene, and that operations are moving to le Mirabar for the forseeable future. Just watch!

Let’s be serious people, as we’ve all learned over the last couple years, pretty much anyone can do porn! This creates the distinction between real porn stars, and what we can safely and simply refer to as porn “people”. You know, the real-life everyday people of porn!

CLICK HERE to watch another one of our locals get tag-teamed by old people — there’s even a quick cameo by this year’s RI Pride parade! Hey, you could be in porn too!

Viva la porn people!

So this Saturday at the Dark Lady, you will have the opportunity to attend The Litter’s annual Christmas In July fundraiser. Now you may remember the feelings we took away from this party last year, and this year we have no choice but to expect more of the same. Don’t get us wrong, we are all for a mid-summer fundraiser to boost revenue for all parties during a time of year that notoriously lacks in cash flow, but Christmas In July AGAIN? The first time, sure. The second time? Sure, but weird. But we are now into at least the 5th or 6th of these abominations and it’s starting to give us the feeling we get when we drive past one of those houses that keeps their Christmas tree up all year long — it’s just plain Michael Jackson creepy (too soon?). We have a feeling that The Litter got this idea from the Home Shopping Network (which you’ll notice is currently in the middle of their own “Christmas In July” sale), and no doubt where she buys a lot of the costume jewelry she wears.

Plus, repeating it doesn’t strengthen a cherished tradition, it beats a dead Santa Claus horse, and the heavy red and green deco in the summer reminds us of a dark, dank, tacky lake house — like if we decided to hold a Christmas celebration in a moldy basement. Then there’s the drag costumes — because none of them have more than two or three bright red and green gowns, we now get to see the same ones in the summer and the winter, and nobody even looks good in those colors anyway! Seriously bitches, there’s really nothing at all attractive about this.

So what to do, you ask? Well, if they really can’t think too far away from the silly Christmas theme, how about New Years? White lights and champagne never go out of style, or maybe a Thanksgiving thing (which is probably a little more in line with the concept of charity anyway). Honestly, we don’t really care — just switch it up! It’s confusing the old people who have trouble enough remembering what year it is!

So, it’s our understanding that the 11th Annual Charlie McGraw Boat Cruise (which so far as we know has always taken place on a boat) is switching up the format this year and has plans to commence somewhere on land in view of the bay.

Why abandon the Bay Queen, you ask? Well it seems that after the 10th Annual Charlie McGraw Boat Cruise and the drama that ensues when you herd a boatload of fags onto an actual boat, the organizers of said boat cruise and their guests were asked not to return! And you just know all of those boat cruise companies all talk to each other, so it probably didn’t take long before ACOS & Co. realized that the entirety of the Narragansett Bay has had enough of their shit. And if somehow they do pull a boat out of their ass in the next six weeks, it’s not going to be anything glamorous — maybe they should just move this shit a little further out into SE Mass where they need the tourism revenue.

But wait, there’s more! When you attend the 1st Annual Charlie McGraw Land Cruise, you’ll be paying the exact same price as if you were at the 11th Annual Charlie McGraw Boat Cruise, you know, because the Bay Queen was just donated for the last ten years and had nothing to do with the ticket price.

All donations go to benefit AIDS Care Ocean State 4 eva!

UPDATE: Oops! As it turns out, The Bay Queen doesn’t care how ridiculous those boat cruises can get, and would most likely be hosting the 11th Annual Charlie McGraw boat cruise this year as well if the notorious vessel’s operating company was not now in receivership. Well that explains it!

Land hoe!

OMG Pride, why did you do this to us?! We are definitely still in recovery from the very long weekend that was swallowed up by Providence’s Pride celebration — but have no intention of letting that stop us from talking about it now.

Let’s start with the outdoor Pride festival that took place this year on South Water St. In case you didn’t know, this festival has taken place in a variety of places around the city over the last several years, but none as picturesque as this one. The river, the buildings in the background, the perfect weather and breeze coming off the water — every bit of it made for some very pretty pictures. Other than that though, it was a total carnival. “Causes”, charities and mayoral candidates mixed up with Dippin’ Dots, fried dough and awfully tacky pride flag-wear. A complete mess… but we knew it would be and headed straight for the booze tent! That of course, is where we found everyone we knew — which turned out to not be all fun and games. You see, we’re all pretty used to seeing each other in the clubs, in the bars, in the streets — whatever — but at night… And not for nothing, but half of us are looking ROUGH in the daytime! We always joke about how popular Providence’s gay scene would be with the world if we were to be documented by a reality TV film crew, but we’re starting to change our minds — this is not a good look!

So we headed out of that mess and back over to GLO to fix the giant Pride flag we single-handedly installed on the front face of its Clemence St. building, which by the way was fabulous — it’s the only Providence Pride flag in the city that you can see… from spaaaaaccceee.. We finally got back downtown after some… unpleasantness… at the Renaissance Hotel just in time to see the very, very end of the parade, which is pretty much the same every year so we weren’t too broken up and we just headed to the block parties to gather wrist bands before any of the lines got too crazy.

Now it’s no secret that Dark Lady’s block party gets bigger and more ambitious every year (and taller, poor DJ AV8 was stuck atop his DJ tower all night), but this year was just ridiculous — it was even bigger than Mirabar’s, which is an impressive benchmark to surpass especially since the Dark Lady wasn’t even around ten years ago. What we enjoyed most about this party — was that they themed both the Dark Lady and Alleycat not centered around pride, so it wasn’t a total rainbow-fest which everyone by now had had quite enough of. Instead, it was called the Snow Ball, which is obviously so wrong on so many levels, but at least it was refreshing! And hands-down, Alleycat totally had the best party — the music, the vibe, the size, the bubbles and dancers — everything was right. We know this is “bitch”idence, but it honestly didn’t suck at all!

Most everywhere else though was a convoluted mess though. It consistently took 20+ minutes to get a drink, 20+ minutes to go to the bathroom, everything was expensive and it took forever to find people we knew. And did you happen to notice who was added to the Dark Lady’s outside bar that would normally have been over at the Stable????

Okay, so last Sunday (in addition to our weekly Sunday at State — plug, plug, plug) was the annual Miss Gay Pride Pageant, sponsored of course by RI Pride, and probably to benefit AIDS Care Ocean State. Anyway, it took place at Mirabar this year, ever since everyone decided to stop doing events at Gallery (because it’s a dismal, industrial-looking franken-ant-farm of a space) — which is fine by us since Mirabar’s 3rd floor space is beautiful and its killer sound system remains underused.

We didn’t go so we can’t say much, but what we do know is that some fat bitch (whose identity we still do not know) from Massachusetts won the title against several drag messes that were at least from here and participated regularly in the local scene. Now we’re sure that there are no rules that bar anyone from participating based on where they’re from — but shouldn’t there be? Shouldn’t Miss Gay Pride RI actually be from Rhode Island?

If some unknown drag queen from a foreign land swoops in and beats out every local contestant, exactly what does that say about our pride in Rhode Island if we’re happy to have it represented by someone who had to drive five hours to get here?

Thoughts?

While we cringe a little (ok, a lot) at this ad for The Melting Pot, we are no less compelled to let you bitches know about “Boys Night Out”, which we mistakenly thought was every night, to take place officially now this Tuesday at (you guessed it) The Melting Pot — located in one of the locations at the Providence Place Mall that seems to have the highest turn-over rate.

We’re going!

So in case you’re unaware on account of being uninterested, or just plain uncool, we’re currently in the middle of Providence’s Style Week!

What the hell is that, you ask?

Well it’s basically Providence’s answer to Boston or New York Fashion Week, or any other “fashion week” that takes place around the world — although we have a feeling that Providence’s is called “style week” on account of some legality. But whatever, it’s a great chance for some super-bitchy fashion people to gather together in a series of events, and for us to bask in it! The bitchiness, we mean.

So far it’s been a blast though. We got in touch with Style Week’s founder, Rosanna, because Sunday’s after-party was at State and ran right into our Sunday weekly party at State. Since then, Rosanna’s been super and given us everything needed for a fabulous time — including seats at all of the invite-only shows. We showed up a little early to our night at State on Sunday, only to find the place swarming with lots of pretty and well-dressed people, none of which we knew and all of which knew one another. But they all warm up the more we see them!

Monday afternoon we took our girl Ada and ex-Trixx dancer Devon to the Lucille and Mendoza shows at the Renaissance Hotel, got there early for cocktail hour and made it a priority to make ourselves more comfortable with liquor. Then once in the shows, we were able to join Ada in critiquing the the designers’ collections — which we were surprisingly good at (we should be, we do have a fine arts degree for fuck’s sake). We’re going to spare you our thoughts, but Ada did decide that we’re going to collaborate on creating a fashion collection for next year. We’re going to assume that Ada would be doing most of the work, while we’d just concentrate on cutting holes in convenient places to maximize sluttiness…

Tuesday we showed up back at the Renaissance Hotel, which by the way does not have the best event space setup, for the Yellow Clover and MadMOIselle shows. Yellow Clover by Sarah Proust was fantastic and MadMOIselle just wasn’t finished and had seams and strings everywhere. We do not have expertise in fashion design, but even we could see it — not good! So now we’re watching closely for split seams and whatnot, and who do we spot across the runway? Parrys Hampton herself… and her little dog too! Who knew she was into fashion???

Kidding! We actually had a lot of fun with her and her dog between the shows over a glass of wine (three actually).
Up later this week we have another show with Ada at Hotel Providence and then the Jonathan Peters show on Saturday!

Meanwhile today, RI Pride is attempting their own version of a fashion show (an underwear fashion show, because us gays are equipped to appreciate little else) poolside at the Regency hosted by Jackie DiMera and Haley Star. Poolside in the rain! We’re also certain that they’re making damn sure to parade poor Mr. Gay RI, Ben Huber in his underwear by the pool for all he’s worth… that’s what they get for biting off of Style Week with some tasteless drag-driven strip show!

You betta work!

For real?!

Well if her ten minutes of schtick on the Buddy Cianci Show this afternoon is any indication, maybe so! As crazy as our city government is, we agree with Casey 100% that the only way to improve it is to make it even crazier. And we’re totally going to her mayoral fun party at Trinity Brew House on the 2nd!

UPDATE: CLICK HERE for the audio! We die!