“I would choose to live in the Victorian era, because drugs were legal. Oh, and before AIDS. Thank you.”

– Us, making fun of the silly questions and answers put to the contestants of the Triple Crown Pageant last Sunday

So last night RI Pride‘s Triple Crown Pageant 2010 took place at the Hi-Hat in Providence’s Davol Square. As you may have figured out by this point, the TCP is one of the more bizarre homo-centric events to take place each year, largely due to the very wide range of participants and attendants, the show’s Oscar Award-esque notorious run time, and the extent to which everyone is dressed up and boozed up. It’s often very difficult to fully understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, and at times, if anything is even happening at all — since the pageant always seems to be paced poorly, leaving the audience with a sense of confusion. We know it’s difficult to run a 3-hour show smoothly, but jesus, they do it every fucking year — it’s not like they have to relearn how to ride the bike every March.

So after a boozy dinner at Downcity with Ada, we sleazed on over to the Hi-Hat an hour into the show to find an entire who’s who of gay Providence. Although the absence of most everyone from Mirabar was a little weird (apparently nobody’s going to be crying when Mirabar is a parking lot), everyone was in a good mood, and our favorite for Miss Lesbian, Sarah Beyers had already won the interview portion of the pageant, which we understand to be an almost foolproof indication of who will end up winning the title at the end of the show. We don’t dislike the Hi-Hat, it’s dinner theatre layout was not an inappropriate choice of venue, but it was certainly not as glamorous as Lupo’s in 2009, and there was WAY too much lighting — we caught ourselves face-to-face with more than one straight-up dumpster fire that sent us running back to the bar… for another $9 drink.

There was music and singing and what not, but as usual, most of the WTF moments were provided by the contestants that we all know had absolutely no chance going in, making us feel sorry (sort of) for finding most of that shit so funny. We got genuine vocal talent from Miss Jackie Collins, expected back-handed comments from the Litter, a threatening weapons display from Sarah Beyers, and some juvenile coming-out-of-the-closet poetry tripe from another lesbian who ended up actually winning the Miss Lesbian 2010 title, prompting some colorful Kanye West awards shows fantasies in defense of Sarah Beyers. However, as much as we wanted the title for Sarah, the fact remains that she does not have a vagina, making her eligibility to win a title created for a lesbian to be questionable — indeed, it’s been that exact question that’s made Ms. Beyers such a polarizing figure in our community. We don’t think that Sarah is the best representative of Rhode Island’s lesbian community, but we do think that her dedication to RI Pride’s cause, her proven leadership and all-around workhorse ethic made her by far the most eligible — assets that RI Pride could have really used, rather than fussing about whether or not they had a dick attached to them. Now we have a title-holder that we likely won’t see until next year’s TCP, but what else is new, right?

Anyhow, let’s look on the bright side and congratulate Miss Savannah Devereaux, certainly the most deserving, visible and capable winner this year. Not to mention she’s funny as shit, so we’re looking forward to seeing a lot more Savannah. We also got a chance to meet Mr. Gay RI 2010 at State, who while kind of quiet, was probably dazed from the previous four hours, so we’ll give him a pass.

Now if we got any of the details from this event wrong, we blame it entirely on the Hi-Hat’s bar, and on not paying attention to most of it while it was actually happening, so feel free to correct us.

So Mr. Bob Thibault, infamous keeper of the crypt known as Gallery, has taken to the switchboard to vocalize his frustration with us for suggesting that Laurel Casey (there’s a name from Bitchidence past) would be performing at the Gallery in the future. Now the funniest part is not that Bob’s totally bullshit over the very mention of Casey’s name — it’s that we posted an item about this very topic…. A FUCKING YEAR AGO!

Now we do know that Mr. Dana down at Gallery faithfully prints out our online rubbish like a Sunday paper so that Thibault can get a look at the latest and greatest silliness, so maybe it’s not Bob’s fault he can’t understand how to read the time-stamp present on each post. Maybe it’s Dana’s stupidity causing him to print out Bitchidence posts in reverse.

Or maybe the time-warp is also in purpose, meaning poor Bob has done a poor job of keep his friends close at such a fragile age. God, getting old must suck.

So as you bitches may or may not know, it fell on us to host Mr. DJ Box last Sunday night at State, at our weekly State Sundays weekly. Since there was an Imperial Court function at State earlier in the evening, we’d taken it upon ourselves to book DJ AV8 weeks in advance, for obvious reasons. Somehow though, within that time, State owner Mr. Alex Tomasso came in contact with Mr. Box and decided to bring him down for the evening instead. Not a monster inconvenience, except for canceling on AV8 (who had rescheduled two weekend vacations for the occasion) for a DJ we’d never met or heard before. But whatever, Alex doesn’t ask us for much so what was the worst that could happen? Maybe he wouldn’t play the right music, or maybe he’d be bitchy — a number of things went through our minds before meeting Mr. Box firsthand.

So Sunday night we show up to State WAY early to catch the tail end of the Imperial Court’s Monarch’s Ball & Investitures II (we swear “investitures” is a totally made up word, you know, like they make up words in Dungeons & Dragons). We attempted to get a read on what exactly was going on, but could only manage to get a few “WTF…”-eyes from a few of the drag queens there we knew. That pretty much said it. Oh, and the FTM-chick with glasses who couldn’t help but be condescending to us at Alleycat the other night was there. She said she was a dude but we totally knew better.

Anyway, so DJ Box shows up early — quiet and shy, which was fine since that meant we could push him around if we had to — and starts setting up his shit and getting acquainted with the equipment. An hour later by 10:30p, Box is still working out the kinks in the sound system, so we go over and ask if we can help get him up and running faster. When we find out that he hasn’t even gotten the right deck running and cannot yet mix two songs together, we begin to worry — since we don’t know the first thing about using turntables and mixers and whatnot, and it seems neither does DJ Box. Whatever, at least he can play a mix CD until we get it figured out — the trouble is that the sound coming out of the speakers sounds like a ham radio because Box has been fucking with the sound levels so badly, he can’t get them back to where they should be. Even his CD’s seem to skip wildly throughout the night, and when we went to ask if he needed to clean his discs, or if it was the playhead that was dirty, he explained that it wasn’t skipping, it was “an effect”. Meaning of course that he was creating this erratic skipping on purpose — to which we responded, “oh… DON’T DO THAT!”. At this point, we’re getting increasingly frustrated and begin to refer to him (to his face) simply as “Box”, kind of like in Meet The Parents where by the end everyone’s calling Ben Stiller “Focker”.

This is when we decide we need outside help, so we call State manager Tarik, who is over at Andino’s on the hill for a birthday party, and is thus wasted, causing him to fly over to State like Superman when I inform him that some kid is fucking with his sound system. Tarik, a 6’4 drunken crazy JWU grad swoops in and fixes everything, threatening to break poor Box’s legs if he fucks the sound up again. Fabulous!

Within minutes though, Box brings the sound system back to a scratchy walkie-talkie sound and we decide it’s time to call in the big guns (well, sort of). So we get on the horn and practically beg Therapy manager and resident DJ Jeff LeClair to leave the party at Andino’s for State to kick Box out and spin for the rest of the night. We remember requesting very specifically, “Jeff, fix my shit!”.

Meanwhile, we have some new friends in town — Olivia Bouyea, Miss Dynamic Diva of New England, 2010, and Nikita Le Femme, Miss Dynamic Diva of New England 2009. We’d never heard of the Dynamic Divas before (or maybe just vaguely), but we found them just fabulous — only reluctantly believing us when we told them that crazy DJs who can’t work the equipment is not normal for a State Sunday night.

So within minutes, Jeff flies in the door and we explain to Box that he’s going to step aside while the nice man here fixes his shit for a while. From this point on, the night was fantastic. Miss Olivia and Miss Nikita took to the bar and the couches (respectively) and had a great time entertaining the very eclectic and non-judgemental State crowd for the first time. Poor Box packed up his stuff and was never seen or heard from again, which we felt bad about it because like anyone inexperienced, we were certain that the evening wasn’t totally his fault. In fact, we can’t think of a DJ having a worse experience than what poor Box went through on Sunday night. You can’t use the equipment, you can’t mix, nothing’s working right, and they replace you halfway through the night for reasons that are obvious to everyone. Short of the turntables overheating, catching fire, burning the place down and killing everyone inside — it doesn’t get much worse than the story of Mr. Box.

This week — the Triple Crown Pageant 2010 after-party! While the TCP winners are contractually obligated by RI Pride to bar hop around downtown to Dark Lady, Alleycat, Union, et al — the hottest after-party last year was still at State, and it’s only going to be more out-of-control this year. It’s going to be the Madonna & Demi Moore’s Oscar after-party of the TCP!

Whoa! We can’t even begin to list all of the things totally wrong with this email invite!

One thing’s for sure, the only thing that could make this event any gayer would be to promise RI Pride’s Rodney in rainbow booty shorts with a roman candle in each hand!

Back in slut college, one of our teachers frequently advised; if you’re ever at the beginning of an overwhelming undertaking, where you have no idea how to begin or where to start — start anywhere! (and indeed, anytime — it’s Saturday evening and we’re getting our asses ready to wreck the city like wet newspaper with Ada)

So that’s what we’ll do!

Did anyone else hear what Buddy Cianci said about the Alleycat on his WPRO radio show yesterday?! Scandalous!

Okay, we are so tired of not writing. Are you tired of not reading? Did you not just die while reading Nick Merollo’s letter to the city’s attorney assigned to his case?! Girlfriend sent that to her, the case’s judge AND some major news outlets. Not that they’ll probably bother with it, Providence politics involving club owners, certain patrons, and the Providence legal system can be tricky — and you’re likely to have stepped on toes without even knowing it (god knows we have…).

So (for now) let’s keep things light! For the past couple weeks, while you bitches are hard at work at your normal jobs, slaving away, while we’re not busy making sure GLO Bar doesn’t go ass-up, we’ve been out partying in the city! And not silly, light partying — we do dirty, crazy partying… actually it’s probably not what you’d think. Last week, Jenny Bomb Dome accompanied us to Therapy where around 6am, Jenny remarked at how funny it might be if we coned off Therapy’s dance floor, rendering it a caution area. So without much forethought, we sent our friend (and GLO Bar DJ) DJ Vasco down to Jenny’s car to fetch the cones that she routinely steals from roadsides and construction sites throughout Providence. Was it the most perfect plan? No! But really, who engages in behavior like that?

Balloons has also been a regular stop for us, especially now that we know it’s open on Wednesday nights. Often times we see our GLO Bar bartender Anita there, where she leads us from Balloons out to her car in the parking lot for a Corona out of the 24-pack stashed in her back seat. Love us some Anita.

We’ve also been having tons of fun with Ada lately. Last weekend we had a date Saturday night to go out and cause trouble downtown. When she couldn’t work us in the door at Mirabar at 1am because they were at capacity (which we think is more of a rough estimate than an actual number), we grabbed someone’s arm to look at their wristband color, and promptly headed to another bar to seek out the appropriate color — and so easily walked in Mirabar’s first floor door.

We still even go to Trannymania at Dark Lady on Wednesdays, which has found itself some interesting new faces. For example, the Skeletor-look-a-like cross-dresser can be found in hot pink fishnet stockings (we shit you not) hauling some ROUGH-looking men back to her RV parked in the parking lot. And Alejandra, the bitch who can’t seem to speak english and always performs songs that are sung only in Spanish — the numbers and outfits are still good though (although her outfits always seem to consist of one single piece of fabric). However, the more you see someone around in Providence, the more you eventually learn about them (whether they speak english or not) — so it was just a matter of time before we spotted her trucking it into CBC after her number at Dark Lady was done. Well, at least she brought it indoors…