Who Paul?

I’ve somehow gotten hooked on Ru Paul’s Drag Race (the drag queen competition show aired by Logo) faster than a bulimic can upchuck a can of Easy Cheese into a jar hidden in her closet. The show isn’t terribly remarkable, the production values are low, and the Queens don’t even get to stay in a house a la the girls over at Tyra’s or the bitches in heat on The Snatchelor. But perhaps because of all this derelict backdrop, the sequin and sass are that much more glittery. The wonderfully awkward, intriguingly grotesque feeling I get while watching it is akin to being in the locker room changing when someone tries to strike up of conversation with you. You want to ignore them, you want to look away, you want to pull your pants up - but you’re frozen, wanting to know what this person looks like, why they’re talking to you, and whether or not they might be legitimately interested in whether or not you’re a swimmer.

Like all competition show formulas, there are challenges, and eliminations. But remember, people, these are DRAG QUEENS. So there’s rampant brash bitchiness that makes you want to slap those little twits like an ill-behaved cat, the scary pre-make-up eyebrows that will haunt your dreams more ferociously than Freddy Krueger, and the hit or miss costuming that is often times somewhere between a drunken, slutty Southern prom queen from the late nineties and an obnoxiously newly wealthy Long Island housewife from the 80s (I guess the easier way of saying that is: Fran Drescher in The Nanny). In short, you will be disturbed, you will be annoyed, you will be shocked, you will be baffled – and you will come back for more.