<em>RuPaul's Drag Race</em> Star Mrs. Kasha Davis: I Predict Pearl Will Win Season 7
Mrs. Kasha Davis certainly understands fans’ weekly fervor as they watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. Like others, she too is an avid viewer…obviously. But the Season 7 star reminds audiences: “It’s reality television; it’s not real.”

“You’re under a lot of pressure,” Mrs. Davis stated, seemingly brushing aside the backstage tensions, onscreen rivalries and personality conflicts between contestants, which air every Monday on LOGO Television, “Stuff is going to happen.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race Star Mrs. Kasha Davis
Photographed by Jose A. Guzman-Colon

Mrs. Davis, a campy favorite this year in the televised series to crown “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” denotes competition often brings out unexpected sides of performers. Still, she feels broadcasts accurately reflect who each girl is. And for those who claim “editing” has turned them into something they’re not?

“That’s an excuse,” she shared in a video interview filmed for YouTube.

“Certainly they can manipulate things to look a certain way, but here’s the deal: There’s a lot of stress. There’s a lot of pressure,” Mrs. Davis continued. “We’re queens. We get together, we’re sisters…people get into arguments, just like any other family. What’s the big deal?”

That’s certainly an enlightened perspective on the show’s dynamics — but not unexpected from Mrs. Davis. As one of the season’s most, ahem, “mature” competitors, the 44-year-old speaks as someone in an eleven-year relationship with Mr. Davis and experience raising her partner’s kids from a previous, heterosexual marriage.

“I came into his life where he was divorced, and obviously had two children, and I got to be ‘Aunt Ed,'” said the drag diva. The daughters, now in their early 20s, consider Mrs. Davis a role model. “If I can be that to them,” she asked, “What more is there?”

Watch: Ross Mathews, Michelle Visage, RuPaul? Pearl, Violet, Miss Fame? Who Would Mrs. Kasha Davis “Marry, F*ck, Kill”?

Well, for this star, the answer is plenty! In April, she released her first music single — “Cocktail” — and debuted a one-woman show at Laurie Beechman Theatre. The autobiographical There’s Always Time for a Cocktail returns to the acclaimed New York City location May 12.

“It’s a show about accepting yourself and accepting others – and maybe forgiving those who are struggling with who you were,” Mrs. Davis described the show, “I think it’s so important right now for kids — and for adults — to have those kinds of examples out there.”

The value of sharing a positive message with young people was driven home recently through a social media blunder, Mrs. Davis said. In preparation for this interview, she accidentally Tweeted her home telephone number. She was immediately flooded by calls from fans, mostly teens.

“There was so many nice kids – 15 to 20 years old – just wanting to talk,” she detailed. Calling the experience “wonderful,” she graciously spoke to each as Mr. Davis videotaped the calls, presumably for a future update to her YouTube channel. “They were so sweet!”

Like other viewers, Mrs. Davis has a favorite to watch this season. For her, that’s the “gorgeous, sometimes ridiculous” Katya. She was partnered with the Boston-based entertainer on an episode which saw all eliminated queens return to compete for re-entry into the contest. (Trixie Mattel was ultimately brought back.)

Watch a Teaser Video for Mrs. Kasha Davis’ Debut Single “Cocktail”

“It was a hoot and holler,” she laughed of a “Conjoined Queens” challenge, which saw the two “attached at the va-jay-jay.” “That Katya is so fun and so creative.”

Still, Mrs. Davis is rooting for Ginger Minj or Kennedy Davenport to take this year’s Drag Race crown. “I just love their style,” she divulged, “In terms of drag, in terms of what they’ve done throughout the years, in terms of the dues they’ve paid.”

However, that’s not who she thinks is likely to win this year. That eye-opening social media mishap-turned-unexpected-blessing shaped her perspective on that, she said.

“Who will probably win is Pearl,” predicted Mrs. Davis. “She’s what the viewers want.”

Painted as a sleepy-eyed underdog, and clearly as handsome as a male as he is gorgeous in drag, Pearl has already twice had to “Lip Sync for Her Life.” Repeatedly told to “wake up!” by the judges, she’s shown growth and come on strong in recent episodes.

“There’s a story. There’s an arc. There’s a struggle,” Mrs. Davis explained, “This is someone a lot of the kids watching can relate to.”

Watch Pollo’s interview with Katya here.

Watch Pollo’s interview with Trixie Mattel here.

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Op-Ed: San Antonio Mayor Needs to Protect Her LGBT Constituents

In an op-ed yesterday in The Advocate, HRC President Chad Griffin called on San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor to stand up for her LGBT constituents.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/op-ed-san-antonio-mayor-needs-to-protect-her-lgbt-constituents?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

You’ll Need A Big Screen To See All Of Chris Hemsworth’s Massiveness In This ‘Vacation’ Trailer

OK, so they’re remaking Vacation and Chevy Chase Wally World blah blah, can’t wait it’s gonna be a hoot.

But let’s talk about what’s really important — Chris Hemsworth at the end of this trailer giving us a hell of a lot more than an angry inch.

Related: WATCH: Chris Hemsworth Waves His Big Hammer In New “Thor” Trailer

And there’s nothing to be angry about here.

Oh, and also note the rim job and glory hole references. Fun!

Watch below:

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/bW37gpvJf8k/youll-need-a-big-screen-to-see-all-of-chris-hemsworths-massiveness-in-this-vacation-trailer-20150507

NYPD Investigating Dallas BBQ Attack as Hate Crime

The gay couple who were attacked reveal new details in a TV interview.

read more

Daniel Reynolds

www.advocate.com/crime/2015/05/07/nypd-investigating-dallas-bbq-attack-hate-crime

Mother's Day Tribute: Feeling Mama Jean's Love Long After She's Gone
I always dreamed that when I finally gave birth and held my first baby, the moment would be divinely special. I’m not a new mother, nor even a father, but a first-time author who delivered a book. It’s no coincidence that Dangerous When Wet, my first born, has just been published in time for Mother’s Day. It’s about my relationship with my Texas tornado of a mother, Mama Jean, who always wanted me to be a writer. She recognized the talent early in me, because it was a talent I’d inherited from my father.

She also recognized early the other talent I inherited from my father: drinking. The memoir is about that too. With the same dauntless and determined drive that made her a financial success in the good ole boys’ club of the Southern small-town where I grew up, she loved me fiercely and tried unsuccessfully to grab my hand from the bottle and shove it onto the writing keyboard. I tried to outrun her love, which cast a shadow as big and wide as her Texas-sized hairdo. “No mother could love a son as much as I do,” she often told me.

Meanwhile, I fell deep in love with alcohol, which I tmay have loved as much as Mama Jean loved me. Thousands of miles away from her, Mama Jean was always with me no matter how deep in booze I swam. I couldn’t escape the thought – especially when I was doing something of which she wouldn’t approve or just making stupid decisions – WWMJT? (What Would Mama Jean Think?). Near the end of my drinking, her voice in my head was just about the only thing left of my conscience. When my love affair with booze died in 2006 in a big way (my suicide attempt) she rushed to my side to foot the bill for rehab.

Three years later, on December 14, 2009, just as I was rebuilding my sober life, hers ended after a rapid decline from Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological and muscular disease. I helped my father plan every detail of her funeral down to her burial dress (her red St. John Knits gown), the red roses on her casket, and the music. At the wake a vocalist sang her namesake song, “Jean,” from the Maggie Smith movie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Jean, Jean, roses are red
All of the leaves have gone green

Ironically, a year after she died I started to become a writer, what she always wanted me to be. I had to overcome the fear that by writing about her, I was betraying her, and the only way I could do that was by writing about her. It wasn’t a betrayal but an honest portrayal and a love letter to her.

The shadow that Mama Jean cast while alive stayed with me as I wrote the book over the next three years, which was the second hardest thing I’ve done after getting sober. I usually write in the living room of my high-rise New York apartment at the head of my dining room table with my “old person” online radio station from Jacksonville, Florida streaming a mix of Muzak-y instrumentals and American popular standards. Behind my chair Mama Jean, in a black-and-white glossy from 1965, stares down upon me from a high shelf in an Art Deco vitrine. She is in a pose you rarely see anymore: she gazes over her shoulder, which is in the middle of the frame, perpendicular to the viewer. Her hair is one solid bouffant flip, a “Cat Five” – as in it could withstand a category five hurricane.

I pulled an all-nighter when I finished the first draft of the manuscript. I was not elated. I didn’t scream, “I did it!” I was too exhausted to feel joy. I felt like what I imagine it must be like after giving birth. I was simply spent from a task that nearly killed me. I lay my head down on my outstretched arm for a while on the table. Then I looked over my shoulder at Mama Jean who was looking over her shoulder in that penetrating gaze of hers.

I looked at the time. It was 12:48 A.M., December 14, 2013. I finished the manuscript on the third anniversary of Mama Jean’s death.

The work wasn’t done. Over the next year, I worked with my editor at St. Martin’s Press, writing and revising the manuscript, finalizing the book jacket, asking famous authors to gold-dust it with their endorsements, copy editing, proof reading, legal reading until I signed off on the final manuscript. I had a few more months to wait for the finished hard cover, the newborn.

I was determined that I would have a special solitary and sacred moment when the book arrived. Would I make a cup of tea, take off all my clothes, slip into a bubble bath surrounded by candles and read the book cover-to-cover? Would I wait to open the book until I was seated alone in a fancy restaurant, order an extravagant meal and toast myself with something bubbly and non-alcoholic? Would I just throw it up in the air à la Mary Tyler Moore in the opening credits of her TV show?

The day the book was expected to arrive, I worked that morning, as I usually do, at the dining room table with my old person radio station playing and Mama Jean’s photo over my shoulder. I left at noon to go to the gym and run errands. In the lobby I saw that there was a package waiting for me. I was certain it was the book, because my editor’s assistant had told me that she’d overnighted it to me. “It’s here,” I said to myself. “But not yet. Get it when you come back.”

I returned an hour and half later with shopping bags of groceries and some new clothes. “I believe there’s a package waiting for me,” I told the doorman. He opened the cabinet behind his desk and searched for probably fifteen seconds, but it seemed like an hour. He pulled out a rectangular, padded envelope, about the size of one hardcover book. He set it down on the credenza. I looked at the label, which had the return address of St. Martin’s Press, but I didn’t touch the package. First I had to sign for it in the doorman’s log. The doorman handed me the package, which seemed as heavy as a boulder and as delicate as an infant.

“Not yet,” I told myself. “Wait until you get upstairs. Damn! I never decided how this super-sacred, solo moment I’m finally about to have should play out.”

On the elevator ride to the tenth floor of my apartment, I was weighed down with my gym bag and shopping packages, but the package that held my book was the one that tipped the scales.

I walked into the empty apartment with both sunlight and my old person music streaming in. I went straight to my bedroom. I placed on the bed my gym bag and shopping packages, and then the book. “Not yet,” I said. “It’s got to be right.” I put away the gym bag. I put away the groceries. I ripped off and threw away the price tags of the new clothes. I put away the clothes. The bed was clear, save for one, rectangular, padded envelope.

I opened it. I certainly knew what the cover, looked like since I’d approved it, but I was worried that the finished version might not be just right. I pulled the book out of the package and actually gasped as I gazed at it. It was beautiful. It was better than I imagined it could be. Between its hard covers was something I’d created, born of pain, suffering and love. It was my baby.

I carried the book into the living room. I held Dangerous When Wet in both hands and stared at it with the gaze of a mother’s love. I caressed the glossy finish of the cover photo of three-year-old me sitting by a pool bar at a table with two cocktails in front of me and Mama Jean’s purse beside me.

I stood there in a fog for I don’t know how long before I pricked up my ears. My heart raced when I heard the song emanating from my old person station. It was “Jean.”

I walked to the dining room table and held the book up to Mama Jean’s photo as her song played: Jean, Jean . . . come out of your half-dreamed dream

Instantly, I knew that I was having my super-sacred, special moment, a moment far beyond anything I could have dreamed. But it wasn’t solo. Mama Jean was there to share it with me.

Jamie Brickhouse is the author of Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir (St. Martin’s Press).

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-brickhouse/mothers-day-tribute-feeli_b_7234918.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Oregon to Join California, New Jersey, & DC in Protecting LGBT Youth from Conversion Therapy

Today, the Oregon State Senate passed HB 2307, a bill that will protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth from the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/oregon-to-join-california-new-jersey-dc-in-protecting-lgbt-youth-from-conve?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Davey Wavey To Host Drag- And Diva-Filled Concert Celebration In Wine Country

The famed Wine Country region of northern California should already be on the must-see list of every adult, but if you need more incentive to visit this beautiful part of our country besides enjoying a primo Shiraz while gazing at the spectacular pastoral landscape get ready for a big one. This Memorial Day weekend internet celeb Davey Wavey will cohost ((along with Traver Rains and Richie Rich) Revue, a massive event with an unbelievable roster of talent that includes such premiere drag performers Jackie Beat, Lady Bunny, Jimmy James and Joey Arias, as well as Tony Award-winning out performer Levi Kreis and one of the truly great divas Martha Wash. It’s as if someone cranked up the volume knob on gay pride to eleven.

The weekend long party (May 23-24) is produced by luxury travel expert Duane Wells, who tells Queerty he thinks of Revue as “a mini-West Coast Wigstock 2.0.” He adds, “It is absolutely going to be one of the gayest nights of the year in Sonoma County. Trust.”

For tickets and more information, go here.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/bO1K21gehIE/davey-wavey-to-host-drag-and-diva-filled-concert-celebration-in-wine-country-20150507

News: Mariah Carey, NSA, James Franco, Britain, Stephen Colbert

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2015/05/news–1.html