Wednesday, June 13, 2012

LA's Horror Drag Queen Defies Hollywood Stereotypes

Courtesy of Squeaky Blonde
Nobody messes with Squeaky Blonde. Her face, powdered paper white, is a spooky muse: A meticulously painted clash of shimmer, matte and neon embellish her grayish green eyes. Her penciled eyebrows are fiercely thin and crimson. Her hair is big, black and ratted out, in tune with the rest of her outfit: scuffed fishnets, a leather corset and a black g-string.  With her seven-inch stiletto heels, she stands at nearly seven feet tall. “I like to look a little bit dead, a little bit sexy, a little bit whore-y, like I’ll kick your ass and eat you.”

Squeaky Blonde is the gut-wrenching drag persona and alter ego of 43-year-old Tony James, a San Francisco-raised performance artist and drag queen veteran. “I was once called a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and a Tasmanian devil,” James says at our first meeting in a small Hollywood cafĂ©, just a few blocks from his home. “I mean, that’s sort of what I am.”

Squeaky’s drag performances are usually on par with her appearance: fierce and unapologetic. “Mostly everything I do is dark, violent, bloody, aggressive, sexual or just kind of fucked up,” James explains. “I really want people to see that drag doesn’t have to be feathers and rhinestones.”

Therein lies Squeaky’s appeal: She challenges the average drag queen as portrayed in the mainstream media and perceived by the mainstream audience: beautiful, sassy and funny. “I want you to be scared, and I want you to have nightmares and push your buttons because that’s what art is to me,” James says. “I have no interest in making you laugh.” Almost immediately, he laughs heartily.

In one act, James explains, Squeaky and a friend reenact the tragic murder of actress Sharon Tate, which chilled the American public in the summer of 1969. Tate, almost nine months pregnant, was stabbed to death by infamous criminal Charles Manson’s cult family. As Squeaky’s friend—a drag caricature of the pregnant Sharon Tate— obliviously sings a heartfelt number to the audience, Squeaky breaks into her house through the glass, cuts open her stomach and viciously pulls out her premature baby. Her intestines—lasagna noodles, actually—and fake blood would cover the stage floor. “Then we’d make out afterwards and I’d hang myself or something,” James adds facetiously.

This genre, often called monster drag or horror drag, is a niche within the niche that already is drag culture. “There’s only a handful of people in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles who even do it because it comes from inside and we have a desire to do it,” James explains. “We’re acting out some sort of sick thing in our heads to fuck with other people’s heads and provoke them.
Given all that, it comes as a surprise to find that James is kind, friendly and cheerful at our meeting. A tall, bearded man sporting a black hoodie jacket and a trucker’s hat, there’s not an unconventional characteristic about him upon first glance. His tattoos at least give away his post-punk, gothic roots: Each finger wears a rectangular blacked-out cuff, and a conspicuous “LA” sign is inked on the side of his neck. Small, silver hoops modestly hang from his earlobes.

James explains that despite her hardcore guise, Squeaky was initially conceived as a form of catharsis. When James was a teenager, he lost his closest friend in a tragic accident. To deal with the pain of this sudden loss, James decided to fill that void with something creative: He developed a character that embodied his late friend—“a real beautiful goth chick,” he says. The name Squeaky Blonde—adopted some years later—is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, the notorious Manson family member known for her failed attempt to assassinate then-President Gerald Ford in the 1970s. From there, his drag career slowly took off, performing at parties and 18-and-over gothic clubs in San Francisco. “I started using that energy to heal myself and say to my friend, ‘C’mon girl, you’re coming on stage with me for a minute.’”

Several years into the development of Squeaky, James hesitantly took on another persona in the mid-90s—at his day job as an executive at eBay. “My coworkers didn’t know [about Squeaky] at all; I was still in the closet back then,” James explains. “I told them I was a single parent and had to be with my kid on Wednesday so I would have the day off.” Squeaky had begun performing every Tuesday night at Trannyshack, then a small, alternative drag club in San Francisco. “I would be out late on Tuesday doing my show and I didn’t have to be back at work until Thursday, so I could have all the glitter and the remnants off by then,” James says with a cheeky smile.

Trannyshack became a home for James, who was inducted as a regular and a member of the family. The club, though born in the underground scene, grew bigger in San Francisco each year, even hosting the likes of mainstream musicians Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani on its stage.

 “[Initially], no one really thought anything of it, other than it was just a bunch of freaks performing for other freaks,” says Joshua Grannell, better known as drag queen Peaches Christ and a longtime friend of James. “But we were a part of the underground drag movement without knowing it was a movement. We just had no idea. We were just having fun being crazy.”

In 1998, Grannell founded his own show—Midnight Mass—a horror film screening event in San Francisco that he hosts as Peaches Christ. Though two separate businesses, Trannyshack and Midnight Mass have frequently overlapped over the years. “The truth is, we grew old together,” Grannell explains. Their successes, however, are largely confined to San Francisco—“a city that celebrates freakishness,” he adds.

When James left his hometown and relocated to Los Angeles in 2000, he didn’t find that kind of underground drag scene here. The drag queens here were “more like club kids,” James says, “dripping with Louis Vuitton jumpsuits, really glamorous, great makeup”—completely contrary to Squeaky’s “gutter girl” persona. “There was no trashy, messy, ugly kind of things going on.”

But that’s not to say factions didn’t existed within LA’s larger drag community: While West Hollywood primarily reflected the glamour-driven, mainstream genre of drag, the scene in Silver Lake “was darker and grittier, which is what I gravitated toward,” James says. During his 12 years in Los Angeles, he has set foot in West Hollywood exactly three times: “It’s not really my scene. People don’t seem to react to the type of drag I do. They want you to look like Madonna or Britney or something and I don’t even listen to that, so…” James trails off, chuckling. “But downtown, they love me, and Silver Lake too, so I’m happy with that.”

Nevertheless, James got busy. With the last of his savings, he opened a boutique on Sunset Boulevard, selling his personal creations for Squeaky that she no longer used: clothing, makeup, wigs, as well as music and art. The shop didn’t last long—“it may have been ahead of its time,” James quips—but that didn’t deter him from pursuing other opportunities for Squeaky to shine in Los Angeles. Squeaky joined a collective famously coined the Tranimals—LA drag queens who take an animalistic approach to the drag genre. He became one of the four primary performers in the collaborative group, which also includes his “drag daughter,” Fade-Dra, a younger drag queen whom he took under his wing.

The Tranimals undertook a number of projects, including their Tranimal workshops last year at the Machine Project Gallery in Echo Park and at the Hammer Museum, UCLA’s art exhibition in Westwood. Photographer Austin Young partnered with the collective, taking before-and-after shots of the participants whom Squeaky and Fade-Dra transformed from run-of-the-mill to Tranimal status using makeup, clothing and other props.

Later this month, Squeaky and the crew will work with students at a boy’s military school in Kansas, putting on a similar photo shoot as well as a musical. He doesn’t expect to be received well, but he remains inspired and is brimming with ideas. “Right now, I’m drawing a lot of my inspiration from world tribal looks,” he says of his conceptual sketches. “I wanna show how these tribal leaders adorned themselves so incredibly and how revered they were in their society for looking so beautiful, whether it’s stretching ears or using mud or something.” All these ideas simply go back to provocation—pushing the boundaries of the norm and the conventional standards of beauty.

“I think people like Squeaky are really amazing,” Grannell says. “They continue to do all this great, great, great stuff, but they’re not necessarily supported by the larger institution.”

For James, staying true to his art form outweighs the need for positive feedback or mainstream reception. “I’m a performance artist who happens to be in drag,” James says. “Art is meant to provoke. If I’m not getting a reaction from you, then I’m not doing a good job.”



Friday, November 19, 2010

Multimedia Tools Assignment


Christine O'Donnell's 2010 Campaign Contributors

F9c9fc88-f427-11df-bad8-000255111976 Blog_this_caption
TwitStat on Kanye West


Yahoo's Most Popular Stories



Women of Color Breast Cancer Awareness Event

Monday, November 8, 2010

Breast Cancer Survivors of Color Pamper Up to Raise Awareness



When Diane Patterson visited the doctor’s for a breast reduction surgery last February, she was expecting a simple procedure to downsize her chest.


But after going through several examinations, she discovered that there was a much more pressing matter to deal with: breast cancer.


“It was a small enough tumor where I didn’t have to go through chemotherapy,” said Patterson, 45. “I still had to go through radiation. It was a very excruciating process.”


Following the diagnosis, she braved through 25 treatments of radiation in five weeks. However, complications arose when her breast MRI revealed that she also had thyroid cancer.


After courageously fighting two battles in one year, Patterson is now cancer-free. And as a survivor, she said she does not want to sit idly by while others experience the same mental and physical pains.


“My thing is, I took my breast cancer as a blessing,” said Patterson, who works as a payroll administrator at Catalina Express. “And if I can go out and help some other woman who has breast cancer, that would be my goal in life. A lot of times we’re just stuck in a rut, where we don’t know where to go.”


So she single-handedly organized the Women of Color Breast Cancer Survivors Day of Luxury in collaboration with Beauty 360 of Manhattan Beach on Oct. 23, where around 50 survivors and volunteers participated to enjoy a free day of pampering, entertainment and food.


“I organized this event because I wanted other

survivors to come out to enjoy a day of luxury and be around other survivors,” Patterson said.


Several services were at the participants’ disposal around the store: a hand and arm massage, a makeover

and a before-and-after photo shoot.


Patterson, who is a member of the Women of Color Breast Cancer Support Group in Inglewood, said the planning process for the event took about two-and-a-half months, after first conceiving the idea back in July.


She collaborated with Keith Carmody, the store manager of Beauty 360 in Manhattan Beach, who helped bring her idea to life.


“We are all about catering to women and their causes,” Carmody said. “It’s just something to give back to the community, a day of pampering, something for the women and survivors to have a good time and spend a few hours with us.”

This is the store’s third breast cancer awareness event since its opening in February, Carmody said.


In addition to pampering services, another strong incentive for the event was to increase breast cancer

awareness in the African-American community, Patterson said.


“Unfortunately, as African Americans we are dying the fastest,” she said. “We have the highest rate of dying for breast cancer.”


Patterson said she attended a breast cancer research conference in Oakland in September, where she learned that African-Americans severely lack participation in clinical trials that may be essential to finding a cure for the disease.

So the event also urged both African-American survivors and non-survivors to sign up with Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation for Breast Cancer, Patterson said.


“Studies show that we are not being included in these trials, so when we’re getting treated, they don’t have studies to compare how to treat us for breast cancer,” she said. “Women feel that because of the Tuskegee incident where the guys were injected with syphilis, they feel like if they participated in these clinical trials, they may die.”


According to Columbia University Medical Center, breast cancer is less common in African American women than white women; however, breast cancer death rate in African Americans is 37 percent higher than whites. This discrepancy is partially socioeconomic, according to the press release.


“Because of economics, they don’t go to the doctor, and even if they do, they’re in denial, so they don’t

follow up with their appointments,” said Charlene Ingram, a nine-year survivor and another member of the Women of Color Breast Cancer Support Group in Inglewood. “Sometimes their tumors are biologically more aggressive.”


The event also raised funds for breast cancer research initiatives by accepting donations and selling raffle tickets. Raffle prizes included donated gift cards from Costco, Sam's Club and Ralph's, Patterson said.


Jeri Hawkins, a volunteer and Patterson’s co-worker at Catalina Express, said being a part of this event helped her realize the ubiquity of breast cancer.


“I think there’s a lot for everybody here,” said Hawkins, 56. “I know many survivors, a lot of friends who are very close to me, and this has given me much more cause to think about that. Breast cancer affects all of those so close to us who we don’t think about until we do something like this.”

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Using social media to find leads on my story

For my story on a breast cancer awareness event last week in Manhattan Beach, I was hoping to gain more insight on other similar events in the LA/OC area. So I called out for help to my dear Facebook community:

This status update went unnoticed in hundreds of news feeds. Even after an entire day, I didn't receive a single response. So I decided it was time to try something new. Facebook's new Question application has been around for a few weeks now, and I thought there was no better time to test it out than now:

I got this response from a UCLA student within a few hours of posting the question. She proceeded to inform me about a rally that will be held this Thursday at UCLA.


I also tested out my Twitter community, but without much luck. Because I don't actively use my account, I don't have many followers, and even with the hash tag, my tweet got lost among the bunch.


So instead, I decided to branch out and try using twitter's relatively new feature that allow me to search mentions of a specific topic in my local area. I thought that was really helpful.







Tracking news outlets and their usage of social media

For this week's assignment, I followed Yahoo News's Facebook page, CNN Breaking News's Twitter account and the LA Times City Desk Twitter account.

Yahoo: After tracking Yahoo News's activity on Facebook for a week, I gained a better understanding of Anna Robertson's presentation last week in class. Yahoo publishes about three posts a day, and they all tend to be light and interesting reads specifically catered toward regular Facebook users. And as the ages 18-29 demographic actively uses Facebook more than any other age group, these posts reflect their general interests. Anna said Yahoo tends to filter out the heavier news stories for more attractive, light-hearted pieces that would garner more clicks. For instance, there were few mentions of hard and dry political affairs this past week, but the page provided a link to a story about President Obama making a guest appearance on Mythbusters. I initially didn't quite understand why this has to be the case, as a great majority of Facebook users are well-educated, intelligent and up-to-date with current affairs. However, as Sarah said, there is a clear line between the content you think you'd like to read and what you actually choose to read. Yahoo News uses its Facebook page to lure the young readers with quirky stories and brings them into its Website. Its Facebook page also provides an effective platform for user interaction. In addition to Giveaways and quizzes for the users, Yahoo can gauge the popularity of a story by looking at the number of "likes." This would contribute to a greater trend, which can help Yahoo in their future endeavors.

CNN Breaking News: I started following their twitter page since the day I opened my account. Throughout the day, they post a flood of links to international and national breaking news stories and videos featured on the main CNN news site. Although I find the sheer number of posts often overwhelming, it's definitely a great way to stay updated. Also, because Twitter only allows 180 characters per post, the tweets to be very straightforward (ex. "Two U.S. hikers to stand trial next month, Iran media reports (link)") Their use of this social media platform is nothing interesting or creative, but judging by their 3.5 million followers, their conciseness is key to their effectiveness.

LA Times City Desk: Contrary to CNN Breaking News's twitter, I found their over-frequent updates to be way too burdensome. The tweets are concise and straightforward as the CNN account; however, as the city desk account, the updates are mostly made up of local headlines, which do not have as many pressing and interesting breaking news as CNN. The updates come at least three times an hour, and while CNN incorporates videos and photos as well, the LA Times City Desk is a lot more limited in this aspect. It would be helpful to incorporate more links to feature pieces and interactive pieces and limit the number of hard news headlines.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Meet "Apostle Smith": Street Musician and Self-Proclaimed Pastor of Westwood

I was walking around aimlessly in Westwood one Friday night when I heard melodies. I went around the block and followed the sound. It belonged to a man who called himself "Apostle Smith."



BBC Shots:




One-minute Interview:





Completed Video: