Quel drag, encore

This just in--according to my friend Snappy, it looks as though the BuzzKill Legal Corporation® from Battlestar NBC/Universal has once again defeated the renegade Copyright Liberation Front (not to be confused with that other Kopyright Liberation Front®, the KLF).

The Peacock Network or Google or Homeland Security or someone has had that nifty video of Jake Gyllenhaal pulled from YouTube.

Oh, curse them, curse them, Justified Ancients of Mu Mu!

You can, however, buy the episode on iTunes for $1.99. Still, you might wait a couple of weeks until the offical Saturday Night Live website catches up and possibly offers the clip on their site.

So my bad and copyright infringers beware. I really should have known better, but even lil milquetoast me likes to flaunt the rules every now and again.

All is forgiven. ¡Viva la Commerce!

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And speaking still further on The Glamourous Life of the Drag Queen, I am totally loving Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up," which has the brilliance to sample "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music. True enough, she sampled "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof on her previous album, so she's clearly working her way through the Broadway in the '60s back catalog. On her next solo outing, expect a mash up of Gwen and Robert Goulet singing a hip hop/electroclash/emo version of "Time to Remember" from The Fantasticks. Tee to da Eye to da Em to da Eeeee, vulture-licious, indeed.

I can't say that I really get Gwen's appeal, though. I sort of got her work with No Doubt (probably not much to get, but still . . . hard not to like something like "Underneath It All" or "Just a Girl"). "Wind It Up" is entertaining, catchy, but not what you'd call a pop classic. Apparently, the song was originally written for a runway show of her fashion line, L(ove) A(ngel) M(usic) B(aby). So viva la commerce II; pop and business get their freak on once more.

What I understand even less is her "look." Yes, yes, classic Vargas girl, '40s/'50s pin-up, yadda, yadda, yadda, but she ends up most of the time looking like a farsighted drag queen with a propensity to do her own hair and makeup. Honey, did you really mean to make your lips that Haifa orange red? Did you let the Lady Clairol "Cornsilk Blonde Bombshell" stay in a little too long? Tell the truth: You didn't really mean to walk out the door looking like that, did you? Mmmm, girlfriend, daylight can be so unflattering to those who insist on wearing discount aisle cosmetics and sweatshop-made clothes.

What always makes me chuckle is that Gwen is married to Gavin Rossdale, formerly of Bush, who way back in the '80s during his first blush of fame/notoriety was photographed with (and romantically/sexually linked to? you'll have to read Boy George's Take It like a Man to figure that one out, and even then . . .) British drag artiste, Marilyn.

So whenever I see Gwen performing, I always think to myself, that ol' Gav' traded in one drag queen for another.

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The world's gone all draggy. That or old Sparks! records are new again. Meet Mika. Listen to "Grace Kelly." Put the rather tedious, "it's all about me and my sexy body and pithy comments to the British press!" Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters back in the go-go dancer's cage at the boy bar where he belongs. (More "I Don't Feel like Dancing," less you, please, Jake.) Long live one-hit wonders!

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And finally on this theme, Zarf the transgendered rocker on All My Children. Transgendered is not the same as transvestite. I hope we all get that by now. So why do the soap writers insist on writing (and the actor insists on acting) the part as if Zarf/Zoë were a man who had sat up too many nights in a flowered kimono, combing out his Eva Gabor wigs, eating bon-bons, and watching too many Charles Busch movies on Logo? Dye, Mommie, Dye!, as it were. Preferably with some highlights and then swept back into a tasteful chignon.

Zarf is supposed to be a man who wants to be a woman who wants to love a woman, specifically long-suffering lesbian character Bianca Montgomery, daughter of that one woman drag revue herself, Erica Kane. But, oh dear. His whole act is very, how you say? Ah, yes, over zee top, n'est pas?

Word to Zarf: Channel Melissa Etheridge, not Melissa Rivers. Or, worse, Melissa Joan Hart. Think less chiffon and stiletto heels and more flannel and sensible shoes. Focus on pumping iron and not curling iron.

Too true, you may have the right look. Bianca is definitely more of a "lipstick lesbian," so you may be on to something with your impersonation of a pre-insane Anne Heche. I'm only trying to help. After all, when everything goes pear-shaped--as it will, because this is a soap, and no one ends up happy and partnered for long, especially the town lesbian--you need to be prepared that it ain't all The 'L' Word out there. It ain't even all La cage aux folles.

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There now. Is everyone who could be offended totally there and in the moment? Good. My work here is done.