FrontBurner

VH1’s new four-episode series, Secret Celebrity RuPaul’s Drag Race, first aired last Friday. But tonight’s episode is the one to watch, because it features two of Dallas’ most beloved drag queens — Alyssa Edwards and Asia O’Hara.

The title pretty much sums up the concept. For each episode, three former Drag Race contestants are paired with three B-list celebrities, and they compete to see who has the most spectacular and heartfelt transformation. The first episode featured comedian Jermaine Fowler and Riverdale cutie Jordan Connor, as well as the very annoying Nico Tortorella from Younger. I was skeptical at first, but RuPaul always knows how to make the formula werq. By the time the charity prize money was awarded at the end, I was tearing up along with Ross Matthews and Carson Kressley.

I chatted with Alyssa, aka Justin Johnson, earlier this week. He’s at home in Mesquite, doing a little gardening and journaling. He’d like you to know he’s doing just fine, thank you very much, with the aid of lots of journaling and the occasional video from his Beyond Belief Dance Company students. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

While you’ve been back at home in Mesquite, what’s been your favorite takeout?

Oh my gosh. Well, I’m a sucker for TexMex, so I have been rotating. I’ve been going to El Fenix, to Posados, to Mia’s on Lemmon. I do it every Friday night. I say Friday night, you treat yourself. I get my enchiladas, some beans, some salsa. Perhaps a margarita. And then I go watch drag. We’re getting a lot of drag on Friday nights.

What are you watching, besides Secret Celebrity RuPaul’s Drag Race?

So we’ve got Season 12 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, then Untucked. And then I’ll tell you what else I like to watch. I like to watch all the live videos. Like that one queen. Did you see when she fell asleep on Facebook?

I hate to say I missed that.

You didn’t see that? She went viral. She left her Facebook Live up for two hours and people sat there and watched. She woke up to about $2,000 in tips. Hilarious. She drank too much and girl just sat in a lawn chair. Her wig fell off and everything. It was hilarious. Bravo to every queen, every entertainer, and every drag illusionist around the world that is still sharing their artistry and making people smile. Wow. We need more of it.

On March 30, KERA-TV will launch television programs and digital resources to support at-home learning for students in more than 120 school districts across North Texas. The content will air on KERA TV weekdays from 6 a.m.- 6 p.m., and will be available for free online at KERA Learn! The member station of PBS and NPR designed the programming around Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards and included material for levels pre-k through 12th grade. 

With Dallas-area school districts closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, students, educators, and parents-turned-teachers are facing the unexpected challenge of carrying on an at-home education. KERA Learn! aims to help alleviate the burden this stressful situation is placing on everybody. (Parents, this would be a good time to let go of the guilt and loosen up the house rules regarding screen time. Just keep yourself and your kids sane and happy however you see fit!)

I watched the first few episodes of Cheer last night, the new Netflix documentary from the producer of Last Chance U. It follows the national championship cheer team out of Navarro College in Corsicana, one that even the locals weren’t particularly aware of. It has hard luck stories. It has grit. It has heart. It has broken noses and concussions and shockingly-difficult-to-apply hair ribbons. It’s as poetic as football and almost as violent, and it’s certainly better than fruitcake. Here’s a great article about it. Watch it.

Remember television? No, not the screen where you watch all your Hulu streams and Amazon rentals. Broadcast television: the thing you turned on and watched no matter what was on. It had channels, they aired shows, and you were completely at the mercy of some mysterious station manager who decided what you were going to watch at any given time.

I know, it sounds horrible. Now we have dozens of streaming options, monthly subscriptions, video on demand, plenty of content to binge and serials to suck up hours—heck, we can even decide to spend the evening watching kids play video games live on Twitch. What wonderful times we live in, right?

Well, I’m not so sure. Yes, we now have dozens of specialty streaming services to satisfy any movie nerd’s quirky cinematic appetite. And yet, all it takes is one corporation to change its distribution strategy—as with what happened with Filmstruck last year—and a heap of classic cinema disappears from the streaming universe overnight. Where can you watch Ozu films these days? The video stores are all closed. Where do you go?

Now you’re wondering: what does this all have to do with anything? Well, oddly enough, the proliferation of competing streaming services have left us in a position where television—and local television in particular—may become relevant again. Case in point: a program called Frame of Mind on KERA that has been around for nearly three decades and will kick off its fall season at 10 p.m. this evening on channel 13.

I spent most of last week getting over a cold, so I caught up on some TV viewing. If you haven’t already watched Season 4 of Last Chance U on Netflix, you should. The series follows a junior college football program in Independence, Kansas, where players are getting a last chance to make the grades and get the tape they need to ideally advance to a D1 school and on to the NFL. Except we, the viewers, know just how heartbreakingly impossible these kids’ dreams really are.

What Season 4 lacks in the character development and drama of earlier seasons, it gains in terms of the clarity of the tragic sacrifices these young men are making in terms of their bodies and their brains. They are commodities, despite the best efforts of well-meaning professors.

Dallas native Markiese King is perhaps the most tragic example of all. He suffers three concussions during the season, plus breaks his finger and a bone in his ankle. After one game, where he is knocked unconscious for minutes and then is sent back in to play, we watch as he has to be physically restrained by teammates after the game as he gets incoherently violent, clearly still in the throes of having his brain rattled. Later, he doesn’t recall any of it.

The wide receiver played for South Oak Cliff High School, initially catching the eye of TCU and Texas Tech. But poor academic performance preventing him from enrolling. So he was relegated to JUCO.

During the show, King takes viewers on a tour of the housing project where he grew up, telling stories of gun violence and stopping at Hardeman’s BBQ to talk with his high school coach. Filmmakers interview his mother, who talks about her longterm illness, which often interfered with King’s high school academic career. As the credits for the season roll, we learn that King still hasn’t managed to get his grades up and his mother’s health has deteriorated, so he returns home to help care for her, with no football options in sight.

Meanwhile, the stogie-smoking, expletive-hurling, emotionally unstable head coach Jason Brown, who kicks King off the team before the last game for allegedly smoking marijuana, has been charged with eight felony counts for allegedly impersonating a lawyer in Johnnie Cochran’s law firm in order to threaten a news outlet. He’d already been fired as the head coach after texting a German player, “I’m your new Hitler.”

These young men have so much heart. They deserve better. From all of us.

Among the multitude of cameos in Taylor Swift’s new video for “You Need to Calm Down” is A’Keria C. Davenport as Nicki Minaj. Houston may now claim her, but Gregory D’Wayne grew up in Dallas and graduated from Oak Cliff’s Carter High School. And just look at her now, hanging by the trailer park pool with Katy Perry, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ellen DeGeneres, Adam Lambert, the Queer Eye guys, and–gasp!–Ryan Reynolds.

Alyssa Edwards, our hometown RuPaul’s Drag Race star, will be riding on the Smirnoff float for NYC Pride at the end of the month dressed as Lady Liberty. I chatted with her on the phone from Los Angeles about what drag queen she’d want to have her back in a bar fight, her recipe for a tongue-popping cocktail, and where she hides those rainbow Jell-O shots.

It is an honor and a privilege to get a chance to talk to you. Well, thank you so much. I’m so very excited to be talking to D Magazine because I am a proud Dallas resident.

So that was one of my questions. You’re in Los Angeles now. You’re going to be on the Smirnoff float in the NYC Pride parade at the end of the month. You’ve been on the Werq the World tour. Are you planning to keep Dallas as your home base? I was asked yesterday at an interview, “What is your favorite place in the world you’d like to travel?” And I said, “There’s no place like home.” You know, I just purchased a home. We all got to see that on my Netflix series, Dancing Queen. And I tell you, it is a struggle for me to leave and travel because, you know, I was born and raised in Mesquite. I didn’t have the appreciation for the Dallas community until I traveled. And I’ve visited a lot of beautiful places, but Dallas is home for me.

How do you think Dallas Pride compares to others that you’ve been to around the country? Whenever I ride in the Dallas Pride parade and I see all the smiling faces and all the waving of  the fans and the flags, I know those people. I see those eyes, and I know that person.

And I think for me, there’s like an extra feeling of warmth and an appreciation of my community and the amount of support that has been selflessly given to me. I think that’s the biggest difference, you know? I think moving our Pride this year to Fair Park was such a great move in my opinion, because it gives us opportunities to really grow and to really elevate our Pride experience.

That’s good to hear. The one criticism I have heard is that you can no longer bring your Smirnoff rainbow Jell-O shots because it’s not in the gayborhood anymore. Well, listen. You weren’t supposed to bring those out on Oak Lawn either, right? Well if you’ve got a good handbag or a nice clutch, you throw those right in there and go on in. And you know, when people were talking about this, I’m like, “You guys, we couldn’t do that on the streets. We just did it anyway.” Right?

Right. Get that cooler and let’s all come have a good time and celebrate life.

Alyssa, what’s your favorite recipe for a tongue-popping vodka cocktail? Oh my gosh. OK, I’m put on the spot now. Here we go. A tongue-popping vodka cocktail recipe. Well, I am a classic martini kind of gal with a little bit of Smirnoff and some rainbow olives. However, I think I love the Red, White & Berry flavor with a little bit of Pop Rocks around the rim.

OK, this is turning into something good. And my God, OK, what can I have in it? A little bit of pink lemonade!

S. Holland Murphy, D editor extraordinaire (who recently abandoned me on behalf of her children), alerted me on Monday to New York Magazine’s series of four covers honoring drag queens. I finally had a chance to look at them today. They are spectacular.

I also finally had a chance to review Vulture’s ranking of the most powerful drag queens in America. Dallas has six queens in the top 100 (although I believe A’Keria Chanel Davenport may have already moved to Houston), including Asia O’Hara and Plastique Tiara. Tongue-popping Alyssa Edwards topped the list at #5. Her new Anastasia Beverley Hills makeup kits, released at the end of May, are already creating a buzz. And you can currently catch her on the World of Wonder’s Werq the World docu-series (see trailer below). The international tour hits Dallas November 11.

And my wife alerted me to the fact that on November 21, Drag Race choreographer Todrick Hall is bringing his Haus Party tour to The Bomb Factory. The album is now her favorite tennis pump-up jam.

If you watched the grand finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race last night, you know the real winner wasn’t [spoiler alert] Yvie Oddly but Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, when her girl on the street segment concluded with a shot of her sitting on a throne on a Los Angeles sidewalk giving out some improvised fake digits (555-VANESSA-VANJIE-VOTERS-DOT-MINGLETHING).

Despite some impressive acrobatics, local contender A’Keria C. Davenport, the last Dallas drag queen standing, lost her first-round lip sync battle to Yvie, who was dressed as a Vitamixed version of Sesame Street.

But best-dressed had to go to A’Keria’s mother and grandmother. Mama Davenport even turned around to showcase her assets and prove that Miss Ass Almighty’s apples don’t fall far from the tree.

Sadly, A’Keria told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that she recently left the Big D and moved to Katy. She also told Metro.co.uk that, post-finale, she plans to create a skincare line as well as start a charity that will provide support for transgender women and homosexual youth. She told the website: “So when things aren’t going as planned in your life, whether your family are putting you out because of your lifestyle, or you’re a victim of transgender gay-bashing, which takes place a lot. I lost a close friend, so that’s something that’s very dear to me.” In addition to her friend, she also knew Muhlaysia Booker, a transgender woman who was fatally shot in Dallas two weeks ago.

I personally knew this beautiful lady and spoke with her right after the first incident. We shouldn’t have to live in fear. We will get justice abd we must SAVE OUR SISTERS. I lost one of my closest friends to the same senseless act. https://t.co/ClHUBTaPrV

— Akeria The SCARLET WITCH Davenport (@A_doubleC_D) May 20, 2019

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and RuPaul provided a moving retrospective of the gay civil rights movement as part of the show. Dallas Pride starts tomorrow, for the first time in Fair Park. A’Keria won’t be there, but the cast of the Rose Room will. Catch Asia O’Hara, Cassie Nova, Jenna Sky, Kelexis Davenport, Krystal Summers, Layla Larue, and Valerie Lohr on the main stage at 2:15. Or head to the Rose Room to see them at 11 tonight.

Show these queens, and yourself, some love this weekend. Because if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else?

Of the three Dallas drag queens who started out on this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, only one remains. A pair of busted burlap pants took out Ra’Jah O’Hara, and Plastique Tiara succumbed last week to a failed catfight and insufficient face-kini. (But you can’t keep the Vietnamese-American beauty down for long–she took the opportunity to release her glam single, “Irresistible.”) The last one standing is A’Keria Davenport, a pageant queen from the Davenport Dynasty, which was founded by Oak Cliff native Kalexis Davenport.

A’Keria has, for the most part, stayed under the radar with passable performances like her take on Tiffany Haddish for Snatch Game at Sea. Then came that twerkerrific improv opposite guest judge Cheyenne Jackson (aside: I was once at a penthouse cocktail party where the Broadway star tickled the ivories). So, since you’ve done your civic duty and voted for our next mayor already and anything else you had planned will probably be rained out, tune in tonight.

Losers is the new Netflix series about seven athletes and a soccer club (Torquay United) that gained more from their losses than their victories, from former world boxing champ Michael Bentt to French figure skater Surya Bonaly (you remember her–she’s the only female figure skater to land a backflip on one blade in Olympic competition, but only came in 10th in Nagano). The episodes are entertaining and inspiring and touching–I found myself tearing up more than once while watching and doing my makeup in the mornings this week, over curling and dog sled racing of all things.

You’ll find the Mavericks’ head coach Rick Carlisle in episode no. 7, “Black Jack,” about Jack Ryan, a former street ball player who could have made it to the NBA but instead found his calling doing tricks with the Harlem Wizards. Carlisle had first met Ryan back in 1990, at a New York Nets rookie camp, when Carlisle was an assistant to Nets coach Bill Fitch. In an interview with the New York Times in 2003, Carlisle said he wasn’t impressed. ”He was older, 29 years old, just about six feet tall, and he looked like a California beach bum when he showed up. White guy, deep tan, long blond hair, mustache, big smile, a little overweight, not quite in shape.”

Carlisle and the Nets give Ryan the boot. But Ryan ultimately rebounds from low self esteem, anger issues, and alcohol abuse to become a crowd-pleasing, ball-twirling phenom, proving that there is hope for us all. We just need to find the right court to play on.