Spring of year 2000, the LGBTA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Association) on campus held its annual Drag Show. Due to the fact, that I was graduating soon, and really wanted to do something wild before I leave the college life (who knew that I didn’t graduate until 2001). I made a huge decision. In the past, we have had professional drag kings and queens to do their shows. But since it is more of a student-run even, I really wanted more students to participated the show. So, I volunteered. (Yes. That’s the #1 reason I volunteered to do the drag show, #2 reason was that my inner show-off queen was at her peak.) Duckie and I desperately wanted Danni to join us for the show, since he missed his chance on Halloween 1999. We still have all the customs from the Halloween. Since Danni couldn’t dress up, he can be the straight guy (Jerry O’Connell) from the “Heartbreaker” video. Unfortunately, it was midterms week for Danni (He transferred to another school earlier in the year), therefore, he was unable to drive down and participate. (And of course, influenced by his boyfriend.)
So, it was just two of us. Thinking about what exactly we can do that will take up a good 5+ minutes. Based on the Mariah video, the dancing was pretty minimal, plus it will require a hot guy, a dog, toilet, doors, popcorns, and a bunch of props to re-act the entire video. It was just way too much trouble. Way too much.
Then I remembered, the recent knock-out TV performance by Jennifer Lopez for the 1999 Blockbuster Entertainment Award, where she did a live version of her video, “If You Had My Love.”
And I was like, yay, wow, I’m so gonna do that. But I can’t leave Duckie all by himself. Besides, he really dig Britney Spears at that time… I immediately thought of the segment where Nicole Sulliven did a mock-up slutty Britney Spears for MadTV. I desperately wanted to find a video clip or a sound clip of that show, but ended up with no luck. (It was not until the year of 2002, Danni found that clip and… Uh, well, I will write about it in Drag-A-Venture III) However, via the power of the internet, I found this clip:
Which is like, a totally different then what I wanted, but it is still funny. I quickly downloaded that mp3 track and saved it in my computer.
Believe it or not, it took us DAYS to get everything all ready for the performance.
Let me start with custom. Since we had really tight budget, we wanted to use whatever we can find to make things work. Anyway, the magical Duckie did it again. I spent 8 dollars on a 10 ft silver fabric, which Duckie made it into what Jennifer Lopez wore on the night of her performance.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any pictures of custom, but it is a silver version of this:
Then I spent 10 dollars on a pair of black FEMALE boots (Size 10) – the largest I can find at Shoe For Less. It is not the same white shining leather that Jennifer wore, but hey, it worked. As for the hair, Duckie used my Mariah wig, and I used his Cleopatra wig. (The only thing on me, that sorta look like Jennifer Lopez, is my ass)
Duckie’s custom is also a challenge. Since he didn’t want to spent too much time to make Britney’s famous little high school girl outfit, he decide to dress up as the “GYM” Britney. (As you may recall, in Britney Spear’s “Baby Hit Me One More Time” Video, she did a back flip and checked out her hot sexy cousin at a basketball court, yep, that outfit) Duckie re-used the pink sweater he wore as Bianca, and wore his tight black workout pants. His wonder bra really made his chest very desirable. To both men and lesbians. (After our performance, my lesbian friend Mimi, kept on rubbing her hands on Duckie’s boobies)
So, Duckie was working the custom for us, at the same time, I’ve got a bigger fish to catch. I have to produce the sound track that we use for the show.
Jennifer Lopez's performance at 1999 Blockbuster Entertainment Award used a slightly different version of “If you had my love” then that of her sound track. (I have both the full length of the Album version and the Remix Version) Using CoolEdit, an audio editing program, I was able to cut, paste and refine each segments together. However, after I played it back along with the video recording (oh yeah, I recorded her performance) – I found out that her ‘Dance’ part is much slower than the remix track. So, I had to tuned down the tempo of the dance portion. So, the track would start out with “If you had my love” and then transition into “Make my boobies on more size.” It turned out that the entire track, was only four minutes long. I had to figure out a way to make the entire performance 5 minutes long, and also maintain the audience’s attention. I looked though my entire collection of CD singles (I’m a music freak, I love CD singles that came with multi-tracks of club remix) to find something, that will build up the tension and good enough for two of us to dance. Then I found Nobody’s Angel’s “If you wanna dance” remix. Okay, the music sucked, but other CDs that I have didn’t offer what would sound good to be glued at the end of main performance. It took me two weeks, to finally get the tracks together, tuned up and finalized. The track would start with:
“If you had my love” + “Quick transition” + “Make my bobbies one more size” + “Quick transition” + “If you wanna dance” + “Ending sound”
So, you think that’s the end of the preparation? No! Of course not!
I have to choreograph our performance!
Duckie is a great dancer, but he was too busy and sorta lazy about how he wanted to do. I already know what kind of moves I will be doing, since all I have to do, is copy what Jenny from the block did on TV. But I have to choreograph “Make my boobies one more size” and “If you wanna dance.” Like a selfish b*itch that I yam, I work on my own portion first. I popped in the video and focus on Jennifer’s movements.
Thanks to the camera men, who kept on focusing on Jennifer’s face, there are moments where I had no clue what she was doing. I ended up having to compare all the moves from the video, Jennifer'’ performance, as well as her back-up dancers. (Took me forever to wait for VH1 to re-play her video, so I could record it.)
The hardest part of connecting all the moves, is that she’s doing them at different speed. The video version is more slower than the live version. And there are certain moves I couldn’t do with the given speed. So, I have to tweak and twist some of the original choreography and added a couple more steps and movements.
When I woke up in the morning, I practice. When I got back home from school, I practice. Before I head to bed, I practice. Even during the shower, I would practice in my head. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be flawless.
It may sound like we had a lot of time to work on everything, but we actually didn’t do sh*t until 3 weeks before the show. (Yep. We put the custom, music and choreography together in 3 weeks)
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