Unpaid Spokeswomen #26

Welcome to Unpaid Spokeswomen, a column where we log what we’ve been into this week. Behind the wigs, makeup, costumes, and several layers of irony, we are two humans who genuinely enjoy doing things. Here is a weekly roundup of our unfiltered expert recommendations.

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Trixie:

Palm Springs, California

On paper, Palm Springs is a desert resort city a couple hours outside of Los Angeles. It is a snowbird city where the population triples during the winter months and conversely un-triples for the summer. It’s about 94 squares miles located in Coachella Valley and happens to be situated on Indian Reservation land.

Okay enough with the tourism pamphlet infographic mumbo jumbo. Palm Springs is magical phenomenon and can only be described as a perpetual gay pride set in the 60’s. If Queer As Folk took place in the same place as Mars Atttacks!, it would be Palm Springs. Drag shows every night. Strong, cool drinks. Older men who look exactly sun damaged enough to never pass for anything but their real age but somehow sparkling with vitality. The city of Palm Springs has a flavor and a color palette that doesn’t exist anywhere else. This is largely due to the fact that the city of Palm Springs is very protective over its historical preservation and curating its visual and cultural experiences. If you even want to paint your mailbox in Palm Springs, you have to get the paint color approved by the city. If you’d like to know how I know so much about the restrictive processes of this city, watch the forthcoming Trixie Motel on Discovery+.

The antique stores overflow with flawless trinkets frozen in time. The homes in PS compose a sprawling pastel quilt of midcentury modern ranches in coordinating shades. The restaurants offer fabulous food and consistently friendly service. But the best part is that you can tell people who live here love Palm Springs. They at some point retreated from society to join this magical ecosystem in the middle of nowhere and they never looked back. In Los Angeles, people have either negative feelings about where they live or no feelings at all. I live in Hollywood and I have seen too many strange people jerking off in front of World of Wonder to feel too positive about the locale. As a woman who has been living here off and on during the renovation, I have become a true Palm Springs faggot who is ready to fast track to the golden years of my gayness in this pastel paradise.

Having a Long iPhone Cord

It’s time. Maybe you’ve thought about getting a longer iPhone cord a few times. You’ve had heated dreams about it and woken up panting. Maybe you even experimented with a longer iPhone cable in college when you were drunk. You loved the impassioned engagement but you decided it was a phase and you should focus on your studies. 

If you lay in bed/on the couch and you can’t scroll TikTok while charging your phone, you have not yet begun to live. I would know because I use TikTok a lot nowadays as I am very Gen Z. 

Picture it. You’re lounging in bed with your phone in hand. It has 10% battery but you’d rather savor your last few minutes of Farmville or whatever you’re doing instead of holster your phone on the nightstand charger. Suddenly you get a text from your friend Janine. She texted the “Yogurt Slut” group chat because she wants to meet up for some frozen yogurt and you’re invited! Lucky you. You can’t believe it because ever since you tried to kiss her at Friendsgiving things haven’t been the same. You know your phone is dying, but if there’s an opportunity to get some original tart froyo (gross) with some sour patch kids on it, you aren’t going to miss it. Especially if it means more facetime with Janine. She could be the one your spiritual advisor told you was coming even though her name doesn’t start with a “G.” But hey, “Janine” kind of sounds like it could start with a G so maybe your spiritual advisor is the kind of person who struggles with names and faces.

The froyo turns out to be delicious! And the interaction with Janine went great! She asked where you got your toe ring and why you wear it on your finger and you got to tell your hilarious ring-sizing story. The whole group laughed and found you both quirky and relatable. Everyone leaves and you realize mid-uber call that your phone died. You have to walk home and just a half mile from your home you get brutally murdered by a crazed copycat of the Zodiac Killer. 

All because you still have a tiny little iPhone cable. Level up, baby. You deserve it. I personally won’t be happy until I get an iPhone charger long enough to use as a fire ladder out of a fourth-story window in my building.

Katya:

Erykah Badu

I may have written about Erykah before, but I don’t mind the repetition because she is well worth a dozen entries when it comes to music that I love and recommend. I started listening to her back when I worked at Dorothy’s Boutique in Boston circa 2006. She is often considered the mother of the neo-soul subgenre, and her first album Baduizm was released in 1997, the same year that the movie Contact came out. 1997 was a big year for me. 

To say I love her music would be an understatement. For about four years straight I had a playlist of about 50 songs on repeat while I did my makeup for shows, and while I entertained gentlemen callers in my boudoir. I’ll never forget one night I had this guy over named Terrence, a lovely black man in his early 40’s who chided me “so what, you put Erykah on when you have a brother over?” I laughed and said no, I always have her on. It was true but he didn’t believe me, and then we got back to fucking. 

It’s hard to pick a favorite record, and even harder to pick a song I don’t care for. Oddly enough I think my three favorites tend to revolve around a similar theme of communication on literal, figurative and metaphysical levels. Telephone (2008) Tyrone (Live) (1997) and Mr. Telephone Man (2015).

I tend to apply this kind of unfair but steadfast rule to anyone I’m getting to know, especially in a romantic sense, that if they don’t like Erykah’s music, as in they actually hate it, then I cannot fuck with them at all. Indifference to it is tolerable, but if she’s playing in the background and they ask to switch the tunes, then they need to get out my damn house. Thankfully, it’s only happened  once, and sure enough that dude was a real dick. 

The Gilded Age (HBO)

Mary Dugan let me tell you about this batshit crazy show. I just watched the first episode last night, and Jesus Christ this period drama is so over the damn top, I spent half the hour with my mouth wide open in a state of disbelief gawking at all the insanity on display. It takes place during the 1880’s in New York and Rhode Island and is a heavy-handed war of Old Money versus New Money that pits caricatures against cartoons. It feels and looks like an alien’s fever dream recollection of Downton Abbey, with the opulent sets bizarrely scrubbed clean like a Disney World set. Lavish interiors and Cirque du Soleil-like costumes nearly obscure the punishingly repetitious dialogue that desperately wants the viewer to know that so-and-so is of the Old World and such and such is the future. If you played a drinking game where you took a shot every time someone said “new” and “old” you’d die of alcohol poisoning in about twenty minutes. As a drag queen, I’m gonna stick around just for the costumes. They are fucking incredibly weird and wonderful. I screamed when I saw Jeanne Tripplehorn glaring in the corner of a lavish parlor room with a giant feather hat. The well-drawn and incredibly acted upstairs-downstairs tension of Downton Abbey was so engaging in large part because of the talent of the actors, and the authenticity of the production design. The Gilded Age feels less like historical drama and more like retro-futuristic science fiction. But I’m gonna watch every single ridiculous episode of it, because I’m gay and I like hats.