Arts & Entertainment
Lady Bunny’s comedy special slays sacred COVID-19 cows
4 wigs, 12 costume changes and new song parodies
At a time where nothing seems certain, legendary drag queen Lady Bunny’s ignorance is our bliss.
“Oh, I’ve never seen it,” says Bunny, when the RuPaul Netflix vehicle “AJ and the Queen” came up as a topic during our interview.
Lack of first-hand knowledge didn’t stop the NYC-based DJ, actress, singer/songwriter, upcoming comedy special star, and creator of Wigstock from skewering “AJ” mercilessly, while co-hosting two recent Voss Events-presented digital drag benefits that raised funds for queens out of work because of COVID-19.
“Listen,” says Bunny, “I make jokes about ‘Drag Race,’ and I don’t watch that either. Honey, I don’t watch anything… I know Miss Vanjie said, ‘Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie’ on her way out, in a way that was odd, but I don’t really know what else happened in that episode, or why she was eliminated, or why she said that.”
Bunny, whose television has not been hooked up for 10 months, admits, “Whenever you see me make a joke about pop culture, that is based on what I see other people talking about.” To compensate for this lack of firsthand information, “I will run it by friends who are more keyed into that kind of thing.”
With no boob tube at home and no burning desire to binge online (her flirtation with Netflix didn’t last past the free trial period), Bunny says she’s been spending her COVID-19 isolation period “trying to catch up on things I said I didn’t have time for before the quarantine, like filing taxes; and exercising, and dieting, so I don’t have that excuse, ‘Oh, I have to run here or run there.’ ”
Bunny is also devoting some of her spare time to long-planned personal projects, including a book she’s penning in partnership with her mother, and an autobiography. (“Just my life, before I forget it,” she says.)
And in a moment in time when there’s never been more spare time to sit around the house, hit a few keystrokes, press a button, and share your opinion on anything, everything, and often, nothing, with the world. That’s part of why Bunny says she’s “trying to stay off of social media a bit more, because I was hitting it hard during the first few months of COVID-19. But now, things seem to have turned sour, and it’s disconcerting.”
Known to those who follow her online as a steadfast supporter of Bernie Sanders (Bianca Del Rio often referred to Sanders as her “boyfriend” during the two Voss Events digital drag benefits they co-hosted), Bunny cited the trigger topics of social distancing and mask-wearing as among her reasons for dialing back on the sheer volume of postings and tweets. (She remains a presence on Facebook and Twitter—but these days, she’s just as likely to be writing about work from fellow artists as she is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
“I realize people are scared, and I realize people are broke,” she says, of the COVID-19 tensions. “But I don’t understand the desire to lash out at people that aren’t observing the precautions that they decide to observe. It’s almost like they’re trying to prove they’re a better Democrat, because they dip their vegetables in Clorox water, and they wear masks everywhere. It’s just, like, I don’t understand what it is about a frightening, deadly pandemic that makes people want to scold others. If I walk down to the [NYC West Side] piers, as I do, almost every day, and I see people who don’t have masks on, and they’re coughing? Well then, I walk away from them. I don’t yell at them… At the end of the day, we are responsible for our own self-preservation. I mean, if someone who weighs 90 pounds and has a syringe sticking out of each eye tells me he wants to screw me without a condom, well, that situation may arise—but it’s up to me to say, ‘No,’ to protect myself.”
Asked how COVID-19 has impacted her creative output, Bunny noted, “All of my work involves dance floors and audiences—and we’re not gonna have either of those for many, many months. So basically, my paychecks have stopped, but my bills have not. So I’m in the same position that, you know, most drag queens or club employees are in.”
With little hope of audiences flocking to her bread and butter public gathering places any time soon, Bunny turned to what she does best: Parody songs, groovy dance segments, sketches, satire, insult humor, and raunchy jokes.
That brings us to the June 5 VossEvents.com debut of her downloadable ($9.99) comedy special, “C#ntagias,” in which, press materials note, “Demented drag diva Lady Bunny shamelessly interrupts your isolation in an attempt to give what may be your last laugh before the apocalypse.”
COVID-19-themed humor is front and center. Along with four signature sky-high wigs and 12 costume changes over the course of the 35-minute show, the press release further promises “brand new song parodies from artists as varied as Lizzo, Justin Bieber, and Madonna.” Gender-blending provocateur Christeene christeenemusic.com duets with Bunny on a pandemically updated version of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is,” and Bunny will perform her timely parody of the RuPaul song, “Sissy That Walk.”
Currently available via Bunny’s YouTube channel, the video for “Sissy That Cough” finds our quarantined gal noting:
If I forget to use Lysol
I’ll end up in the hospital
I’m climbing up my fucking walls.
Those walls aren’t a problem, at least not in the video, which sees Bunny singing and dancing around an empty white space that is occasionally populated by, right on cue when the lyric comes in, bats she’s worried will:
Fly, fly, fly,
Uh-oh
From Wuhan Chi, Chi, Chi.
Bunny claims sole responsibility for crafting the lyrics to “Cough”—but overall writing credit for “C#ntagias” is shared with Beryl Mendelbaum, the Facebook drag persona of Bruce Jope, described by Bunny as “a fascinating character who hung out with everyone from Divine to Holly Woodlawn to Cher, back in the day.”
There’s a reason for that. Long before the character of Beryl burst onto the scene, Jope and his late partner, Francis Toohey founded the magazine Hit Parade (1978-1983, first based in Boston, then NYC). It chronicled, with gusto, the sort of culture and mind frame that drew people like RuPaul and Lady Bunny to NYC.
Mendelbaum, says Bunny, brings to their past collaborations (including stage shows “Clowns Syndrome” and “Trans-Jester!) an ability “to write as an older, Jewish retiree kleptomaniac, which is her online [Facebook] character. And I thought, if she can write in the voice of someone who she is not, maybe she can write for me, a potty-mouthed, southern, over-the-hill showgirl!”
Skits also play a part in “C#ntagias.” One of them, notes, Bunny, “was inspired by three emails I got claiming they had activated my computer’s camera when I was on a porn site, and I needed to send them $2,000 via Bitcoin or they were going to send this footage to all of my email contacts. So I started writing a reply, not that I even thought they were a real person, because I’m not the biggest porn fan, and so I came up with some stuff that was pretty funny. I sent it off to Beryl and we finished off the skit… She has a way of either pulling back or taking things in a different direction if I become too preachy, too vulgar, too whatever. She’s kind of like half writer, half director.”
For more information on Lady Bunny’s comedy special, available for digital download as of June 5, visit vossevents.com/digital. For Bunny and Beryl, see ladybunny.net and @BERYLMENDELBAUMFANS, respectively.
Movies
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Celebrating iconic film 35 years after its release
Hard as it is to believe for those who were around when it happened, “Thelma and Louise” celebrates the 35th anniversary of its release this year.
Deeply popular with both critics and audiences at the time, its reputation continues to ride high; it’s a movie that manages to exist within a nexus of intersecting genres – the “buddy picture”, the “crime thriller,” the “action adventure,” the” “western,” the “neo-noir” – by blending them seamlessly into a crowd-pleasing wild ride of a story, all while delivering a powerful feminist message of outrage, defiance, and empowerment.
And no, “Thelma and Louise” is not a “queer movie” – but it feels like one.
That’s partly because It exists within another genre, too: “lesbian noir,” which blossomed in its wake with films like “Bound” (1996) and has re-emerged in recent films like “Love Lies Bleeding” (2024) and “Honey, Don’t” (2025) – but that also stretches back across decades into the days of old Hollywood, when coded queer characters were a regular fixture in the seedy film noir classics of their time, never overtly identified as such but obvious to spot for anyone savvy enough to read the subtext. That’s why “Thelma and Louise” resonated (and continues to resonate) with lesbian and bisexual audiences who see themselves reflected in its two lead characters, even if there is nothing queer about their relationship — on the surface at least.
Of course, that can be a sore subject; subtext might seem like a “cop-out” for those who long for more open representation for LGBTQ people on the screen – but it’s everything when it comes to recognizing the queerness of older movies (and a lot of newer ones, too), and just because something is not explicitly stated, that doesn’t mean it’s being hidden. After all, most good stories rely on the transcendent power of nuance, which always relies on subtext to shine through. And if any movie relies upon subtext, “Thelma and Louise” is certainly one of them. In its masterfully crafted narrative of a weekend “girl’s trip” that goes horribly wrong, a lot of the most important information is left unspoken.
Take Thelma (Geena Davis), to start with: a naive young housewife whose husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) treats her like a possession, she blithely ignores his mediocrity and disregards – or at least, pretends to – his repressive tactics to control her, choosing instead to live in a tenuous illusion of “traditional” marriage dynamics; yet when her bestie Louise (Susan Sarandon) offers her a chance to escape for a weekend, she jumps at it – even if she has to skip the part where she asks his permission.
Louise (Susan Sarandon), a bit older and a lot more worldly, is a waitress who spends her days fending off the insults and advances of her male customers at the diner where she works; she sees Thelma’s situation clearly, and hopes that a temporary respite from Darryl will help her recognize the dead-end reality of her marriage. We understand this immediately, even though a direct word is never said about it, and she’s right, of course. They’ve barely even gotten on the road before Thelma’s longing for attention from someone other than her inadequate husband – a honky-tonk Lothario (Timothy Carhart) she meets in a roadhouse where they stop for drinks on the way out of town – leads to an attempted rape that is only prevented when Louise shoots the predator dead in the parking lot.
That killing is the catalyst that turns them into fugitives; as Louise rightly understands, there’s no evidence of sexual assault, just a dead body and a pair of runaway women, and the letter of the law is not on their side. But in truth, that fatal shot is fired not to save Thelma, who has already been freed from her would-be rapist’s clutches when it happens, but because Louise has traumatic memories – and a chip on her shoulder – over something that “happened in Texas,” years before. We never find out what it was that happened, and we don’t need to; our imaginations tell us all we need to know, just as we know that the killing, while it may have been cold-blooded murder, is a justifiable homicide all the same.
There’s more of that subtextual nuance throughout, from the perversely inspiring motivations of hitchhiking hustler J.D. (Brad Pitt, in the sex-on-a-stick performance that launched him on his trajectory to stardom), who takes advantage of Thelma’s gullibility to rob the heroines even as he teaches her the tactics that will soon launch them on their fateful ride-or-die fugitive adventure; to the self-serving “chivalry” of Louise’s erstwhile boyfriend (Michael Madsen) as he casts himself as the “martyr” in letting her go. And yes, even to the benignly sublimated patriarchal programming that drives police investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel in an uncharacteristically empathetic role) to act as the would-be savior of these two “fallen” women, though they want no part of his well-meaning attempts to “rescue” them from the consequences of their choices. And when the two fugitives terrorize a piggish trucker (Marco St. John) before blowing up his big-rig tanker, nobody says – or needs to say – why it feels to them like the right thing to do; it simply IS the right thing, and we, as the audience, know it. What we have seen up to that point has placed us firmly on Thelma and Louise’s side already, and we’re as ready to watch the puerile patriarchy burn as they are.
None of this is spoken aloud, nor is it even alluded to, but it comes through, nonetheless. Chalk it up, if you like, to the power of cinema, especially in the hands of a versatile, stylish, and seasoned director like Ridley Scott, to communicate what is inherently beyond the power of words.
Thelma and Louise may not be “a couple,” but we can’t help but notice as their clothing evolves from frilly-femme to “butch” utilitarianism along the way, or how their connection to the men in their lives easily dissolves without fanfare. And by the time we reach the movie’s thrilling denouement, when all they have left is their commitment to simply stand up against all the things that have kept them feeling incomplete, unfulfilled, and unacceptable, it’s an achingly familiar feeling for any queer viewer who has experienced the same.
We all know what happens, so it’s no spoiler to say that, when they drive off into oblivion in the Grand Canyon, they choose freedom over life itself – and when they head over that cliff, fully embracing their fate as a feminist iteration of the Bonnie and Clyde brand of “noble” outlaws, they seal their fate with a kiss.
At that point, no explanation is needed. Their love for each other transcends anything they’ve felt with the inadequate men in their lives; and in that final freeze-frame moment, when they drive off the cliff and sail into oblivion, we like to think that their car – like Danny Zuko’s at the end of “Grease” – simply flies away into the bliss of an endless summer, and you can’t get any queerer than that.
Out & About
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
In-person gathering to be held at Tom’s Watch Bar
Modern Military Association of America will host “Pride in Service: An LGBTQ+ Military Happy Hour” on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. at Tom’s Watch Bar.
This in-person gathering is the perfect chance to connect, share stories, and celebrate the diversity within the military community. Come relax, meet fellow LGBTQ+ service members and allies, and enjoy a fun, supportive atmosphere. Don’t miss out on an evening full of pride, camaraderie, and good vibes. Visit Eventbrite for more details.
Friday, September 11
Go Gay DC will host “Out in DC LGBTQ+ Community Social” at 7 p.m. at Hotel Zena.This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Women in their Twenties and Thirties will meet at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area. For more details, visit Facebook.
Saturday, September 12
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host screenings of “Princess Sparkles” and “Kiloran Bay” at 1:30 p.m. “Kiloran Bay” is a 13-minute musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. “Princess Sparkles” is about a girl who accidentally signs up to pet-sit a princess only to discover she’s actually a nippy, Fox News-watching pig. More details are available on the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
Sunday, September 13
“Nellie’s DC Drag Brunch” will be at 12 p.m. at Nellie’s Sports Bar. Come get served like a queen by a queen. Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets are $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, September 14
“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10:00a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Tuesday, September 15
Center Bi Pan+ Roundtable will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is an opportunity for people to gather in order to discuss issues related to bisexuality or as Bi individuals in a private setting. Visit Facebook or Meetup for more information.
Wednesday, September 16
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Movement for Healing” at 3 p.m. This trauma- and yoga therapy–informed class is designed to help guests gently reconnect with their body and their breath. Through mindful movement, somatic awareness, and grounding practices, guests will explore how to release tension, increase mobility, and cultivate a deeper sense of safety and ease within. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Thursday, September 17
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Comings & Goings
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
Calendar: September 11-17
Multi-billion-dollar 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund to continue until 2090
Md. groups receive state grants to fight hate crimes
Nominate your favorites for the Blade’s 25th annual Best Of LGBTQ DC Awards
Gloria Steinem’s life of substance and consequence
PHOTOS: SUNFESTIVAL
