Behold! The Gaga Lady on the September cover of British Vanity Fair. The stories look like they’ll be sooo good. I guess now I need to add this to the pile of September issues I gotta get. So far!: V, French Vogue, W (now under Stefano Tonchi!). PS: Does the hair in this picture remind anybody of the Gaga + Oprah story from American Vogue?

Carine Roitfeld is insanely more fabulous than Anna Wintour. Not that Anna isn’t fabulous, too. I guess I just relate to Carine a little more. Maybe it’s all the black clothes, the coal around the eyes and her touch of rock and roll. I was just rewatching The September Issue and Anna was “concerned” about the number of black clothes in the issue. Um, helllloooo, you can never have enough black.

Just when you thought Alexander McQueen’s alien/armadillo shoes were a sight for fierce feet, meet Atalanta Weller’s “football” shoe. Love, love, love.

Who needs mace, now? When you’re walking alone at night on that dark street and some doosh gives you a hard time, all you have to do roll one of these off your feet and bust a hole in his head.

Last Monday, RuPaul’s long-awaited Drag U. , the latest brainchild from her blond highlighteness, premiered on the LOGO Network. Drag U. is basically a spin-off of Drag Race, that super successful reality competition series that’s searching for America’s Next Drag Superstar. Shantay you stay. Before I saw the first episode of Drag U., I didn’t really know what to expect. Whatever it was, I knew that Ru would serve the kids something fierce. And honey, there’s nothing I like more than a 7-foot tall drag queen in my television screen. Worrrrrk.

Drag U. is a makeover show, but one like you’ve never seen. Here’s the premise: a carefully selected group of queens from previous seasons of Drag Race basically descend from Sephora and WeaveTopia to unleash their wisdom and dragspertise, making the world a better place. One fake eyelash at a time. You might remember Nina Flowers (hey, girl), Raven (I can’t STAND this trollop), and Jujubee (yesss!), plus Ongina, Pandora Boxx and other favorites are in the house, too.

Each episode, one of the queens gets assigned a plebeian hot mess to make over into a more fabulous drqg queen version of themselves. The show just kicked off, so it’s hard to tell who the lucky group will be each week. But last time,  the queens made over women who had seemingly lost touch with their femininity. Cue the house music! The queens sashay to the rescue and teach these women everything they need to know about hair, make up, and walking in high heels. There was something very Butlerian about the whole ordeal (and I’m not going to take it there) with the boys in drag teaching the women how to be more like women. Right?

The heart of the show is its big heart: you know, self-empowerment, inner beauty, self-confidence-it’s-what’s-on-the-inside-that-counts. And these ladies do come from diverse backgrounds: some were lesbians, but others were straight and married with children, with the husband and kids in the audience! How’s that for a progressive family dynamic?

But I don’t see how the show will survive week after week without changing the group who gets made over. People want to be surprised – that’s TV for you. The gender doesn’t matter as much as how unfabulous their background is. I mean, the whole premise of the show is basically saying, Okay, so you’re really fabulous on the inside and that’s fine and everything, good for you, but let’s just go ahead and make that boring outside pop just a touch more.

I’m excited to see what becomes of Drag U. It’s an inventive, new kind of makeover show. Everybody remembers the Ricki Lake make over’s or the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeovers, but leave it to RuPaul to create the first Drag Over. Lord knows I’m dying to live in a world where everybody’s fabulous and rolling around in sequins and 42 inch weaves.

This piece originally appeared on Splice Today.

1:07 p.m.: nd it’s already been 10 minutes—I’m sooo late for my pedicure—and I’m just standing inside the bank cubicle along with everybody else and we’re all so annoyed and you know what? We don’t care if you know we’re pissed off, either, so we tap our feet and sigh just enough so you can hear how irritated we are and we peek out of the line to look back at you like you’re a fuckin’ idiot, I mean really This Is New York and everybody is impatient, and that’s what you get when you’re the asshole who takes forever at the ATM machine, I mean maybe you don’t remember your pass code or maybe your card is expired but, whatever, I don’t really care—I want what everybody else waiting on this line wants: get to the machine, pull out my denomination of $20, $40, or $100 dollars and get on with the rest of m

1:25 p.m.: Finally I’m out the bank and once freed I pop down into the subway and oh god it’s hot down here, it’s like so hot I can barely breathe I mean like forget sweating and being generally uncomfortable and everything—this is different; I feel faint, like I’m going to pass out right here, like my clothes are melting off, like I’m going to fall down on the subway tracks, which has always been one of my biggest New York City fears anyway—falling down the subway platform on accident, I mean when you live here you hear about that happening all the time, and I even remember some time ago there was this dude going around pushing random people down when the train came which is uber scary so that’s why I started standing way back when the trains come to protect my life.

1:40 p.m.: So the train pulls up and I’m back a full five feet and it’s hot down here and I can’t breathe so I’m looking forward to climbing in the train because I know it’ll be ice cold inside but when I get in it’s actually the same temperature—fuck!—and I think to myself, okay, just get a seat by the window and catch as much of the breeze as you can, so I see this seat, and almost immediately this fat guy swoops in and I’m like, really? I was so obviously about to dive into that chair, fat dude, but I’m too hot to argue so I give him a mean look and continue to choke on the stale air.

1:45 p.m.: W. 4th St., 14th St. I’m standing in this heat box and there’s a Very Important Looking Woman who just got on and she can’t wait to pull out her computer—it’s not even an iPad or a Kindle, it’s a full-on laptop—so of course I stare at her and immediately start thinking about what this lady could possibly be doing that’s so All Important that she can’t hold off a few minutes until she gets to where she’s going and it really annoys me, you know?

1:55 p.m.: Exit train. Power walk to exit. Swim through turnstile. Climb up stairs. Avoid getting face too near anybody’s ass. Clasp for air at the top.

1:57 p.m.: There are these tourists standing there, maybe eight or 20 of them, and they’re just standing, chilling, unphased that Everybody Has Somewhere To Be, so there they go, with their huge maps and their fanny packs and their visors, and they’re speaking in some foreign tongue I can’t locate, and they’re pointing, pointing, pointing, and what I really want to do is scream WHEREVER YOU’RE GOING IT’S NOT AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRWELL! But then I’m like, okay, that wouldn’t be too nice, wouldn’t make their New York City day, so I just roll my eyes and huff past or maybe I bump them a little and I think they got the hint.

1:59 p.m.: The song playing on my iPod is “Robot Rock” by Daft Punk. Where will I live in L.A.? Wow, that guy is really hot, wonder how hung he is.

2:00 p.m.: I’m still really late to my pedicure and it was a super difficult appointment to get and it’ll so take me three months to get on their books again so I’m hoofing it, flying past everybody, dodging people like a go-cart.

2:01 p.m.: And that’s when I see a girl in a yellow and blue shirt with a clipboard, just standing there in the middle of the sidewalk so I think—ugh—and that’s when I try to deflect her by pulling out my iPhone, trying to look really busy because nothing annoys me more than these people who stand on the street and are all, Hey, Let Me Be Your Friend So I Can Sell You This Fabulous Thing I Have, but don’t get me wrong—it doesn’t bother me that they’re like on the street or whatever, I mean this is AMERICA and we are free, sometimes, but I just get irritated when they try to stop me and especially when they get really ballsy and actually walk with me because I, Madison Moore, should Save the Planet—I mean, it’s not that I’m not into like planets or anything, I just have stuff to do you know? And now is the worst time to try to put me on pause, so before the blue and yellow clipboarded chick opens her mouth at me I’m all, Sorry!, and keep go-carting past.

See, the key is not to slow down because once you do that then they’ve got you trapped and you’re theirs for at least the next 60 seconds and by then you’re bound to sign up for something.

This piece originally appeared on Thought Catalog.

Christopher Nolan’s epic masterpiece Inception is just about as narcissistic as movies can get. I mean really: it’s 2 ½ hours long and you have to stay put the whole time or you’ll miss an extremely important plot twist. Also: nobody knows what it’s about. I imagine the thought bubble inside Nolan’s head going something like, “My name is Christopher Nolan, and I’m going to develop a plot so above people’s heads that nobody will get it.“

To me, the confusion surrounding what the hell Inception is about is the best part of the movie. It sparks debate, and it’s a great advertising ploy. Before I got to the theatre, I had no clue what was going to happen over the next 3 hours of my life. I mean, I knew the movie was about dreams and everything. But an hour and several Twizzlers in I still didn’t know what was happening, and then I left even more confused than before. Whoever said movies should be easy?

Inception’s heavy bass, rich colors, and wild chase scenes will turn you all the way on. Basically, it’s a high-octane thriller about your wildest dreams and ideas. Dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within reality, all couched in a dream. French philosopher Jean Baudrilliard wrote a tiny book about this stuff called Simularca and Simulation where he basically argues that reality isn’t real anymore. Nobody knows what’s real. Seems to me like Chris Nolan read a little Baudrilliard to cook up this idea. Hey, is any of what we’re seeing real? Or is it all a dream? Where do ideas come from? When are we dreaming, and when is it real? Or is it ever really real? And – fuck! – does that top keep spinning or does it fall at the end?!

What I really loved about Inception was the ambitiousness of it all. There is nothing small about it. But Inception’s ambition is a lot different than similarly epic movies like Avatar, where it is all about showing what computers can do. Where James Cameron preferred CGI, Chris Nolan builds a real prison/fortress on a mountain that he blows up. He goes for thousands of gallons of real water being blown through windows at Leonardo DiCaprio. He builds a set that actually tilts 25 degrees (for real!) with every glass and piece of furniture glued down so it doesn’t budge. And I was especially blown away during the scenes when Joseph Gordon Levitt (I die) defies gravity, taking down all the bad guys in a rotating hotel hallway. But guess what? The hallway was really rotating! And, yeah, there is some CGI, like the really cool scene where the city of Paris folds on top of itself, but most of the stunts are real. So take that, Avatar.

Inception is an intellectual thriller of the highest class, one that packs smart dialogue, a plot so brilliant nobody understands it, and dazzling graphics into a fast-paced extravaganza. I just saw the movie on Saturday and I’m already dying for the sequel.

“The best thing to do is to always compete with yourself and not to compete with others. The only thing you can control is your own performance and what you’re doing to yourself and with yourself. You also have to be careful about how you handle it, because you never know. That one cunt-y person could become the new Editor-In-Chief. Sometimes the nasty person wins.” [Complex]

M.I.A.’s really long, really loud new cd /\/\ /\ Y /\ just dropped yesterday, and it’s her strongest effort yet. For those of you haters out there you were all afraid she’d go “popy” and lose her stake on weirdness, watch this video clip of her performance of “Born Free” on Letterman last night. The song, which brilliantly samples “Suicide” by Ghost Rider, is really loud and kind of amazing.

For their cover, the ‘settes pumped it up with an electronic, future disco sound. That, plus the video is full of Day-Glo colors and the whole makeover gets the song feeling updated, now. Watch below!

Don’t cha wish your boyfriend was gay like me? Don’t cha wish your boyfriend was fierce like me? Don’t cha?

According to July’s Teen Vogue, gay dudes are this season’s Must Have Accessory. Hurry – everybody put down your ‘It’ bags and go get u a gay before we’re all sold out.

What’s missing from that article, though, is the gay perspective. Like – why we allow ourselves to be friends with straight chicks.

The “Gay Best Friend” (GBF), as Teen Vogue calls it (I so hope that acronym doesn’t catch on), is a new trend among teenaged girls, who are like sick and tired of bitchy, backstabbing frenemies. These bitches wear all your clothes but don’t take you out for a drink, meet all your boyfriends so they can steal them from you, promise you don’t look fat when you really do – the skanks.

But enough is enough! Teenaged girls everywhere are fed up and embracing gay dudes as their new BFFs. So suck it, mean girls. One sixteen-year-old from California was like, “A few years ago, all the popular, pretty girls were walking hand in hand with a preppy jock. Now you’ll see them in hallways with a Mulberry bag on one arm and a Johnny Weir look-alike on the other.”

Johnny Weir is the ideal gay BFF?? Oh really?…

Everybody is familiar with the straight girl-gay guy sort of coupling. Remember Will and Grace? Or what about Carrie and Stanford, Charlotte and Anthony, Perez and Gaga, Kathy and Anderson – allegedly! The all-knowing Teen Vogue says that one of the reasons straight girls flock to gay bois is for emotional comfort. It can get pretty complicated for a girl to be friends with a straight guy, because he will want to bone her  obviously, and that would just ruin everything. A gay never befriends a girl because he wants to sleep with her.

Although many a gay has been invited to touch a boob. And he might actually like to get with the girl, you know, depending on how bottomy or toppy he is.

But writing gay dudes off as trendy accessories is totally bogus. We gays have been popular on TV for the past couple years now, and directly involved in anything brilliant for centuries, which, ok, I guess makes everybody want to go out and get their own personal gay. But the gays people like aren’t ever sexualized – they’re just well dressed, comical sketches. Entertainment!

I mean, why is it that everybody loves a lispy, witty, faaaaaaaaaaaabulous gay, but some of these people won’t even let us get married? You f’in’ hypocrites! I get really annoyed when the only way people like their gays is with a side of lisp and a pinch of faaaaaaaaaaabulous, even if some of us really know how to work a pair of high heels.

To some extent, I think that’s one thing straight girls love about the gay: we aren’t afraid to just put it all out there. We will tell you exactly as it is. In fact, yes, that dress does make you look fat. No, your weave does not look real. And bitch we will wear high heels and look better than everybody, and if you don’t like it then you can just get the fuck out the way and watch us clack past.

But! There’s another side to the story, too. It’s really hard for us gay boys to be friends with straight guys, mostly because they are so fucking protective of their warrior cocks that they don’t allow the forbidden nectar anywhere near. In my experience, the gay friend is likely to develop (sexual) feelings for said straight dude, as in, he probably just wants to sleep with him a couple times. My first year in college I was friends with the hottest dude, the appropriately named Ryan Hottle, – olive skin, green eyes, curly black hair, athletic body, ripped as Jesus Christ. I’m giving myself hot flashes just thinking about him. Anyway, I’d be in the room when Ryan smoked pot, when he played video games, when he played acoustic guitar. So one day I decided it would be fantastic to tell him exactly how I felt so I did and then we

Girls don’t like girls anymore so they’re getting cushy with gay dudes, gay dudes can’t be friends with straight dudes so they surround themselves with other gay dudes and fag hags. That leaves all the straight dudes to play by themselves, with their beer pong and flannel shirts or whatever it is they do.

I guess it makes like scientific sense or whatever, if men are supposed to be with women. Hey, it’s like being straight without the sex! But what will really be interesting is the day when all straight guys are required to have a gay BFF. There’s a porn for that.