Rayalight's Blog
Before I Go...
Well one day left and it is all over with...kinda sad, but it will be good to move on to other things. But I wanted to encourage everyone who has gotten enthused by drag by joining this site, to take the time and go on youtube and search for Trannyshack (and make sure it is the Trannyshack in SF, not the UK -- Heklina, who owns the rights to the name does not have the international rights to it sadly).
Trust me, you will be thoroughly entertained and absolutely blown away by the amazing performances and performers who have totally stretched the bounds of drag. No offense to the fierce queens on here, but drag is not just putting on makeup and lip synching some standard song and taking tips. It can stretch all the way into performance art.
Here are some of the amazing things you will find:
Glamamore doing Maria Callas:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=89pdVXX6pCk
Kiddie's amazing pageant number (where she actually gets BRANDED):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IamI4snaNFs
Fauxnique doing Poses, all outfits constructed of glamour ads:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ke-NzTeODiA
Putanesca doing a flawless Tina Turner:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=anq7IwkL5d4
Holy McGrail's $12 lion king number:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eEdeFoGDCww
Precious Moments and Falsetta Knockers doing Whatever happened to Baby Jane:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nKaWpxcIhWk
Precious doing Bachelorette with amazing III video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lSoDPc1ATU0
Renttecca's 2 Trannies 1 Cup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V2ed9psCWw
God I could go on and on and on, I mean Trannyshack has been going weekly now for more than 12 years, traveled to different cities, states, countries, along with the annual pageant that attracts thousands of people.
And if you are impressed, come to the final Trannyshack blowout, August 23rd, in SF.
http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=287228
And you will see some amazing drag numbers in front of more than 2000 people!!
Alright enough plugging!!
The End is Near!!
Well it looks like things are coming to a close here at the drag race!! I think I am supposed to write about winning but I think in order to win, I would have to be on the show, and I just think that is unlikely. I think I needed to send my application directly to them. Plus I think they probably handpicked a lot of the people from drag personalities that are out there and that they know are fierce already! But I don't know, maybe they will shock us. I would love for there to be some people on it who were on the site, just to make the connection. And it has been a blast getting to know some of you queens and see your drag personas. I am relatively new to this whole thing, only 3 years, and I feel I have a lot to learn, and there are definitely quite a few girls on here who could teach me a thing or two!!
But the one thing you can't be is bitter about this whole thing, just like you can't be bitter about the hot guy that feeds you every line in the book and steals your heart before running back to his boyfriend that you thought he was leaving (note to self)!! It's all a process, if you focus too much on the results, on the winning, you lose out on all the fun in life and everyone thinks you are a bitch and writes a tell-all book about you (note to Madonna)!! Everyone loves a winner, but these days, 15 minutes later they want you to crash and burn, so you got to enjoy the whole ride and hold your head up high and be proud of your work and let it speak for itself.
Jesus Christ, when did I become fucking Oprah!?!?! Anyhow I just want to thank u all for taking the time to watch my videos, read my blogs, look at my photos, and vote for me. I am truly humbled and I truly hope that one day we all cross paths. And when the show does come on, I am sure they will have a site dedicated to it and maybe we can all meet on a forum somewhere and dish about it!!! But hopefully we can meet beyond cyberspace and entertain each other on and off the stage!!
But please become my friend on myspace, myspace.com/raya_light, if you so desire so we can all keep in touch. I head to Miami for New Years every year so I am really hoping to see some of the fierce Florida sistas and you know I want to break donuts with DD, that would be a total trip!!!
All my love and respect to each and everyone of you!!!
Raya
From RuPaul's Blog
"we've seen all the Drag Race casting tapes and have narrowed it down to 15 contestants. lemme tell you something, this show is gonna be off the mothereffen' chain! these bitches are friggin' bring-ing-it."
http://www.rupaul.com/news/
I don't believe the 15 are from the site, perhaps a few of them, those that sent stuff straight to the producers, but other than that, I think this site was meant to just drum up interest in the show. We will just have to wait and see.
RuPaul is in SF on July 26th and I will be performing at the event she is at so perhaps I will have a chance to ask her myself!! Mwah,
Raya
My Ideal Performance
Well lately I have been contemplating my next step with all this craziness. Out here in San Francisco, the mothership is taking off, Trannyshack ends August 23rd. For those of you who have never heard of or been to Trannyshack, look it up on youtube sometime. You will be blown away by what Trannyshack has done to the concept of drag in 12 years. Even though the weekly club will no longer be, I am sure Trannyshack will continue in some other form and drag is exploding in San Francisco, but Tuesdays at midnight will always belong to this amazing institution that can only happen in a place much like heaven, San Francisco.
Anyway I digress...my ideal performance. So in the short 3 years that I have been doing drag, I have done so many numbers, to so many themes, telling so many stories. And my thought is to try to weave those together into a show called "My Life is a Drag," telling the exaggerated story of Raya Light. Right now it seems like a daunting task to put together but then I never had any of this planned, Raya Light was an absolute happenstance.
I have a lot of it sketched in my head but there are so many details to try to figure out how to do. How to handle makeup...should I do my makeup on stage...or start in makeup...how do I handle makeup changes during the show? I also want there to be spoken elements of the show, audience interaction, maybe I will even sing, I can, I just have not been so bold yet. Licensing rights to music is always an issue with this, maybe at first it won't matter, I don't know. Maybe there will be a video element, we have some amazing visual artists in SF as well. And of course where will the story go...how will it end?
All of these provide a lot of time to play and explore but hopefully it will eventually happen and I can perform it here in SF with and to a lot of the amazing artists that make this city so unique. They are the ones that know me best and have inspired me the most and I know they would get a great kick out of it.
And then it of course opens to amazing buzz and plays for weeks and then tours and makes it way to Off Broadway and then Broadway, which has always been my dream, ever since I was a little gay boy who can't really sing or dance well enough to be up there otherwise.
But at the end of the day, any success wouldn't be about me, it would be about the story and what I wanted to convey and say to people and entertain them with. That's what really is most important to me!! And of course the unbelievable ride it would take me on! Just like this whole one!
Mwah,
Raya
Raya is Having the Best Week Ever!!!!
Well I got curious as to why my video jumped so much in views over the past week so I did a little google and lo and behold, it's been posted all over the place, in blogs galore, eventually making it to the Best Week Ever site...
http://www.bestweekever.tv/2008/06/17/why-so-serious-asks-drag-queen-hopeful/
Well I am truly honored and of course glad to be helping in publicize the race and the show in these early goings so hopefully it will really happen and hopefully I can be a part of it!! We shall see!! Mwah,
Raya
More Info on Raya
I am not sure if they are OK with this or not but if you want to see more pictures of me, you can always check out my myspace profile...
http://www.myspace.com/raya_light
or if you want to see some of my performances, check me out on youtube....
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=raya+light+drag&search_sort=video_date_uploaded
Enjoy!
Raya
The Ridiculous Voting Tallies
It will be interesting to see what they do at the end in terms of putting the person on the show with the most votes because you can easily sit here all day long and vote for yourself over and over and over again. (You don't have to be an internet whiz kid to figure that out!)
No offense to the fierce queens at the top but I highly doubt that 1000s of people have actually voted for them. If you look at "Who Voted For Me" on their profiles, you see that they haven't really even gotten that many votes from people who have registered on the site, so it stands to reason that the other votes are pretty much garbage. And if you read Ru's blog, you can see that votes really don't have much to do with it, but the rules do say the one with the most votes. Maybe they will clear the slates clean and make it so only registered voters count. I don't know. But it really should be fair rather than who had the most time on their hands to sit their and vote over and over and over again.
Mwah,
Raya
www.myspace.com/raya_light
Raya in a Nutshell
She's a product of Los Angeles in the 80's. A time of mini-malls, big hair, and Pac Man fever. New wave, cocaine binges, and breakdancing. Latchkey children, McMansions, and Olypmic boycotts. Corporate yuppie greed, AIDS hysteria, and "Where's the Beef?"
So it's no wonder she wears black on the outside because black is most certainly how she feels on the inside. But underneath it all, there's a glimpse, a glimmer, of something else. Hope? Enlightenment? Irony? Pure Evil? The answer requires you to get up close and personal, but if I were you, I'd have one foot ready to run for the hills like a banshee, because where there's a flicker, there's always the potential for a raging wildfire...Raya Light.
Too funny...
...someone called me this morning to say the Towleroad blog was using my pic to promote this show...
http://www.towleroad.com/2008/05/drag-queens-get.html
Of course the pic was taken by the ferosh, Putanesca, vote for her!!!
What the Hell is All This About?
Well I signed up cuz someone forwarded this to me and I thought I would check it out. If I ever got on something like this, I am sure Scary Raya would make a visit and frighten the weaves right out of the pageant queens!! I would certainly watch the show and pray it ain't tragic! The producers should come to San Francisco to find an alternative drag queen to throw in the mix, that's for sure!!
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