Guilty pleasure

Gentlemen start your engines: RuPaul's Drag Race — season four — is right aroundthe corner

Sharon Needles
Jiggly Caliente

Pipe down, Christmas! And who cares about New Years? After seeing the trailer, I don’t care about anything but RuPaul’s Drag Race coming back on TV this January.

The naysayers will say, “Nay! The last two seasons were booooring.” They're wrong.

Sure, Ru made a controversial choice picking Tyra in season 2, but I beg you not to cheat yourself out of joy in 2012 (before the Mayan calendar runs out). This season of RuPaul’s Project Runway-style reality competition to decide America’s Next Drag Superstar is promising some serious extravaganza.

The previews for this season seem like the show’s budget has been significantly increased, which makes me hopeful that this show could do for Logo what Project Runway and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy did for Bravo.

The first real trailer for this season was just released, and footage documents that, among other challenges, the queens will be stepping into the wrestling ring to grapple with each other and with multisyllabic words, with equally devastating results. It’s clear these girls can’t play nice.

Less clear from the trailer is whether or not the term “showgirl” is an insult. Somebody tell Elizabeth Berkley something she doesn't already know.

Sharon Needles from Pittsburgh is my early pick for the 2012 crown. Sharon, whose drag idol is “somewhere between GG Allin and Amanda Lepore,” looks like a cadaver who is into S&M. She’s as quick-witted as her falsetto is off-putting. Last year, the Drag Race judges favored creative and intelligent queens over the beautiful and vapid, and I hope that continues. As Sharon says, “Being gay and weird is downright hard. These children need a role model.”

Speaking of beautiful and vapid, my pick for the most hysterically named queen is Jiggly Caliente. This “urban glam, slutty” drag queen explains that she’s hot, so she picked the surname Caliente. She also identifies strongly with the Pokemon Jigglypuff, and you’ll understand why. Second best name goes to Madame LaQueer.

The most conusing name, however, goes to Chad Michaels, which sounds more like a dude rushing Pi Kappa Alpha than a drag queen. And Latrice Royale wins my award for Best Makeup and Most Anticipated Lip Sync-er.

There’s nothing to worry about if, like me, you get bored with the queens speaking perfect English. The preview shows several of the contestants consistently mangling pronunciations of common words. This season has two native Spanish speakers from Puerto Rico, Kenya Michaels and Madame LaQueer. LaQueer is also the first plus-size Spanish-speaking queen, so she's got two plusses in my book.

Plus, the preview shows that Elvira is going to be one of the many celebrity guest judges, so you officially have every reason to watch this unbelievably over the top guilty pleasure of a show this January. You're welcome.

See the trailer for Season Four of RuPaul's Drag Race:

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In the spotlight

Houston reels in new rank among 10 best cities for filmmakers in 2026

Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash

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Houston has just snapped up new recognition as the No. 10 best place to live and work as a filmmaker in North America, according to MovieMaker Magazine's annual report, "The Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2026."

The Bayou City has made improvements after ranking 12th in the magazine's 2025 list.

The annual list ranks the best cities in the U.S. and Canada for individuals to live while working in the film industry, based on production spending, tax incentives, cost of living, the prevalence of "local film scenes," and additional factors. The list is divided into two categories: 25 big cities and 10 smaller cities or towns.

The spotlighted cities are the places where the publication believes filmmakers "have the best chance of both succeeding in the famously difficult entertainment industry, and making [their] own art."

For up-and-coming filmmakers that want to live in Texas, MovieMaker says doing it in Houston is "more sustainable than ever" thanks to incentives like the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program, which increased its production grant rebate from 22.5 percent to up to 31 percent for qualified in-state spending. The report also said Houston has an "arms-wide-open" approach for filmmakers.

"As the biggest city in Texas, and fourth biggest city in America, Houston has nearly every type of location, from cityscapes to piney woods to rolling hills to nearby farmland," the report said. "It’s close to Galveston Island and the Gulf of Mexico, and car commercials love the absence of billboard advertising."

MovieMaker also highlighted Houston's diversity, its low cost of living compared to the national average, and its local festivals like the Houston Cinema Arts Festival and Houston Latino Film Festival.

"The city has enough film crew for two to three sizable features, and recent shoots have included the thrillers Eleven Days, with Taylor Kitsch, and A Love, from director Courtney Glaude, Tyler Perry Studios’ executive creator of Scripted and Unscripted," the report said. "Houston is also notable for a strong contingent of films with budgets under $1 million."

Elsewhere in Texas, Austin ranked as the No. 5 best place to live and work as a filmmaker in North America. Dallas ranked seventh, while neighboring Fort Worth ranked 12th. San Antonio appeared as No. 14, and El Paso landed 25th on the list.

filmmaking moviemaker magazine rankings city life entertainment houston