SUMMER OF GLAM

HYPED AS: Make-Up, the once-a-month, gender-bent glamathon and rock ‘n’ roll drag revue at mid-Wilshire’s El Rey Theatre, reputed to have one of L.A.’s toughest velvet ropes.

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REALITY: “Drag queens are the last taboo, the thing that kids know their parents are going to hate,” says Pat Briggs, show producer, performer and co-promoter, wearing a mile-high feather headpiece and strategically placed rhinestones. Briggs upgraded his long-running New York club, Squeezebox, by bringing it west and “making it more Vegas.” The house band, Gutter Gangsters, is a coalition of musicians backing up a variety of drag performers. Says Briggs: “I’m creating the first she-male supergroup, sort of the Spice Girls meets Sex Pistols.” Do door signs such as “Men” and “Women” have any meaning in a place like this? The restroom goings-on rival the spectacle onstage. (Yes, those are real women sitting in the men’s urinals).

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I’M ON THE LIST: Club kids, drag queens, fashionistas, Lukas Haas and “NewsRadio’s” Dave Foley. (Shannon, the door girl with the severe hairdo, maintains her militant bitchiness even though the fabled snake-around-the-block line fails to materialize.) “We were at a formal Chinese banquet with all of my family members and told them that there would be lots of transvestites and that we were going to wear slutty outfits,” brags Laura Stone, a criminal defense attorney, as she shows off her rubber miniskirt and stiletto heels. High points of the show include Alexis Arquette in full drag (when isn’t he?) belting the New York Dolls’ anthem, “Personality Crisis,” in a duet with transvestite-about-town Candyass. “Talk? I can’t talk now,” rasps Arquette after singing himself raw. “Call me later.”

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CELEB QUOTIENT: Negligible, though the place has previously attracted Rose McGowan, Traci Lords and members of Hole.

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WOW FACTOR: Paint-on PVC pants, glitter wigs, duct-taped nipples and blinking, battery-operated what-have-yous.

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ATTITUDE: Not on the list, well-connected or outrageously deviant? Don’t bother.