Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs
Follow The Big Takeover
One wouldn’t usually associate Christmas with JOHN WATERS, the reigning king of filthy films. After all, 300 pound drag queens, bestiality, and cha cha heels are rarely things you think about during the Holiday Season (unless you’re DIVINE), so it came as a surprise to me that Waters has been doing a traveling stand-up act for a few years now, entertaining folks with both lewd and charming memories and musings on Christmas. The tour (which included stops in San Francisco, Portland, New York and D.C. this year) relates directly to the Christmas album he released last year, A John Waters Christmas, which features hand picked holiday oddities from the man himself.
Waters appeared right on time, and as he walked on stage in a pinstripe suit wearing a red velour scarf, everyone stood immediately to applaud vigorously. He then began his hour-long set, which seemed very off-the-cuff, but was probably well-rehearsed. I’d love to recount some of the hilarious bits from the evening, but the majority of it would be completely asterisked-out.
I can mention, however, some tamer parts of the set. The first thing Waters said that really shocked me was that a few days before, he and Baltimore mayor MARTIN O’MALLEY had spent time lighting the city’s Christmas tree together while a song off Waters’ album, “Santa Claus Is A Black Man,” played in the background. Funny that a man who has focused on the seedy side of Baltimore for decades in his work would be embraced by the city’s highest authority. But as any Marylander knows, we have few celebrities from our humble (hick) state, and we truly embrace the ones that we do have.
Waters also talked about his lust for Alvin of ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS; his own brand of ‘Christmas Terrorism’ back in the day, when he would drive around with his friends, high on LSD, and break into people’s cars and open their presents and then either steal them or leave the gifts unwrapped where he found them; the carton of Kools his mother would put in his stocking, and how Divine’s mother used to make Divine dress as Santa during the holidays, which filled the plus-sized diva with a fury that could not be matched. Waters continued with riffs on gay marriage (“that’s why you become gay in the first place, so you don’t have to get married!”) and his own Christmas wish list of out-of-print art books and wacky films.
After the set was over, Waters fielded questions from the audience, some of which were pleas to become his maid or assistant or sex slave, before he left the stage. I felt very Christmas-y as I walked out to my car parked next to what looked like a broken down crack house, because the evening was so cute and funny and filthy and heartwarming. Waters concocted the perfect balance of naughty and nice, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend my night before the night before the night before Christmas.
