In the slimelight.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

IT STARTED - how else?- as a protest.

It has slithered in and out of official status as a Eugene Celebration event.

Yet Friday's 6:30 p.m. competition and coronation in the downtown Park Blocks will mark the 20th anniversary of the Slug Queen as a non-institution.

It is local festival royalty like no other.

Typically, high school beauties win such crowns - even those with such dubious titles as "Miss Garlic." But sweet, young things have no special shine when it comes to slime.

In fact, four Slug Queens have been men, from a drag queen to a Catholic father of seven.

Female winners have included an elementary school librarian, a psychotherapist and an accordion player.

Each new Slug Queen is voted in by the Old Queens. (Yes, that's the preferred title. Make the mistake of calling them former queens and they're wont to lecture, "Once a Queen, always a Queen!')

Being the youngest, fairest or slimmest in the land is no advantage in their eyes.

Rather, the edge goes to those who can step into the slimelight "with a lot of wisdom and a good understanding of Eugene politics already under their belts," said reigning Queen D'Arcy (actor/singer Darcy DuRuz).

Officially, Slug Queens are selected on the basis of talent, costume and their ability to ad lib witty answers to inane questions (a parody of the wildly uneven "interview" segment of many beauty pageants.)

But the Old Queens also consider "whether we'll be able to live with this person for years to come," explained 1993 Queen Bananita, Lane Community College instructor Sarah LaMaster Ulerick. "They have to be willing to contribute energy to Queendom and the community for years to come."

They also might have a good bribe under their belts.

Such persuasion is par for the course - chocolate for the judges being a standard ploy.

The most outrageous bribe so far?

1996 Queen Slima-Gadda-Da-Vida-Baby, then-Eugene Hilton food and beverage director Katrina Parrish, treated the Old Queens to a catered dinner - locking the banquet room door to prevent any rivals from slinking in. She then promised a weekend at her mother's home in France, conveniently failing to note that air fare was not included until after she was crowned.

2001 Queen D'Arcy prides herself on winning despite "no bribing whatsoever." She did, however, have the advantage of a husband who plays in the Eugene Symphony.

"He had three trumpeters play a fanfare every time I stepped on stage," she acknowledged.

Though the winner's duties include appearing at the opening reception of the Mayor's Art Show, riding in the parade and presiding over next year's coronation, the Slug Queen is not a sanctioned Eugene Celebration event.

That's only because the group never registered as such with Downtown Events Management, said Steve Remington, director of the private nonprofit organization, which runs the celebration.

Such guerilla status suits the Queens.

"It's fabulous because we're still free, free-spirited and don't answer to any corporate sponsors," said 1997 Queen Bagonda, whose alter ego Kevin Henry works for a local disability rights group. "If we became an official event, we'd have to come under their control. You just don't control a queen!"

Such independence is consistent with the Slug Queen's origins.

The year was 1983. More than 25,000 people had converged downtown for a public celebration of the new Hult Center in 1982, and city officials were trying to launch an annual festival that would similarly bring the community together.

"Some of us thought it was important not to take ourselves too seriously as a city," then-City Councilor Cynthia Wooten recounted recently. "We wanted to call this event the Eugene Slugfest."

But a majority of city leaders opted for the more generic but less slimy "Eugene Celebration."

By way of lighthearted protest, Wooten and others created a gastropodous entry for the first Eugene Celebration parade: a giant, Chinese dragon-style slug accompanied by the first Slug Queen- former Eugene bicycle shop owner Bruce Gordon.

"I think they picked me because I already had a gown," Gordon recalled from his home in Petaluma, Calif. "I'd gone to a Halloween party in drag the previous year."

In his silver lame gown, blond wig and long gloves, Gordon waved to the crowd from a vintage MG convertible to the strains of "Happy Trails to You."

Thus began the Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod.

The next queen was chosen in only slightly more formal fashion. Wooten sought nominations from friends at a backyard picnic. She'd rigged a makeshift, "Queen for a Day" style clap-o-meter, and special education teacher Melva Boles got the most applause.

The following year, competition was opened to the general public, complete with rules admonishing contestants to "be tastefully tacky, but not gross or disgusting."

1985 Queen Glenda, attorney Nancy Willard, boasts that she was "first to win in an honest beauty and talent competition." Part of her royal platform: boosting Eugene's then-sluggish economy with a "Slug-It Note" factory.

"Unfortunately, we were never able to get the slugs to leave their trails of goo straight across the top of the memo paper," she said.

But - in the tongue-and-cheek miscongeniality that marks this anti-beauty pageant - her sovereignty was challenged by pretender-to-the-throne Kathy Gillespie, who rode atop a huge float in the 1985 parade, contending Queen Glenda was the imposter.

The elementary school librarian was officially elected Queen Kathy in 1986. Her "talent?"

"I took Polaroid pictures of the judges," she said. "I am also the only Old Queen who's a permanent art object. (You can see Gillespie, clutching a sequinned box of Corey's Slug Bait, in the Eugene Airport's "Flying People" mural.)

But hers was hardly the low mark for slug talent.

1987 Slug Queen Dave - mail carrier Dave Tobin - displayed a slug-shaped birthmark on his belly. His seven children helped festoon him for coronation, braiding his bushy beard and outlining his birthmark in marking pen.

1990 Queen Slugeretta, psychotherapist Janet Green, played the noseharp. (And publicly revealed her identity only this year - "I was afraid some of my clients would think, 'She's nuttier than I am!')

1991 Queen Marigold, homemaker Emily Semple, performed vacuum cleaner tricks. And 1992 Queen Zinnia, sewing teacher Liz Deck, demonstrated a 12-step recovery program for tarnished thrones by cleaning an olive green toilet bowl.

But talent isn't everything.

1998 Queen Peterella - potter Pete Theophanes - won on the strength of his answer to a ridiculous math problem. His wit came through loud and clear, even though he communicates by casting his eyes toward letters on a board because of cerebral palsy.

And then there are the costumes.

Gaudy is good. "Slime green" is a favorite color. Most contestants add touches such as gluing moss on the bodice or trailing shiny glue - "slime tracks" - across the skirts.

1999 Queen Carmen Slugana (grad student and mother of three Laura Minnick) recalled walking to a royal appearance one night in full regalia: A crown of fruit atop her head, "dingle-ball bra" and sarong, and tall, platform shoes.

A drunken man stumbled out of a tavern and made some "right treasonous" suggestions about things they should do together without her regalia.

"I drew myself up as tall as I could, and in the biggest, most commanding voice I could muster, said, "Stand aside, I am the Queen!" she recounted. "He gaped a bit, blinked, and stepped back with his mouth hanging open."

1997 Slug Queen Bagonda, Eugene's answer to Savannah drag queen RuPaul, recalled one expected show of admiration for her glamorous get-up:

"During the celebration, a soccer mom thrust her infant up for a better look and said, 'He just loves Drag Queens - "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything" is his favorite movie!' '

Queen Marigold did not enjoy such adulation when she accepted an invitation to join other local royalty at the Florence Rhododendron Festival.

The chiffon wedding dress she'd dyed slime green stood in dramatic contrast to the tasteful gowns of area high school queens.

"I'm not sure they knew what the Slug Queen was," she recounted. "The stage they'd created was this glittery, mylar fairyland. They didn't really know how to respond when I said, 'I feel so welcome, because you've covered the stage in slime!' '

Slug Queens also perform community service - even long after their yearlong reign.

2000 Queen Accordionna, for example (who closely guards her "other" identity) recently appeared "at the ridiculous hour of 7 a.m. to host a People-Powered Fridays `party' ' for bike commuters at the DeFazio Bike Bridge.

Over the years, queens have played the "Vanna White" role at the HIV Alliance auction; raised funds for everything from Meals on Wheels to the Red Cross to a Tijuana AIDS hospice; lured customers to high school car washes; and visited schools during TV Turn-Off week.

They also raised more than $5,000 for the new Eugene Public Library in a lighthearted battle with The Comic News for naming rights to the restrooms. The gastropods prevailed - the bathrooms will be called Slug Queen Throne Rooms.

It's a gig that keeps on giving, Queen Bananita said.

"My personal highlight was taking my Slug Queen act to the 25-year reunion of my Harvard class of 1973,' she said.

She upstaged friend and classmate Al Franken (of Saturday Night Live fame) by performing a six-minute "Riverdance" while "zinging one-liners in a Russian accent."

For Queen Accordionna, the crowning achievement was getting a parade invitation to this year's Portland Rose Festival - albeit in the evening Starlight Parade.

"It was quite an experience - sort of like conquering Rome," she said. "I did meet some of the other queens that were there, including the Rose Queen. They were all pretty, female, and between the ages of 18 and 20. I felt a little sorry for them because they just got to smile and wave. They didn't have an accordion or anything else that looked like fun."

CAPTION(S):

INSIDE When it comes to wacky pageants around the nation, the Slug Queen contest may just be the top banana / 2B Far right: "You just don't control a queen," says 1997 Queen Bagonda, aka Kevin Henry, who wowed judges with a duct tape mini-dress. Above: 1998 Queen Peterella (Pete Theophanes) and his attendants celebrate. Right: The 1986 queen, Kathy Gillespie, weeps as she turns over her reign to Dave Tobin. BY KAREN McCOWAN PHOTOS BY The Register-Guard The Register-Guard Caption goes here caption goes here. The Register-Guard Above: 1992 winner Liz Deck freshens up. Right: Five queens (from left) Bruce Gordon, Melva Boles, Dave Tobin, Nancy Willard and Kathy Gillespie ride in 1987 parade. 20TH SLUG QUEEN COMPETITION Entry forms due: 5 p.m. Monday, Aug. 12, at the Saturday Market Office, 76 West Broadway, Eugene. Public competition begins: 6: 30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16, on the Saturday Market Stage in the Park Blocks, Eighth Avenue and Oak Street, Eugene. More information: First Lady in Waiting Kim Still, 686-8885 www.slugqueen.org