"A Raisin In The Sun" on ABC 02/25

I have already expressed that I feel Phylicia Rashad is one of the most underrated and under appreciated actresses of our time. Monday evening she will be appearing in a television production of "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hannesberry. The cast also features Audra MacDonald, Sanaa Lathan, Sean Combs all of whom appeared in the broadway production that garnered Tony's for Rashad and McDonald (Rashad becoming the first black woman ever to win as Lead Actress in a Drama). Check this movie out if you can. This will be my 3rd production of this play. I saw the movie with Sidney Poitier and the PBS version with Danny Glover and Ester Rolle....



Three women shine in powerful 'Raisin in the Sun'
By Matthew Gilbert
Globe Staff / February 23, 2008

On Monday night, ABC is bringing the big, rich performances of the 2004 stage revival of ‘‘A Raisin in the Sun’’ to the small screen. More accurately, ABC is bringing the big, rich performances of Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, and Sanaa Lathan through the small screen, into our homes and hearts and minds. This knockout adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play is a model of both the pure power of stage acting and TV’s potential to bring us up close to that acting without deadening it. The movie shows us every facial expression and eye flicker, and yet the camerawork, with its probing intimacy, never distracts from the story.
more stories like this.

Both Rashad and McDonald won Tony Awards for their performances in the Broadway play, and the ABC film, premiering Monday night at 8 on Channel 5, showcases exactly why. Surely they will go on to collect a few TV acting prizes when the season is over. Along with Lathan, Rashad and McDonald mightily embody the female strength and survival instinct that drive this play to great heights of inspiration. Sean ‘‘Diddy’’ Combs may be the best-known name on the marquee, and his performance is solid enough; but the women, so fully realized and emotionally evocative, are the thing.

Written by Hansberry on the eve of the 1960s civil rights movement, ‘‘A Raisin in the Sun’’ once again proves its durability as both a period piece about African- American identity and a statement for the ages. Set in 1959 Chicago, the action follows the financially struggling Younger family through a series of crises hinging on a forthcoming insurance check for $10,000. While Walter Lee (Combs) plans to gamble the money on a liquor-store venture, his widowed mother, Lena (Rashad), and his wife, Ruth (McDonald), want to buy a home in a white neighborhood. His sister, Beneatha (Lathan), hopes the windfall will pay for her medical school. The play is a wonderfully balanced work, as it reaches into social and racial issues, family dynamics, and spiritual conflict without losing its dramatic center.

Both McDonald and Lathan deliver revealing, visceral performances. As McDonald’s Ruth considers aborting her second child, with no resistance from Walter Lee, her face is twisted with grief and exhaustion. Lathan’s Beneatha is an extroverted free spirit unwilling to stop expressing her creativity, her African heritage, her joy, and her ambition. She is open-hearted and stubborn at once. She is drawn to assimilate, as a black American, and yet she snaps, ‘‘I am not an assimilationist’’ at her Nigerian boyfriend, pronouncing the word like an expletive. She embodies an internal divide.

But Rashad is as restrained as the other actresses aren’t. She pulls back from every possible chance of turning Lena into a self-consciously noble heroine. Lena is a tower of faith, but Rashad doesn’t telegraph that fact or veer into sanctimony. Lena is truly saintly: She doesn’t lose hope that her son will grow up, telling Beneatha, ‘‘There’s always something left to love.’’ She sees the good in him, even when she is disgusted with his irresponsibility and his claim that ‘‘Money is life.’’ But Rashad never makes her heroine into anything more self-consciously dramatic than an ordinary woman who has learned from life. She projects pride, but not in cloying amounts.

Combs’s presence runs the risk of prying us out of the movie, as he doesn’t quite disappear behind his portrayal of Walter Lee, as sincere as his effort may be. Combs remains undeniably Diddy. And yet that contemporary flavor adds a new currency to the play, a sense that it still has something relevant to say about black men trying to get a foothold in adulthood, trying to dream against the odds. Combs doesn’t draw every inch of the poetry from the script, nicely adapted from the play by Paris Qualles, but his sullen presence adds weight to his scenes.

Qualles and director Kenny Leon open up the play with a few external shots, but only slightly. And yet this made for TV movie, whose producers include Combs and the team of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron from ‘‘Chicago,’’ never feels claustrophobic or overly stagy. Wisely, the people behind the scenes step back and let the actors and Hansberry tell the story.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.

DVD Release: TONGUES UNTIED - "Black Men Loving Black Men Is A Revolutionary Act"

Tongues Untied (1990)

Dir. Marlon T. Riggs 1989 55 min USA

The stories are fierce examples of homophobia and racism: the man refused entry to a homosexual bar because of his color; the college student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a homosexual-bashing; the loneliness and isolation of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the Black SGL male experience: protest marches, smoky bars, "snap diva," humorous "musicology" and vogue dancers.

Bonus Features Include:

-Newly Released Deleted Scenes & Outtakes

- 1991 Interview with Director Marlon T. Riggs

Interviews with:
Isaac Julien, Filmmaker
Phill Wilson, AIDS Activist
Juba Kalamka, Spoken Word Artist
Herman Gray, Cultural Critic

"A Black male warrior fighting for the right to love other Black men,
Marlon Riggs affirms what was nearly lost, newly found: the certainty
that Black male lives are utterly precious."
—Alice Walker, Author, The Color Purple

"My struggle has allowed me to transcend that sense of shame and
stigma identified with my being a Black gay man. Having come through
that fire, they can't touch me."
—Marlon T. Riggs



* Los Angeles Film Critics Award * *Best Documentary, Berlin Film Festival *

Robin Roberts

My work schedule has me starting at 9:30am during the week which gives me time to watch Good Morning America. I am not sure why I watch that show. Probably because of all the morning shows I like Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer the best.

I've always liked Robin although I feel like there is alot about her life that she is not sharing. Which is her right. I just think she'd reach even more people if she did. Last year she was diagnosed with cancer and they have covered her trials with it. Even getting her head shaved for chemotherapy. Once I saw her bald I thought she looked beautiful. But then I think black women with features like hers always look great with short of no hair. Since she is on air they have had her using a wig which does resemble what her hair was like before she went bald but recently the hosts have been participating in a segment called "I Dare You...." and hers was to walk in a fashion show. She got tips on walking from no other than Tyra Banks and walked during Fashion Week today at Isaac Mizrahi show. Nina Garcia from Elle magazine and Project Runway was in the audience. The show also featured one of my favorite girls from "America's Next Top Model" Dani.

The picture of Robin is in a dress I don't particularly like but she did a wonderful job and considering it's out of her comfort zone and her living through cancer treatment it was wonderful. Dani's picture is from "Top Model" when they did a bald photo shoot...

Church Outings...

There are parts of this story that are completely funny and some that are very tragic. I encourage all people who are in this situation to get to know God for yourself. The love of Jesus The Christ has nothing to do with this situation...

Choir Member on Outing Spree Hits DC Baptist Church

A female choir member at the D.C. Greater Mount
Calvary Holy Church has sent a letter to its pastor,
outing over 100 church members, mostly male members of
the choir, the Washington Blade reports:

Outing"The outings added to the inner turmoil
experienced by a large number of gays who attend
services at the 7,000-member Greater Mount Calvary
Holy Church, located on Rhode Island Ave., N.E.,
according to a gay former member who provided copies
of the e-mails to the Blade. 'I will be leaving the
choir at the top of the year because 80 percent of the
tenors are homosexuals and act more like a female in
choir rehearsal than I do,' the church choir member
said in one of her e-mails to Bishop Alfred Owens Jr.,
the church pastor. The e-mail, sent in December,
identifies about 45 fellow church members as gay. She
sent a second e-mail to Owens on Jan. 2 identifying
another 62 church members as gay. 'The following
people I am asking you to monitor very closely and my
prayer is that you will sit them down from their
ministries,' she told Owens in the December e-mail.
'Because they are ushering in the presence of sin,
lies, a spirit of homosexuality and sexual spirits.'"

The female choir member also copied the email to over
300 additional church members on a Yahoo group.

The pastor would likely be sympathetic to her
concerns, given his past: "Owens became the subject of
media attention in April 2006 when he used the word
'fag' in a sermon on Palm Sunday. 'It takes real men
to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior,' Owens said in
the sermon, which was recorded by the church. 'I’m not
talking about no faggot or no sissy,' he said. 'Let
the real men come down here and take a bow — all the
real men. I’m talking about straight men … praise God
that you’re straight.' The church’s web site includes
a listing of twice-monthly sessions of a ministry
called 'Breaking the Chains of Homosexuality,' which
it says helps gays change their sexual orientation
through counseling and prayer. Minister Dennis
Sawyers, an expert in 'ex-gay' ministries, is listed
as the leader of the church’s efforts to counsel
gays."

Sylvia Rhue, director of the National Black Justice
Coalition’s religious affairs program said that many
gays attend that church because they like the
"traditional setting" they find there. A setting,
which, at this particular church, is now in turmoil.

{The Choir Pictured Above Is Not Affiliated With The Church In The Story}

Elder Kevin L. Taylor-"Obamination"

I can't exactly call Kevin a friend but he is someone I admire as a man, as a black man, as a black gay man, as a black gay spiritual man, and as a creative, black, gay, spiritual man among other things. I've known him since he was Deacon Kevin years back in the Unity Fellowship Movement and he never ceases to inspire me.

January 08, 2008

Obamination: An Open Letter to Senator Obama

The Senator’s Unacceptable Stance on Marriage Equality
Written By KEVIN E. TAYLOR

While the title might denote otherwise, this really is
a (brotherly) love letter to Senator Barack Obama.
It’s written in love. It’s intended with love; my love
for the world, for the people in it and my love for
change, which brings growth and fosters understanding.
It’s a love letter for change.

I am an openly Christian, openly gay black man who has
been praying to God my entire life for a love that
would be beyond relationship and the regular. When I
was 13 years old, my mother asked me if I would ever
get married and I told my mother that I would “as soon
as they make it legal.” When the “civil unions”
statute was recently passed in the state of New
Jersey, my now 80 year old mother called me and said
powerfully, “Baby, I think your husband is on the way.
God answers prayers!” I got so happy to realize that
my mother, with her Christian love and maternal
adoration, only wants me to be happy.

Civil unions don’t make me happy. Domestic
partnerships don’t make me happy. They also don’t make
me safe. They don’t make me feel secure. They don’t
give me access to the hospital in the midnight air if
the nurse says no. They don’t give me the hope that I
will be able to get my favorite singer Natalie Cole to
sing Inseparable at a wedding ceremony one day soon.
They surely don’t make me married. They don’t give me
all of the rights and privileges and protections of
any other American.

I really do like you Senator Obama, and I think you
could be a glorious, viable, vicious vessel for
change. I have been struggling between my radical need
for change that you speak and the
“we-can-do-better”ness of Senator Hillary Clinton.
Somehow, maybe because of gender, maybe race, maybe
your words of encouragement and embodiment, I am drawn
to you and your audacious hope.

That is why, from the depths of my soul, your stance
on marriage equality breaks my natural and spiritual
heart.

Looking day after day and week after week into the
eyes of a black man, born of a white woman and a black
man, I was deeply and personally devastated when you
took the old guard, status quo, “What else can we do?”
stance on Marriage Equality. The thing that is most
empowering about a strong leader is that even if they
cannot do all things (only God can), it’s nice, it’s
invigorating, it’s real to have someone say “I WILL DO
EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO MAKE CHANGE!” I understand
the lay of the land. I understand the mentality of
America and the people within it, many of whom stand
or speak against marriage equality and what they think
it represents. I get that. I don’t accept that. I
surely don’t expect it from a man who says “I AM
CHANGE.”

Senator, you said some powerful, masterful,
soul-shifting things when you spoke at the 2004
Democratic Convention. In doing so, you squarely and
quickly placed yourself in the position to be able to
make changes and take chances. You passionately said
to everyone from the world stage that “WE CAN DO
BETTER.” So imagine my disappointment and chagrin when
you kowtowed and walked right into the ookie-doke and
said…“but.” But we can’t make change. But people will
never go for it. But it’s not going to happen anytime
soon. Even if America isn’t ready, I want to believe
that you are ready and willing to stand for change. I
want to believe that you would be willing to fight,
even if the end result isn’t to my liking. At least I
could say “Well, you tried and for that you have my
thanks.” But I cannot.

At the end of the day, you had just come out and said
that you had already made up your mind. You had done
research and analysis and all of those trivial things
that people say when they hunch their shoulders to say
that I don’t know what else to do. For me, there is a
very real reason that this stance is so morally
unacceptable.

As the child of a biracial union, you know better of
the many pains, pangs, and perils of being made to
feel less than. You know what it feels like to have
words hurled at you. You know what it feels like to
have people say that you are not good enough and that
your very existence is against good. In many states in
the union, in many households in America, still people
turn their noses up and their heads down to the
joining of black and white, black and Hispanic or
Asian or anything that blends or bleeds the races.
People still say that it’s not about not liking
certain people, but rather just about their beliefs.
White people. Black people. Many people just say that
it’s what they believe and that’s that. But the truth
is that laws and leery lawmakers had it on the books
in this country for decades, nay centuries, that it
was unacceptable. Until as recent as the early 1970s,
there was a state in this country that made the love
between an African-American (or other colored person)
and a white person against the law. But that love is
real and it has real hopes and real dreams and real
passion that gives birth to real people. One of those
people are you, Mr. Senator.

According to many laws in the land, especially when
you were born, you should not have ever been allowed
to live, seek liberty or pursue happiness. But your
parents fell in love and that love gave birth to a man
who have given birth to an uprising in this country,
an uprising that has people believing again, an
uprising that has Oprah standing up and saying “He Is
The One!” when she is normally reserved and removed
from political conversations. I really do believe in
the possibility of President Obama. I do. I really do.

But you don’t believe in me.

What do you do when you love someone and believe in
someone and hope for someone and that someone says I
don’t stand with you? That someone says I can’t fight
for you?

I wrote this letter.

If you want to, post this on a website where people
banter and debate. If you want to, call me crazy and a
race-trader because I am a black man who is
questioning a black man and that the airing of
laundry—dirty or otherwise—isn’t something that we
should do. But I have got to because you are poised to
change minds and you can start here, given your
singular and unique relationship to the issue of
marriage equality in America. No one else, but a child
born of a mixed marriage, could understand how the
strain and stigma placed on people through laws and
lack of understanding can shape or shift or shame the
life you live.

I am tired of people trying to tell us that waiting is
the only way. I don’t get a gay discount on my taxes.
I don’t get a gay discount on my utilities or any
other obligation that I have as a human being in
America. I don’t expect any such discounts. I also
don’t expect to be discounted.

Senator Barack Hussein Obama, I urge you today to pour
yourself a cup of coffee or tea, whichever is your
preference, and search your heart after you read this
letter. Imagine what it would have been like if your
mother and your father had been terrorized and
stigmatized and damned and discouraged and belittled
in a country by laws and people and hatred that said
that their love was invalid and that they didn’t have
a right to be together. Oh, wait. This is America and
that is how it was in the 1960s and yet they came
together, in love and in commitment, if only for a
while and it was that union and the power of that love
that gave birth to you.

Here you stand, on the cusp of a new day and a season
of change, with the potential and the power to say
that no one—not man or woman, African-American or
Caucasian or Asian or Latino or biracial, Christian or
Jew or Muslim or non-believer—deserves to be treated
or protected with anything less than the fullness of
the law. Your parents stood in adversary. You say that
you stand in audacity. I dare you to do better and
stand firmer.

I know that change isn’t always easy, Mr. Obama, but I
thought that was the reason that you declared that
“hope is audacious.”

I hope you understand and I hope that you are
listening.

Sincerely and Seriously,
Elder Kevin E. Taylor

You can reach Kevin at www.KevinETaylor.com and at the
website of Unity Fellowship Church New Brunswick
www.ufcnb.org

DARE TO BE GREAT IN 2008

These Boyz Can Sang!!!

This is not an old gospel standard but they make it one...And they are funny as all get out!!!

Here's Where I Stand...

Sometimes as a writer I come across another writer or a song that says all I want and need to say. Here is one of those. It's from the movie, "Camp"

The set up is this young lady has been sent to this theatre camp but only with the provision that she lose weight from pressure by her father. At the last minute the girl who was supposed to sing this song can't do it so in the spirit of "the show must go on" she is forced to go on. After taking off the wires that have been applied to her mouth she sings this amazing song which is an anthem to her father...



The actresses' name is Tiffany Taylor. I am not sure who wrote the song but the lyrics follow,

[Tiffany Taylor]:(Cast)

Here in the Dark
I stand before you
This is my chance to show you my heart
This is the start, this is the start.

I have so much to say and I'm hoping
That your Arms are open
Don't turn away, don't you need me?
But you have to hear me.

Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
Love me, but don't tell me who I have to be
Here's who I am,
I'm what you see.

You said I had to change and I was trying
But my heart was lying
I'm not a child any longer
I am stroooongerrrr

Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
Help me, to move on but please don't tell me how
I'm on my way, I'm moving out


In this life we've come so far
but we're only who we are (who we are)
Courage of love (Courage of Love)
will show us the way (Show us the way)
Unlock the power
To stand up and saaaaa--aaaaayyy (Stand upppp)

(Up and say!)
Herreeeee's where I stand
Here's who I am
(Stand Up) I'll be counting, counting on you
If you're with me, we'll make it through

Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
Love me, Love me, Love me, and we'll make it through

Here's where I stand,
Baby, Baby, Baby, I'm counting on you

Here's where I stand
Love me, Love me, Love me, and we'll make it through

I'm counting, Oooh,
I'm counting,
I'm counting, I'm counting onn....
Yooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[Tiffany adlibs throughout this part]

(Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
I'm counting on you)

(Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
We'll make it through)

(Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
I'm counting on you)

(Here's where I stand,
Here's who I am
We'll make it through)

(Repeat till fade)