Andy Murray Defends Canadian Open Title By Blasting Roger Federer Off The Court!
I believe Andy Murray has an excellent chance to finally win his first grand slam singles title at the 2010 US OPEN. I am surprised Murray hasn’t won a grand slam singles title. However, Murray proved he might be ready he defeated Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer back to back in straight sets to win the Canadian Open. The real question is, can Andy Murray beat Federer and Nadal in a best of five set match in the tight pressure packed situation of a slam semifinal or final? Murray was very aggressive, he attacked Roger’s second serve and ran the twenty nine year old Swiss Master around the tennis court. Next, Murray occasionally attacked the net and pushed Federer back. I felt Roger was flat, I think he was tired from the two three set matches he played just to reach the final. Federer will move to the number two ranking on the ATP Tour next week. However, I feel Andy Murray proved a lot this week that he does have mental toughness and he can beat the top male tennis players. Murray needs to prove he can win a grand slam but this victory certainly increases his confidence.
LA Times Article: R.I.P. Jazz Singer & Actress Abbey Lincoln Has Died.
Abbey Lincoln dies at 80; jazz singer, actress, civil rights advocate
She started as ‘a sexy young thing in a Marilyn Monroe dress’ before joining Max Roach on ‘We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,’ a landmark musical statement of the civil rights movement.
 Abbey Lincoln, shown at New York’s Lincon Center in 2005, had a voice that wasn’t “pure or perfect,” a jazz critic said. “But her limitations infuse her singing with honesty.” (Brad Barket, Getty Images / August 13, 2010) |
Abbey Lincoln, an acclaimed jazz singer, songwriter and actress who evolved from a supper-club singer into a strong voice for civil rights, has died. She was 80.
Lincoln died Saturday in a nursing home in New York, said Evelyn Mason, her niece. No cause was given, but she had been in failing health.
Lincoln built a career as an actress and singer in the late 1950s through the turbulent 1960s, then stepped away during the 1970s and, years later, returned to prominence as a singer praised for her songwriting abilities.
“There was a passion to what she did,” said jazz critic Don Heckman, who noted that Lincoln’s songwriting made her a rarity among jazz singers. “She was not someone who was just singing a song. She had an agenda, and a lot of it had to do with civil rights…. She expressed herself in dramatic and impressive fashion in what she said and how she sang.”
Her voice was a “special instrument, producing a sound that is parched rather than pure or perfect,” wrote the New York Times‘ Peter Watrous in 1996. “But her limitations infuse her singing with honesty. More important, she understands the words she sings, declaiming them with a flare of memory that seems to illuminate all the lost love and sadness people experience.”
She was often compared with Billie Holiday, one of her early influences. Times jazz writer Leonard Feather, writing after a Lincoln performance in 1986, said he could see glimpses of Holiday. “Not so much vocally as visually — a slight toss of the head, a jutting of the jaw,” he wrote. “As Lincoln said, ‘We all stand on the shoulders of those who preceded us.’ ”
And Lincoln made an impact on the next generation.
“She opened up doors, not just in the sense of career possibilities but as empowerment to be myself when I sang,” singer Cassandra Wilson told the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Lincoln was born Anna Marie Wooldridge on Aug. 6, 1930, in Chicago, the 10th of 12 children. The family soon moved to rural Michigan.
She moved to California in 1951 and performed in local clubs, then spent two years singing in Honolulu before coming back to Los Angeles. And she became Abbey Lincoln, inspired by Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln. Her manager, songwriter Bob Russell, thought of the name.
Lincoln had a role in the 1956 film “The Girl Can’t Help It” in which she wore a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe. The appearance, coupled with her first album, “Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love,” gave her a glamorous image. That changed when she started working with jazz drummer Max Roach, whose music would reflect the coming civil rights struggle. They married in 1962.
“I started out being a sexy young thing in a Marilyn Monroe dress,” she told The Times in 2000, “And Max Roach freed me from that.”
The 1960 release “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” included Lincoln’s wordless, sometimes screaming duet with Roach and was a landmark musical statement of the civil rights movement.
Lincoln “was like an OK supper singer,” critic and producer Nat Hentoff told The Times in 1993. “Then I went down to the Village Gate here in New York where Max and she were doing the ‘Freedom Now Suite.’ It was just extraordinary, the power of it.”
Critics were divided. “We all paid a price, but it was important to say something,” she told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It still is.”
Movie roles followed, including “Nothing But a Man” in 1964 and “For Love of Ivy” in 1968, in which she starred with Sidney Poitier.
Lincoln “was a really gifted person and a truly wonderful actress. She was the kind of person you expected to live forever,” Poitier told The Times on Saturday.
“She was gifted in so many ways. She was quite productive, and it was quite rewarding for those of us who heard her sing and watched her act.”
Lincoln and Roach divorced in 1970, and she returned to California to “cleanse her spirit,” she told The Times in 1993. She taught at what is now Cal State Northridge, did some television work and performed only occasionally.
Her career took off again in the late 1980s, with works including two 1987 albums paying tribute to Holiday. Living in New York, she moved to the Verve Music Group and had commercial and artistic success with “The World Is Falling Down” in 1990 and “You Gotta Pay the Band” in 1991, in which she performed with saxophone great Stan Getz. Her final new release was “Abbey Sings Abbey” in 2007.
Lincoln is survived by brothers David and Kenneth Wooldridge and a sister, Juanita Baker.
Montreal Mirror Article: Black Gay Group In Montreal Creates A Space For Black Gays And Lesbians.
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The colours of PrideMontreal’s African Rainbow celebrates five
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by GERARD DEE
Alexis Musanganya, executive director of Arc-en-ciel d’Afrique, aka African Rainbow, a Montreal-based LGBT organization which addresses the needs of people of colour, says he started the group in response to the lack of diversity in Montreal’s Pride parade. “I’ve been here for 12 years,” says Musanganya, who’s originally from Rwanda, “and I was always going to Gay Pride, and noticing that there were not enough black people participating. Sometimes you would see two or three in maybe thousands of people who were marching; the percentage was not representative of the reality of Montreal. And I always asked, ‘Why don’t I see black people in Gay Pride?’ And the answer is because they are afraid to come out.” So, five years ago, Musanganya took action and co-founded African Rainbow, which now boasts 30 active members and 300 Facebook members. He says he wanted to create a group where gay people of colour could connect. “A lot of black people in Montreal who are gay, lesbian or bisexual didn’t have a specific place to talk about these issues,” he says. “They were just meeting in bars, saunas or on the Internet. But for the issues they were facing, there was no dialogue. So our original mandate was to fight against this sense of isolation that gay and lesbian people from Africa and the Caribbean feel, and to fight against homophobia in the black community. “Over the years, we’ve extended our vision and our mission, focusing more on HIV and AIDS. There’s a high prevalence of [infection] among black people in general, especially if they come from pandemic countries. And gay people are more at risk than heterosexual people. So our community is at the intersection of these two high-risk communities.” Musanganya says increased visibility is key to helping people of colour feel more at ease discussing these issues. “If those people who are out and are comfortable with themselves can be together in the parade, with a banner saying, ‘We are black, we are gay, we are proud,’ that can inspire other black gay people. It’s very important for them to see that their culture is not in opposition to their sexuality.” In addition to participating in the parade, the organization also hosts their annual Black & White pride party (Suco Lounge – 2108 St-Laurent – on Aug. 15, 10 p.m., $35). “We want to celebrate African and Caribbean cultures through our sexual orientation, but everybody is welcome,” he says. And for the first time, to mark their five-year anniversary, the group invited a special guest, actor Darryl Stephens, to both participate in the parade and appear at the party. Musanganya says the star of TV’s Noah’s Arc, the first scripted show about gay African American men, which ran on Logo in the U.S and Out TV in Canada, was an obvious choice. “Darryl is a role model; he’s handsome, his career has centred on gay-themed movies, and he’s really showing the face of success to black gays all over the world. “And so many black people loved Noah’s Arc. I was talking with some people who are 25 or even older, who were saying that if they had seen a show like that when they were 18, it probably would have changed the way they looked at themselves. The show gave strength to black gay people, and showed them a way to be black, gay, out and proud.” |
Vancouver Sun Article Doesn’t Get It: White Gays Still Have White Skin Privilege But Gay Stars Of Colour Are Still Invisible.
Celebrities paved way for the culture of gay acceptance that thrives in 2010
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi were married in California before the state flip-flopped on its same-sex marriage laws.
Photograph by: Reuters Files, Vancouver Sun
July 24, 2010 -The Real World and America’s Best Dance Crew helped MTV become the first TV network to win an “excellent” rating for its portrayal of gays, lesbian and transgender people on television, the U.S. activist group GLAAD has announced.
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When you think about it, the fact that it’s a gay, gay world today -at least in North America -and nobody much bats an eye or argues that fact, aside from the usual suspects, it seems hard to believe that it was only 13 years ago that comic Ellen DeGeneres, the world’s most engaging lesbian, came out on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Even for the entertainment industry, a traditionally liberal stronghold of diversity and acceptance, her decision was considered a bold and risky move, so bold and risky that many think it was the unspoken reason her successful sitcom was subsequently cancelled.
DeGeneres, of course, recovered rather handily, marrying her actor girlfriend Portia De Rossi before California flip-flopped on its same-sex marriage laws, hosting the Oscars, judging on American Idol for a season and drawing millions of viewers to her daytime hit, The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
If Ellen’s “I’m Gay” story carries dark shades of Cary Grant and Rock Hudson, and the scores of Hollywood celebrities from another era around whom rumours of homosexuality have long swirled, celebrities who were said to have stayed in that wretched closet to protect their careers (Tom Cruise being their modern-day counterpart), the truth is that Hollywood of late has been paving the path to equality and acceptance for homosexuality.
In a way, Hollywood has made homosexuality a part of our lives, no more or no less unusual than watching the U.S. president being questioned by Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View this week.
We follow performers we respect, and we admire them for their talent, and suddenly their sexuality either doesn’t matter, as with DeGeneres, or it’s the focus of the show, like Will & Grace or The L Word.
It is, you might say, cool to be gay these days, to be publicly out and about, like so many Hollywood A-listers are, movie stars (Jodie Foster, Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen), television actors (Sean Hayes, T.R. Knight, Cynthia Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Neil Patrick Harris, Meredith Baxter), singers (k. d. Lang, Elton John, Lance Bass, Melissa Etheridge, George Michael, Ricky Martin, Adam Lambert, Clay Aiken) and sports stars (Mark Tewksbury, Martina Navratilova, Greg Louganis).
That they openly embrace their homosexuality, or their bisexuality (hello, Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan and Anna Paquin) or their transgendering (Chaz Bono), and that we feel we know them as comfortably as if they were good friends, has turned their sexuality into a non-issue.
True, homophobia still runs rampant in some cultures and corners of our communities, and indeed, in the hearts of many who can’t shake their intolerance or religious indoctrination, and gay bashings still darken the headlines, and stories still surface of discrimination against gay youth. But there’s no question being gay in 2010 is much different, and in many ways easier, than it once was.
Today, there are gay cruises, gay television networks, gay travel agencies, gay porn, gay marriage (legalized in Canada five years ago), gay dating sites, GLAAD media awards, and even a gay day at Playland.
And then there’s this:
Consider that 32 years ago, Vancouver’s first Pride Parade was a protest march down Davie Street, a direct action by the city’s growing gay and lesbian community to raise hell, and awareness, about what they saw as widespread social and legal inequalities based on their sexuality.
To say the gays have come a long way, baby, is to know that on Sunday, when the 33rd annual Vancouver Pride Parade hits those same West End streets, hundreds of thousands of straights (and not a few politicians) will join in the rainbow bright love fest, an exuberant skivvies-baring celebration of the city’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.
Turns out, thanks in no small part to Ellen & Co., that being out is in.
Gayblackcanada 