Monday, February 18, 2013
(52) Three Legged Lesbians
Donation thank you’s; Multi-Tasking; Stupid Americans; Oxymorons; LoHans Solo 2.0; Odd Couples … and more! Reproduced and renamed song *You’re a Stupid Cunt* by Kiko Lombardi of: http://www.visitronix.com Music bed provided by DJ Toni Teresi http://www.myspace.com/nypstar
Prop 8 backers target trial judge in urging appeal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Backers of California’s same-sex marriage ban urged a federal appeals court to overturn the trial judge who struck down Proposition 8 by arguing late Friday that his consideration of evidence was “egregiously selective and one-sided.”
In written arguments to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for the ban’s sponsors alleged that Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker “quite willfully” disregarded a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court precedent and other relevant information when he decided the voter-approved measure was an unconstitutional violation of gay Californians’ civil rights.
“The district court based its findings almost exclusively on an uncritical acceptance of the evidence submi…
Read More
In written arguments to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for the ban’s sponsors alleged that Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker “quite willfully” disregarded a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court precedent and other relevant information when he decided the voter-approved measure was an unconstitutional violation of gay Californians’ civil rights.
“The district court based its findings almost exclusively on an uncritical acceptance of the evidence submi…
Read More
The One Who Got Away: ''Good People'' is a highly entertaining, very funny and all-around insightful drama, painted with exquisite cultural detail
Stage:
If there is a way to think of Margaret, the indefatigable protagonist of David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People, it might be with the words of columnist Doug Larson who said, ''A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.''
For although Margaret – born, bred and permanently embedded in her working-class South Boston neighborhood – has learned to navigate the meager opportunities and bad luck of poverty, she has also evolved an oblique kind of thinking. It has a stubbornness to it; an aspect of rationalizing, despite a smart, sometimes cunning mind. And although this rationalizing may often parallel reality, it has also allowed for the quiet solidification of a very private, virtually subconscious personal myth. It is a sense of self that even as it fortifies the daily struggle, might nevertheless serve as a subtle form of self-sabotage. If she has all the answers then there is nothing to regret, but also nothing to change. It is the coping mechanism that has allowed a keen (if uneducated) intellect to survive itself. And if she will be cruel to protect it, does that make her a bad person? And what of those tantalizing moments when Margaret asserts what is both the truth and what she needs to believe? Who gets to decide such moral high ground?
Good People
(Photo by Margot Schulman)
Beautifully identified and crafted, Margaret exists at the heart of what also happens to be a highly entertaining, very funny and all-around insightful drama, painted with exquisite cultural detail. A South Boston native himself, Lindsay-Abaire delivers an expression of his world with an authenticity that resonates whether you know this ''other'' Boston (or its suburban refuges) or not. But it's not about dropping the R's or noting the references. It's about the cadence and rhythms of a claustrophobically tight-knit community that has, with brute certainty, decided to be nobody's fool. Lindsay-Abaire has caught it all. The only question is whether any given production can deliver it. This one does.
Embracing the vision as if she's lived it, director Jackie Maxwell keeps a tempo and time as witty as the play itself and lets the naturals fly. Equally simpatico, designer Todd Rosenthal's cramped and gloomy houses, nighttime windows lit with analog television blue, and interiors limping along with '70s-era Colonial kitsch, are potently suggestive of the quiet poverty in this back end of Boston. An evocation of settled neglect, he gives us houses carrying apartments filled with families, the unemployed and the elderly. No one can afford to make the windows shinier or the siding better.
And it's within this hardscrabble community that Margaret has been living a difficult, if predictable, existence. Her axis begins to tilt when she loses her job and her ability to pay rent for herself and her daughter. Egged on by girlfriend Jean, Margaret seeks out a long-ago ex-boyfriend who has returned to the area after having escaped the neighborhood for a life of education and now wealth. Margaret descends upon Mike at his office and though ostensibly there to ask for a job, they soon enter a barbed banter in which Mike reluctantly finds himself inviting Margaret to his birthday party, a large affair being thrown for him by his wife. When Margaret turns up at his affluent suburban home on the appointed evening, it doesn't take long before she has upped the ante with Mike in a way that perhaps neither of them expected.
Inhabiting Margaret with supernatural insight and a comic timing to beat the band, Johanna Day makes this woman utterly and inexorably her own. With consummate skill and subterranean artistry, she captures the ready smile and quick words of a woman who has learned to mask a lifetime's worth of anger and disappointment. It's a face that says, ''Big deal, I saw it coming,'' with each of life's knocks. But as stoic as Margaret may be, Day ensures a view onto a far more complicated inner landscape. In her canny confidence, her searching eyes, Day delivers the Margaret that refuses to ''grow in a row,'' even if it costs her.
The only downside here is that Day is so brilliant it is a challenge for the rest of the cast to keep up. Coming closest are Amy McWilliams as Jean, and Francesca Choy-Kee as Kate, Mike's young and educated wife. As Margaret's stalwart friend, Jean knows more about Margaret than she may ever reveal and McWilliams captures this silent dimension amid a nicely textured and skillfully comic portrayal of a raucous gal pal. And supporting role though she may be, McWilliams's clear sense of Jean is indispensible in setting the cultural temperature here. Playing Kate with much layering and compellingly credible emotion, Choy-Kee does much to diminish the ever-so-slightly obviousness of her as device as well as evading the kind of cliché that the character might encourage.
Good People To March 10 Arena Stage Kreeger Theater 1101 6th St. SW $55-$85 202-488-3300 www.arenastage.org
Never quite finding his connection with either Day or the Southie accent, Andrew Long nevertheless gives his Mike a memorable and effectively edgy presence; convincing as a man who harbors well-hidden angers and uncertainties. Similarly, as Dottie, Margaret's landlady and sometime babysitter, Rosemary Knower cuts a comic figure and a formidable presence even if she never quite nails the accent or enough of the deadpan grim. Better with the accent, but not quite seedy enough (he's a floor manager at a Dollar Store, after all) Michael Glenn slightly overplays at first but comes into his own with a quietly engaging turn as the put-upon Stevie.
But as good as the ensemble is, it is Day's searingly memorable Margaret, growing best as she can from a crack in a South Boston sidewalk, who will haunt you. ...more
If there is a way to think of Margaret, the indefatigable protagonist of David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People, it might be with the words of columnist Doug Larson who said, ''A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.''
For although Margaret – born, bred and permanently embedded in her working-class South Boston neighborhood – has learned to navigate the meager opportunities and bad luck of poverty, she has also evolved an oblique kind of thinking. It has a stubbornness to it; an aspect of rationalizing, despite a smart, sometimes cunning mind. And although this rationalizing may often parallel reality, it has also allowed for the quiet solidification of a very private, virtually subconscious personal myth. It is a sense of self that even as it fortifies the daily struggle, might nevertheless serve as a subtle form of self-sabotage. If she has all the answers then there is nothing to regret, but also nothing to change. It is the coping mechanism that has allowed a keen (if uneducated) intellect to survive itself. And if she will be cruel to protect it, does that make her a bad person? And what of those tantalizing moments when Margaret asserts what is both the truth and what she needs to believe? Who gets to decide such moral high ground?
Good People
(Photo by Margot Schulman)
Beautifully identified and crafted, Margaret exists at the heart of what also happens to be a highly entertaining, very funny and all-around insightful drama, painted with exquisite cultural detail. A South Boston native himself, Lindsay-Abaire delivers an expression of his world with an authenticity that resonates whether you know this ''other'' Boston (or its suburban refuges) or not. But it's not about dropping the R's or noting the references. It's about the cadence and rhythms of a claustrophobically tight-knit community that has, with brute certainty, decided to be nobody's fool. Lindsay-Abaire has caught it all. The only question is whether any given production can deliver it. This one does.
Embracing the vision as if she's lived it, director Jackie Maxwell keeps a tempo and time as witty as the play itself and lets the naturals fly. Equally simpatico, designer Todd Rosenthal's cramped and gloomy houses, nighttime windows lit with analog television blue, and interiors limping along with '70s-era Colonial kitsch, are potently suggestive of the quiet poverty in this back end of Boston. An evocation of settled neglect, he gives us houses carrying apartments filled with families, the unemployed and the elderly. No one can afford to make the windows shinier or the siding better.
And it's within this hardscrabble community that Margaret has been living a difficult, if predictable, existence. Her axis begins to tilt when she loses her job and her ability to pay rent for herself and her daughter. Egged on by girlfriend Jean, Margaret seeks out a long-ago ex-boyfriend who has returned to the area after having escaped the neighborhood for a life of education and now wealth. Margaret descends upon Mike at his office and though ostensibly there to ask for a job, they soon enter a barbed banter in which Mike reluctantly finds himself inviting Margaret to his birthday party, a large affair being thrown for him by his wife. When Margaret turns up at his affluent suburban home on the appointed evening, it doesn't take long before she has upped the ante with Mike in a way that perhaps neither of them expected.
Inhabiting Margaret with supernatural insight and a comic timing to beat the band, Johanna Day makes this woman utterly and inexorably her own. With consummate skill and subterranean artistry, she captures the ready smile and quick words of a woman who has learned to mask a lifetime's worth of anger and disappointment. It's a face that says, ''Big deal, I saw it coming,'' with each of life's knocks. But as stoic as Margaret may be, Day ensures a view onto a far more complicated inner landscape. In her canny confidence, her searching eyes, Day delivers the Margaret that refuses to ''grow in a row,'' even if it costs her.
The only downside here is that Day is so brilliant it is a challenge for the rest of the cast to keep up. Coming closest are Amy McWilliams as Jean, and Francesca Choy-Kee as Kate, Mike's young and educated wife. As Margaret's stalwart friend, Jean knows more about Margaret than she may ever reveal and McWilliams captures this silent dimension amid a nicely textured and skillfully comic portrayal of a raucous gal pal. And supporting role though she may be, McWilliams's clear sense of Jean is indispensible in setting the cultural temperature here. Playing Kate with much layering and compellingly credible emotion, Choy-Kee does much to diminish the ever-so-slightly obviousness of her as device as well as evading the kind of cliché that the character might encourage.
Good People To March 10 Arena Stage Kreeger Theater 1101 6th St. SW $55-$85 202-488-3300 www.arenastage.org
Never quite finding his connection with either Day or the Southie accent, Andrew Long nevertheless gives his Mike a memorable and effectively edgy presence; convincing as a man who harbors well-hidden angers and uncertainties. Similarly, as Dottie, Margaret's landlady and sometime babysitter, Rosemary Knower cuts a comic figure and a formidable presence even if she never quite nails the accent or enough of the deadpan grim. Better with the accent, but not quite seedy enough (he's a floor manager at a Dollar Store, after all) Michael Glenn slightly overplays at first but comes into his own with a quietly engaging turn as the put-upon Stevie.
But as good as the ensemble is, it is Day's searingly memorable Margaret, growing best as she can from a crack in a South Boston sidewalk, who will haunt you. ...more
Lesbian News - 17 Feb 2013
'Glee's' Santana Helps Quinn Put the Lesbian in LUG for Valentine's DayTop 5 Myths About Gay & Lesbian Wedding PhotographyNationwide gay and lesbian population count breaks new groundThe lesbian love octogonWho?s Sending Out Fake Lesbian Wedding Announcements to Small Papers?
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Martial-arts seminar Feb. 17
Fitness Formula Clubs FFC and Krav Maga Academy are hosting a Special Weapons & Ground Defense Seminar featuring John Whitman on Sunday, Feb. 17, at FFC Old Town, 1235 N. LaSalle St., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Amar en Tiempos Revueltos - season 5, recap 17
Teresa is still going on about Ana not being able to make it to the funeral of her and Alfonso’s father, but like with everything these days, Teresa keeps hearing to just let it go; even Héctor keeps telling her to ‘not start this again’.
Meanwhile, Rosa is either trying to woo or suck up to Ana by buying her some purple colored treats that Ana loved when she was younger because her father always brought them over.
I can’t tell if Rosa is genuinely interested in friendship (or more), or is just keeping Ana sweet until a better business type of opportunity comes along.
Later at the Rivas home, Alfonso is apologizing to Ana for his behavior for the past couple of months and tells her that he needs a doctor. A real doctor that can help him get off the booze and pills he’s taking.
That doesn’t last long though, because later he’s boozing it up again and this time it’s Ana who is getting the full brunt of it. Alfonso wants sex, but Ana is having none of that when he’s drunk (or any at all for that matter), so tells him to buzz off. Alfonso doesn’t take this so lightly though and tries to force himself on Ana, but she kicks him out of the room.
She talks to Cristina about what happened and with tears in her eyes tells her that she is going to separate from Alfonso and that she made a huge mistake marrying him in the first place.
The next morning at the table, Alfonso apologizes for what he did and Ana tells him that his bags are ready. Alfonso questions if she is kicking him out, but she tells him he is going to a specialized clinic to help him with his demons and clear his body and soul, otherwise known as Rehab. She tells him that she’ll support him, check up on him with the doctors, but tells him to not be very hopeful about anything else.
Ana later goes over to Teresa’s shop to tell Carmen and Teresa that she dropped Alfonso off at a ‘resting sanatorium’ and that he will be receiving treatment for his substance abuse. Both Carmen and Teresa look at Ana dumbfounded, but Carmen, when questioned, confesses that she did indeed suspect Alfonso was having problems. This confession nearly makes Teresa’s eyes pop out of her skull and she questions Carmen on why she kept this a secret from her as they could have done something for him. Ana gives them the details on the treatment centre Alfonso is staying at, but tells them she was advised by the doctors to not visit him for a while because it would be better for his progress.
Teresa, meanwhile, is ready to blow a fuse though, accusing Ana that she is leaving Alfonso to deal with this on his own. Ana calmly rebuffs her, saying that she left Alfonso in the best care possible.
<!--pagebreak-->
Carmen leaves to process things at home, leaving Ana and Teresa at the shop alone and things get heated fairly quickly between the two:
Teresa: It’s hard to believe for me that my brother’s become a drug addict as you say.
Ana: I understand. It is hard to accept that somebody you love has taken that route.
Teresa: I’m wondering what you have done to get him in this situation.
Ana: I would have sent him to a clinic much earlier, but it is right now that I could because he decided to.
Teresa: No, not for sending him there. I don’t think my brother is taking drugs just for mere fun. No, he is not that kind of person.
Ana: What are you insinuating?
Teresa: That after marrying you he was under so much pressure that he couldn’t overcome. Maybe that’s why he was taking drugs; running away from a relationship that was hurting him.
Ana: I don’t like what you’re saying, Teresa.
Teresa: Me neither, but that is what I am thinking and neither do I believe that my brother’s admitted to a sanatorium of his own free will.
Ana: If you don’t believe me, ask Héctor. Héctor can tell you what happened with your brother.
Teresa: Don’t get my husband involved in this.
Ana: Why not? Hasn’t Héctor told you he saw Alfonso the last couple of weeks?
Teresa: I told you, do not say his name! I am fed up with everybody talking to him behind my back!
Ana: Héctor is a good friend to his friends and you don’t care about him, or your brother or anyone, just that nobody talks unless it is under your control. People are free to talk to whom they want and you can’t avoid that.
Teresa: Are you calling me egocentric?
Ana: I just call that selfish.
Teresa: You are the only one who is selfish, who has no friends, who looks down on all of us: YOU!
Ana: I don’t have an inferiority complex like you.
Teresa: But which complex of inferiority…
And then ladies and ladies… this is what happens:
And with that I will leave you for now.
Next week:
The girls both reminisce about what happened, while everything else still goes on.
You can read previous recaps here.
Meanwhile, Rosa is either trying to woo or suck up to Ana by buying her some purple colored treats that Ana loved when she was younger because her father always brought them over.
I can’t tell if Rosa is genuinely interested in friendship (or more), or is just keeping Ana sweet until a better business type of opportunity comes along.
Later at the Rivas home, Alfonso is apologizing to Ana for his behavior for the past couple of months and tells her that he needs a doctor. A real doctor that can help him get off the booze and pills he’s taking.
That doesn’t last long though, because later he’s boozing it up again and this time it’s Ana who is getting the full brunt of it. Alfonso wants sex, but Ana is having none of that when he’s drunk (or any at all for that matter), so tells him to buzz off. Alfonso doesn’t take this so lightly though and tries to force himself on Ana, but she kicks him out of the room.
She talks to Cristina about what happened and with tears in her eyes tells her that she is going to separate from Alfonso and that she made a huge mistake marrying him in the first place.
The next morning at the table, Alfonso apologizes for what he did and Ana tells him that his bags are ready. Alfonso questions if she is kicking him out, but she tells him he is going to a specialized clinic to help him with his demons and clear his body and soul, otherwise known as Rehab. She tells him that she’ll support him, check up on him with the doctors, but tells him to not be very hopeful about anything else.
Ana later goes over to Teresa’s shop to tell Carmen and Teresa that she dropped Alfonso off at a ‘resting sanatorium’ and that he will be receiving treatment for his substance abuse. Both Carmen and Teresa look at Ana dumbfounded, but Carmen, when questioned, confesses that she did indeed suspect Alfonso was having problems. This confession nearly makes Teresa’s eyes pop out of her skull and she questions Carmen on why she kept this a secret from her as they could have done something for him. Ana gives them the details on the treatment centre Alfonso is staying at, but tells them she was advised by the doctors to not visit him for a while because it would be better for his progress.
Teresa, meanwhile, is ready to blow a fuse though, accusing Ana that she is leaving Alfonso to deal with this on his own. Ana calmly rebuffs her, saying that she left Alfonso in the best care possible.
<!--pagebreak-->
Carmen leaves to process things at home, leaving Ana and Teresa at the shop alone and things get heated fairly quickly between the two:
Teresa: It’s hard to believe for me that my brother’s become a drug addict as you say.
Ana: I understand. It is hard to accept that somebody you love has taken that route.
Teresa: I’m wondering what you have done to get him in this situation.
Ana: I would have sent him to a clinic much earlier, but it is right now that I could because he decided to.
Teresa: No, not for sending him there. I don’t think my brother is taking drugs just for mere fun. No, he is not that kind of person.
Ana: What are you insinuating?
Teresa: That after marrying you he was under so much pressure that he couldn’t overcome. Maybe that’s why he was taking drugs; running away from a relationship that was hurting him.
Ana: I don’t like what you’re saying, Teresa.
Teresa: Me neither, but that is what I am thinking and neither do I believe that my brother’s admitted to a sanatorium of his own free will.
Ana: If you don’t believe me, ask Héctor. Héctor can tell you what happened with your brother.
Teresa: Don’t get my husband involved in this.
Ana: Why not? Hasn’t Héctor told you he saw Alfonso the last couple of weeks?
Teresa: I told you, do not say his name! I am fed up with everybody talking to him behind my back!
Ana: Héctor is a good friend to his friends and you don’t care about him, or your brother or anyone, just that nobody talks unless it is under your control. People are free to talk to whom they want and you can’t avoid that.
Teresa: Are you calling me egocentric?
Ana: I just call that selfish.
Teresa: You are the only one who is selfish, who has no friends, who looks down on all of us: YOU!
Ana: I don’t have an inferiority complex like you.
Teresa: But which complex of inferiority…
And then ladies and ladies… this is what happens:
And with that I will leave you for now.
Next week:
The girls both reminisce about what happened, while everything else still goes on.
You can read previous recaps here.
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