Doink-Doink

We all know that sound. The deadbolt notes played before the opening Law and Order vignette where they discover the body. We hear it between acts.
Doink-Doink.

The last Law and Order aired last night to little fanfare other than a final doink- doink.

Last night's episode ended the series and its 20th season. ‘Law & Order’ is tied with ‘Gunsmoke‘ as the longest-running TV drama. Over 400 episodes, that means you could watch a L&O ep everyday for a year with no repeats. I was surprised NBC cancelled L&O giving up the chance to break the tie with Gunsmoke. Creator/producer Dick Wolf is reportedly interested in going to TNT for the tie breaking season. The spinoff series, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, has already left NBC to produce new eps at TNT. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is still going strong on NBC.

S. Epatha Merkerson is an actor's actor. She is one of the greats. Talk about making an impression, S. Epatha Merkerson did a dramatic gut wrenching guest starring role on L&O's first season. In season 3, she appeared as a different character, Lt. Anita Van Buren, and the rest is...you know. And it really is because Merkerson's Lt. Van Buren is the longest running black female character in TV history. We've seen her strong leadership, her soft side, her private life with husband and sons and private battles like with breast cancer this season. We've seen her put on the NYPD blue jacket and go on raids and hit perps upside their heads. But she does her best work, like all the L&O detectives and attorneys, in the interrogation room.



The L&O interrogation room is where the actors really got to exercise their acting muscles. This small room with only a table and chairs and a two way mirror is where we watch the innocent grieve and beg, the guilty maneuver and lie, soul searching, family secrets told, the strong fall apart and the weak conjure up some backbone. The detectives often do their thing and leave to watch through the mirror as the perps or witnesses squirm, pace and react.

I remember the detectives all taking a turn questioning a belligerent, hard core teen thug ranting about how he wasn't gonna tell nothing. He wanted to talk to "the man." Lt. Van Buren, after grabbing him up and giving him his options to no avail, gets quiet and simply tells him that "in this house, I am the man." Without any more words, she conveys through her demeanor, authority, strength and just enough compassion to jog him in the direction of trusting her. You could see him physically change. His eyes, body posture and even his relationship to the table and chair and to the Lt. actually change. L&O is good for these scenes. This police drama was not all about car chases and shoot outs. It was about human misbehavior and how the legal system deals with it. It's about characters, both the criminals and the law and the order teams.

L&O has a Alfred Hitchockian nature. When everything points to an obvious suspect, it's almost never him or her. Plot twists and shocking and surprise endings are always in the L&O mix and it may just circle back to the original suspect. Happy endings are not promised and the good guys don't always win. You never know until you see -Created by Dick Wolf- fade in on the black screen. Doink-Doink



First season- Law Chris Noth and George Dzundza. Order Micheal Moriarty and Richard Brooks.


Broadway song and dance man, Jerry Orbach as wise-cracking Detective Lennie Brisco.


Order: Jill Hennessy as Claire Kincaid and Sam Waterson as Jack McCoy.




Steven Hill as DA Adam Schiff came to the show in season 9 joining Angie Harmon who came on as DA Abbie Carmichael in S8. Season 3 added S. Epatha Merkerson as Lt. Van Buren, S5 added Benjamin Bratt as Det. Rey Curtis. In the center is Jerry Orbach (Det. Lenny Brisco) and Sam Waterston (DA Jack McCoy)


Rent star, Jesse L. Martin joined Jerry Orbach in solving crimes in season 9. Two song and dance guys now representing the Law.
S. Epatha Merkerson said she loved singing Broadway tunes with Jerry and Jesse.



Diane Weist as DA Nora Lewin joined the show in 2000 and Fred Thompson, (prior to his real life presidential bid) helped with the Order in 2002.



The court room where the district attorneys worked in the second half of the show.

In 2004 native New Yorker, Jerry Orbach died. Law&Order was never the same without Lennie Brisco. NYC policemen loved Jerry Orbach and the lights on Broadway were dimmed in his honor.

Actor Dennis Farina came on to partner with Jesse L. Martin (Det. Ed Green)


Season 19 and 20 brought in Jeremy Sisto as Det. Cyrus Lupo and Anthony Anderson as Det. Kevin Bernard.

S. Epatha Merkerson had decided this was to be her last season even before the show was cancelled. Lt. Van Buren, fought cancer and finacial struggles due to medical bills in this last season. How will she go out? Will the fade to Dick Wolf leave us forever in a cliffhanger? Will there be a Law and Order movie? Doink-Doink!

Missing the series most will be New York City actors. There were plenty of famous guest stars on this show but for the NYC actor, they had to get their L&O creds. Appearing on L&O was considered a rite of passage for actors in New York City.

We won't get to miss it too much as the reruns are on practically 24/7 and now there are 20 years worth. So, the familiar Mike Post guitar riffs and the doink-doink will never be far away.


Celebrating 20 years brought together old and new cast members.

Lena Horne

Back in the day, whenever a Black person appeared on TV, black folks called each other to make sure nobody missed it.
"Black folks on TV!"
This was especially true whenever Lena Horne was on perhaps a show like Ed Sullivan or Dean Martin, the phone wires burned up!
"You got Lena on!"

Lena Horne, the beautiful actress/jazz singer who broke color barriers in Hollywood and fought for civil rights during a seven-decade career that took her from being a $25 a week dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem to Hollywood and the Broadway stage, has died. She was 92.

Horne became one of the highest-paid black entertainers in America by 1943. She was one of the last survivors of the era of popular music that produced Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born on June 30, 1917, into a professional middle-class family in Brooklyn, New York. Her paternal grandmother, Cora, was a community leader and a feminist, and she had her 14-month-old granddaughter Lena appear on the cover of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s October 1919 “Branch Bulletin.” At age 16 Lena Horne got a job dancing at the Cotton Club.



In 1941, Horne signed a seven-year movie contract with MGM that made her the only black woman with a long-term studio deal. She appeared in a dozen films over the next decade, mostly in singing roles that could be excised when the films were shown in white theaters in the U.S. South.

“They didn’t make me into a maid, but they didn’t make me anything else, either,” she later wrote. “I became a butterfly pinned to a column, singing away in Movieland.”

To MGM, Lena Horne was a double edged sword of racial difficulty. She had Caucasian enough looks to be accepted by white audiences but too dark-skinned to be considered for a starring role in segregated America. OK, but, she was nonetheless seen as too light and beautiful to play a maid.
The ridiculousness of racism was never made clearer than this stupid "dilemma." Nevertheless, she was a trailblazer.



“She opened so many doors as the first beautiful black woman in movies,” actress Leslie Uggams told Jet magazine in 2007. “Black women were only allowed to play maids in the movies, and all of a sudden, the black community had this goddess.”

She had major roles in all black productions “Cabin in the Sky” and “Stormy Weather” in 1943. In other films such as “Panama Hattie” (1942) and “Swing Fever” (1943) she was used primarily in musical numbers.





Horne acted on her convictions about racial equality. During a World War II show for U.S. troops in Kansas, she walked off the stage because German prisoners of war were seated in front of black soldiers.

Because of her friendship with Paul Robeson, the black actor and activist, she was blacklisted from film, television, radio and recording in 1950. The blacklist did not effect cabaret. She prospered as a nightclub entertainer, appearing with Count Basie, Tony Bennett and Harry Belafonte and by 1956 returned to the movies as the blacklist was lifted.

In 1957, Lena Horne appeared at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel and starred in the Broadway musical “Jamaica” in 1957 to 1959.





During the 1960s, Horne appeared at rallies for civil rights throughout the South. In 1963, she marched on Washington with Martin Luther King.

“Whatever petitions I’ve signed or benefits I’ve played I’ve not done because I had any broad or deep political program I was pushing,” Horne wrote in her autobiography. “I had just learned from my father and from my grandmother not to take any nonsense from anybody."

In 1971 and 1972, she suffered the deaths of her husband, her father and her son, Teddy, in a period of 12 months and briefly retreated from public life.

“She was finally devastated,” Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote in a book on her family. “She retired to Santa Barbara, California, to plant cacti.”

After emerging from that crisis, she began to enjoy performing more.



“It took 1960s politics and 1970s personal grief for her to have the courage to present herself to an audience,” Buckley wrote.



She played Glenda the Good Witch in “The Wiz” (1978), directed by Sidney Lumet, Gail Buckley’s former husband. Her “Lena: The Lady and Her Music” played to sold-out crowds on Broadway for 333 performances in 1981 and 1982 and won a special Tony Award and two Grammys. Newsweek said of her performance: “Lena Horne is a revelation -- of astonishing power and complexity.”

Horne continued to record through the 1990s, releasing her last studio recording, “Soul,” in 1999. Her last major public appearance was in 1999 at an all-star salute, “Lena: The Legacy,” at Avery Fisher Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center.

Beautiful, sexy, sultry, sassy and outspoken, Lena Horne. Thank you and R.I.P.

Dixie Carter

Actress Dixie Carter has died at age 70. Dixie was best known for her role as Julia Sugarbaker on a show that had one of the best ensemble casts in TV sitcom history, Designing Women. Dixie Carter played the outspoken Julia to the max with great Southern charm and moxie. She was beautiful, sassy, intellectual, chic, brave, cultured and fearless.

Here are a few gems of Julia Sugarbaker's wit and wisdom.
Dixie Carter was a great actress and Julia Sugarbaker will forever speak to that.


Julia has dinner plans with Jimmy Carter and Charlene ruined it. They didn't call Julia "the Terminator" for nothing.


In the same episode after the jury Julia is on is sequestered thanks to Charlene, Julia lays down her law to the jury.


Julia defendes her sister. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia!


Designing Women took on many social issues. Julia lets a customer know how she feels about her bigotry towards a young man with AIDS.



Designing Women cast, Delta Burke, Annie Potts, Dixie Carter, Jean Smart and Meshack Taylor.



Dixie Carter and her husband actor Hal Holbrook

Easter 2010

Easter has so many images, like fancy hats, rabbits and chicks and chocolate bunnies and peeps and colored eggs and lillies. And, springtime images with budding trees and returning birds are all Easter images too. All bright and colorful signs of renewal and HOPE.


I like the Easter message of renewal of nature and of the spirit. So, I don't like to think of Easter images being in competition with each other although it's hard when Easter baskets are loaded with GI Joes and soccer balls to remember the real reason for the season.

The greatest image of darkness to light, despair to hope comes from the most gruesome death to the most brilliant resurrection. No competition.


He is not here; He has risen, just as he said.
Matthew 28:6

Hillary's Victory too!

I've always said that we will have health care reform or Hillary is gonna hurt somebody! Remember how she put together and presented a universal health care plan during her husband's first term? I have always appreciated that effort. The bill the president signed into law today was certainly not the sweeping changes she or Obama wanted. But, it is a good beginning and a road to it. So thanks to Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy for making the health of U.S. citizens a priority issue.



Hillary Clinton in the White House Situation Room after the historic vote Sunday night.

Oscar Crashing Ceilings in 2010

Congrats to history makers at the 2010 Academy Awards.
Geoffrey Fletcher won for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious. This is the first Academy Award to go to an African American for writing.
Isn't that ridiculous? Fletcher was understandably totally shocked.
Geoffrey, why are all those Fed EX and UPS trucks backing up in your driveway? Could they be delivering plays and books for you to adapt to the screen? Hmmm. Uh Huh! Congrats!



Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for "The Hurt Locker" She is the first female to take a directing Oscar home. Fellow director Barbra Streisand was beaming when she handed the statue to Bigelow and I could feel the smiles from pioneers like Ida Lupino and Lee Grant and all the current and upcoming female directors who can now crash through the huge hole action director Bigelow blew up for them.




Keep that celluloid ceiling cracking!
Congrats to Mo'Nique, Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Precious) 2010. Very classy Mo' wearing a royal blue dress and flower in her hair in tribute to Hattie McDaniel, Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1940 (Gone With the Wind).

Opening Ceremony Hallelujah

2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony highlight was the hauntingly beautiful Hallelujah sung by k.d.lang. This song has been covered by a lot of singers but never so passionately as on this winter night in Vancouver B.C. The spectators holding candle like flashlights added to the mood but even if you've heard k.d. do this song before, you ain't heard it like this. The Olympics won't give up the video of the song, but here's a gorgeous version with k.d.

The lyrics are astoundingly beautiful and meaningful to me. Everyone seems to interpret something different, there are the obvious biblical references, and the verses vary. In short though, to me they mean no matter who you are are how big you think you are, life is not always going to be easy and love is not promised to be smooth sailing or everlasting. But, life is to be cherished and love is worth all.

"And every breath we drew was Hallelujah."

Gay Rights? What Would Dr. King Do?

On the 80th anniversary celebration of his birth, how do you think the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King jr. would address gay rights. Would he have addressed it? He was of course a fighter for freedom and justice. He was also a Southern Christian minister, three variables that often close the justice door (and more often heavens door) when it comes to GLBT rights and especially marriage equality. How would MLK stand on this?
Well, I believe Dr. King would stand with me and my GLBT community to get all of our rights, including the rights of marriage. I believe this because he was a man who was not bound to a stereotypical southern bible belt attitude. I believe it because his work and words as a Christian and as a pastor indicated that he understood that Christ would not regard any people as less than. That we are all threads in the human tapestry.

Dr. King was also a civil rights leader who did not hesitate to stand up for justice no matter how unpopular the issue. So, yes I believe Dr. King would be a drum major for gay rights because, Coretta Scott King, the person who knew him best and was the most congruous with his beliefs was a strong supporter of gay rights and gay marriage.

In 1998, just a few days before the 30th anniversary of her husband's assassination, speaking before nearly 600 people at the Chicago Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Coretta Scott King called on the civil rights community to join in the struggle against homophobia and anti-gay bias.
She noted the obvious similarities:

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood."

She also noted that her husband believed that all struggles for equal rights were bound together and that it was necessary to fight against bigotry in all forms, not merely the form that affected you personally:

"We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be," she said, quoting her husband. "I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy."

And she pointed out that many gays and lesbians had fought for black civil rights, demanding that blacks return the favor:

"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement," she said. "Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."

But perhaps her most eloquent statement on the subject came in 1994, again invoking the words of her late husband in support of equal rights for all:

"For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law...I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." On another occasion he said, "I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible. Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others."

"I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother, and sisterhood, for lesbian and gay people." -(Reuters, March 31, 1998).

Did you know that Dr. King's longtime colleague and the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, was an openly gay man?




I agree with Mrs. King that her husband would stand with her for equal rights for GLBT people. Her oldest daughter the late Yolanda King was also a supporter and believer that her father would be too. In contrast, the youngest King daughter, Rev. Bernice King, who was five years old when her father was killed, is outspoken in opposition to gay rights and marriage. She does not feel her father would support this issue.

"I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions."

Yolanda King and Rev. Bernice King





So, here on the 80th anniversary of his birth, what do you think? Do you agree with Coretta King or Rev. Bernice King about where MLK would stand on GLBT rights and same-sex marriage?

Blago knows Blackness

"I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived," Blagojevich said. "I saw it all growing up."

Oh, I see. Former Governor Blago knows that to be Black you got to shine shoes, grow up near Blacks and of course be poor and witness struggle. Five-room apartment? He is one of us for sure.

What a mixed up jerk this guy is. Does he think Elvis was Black too? Yes, Elvis, his hero who grew up around Blacks, was poorer than dirt and absorbed Black music.
I think Mr. Blago's feelings about the president, (yes Blago, the president) is not his Black ethnic identity but his own white priviledge jealousy.
The color here is green, children.

Happy Birthday Elvis!

Can you imagine this guy at 75? My favorite Elvis performance was his 1968 Comeback show. He rocked and danced and sang and played around with the audience.

I love this song where Elvis is at his spiritual passionate best. I loved it when he was not performing, but just sitting at a piano singing gospel. If you find some of these impromptu moments on video, you can tell he loved it too.

In Memoriam 2009 (Part 1)

The loss list is sadly very long this year. And, this list may not be at all complete.

Brittany Murphy- b. 1977, was an American actress and singer. She starred in films such as Clueless, Girl, Interrupted, 8 Mile, Uptown Girls, Sin City, Happy Feet, and Riding in Cars with Boys. She also voiced Luanne Platter on the animated TV series King of the Hill.



Steve McNair- b. 1973. Was the Quarterback that led the Tennessee Titans to a superbowl championship in 2000.



Natasha Richardson- b. 1963, was a gifted English stage and screen actress. She helped raise millions of dollars for AIDS research and awareness. Natasha was married to actor Liam Neeson and was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave. She died as a result of a skiing accident.



Farrah Fawcet- b. 1947. Actress who starred in Charlie’s Angels and commercials in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Also she appeared in Playboy in 1995, making it the top-selling issue in the 90’s along with her record sells breaking pin-up poster and popular hair style. She became a cultural icon. Despite that status, Farrah shared much of her brave last health battle with the public.
Farrah was also a fine dramatic actor.



Ed McMahon- b. 1923. TV personality and Johnny Carson’s announcer and sidekick on The Tonight Show from 1962-1992. Ed never came to my door with the big Publisher's Clearing House check. sigh.



Billy Mays TV Pitchman for OxiClean and other products. His distinctive beard and loud sales pitches made him a recognized television presence. His voice was always so annoying to me and yet I for some reason miss it?



Fred Travelena- b. 1942, was an American entertainer, specializing in comedy and impersonations. In 2005 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



David Carradine- b. 1936. Best known for his work in the 1970s television series Kung Fu and more recently in the Kill Bill films. He appeared in more than 100 feature films.




Koko Taylor born 1936 was the "Queen of the Blues." No Doubt.



Waymon Tisdale- b. 1964. Professional basketball player with the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns and a smooth jazz bass guitarist.



Dom DeLuise- b. 1933 was an American actor, comedian, film director, television producer, chef, and author. Very funny guy especially in Mel Brooks comedies and with Burt Reynolds.



Bea Arthur- b. 1922. Actress, comedian and singer whose career spanned seven
decades. Arthur achieved fame on the 1970’s sitcom Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980’s sitcom The Golden Girls.



Jack Kemp- b. 1935, was an American politician and professional football player. In the 1996 election, he was Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole’s running mate for Vice President.



Marilyn Chambers- b. 1952. An American pornographic actress, exotic dancer, model, actress and vice-presidential candidate. She was best known for her 1972 hardcore film debut Behind the Green Door.



Karl Malden- b. 1912. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he featured in classic Marlon Brando films such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and One-Eyed Jacks. He guest stared in many TV dramas and co-starred with Michael Douglas on The Streets of San Francisco.



Oscar Mayer- b. 1914. Grandson of the original Oscar Mayer who founded the meat company bearing his name.



Robert McNamara- b. 1916, was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense. McNamara served as Defense Secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968.




"Gidget"- b. 1994. The famous Taco Bell mascot from the commercials with his (her) famous tagline “Yo quiero taco bell” was used in a number of TV and movie spots including a commercial for Trivial Pursuit and the movie Legally Blonde 2.



Socks the official pet cat of the Clinton’s during their administration in the white house. Was often photographed in parts of the white house and lived 20 years.



John Hughes- b. 1950. An American film director, producer and writer. He scripted some of the most successful films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon’s Vacation; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Home Alone and its sequel.



Eunice Kennedy Shriver- b. 1921, JFK 's sister and founder of the Special Olympics in 1962.



Walter Cronkite- b. 1916. American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as “the most trusted man in America”.



Les Paul- b. 1915. He was an American innovator, inventor, musician and songwriter. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which “made the sound of rock and roll possible”.



Naomi Sims- b. 1948, is widely credited as being the first African American supermodel.




Alaina Reed, played Olivia on Sesame Street and Rose on sitcom 227. Alaina was 63.



Jennifer Jones, glamorous actress and Academy Award winner was 90 years old.



Sadly we must go on to Part two....