Lez Keep It Real

This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Catherine “Cat” Cora
1968 -

Cat Cora was raised in a Greek community in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. Her grandfather and father were both restaurateurs. Her cuisine is a blend of her Greek and Southern roots like her favorite dish Kota Kapama (Greek cinnamon chicken), and slow-cooked lamb shanks with feta salsa verde.

After receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise Physiology and Biology at The University of Southern Mississippi, she enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Cat has also appeared on Simplify Your Life. She was also a cohost of the Food Network show Kitchen Accomplished. Cat is one of the few female Iron Chefs in its franchise history (including the Japanese version of Iron Chef). She was a winner of the Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Awards for 2006. In 2008, she was awarded the Hero Visibility Award by the Human Rights Campaign. Cat lives in California with her partner, Jennifer, and two sons.

Interesting tid bit:
Cat was inspired by Julia Child, Barbara Tropp, M. F. K. Fisher and her grandmother, Alma. In January 2005, she co-founded Chefs For Humanity, which describes itself as “a grassroots coalition of chefs and culinary professionals guided by a mission to quickly be able to raise funds and provide resources for important emergency and humanitarian aid, nutritional education, and hunger-related initiatives throughout the world.”

Don’t forget about the Lez Keep it Real Contest! It’s still going on people because I haven’t had enough submissions. Submit and you can win!

More Notable Lesbians

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

*Some information provided by Wikipedia.com

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According to Reuters, Ellen is the number one television host in the country.

LOS ANGELES, March 26 (Reuters) - American talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has topped rival Oprah Winfrey in a popularity poll of television hosts — while veteran Larry King was labeled the least sexy.

The poll by Web site AOL Television asked readers which daytime TV host made their day and Ellen, who opens “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” by dancing with her audience, trounced Oprah with 46 percent of the vote, while Oprah only won 19 percent.

When asked which daytime host made the ideal dinner guest, again it was Ellen, with 47 percent of respondents saying they would rather dine with her, compared to 14 percent for Oprah, long considered the queen of daytime TV with “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” READ MORE

The poll was calculated from over 1.35 million votes and comprised from a diverse audience from soccer moms to “hipsters” to people who could possibly care less. This whole thing makes me wonder … do people in the bread basket states, the ones with housewives who do watch Ellen on a regular basis, forget that she’s a lesbian? I know for a fact that Ellen doesn’t hide it, in fact she has talked about it on her show on numerous occasions. So, if people in this country still have such a problem with homosexuality then why on earth is she so damn popular?

Why is it okay for Ellen to be gay, but it’s not okay for female athletes or female basketball coaches?

Why is there such a stigma to being gay when it’s not someone prominent on the Hollywood scene? Is Ellen the exception to the rule? Does her humor overshadow the fact that she is gay and lives with her lover, Portia?

I don’t get it at all.

It reminds of a time when black athletes were considered “OK” in the book of white racists simply because they could play a sport. It’s hypocritical and just plain wrong. Discrimination shouldn’t have any exceptions, period. It just shouldn’t exist.

I don’t want to take anything away from Ellen’s honor here as she clearly deserves it. As always, I’m just throwing out another angle on the situation.

ellen degeneres, ellen most popular television host, women’s basketball coaches

Sounds like the beginning of a punch line, doesn’t it?

Lesbians and alcohol go together like cookies and milk, peanut butter and jelly, Britney Spears and chaos … you get the picture.

There have been studies about this. And alcohol is very prevalent in the lesbian social scene. Unless you have a handle on it and drink socially (and responsibly), it can easily go from healthy to habitual in no time.

Just ask Jennifer Storm:

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This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Katharine Lee Bates
August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem “America the Beautiful.” Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The daughter of a Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied. The first draft of “America the Beautiful” was hastily jotted in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Bates spent teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Later she remembered:

“One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.”

The words to her one famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.

Katharine Lee Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1929, aged 69. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Interesting tid bit:
Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and children’s books. Her family home on Falmouth’s Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society. There is also a street named in her honor, “Katharine Lee Bates Road” in Falmouth. She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman’s death in 1915. These arrangements were sometimes called “Boston marriages” or “Wellesley marriages,” when two or more academic professionals lived together for companionship and financial benefits.

Don’t forget about the Lez Keep it Real Contest! It’s still going on people because I haven’t had enough submissions. Submit and you can win!

More Notable Lesbians

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

*Some information provided by Wikipedia.com

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Curve Magazine is having a fun little contest in which they are letting their readers decide one and for all who the funniest lesbian comedian is.

I recently wrote an article on Tamale for the upcoming issue. She’s a fashionable lesbian comedian whose performance credits include gender bending, fire dancing, American Tribal belly dancing and, of course, comedy.

Other notable names up for the honor include Ellen, Kate Clinton, Judy Gold, Sabrina Mathews, Elvira Kurt, Rosie, Lilly Tomlin, Suzanne Westenhoefer and a slew of others. You can visit Curve’s website to vote for your favorite.

As for my favorite, I’m not sure. I love me some Ellen. I could listen to her for hours because she just has that quality where she can make you laugh without even trying. And of course I think Lilly Tomlin is hilarious, especially in movie roles. But I also think Suzanne Westenhoefer’s stand-up is pure, stomach-soreness, laugh-till-you-cry, good, clean fun.

Here’s a recent Q&A article with Suzanne from Planet Out:

Is there truth to the saying, “Do what you love and the money will follow?”
There is no truth to the “Do what you love, money will follow” myth. I have made money doing things I hate, and I never get paid for doing what I really love: Laundry. I think it should be, “Do what everyone says you are good at and expect limited funds.” or even “Do what you love and probably get a rash.”

What is your worst habit around finances?
I spend on lap dances for others. This is not a joke. I have to stop.

Are there economic advantages to being a bottom?
Being a bottom means never having to ask where the checkbook is. You are usually lying on it.

What was your big financial break in comedy?
I won $25 the first time I did stand-up.

What was the most miserable “service” job you ever did to subsidize your income?
I love all service jobs. I am a co-dependent, pleaser bottom. I could not, however, do anything that was messy. Like gutting fish … first thing that came to mind.

What’s the best money lesson learned from a romantic encounter?
Never share.

Is The Dinah weekend worth the buck?
The Dinah Shore weekend is totally worth the money IF you get laid, meet a partner or get to see me. Some of you will be able to do all three, and actually be owed money at the end of the weekend.

More about Suzanne Westenhoefer
Fearless, bold, unapologetic, and “freaking hilarious” best describes Comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer. She’s made a career out of telling the truth: Life is funny and no one is off-limits. From her mom’s last will and testament to her dog’s embarrassing discovery, Suzanne shares stories that leave audiences in stitches.

Her comedy special and documentary, “A Bottom on Top,” aired on LOGO Television in fall 2007. It will be available on DVD on March 18, 2008.

curve magazine, favorite lesbian comedian, suzanne westenhoefer, ellen, kate clinton, judy gold, lilly tomlin, tamale

It never really bothered me much when other kids said, “that’s so gay.” It never bothered me because I said it as well. It still doesn’t bother me when I hear it said today.

Maybe because when I was growing up there wasn’t such a stigma to the word “gay.” It was a fun word, light and airy, back then. Now, it’s derogatory and ranks rights up there with the likes of “bitch.”

How did this happen? Well, there’s the evolution of language of course. And BBC News has a few other theories of their own:

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OKLAHOMA CITY, — Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern will not receive legislative punishment for anti-gay comments she made earlier this year, House Speaker Chris Benge said.

Thousands of e-mails and phone calls began flooding the offices of Kern and other legislators after Kern told a group of fellow Republicans that gays are “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam,” the Oklahoman reported Friday.

The reaction followed the posting of Kern’s comments on the YouTube Internet site.

Benge, a Republican, said she does not plan to punish Kern for the remarks, which were made in January.

Several organizations reportedly requested that Benge punish Kern or require her to apologize. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is examining a large number of alleged e-mail and phone death threats Kern has received.

“I’m not going to live my life in fear,” Kern said. “The bottom line is I know in my heart I know what I said and it’s being taken out of context.” (Oklahoma City News)

When I think of something being taken out of context, I think of a situation like this:

I say: “I don’t eat a lot of protein because I’m trying to slim down a bit for an upcoming role.”

Reporters say: Lyndsey said, “I don’t eat a lot” because she is trying to lose weight.

That’s something being taken out of context. This … well, this is just a regurgitation of words that were SAID BY THE INDIVIDUAL HERSELF.

How do I know? It was recorded word for word!

Taken out of context my butt. Thankfully we have Ellen to shed some light on the situation a little bit.

Basically, Miss Sally said what she said. There was nothing taken out of context. It was pretty obvious what she was saying when she said it. There was no editing of her comments, no quotes rearranged. She’s backtracking, as most politicians do. See Larry Craig.

Oh Sally, you’ve been caught spewing rhetoric that is unprofessional and inappropriate for an elected official. Grow up or resign. But don’t downplay what you said by saying it was “taken out of context.”

We were born gay. But we weren’t born yesterday.

ellen, sally kern, out of context, gays are terrorist

Today’s Come Out & Play post spotlights Michael Stipe from REM.

I sort of always suspected that Michael Stipe was gay. I guess a lot of people did because when he finally came out there wasn’t much of a buzz around it. It was like, “Yeah, we knew that.” But I had never heard him talk about it.

As most of you know, I try to browse YouTube for video Come Out & Play stories because it’s fun and there are so many videos to choose from. I found this one of Michael Stipe. It’s only a bit part of an interview, but he addresses a certain aspect of coming out in the public eye. I think it’s always interesting when a celebrity comes out because there’s another element thrown into the mix. Coming out in front of the whole world is entirely different than coming out to select family and friends. That’s why it’s nice to be able to hear his or her perspective on the matter, whoever the celebrity may be.

Here’s the video. I wish I could have found more of the interview, but this was all that was posted. I’m sure that he had a lot more to add to the conversation. Enjoy it and, as always, leave a comment if you wish.

Tune in every Friday for the Come Out & Play series, featuring coming out stories of celebrities, every day people, personal reflections, advice, tid bits and everything else concerning the complicated world of coming out!Got an interesting coming out story to tell? Contact me and I will feature it in an upcoming post of Come Out & Play.

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This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Sakia Gunn
May 26, 1987-May 11, 2003

Sakia Gunn was a 15-year old African American lesbian who was murdered in a hate crime in Newark, New Jersey in May 2003. While waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two men. When the girls rejected their advances (by declaring themselves to be lesbians) the men attacked them. Gunn fought back and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her in the chest. Both men immediately fled the scene in their vehicle. After one of Gunn’s friends flagged down a passing driver, she was taken to nearby University Hospital, where she died

Interesting tid bit:
The murder set off several protests in working-class Newark, and more than 2,500 people were reported to have attended Gunn’s funeral. n comparison to the 1998 gay-bias murder of Matthew Shepard, Sakia Gunn’s murder drew limited media coverage. Using the Lexis-Nexis database, Kim Pearson, a professor at The College of New Jersey found that there were 659 stories in major newspapers about Shepard’s murder, compared to only 21 articles about Gunn’s murder in the seven month period after their attacks. Pearson also notes that not only were Shepard’s attackers tried and convicted during this period, but that it took nearly that long for Gunn’s attacker to even be indicted.

Don’t forget about the Lez Keep it Real Contest! It’s still going on people because I haven’t had enough submissions. Submit and you can win!

More Notable Lesbians

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

*Some information provided by Wikipedia.com

notable lesbians, famous lesbians, sakia gunn, matthew shepard, Richard McCullough

Can you ever really be friends with your ex?

OK, so it’s not as of a riveting or compelling question as “why are we here?” or “is there really a heaven?”

But it is as complex.

It’s one of those questions where the answer is different for everyone. It all comes down to beliefs, circumstances and relationship ideology.

I’ve written about this before, from my perspective. But this morning I was hit with a discussion (we’ll call it a discussion, though argument would probably be more accurate) about my girlfriend’s ex. My girlfriend and her ex are pretty good friends. They check in with one another on a regular basis and have what I would call “a solid friendship.” There’s no blurring of the lines, no misplaced feelings. And yet, I still have an issue with it for some reason.

My issue isn’t that I don’t want my girlfriend to be friends with her ex, it’s more about the boundaries. In my experience, I’ve learned that it served my best friend (aka, my ex) and I well when we went our separate ways. Neither of us could really move on and evolve unless we did so. I guess I figured it was like that everyone. But maybe I was wrong.

Maybe I didn’t take into account that everyone has different relationships and interactions, and that my situation was unique to me. Maybe I thought that there was one, definitive answer to the above question when really there are thousands.

Can you ever really be friends with your ex?

For me, the answer is no. It just wouldn’t work. And we are better off with the way things are now.

But what about the rest of you? I’d love to hear what your answers are. Maybe it will help give me some clarity. Or maybe it will simply entertain me. Either way, comments are encouraged.

exes and friends, blurring the boundaries, too much contemplation

1) They don’t know the difference between separation of church and state … or gay people and terrorists for that matter.

2) Even the few you believe in or trust are shady mother crunchers.

AP NEW YORK — As Gov. Eliot Spitzer faced mounting calls to resign amid a prostitution scandal,
a law enforcement official said Tuesday that the governor first came under suspicion because of cash payments from several bank accounts to an account operated by a call-girl ring. Spitzer was the initial target of the investigation and was tracked using court-ordered wiretaps that appear to have recorded him arranging for a prostitute to meet him at a Washington hotel in mid-February, the official said.

I e-mailed my father the above video and said, “This is the kind of rhetoric that scares me, because it isn’t just anybody saying it — it’s a lawmaker.”

He responded with, “What do you expect from a politician?”

I responded with, “Exactly. See Spitzer.”

I won’t repeat what he said after that.

I feel so bad for his wife. She looked as though she had been punched in the stomach in every photo taken during Spitzer’s (put out the fire quickly) press conference. Even when he apologized, I didn’t feel as though he regretted his actions. He didn’t speak off the cuff, he memorized a few statements and regurgitated them on cue.

I honestly believe that if he hadn’t been caught, he’d still be big pimpin’.

Seriously though, I expect more from those we elect into lawmaking positions. I mean, come on. I know that everyone isn’t perfect. We all have vices and skeletons in our closets. But people in these types of positions are held to a higher standard. They have to be in order for them to be able to enact political policies that are fair and just, as well as morally sound. I really wonder if and when you get to a certain status in the political sphere, you are required to check your morals at the door. If that’s the case, then I don’t want to run for office anymore. I’d rather spend my time in the rolling hills of Scotland, writing and enjoying the view from afar.

Anybody want to come with me?

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The last time I wrote about Pokey Chatman was about six months ago. On Sunday, I had the more page views for this blog than I’ve had in a long time.

Where am I going with this you wonder?

Pokey Chatman is the reason for those page views as most of the visits to this blog revolved around search strings like, “Pokey Chatman” and “Pokey Chapman,” and even “Pokey Chatman scandal.”

It’s been almost a full year since the “scandal” broke headlines. But so many of you are still searching for answers. So many of you feel that we are owed some answers. I have to say, I feel the same way.

As of today, Pokey is in Russia coaching the Spartak with the likes of Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird on her roster. She hasn’t spoken out about LSU or what happened since she abruptly stepped down as LSU’s head women’s basketball coach.

I can’t imagine that she is happy in Russia. Living in another country can be a cold, gray and lonely existence if you are there by yourself (and in Russia of all places). But at least she has basketball, right? At least she’s free of the looks and whispers. At least she’s free from speculation.

That is … at least she is for now. But what happens when she returns home?

The fact of the matter is that she can’t hide from this forever. And until she directly addresses the situation, it will be patiently waiting for her to return. I know Pokey just wants to move on. But I don’t think she will be able to move on fully unless she makes a comment or two about what happened. History has proven that living in exile can only work for so long. And it seems that many of you still want some answers.

Don’t we all?

Don’t we all still wonder, ponder and speculate about the circumstances in which one of the most respected, talented and likable coaches in women’s college basketball history suddenly disappeared from the limelight.

Like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing from the sky, the whole thing just seems unfinished. And while many of you are still searching for the answers, or in this case — the missing piece, rest assured that I am as well.

In the mean time, here are all the posts I wrote about Pokey over the past year. Hopefully, they will satisfy your curiosity for the time being. I promise that the next time I hear a peep out of Pokey, I’ll share it with all of you.

Where in the word is …

Pokey’s been spotted …

Swoopes weighs in …

Pokey walks away with …

Pokey says …

Pokey off to Russia …

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This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Laurette Taylor
April 1, 1884 – December 7, 1946

Laurette Taylor was an American stage and silent film actress. Some of her major roles include the title character in Peg o’ My Heart and the indomitable but deluded Southern matriarch Amanda Wingfield in the original Broadway production of the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie, a legendary performance that marked one of the most dramatic comebacks in theater history. Taylor’s oversized personality, mercurial moods, and eccentricities became legendary. Writing after Taylor’s death, Tennessee Williams paid tribute to “the great warmth of her heart,” saying, “There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.”

Interesting tid bit:
Laurette Taylor suffered from severe alcoholism for many years, a condition which sharply limited her appearances from the late 1920s throughout her career. Alcoholism almost certainly contributed to her death from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 62. Some of her most famous lovers included legendary stars Alla Nazimova, Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, and film director Dorothy Arzner. Her great granddaughter is currently an actress in Los Angeles.

Don’t forget about the Lez Keep it Real Contest! It’s still going on people because I haven’t had enough submissions. Submit and you can win!

More Notable Lesbians

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

*Some information provided by Wikipedia.com

notable lesbians, famous lesbians, Laurette Taylor, silent film lesbian actors, the glass menagerie

Well, I have to give it to her. Hillary isn’t going out with out a fight. She won Ohio and Texas, which would have clinched the democratic nomination for Obama had he won.

Meanwhile, McCain sailed through easily. And Huckabee dropped out. No surprise there.

So, here we have it. Hillary and Obama will continue to trade barbs while McCain is free and clear to concentrate on the task at hand. I’m no political analyst here, but I can’t help but wonder if this will hurt the democratic party overall. With no clear frontrunner, people are still torn between one candidate and the other. If they get frustrated enough with Obama and Clinton’s propensity to fight like little school girls, they may just jump the track and hop on the McCain train. Because right now he’s going full speed ahead.

I will say this though, I’ve never been all that into politics. But this year’s Presidential race is unlike any other. I feel as though there is so much at stake. Whomever takes the reigns over from Bush is going to have a lot on his or her plate. Bush dug us so deep into a hole of economic sludge that it’s going to take more than Hillary’s claws, Obama’s charisma or McCain’s military savvy to get us out.

I know I seem hard on Hillary sometimes. I’ll admit it, she’s not my favorite person in the world. But I watched Saturday Night Live on Saturday and saw the opening sketch. It was hilarious. And when the shot cut to her live, I was impressed. She actually made me laugh. Whether she was playing to a certain demographic or not, I think it takes a lot of guts to do that. She won me over just a tid bit.

Before I let you bloggity bloggin’ readers outta here, I have to apologize for my absence yesterday. I was still recovering from being sick. But I’m back and feeling much better. So I can promise you some friendly and witty banter over the next couple of posts.

Until tomorrow …

hillary clinton, barack obama, john mccain, mike huckabee, presidential election 2008, hillary wins texas and ohio

I’m home today catching up on some sleep because I had a rough night sleep last night. I tossed. I turned. I sat awake for a couple hours. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a reason why. It was just one of those restless nights I guess.

Anyways, since I was sleeping most of the day and enjoying the day I didn’t have too much time to scour the Internet for news stories, or pick my brain for a personal reflection or two. So, here’s what you are going to get.

Straight from our friends at the Rainbow Sash Movement:

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