Black actors in the lead?

On NBC too?????? I was shocked when I read that J.J. Abrams who was the executive producer of such shows as Alias, Felicity and currently Lost has cast two black actors (or biracial for those who want to get technical) in his new series Undercovers.  Soul Food’s Boris Kodjoe and English actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw who starred in Doctor Who have been cast as husband and wife in the new series.

J.J. Abrams has found his next great heroine.

English actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Doctor Who) has nabbed the coveted female lead in Undercovers, the new NBC dramedy about married spies from Abrams and Josh Reims, sources confirm to me exclusively.

Mbatha-Raw will play the role of Samantha Bloom opposite Soul Food’s Boris Kodjoe, who was previously cast as her husband, Steven Bloom.

Gerald McRaney co-stars as the couple’s boss.

NBC confirmed this week that Abrams will direct the Undercovers pilot.

So, who’s Mbatha-Raw? The 27-year-old actress is best known for her recurring role as Tish Jones in Doctor Who. Other credits include UK dramas Spooks and Bonekickers. Most recently, she appeared on Broadway in Hamlet opposite Jude Law.

When I first read about Boris being cast in the show I was happy for him but I thought there was no way in hell network tv would cast a black actress as his wife. When was the last time you’ve seen a black couple or black folks period in the lead on network tv?   Part of an ensemble cast yet only a few lines, yes.  Best friend, yes.  Sidekick, yes.  Shoulder to cry on, yes.  Stuck in the background, yes.   I mean it’s the 21st century and take a real good look at network television. I thought for sure they were gonna cast a non black actress. But when I read that Miss Mbatha-Raw was cast as Boris’s wife I nearly fell out of my chair.  It’s the 21st century and this is a shock to me yet it shouldn’t be.  But we all know how Hollywood is.

I’m not familiar with Miss Mbatha-Raw’s work but you can read more about her in this May 2009 interview at the Guardian.uk.  I’m very familiar with Boris Kodjoe.  I was a huge fan of Boris from his Soul Food days and he also starred in the short lived tv series Second Time Around with his real life wife Nicole Ari Parker who also starred in Soul Food.

Anyway I’m looking forward to Undercovers.

Sade returns

The New York Times has a really nice article about Sade.  Just in time for the release of her new cd Soldier Of Love.  The cd will be released tomorrow.  I pre-ordered through Amazon.com and it’s already on it’s way.  But with Mother Nature acting up around here who knows when UPS will deliver it to me, lol.

A Reluctant Return to the Spotlight
By JON PARELES

LONDON

WHEN a man from a radio station asked Sade what she had been doing in the 10 years between albums, she told him, “I’ve been in a cave, and I just rolled the boulder out of it.”

She chuckled as she recounted the exchange, with her feet tucked up on the couch at her Georgian house in the north London neighborhood of Islington.

A January rain pelted the trees outside the window of the second-story drawing room, atop a graciously curving staircase. Sade, a slender figure in black pants and a black V-neck sweater, made things cozy, feeding kindling to a crackling fire in the hearth. An interview about her new album, “Soldier of Love” (Epic) — only her sixth studio album dating back to her 1984 debut, and due for release on Tuesday — stretched into a four-hour conversation.

“I’ve got absolutely no real perception, properly, of time,” said Sade, 51, who was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father was a Nigerian university teacher of economics; her mother was an English nurse, and raised her in rural England after the couple divorced. Sade’s speaking voice is even lower than the husky alto in her songs, the elegantly subdued ballads that have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.

Sade’s hits, like “Smooth Operator,” “No Ordinary Love” and “The Sweetest Taboo,” were ubiquitous through the 1980s and 1990s, purring out of radios and lending ambience to countless lounges, restaurants and boutiques. Sade emerged in the music-video era (her debut album, “Diamond Life,” appeared a year after Madonna’s did), when many pop stars believe they need maximum media exposure to sustain a career. Instead Sade has hung back, letting the songs alone define her. It’s a decision that may, in the end, make her more cherished. Fans have not forgotten her; preorder made “Soldier of Love” No. 2 on the Amazon sales chart last week.

You can read the entire article here at the New York Times.

Giving a side eye to Mother Nature

Yes I am. The weather folks are talking about more snow tomorrow and Wednesday. The accumulation projections range from 5 to 16 inches depending on where you live in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Like I need more snow to shovel    But the good news is that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. The federal government was closed today but today was my day off anyway. But I do get a snow day tomorrow. And after reading the Washington Post’s Get There column with Dr. Gridlock, if the government was open my train station won’t be open anyway. Metro is running on a limited service schedule. Fifteen stations are closed due to heavy snow drifts on the tracks. There’s also limited bus service as well.

Metro service limited on Tuesday

The effects of the past storm and anticipation of the next will limit Metro transit services on Tuesday.

Metrorail
The train system will open at 5 a.m. with limited service and may close early depending on how cold it becomes and how deep the snow gets. Fifteen stations will remain closed because the snow drifts on the tracks are so heavy.
Six-car or eight-car trains will operate at 30-minute intervals. They will travel at 35 mph.

Here’s the line-up:
Red Line Limited Service: Medical Center to Union Station and Glenmont to Forest Glen
Blue Line Limited Service: Franconia-Springfield to Stadium-Armory
Green Line Full Service: Greenbelt to Branch Avenue
Orange Line Full Service: Vienna to New Carrollton
Yellow Line Full Service: Huntington to Fort Totten

Closed stations: Shady Grove, Rockville, Twinbrook, White Flint, Grosvenor, New York Ave, Rhode Island Avenue, Brookland, Silver Spring,Takoma, Benning Road, Capitol Heights, Addison Road, Morgan Boulevard and Largo Town Center. They all have snow drifts of three to six feet on the tracks.

30 minute intervals at 35 mph? It would take forever to get to work. I wonder if metro is charging rush hour fares for this limited service since morning rush hour starts at 5:00am.

Snowmageddon continues

It started snowing yesterday morning and it hasn’t stopped. It’s coming down pretty heavy here in Upper Marlboro. Some folks are talking 18 inches or more in our area.  Other places within the D.C. area have gotten 20 to 26 inches.

Snowstorm’s intensity has D.C. region hunkering down

By Ashley Halsey III and Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 6, 2010

The full weight of winter brought life in much of the Washington region to a standstill Saturday as a storm predicted to be one of the most powerful on record dumped 12 to 21 inches of snow overnight.

Police reported two fatalities — a father and son hit by a tractor-trailer in Virginia when they stopped to help a stranded motorist — and with the snowfall expected to outpace plows’ ability to clear it, officials pleaded with people to stay off the roads until conditions improve.

People were confined to their homes by the mountains of snow, many in the dark as trees brought down power lines. Montgomery County, and Potomac in particular, seemed to be the hardest hit.

Pepco reported 89,094 customers without electricity, the largest cluster in the Potomac area of Montgomery County. BGE had 30,356 customers without power; 8,000 in Anne Arundel, 2,400 in Howard County and 4,800 in Prince George’s. Dominion had 71,000 customers without power, nearly 58,000 in Northern Virginia.

Transportation agencies struggled to keep up, the job made even more difficult by trees felled by high winds and the weight of the accumulating snow.

Metro, the transportation lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people, opened at 7 a.m. Saturday, but service was available only to underground portions of its system. Trains were running on 30-minute intervals. Metrobus and suburban transit services ceased operations and officials warned residents there would be no public transportation for the day.

Flight operations at Reagan National Airport were suspended for the day and only a smattering of international flights were expected at Dulles, according to Tara Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport reported most flights were canceled.

And though the Postal Service creed may be “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” the agency suspended service across the Washington region on Saturday, surrendering to one of the largest snowfalls in the region’s history.

“No delivery, no retail, no collections due to the storm and for the safety of our customers and employees,” said Postal Service spokeswoman Deborah Yackley.

The decision impacts mail service in all of the District, Maryland and the northern and western parts of Virginia south to Fredericksburg.

I went out on my balcony and took this picture.  It’s so cold outside.

I went to work yesterday and we had a four hour early dismissal. Since I start work very early I got off very early. Picked up something to eat and headed home.  I was so happy to get home.  Monday is my day off and it looks like everyone might be off that day as well.  It’s gonna take a while for folks to dig out of 18 inches or more of snow. According to this New York Times article:

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parent agency of the weather service, called the blizzard “a potentially epic snowstorm” that could rival the 28 inches of snow that a January 1922 storm dropped on the capital.

“The National Weather Service has been very clear that this is a storm to take very seriously,” she said. The halls of the Capitol building were quiet, and the federal government sent many workers home four hours early on Friday. Dr. Lubchenco said she was making contingency plans for all government offices in and near the capital to be closed through Tuesday.

“If it is as much and as heavy as they are forecasting, it may be a number of days before people are actually moving around again,” she said. “This is a serious storm.”

Check out what the Capital Weather Gang has to say about Snowmageddon.

Preparing for Snowmageddon

Yes, Snowmageddon is the name that this upcoming snowstorm is being called by the Capital Weather Gang over at the Washington Post.

Anyway my feet are hurting right now. I spent about 50 minutes standing in line at the grocery store 4 hours ago. All this so I can be well stocked up for the upcoming snowstorm.

This picture was taken at a supermarket in the Washington, D.C. area.  This is how the store I stood in for 50 minutes looked, lol.

The local weather folks are predicting snow accumulations could get as high as 26 inches depending on where you live in the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia area.  Unfortunately according to this map I live in the 16-26 inch category of snow prediction.

Folks around here will be digging out for days if we get up to 26 inches

Snow weary in Maryland

It’s only February, early February at that and I’m already sick of this winter. We’ve had enough snow to last a lifetime around here. It snowed last Saturday. I thought we would only get a dusting or maybe an inch of snow. But it kept snowing and snowing and snowing all day long. So of course I had to clean the snow off my car on Sunday morning and do a little shoveling. At least it was easier to clean the snow off my car and shovel this time than it was with the snow we had the weekend before Christmas 2009.

Well last night we got more snow. Wasn’t as bad as last Saturday but I still had to clean the snow off my car again before going to work. And I still got to work on time. Imagine that, lol

And you know what? We’re supposed to get a major snowstorm Friday night and Saturday. Oh what fun. Snowbound again. I don’t know how much snow they’re talking about when they say major storm. But I’m not looking forward to it. More snow to clean off my car and probably more shoveling. Oh happy day

The Washington Post has an article today on how folks in the D.C. area are getting sick of all this snow.

Many in Washington region are weary of winter and its never-ending snow

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 3, 2010; B01

February — there is so little to recommend it.

Endless gray skies, gray faces, and gray snowdrifts that never seem to melt entirely. The month has barely started and here it comes — unwelcome to much of the wind-chapped and crabby populace — snow on Tuesday and Wednesday and again this weekend.

Will it ever end?

“I’ve had enough snow to last me a lifetime,” said Keisha Mims, 28, a lawyer from Southeast Washington, slogging home during a recent rush hour. She’s dreaming of her vacation in April to an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. Until then, she said, “I’m going to sit in the house and eat myself into a coma.”

Lower temperatures than normal and higher-than-average snowfall — including an unusual December snowstorm that dumped 16 inches on the region — have combined to make this winter more severe than most, weather experts said. They expected three to seven inches for Tuesday and Wednesday’s snowfall and even more this weekend, a bane to local jurisdictions where snow removal funds are rapidly being depleted.

Even though past Februarys felt dreary, the past six winters have been relatively mild, with below-average snowfall totals, said Bryan Jackson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling. In the past three years, the tally at Reagan National Airport has been less than 10 inches a year, far below the average of about 15 inches. This year, the total is 24 inches — and counting.

That’s why this year’s unrelenting snow and cold seems to some like, well, an affront.

I especially love the part about sitting in the house and eating yourself into a coma. I try not to do that when I’m stuck in the house during snowstorms but that refrigerator gets awfully damn tempting when you have cabin fever.

Congrats to Caressa Cameron

Congratulations to Caressa Cameron. Caressa, who was Miss Virginia, was crowned the new Miss America last Saturday in Las Vegas. Caressa graduated from Massaponax High School in Fredericksburg, VA and she’s a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University.

22-year-old goes from Miss Va. to Miss America

By OSKAR GARCIA
Associated Press Writer

A 22-year-old Virginia woman who said she once thought her only talent was singing is the nation’s newest Miss America, emerging from a field of 53 contestants picked for their beauty, compassion and interview savvy.

Caressa Cameron, a broadcast journalism student at Virginia Commonwealth University, now plans a second year away from college as she travels extensively to raise money for charity and carry the 89-year-old pageant’s crown.

“I hope to gain inspiration, I hope to gain momentum so that when this 365 days is over, I can shoot through the moon,” Cameron told The Associated Press.

Cameron, the first black Miss America since Ericka Dunlap in 2005, says she wants to get a master’s degree and eventually become a news anchor.

Cameron, the daughter of a background researcher for the government and a contractor, said she was inspired to compete in pageants at age 14, when Miss Virginia 2003 Nancy Redd visited her school.

“At that time, all I knew that I could do was sing — that’s all I had,” the Fredericksburg, Va., native said.

Cameron said that after that visit, she decided to try out for a school musical, which snowballed into more opportunities in the arts, drama and other areas.

“More doors and more doors continued to open,” she said. “It’s so important that we reach our young people, because there are so many young people that are at the very same crossroads that I was at.”

“We need those people to let them know that just because your circumstances are a certain way, you don’t have to succumb to them,” she said. “You can do something amazing, like become Miss America.”

The last Miss America from Virginia was Nicole Johnson in 1999.

Cameron won the title and a $50,000 scholarship Saturday night after strutting in a skintight yellow dress, belting Beyonce’s “Listen” from “Dreamgirls” and advising parents to limit video games and television when asked about childhood obesity during an onstage interview.

Caressa is the 8th black woman to be crowned Miss America.  After she was crowned I went back and read the blog post I made back in May 2009 titled Are Separate Beauty Pageants for Women of Color Still Relevant? The Miss America pageant has come a long way from their days of the notorious rule number seven.

The pageant’s long history of excluding women of color dates from its beginnings. At some point in the 1930s, it was formalized in the notorious rule number seven of the Miss America rule book. Instituted under the directorship of Lenora Slaughter, rule number seven stated that “contestants must be of good health and of the white race.” As late as 1940, all contestants were required to list, on their formal biological data sheet, how far back they could trace their ancestry. In the pageant’s continual crusade for respectability, ancestral connections to the Revolutionary War or perhaps the Mayflower would have been seen as a plus.

You can read more about Caressa at Fredericksburg.com.

Serena Williams wins the Australian Open

Congrats to Serena Williams.  Serena won the Womens Title in the Australian Open last Saturday.  She defeated Justine Henin 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.

In previous years I always forgot that the Australian Open was shown live early in the morning.  I didn’t forget this time. I recorded it so I could watch the match later that morning.

Williams Outlasts Henin, Taking Australian Open
By JOE DRAPE

MELBOURNE, Australia — As Serena Williams collapsed on the court Saturday, weary and elated after capturing her fifth Australian Open title, those who follow tennis, or perhaps sports of any kind, knew they had witnessed the performance of a great champion. She had turned back a pretty good champion in Justine Henin for a hard-fought 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 victory.

It was Williams’s 12th Grand Slam title, which matches Billie Jean King’s total and is six behind Chris Evert’s. Williams is halfway to the record for major titles held by Margaret Court, who was at Melbourne Park to present the championship trophy.

Williams, 28, fought through pain to earn it — her right thigh and left knee and wrist were wrapped, as they have been for the past two weeks. And her grimaces and hobbled steps as she battled Henin further betrayed her distress.

Williams’s ability to endure is one of her vital intangibles, as is her ardor for the competitive part of the game. She played doubles here nearly every day, and she and her sister Venus won their 11th major title on Friday. These are only part of the reason Williams is the only active women’s player who owns a career Grand Slam. Yes, she has a thundering serve, a ballistic forehand and the ability, as Henin put it, “to hit the right shots at the right time.”

TGIF!!!!

It’s Friday and it’s awfully damn cold outside

We’re suppose to be getting snow tomorrow.  Not alot like they’re getting down South.  I went to the grocery store after work today just in case of snow.  So I will be settling in at home this weekend.

I was listening to my mp3 player on the subway as usual going home from work today.  I decided to play some music by Toto.  They’re a very popular band from the 70’s and 80’s.  Check out one of my favorite Toto songs, Georgy Porgy.   Georgy Porgy is from their debut album/cd Toto.

Here’s another song by Toto.  Africa is from their album/cd Toto IV.

And check out another great song by Toto. Rosanna is also from their album/cd Toto IV.

Ugly Betty comes to an end

I read earlier today that ABC is canceling one of my favorite tv shows, Ugly Betty. The series finale will air in April.  I guess another reality show will take it’s place

“Ugly Betty” has gone out of fashion.

ABC has decided not to continue the show beyond its current fourth season, Variety reports. The cast and crew were informed of the bad news this morning. The series finale will air in April.

With four episodes still left to produce, executive producer Silvio Horta said they will be able to send “Ugly Betty” off in style.

“We’ve mutually come to the difficult decision to make this Ugly Betty’s final season, and are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion,” Horta and ABC Entertainment Group chairman Steve McPherson said in a joint statement. “We are extremely proud of this groundbreaking series, and felt it was important to give the fans a proper farewell.”

I know the show lost some of it’s mojo during season 3 but this season the show seemed to be getting better.   I loved seeing Vanessa Williams and Judith Light going at each other.  I’m gonna miss that