Tweeted this morning by rapper 50cent:
If you a man and your over 25 and you don't eat pu**y just kill your self damn it. The world will be a better place. Lol about 13 hours ago via ÜberTwitter
Gay-oriented Campus Pride reacts to Tyler Clementi suicide: 'A terrible, unfathomable tragedy'
News release from Campus Pride:
Campus Pride cites suicide as sobering example of findings in the "2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People" released last week at a U.S. congressional briefing on Capitol Hill
(New Brunswick, NJ, Thurs, Sept 30, 2010) Campus Pride, the nation’s largest non-profit organization working with LGBT and ally college and university students, offers its condolences and support to the family of Tyler Clementi and the campus community of Rutgers University.
“Every college student should have the right to a safe campus climate -- void of intimidation and harassment -- for campus learning and living,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director and founder of Campus Pride. “The suicide of this gay young man is a terrible, unfathomable tragedy. We send our condolences to the family of Tyler Clementi and to the campus community of Rutgers University. We ask that all campuses across the country remember what happened at Rutgers and act decisively to curb anti-LGBT bias incidents, harassment and acts of violence.”
Through its Q Research Institute for Higher Education, Campus Pride released last week its "2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People." The in-depth research study is the most comprehensive national LGBT higher education study of its kind. Campus Pride surveyed more than 5,000 LGBT students,faculty and staff for the report. Findings demonstrate that this suicide and incidents of harassment are neither rare nor fleeting-- they are REAL.
Among the findings in the report:
- One quarter (23%) of LGBQ staff, faculty, and students reported experiencing harassment (defined as any conduct that has interfered with your ability to work or learn). Almost all identified sexual identity as the basis of the harassment (83%). An even greater percentage of transgender students, faculty, & staff reported experiencing harassment (39%) with 87% identifying their gender identity/expression as the basis for the harassment. The form of the harassment experiences by transgender people was more overt and blatant.
- One-third of LGBQ (33%) and transgender (38%) students, faculty, and staff have seriously considered leaving their institution due to thec hallenging climate.
- More than half of all faculty, students, & staff hide their sexual identity (43%) or gender identity (63%) to avoid intimidation.
- More than a third of all transgender students, faculty, &staff(43%) and 13% of LGBQ respondents feared for their physical safety.This finding was more salient for LGBQ students and for LGBQ and/or Transgender People of Color.
For more information about Campus Pride's "2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People" report, visit www.campuspride.org/research.
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Believe In -- Campus Pride. Campus Pride is the leading national nonprofit organization 501(c)(3) for student leaders and campus organizations working to create safer, more LGBT-friendly colleges and universities. It exists to give "voice and action" in building future LGBT and ally leaders. More info online at www.campuspride.org.
Martini Tuesdays, now monthly, returns Oct. 5 at Mondrian Hotel Sunset Lounge on West Avenue
From Edison Farrow:
"Martini Tuesdays" is a cocktail party that meets at fabulous South Beach venues on Tuesdays at 9pm. Now in its 9th year, Martini Tuesdays is a great night for networking and meeting new friends. There is never a cover charge.
Martini of the Week:
Red Passion Martini
Made with Pomegranate Liqueur, Cognac, Passion Fruit, Lemon Juice, and Simple Syrup.Mondrian Hotel
Sunset Lounge
1100 West Avenue
305.672.2662
Miami Beach
www.mondrian-miami.comPlease note: Martini Tuesdays will now be just once a month until further notice.
Actor Tony Curtis, 85, dies at Las Vegas-area home
By KEN RITTER, Associated Press
LAS VEGAS -- Tony Curtis, the Bronx tailor's son who became a 1950s movie heartthrob and then a respected actor with such films as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like It Hot," has died. He was 85.
The actor died about 9:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas area home of a cardiac arrest, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said Thursday.
After a series of frivolous movies that exploited his handsome physique and appealing personality, Curtis moved to more substantial roles, starting in 1957 in the harrowing show business tale "Sweet Smell of Success."
In 1958, "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Academy Award nomination as best actor for his portrayal of a white racist escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he donned women's clothing and sparred with Marilyn Monroe in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."
His first wife was actress Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame; actress Jamie Leigh Curtis is their daughter.
In later years, he returned to film and television as a character actor after battling drug and alcohol abuse. His brash optimism returned, and he allowed his once-shiny black hair to turn silver.
"I'm not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman, sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane," he said at 60. "I've got a helluva lot of living to do."
He also became a painter whose canvasses sold for as much as $20,000.
"He was a fine actor ... I shall miss him," said British actor Roger Moore, who starred alongside Curtis in TV's "The Persuaders."
"He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humour and wonderful ad libs," Moore told Sky News. "We had the best of times."
Curtis perfected his craft in forgettable films such as "Francis," "I Was a Shoplifter," "No Room for the Groom" and "Son of Ali Baba."
He first attracted critical notice as Sidney Falco, the press agent seeking favor with a sadistic columnist, played by Burt Lancaster, in the 1957 classic "Sweet Smell of Success."
In her book "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," Pauline Kael wrote that in the film, "Curtis grew up into an actor and gave the best performance of his career."
Other prestigious films followed: Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," "Captain Newman, M.D.," "The Vikings," "Kings Go Forth," "Operation Petticoat" and "Some Like It Hot." He also found time to do a voice acting gig as his prehistoric lookalike, Stony Curtis, in an episode of "The Flintstones."
"The Defiant Ones" remained his only Oscar-nominated role.
"I think it has nothing to do with good performances or bad performances," he told The Washington Post in 2002. "After the number of movies I made where I thought there should be some acknowledgment, there was nothing from the Academy."
"My happiness and privilege is that my audience around the world is supportive of me, so I don't need the Academy."
In 2000, an American Film Institute survey of the funniest films in history ranked "Some Like It Hot" at No. 1. Curtis - famously imitating Cary Grant's accent - and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians who dress up as women to escape retribution after witnessing a gangland massacre.
Monroe was their co-star, and he and Lemmon were repeatedly kept waiting as Monroe lingered in her dressing room out of fear and insecurity. Curtis fumed over her unprofessionalism. When someone remarked that it must be thrilling to kiss Monroe in the film's love scenes, the actor snapped, "It's like kissing Hitler." In later years, his opinion of Monroe softened, and in interviews he praised her unique talent.
In 2002, Curtis toured in "Some Like It Hot" - a revised and retitled version of the 1972 Broadway musical "Sugar," which was based on the film. In the touring show, the actor graduated to the role of Osgood Fielding III, the part played in the movie by Joe E. Brown.
After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol addiction.
"From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that people weren't picking on me."
He recovered in the early '80s after a 30-day treatment at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.
"Mine was a textbook case," he said in a 1985 interview. "My life had become unmanageable because of booze and dope. Work became a strain and a struggle. Because I didn't want to face the challenge, I simply made myself unavailable."
One role during that era of struggle did bring him an Emmy nomination: his portrayal of David O. Selznick in the TV movie "The Scarlett O'Hara War," in 1980.
His health remained vigorous, though he did get heart bypass surgery in 1994.
Curtis took a fatherly pride in daughter Jamie Leigh's success. They were estranged for a long period, then reconciled. "I understand him better now," she said, "perhaps not as a father but as a man."
He also had five other children. Daughters Kelly, also with Leigh, and Allegra, with second wife Christine Kaufmann, also became actresses. His other wives were Leslie Allen, Lisa Deutsch and Jill VandenBerg, whom he married in 1998.
He had married Janet Leigh in 1951, when they were both rising young stars; they divorced in 1963.
"Tony and I had a wonderful time together; it was an exciting, glamorous period in Hollywood," Leigh, who died in 2004, once said. "A lot of great things happened, most of all, two beautiful children."
Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925, the son of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after World War I. His father, Manny Schwartz, had yearned to be an actor, but work was hard to find with his heavy accent. He settled for tailoring jobs, moving the family repeatedly as he sought work.
"I was always the new kid on the block, so I got beat up by the other kids," Curtis recalled in 1959. "I had to figure a way to avoid getting my nose broken. So I became the crazy new kid on the block."
His sidewalk histrionics helped avoid beatings and led to acting in plays at a settlement house. He also grew to love movies. "My whole culture as a boy was movies," he said. "For 11 cents, you could sit in the front row of a theater for 10 hours, which I did constantly."
After serving in the Pacific during World War II and being wounded at Guam, he returned to New York and studied acting under the G.I. Bill. He appeared in summer stock theater and on the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills. Then an agent lined up an audition with a Universal-International talent scout. In 1948, at 23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio, starting at $100 a week.
Bernie Schwartz sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, so the studio gave him a new name: Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite novel, "Anthony Adverse," and the Anglicized name of a favorite uncle. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis.
The studio helped smooth the rough edges off the ambitious young actor. The last to go was his street-tinged Bronx accent. His diction became a Hollywood joke, as when he uttered to Piper Laurie in a medieval potboiler "The Prince Who Was a Thief": "Yonder lies the castle of my fodder."
Curtis pursued another career as an artist, creating Matisse-like still lifes with astonishing speed. "I'm a recovering alcoholic," he said in 1990 as he concluded a painting in 40 minutes in the garden of the Bel-Air Hotel. "Painting has given me such a great pleasure in life, helped me to recover."
He also turned to writing, producing a 1977 novel, "Kid Cody and Julie Sparrow." In 1993, he wrote "Tony Curtis: The Autobiography."
Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
AP file photos
NJ student secretly taped having sex with man kills himself; left note on Facebook: 'Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.'
By ERIN VANDERBERG and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- A college student jumped to his death off a bridge a day after authorities say two classmates surreptitiously recorded him having sex with a man in his dorm room and broadcast it over the Internet.
Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge last week, said his family's attorney, Paul Mainardi. Police recovered a man's body Wednesday afternoon in the Hudson River just north of the bridge, and authorities were trying to determine if it was Clementi's.
ABC News and The Star-Ledger of Newark reported that Clementi left on his Facebook page on Sept. 22 a note that read: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry." On Wednesday, his Facebook page was accessible only to friends.
Two Rutgers freshmen have been charged with illegally taping the 18-year-old Clementi having sex and broadcasting the images via an Internet chat program.
Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said in a statement Wednesday that his group considers Clementi's death a hate crime.
"We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and kind," Goldstein said. "And we are sickened that anyone in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others' lives as a sport."
It wasn't immediately clear what Clementi's sexual orientation was, and a call asking the family's lawyer about it was not immediately returned Wednesday.
On the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, there was dismay over Clementi's death and the circumstances that led to it.
"We are profoundly saddened by this report, and our hearts and prayers are with the parents, family, and friends of this young man, who had started at Rutgers this semester as a first-year student on the New Brunswick campus," university president Richard McCormick wrote in a letter to the campus. "If the charges are true, these actions gravely violate the university's standards of decency and humanity."
News of Clementi's death came the same day that Rutgers, the flagship university in a state known for ruthless mob bosses, petulant reality show stars and cutthroat drivers, launched a two-year project to get people on campus to behave better.
Under the aegis of that project, students, faculty and other employees have been encouraged to attend a series of lectures, presentations and discussions on civility, exploring such topics as how cell phones, iPods and other gadgets affect civility, and sportsmanship for athletes and fans.
One of the defendants, Dharun Ravi, was Clementi's roommate, Mainardi told The Star-Ledger. The other defendant is Molly Wei. Ravi and Wei could face up to five years in prison if convicted.
A lawyer for Ravi, of Plainsboro, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. It was unclear whether Wei, of Princeton, had retained a lawyer.
The Middlesex County prosecutor's office charged the pair, both 18, with two counts apiece of invasion of privacy, claiming they used the webcam to view and transmit a live image of Clementi on Sept. 19. Ravi was also charged with two more counts of invasion of privacy alleging he tried to transmit another encounter of Clementi on Sept. 21.
Collecting or viewing sexual images without consent is a fourth-degree crime. Transmitting them is a third-degree crime with a maximum prison term of five years.
A Twitter account belonging to Ravi was recently deleted, but in a cached version retained through Google he sent a message on Sept. 19: "Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."
Two days later, he wrote on Twitter: "Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again."
Clementi's driver's license and Rutgers ID were found in a wallet left on the bridge on Sept. 22 after two witnesses saw someone jump from it, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Clementi's body hadn't been positively identified.
Mainardi issued a statement Wednesday confirming Clementi's suicide.
"Tyler was a fine young man, and a distinguished musician," Mainardi said. "The family is heartbroken beyond words."
Ed Schmiedecke, the recently retired music director at Ridgewood High School, where Clementi graduated earlier this year, said Clementi was a violinist whose life revolved around music.
"He was a terrific musician, and a very promising, hardworking young man."
On campus and off, Clementi's story gained sympathy after word of his death spread.
A vigil was planned for Wednesday night. And a Facebook group, In Honor of Tyler Clementi, was quickly set up and by Wednesday had drawn nearly 3,000 people, many of whom posted remembrances of Clementi or expressions of shock over the death of the young man pictured playing his violin.
"You will never be forgotten Tyler," Samantha Hoffer commented. "I am so glad to have known such an amazing and talented person in my life. Rest in peace."
Georges Richa, a Rutgers freshman from New Brunswick, said he got to know Clementi a bit during dorm room conversations that last until 3 a.m. and are a rite of the earliest days of college.
"I wish I could have been more of an ally," he said. "I've been arguing about this for days" with others on the hall.
Gay rights groups say Clementi's death is the latest example of a long-standing problem: young people who kill themselves because they're bullied about being gay - regardless of whether they are.
Last week, Dan Savage, a columnist at the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger, launched the It Gets Better Project, a YouTube channel where gay, lesbian and bisexual adults share the turmoil they experienced when they were younger - and show how their lives have gotten better.
In response to Clementi's death and others, the group Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays said it would issue a "call to action" on the topic.
New York Police Department harbor officers recovered the body of a white man, clad only in pants, wearing a watch and without identification after a parks department employee spotted a body floating in the river, police said. The body was taken to the city medical examiner's office; authorities hoped to use the watch as identification.
Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield. Associated Press writers Beth DeFalco in Ridgewood, N.J., Colleen Long in New York and David Porter in Newark contributed to this report.
Study finds more gay characters on network TV
By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK -- The number of gay and bisexual characters on scripted broadcast network TV has risen slightly this season to 23 out of a total of nearly 600 roles, according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
The 15th annual "Where We Are on TV" report released Wednesday found that 3.9 percent of actors appearing regularly on prime-time network drama and comedy series in the 2010-11 season will portray gay, lesbian or bisexual characters.
That's up from 3 percent in the 2009-10 season. The increase in 2008-09 was 2.6 percent.
Only six of the 23 gay and lesbian characters this season are nonwhite, GLAAD found.
Using information provided by ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW, the group reviewed 84 scripted series announced to air this season.
The only original programming announced by the gay-focused cable networks here! and Logo is unscripted, alternative programming, so they were not part of this year's character count, GLAAD said.
While the number of broadcast drama series featuring regular or recurring gay characters is unchanged from last year, the number of comedy series has increased from 8 to 11, including new comedies "Running Wilde" (Fox), "Hellcats" (CW), "(Bleep) My Dad Says" (CBS), and midseason show "Happy Endings" (ABC).
ABC led the networks in gay representation, with 7.2 percent or 11 regular characters out of a total of 152, followed by Fox with five out of 100 (5 percent).
On mainstream cable channels, the number of regular characters rebounded to 35 after a two-year decline.
HBO features the greatest number of gay and bisexual characters, with 10 regular and recurring characters.
The HBO drama "True Blood" is the most inclusive series on television, featuring six characters, the group found.
The overall increase in gay characters "not only reflects the shift in American culture towards greater awareness and understanding of our community, but also a new industry standard that a growing number of creators and networks are adopting," GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said in a statement.
He pointed to such programs as ABC's "Modern Family" and Fox's "Glee" as indicators that "mainstream audiences embrace gay characters and want to see well-crafted stories about our lives."
Caption: Denis O'Hare, left, and Theo Alexander are shown in a scene from "True Blood." HBO, John P. Johnson / AP Photo
