Tuesdays Invitation!

Russell T. Davies was born in Sketty, a suburb of Swansea in Wales April 27^th in 1963. He is a British television writer best known for his original works “Doctor Who”& “Queer as Folk” which was adapted for an English version by Showtime.

Russell T. Davies is an Oxford graduate with a degree in English Lit. After graduation and a short career as a production assistant he took some directing classes and began directing some British children television shows. He even won a children’s BAFTA ( British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for best drama. He continued writing on this show and that building his reputation including writing many gay themed shows such as Queer as Folks and Bob and Rose. In early 2003 he wrote the religious tele-fantasy drama “The Second Coming” for which he won a Royal Television Society Award, This made him one the UK’s foremost drama television writers. In 2003 he brought on to a project which has made him a household (well scifi households) name. He was asked by the BBC to head up the revival as Executive Producer and head writer of Doctor Who. The series which began in 2005 has been a ratings smash and has spawned a number of spinoffs making Russell the Father of the modern British Sci-Fi age.

So Russell T Davies., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your talent are more than welcome!

Congratulations to a dinner guest

Congratulations to Eugene Robinson, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in journalism for commentaries.

" Awarded to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post for his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture."

You can view all info for Mr. Robinson at his Tuesday invite here.

Tuesdays Invitation!

Seth McFarlane was born and raised in Kent, Connecticut October 26, 1973. He is best known as the creator of the television phenomenon Family Guy.

Seth McFarlane is one of the ultimate fan boys. As with most he was a class clown whose comedy was not appreciated by his teachers. He graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and his first job was with Hanna Barbera. At H.B. he worked on many Cartoon Network shows as an animator and writer. His work there led to the beginning of the building of his empire starting with Family Guy, for which he provides several of the voices, and currently working on the spin off, The Cleveland Show. As of a deal he currently made with FOX Seth is the highest paid television writer in the world.

So Seth McFarlane., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your geekiness are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Stevie Wonder was born Stevland Hardaway Morris May 13, 1950 in Saginaw Michigan He is a multi award winning…c’mon he is Stevie Wonder, who does not know what he is best known for.

I am going to diverge from the regular invite formula and talk about what Stevie Wonder means to me. My parents had divorced by the time I was three so I never knew of a time when all three of us lived in the same house together. My early life was full of sporadic weekend visits to my father’s house where I would spend a lot of time perusing his majestic record collection, which was pretty much equal to my mother’s majestic record collection. In both collections there were some standards and one of them was the collected works of Stevie Wonder. Of course there was a LP that this one had that that one didn’t but by that time Stevie had multiple songs on multiple records. In a twist of personal irony one of my favorite Stevie Wonder albums “Journey thru the secret life of plants” neither of them had. So Stevie was one of the few things that for me as a kid united us as a family. Oh and I loved him on Sesame Street!

So Stevie Wonder., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your music are more than welcome! (One of your albums will probably be in rotation in the background anyway so you won’t have to perform!)

Tuesdays Invitation!

MC Lyte was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a rapper and an actress.

She is the Lyte L.Y.T.E, In the 80’s rap and hip hop were just past its infancy stage but it was still a male dominated club but some sistahs where making their presence felt MC Lyte was one of them. With catch beats, a powerful voice and strong lyrics with a message, she could not be ignored. It also didn’t hurt that she, I can honestly say, is one of the most beautiful women in the game. She was the first solo female rapper to ever go gold. She has also made several television appearances as herself and in actual acting roles; one of my favorite appearances was on the television show “The District”. In the current millennium she has continued to garner praise and awards and has donated some of her belongings to the Smithsonian.

So MC Lyte., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your history, and your mad lyrics are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Rachel Maddow was raised in Castro Valley, California. She is a radio show and political television host best known for the shows named after her.

About two years ago I got hooked on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”. The show presented news in a way that was both instructional and entertaining and it became a regular staple in my nightly watching. One night Keith was on vacation and I was introduced to a very plucky and nervous Rachel Maddow. She was a little shaky and she tried a little too hard to be “Keith” but I was endeared to her just the same. As time went on and she made more guest appearances she found her own footing and her own path, I am happy it was televised and I was along for the ride. A few of her endearing qualities is that first all this woman is wicked smart. I mean nobody calls her Dr. Maddow but, they probably should, she is a Rhode Scholar and has earned a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Oxford. What I really love about her is that she is a self proclaimed geek and keeps by her bedside a stack of comic books. Oh yeah, and she is openly gay.

So Rachel Maddow please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your geekiness, and your smarts are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Eve Arden (born Eunice M. Quedens) was born April 30, 1908 in Mill Valley, California. She was an actress best known as a lovable teacher in the old classic “Our Miss Brooks” and more currently as the Principal in the classic musical Grease.

My first introduction to Eve Arden was on the classic “I Love Lucy” when Lucy and company went to Hollywood. Even in the way she delivered her one line cutting Ethyl she stood out. Since then I have seen her in several more films and she has a wit and tongue and cheekiness about her that will endure her to the most harden heart. No matter what role I have seen her in, she has managed to bring the same humor and vulnerability to every role while always playing that role to its height. She was also one of the first women to have her own comedy variety show on television, "The Eve Arden Show". Ms. Arden passed in 1982 of Heart Disease and Cancer. I am sorry that I did not discover her in life but she has left a wonderful bog shoulder legacy behind.

So Eve Arden please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your humor, your cleverness, and your mouth are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

E.J. Flavors (yes that is his real last name) was born and raised in Westbury, NY July 16, 1967. He is one of a growing number of music fans and computer geeks who have combined their resources to become internet DJ’s

E.J. Flavors is many things a preemie, a Virgo in a Cancer’s body, a drummer and a junkie. His drugs of choice are gadgets and music and usually they can interact with each other. Now I like music a lot, and I use to think I knew something about music until I met E.J. I have no idea how he keeps all that music knowledge along with the knowledge of his collection stuffed in his brain. I also admire him for being on the forefront of the E.J. makes geekdom look cool.

So E.J. Flavors., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your geekiness are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Richard Parsons was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York april4, 1948. He is a lawyer and a business man and has currently been named chairman –designate for Citigroup.

I have to admit Robert was brought to my attention at a reading I attended recently. The author mentioned that Robert Parsons was the first African American to have the position of Chairman of Citigroup. I started doing some digging and Robert graduated from Albany Law school and received a Juris Doctor, he was also the CEO & Chairman of Time Warner helping to negotiate the merger with AOL. He is also on the President’s Economic Advisory Team and was considered for the post of Secretary of Commerce in the current administration.

So Robert Parsons please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your knowledge are more than welcome! Oh and yes we know you are a republican…your still invited!

Tuesdays Invitation! Black history

Black History month, began by Carter G Woodson as Negro History Week, began in 1926 and was celebrated the second week of February. That week was chosen because of the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, two people he felt had made a great impact in social condition of Black Americans.

While many people feel that the need for an entire month dedicated to the education of one race of people has far outlived its usefulness, especially in the wake of the Election of President Obama and our new “post racial” society. But I believe that there can never be enough education in general and that education about Blacks in American history continues to be lacking. So Derrick’s Window will celebrate Black history month. I invite you to join in.

Tuesdays Invitation!

Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a civil rights activist best known for working with Martin Luther King Jr. and being instrumental in helping to teach him his non violence methods.

Bayard Rustin was one of those in the background people that worked in the Civil Rights movement and helped the gears turn. However for as much as he worked with the movement he was also the victim of its hypocrisy. After working and traveling and being instrumental in helping to plan the 1963 “March on Washington” NAACP Chairman Roy Wilkins did not allow Rustin to receive any public acknowledgment of his work in planning the historic march because Rustin was gay. Bayard spent the rest of his activist career after the passing of the civil rights and voting acts working in politics and as an advocate for black and gay rights. He passed in August in 1987.

So Bayard Rustin, please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your knowledge of history are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Andy Mangels was born and raised in Montana. He is best known as a writer for comics, science fiction, and cartoon related material. He is also a huge Wonder Woman fan.




I have to say I really admire Andy Mangels. He has been asked for his opinion and made a part of his living on giving the history and his feelings on cartoons that people of my generation grew up with. He has written and directed documentaries or special commentary for DVD releases such as He-Man ,She-Ra, Isis, Ghostbusters, and Star Trek just to name a few. He has also written or co written books for several Star Trek and other pop culture properties. In addition to his writing he is a gay activist giving of himself to many charities and worth causes. He has even run in a couple of International Mr. Leather contest. For any grown kid like me he is a true inspiration.


So Andy Mangels please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your pop culture geekdom knowledge are more than welcome! (I will be expecting you to wear the Wonder Woman shirt!)

Tuesdays Invitation!

Malcolm Jamal Warner was born August 18^th 1970 and raised in Jersey City, NJ. He is best known around the world for playing Theo Huxtable for the entire 8 year run of “The Cosby Show”

While it is true that Malcolm is known for his on screen personas on Cosby, Malcolm and Eddie, and Jeremiah, what a lot of people miss are the other skills that lends to the global community. He is also an accomplished speaker, writer and director but for me what helps him make the invite list is his musical talent. Malcolm has for years honed his craft as a musical artist with his band “Miles Long”. In 2003 he released his first album “The Miles Long Mixtape” and in 2007 his follow up “Love & Other Social Issues”

So Malcolm Jamal Warner please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your diversity, and your jazz are more than welcome! (One of your albums will probably be in rotation in the background anyway so you won’t have to perform!)

Tuesdays Invitation!

Frederick Douglass (February 17, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia," Douglass was one of the most prominent figures of African American history during his time, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, or recent immigrant. He spent his life advocating the brotherhood of all humankind. One of his favorite quotations is: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

It is quite impossible, at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve the problem.

We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, to-day, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered. As I have often said before, we should not measure the negro from the heights which the white race has attained, but from the depths from which he has come. You will not find Burke, Grattan, Curran and O'Connell among the oppressed and famished poor of the famine-stricken districts of Ireland. Such men come of comfortable antecedents and sound parents.

Laying aside all prejudice in favor of or against race, looking at the negro as politically and socially related to the American people generally, and measuring the forces arrayed against him, I do not see how he can survive and flourish in this country as a distinct and separate race, nor do I see how he can be removed from the country either by annihilation or expatriation.

Sometimes I have feared that, in some wild paroxysm of rage, the white race, forgetful of the claims of humanity and the precepts of the Christian religion, will proceed to slaughter the negro in wholesale, as some of that race have attempted to slaughter Chinamen, and as it has been done in detail in some districts of the Southern States. The grounds of this fear, however, have in some measure decreased, since the negro has largely disappeared from the arena of Southern politics, and has betaken himself to industrial pursuits and the acquisition of wealth and education, though even here, if over-prosperous, he is likely to excite a dangerous antagonism; for the white people do not easily tolerate the presence among them of a race more prosperous than themselves. The negro as a poor ignorant creature does not contradict the race pride of the white race. He is more a source of amusement to that race than an object of resentment. Malignant resistance is augmented as he approaches the plane occupied by the white race, and yet I think that that resistance will gradually yield to the pressure of wealth, education, and high character.

My strongest conviction as to the future of the negro therefore is, that he will not be expatriated nor annihilated, nor will he forever remain a separate and distinct race from the people around him, but that he will be absorbed, assimilated, and will only appear finally, as the Phoenicians now appear on the shores of the Shannon, in the features of a blended race. I cannot give at length my reasons for this conclusion, and perhaps the reader may think that the wish is father to the thought, and may in his wrath denounce my conclusion as utterly impossible. To such I would say, tarry a little, and look at the facts. Two hundred years ago there were two distinct and separate streams of human life running through this country. They stood at opposite extremes of ethnological classification: all black on the one side, all white on the other. Now, between these two extremes, an intermediate race has arisen, which is neither white nor black, neither Caucasian nor Ethiopian, and this intermediate race is constantly increasing. I know it is said that marital alliance between these races is unnatural, abhorrent and impossible; but exclamations of this kind only shake the air. They prove nothing against a stubborn fact like that which confronts us daily and which is open to the observation of all. If this blending of the two races were impossible we should not have at least one-fourth of our colored population composed of persons of mixed blood, ranging all the way from a dark-brown color to the point where there is no visible admixture. Besides, it is obvious to common sense that there is no need of the passage of laws, or the adoption of other devices, to prevent what is in itself impossible.

Of course this result will not be reached by any hurried or forced processes. It will not arise out of any theory of the wisdom of such blending of the two races. If it comes at all, it will come without shock or noise or violence of any kind, and only in the fullness of time, and it will be so adjusted to surrounding conditions as hardly to be observed. I would not be understood as advocating intermarriage between the two races. I am not a propagandist, but a prophet. I do not say that what I say should come to pass, but what I think is likely to come to pass, and what is inevitable. While I would not be understood as advocating the desirability of such a result, I would not be understood as deprecating it. Races and varieties of the human family appear and disappear, but humanity remains and will remain forever. The American people will one day be truer to this idea than now, and will say with Scotia's inspired son:

"A man's a man for a' that."

When that day shall come, they will not pervert and sin against the verity of language as they now do by calling a man of mixed blood, a negro; they will tell the truth. It is only prejudice against the negro which calls every one, however nearly connected with the white race, and however remotely connected with the negro race, a negro. The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up, but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary and hated color line. Men of mixed blood in this country apply the name "negro" to themselves, not because it is a correct ethnological description, but to seem especially devoted to the black side of their parentage. Hence in some cases they are more noisily opposed to the conclusion to which I have come, than either the white or the honestly black race. The opposition to amalgamation, of which we hear so much on the part of colored people, is for most part the merest affectation, and, will never form an impassable barrier to the union of the two varieties.

So Frederick Douglass, please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your verbiage, and your intelligence are more than welcome!

Tuesdays Invitation!

Wanda Sykes was born and raised in Portsmouth Virginia. She is comedian, writer and an actress best known for her commentary on life, current events, and the battle of the sexes.

For the record, I have always found Wanda entertaining, even though I have questioned some of her choices in roles. However realizing how limited choices are out here for black actors and comedians I gave her some slack. I also supported her when she was attacked by Dr. Bill Cosby for her brand of comedy. She was a writer on the Chris Rock show and made guest appearances on several shows before landing a co starring role on the CBS show “the New adventures of Old Christine.” Her filmography includes “Monster In Law” ,”Pootie Tang”, “My Super ex Girlfriend”, “Clerks II” and several others. Recently Wanda has made headline news for outing herself at a anti prop 8 rally in Nevada.

So Wanda Sykes., please accept this invitation to the Dinner party of the year. Your opinion, your outrageousness, and your courage are more than welcome!