Big Think: George Takei

From the clip recap:

Actor, activist, prolific meme-generator, and cultural icon George Takei graces Big Think with his presence today in this powerful 5-minute clip. Takei explores Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's ambitious and progressive vision for the future: "Roddenberry felt that the Enterprise was a metaphor for starship earth and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity." We also learn that Takei's character, Sulu, represented a united Asia free of the many strifes Roddenberry witnessed during the 20th century. Takei tells us how the name "Sulu" came about; it's an incredibly inspirational story. Finally, Takei explains the now-glaring omission of gay and lesbian characters from Roddenberry's progressive Enterprise. In short, it was the 1960's and the biracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk nearly sank the show. Roddenberry knew there were limits to what the public would tolerate and he couldn't risk losing his platform for social commentary by testing them. Thankfully, as Takei notes, times have changed quite a bit since then in so many ways. And Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry are partly responsible.

PETITION: Boycott Stonewall Movie

Variety reports:

"A historically accurate film about the Stonewall Riots would center the stories of queer and gender-noncomforming people of color like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson," a MoveOn petition reads. "Not relegate them to background characters in the service of a white cis-male fictional protagonist." The trailer for Roland Emmerich's film about the 1969 Stonewall riots just debuted online on Tuesday, but it's already sparked controversy among the LGBT community for its portrayal of the start of the gay-rights movement. The preview presents a white man as the centerpiece of the movie, showing a character named Danny (Jeremy Irvine) arriving in New York City, where he meets the gay community on Christopher Street and is radicalized by his experiences with them at the Stonewall Inn. A MoveOn petition aimed at director Roland Emmerich, himself openly gay, urges those who sign it to boycott the movie "for erasing the contributions of of-color queer and gender non-comforming activists."

So far the petition has over 14,000 signatures.

UPDATE: Director Roland Emmerich has responded on Facebook:

When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck that the circumstances that lead to LGBT youth homelessness today are pretty much the same as they were 45 years ago. The courageous actions of everyone who fought against injustice in 1969 inspired me to tell a compelling, fictionalized drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth, specifically a young midwestern gay man who is kicked out of his home for his sexuality and comes to New York, befriending the people who are actively involved in the events leading up to the riots and the riots themselves. I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film - which is truly a labor of love for me - finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.

Matt Baume On Stonewall

Percy Sledge Dies At Age 74

Via the Associated Press:

Percy Sledge, who soared from part-time singer and hospital orderly to lasting fame with his aching, forlorn performance on the classic "When a Man Loves a Woman," died Tuesday in Louisiana. He was 74. Dr. William "Beau" Clark, coroner for East Baton Rouge Parish, confirmed to The Associated Press that Sledge died early Tuesday morning, about an hour after midnight, of natural causes in hospice care. A No. 1 hit in 1966, "When a Man Loves a Woman" was Sledge's debut single, an almost unbearably heartfelt ballad with a resonance he never approached again. Few singers could have. Its mood set by a mournful organ and dirge-like tempo, "When a Man Loves a Woman" was for many the definitive soul ballad, a testament of blinding, all-consuming love haunted by fear and graced by overwhelming emotion.

Sledge was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2005 alongside U2, Pretenders, Buddy Guy, and The O'Jays.

TRAILER: Love & Mercy

Stereogum recaps:

Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson is one of the most legendary figures in music, a guy who wrote and produced dozens of classic songs and helped shape the album as music’s preeminent artistic statement. He’s also a bit of an oddball, which makes him an ideal subject for a Hollywood biopic. Just such a movie is coming to theaters this June. Love & Mercy stars Paul Dano and John Cusack as Wilson; Dano plays the younger Wilson, while Cusack depicts the musician’s older years. Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti have prominent roles, too.

Actress Donna Douglas Dies At 81

Donna Douglas, known to you as Elly May Clampett, has died at the age of 81.

Born in September 1933, Douglas was married at age 16, had a child and later divorced, all before she moved to New York and earned a role in an acclaimed episode of the “Twilight Zone” in 1959, according to the Internet Movie Database. After several more television roles, she nabbed the role of Elly May Clampett, the only daughter of Jed Clampett, in “The Beverly Hillbillies” when it first appeared on TV in 1962. She appeared in all 274 episodes of the show, which ended in 1971. Douglas revisited her character for the show’s reunion TV movie in 1981. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in the 1966 flick “Frankie and Johnny.”

Four years ago Douglas won a lawsuit against Mattel for issuing a Barbie in her Beverly Hillbillies likeness without her permission.

RELATED: Max Baer, who played Jethro Bodine, is the sole surviving cast member of The Beverly Hillbillies. Buddy "Jed Clampett" Ebsen died in 2005 at the age 95. Irene "Granny" Ryan died of a stroke at the age of 70 in 1973 shortly after receiving a Tony nomination for her performance in the Bob Fosse-directed Pippin. Nancy "Miss Hathaway" Kulp died of cancer at the age of 69 in 1991, two years after coming out as a lesbian. Kulp was a 1984 Democratic nominee for the US House, but lost after Ebsen endorsed her GOP opponent, saying that Kulp was "too liberal." Raymond "Milburn Drysdale" Bailey died of a heart attack in 1980 at the age of 75 after suffering symptoms of Alzheimer's since the final seasons of the show.

Babs: I'm Not A Diva

She said as she sat in the host's chair in order to show her most flattering side.

Here's A Gay Trivia Quiz From 1966

Boy Culture has the rest of the quiz and its answers, many of which are jokes. Of the first 20 questions, I only got three right.

Eydie Gormé Dies At Age 84

Superstar of the 60s Eydie Gormé, also well-known for her career-long onstage partnership with her husband Steve Lawrence, has died at the age of 84.

"Legendary singer and performer Eydie Gorme passed away peacefully today at Sunrise Hospital following a brief illness," [spokesman Howard] Bragman said in a statement. "She was surrounded by her husband, son and other loved ones at the time of her death." In his own statement, Steve Lawrence said: "Eydie has been my partner on stage and in life for more than 55 years. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing." He added: "While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time."  A favorite on The Ed Sullivan Show, in showrooms in the Catskills and in Las Vegas – where they married on Dec. 29, 1957, and later took up permanent residence – as well as on stages, including Carnegie Hall, Steve and Eydie, as they were known, sang popular hits of the day, including Broadway standards, and exchanged pointed personal banter – all of which their audiences ate up.

Eydie and Vicki Carr were my dad's favorite singers.  

RELATED: There used to be a great gay-owned record store in Atlanta called E.D.'s Gourmet Records. I stopped in whenever I was in town and the name still makes me smile.

Ray Manzarek Dies At 74

Ray Manzarek, founding member of the iconic band The Doors, has died at the age of 74.

Manzarek founded The Doors after meeting then-poet Jim Morrison in California. The band went on to become one of the most successful rock 'n' roll acts to emerge from the 1960s and continues to resonate with fans decades after Morrison's death brought the band to an end. The Doors sold more than 100 million albums worldwide on hits like "Hello, I Love You," "Riders on the Storm," "Light My Fire," and "Break On Through to the Other Side." Manzarek, a Chicago native, continued to remain active in music after Morrison's 1971 death. He briefly tried to hold the band together by serving as vocalist, but eventually the group fell apart. He played in other bands over the years, produced other acts, became an author and worked on films.

Richie Havens Dead At 72

Richie Havens has died at the age 72.  

"The Roots Agency represented Richie Havens for many years and regrets to post of his passing on April 22, 2013," the agency posted on its website. "His fiery, poignant, soulful singing style has remained unique and ageless since his historic appearance at Woodstock in 1969," the agency continued. "For four decades, Havens used his music to convey passionate messages of brotherhood and personal freedom."

Havens was the first performer at Woodstock, where his set famously stretched into three hours because he'd been told to hold the stage due to other artists having difficulty in reaching the site. After Havens finally ran out of material yet continued to be called back for encores, he improvised a version of the slavery era spiritual which became his career-long trademark. Here's that performance.

Fontella Bass Dies At 72

Motown-era pop star Fontella Bass died of heart disease on Wednesday at the age of 72.

After some early recordings with Little Milton’s Bobbin label in St. Louis, she joined Chess and released her first records on its Checker subsidiary in early 1965. The first two, “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” and “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” duets with Bobby McClure, had modest success on the rhythm-and-blues charts. But her career was made by “Rescue Me,” released later that year. Driven by a bubbly bass line, it featured Ms. Bass’s high-spirited voice in wholesomely amorous lyrics like “Come on and take my hand/Come on, baby, and be my man,” as well as some call-and-response moans that Ms. Bass later said resulted from a studio accident. “When we were recording that, I forgot some of the words,” she told The New York Times in 1989. “Back then, you didn’t stop while the tape was running, and I remembered from the church what to do if you forget the words. I sang, ‘Ummm, ummm, ummm,’ and it worked out just fine.”

In 1990 Bass successfully sued for publishing royalties after she heard Rescue Me being used in an American Express commercial.

TRIVIA: The background vocals on Rescue Me were sung by Minnie Riperton.