WIMBLEDON 2006: Ladies' Quarterfinal Predictions

Amélie Mauresmo FRA (1) vs. Venus Williams USA (11). Venus and Amélie were supposed to meet in the quarterfinals at the French Open last month. Neither of them made it, they both lost to semifinalist Nicole Vaidisova CZE (10). It's very possible, that this quarterfinal might not happen. Both favorites have to get past excellent Russian players in the fourth round. Venus has to play Anastasia Myskina RUS (9) and Amélie has Dinara Safina RUS (14). Venus was two points away from losing to doubles phenom Lisa Raymond on Wednesday. Venus raised her game and won 9 games in a row, and then closed out the match. Grass is actually the French #1's best surface and until this year's Australian Open was the site of her best Grand Slam success. There's something about the grass that brings out the best in Venus' game and I figure she will save at least one match point but win. This match shoudl be the best of the quarterfinals. PREDICTION: Williams in 3 sets.

Maria Sharapova RUS (4) vs. Elena Dementieva RUS (7) . When the Russians play each other there is always extra tension. Sharapova's game is well-suited to the grass. Although Dementieva's serve has improved her two great strengths: mental toughness/fighting spirit and powerful ground strokes are matched, if not surpassed by Sharapova. PREDICTION: Sharapova in 3 sets.

Martina Hingis SUI (12) Ai Sugiyama JPN (18) vs. Justine Henin-Hardenne BEL (3). The Swiss miss finally recieved her comeuppance from the Japanese veteran after being up 2 breaks in the third set. The odious Justine is the defending champion and will easily get into the semi-final over Ai Sugiyama or the French qualifier Severine Bremond who took out Patty Schnyder SUI (8) and Gisela Dulko ARG (31). I doubt she can make it 3 seeds in a row. In the fourth round Henin-Hardenne will need to get past a resurgent Daniela Hantuchova SVK (15). PREDICTION: Henin-Hardenne in 2 sets.

Kim Clijsters BEL (2) vs. Nicole Vaidisova CZE (10) . Vaidisova just made her breakthrough in her French Open quarterfinal win over Venus last month outhitting the current Wimbledon champion in 3 sets. Can she beat the current US Open champion in her second Grand slam quarterfinal? That would be quite surprising. PREDICTION: Clijsters in 3 sets.

AZ: Cast a Vote, Win A Million Dollars?

This is a very good idea to boost voter participation: Arizona voters will vote in November on a voter initiative to award one million dollars to a single voter in every statewide election drawn at random. If enacted, it would be retroactive and apply to the November 2006 election.

Interestingly, Arizona already has reasonably high voter turnout (by US standards): 60 percent of eligible voters are registered, and 77 percent of them voted in the 2004 Presidential election.

It's sort of disturbing to me that the voter initiative preys upon lack of mathematical sophistication (and pure greed) to improve voter participation, but in balance I do think its a good idea.

Where to begin?

i'm back home in Los Angeles...i'm still catching up with e-mail and stuff. Cuba is one of the most remote, most beautiful places on earth. I'll have a sequence of posts on that later...

In Cuba and Bahamas

Somehow my post that I was going to be in Cuba for the past two weeks was eaten by blogger. Right now I am in Nassau, but will be back in Los Angeles and resume blogging on Thursday June 29th.

In Cuba and Bahamas

Somehow my post that I was going to be in Cuba for the past two weeks was eaten by blogger. Right now I am in Nassau, but will be back in Los Angeles and resume blogging on Thursday June 29th.

WA: LGBT Rights Climate Improves

While I was out of town last week there were some exciting LGBT rights developments in Washington state. The heterosexist supremacists failed to qualify a ballot measure which would have repealed Washington's LGBT civil rights law which was enacted earlier this year, after nearly 30 years. Thus the law went into effect on Wednesday June 7. Yay!

The failure to get enough signatures to even qualify an anti-gay rights measure has heartened civil rights activists in the state because they have been anxiously waiting for a final ruling on a marriage equality case since March 2005 from the Washington State Supreme Court. This should be a clear signal to the Court that the climate for LGBT equality is improving in the state and that a ruling declaring that marriage for same-sex couples can not be prohibited by the state without offending the state (and federal) constitution would not be out of step with the public policy of the polity.

Back From San Francisco

I'm back from San Francisco but I leave Monday for 2 weeks in Cuba and the Bahamas. I really have no idea how much blogging I will be able to do while I'm out of the country.

Black Gay Mayor Misses Historic Win By 253 Votes

Openly gay, black mayor of Palm Springs Ron Oden lost the Democratic nomination for the 80th Assembly District to Steve Clute by 253 votes (9,133 to 9, 386). He was trying to become the first openly gay Black official elected to a state office. He would have still had to face Republican Bonnie Garcia if he had won the nomination. Oden did not have to give up his mayoral seat to run, he does not face re-election for that seat until November 2007.

Happy E-Day!

Today is election day in California. Good luck to, Elena, Adam, Jackie, Debra and Phil!

I'll be working with Vote for Equality talking to voters in Altadena, CA (a predominantly middle-class African American suburb of Pasadena and Los Angeles) about their views on same sex marriage.

FRENCH OPEN: Updated Quarterfinals Predictions

Amélie Mauresmo FRA (1) Nicole Vaidisova CZE (16) vs. Venus Williams USA (11). The 17-year old Czech sensation eleiminated the World's #1 ranked tennis player in 3-sets when Mauresmo got tight in front of her adoring Parisian fans after winning the first set in a tiebreaker, losing the final two sets 6-1,6-2. Both players are over 6 feet tall, and both like to play with power and pace. It's hard to believe that the young Vaidisova can do this better than the 5-time Grand Slam champion. PREDICTION: Williams in 3 sets.

Maria Sharapova RUS (4) Dinara Safina RUS (14) vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova RUS (8) . The younger sister of Marat Safin is finally coming into her own. She lost in the final of the Tier 1 Italian Open to Martina Hingis last week. Amazingly, Safina was down two breaks 1-5 in the 3rd set against Sharapova and won the match (Sharapova never had a match point). Safina never stopped going for her shots regardless of what the score was. In this second all-Russian match I think that Kuznetsova will pull out the win, just barely.
PREDICTION: Kuznetsova in 3 sets.

Anna-Marie Groenefeld GER (13) vs. Justine Henin-Hardenne BEL (5). The odious Justine is the defending champion and will easily get into the semi-final over either Groenefeld or Gisela Dulko. PREDICTION: Henin-Hardenne in 2 sets.

Kim Clijsters BEL (2) vs. Martina Hingis SUI (12) . This is a reprise of the Australian Open quarterfinal which was won by Clijsters, who at one point was simply overpowering "Chucky." It's not clear if Hingis has managed to come up with a solution to the "big babe tennis" dilemma since then, but she did show by winning the Italian Open two weeks ago (defeating Venus Williams in three sets after losing the first seven games in a row) PREDICTION: This is really a toss-up, but I'll say Clijsters in 3 sets.

25th Anniversary of AIDS

Rod 2.0 and Keith Boykin have joined Mad Professah in acknowledging today's sombre anniversary: 25 years ago, on June 5, 1981 there were published reports of a strange public health incident which we eventually came to know as AIDS. The Los Angeles Times is in the midst of publishing a very interesting series of articles on AIDS this week. Another useful resource is the AIDS Education Global Information System, aegis.com.

COLORADO: Governor Vetoes Gay Rights Bill

For the second consecutive year, Republican Governor Bill Owens has vetoed a gay rights bill which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the state's non-discrimination employment statutes. Last year when he vetoed it he said that the bill might force employers to give partnership benefits to same-sex couples (like that would be a bad thing!) This year he came up with an equally nonsensical excuse for vetoing this important LGBT civil rights bill:

As stated in my veto letter of nearly identical legislation last year, I believe that S.B. 081, though intended to protect employees from discrimination in the workplace, is unnecessary and may in fact result in harmful unintended consequences.

Colorado law already protects individuals from being fired because of their sexual orientation. In 1990, the General Assembly passed the "off duty conduct statute," C.R.S. § 24-34-402.5. This law protects all Colorado employees from being fired as a result of lawful conduct away from the workplace during non-working hours. The Colorado courts have ruled that homosexual employees who claim to have been fired because of their off duty sexual conduct already have the right to sue their employers for money damages under this statute.

S.B. 081 has the potential to be costly for Colorado businesses due to an expansion of their tort liability. Employment lawsuits are time consuming and expensive. The average employment lawsuit takes years to resolve. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and court costs to defend employment discrimintation(sic!) lawsuits, even those without merit.

Good grief! The Colorado Governor's press office can't even SPELL discrimination correctly! No wonder they think it doesn't exist. The openly lesbian state senator and main sponsor of SB 81, Jennifer Veiga (D-Denver), was not surprised by the veto. She was quoted by the Denver Post as being "really irritated" by the governor's action.

The veto of the LGBT civil rights bill occurs in the context of a huge public debate about homosexuality and public policy in Colorado. In the Fall, Colorado voters will be asked to decide a number of gay-related ballot propositions: whether marriage should be reserved to heterosexual couples, to enact sweeping comprehensive domestic partnership legislation or to deny and state-related benefits to same-sex couples.

Mad Professah Endorsements in June 6 Primary

Governor: Phil Angelides

Lieutenant Governor: Jackie Speier

Secretary of State: Debra Bowen

Attorney General: Jerry Brown

Controller: John Chiang

Treasurer: Bill Lockyer

Insurance Commissioner: NO ENDORSEMENT

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Jack O'Connell

United States Senator: NO ENDORSEMENT

United States House (District #31): Xavier Becerra

State Board of Equalization (District #4): Judy Chu

State Senate (District #20): Cindy Montanez

State Senate (District #24): Gloria Romero

State Senate (District #232): Gloria Negrete-McLeod

State Assembly (District #44): Adam Murray

State Assembly (District #45): Elena Popp

State Assembly (District #46): Fabian Nunez

State Assembly (District #47): Karen Bass

State Assembly (District #49): Mike Eng

State Assembly (District #80): Ron Oden

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (District #1): Gloria Molina

Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education: Monica Garcia

Proposition 81: Yes

Proposition 82: Yes

FRENCH OPEN: Quarterfinal Predictions

Amélie Mauresmo FRA (1) vs. Venus Williams USA (11). Venus has looked shaky early but has yet to drop a set. She played smart against a dangerous, powerful opponent Karolina Sprem in her 3rd round match. She plays tricky lefty Patty Schnyder (7) in her fourth round match but has never lost to the wily Swiss. Mauresmo has another difficult assignment with the hard-hitting youngster Nicole Vaidisova who is a younger, Czech player modeled after Sharapova. Mauresmo is the first French player to be seeded #1 at her country's major championship in over 30 years and after winning the Australian Open title earlier in the year has seemingly calmed the butterflies which have caused her to underperform at this tournament in the past. Venus leads their head-to-head 5-4, but they have never played on clay (Venus defaulted the 2004 German Open final due to an injury) and Mauresmo has won the last three times they have played. PREDICTION: Mauresmo in 3 sets.

Maria Sharapova RUS (4) vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova RUS (8) . Kuznetsova made noise earlier in this season by beating Sharapova 6-4, 6-3 in the NASDAQ-100 Open final on hard courts in March to win the "fifth major." Sharapova is slightly injured, but as she demonstrated in Australia, her will to win and powerful serve and grounstrokes can get her deep into the draw of a major tournament. It's doubtful that will be enough for her to outlast someone who Martina Navratilova called "the most talented" of the Russians. PREDICTION: Kuznetsova in 3 sets.

Anna-Marie Groenefeld GER (13) vs. Justine Henin-Hardenne BEL (5). The odious Justine is the defending champion and will easily get into the semi-final over either Groenefeld or Gisela Dulko. PREDICTION: Henin-Hardenne in 2 sets.

Kim Clijsters BEL (2) vs. Martina Hingis SUI (12) . This is a reprise of the Australian Open quarterfinal which was won by Clijsters, who at one point was simply overpowering "Chucky." It's not clear if Hingis has managed to come up with a solution to the "big babe tennis" dilemma since then, but she did show by winning the Italian Open two weeks ago (defeating Venus Williams in three sets after losing the first seven games in a row) PREDICTION: This is really a toss-up, but I'll say Clijsters in 3 sets.

L.A. WEEKLY endorses ELENA POPP for AD 45

The endorsements keep rolling in! Earlier in the week, La Opinión endorsed Elena Popp for the 45th California Assembly District in which I live. Now comes word of the endorsement by L.A Weekly:

First, a word about Christine Chavez. Chavez, an organizer with United Farm Workers and the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, tells us she is a fighter. And on some level, we suppose she must be. But what could have possessed her to avoid eight candidate debates in her run for the 45th Assembly District? Why would she skip one forum sponsored by KPCC-FM, and another broadcast on KPFK? We can only conclude that Chavez is running a stealth campaign, one that is supremely disrespectful of the voters, that trades shamelessly on her family name. We don’t care how many campaign mailers, paperback books, English-Spanish dictionaries or photos of her grandfather that she sends to the voters if she can’t be bothered to engage her opponents. And it’s hard to believe Chavez will, as she says ad nauseam, pose a vigorous challenge to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when she can’t even show up to discuss her political views with the editorial board of the L.A. Weekly. As she does her best to avoid answering difficult questions, we can’t help but be reminded by the childhood photograph Chavez placed on her mailer — the one in which she is tethered to her famous grandfather at a famous point in history, yet looking like a timid little girl.

That leaves voters with three substantive choices in the 45th Assembly District, a hive of progressive political activism: renters advocate Elena Popp, political organizer Kevin de León and college teacher Gabriel Buelna. Buelna has been an intriguing candidate, doggedly making his way through the district as he hears constituent complaints about traffic, public safety and other neighborhood-level issues. But his frequent mention of speed bumps, traffic signals and bus routes makes him seem like a better fit for a city council race. De León has an entirely different set of problems. As a seven-year organizer of the California Teachers Association, it’s hard to see how he developed much of a tie to the district, which stretches from Hollywood on the west to El Sereno on the east. De León certainly benefited from an avalanche of money and logistical support pouring in from Sacramento — thanks in part to his childhood friend and political patron, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez. But de León has sent few signals that he will be his own man.

The one candidate who offers strong convictions, an extensive record of activism and a degree of independence is Popp, who spent her earliest years in Mexico and speaks fluent Spanish. Popp, who is backed by departing Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, has a keen understanding of the work needed to pass health care legislation, fund public education and protect vulnerable housing units. Popp also has a strong understanding of the district. Our only reservation is whether she is too naive to survive Sacramento. If nothing else, Popp has learned some unpleasant truths during the 2006 campaign, ones we hope she will be able to apply in the Capitol.

In addition to the nice endorsement, the Weekly also has an interesting article on the intricacies of the race by David Zahniser. Go, Elena!!

FOOD: Yang Chow Slippery Shrimp

Wow! I think I have a new favorite food! Last night, to celebrate my return to the gym after a near 2-month hiatus I went to Yang Chow restaurant in Pasadena. I had heard from blogging.la that Yang Chow's Slippery Shrimp was the worst kept secret in Los Angeles and have been looking for cheap and excellent Chinese food for awhile. Previously I had enjoyed Oak Tree Inn on Fair Oaks Avenue in nearby South Pasadena but I think they have diminished in quality recently. I'm still looking for a really good cheap and excellent Indian restaurant, and of course my long quest for decent (East) Caribbean/West Indian food in Los Angeles has been well-documented on this blog. Anyway, I ordered the slippery shrimp (seen in the picture) and the braised string beans with steamed rice. The shrimp is succulent, slightly spicy and slightly sweet simultaeneously while the beans are crunchy and slightly salty with a savoury sauce--a fantastic counterpoint.

REVIEW: A+.

Musical Chairs On The California Ballot June 6

The Insurance Commissioner is running for Lieutenant Governor.
The Lieutenant Governor is running for Insurance Commissioner.
The Controller and the Treasurer are running for Governor.
The Attorney General is running for Treasurer.
A former Governor is running for Attorney General!

Thanks, term limits! 7 more days until the Statewide Primary Election. I've been filling out my absentee ballot and will have more official endorsements in all statewide races later in the week.

FRENCH OPEN 2006: Day 1

Mashona Washington from Houston, Texas had 3 match points against Maria Sharapova yesterday at the French Open but ended up losing 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 after leading 5-2 in the third set! The match was almost 2 and a half hours long. Through the first two sets Mashona not only had more winners than errors, she had more winners than Sharapova!
This was one of the best women's t matches of the year. Mashona was hitting winners from every corner of the court, oftentimes on the stretch. Sharapova led 6-2, 3-1 before Mashona even had her first break point. Two of the three match points were on Mashona's serve, but were denied by winners from Sharapova. A truly great match.

REVIEW: X3

Director Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand opened Friday. I saw it at the Grauman's Chinese Theaters in Hollywood yesterday.

Clearly, the screenwriters, Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, XXX)
and Zak Penn (X2, Elecktra), took the subtitle "The Last Stand" pretty seriously because the story makes profligate use with some beloved characters' lives and powers by making some permanent decisions about their futures. Usually this is a tactic which heightens suspense in a thrilling way (c.f. this season's 24) but if it is overused then it actually reduces narrative tension because then the audience expects the main character to not surivive (c.f. the series finale of Alias). Unfortunately, in The Last Stand the device is used enough times so that the results are more like the latter than the former.

Almost all the reviews of the film comment approvingly on the stunning visual effects of the film, but those are expected and de rigeur for any summer blockbuster in the post Lord of the Rings movie marketplace. No, what ultimately disappoints is the lack of emotional resonance of the plot.

REVIEW: B+

FRENCH OPEN: Preview

Roland Garros, the 2006 French Open, starts on Sunday May 28. It becomes the first major tennis tournament to be scheduled over 15 days. The draw has been released.

World #1 Roger Federer has a rather tough draw, and is scheduled to play unseeded Arnaud Clement in the first round. Others in his quarter of the draw are pulchritudinous Tommy ("Tete") Robredo and blogger Jose ("Chucho") Acasuso who have both won clay tournaments this year. Other interesting first round matches to watch are Gael Monfils versus Andy Murray and Acacuso versus Fabrice Santoro.

On the Women's Side, World #1 and reigning Australian Open champion Amelie Mauresmo opens versus American Meghann Shaughnessy. Also in her quarter of the draw are Venus Williams (11), Nicole Vaidisova (16) and Patty Schnyder (7). Maria Sharapova (4) has another Slam with a lovely draw ahead of her, beginning with American Mashona Washington in the first round with really only Svetlana Kuznetsova (8) or Francesca Schiavone (9) to potentially cause her trouble. Nadia Petrova (3), the hottest player on clay so far in 2006, was unfortunate to have defending champion Justine Henin-Hardenne (5) in her quarter of the draw. In the bottom of the draw Kim Clijsters (2) is even more unlucky to be in the section of the draw with the resurgent Martina Hingis (12). Also in that section is 2004 finalist Elena Dementieva (6) who may face a round of 16 matchup with the Swiss Miss.

First Round Matches to Watch: Hingis versus American Lisa Raymond, Ana Ivanovic (19) versus Samantha Stosur, Sania Mirza versus 2004 Champion Anastasia Myskina (10) and Dinara Safina (14) versus Vera Zvonareva.