Amy Poehler

Today I’m celebrating the funny, classy,  inspirational Amy Poehler. Poehler was recently named one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year 2009 for her success as an entertainer and her ongoing projects that engage young women, like the web show Smart Girls at the Party. This ambitious comedian stars in her own prime time NBC show Parks and Recreation as well as voicing ten-year old dynamo Bessie Higgenbottom on Nickelodeon’s The Mighty B! a show she co-created with Erik Weise and Cynthia True.

Clips from Poehler’s interview on \”Inside the Actor\’s Studio\”.

My favorite Poehler sketch, despite numerous classics from her stint on SNL, is still the NYC UCB long form improv sketch from ASSSSCAT with Tina Fey “Monkey Boners”. Watch it below…

ASSSSCAT Improv TV special

Katey Sagal as Gemma Morrow in Sons of Anarchy

I was having dinner at a friend’s house the other night when the subject of marriage and morality came up. Yeah, it was that kind of dinner party. At one point the conversation turned to media representations of marital bliss and the man next to me said, “you know the single most detrimental media influence on the American marriage?”

Dramatic pause…\”Married With Children\”.

At the time I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration (and still do) but I was reminded of just how popular the show was. The sitcom debuted in 1987 on the nascent FOX network at a time when the highly touted Cosby show topped the Nielsen charts and set the tone for the American TV family. By 1989 the show’s cult following had blossomed into a national obsession and MWC consistently won it’s time slot in the ratings game prompting FOX to charge the same amount for commercials that CBS charged for Sixty Minutes.  Just recently, the show made Time Magazine’s list of  Best 100 TV Shows of All Time.

What struck me as ironic is that the same actress I admire for her grounded performance as the tough-as-nails matriarch of a motorcycle gang in the gritty drama Sons of Anarchy was also the bouffant, bon-bon stuffing matriarch of the dysfunctional Bundy clan, the versatile Katey Sagal.

When I delved a little further I discovered a multi-talented woman who, despite a very successful film and television career, counts music as her first love. Sagal’s musical career includes stints as a backup singer for Bob Dylan, Etta James and she was one of Better Midler’s “Harlettes” in the late seventies and early eighties. She’s also released a couple of CDs of her own including the well reviewed 2004 release from Valley Entertainment, \”Room\”.

But it’s her portrayal of the resilient Gemma Morrow that really resonates with me, a pitch perfect blend of flint and vulnerability. When so many female roles are still confined to “girlfriend”, “wife” or “detective” it’s refreshing to find a character so complex, flawed and imminently watchable. Thanks to the show’s creator Kurt Sutter (also Sagal’s husband) for writing such a great role and to Sagal for tackling it with relish.

Check out the following links for interviews with Sagal on her portrayal of Gemma Morrow…

CNN interview

Chicago Tribune blog

Check out Sons of Anarchy Tuesday nights at 10PM on FX.

Megan Fox in FHM

What are photographers saying to women when they’re posing like this in men’s magazines? Is it the same crap they say for the high school yearbook photos? “Hey there, pretty girl. Chin up. That’s right…”

But then, no one really needs to tell Megan Fox how pretty she is. She’s very well aware. (Gorgeous eyes and I do love this shot.)

I came across an interview with Fox in New York Times Magazine that I feel raises pertinent issues about women in Hollywood, particularly young, hot women in Hollywood.

The article, titled “The Self Manufacture of Megan Fox”, addresses Fox’s canny manipulation of the media. She’s managed to keep herself squarely in the spotlight despite the fact that she’s only made three films, albeit two huge blockbusters, Transformers and Transformers II (sheesh). Through a series of provocative interviews, seemingly off-the-cuff controversial remarks and ubiquitous photo spreads she’s become Hollywood’s next BIG THING. It seems innocuous, at this point, to mention that she’s not an actor.

Well, not by my definition anyway. An actor is someone who has studied acting as a craft, not as a means to gain notoriety, fame and lots of cold hard cash. An actor takes a written work in any genre and brings the story alive, delves deeply into character and takes the audience on a cathartic journey. Hollywood could give a shit less about any of that. Actors are products designed to make money and for many (not all) producers, studio executives and publicists the “sexy starlet” is the easiest path to a paycheck. That only works, however, if the starlet in question allows it to be so.

“All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. You’re sold, and it’s based on sex. That’s O.K., if you know how to use it.”

You know, I don’t think Kate Winslet got that memo. If she didn’t, I don’t want to be the one to give it to her. It takes talent and hard work to create the memorable performances that actresses like Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Christina Hendricks and Elizabeth Mitchell deliver. What saddens me about the immediate fame Megan Fox cultivates is that it may prevent her from pursuing the gift that is acting. Learning the craft, failing at it, hitting the boards night after night, finding something within yourself that you never knew was there, the glorious sound of riotous laughter from an engaged audience, the moment when you and your fellow actors realize you finally, finally got it right.

I don’t blame Megan Fox for pursuing her dream. I blame the people who cast her. When women like Fox, who freely admits her lack of acumen,

“I’m not one of these people who grew up studying acting or went to theater school,” Fox told me at the hotel. “I don’t know if I’m talented, I don’t know what I can do or can’t do. I had no skills at all.”

are cast in film after film based on their look and celebrity what message does that send young female actors? Quit the whole Stanislavsky thing! Get a nose job and an attitude, honey! Why should any hot, young girl think she has to act to be a star? Why should any hot, young girl think she has to act to be an actor?

I don’t have a problem with Fox’s beauty or her use of it to further her career. Beauty is a useful tool in this business but it can’t be the only one you rely on. I don’t begrudge her the wonderful, amazing opportunity that’s been dumped in her lap. I just don’t want her to sell herself, and us, short.

Becky Blanton Speaking at TED

Writing is hard. Among all the things I attempt to do well, with varying degrees of success, I find writing to be the most challenging. I really admire people who do it well, consistently and with passion.

Becky Blanton is one of those people. She was also a homeless person. Still is by definition of the Federal Government. Becky Blanton, through her writing and her lifestyle choices, raises some interesting questions about how we “see” people. Literally.

I discovered Blanton’s story at TED, a non-profit organization that brings together great minds from the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design and challenges them to deliver the “talk of their lives”. The results are funny, shocking, tragic, revealing, entertaining and always inspirational. Blanton’s talk is about the year she spent living out of her van with the Rottweiler and her cat. What began as a great American road trip adventure ended in frustration, homelessness and depression. As Blanton states in her talk, she was amazed at how quickly she went from being a talented, hard working journalist to an invisible woman.

Becky Blanton: The Year I Was Homeless

What I found especially compelling about Blanton’s experience was her assertion that society equates living in a permanent structure with having value as a person. Think about it. Someone living in  a rundown little house on the edge of town is, by American standards, “better off” than someone living in clean, well maintained vehicle. My boyfriend’s parents love to regale us with stories of a couple they know who decided to live in their RV and travel the country. Breakdowns in the desert and noxious plumbing problems play out like another painful installment of National Lampoon’s “Vacation”. But at least for them it’s a lifestyle choice.

Recent unemployment statistics and housing foreclosures, however, are no laughing matter. The number of homeless in New York has risen 45% since 2002. Apparently one of Mayor Bloomberg’s solutions is to charge the working homeless who live in public shelters rent. In one case, a single mother making $8.40 an hour as a cashier at Sbarro was charged $360 in rent for her space at the shelter. Here’s what sticks out for me…

1) How the hell do businesses get away with paying someone $8.40 an hour? Oh, well it is above the Federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. (Meanwhile members of Congress has awarded themselves 31,600 in pay raises over the last nine years.) In fact, 44% of Congress are millionaires.

2) How is this woman supposed to get herself out of the shelter and into a home of her own? I have no idea how anyone survives in New York on less than 60,000 a year.

3) Bloomberg just spent 100 million of his own money in his mayoral campaign. So, basically a multi-billionaire has decided it makes good sense to charge a homeless woman rent for her shelter. Mighty white of you, Mr. Bloomberg.

In a country as wealthy and resourceful as ours, there shouldn’t be any “working homeless”. We can do better than this. We can change this. Change starts with fresh perspective and Becky Blanton has some great ideas on how to change yours…check out her blog and maybe even find a place to feed the homeless (some of who may be working) this Thanksgiving.

Zoe Saldana

Provenance…Queens, New York with a stint in the Dominican Republic for boarding school. Saldana won a scholarship to Ritmos Espacio de Danza Academy, where she studied ballet, jazz, and modern and Latin dance. In fact, it was her dance skills that led to her first major film role in Center Stage, (2000) but her acting skills placed her opposite Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl.

Point of Entry…Law and Order/\”Merger\”/1999

Sur Les Pointes…Saldana’s star turn in J.J. Abrams successful reimagining of the classic \”Star Trek\” as Nyota Uhura.

Pointless…A lead role in the 2002 Britney Spears vehicle, \”Crossroads\”.

Power Play…Scoring a starring role in the most anticipated film event of the year, James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller \”Avatar\”.

Press…A woman men love according to AskMen.com.

Photo Montage…Vanity Fair brings the native New Yorker back to her old stomping grounds for a Harlem Renaissance photo shoot.

Pictures…a Rotten Tomatoes filmography.

Parlay…Esquire interview (with expletives)

Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

Elinor Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences which she shares with Oliver E. Williamson.

I listened to a brief interview with Mrs. Ostrom on NPR in which she stated that in high school she took algebra and geometry but was denied the opportunity to take trigonometry because of her sex.

Now, I might not see that as such a golden opportunity given that I failed algebra, twice. In all seriousness, however, imagine how many bright young women were steered away from potentially brilliant careers in economics and science.

Elinor Ostrom was not to be deterred. She graduated with a BA from UCLA and then used a position in the personnel office as a spring board to enter the graduate program in public administration “at a time when women didn’t go to graduate school”. She met her future husband, Vincent Ostrom, at UCLA and the two remain together today. In fact, before Elinor’s Nobel win the couple were best known for founding the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at the University of Indiana, where they both teach, in 1973. The Workshop brings together students and scholars from disciplines as varied as business, anthropology and political science to conduct research in a supportive cross-disciplinary environment. The goal, “to promote the interdisciplinary study of institutions, incentives, and behavior as they relate to policy-relevant applications.”

The philosophy behind the Workshop is that “from the beginning, the Workshop’s founders, Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, have believed that ideas and theories must be considered through the lens of experience—that the critical connection is between ideas and what gets done.

This practical approach to solving big, big problems lies at the core of Ostrom’s ground breaking work \”Governing the Commons\” for which she won the Nobel Prize. It’s all about finding ways to better manage our resources as a community for the betterment of mankind.

Ivanka Trump may offer valuable lessons for young, ambitious business women and she’s certainly a style maven. And to be fair, she also has plenty of time to contribute much more than that. Elinor Ostrom went against conventional wisdom and blazed a trail for women. She might just have given us a path to change the world. What the hell, read both books!

Governing the Commons, the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

The Trump Card, Playing to Win in Work and Life

Al Franken baby!

Today’s post was supposed to a follow up to the Ivanka post in which I celebrate Elinor Ostrom’s historic Nobel Prize win. Over the weekend, however, I came across a Daily KOS post on Al Franken\’s grilling of a Halliburton/KBR attorney during a hearing on the Senate Amendment 2588.

In a nutshell, Franken, (D-Minnesota) proposed an amendment to a Department of Defense Appropriations bill that prohibits “the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company , KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.”

The indomitable Jamie Leigh Jones

“Certain claims” refers specifically to sexual assault cases like the one Jamie Leigh Jones brought against KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton at the time, after she was gang raped by colleagues in Iraq. When she attempted to report the crime she was locked in a shipping container and told if she left Iraq for medical treatment she’d be out of job. Unfortunately, it looks like Jones’ case may be one of many.

So, it would seem to make a lot of compassionate, common sense to say that vicious sexual assaults should not come under binding arbitration but are heinous criminal acts and should be prosecuted as such, in a court of law. Thirty Republican senators don’t think so. And if you want to know who they are, click HERE. That’s right, thirty Republican senators voted against the amendment, even after Jones bravely came forward with a story that should scare the hell out of female professionals, fathers and husbands everywhere.

Unconscionable. And the Department of “Justice” didn’t even bother to show.

But then Halliburton does give Republican senators lots and lots of reasons to defend them, don’t they?

Check out the following…

Jamie Leigh Jones’ story:

Al Franken’s questioning of Halliburton/KBR attorney:

Ivanka Trump, 27 year old Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions, Trump Organization

“Whatever it is you’re looking to do or make or sell, you build your business on the assumption that you can do it better, smarter, and more efficiently than the competition. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivanka-trump/going-it-alone-an-excerpt_b_319579.html

Let me begin with the admission that I have not read Ivanka Trump\’s new book, “Trump Card” recently published by Touchstone Books/Simon and Schuster. I chanced upon an excerpt from the book on the Huffington Post website soon after listening to an interview with Elinor Ostrom, 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics on NPR.

I was struck by how different these two successful women are in the circumstances of their upbringing and how that has effected their contributions, (or in Ivanka’s case might effect future contributions) to society.

I read a few more online articles on Ivanka Trump and by consensus she’s an accomplished, hard working and savvy businesswoman in her own right. I found an article on MSN.com touting her level headed handling of her celebrity and lack of a sense of entitlement. Psychotherapist and rich kid himself, Richard Clark had this to say about wealthy children, “The moment that a child begins to believe that they deserve their wealth is the moment where things will begin to go downhill. . . . The unhealthy, unproductive progeny of the wealthy are the ones who begin to believe their own press.”

By all accounts Ivanka hasn’t fallen into that trap. She’s the first to admit that she’s a child of great privilege, born with opportunities others were not. Still, she prefaces her book excerpt with the affirmation,

“We’ve all been dealt a winning hand and it is up to each of us to play it right and smart.’ This is the philosophy with which I operate in my day to day, and I hope that every reader walks away from my book with the feeling that life is a series of roads to success.”

While I applaud Ivanka’s desire to establish her own identity and means of success, (Paris Hilton was raised in similar circumstances and she’s a cautionary tabloid tale) we’re not all dealt such a winning hand. In a sense, I think, while the philosophy behind the book is well intentioned, it’s also incognizant. The fact is, there are many kids born with the same innate potential as Ms. Trump, intelligence, desire, talent, curiosity but for whatever reason are denied the tools with which to cultivate those innate gifts.

Malcolm Gladwell studies this conundrum at length in his recent book \”Outliers\” published by Little, Brown. Outliers is a term Gladwell uses to describe the uber successful members of our society. Bill Gates is the most obvious example but there are many others. He refutes the long held, cultural belief that successful people are just that much smarter, more talented, etc. On the contrary, he provides thoughtful and compelling evidence that success depends on a myriad of variables not the least of which is, who your parents are. Success is a product not only of the innate gifts with which one is born but also, and perhaps more so, of “history, community, opportunity and legacy”. All of which Ms. Trump has been gifted in spades.

So, is it really that special that Ivanka Trump is an author and successful executive (at her Father’s firm) with her own jewelry business? What can we really learn from her rise to success? Quite honestly, with all the advantages of being Ivanka Trump and a degree from Wharton School of Business shouldn’t she be expected to “do it better, smarter, and more efficiently than the competition”? If she couldn’t, who could?