He reminds us that we must dis-identify from the currents of consciousness.

Despite the fact that I heard him teaching this lesson yesterday, I managed to forget it completely even before leaving the shul. It is quite difficult to stay above the petty thoughts of the ego mind. The slights we feel, the anxiety to do good, the fear of not accomplishing enough, the anger at the injustice in our own lives and in the world, can really be overwhelming.

Sometime in late May, I made the decision to wear a head covering every day to help remind myself of my duty to have a passion for truth and seek knowledge of The Divine. My spiritual practice seems to work best when I demand time for it. The kippah itself is just another ornament when I miss my morning prayers, or forget my commitment to serve my highest ideals mid-way through another stressful day at the office. There have been times when I thought about taking off the kippah, despairing that I wasn't doing the things that really matter (the prayers, the contemplation, the journaling), but I've kept it on.

Today, I find it more difficult than normal to reconcile my commitment to Judaism with my political beliefs. My uncle forwarded me a video link, which I imagine should make me feel more strongly connected to Israel and the Western Wall. But seeing men carrying machine guns while wrapped in t'fillin makes a mockery of my highest ideals.

I feel discombobulated when I don't lay t'fillin because it connects me to the highest aspirations of my religious community. It binds me to The Divine, with righteousness, with justice, with love, and with compassion. Judaism isn't a nationality. It isn't even an ethnicity. Judaism is a religion that can connect people with their highest ideals. It isn't the only path to your higher self. It isn't the only true wisdom tradition. But it is my wisdom tradition and my heart breaks to know that people conflate politics and religion.

God does not need a bodyguard. The Divine is within us all--Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan, and atheist alike. And the sad reality is that The Divine is broken, and in mending our own broken-ness, we help heal The Divine. That inner spark is nothing without our own internal work.

So yes, I will use this time to reflect on the ways I cling to my Yetzer HaRa. But I cannot join you in celebrating the apartheid status of Jerusalem. As much as I appreciate the existence of the Western Wall, I long for the day when the al-Aqsa Mosque is treated with the same respect. One day, all people will live in peace and we will recognize that our religions never needed political states to survive. Each human will have the right to self-determination and all of our nation states will be recognized as legitimate entities.

My hope, my prayer, is that one day humanity recognizes the arbitrary nature of borders, strengthens the United Nations, recognizes women must have equal representation in all decision-making bodies, and all people--regardless of gender or nongender--are honored as vital members of humanity.

This is why my wedding will take place at my temple. Not because of a plot of land my family hasn't been near in at least a thousand years, but because through the neo-Hasidic Kabbalistic teachings of Rabbi Finley, I can see the way to being a better person. God willing, everyday I will make progress towards "constant reverence for the abiding presence of The Divine through devotional acts and moral refinement." My focus is on following Rabbi Finley's definition of true piety. The politics--including my fundamental political disagreements with Rabbi Finley--are beside the point.

Katrina Hill: Controversy over geeks, sexy females claiming they're geeks and nerd. Do fake geeks exist? Cosplay is a big staple of geek culture and I know a lot of you do it. Slave Leia's are accused of using their body.

Bonnie Burton: Princess Leia in that scantily clad outfit did kill Java the Hut. She actually saved herself.

Adrianne Curry: I reserve my Chewbacca costume for when I'm old and can't wear these costumes anymore.

Jennifer Stuller: Also, there aren't many female characters who are fully clothed.

Bonnie Burton: Would like to see more women dress up as creatures. And why doesn't anyone cosplay as a building? I want to see a hot Justice League building.

Adrianne Curry: This country puts too much of an emphasis on nudity is wrong. It's not - violence is wrong.

Kaila: We need to broaden the definition of sexy. Unrealistic expectations on girls and women in our society. And then sexy wont be such a loaded term any more.

So, I've taken courses on gender and sexuality at Wellesley College. Why did I think this panel was going to enlighten me or completely engage me?

Clare Kramer: the whole question stems from females questioning females. I cannot believe how petite she is in real life! She's such an Amazon on teevee!

Don't write sexily. But answer negates the fact that there are glass ceilings for women in male-dominated fields.

Every question elicits the same basic response. Perhaps they need an actual gender studies scholar as moderator? And as the fiance pointed out, this is a super white panel.

Bonnie: Womenthology - project started on Kickstarter, for women who've never done comics before to be paired up with women who are already in the industry, to empower newbies and professionals to get together. We raised all the money we needed in one day, and we're still raising money. I wouldn't say that's using our sexuality, but it was definitely using gender.

Seriously horrified by this panel now. Chris Gore just walked in and said:

Chris Gore: I represent all the guys in this room because I want to put my penis in all the women on this panel.

Panel now being saved by Seth Green, speaking from the floor.
Seth: I think it's really a matter of authenticity, not just a matter of sexuality. It is kind of that debate, you can't have this because you haven't liked it as long as me. So, why perpetuate those stereotypes (in Made Men)? Why not band together and make more awesome things? Just one more thing - when you talk about the dearth of sexy costumes that have cloth. I think Willow is sexy in a sweater and skirt, but I also think Mystique is sexy. Why does it have to be one versus the other?

Now people are asking rambling questions and like the rest of the panel, Bonnie is talking long in response to each question. She can be funny, but she should recognize there are 7 other panelists.

So, needless to say, I've been waiting for this movie for awhile. Watching the pitches in Hall H, I was convinced that Marvel has it right: focus on the story, while DC is annoying: focus on the "cool characters nerds want to see." And yes, I have a grudge against DC for axing Joss from Wonder Woman.

So I was a bit surprised at the end result. I really wanted to like Thor, but it was disjointed and (a)I had no interest in the ethereal world scenes and (b)the writers weren't interested in character development.

I thought it was just me, but Joe Morgenstern agreed with me.

On the other hand, I think Kenneth Turan simply doesn't get genre flicks. People like that the Marvel universe is interconnected. We like that we get previews at the end of the credits. We like seeing Clark Gregg play the straight man. We like the idea that someone in the government knows all these superheroes and mythical men are romping around Earth. The best thing about Thor was that it had humor. I enjoyed that it didn't take itself too seriously in the Earth scenes - that made it enjoyable to watch.

But here's why I thought it was going to be so much more than it was: Natalie Portman is a thinking woman's actress. She's incredibly smart (and not just for actor standards). So, I thought 'yay! The smart girl's going to get the hot guy in the movie for a change!" Except, all she did was go giggly every time she was in a scene with Thor. Their entire romance boiled down to two points: the man is ripped and he can tell her about worm holes. Really? That's all it takes to make a super intelligent woman turn to mush? Puh-leeze.

I didn't hate the movie the way I hated Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe. But I wanted it to be wonderful, the way Iron Man was. But there were too many disjointed plot points and too little character development for me to be able to get behind the movie. And I guess I've seen too many sci-fi fantasy t.v. series and movies to be willing to suspend my disbelief of one-sided females who swoon the minute a handsome man walks into their lives. Man, do I miss Buffy.

William Deverell
D.J. Waldie
Leo Braudy
Lawrence Culver

Culver: Hollywood and the Hollywood sign - rivals Coca-Cola as a brand name. The sign itself was not considered significant...Originally, was not connected to the movie movement. It was a temperance movement of rich people who wanted to tend their gardens in rival with Pasadena. If they did have rooming houses, they would have signs 'No Jews, dogs, or actors allowed.' [laughter] The 'land' part of the sign was taken down in 1949. In the lates 70s it was reconstructed. The sign was supposed to be temporary. I can only liken it to the Eiffel Tower which was also supposed to be temporary.

Morrison: Deverall expanded on the multiple layers of mythology about California.

Deverell: In some ways, Los Angeles has profited by making it seem so easy. That this metropolis exists in nature - but we really shoved nature around. We really tested the limits of placing this many people in a basin this big. Just pull it back a little bit, Los Angeles comes into being by one of the most aggressive campaigns of control of nature. It's a rubber band that can be stretched only so far, and eventually nature will snap it back.

Los Angeles does something that other cities have not figured out how to do - it advertises itself, Los Angeles, as the attraction.

Waldie: Selling of Los Angeles began after the original Mexicans lost their property to the banks of San Francisco in the middle of the 19th century. Selling us off to others has been part of the history of the city...part of what we're talking about today is why is that the case? Why do we persist in understanding that Los Angeles is a product to be sold to someone else...This was famously called a fragmented metropolis and it remains a desperately fragmented metropolis that lacks in the social glue, cultural glue that other metropolis has.

I believe, as Bill does, that the past provides a window into our present discontents. The builders of Los Angeles, all of those players in the making of Los Angeles, regarding this place as a consumer product to be packaged, sold, and walked away from.

Morrisson: the frontier of leisure sounds positive, but ended up making LA very segregated in many ways...the idea that resort living was in opposition to public parks that other cities have.

Culver: LA willed itself from a town of a couple thousand people to the second largest city in the United States. On the one hand, Los Angeles sold leisure in a way that people really like - that you could go to the beach and the mountains and live in a bungalow and celebrate the fact that you liberated yourself from Iowa. Likewise, was the effort to make leisure restricted and controlled. Public pools were restricted.

Leisure came to be something controlled at private resorts, private hotels. And encapsulated by private families in private homes - backyard swimming pools rather than a public pool.

Braudy: Wanted to bring the myth back into this as well. We've been talking about the negative history but there's a dialectic between the myth and the reality that happened after WWII. The solidity of the myth continued. As long as people believed the myth, it was bigger than what happened on the ground.

Deverell: We tend to think of myth and reality at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but they're in a circle. The privatization of Los Angeles, it's certainly not the only place in the country that understood that privatization was comfortable. We can trace that across the country in suburbs that were not fenced and then were fenced. During the Cold War, people did retreat to the privacy of their domestic space. LA offers people that, in part because they could be outside.

Braudy: The size of the city has been discussed since it was created. Say you came from some specific neighborhood, but the farther you go from here you eventually say you come from LA; maybe not the city of Los Angeles. ...When we move into the marketing of small houses on small lots...they were buying into the relief of depression and war. My neighbors, many of my neighbors had grown up in oil camps in Bakersfield and Los Angeles delivered safety to millions of people.

Culver: It's strange how the myths that LA was selling and inventing and broadcasting through Hollywood, on the one hand offered something that was the realization of a dream for people who had lived lives of privation and at the same time those houses were restricted by incredibly racial covenants, and that continued long after the Supreme Court overturned the legality of racial covenants.

Braudy: Branding makes you more visible, but it is incredibly reductive at the same time. This effort to create a mythology about this great, sprawling place has really become a template...an amorphous, urban world - and how do we represent it? Even though it has very little to do with the kind of people who live in Los Angeles, it's just shorthand.

Morrison: California is famously negligent about its history. I remember that when I wrote my book about the LA River, people were surprised that it was a river.

Deverell: There's a difference between memory and amnesia. We also forget, willfully forget the history of this place. What LA has done, brilliantly, is structure memory brilliantly. We remember a mission period that was sunny. We remember a certain lifestyle of the late 18th century that was hazy. What we forget is that LA came of age in a bloody way and with racial and ethnic violence that was dark and grim.

We have to be careful about making LA stand alone as such an exceptional place. New England history for example, is a landscape of dire and deep native and white conflict and that's not part of the story that New England constructs.

Waldie: Important to remember that the political structure of Los Angeles...the leaders of the city of LA devised a system of local government, designed to put the citizens of Los Angeles as far away from the messy business of running the city as possible - that technocratic utopian view that government could be perfect...corporate efficiency. If true politics is driven out, we have what we have today in LA which is something different from that.

Morrison: We have 88 cities in the county of Los Angeles, no wonder we can't get regional transportation.

Waldie: [Someone wrote about] that We need to be loyal to imperfect places.

Culver: Frontier - possibility and also danger and violence. The frontier is not a carefree, happy place but it is also a place of opportunity. Palm Springs does have this history of becoming a gay tourist destination and community. Algua Caliente band of Indians whose land occupies most of the land of Palm Springs and spent a long time trying to hold onto the land. Through the alchemy of Indian gaming, they're now not only one of the most powerful players in Palm Springs, they're one of the most powerful players in California.

Braudy: Some of the kinds of problems. There's a coalescence...it was a myth of independence, of individualism. There was an old song 'what was your name back in the United States?' ...The kind of collision between entrepreneurial individualist California that doesn't want to have very much to do with neighbors except maybe barbecues. And those trying to create a cohesive society. The things that made you free and made you want to come here for.

Deverell: A vast number of people view LA as a place of rejuvenation. Look at the poeple arriving in LAX - it's magnetic. A lot of people don't come for the reasons they used to come. Once you introduced Hollywood, fame, and money into the equation - for every person that comes to start life anew, another comes to become famous. It has a real tight hold on all of us, I suspect. There's an underbelly to the myth.

Braudy: The upside is there are a lot of pretty people in Los Angeles. There's still something about the place itself. Now there's an ideal of rejuvenation.

Morrison: I see the map: Silicon, Silicone.

Braudy: We're tired of the Hollywood sign in a sense. All of the people really interested in preserving the sign are people who came here. ...A sense of the outsider investing more in these iconic images, rather than the insider. Hardly any industry people put up money the first time the sign was recreated.

Pamela Ribon: wrote for stage and screen and Why Girls Are Weird?, Why Moms Are Weird?, Going in Circles and blogger

Howard Gordon: wrote Gideon's War: a novel. Started during writer's strike, finished a month after 24 wrapped.

The moderator was Heather Havrilesky, who actually participated in the panel discussion much more than recorded in this blog entry.

Pamela: I wrote a book so I could break into television. I took a lot of meetings where people said "let me know if you have a magazine article or a book you'd like to adapt." Without planes, I would never finish a novel. I finished my first novel on unemployment...right after 9/11, when no one was hiring and no one was interested in comedy. I started an online journal in 98. I was working at IBM at the time and it looked like I was working. ...I lost everything, so I figured I would just moved to Hollywood.

Duke: It was kind of a back door entry. To make a long story short, my partner died. Aaron Spelling and I had been working together for 29 years. I wanted to do something and I didn't want to go to work for Paramount. ...I had a friend who I would tell stories about growing up in Hell's Kitchen. He told me I needed to write it as a novel, and I explained that I don't do novels. My friend was Bob Smith, the owner of a television station in Santa Barbara and he came to me one day and told me had cancer and that he wanted to read my book before he died. He did read it and he did died. If I had any idea how difficult it was, I would have never done it. The camera and soundtrack in film tells you everything about what's going on. In a novel, there's none of that, the writer has to create all of that. It is very, very challenging, at least for me. My first draft read like a screenplay. My editor said normally we don't do it this way - normally we write the novel and then we write the screenplay. ...

moderator: Howard and Duke, you two both wrote about brothers. What about the brother relationship appealed to you?

Howard: I'm one of three brothers, I'm the oldest of three. I've always been fascinated by stories from Cain and Abel to Joseph to The Fighter, a lot of love, a lot of competition.

Duke: I think Howard explained it beautifully. You can't write a scene unless you know what everyone wants. If you don't have conflict, you don't have a scene. And if it's between brothers, that's even better.

I have heard this statement so many times that "it writes itself." Who is this guy who writes itself?

Moderator: you have a book about getting over a divorce. How did you choose the material?

Pamela: I had a lot of people telling me "you look like you're in pain. Are you okay?" My lit agent couldn't believe that I was in roller derby and broke my tail bone. I think I had a lot of problems apologizing for breaking up a marriage.

Moderator: Howard, you have an attraction to characters who are forced by circumstances to compromise their morals.

Howard: How you define yourself at the edges of your life is important and a big part of dilemmas needed for good scenes. ...I'm really glad foreign policy is not my job. I think by my nature I'm a compromiser. I've gained no wisdom from it except how complicated the world is and how many moving parts there are. The thing I would hope for if I was president is to get lucky.

Moderator: Duke, your book shows how convoluted the world was during the Kennedy presidency. Your novel does a great job of dramatizing the scene.

Duke: In 1959, when John F Kennedy was elected president, I happened to be flying with the Blue Angels. He was a former naval officer and a hero. When he got assassinated, it was a real blow. I began to follow the conspiracy theories that were written about it, beginning with his brother Bobby...I read all of that. Having gone through all of the information and all of the different theories, I came up with my own theory of what happened, which begins with the deal that the CIA made with the mob to assassinate Castro. There's no dispute about that. That is a fact.

moderator: Because the word 'conspiracy' is used and it becomes a kook theory. I think it's fascinating that so many aspects of the story are indisputable. Why does it stay in the realm of myth?

Duke: I think John F Kennedy still to this day is larger than life. I was at a party where he walked into a room and the entire party stopped. The smile, the charisma, was unbelievable. ...No less a character than G Robert Blakely who was the lead counsel on the House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote a book that said categorically that there was a conspiracy, Lee Harvey Oswald was involved, there was another shooter behind the grassy knoll, and then he names the three men behind the conspiracy. ...On their death beds two of the three admitted to being part of the conspiracy. Now how it happened is a mystery and is why my book is a novel and not a history.

...Bobby Kennedy got the call from J Edgar Hoover, his arch-enemy. Bobby thought that Hoover told him with glee that his brother had died...He called John McComb and asked him point blank, "Did the CIA kill my brother?" and he denied it. The lower levels of the organization was involved, along with the anti-Castro Cubans in Miami.

moderator: Pamela, in your most recent blog post you write about a television writer who said you're all set because you're a mid-level female comedy writer. ...Do you have a general assessment of writer's rooms for women?

Pamela: I've been on shows where I've been the only woman in the room, where half the room was women...I hear it's lovely on an hour-long show, not as cut throat as a half-hour comedy room. ...I'm not saying that there is a glass ceiling. I have heard stories from women who have hard times in some rooms. The more frustrating thing is when you get the call "they're looking for a woman." And then they ask "do you have kids?" No, darn, another job lost. ...I hope the woman got the job because she deserved it and wasn't just easy to get along with. ...you guys don't have to take as long to make a human as a woman.

Duke: ...I loved working with directors, that was not Aaron's strong suit. The 80s was the era when there were three networks, and that was all you got to see. 97-98% was watching the three networks, and the rest was local shows. If you got less than 30% that was it, you were off the air. I remember when we started Vegas, it got a 47% share.

Howard: I started in the 80s at Spencer for Hire. ...There was a scene in The September Issue where Anna Wintour's father left Parliament because he couldn't take the fools anymore and the older you get, the harder it gets to live with....I've been at Fox now for 20 years, but I think if I could make a generalization, it's gotten a lot more corporate and a lot more managing up. TV is great, it's still great, I'm very bullish on the medium, and I think a very relevant one and where some of the greatest work is still being done.

Anecdotally, people are still aspiring for cable. But it isn't where the money is.

Moderator: next novel?

Howard: the time frame of this novel was very compressed and it was a conceit that allowed to create a narrative that was a little easier to bite off and chew. If I had a complaint about this book, it was a little easier and I hope to tackle something more complex next time. It was meant to be very pulpy and not aspiring to be a Pulitzer.

Duke: I actually only had a partnership early on. My partnership with Aaron Spelling was a business partnership. We shared some writing chores. Aaron very seldom did any rewriting. I did a lot of rewriting on the shows. He was a very good writer, don't misunderstand me. Aaron Spelling was a Jew who was born in Dallas, Texas on the wrong side of the railroad tracks whose father was a tailor. He never flew in an airplane. He loved to work with the networks. He loved to sell. He enjoyed working with writers, but didn't particularly enjoy working with directors. I grew up in Hell's Kitchen, my father was connected to the Mob. I flew with the Blue Angels. We were very, very different but we worked together very well. Our egos never clashed. We each had a primary show that we handled - I had the primary responsibility for action/adventure shows. We would split show duties also.

Howard: I came out to LA with a writing partner. We were partners for our first 9 years in LA. We split up in the first year of the X-Files. I know a husband/wife writing/directing team. It's a very special and very intimate relationship. ...You always wonder what you bring to the partnership and what you could do on your own.

Pamela: When you're writing in a room, you're coming up with a concept. Someone does go off and does the page work. It depends on how involved your editor and agent are, but they can tear up a novel too. I think now I'm ruined, I have to work collaboratively.

Duke: When the mob made the deal with the CIA to assassinate Castro, it was before the Bay of Pigs. When the 2506 brigade invaded Cuba, the US would bring in the Marines if it was failing. Kennedy didn't order that and the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans felt betrayed. ...During Cuba Missile Crisis, he guaranteed Khrushchev that he wouldn't invade Cuba again if they removed the missiles from Cuba and the anti-Castro Cubans felt betrayed a second time. ...in the meantime, Castro threw all of the mob-backed casinos in Cuba. Bobby Kennedy went after Jimmy Hoffa, who controlled the Teamster's pension fund, which was used to fund the building of casinos in Vegas. They determined that the only thing to do was to get rid of Bobby. They got rid of John because if they had killed Bobby, Kennedy would have just replaced him with a similar attorney general. The first thing LBJ did was get rid of Bobby because he hated Bobby.

That was five years ago. Somewhere along the way, I got really excited about climbing the agency career ladder. I fell in love with an art director and my appreciation for advertising deepened. (I guess it's a good thing I haven't read No Logo.)

So it is with nervous excitement that I proclaim freedom from the corporate world. Tomorrow is my last day as an account supervisor. Rather than spending 9-11 hours a day focused on for-profit marketing, I'll be able to spend my time challenging the status quo and creating political will for ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and fully funding social needs.

And I take with me the one thing money can never buy - true love.

Back to my original thought.

This week, I've seen adorable new baby pictures and traveled with a pregnant mother of twins to the hospital. And I was reminded that a year ago, my Bat Mitzvah tutor died. She was only a year older than me, and shared my love of Dirty Dancing. (Actually, I think she introduced me to obsessing over it.) It's hard to know what to say when someone passes before the age of 40.

Which reminds me of Katie, who passed a few years ago. The BDOC of my sophomore year. And Matthew, the gentle giant who introduced me to my first boyfriend and passed following a terrible accident during high school. And Rabbi Tucker, who took his own life, unable to face his mortal transgressions.

I remember people who passed before their time differently from those who lived long and prospered. With some, I felt great personal responsibility which took years to overcome. With others, profound sadness over a life shattered, families torn asunder. Every time I read about the temple of my youth, I wonder how my Confirmation Rabbi's wife and children are doing.

I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who love me and support me. Who knew I'd find my soulmate, re-engage my Jewish spirituality, and become engaged to a nice Chinese boy?

In the face of all the real issues we face in life, why in the world did I waste my time watching Somewhere? It's very clear to me: Frank Bruni's immensely engaging article on Elle Fanning in the NY Times Magazine. And now it looks like maybe I should read about her in Vanity Fair as well.

Guess that's how the cookie crumbles. Some make it to the next day of their lives. Some pass on too soon. For now, it's time for me to join Minerva in the sweet land of dreams.

Favorite quotes: when asked if the actors in True Blood look like the characters in her head, she acknowledged that Anna is a beautiful woman, but she's a small thing. And she said, "I know this wouldn't fly in Hollywood, but Sookie is a woman with curves. She's a big girl."

Her last quote of the day: "I love strong women with flaws." And I love the strong women she creates. I only wish Alan Ball will change his focus and allow the women in his series to show their strength. Follow the jump for some verbatim note-taking.

I hate rock and roll band reunions. Unlike the world of zombies, when you're dead you should stay dead. But also, unfortunately the real clincher, I sustained some significant hearing damage from the 17 years . The last 4-5 years of the band took 10-15 years of hearing from me. I think you'd probably agree that this is a wise decision, knowing what I'm up against.

But a lambskin version, made by hand, in the United States? Clearly this is the jacket I've been waiting for these past ten years to replace my old love. Schott's Women's Lamskin Perfecto Jacket is my heart's new desire.

New consumer lust found in the Sunday NYT Style Section Pulse column, by Karin Nelson.

It's always fascinating to listen to artists speak about their craft. I've been fortunate enough to accompany Chung to several Academy events, and I always leave invigorated about the world, where creativity flows in torrents. Of course, there is the flip side to it - peaking behind the current forces you to recognize the talent of the show creators and confront the fact that your favorite actors might not be the articulate genius you thought he was when he was reading someone else's lines.

These were the shows of my childhood. Some I watched more than others. (You'll forgive me, as I was four when Cheers premiered.) With so many people on the stage, everyone was getting a little antsy as the moderator meticulously drilled the cast and crew of Cheers. Ted Danson spoke about how many actors read for the part of Sam Malone and said he's convinced he won the role because his reading partner was Shelley Long. The creators, Glen Charles & Les Charles, discussed their inspiration: after working on Taxi, they wanted to create a work-placed comedy set in a space the viewers would want to hang out at.

The moderator then talked to the Night Court crew, since their show as the next to get on the air. Reinhold Weege took the opportunity to hold court and wax poetic on The Way Things Used to Be. He readily admitted that he's basically had two jobs: working on Barney Miller and creating Night Court. (Would that we all had such luck!)

Charlie Robinson told a great tale. He was a guard at Mattel when his agent booked him for 9 episodes of Buffalo Bill. So he went into his manager's office and asked for time off. Once the eps were in the can, he went back to work as a guard. Agent called him again and said they wanted to shoot 9 more eps of Buffalo Bill. So he again went to his boss and got time off for the shooting. As soon as he was done with the acting, he went straight back to his guard duty at Mattel headquarters. When his agent called to let him know he got the role on Night Court, he went into his boss' office and the guy said "you ain't coming back here."

Markie Post was also on the panel and spoke about the experience, agreeing with previous speakers about the family feel. Plus, she and Larroquette were two of the Sam and Diane rejects from Cheers casting, so it worked out for all of them.

At this point, Linda Bloodworth-Thompson interjected to wax poetic about Markie's talent. Well, sort of. In a way only she can. Linda said Markie's talent is often under-estimated because she's so hot. At some point, the moderator caught up with her and asked her about creating Designing Women.

Her primary motivation was two-fold: tell a real story about the South and put four articulate women on the air. She was in the middle of pitching Columbia when the chairmen of CBS called and asked her to come down for a meeting. The heads of CBS loved the idea and asked "where do they work?" She through out the idea that they were decorators, someone else suggested the title of the show and away they went. She explained she was able to create deeply feminist shows because it was a different era: studio chiefs enjoyed having characters who were loud mouth broads. Nowadays, the airways are full of rape and murder victims. If you're not fuckable, you don't exist as a female on screen.

Linda's words were very jarring, and definitely beyond the ability of the moderator to contain. I fear I'm not doing her justice with my poor memory and lack of notes.

After she spoke, the Murphy Brown crew had a chance in the spotlight. And honestly, it was a bit of a let down. Murphy Brown was a seminal part of me growing up: she was a figure I could idolize and in some way relate to: hyper-articulate, takes no guff, and is funny to boot. Alas, Candace Bergen wasn't there. The creators spoke about how she grew into the role. And they came from a very regimented school of production: writers had a week to develop a story idea, two weeks to write a first draft, and one more week for the second draft. They were able to explain that the reason only the first season is available on DVD is that the songs are too expensive. That was the excuse used with La Femme Nikita, and it's now all available. I think they simply lack the strong inside motivation to get it done.

What I'm failing to fully articulate is the way Linda's speeches simply took my breath away. In the midst of this celebration of the past, she pointed out the current dearth of meaty female roles and the utter lack of depth to the women allowed on screen. She denounced stupid jokes and the iterative nature of most shows on screen. She spoke about the fact that good story-telling never goes out of style, whether its on t.v., film, or in a book. No matter how small people's attention spans seem with new technology, they'll always be willing to stop for a good story. But she's not sure studios are willing to make the space for real, quality, innovative shows. And then she threw in some ageism by saying writers today are so young they don't have any experience to draw from (though she included a caveat that some young writers are talented, just not most of them). And she ended the evening by denouncing the recent Wellesley grads in their $700 shoes who come to give her notes.

Oh, Linda, you had me with you up until you threw my sisters under the bus.

Chung insisted we muddle around afterward to speak with Linda. It was an awkward confluence of industry folks eager to press their cards into her hand. She was quite gracious, but also clearly not the person to talk to about getting a job: she doesn't haven't anything in production right now (HBO killed her last series without airing it) and her assistant handles her meetings. But she did seem happy to lend an ear to the aspiring writers and actors in the audience. Eventually, Chung interjected himself to announce that I was a Wellesley grad. She made a comment about being friends with the former First Lady (which just sounded odd because who refers to the Secretary of State as the Former First Lady?) and when I explained that I'm also a feminist peace activist, she understood that I got the over-arching point of her diatribes.

A couple of parting snapshots with Joe Regalbuto and Kelsey Gramer and we left.

By the end of the day, I simply am not the same person I was when I walked in. Apparently, my neurons may be dying. Well, now that I can articulate the cause of my melancholy, I must use my strong will to work past it.

Add this to the list of reasons I can't wait to get a dog. S/he'll be joining me in January, when I return from my trip to India for a peace conference. So much to do: must figure out where to find him/her, and most importantly - what to name him/her. I've always had male dogs, so I'm not sure how I'd do with a girl pup. Oh yes, and preparing for that peace conference is also on my to-do list.

Well, no more. The rebbetzin encouraged us to share our love of Ohr Hatorah with family and friends, and this is the primary place for me to express my ecstatic appreciation of all things cultural.

Brief background: I grew up at a conservative shul in the Valley. I learned to sing and to daven there. And my rabbi, the one who taught me for my confirmation, committed suicide. There's more I could say about my troubled relationship with organized Jewry, but I'll leave it there for now.

Rabbi Finley leads Ohr Hatorah with an eye towards explaining spiritual psychology, to prepare oneself as a receptacle for the Divine. His teaching is grounded in a neo-Hasidic interpretation of Kabbalah.

Experiencing Shabbat at Ohr Hatorah can be the most enlightening, soul expanding experience of your life. Or, if you choose to focus on the oddities, it can leave you feeling terribly isolated.

The rabbi is in the midst of teaching about Roberto Assagioli's The Act of Will. Last week, he suggested that anyone interested in purchasing the book, look for it on addall.com, which is a bookstore search engine. Through AddALL, I found a used copy and it arrived on Friday.

The best thing about studying Assagioli is that it isn't difficult to read his writing. Unlike Abraham Joshua Heschel's God in Search of Man, this book is written in perfectly modern language. It's theme can be overwhelming; but the map to a coherent existence that it offers is priceless. Some of us yearn for a deeper existence and a life of meaning must be pursued consciously. By understanding the qualities of will, the types of will, and using will to harmonize our sensations, feelings, impulses, imagination, thoughts, and intuition we can lift ourselves to a higher realm of consciousness.

Assagioli's Relationship Between Self, Will and Other Psychological Functions

Today's study session focused on this diagram, along with his egg diagram as maps to self awareness that can lead to a life of consciousness, where you reflect and expand your core truth rather than swaying with the winds of modern life.

I've only scratched the surface of the subject (I'm only on page 33 of the book), but it feels profoundly true and a helpful instruction manual for living a life of virtue. Here are some definitions, gleaned from the book:

Repression: implies unconscious condemnation or fear (or both!) and the consequent endeavor to prevent the repressed material from emerging from the unconscious to consciousness

Endurance: It has been found that refusal to accept suffering can often create neurotic conditions, while generous acceptance of unavoidable suffering leads to insight, growth, and achievement.

Initiative, Courage, Daring: This quality has two roots: one is the recognition that full and lasting security is fundamentally an illusion. The other incentive toward courage is the enhancement and stimulation given by danger, by risk.

In the meantime, think about this: what core values define you? How do you actively emanate these values on a daily basis? Do you work daily to live a life of consciousness?

Here's hoping I slow down long enough to breathe deeply and internalize these teachings each day.

Yes, 500 Days of Summer features great actors. But the amazing thing is how it combines belly laughs with pathos. The movie kept my mind engaged from the moment I sat down. And its themes continue to reverberate through me in a powerful way.

As the trailers say, it's not a love story. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who has lived the lives of both of the main characters: being loved when you're casually involved, and loving more deeply and more profoundly than your mate can withstand.

Ultimately, it led me back to a very basic question: how do you know when you've found The One? At what point does your mind stop being fearful of Giving Up Independence and fall deliciously and unequivocally into I Am A Better Person Traveling This Path With You Now and Always?

And also, p.s.: how much of our Dreams should we give up for Economic Reality? How much of our life's work should be spent on our life's passion? This is dangerous territory to tread on.. it can make you question everything about your life. Or it can reaffirm the choices you've made.

On the other hand, my friends have had different reactions to the movie. Some lose sleep worrying about Tom. Others get angry at Summer. Ultimately, the breadth of our reactions is a testament to how well the film was written and how important it is to see it.

500 Days of Summer IMDB entry
500 Days of Summer Rotten Tomatoes entry

These days, I find that I'm stuffing so much information into my day that I barely have time to breathe, let alone regurgitate it in a meaningful way.

I spend at least an hour a day reading marketing news: from e-newsletters to my Twitter feed to the articles found on my Twitter trail. Half the time, I bookmark the articles without reading them, assuming that at some magical point in the future, I'll have the time and head space to read it all. On top of that, I've got my daily work deliverables, eating, etc.

I wish I wasn't such an information junkie. Then, instead of using every new channel to gather more nuanced understanding of the world around me, I would take the time to contribute to the overwhelming flood of nonsense.

Take Twitter. I have absolutely no idea why so many people choose to write about their evening runs, their daily coffee breaks, and other diarrhea of the mouth. Do they really think I care? Do they ever stop to wonder who has time to read all this nonsense? It's bad enough I hear about headaches in FB status updates. People: leave the detritus of your life for the people who have to listen (e.g. your significant other and closest friends).

On FB, entertain me with amusing links or funny witticisms you found during the course of the day. Stop telling me what decade you're like, what nail polish color reflects your personality, and the rest of the nonsense. (Obviously, not a big fan of quizzes.)

On Twitter, Less Is Definitely More. Shireen, aka @digitalsista, has a ton of great insight to offer on social media strategy. But almost every day I think about un-following her because I just don't care to listen into snippets of a conversation begun offline that are really just the flotsam and jetsam of one woman's life. Maybe I'm too persnickety, but I want Twitter to be edited blogging: really only tell me things that I must know, not everything you can fit into 140 characters.

Not that I'm really one to talk. I feel like I update my Twitter accounts less often than my blogs. Why? Well, there's this little thing called Work. And not wanting to blab confidential client information. And, oh yes, Work. I'm more likely to post myparentsjoinedfacebook.com on my FB status than Twitter because, well, do I really need to show the whole world that I followed a link from my "work" Twitter account to a Time article that led me to the most hysterical tribute to family faux pas ever (before leaving work)? And to think, because of the floodgate that is a Twitter feed, I felt bad that I couldn't figure out who to attribute that link to.

I'm losing steam before getting to the point. I want to learn how to turn off the information flow and turn on my engagement with the web. I've lost my blog reading habits over the years of learning how to be a marketer and I doubt many people know who I am in the blogosphere or any other sphere of the web. I'm not really one of those "Connector" types sought after by marketers, unless you think about the diverse communities I touch via the WILPF sisterhood.

Pet Peeve of the Week: Market researchers describing millennial women as "post-feminist" and Gen X-ers as "Riot Grrls." These damn boxes you cram us into are getting quite suffocating.

Not sure I wound up at a point, but if you could help me learn to unsubscribe from industry e-newsletters and carve out time for my own writing in between watching E True Hollywood Stories, So You Think You Can Dance, and strategizing / executing integrated marketing, I'd really appreciate it.