This was definitely the year of the headband, as illustrated by Busy Phillips, Charlize Theron and Michelle Williams, and I think it totally worked!  I love a great accessory!

I love Amanda Peet!  I love Sarah Paulson! I LOVED them in Studio 60, I love Amanda Peet’s genuine happiness for Peter Dinklage.  Both of their styles are so awesome, red carpet or not…they are even gorgeous in person without a spot of makeup on!

Regardless of the headband, I have always loved Michelle Williams and I definitely think she got best speech tonight.  She always looks like an original, not a copy, which I really like about her!

Holy amazing skin!

Kate Winslet looked absolutely gorgeous!

Jessica Biel looks like such a movie star here, so radiant and divine!

Claire Danes looked stunning, and wow, what a back to that dress!

I have to admit I have never been a big fan of Lea Michele’s styling choices, but she has never looked better than she did tonight.

I also feel Emma Stone has never looked better, although I don’t usually mind her styling choice

Has Laura Dern ever looked more radiant?  I don’t think so.  I wish Laura Linney, who I think is brilliant, would have gone with a less architectural dress and something more like this.

I think that Mila Kunis’ dress illustrates the importance of proper tailoring.  The dress is cute but it just didn’t fit her correctly in the waist.

On the flip side, this look illustrates the genius of proper tailoring.  Look at how it fits her perfectly!

I think Angelina Jolie’s hair and makeup was stunning, as usual, but I was not crazy about her dress.

I think Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy are simply a gorgeous, classy, fun couple and I loved their moment on stage tonight.  Felicity looked divine!

peter dinklage wins the golden globe.

I am only talking about the craziness that is “the camera adding 15 pounds.”  I have met Julianne and she is teeny-tiny.  I believe 5 foot nothing and under 100 pounds.  She is a beautiful woman and was definitely the best dressed of the People’s Choice Awards 2012.  The glittery, backless number is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

But the outfit definitely has bad angles, unfortunately.  In about half of the photographs, it makes her look “thick” which couldn’t be further from the truth.  When the camera shoots her straight on or crops the image above her knees, she looks a lot different than the profile angles.

I hope this serves to help you realize, you can be teeny-tiny and still, the camera can be so unforgiving.

“And I just ran out of band-aids / I don’t even know where to start / ‘Cause you can bandage the damage / But you never really can fix a heart.” -Demi Lovato/Fix a Heart

It’s National Human Trafficking Day and I promise this post relates…while it may seem that we are veering off-topic for a moment, I promise, if you just keep reading, it all relates.  And by the way, while we’re chatting, if you do anything for me, at least make this issue a hot-button topic that you want to hear candidates talking about.  Because people are not for sale.  20,000 of them US citizens, by the way.

Sometimes, despite all of life’s annoyances, AKA dropping your driver’s license and losing it, God really just has a way of putting people in your path whose stories you simply need to hear.  So yesterday, I went to a DMV in the Valley to avoid the craziness that is the Hollywood DMV.  And while I did forget my checkbook and have to return to the Hollywood DMV to actually get my replacement, yesterday’s waste-of-time activity really ultimately wasn’t a waste of time.

You see, I sat down to a perfectly normal-looking eccentric woman.  Yes, she was wearing a very peculiar outfit, yes her hair needed to be brushed, but she blended it with all the other eccentricities I see in Los Angeles.  She noticed my new cross tattoo on my left wrist and asked me if I was a Christian.  And I knew the way she asked, that this wasn’t a loaded question.

It wasn’t full of the typical, “oh you love Jesus so you must hate gay people” contempt and well-earned judgment.  So I said, yes, I am, but not in the way you might assume and before I was able to become nervous, she began talking.

It was a bit like pulling teeth to find out the real root of her pain, but once I did, I knew it was one of those moments that I needed to remember for the rest of my life.  Long story short, she is probably 60 years-old and somewhat mentally-disabled.  She is not also not very physically mobile so she watches church on television, particularly TBN.

Well, she was watching and she interpreted the pastor/speaker/whomever was on TV to be saying that in order to be blessed by God they needed to give money to that particular network or cause.  I can see how she may have misheard or misunderstood the intent, cue mild mental delays, but I can also connect-the-dots and understand how she internalized a message that is rampant in prosperity theology.  So she, earnestly wanting to “be approved by God” and “needing to be blessed” completely emptied out her bank account and wrote one well-meaning check to this particular organization.

Again, I realize that there are significant problems in logic in doing so, but this woman’s heart was in the right place.  She zeroed out her bank account, got evicted and became homeless.  All the while believing that her money was going to good use and that God would ultimately bless her sacrifice.  Since then, she has been living behind a Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant and sleeping on the ground.  She eats refried beans and rummages through the trash for food.  Again, I understand that her thinking is completely illogical and off.  She has some problems.  But here’s the bigger issue.

The bigger issue is that you can donate your every penny to an organization out of a sense of guilt and shame and a gut-wrenching desire to be loved by God.  Not knowing that He loves you completely as is.  Not understanding that God wants to be kept far away from manipulative, disgusting, deceptive marketing ploys.  Not believing that if shame is involved, God isn’t.  I know we have free will.  We can do perfectly idiotic things like empty our bank accounts and become homeless.  But the thing is, this woman has some significant mental handicaps.  I wish someone on the other side of the phone, who was accepting her money, asked her if she had the money to be doing this.  I wish there was a way to stop her from doing this.  She’s on Disability, I really wish someone had financial conservatorship over her. I really wish people would just stop falsely advertising the earning of God’s grace to perfectly desperate people.  People just longing for God and ending up down this rabbit hole called American Religious Capitalism.

My heart really ached for her.  It still does.  I don’t know how I can be a part of the solution.  She wouldn’t accept a food handout.  She wasn’t stable enough for me to feel comfortable giving her my name or phone number.  She wanted to use my address to receive her mail, which just made me uneasy in my gut which I tend to listen to.  I guess all I can do is pray and lend my voice to honor her story.

And I promise, this does relate to human trafficking.  The sale of your body or the sale of your soul is very interrelated.  What people will do out of desperation to connect to God, to connect to themselves, to feel worthy and loved.  Human trafficking has personally affected me and if you looked at me from the outside, saw my teaching resume or were even decent friends with me, you would never guess that in a million years.  Someday maybe I will be brave enough to tell you how I got lucky, how I listened to my gut, how it could have been me if I would have taken just another step in a particular direction.  I’m going to give it time, years to heal, before I tell my story publicly.  I was that close, without me even looking for it.  That close to just falling in the trap that was waiting.  That close and I am a savvy, college-educated, independent woman.  That close to getting out of control and causing me major harm, if I made it out alive.  It’s not just a problem of poor people.  It’s not just a problem of “prostitutes” who “are asking for it.”  It’s very real and if you don’t care about the adult women affected, think about the other 50% of victims — the children sold — little kids sold into modern-day slavery.

So, to sum this up, people are not for sale.  God is also not for sale.  What do you think?  Lend me your thoughts!  Tell me what stirs your heart, what hits you, what you resonate with, and even what you don’t…

I am speechless that 16,000 of you follow this little blog.  That’s 15,990 more than I anticipated.  Please, please do not hesitate to drop me a note and let me know topics you’d like to see featured or a little more about yourself.

Here’s to 2012.  Let’s keep all who are hurting especially in our prayers as we greet the New Year. May 2012 be a year of healing and hope for us all.

It is my deepest, heartfelt prayer that I will continue to advocate for children as a teacher and move toward working more and more steadily in the media as an advocate for women and people with disabilities.  Fingers crossed for at least one of my two pilots getting picked up this pilot season!

Love,

Jen

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

“So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.”

-Dar Williams/The Christians & The Pagans

I must first give credit to the source of this information– Erwin McManus at Mosaic.  You can download his sermon -”Truth Between Us: Scientology and Christianity” here.

Here are some of the highlights:

• We should not be surprised that Scientology’s incubator is Los Angeles.  It should be no surprise that it encompasses the culture of LA.
• We should not be surprised that L. Ron Hubbard made his living from writing and using his imagination.  LA is the epicenter of creativity.
• LA is also the epicenter of brokenness, the artisan’s dilemma.

You can’t be an artist without being depressed.  -E. McManus

These central narratives of Scientology can be defined as “the truth between us:”

• Every human being is spirit.  We are essentially spirits with bodies.

“Scientology is where atheists and loners came together.” -Paul Haggis

• Scientology emerged in the 1950′s when the Church was focused on “sin management.”  Scientology was focused on a human’s “unlimited creative potential.”

Where it’s a little overstated is the word, “unlimited.”  Change “unlimited” to “unimaginable” and this aligns itself with the Christian perspective.  Dreams and imagination are part of how God designed us.  The human spirit does need to hear that.  Jesus does want to come to the table and speak to that.

Scientology countered the idea that we need to live in our weakness.  Christianity agrees: “in our weakness is His strength.”  Where we deter slightly is that, even in our optimal best, God is still way better.

• Scientology stepped into Christianity’s silence on creativity and imagination.

Scientology says that there are wounds and scars in our past lives that paralyze us from truly living.  If you take out “past lives” and simply state that there are wounds and scars in our past that paralyze us from truly living, we really could agree.  Scientology created the “E-Meter” to deal with this karmic debt.  Christians needed to address these deep wounds and brokenness to be relevant in LA.  Scientology has — perhaps this is why it’s “mecca” is in Los Angeles.

Some of us spend our whole lives just holding the broken pieces together (like a broken mosaic).  These things anchor us to the past.  That’s where Scientology steps in for so many Angelenos.  While most of us are born unordinary with unordinary potential, the tragedy is that we choose ordinary lives and die ordinary.

Where we align with Scientology is when we realize that living out of our best is not incongruent with God’s plan.  Yet, there’s so much stuff holding us back.  We’re living under all this rubble.

Romans 12:2 calls us to be free from the weight that standardizes us.

Again, I urge you to listen to the full sermon here.  I am longing for a world that seeks, as Erwin McManus says, to find the truth between us.  To find where we agree, where we can sit together.

I’m still on Cloud 9 on what this means for the disabled community in terms of the media! I’m going to post a video response soon, but until then, celebrate with me!

First of all, I really, REALLY loved this moment!  I wish more of the industry were like this, let’s just celebrate what’s good in eachother, right?!

And now, for the FASH-ONs. I really like to just focus on the stand-outs…

this girl is one of the sweetest and smartest in the business!

rockin' it post-baby and just love her.

lovin' her more and more, seems to be taking herself less seriously, and why is everyone saying that's "pudge"?! i wish!

love the necklace! her voice kills!

good guy, through and through!

work it!

she just screams bad-ass.

love it! so unique.

finally, katie is giving movie star!

“there’s nobody quite as mean as people being mean for jesus.” - rev. welton gaddy (baptist pastor, president of the interfaith alliance, and spiritual advisor to chely wright)

please, if you can, go see wish me away.  tell me about what you think…you can find the schedule of upcoming screenings by clicking here.  also, if you would like to learn more about chely, you can do so by clicking here.  if you are interested in purchasing her book, like me, you may do so here.  in regards to her music, i purchased lifted off the ground (favorite tracks include: “broken”, “notes to the coroner”, “like me”, “damn liar”, “wish me away” and “hamburg”).  i also purchased “between a mother and a child” (which is deeply personal to me) from her cd called, the metropolitan hotel, and “picket fences” from her cd, single white female.  had it not been for her documentary, i probably would have not been interested in her music.

if you’d like to see some of the trailers…