Today is Squeer! lava’s something-something birthday.  She said she didn’t want a fuss, just money, but currently our pockets are overflowing with fuss, but contain very little cash.  So please join us in a rousing round of happy birthday, and break out your best breakfast wine to toast our dear lava.  I should also mention she accepts checks.

Sidney Poitier was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama yesterday, Wednesday Aug 12, 2009. Poitier, the first black man to win a Best Actor Oscar, was chosen for his contribution to acting and race relations.

This year’s awards were presented to “Agents of Change.” In presenting the medal, the President said of Potier:

“It’s been said that Sidney Poitier does not make movies, he makes milestones — milestones of artistic excellence, milestones of America’s progress.”

“Poitier,” the president added, “had not only entertained, but shifted racial attitudes, broadened hearts and brought Americans together.” Continuing, “[He] left an indelible mark on American culture” and “advanced the nation’s dialogue on race and respect. Rising from the tomato farms of the Bahamas, his talent led him to Broadway, Hollywood, and global acclaim. In front of black and white audiences struggling to right the nation’s moral compass, Sidney Poitier brought us the common tragedy of racism, the inspiring possibility of reconciliation, and the simple joys of everyday life.  Ultimately, the man would mirror the character, and both would advance the nation’s dialogue on race and respect.”

I am sure this award will be given pride of place, right between Sidney’s Oscar, and his Bale.

Because we love you and you love Paul Rudd so much you’re willing to abduct strangers who look like him, we bring you one of our favorite Rudd moments.

In no particular order…

Angela Bassett

Education: B.A. African American Studies, Yale University; M.F.A. Yale School of Drama
Fluencies: English
Causes: Youth Arts Programs, UNICEF

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
• Full scholarship to Yale
• 1993, Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, What’s Love Got to Do With It
• 1994, Academy Award Nominee – Best Actress in a Leading Role, What’s Love Got to Do with It
• 2002, Emmy Nominee – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-Series/Television Movie, The Rosa Parks Story
• 2008, Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

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Mira Sorvino

Education: B.A. (magna cum laude) East Asian Studies, Harvard University
Fluencies: English, Mandarin, French
Causes: Amnesty International

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 1989, Hoopes Prize – For her thesis on racial conflict in China
• 1995, Academy Award Winner – Best Supporting Actress, Mighty Aphrodite
• Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Mighty Aphrodite
• BAFTA Award Nominee – Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Mighty Aphrodite
• Emmy & Golden Globe Award Nominee,  Norma Jean & Marilyn
• Mirasorvone, a compound excreted by the sunburst diving beetle as a defensive mechanism, was named in her honor after she portrayed an entomologist in Mimic.

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Natalie Portman

Education: B.A. Psychology, Harvard University
Fluencies: English, Hebrew, French, Japanese, Arabic and German
Causes: Animal rights, the environment, FINCA International, Israel

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 1998, High school paper A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search and published in Journal of Chemical Education
• 1998, Tony Nomination – Best Actress, The Diary of Anne Frank
• 2002, Co-authored – Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
• 2004, pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 2004, Golden Globe Winner – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
• 2004, Academy Award Nominee – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
• 2004, BAFTA Nominee – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
• 2006, she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism

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Danica McKellar

Education: B.S. (summa cum laude) Mathematics, UCLA
Fluencies: English, French
Causes: Making math and science more accessible to young girls.

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 1998, Co-Author – Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z²
• 2007, Author – Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail
• 2008, Author – Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who’s Boss

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Rachel Weisz

Education: Bachelors Degree in English, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Fluencies: English, German
Causes: The Constant Gardener Trust, It’s Only Make Believe (bringing theater to hospitalized children), Pediatric Epilepsy Project

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 2006, Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener
• 2006, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener
• 2006, BAFTA Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Constant Gardener

_______________________

America Ferrera

Education: B.A. International Relations, USC
Fluencies: English, Spanish
Causes: Save the Children, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cancer research, Peace Games, Smiles for Success (dental care for women trying to get off welfare)

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 2007 Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical (Also nominated in 2008 and 2009), Ugly Betty
• 2007, Emmy Award Winner – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Also nominated in 2008 and 2009), Ugly Betty
• 2007 Time Magazine – 100 Most Influential People

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Lucy Liu

Education: B.A. Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
Fluencies: English, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish and Japanese
Causes: International AIDS issues, human rights, UNICEF, breast cancer research

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• Graduated from New York’s Stuyvesant High School
• Plays the accordion
• Accomplished visual artist having shown in the US and Germany
• Won Grant to study art in China
• First Asian-American female to host Saturday Night Live
• 1999, Emmy Nomination – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, Ally McBeal

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Julia Stiles

Education: B.A. English Literature, Columbia University
Fluencies: English, German, Spanish and some Italian
Causes: Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, children’s issues, Rock the Vote

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• Has built houses in Costa Rica for the underprivileged
• Board of Directors of Amend.org, a New York-based nonprofit that implements childhood injury prevention programs in Africa
• Made her directorial debut at 2007 Tribeca Film Festival with her short film Ravings

_______________________

Aisha Tyler

Education: B.S. Government with a minor in Environmental Policy, Dartmouth University
Fluencies: English, French, Russian and Swahili
Causes: Breast Cancer

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• 2004, Author – Swerve: A Guide to the Sweet Life for Postmodern Girls
• Plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home games for the Childhelp USA charity
• Regular contributor to various magazines
• NAACP Image Award

Jodie Foster

Education: B.A. (magna cum laude) Literature, Yale University
Fluencies: English, French, German

Notable Awards and Accomplishments:

• Graduated from a French-speaking prep school and was class Valedictorian
• Founded her own production company before the age of 30
• Has an asteroid named in her honor
• Dubs the French versions of her movies herself
• It would take a couple days to list the awards Jodie Foster has won.  Suffice it to say, she was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1976 at the age of 14 for her performance as Iris in Taxi Driver and has since won 2, one for The Accused and another for Silence of the Lambs, and has an arm load of other nominations.

How’d we do?  Tomorrow we’ll bring you the 10 worst.

In honor of St. David’s Day I wanted to spotlight a kick-ass Welsh woman.  However, I could only think of three Welsh women and two were Catherine Zeta Jones and Charlotte Church, so no and no.  This left me with Dame Shirley Bassey, and regardless of her country of origin she fits the bill.  If you don’t know her, you should. She sang the themes to Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, and Moonraker, and is the only singer to have recorded more than one James Bond theme song.  She’s also a gay icon, and the apple of Prince Philip’s eye (these two facts are completely unrelated).  Her career spans more than 50 years, and at age 72 she’s still as marvelous as she ever was. She is living testament that a woman can feel and be thoroughly sexy after sixty.

Here she is vamping it up at a celebration of Prince Philip’s birthday.  I defy you to tell me I’m wrong.

By way of Lisa(#1) we bring you Gail Trimble.  Ms. Trimble recently lead her Corpus Christi College, Oxford team to victory on BBC2’s University Challenge.  What did she win for being a scholarly and confident young woman?  Public vilification.  She’s maintained her head through good press and bad, and handled it all with grace. However, we are more than a bit angered and confused by the negativity.  When did being intelligent become objectionable and why? Is it jealousy, or possibly the mistaking of  a mixture of shyness and intellectual confidence for hauteur?   Whatever the root of it, we feel she’s thoroughly undeserving of this bizarre backlash and think her brilliance and self-possession should be celebrated.  So please join us in raising a glass (and our glasses) to Gail Trimble.  Well done, Gail.  Well done.

For those of you interested, here’s a video that highlights her story fairly well.

She rocked the Grammies in confection perfection.  She rocks the mic and piano, and she rocks our world.

In case you don’t know who she is, this is the object of our current girl crush:

and this is her music:

and another (Just because it’s my current favorite.  Sorry for the lack of video.):

P.S. Can someone tell Youtube that the title overlay is hideous.  I appreciate being able to tell what a video is when it’s embedded, but surely there is a more elegant looking solution than that asstastic bullshit.

Yep, and here’s why:

So, now, you down with PAB?

Thanks for the tip, koudelka

Ms. Jackson is a classically trained, award winning actress whose range and achievements have rarely been rivaled.  As testament to her range, she’s noted for what many consider to be one of the funniest performances on British TV (A Morecambe & Wise Show skit in which she plays Cleopatra), and for one of the most accurate portrayals of Elizabeth I ever committed to film. After a long and rewarding career during which she was nominated for an award most anytime she opened her mouth on screen, and for which she won two Oscars, an Emmy, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe (among others), she retired from show business to begin a career in a politics.

Since 1992 She’s been a British Labour MP (Member of Parliament), and has made two unsuccessful bids for Mayor of London.  No Shrinking violet, Jackson regularly stands up for what she believes in, even when it goes against the party line. In 2005 Jackson was one of only 12 Labour MPs to back a call for an investigation into the Iraq War, and eventually became so angered by Blair’s policies that she threatened to challenge the Prime Minister as a stalking horse candidate if he didn’t commit to stepping down.

No matter what your political convictions may be, you have to admit Ms. Jackson is an admirable mixture of talent, intelligence, substance, back bone and courage.