This week in Obvious...

It took a scientific study to prove that dogs can get jealous.

Seriously, anyone who's ever had more than one dog at the same time could have told you this. When I was a kid we had three dogs. I had an uncle with five, and my cousins had two. On the holidays there would be ten dogs under one roof. You could easily tell that they all had distinct personalities, and they would get mad about things, especially if you paid more attention to one over the other.

In this study they had two dogs do tricks, and after then did it one got fed and the other didn't. The hungry dog became agitated.

I can't wait to see their next $10 million study when they dump a bucket of water on the floor and then see if the floor is wet. It should really change our perceptions of the world.

Bad way to start your morning

Know how sometimes you wake up early in the morning and think, "oh shit, I have to go to work" then you remember that it's Saturday, and you can go back to sleep since you have nowhere to go? Isn't that a great feeling?

I had the opposite this morning. I opened my eyes thinking it was Saturday for some reason, then remembered that it was actually Friday and I had to get up and go to work.

Total bummer.

I think Starbucks coffee is more addictive than other coffees

I have no legitimate data to back up my hypothesis, but it really wouldn't surprise me if I'm actually right.

All I know is that back when I used to drink a ton of coffee I never got headaches when I went without it for a day until I started brewing starbucks coffee in our office.

Scientists, get on this.

B.R.A.S.

I've recently coined this term to explain the problem found in many pieces of historical fiction, in particular scripts about significant figures in history. I call it B.R.A.S., which stands for Biopic Reach-Around Syndrome. It occurs when the writer holds his subject in too high a regard, and therefore spends the entire script attempting to jerk them off/perform cinematic fellatio on them.

It's always a significant point in history, and the people are always passionate, never doubt themselves, and come up with marvelous displays of their own brilliance. It's never, "a man walks into a bar and meets a friend for a drink". It's always, "Our hero walks into [insert name of famous bar] while the TV shows news coverage of [insert seminal moment in history] and meets [insert other famous figure]. They proceeded to be awesome together."

The writer puts his subject up on a pedestal, and so he/she ceases to be human. Then the story comes off flat, like it's kissing someone's ass. This format works fine when you're doing short reenactments for a History Channel documentary, but doesn't work for a movie.

The reason it happens so often is that movie scripts take a long time to write, so for a writer to devote the time to writing a biopic they have to like the person enough to devote months of their lives to writing a story about that person. Generally they hold this figure in high regard, and can't help but try and show them in the best light possible.

The other reason is that a lot of people in LA are star-fuckers. To them, a story is interesting if there are famous people in it, even if the story isn't very exciting to begin with. Going to Starbucks for a coffee isn't interesting, and these people agree. However, if you go to Starbucks for coffee and George Clooney is line in front of you, these people now think that's a fantastic story worth telling. And maybe it is worth telling to your co-workers when you sit back at your desk with your latte, but it's not something you should put in your memoirs, and it's definitely not something worth writing a movie about.

Plus a lot of biopic movies are M.O.W.'s on TV networks, which tend to have a lower quality of writing than more mainstream movies.

I'm not saying all biopics are like this, but the biopics that succeed are the ones that try to get at the truth of their subject, not jerk off to their memory on celluloid.

The Multiplicity Sushi Restaurant

There's a sushi restaurant down the street from our office, which we assume is family run. We assume this because nearly every person who works there is identical, with the exception of a woman we assume is their mom, because she also kinda looks like them. Either the guys running the place are identical triplets, or they're the results of a strange cloning experiment. Another piece of evidence supporting the cloning theory is that one of the "brothers" could be described as slightly off, by which I mean we believe he may have some sort of social anxiety problem. But then again , we're Hollywood assistants, what the hell do we know.

In the movie Multiplicity, Michael Keaton made clones of himself so he could have more personal time. Then the clones made a clone of one of themselves, who was then a little slow. In the end, the two regular clones and the "special" clone went and opened up a pizza parlor together.

Now since this Sushi place is located right between a whole bunch of movie production companies, I'm wondering if the guys who developed Multiplicity ate at this restaurant, saw all these clone-type brothers, and that gave them the idea. It's Hollywood, crazier things have happened.

Funny timing

One of my bosses thinks that unless I'm doing company work during every waking hour of my life I'm being a slacker, and that "everyone in the industry does this" while failing to mention that other people in the industry also get paid overtime and get health benefits, which I do not. I also don't have any real hope of advancing within the company since it's a very small operation, and this guy hasn't done enough in town to really add any prestige to my job. It's only a matter of time until I move on to elsewhere and this is just another line on my resume, so I have no incentive whatsoever to go the extra mile here and sacrifice what little free time I still have left.

He was giving me shit for not taking scripts home with me every night during the week, which is ridiculous because we don't even get that many scripts in the office, even if I did have time to read it between leaving the office at 8pm and coming back the next morning at 8:45.

Right after I walked out of his office saddled with a pile of annoying crap to go through over the weekend I got an email from my college "alumni in entertainment" group with a job listing for a Writer's Asst job on a TV show. This is exactly the kind of job I want to have next since I want to write for TV, plus it's a full time job with benefits since it's set up at a studio.

I'm totally applying for this.

Got sick

I caught a cold on my flight back to Boston on Wednesday. This is what happens when I don't take red-eye flights. See, on the red-eye no one really takes their kids with them, it'd be cruel to the kids. On the rare times you see a kid on a red-eye you think "wow, that mom must either be really strapped for time or must not like her kid."

Either way the result is fewer children on the plan, ergo, fewer passengers carrying every germ they picked up that week in elementary school, therefore fewer germs in the air on the plane. When I fly during regular human hours, there are plenty of kids. And now I have a sore throat.

I took yesterday off from work, and while it was nice to be able to sit on my ass and watch DVD's and drink tea, my stupid east coast puritanical work ethic makes me feel guilty even about that, so I only took the one day. Now I'm at work, and I don't want to be here. I'm tired, and my throat hurts worse than it did this morning.

Also on the plus side, NewGirl (who isn't so new anymore, but I can't just call her "Girl") brought me some soup from Canter's last night. It was very sweet of her, and the soup was very good. Gotta hand it to the Jews, they can makes some pretty good comfort food.