It all happened on Wednesday morning when Amanda’s assistant walked into Amanda’s house and saw a man who was holding Amanda’s jewelry box. When he saw the assistant he said, “What’s up bitch? I live here.” He then ran away.
While the robber got away with $900 worth of jewelry, Michelle was unharmed. I can imagine she was probably fucking scared to death, but I’m glad she’s OK. I can’t even imagine being in that situation, and it sounds like she handled it pretty well and kept her cool long enough to call the police and report the guy. Team Michelle!
I really enjoy this video, where singer Jason Mraz talks about how great it is to have an assistant. He really nails the whole “famous person who has to brag about what a nice, generous person they are” schtick.
Ever been desperate for money? Ever been so desperate for money that you applied for a job at a fast food place? Well, one man was that desperate - and then some.
A man in Haverstraw, New York went into a Taco Bell, intending to hold the place up. He pulled a gun on the clerk and demanded money. So far this is a typical robbery, right? Well, then instead of trying to get the money out of the register, the man walked to the manager’s office and asked for an application. (Also: it was 2 AM when this happened.) The manager said no. The would-be robber left.
That’s right, folks - the robber left without money or a job. That has to hurt. I mean, if you can’t even steal money from a Taco Bell at 2 AM without fucking up, you have got to rethink your career path. Here’s some unsolicited advice - might I suggest another fast food joint? This time, show up during normal business hours and leave your gun at home. You’re welcome.
Retired tennis star Andre Agassi has a new autobiography coming out, and it sounds like this book is going to be very interesting. In the book, Agassi admits to having used meth while playing competitively. He then failed a drug test, but managed not to be thrown out of tennis because he claimed that he hadn’t taken the meth on purpose… it was his assistant’s fault.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography “Open” published Wednesday in The Times of London, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant “Slim.”
“Then I come to the central lie of the letter,” Agassi writes. “I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
I am guessing from the quotes that Slim wasn’t the assistant’s real name. Although… it would be even more awesome if Agassi didn’t even have an assistant and the whole story was made up. Regardless, maybe it’s time for “Slim” to write a tell-all? I’d read it.
Remember the character Milton from Office Space? He was the guy who was laid off, but didn’t know it and kept working at the company even when they corrected a clerical error that kept paying him? A story from New Jersey is basically the opposite of that. Anthony Armatys accepted a job at a telecom company called Avaya in 2002, then changed his mind. However, he’d already been added to the company payroll, and it didn’t occur to anyone to take him off of it. Fast forward a few years, and in 2007 someone finally realized Armatys had been collecting a paycheck for not working. He has just pleaded guilty to a count of theft as part of a plea bargain.
Here’s the thing: Armatys didn’t do anything accept decline a job. He didn’t fuck with the company’s computer system or anything - the mistake was theirs. Frankly, if a company started paying me a check even though I didn’t work there, I would probably keep the money and laugh my head off about how dumb they were. I mean, did no one ever wonder why checks were going to someone who didn’t work there? Was the company such a huge bureaucracy that it took five years to figure out there was a problem and correct it? I don’t think Armatys is at fault here.
Thanks to that exact form of science known as “monitoring people on Facebook,” we now have conclusive proof that people hate Mondays. Those of us with jobs know this already, but for some reason people seem to believe things whenever there’s a study to back it up. The FB team charted status updates on particular days to see when people were most happy and most sad. Happiest day of the year is apparently Thanksgiving - I give credit to the tryptophan.
David Archuleta, the singer who came in second place on the eighth season of American Idol, has had more success than the majority of AI castoffs. However, his busy schedule means he is having some trouble keeping up with obligations. Last week, he was set to do a phone interview with a radio station in Chicago, but he forgot about it and then Tweeted an apology. That led one of the posters on the fansite Fans of David to suggest that the singer needs a personal assistant. Despite what people think from the title of this blog, I’m not opposed to people having assistants if they need them - as long as they treat said assistants respectfully, of course. As the FOD poster said:
Could this perhaps be (yet another) sign that David may benefit from a personal assistant? You know…one of those super-proficient professionally-trained staff who knows what he wants and needs before he does? Someone who has him scheduled smoothly down to the second? Why yes, I believe that now is the time.
If you decide not to hire an assistant, David, might I suggest setting up some Google Alerts? They’ve saved my ass many a time.
One of the things I love about the internet is how egalitarian it is. You can start a blog for free and write whenever you want, no matter where you live. Elena Moscatt, a Baltimore-based writer and performer, was one person who has used the internet to showcase her work. She leveraged her connections and experience in film and TV to producer her own web series, Life After Lisa. Moscatt’s credits include working briefly as Kevin Bacon’s assistant and a job as the head of craft services for The Wire. Her webseries will now be shown as part of the Baltimore Women’s Film Festival:
The series promises to mix madcap mystery and heartbreak as a film student investigates the death of Lisa, a student in a Charm City girl’s college in the mid-1980s. But its behind-the-scenes saga is more epic. It spans the early days of the Internet and the cutting edge of Web production, as well as such hot topics as the drop in Maryland filmmaking because of the state government’s reluctance to provide incentives for film production.
You can watch the first episode of Life After Lisa after the jump.
Two professors at the University of Southern California, have done a study showing that the dumber and less competent someone is, the more likely they are to yell and try to intimidate other people.
“Power holders feel they need to be superior and competent. When they don’t feel they can show that legitimately, they’ll show it by taking people down a notch or two,” says Nathanael Fast, a social psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who led a series of experiments to explore this effect.
Fast and Chen asked their volunteers to select a punishment to be given to university students for wrong answers in a hypothetical test of learning. Volunteers chose between horn sounds that ranged from 10 decibels to a deafening 130 decibels.
The volunteers who felt the most incompetent and empowered picked the loudest punishments – 71 decibels on average. Workers who felt up to their jobs, selected far quieter punishments, between 55 and 62 decibels, as did those primed to feel incompetent yet powerless.
I still can’t believe people get paid for “discovering” things that any assistant could have told you about. Then again, I suppose it’s the nature of being an assistant to watch other people get paid for shit that you deal with every day.
Ever been desperate for money? Ever been so desperate for money that you applied for a job at a fast food place? Well, one man was that desperate - and then some.
Retired tennis star Andre Agassi has a new autobiography coming out, and it sounds like this book is going to be very interesting. In the book, Agassi admits to having used meth while playing competitively. He then failed a drug test, but managed not to be thrown out of tennis because he claimed that he hadn’t taken the meth on purpose… 
Remember the character Milton from Office Space? He was the guy who was laid off, but didn’t know it and kept working at the company even when they corrected a clerical error that kept paying him? A story from New Jersey is basically the opposite of that. Anthony Armatys accepted a job at a telecom company called Avaya in 2002, then changed his mind. However, he’d already been added to the company payroll, and it didn’t occur to anyone to take him off of it. Fast forward a few years, and in 2007 someone finally realized Armatys had been collecting a paycheck for not working. 
David Archuleta, the singer who came in second place on the eighth season of American Idol, has had more success than the majority of AI castoffs. However, his busy schedule means he is having some trouble keeping up with obligations. Last week, he was set to do a phone interview with a radio station in Chicago, but he forgot about it and then Tweeted an apology. That led one of the posters on the fansite Fans of David to