No dinosaurs, no Donnie Darko, no Sam Hall

The post is late tonight and, for that, full responsibility can be thrown squarely across the feet of one Stephen Spielberg, who has been ruthlessly distracting me from Jake with a film about dinosaurs. As someone who was once lovingly presented with a mammoth tusk and back tooth, and has a Roman urn to hold cocktail umbrellas, I thought I'd take this opportunity to examine Jake Gyllenhaal's problem with dinosaurs.


As it turns out, we should be grateful for our toothsome ancestors because, if it hadn't have been for the existence of dinosaurs, the acting industry could have lost Jake Gyllenhaal forever and the movie industry's loss would have been eastern philosophy's gain. Fortunately, Columbia University is the only university in the world which insists on its students knowing the name of each bone in every dinosaur that ever stomped the earth. According to Knight Ridder back in 2001, 'Jake followed his sister to Columbia University in New York, but unlike her, he did not graduate. He says his decision to leave school had nothing to do with his grades. "Actually, my grades were pretty good, except for the `F' I got in my class on dinosaurs. That was the hardest class I ever took."'


Even though, back in 2006, one might remember, Jake went bowling in Texas with Lance Armstrong and adopted the pseudonym
'Jakeosaurus' for his scorecard, his antipathy to the fourlegged colourful lizards was entrenched. Jake told GQ in 2004: 'I was taking a class in dinosaurs... We had to memorize every bone in every dinosaur. And I remember sitting in this class, like, 'What the fuck am I doing here? I have this huge opportunity in front of me.' So I just went from movie to movie, because I didn't want to go back to school. [My parents] both freaked out about it: 'You gotta finish college, Jake.' And I was like, 'No, I don't.' That was incredibly freeing for me.'


But it could have been a lot worse: 'I went to Columbia, and Columbia has this core deal in the first two years, they’re famous – you know when you’ve met a Columbia student because you can talk about the core, it’s really weird. Like Brown students, they’re like, “Did you take African drumming?” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah.” At Columbia it’s different. But I learned really core modern western thought in two years and what shaped that, and I feel myself very well educated because of it. So whether I graduate and I get the degree – I’m just hoping for one of those honorary degrees.'


While I'm in a scientific bent of mind, I thought I'd (slightly) quote from an article which took the laws of physics to The Day After Tomorrow (a worthwhile task, I'm sure you'll agree), a film the study took pains to explain but could not spell. 'It would be very difficult to mathematically predict the exact damage done by the high velocity storm surge in The Day After Tommorow. However, we can get a rough idea of its destructive potential by comparing it to a wind with similar kinetic energy. The famous Bernoulli equation indicates that when a moving fluid like a wind or water flow is stopped, say by running into a wall, the kinetic energy of the flowing fluid will be converted into a pressure acting on the wall. Obviously if the pressure is too high the wall collapses... [a lot missing here]... Note, that we deliberately ignored the gravitational potential energy term in the Bernoulli equation for the sake of simplicity.'


So, ipso facto, if it had not been for dinosaurs, there would have been no Donnie Darko.

Includes pictures from IHJ.