Swapping Heads for Convenience and Profit, or: United Media Memories, Part 4

No chapter on how cartooning causes
a lapse into despair and madness.

My previous "weird" United Media tale concerned one of my co-workers. Today's is about one of the cartoonists whose work we syndicated.

I should begin by noting that to be a syndicated cartoonist, even if you're not a licensing machine like "Dilbert" or "Garfield," is to be in very exclusive company. Back in the mid-1990s, when I worked at United Media, I saw the contract for one of our lesser cartoonists ("lesser" not in quality but in the sheer numbers of newspapers carrying his strip) and the guy was making like 65 grand to draw funny pictures.

So it's not a bad gig, considering a cartoonist is probably getting paid for other illustration work, or whatever he's doing to fill the several hours that he's not drawing comics for United Media.

A Shooting at Snoopy's House, or: United Media Memories, Part 3

Yeah, more stories.

As I take a small trip down United Media Memory Lane, I regret that there are some stories that I'm unable to tell because they're stories that were told to me; I didn't experience them firsthand.

If I could only track down the guy who told me some of these stories, I'd have him do a guest post. The crux of those pre–The Anthony Show United Media stories was that during the late 1980s, more than a couple of employees liked to consume drugs, particularly cocaine, and that resulted in episodes that were very funny when you hear them 10 years later but were likely very sad and regrettable during the time they occurred.

But I do have a couple of stories that I witnessed, and they definitely fall under the "that's weird!" category. Here's a good one...

The Day I Met Charles M. Schulz, or: United Media Memories, Part 2

Perhaps one day I will be this happy.

My role at United Media, some memories of which I shared yesterday, was in the Comic Art department, where we received the comic strips from the artists. These were either actual hard copies via mail or scanned files on our server.

I spoke to many of the cartoonists, from Scott Adams of "Dilbert" to Brad Anderson of "Marmaduke," when they had questions or if I had to hound them when they were falling behind on their deadlines. Most of the cartoonists were helpful and humble, aware of how lucky they were to be getting paid to draw pictures. A couple of them were assholes. And a few of them gave me memories worth blogging about.

The Time Gum Was Hurled at Me Because I Was Walking the Streets in a Tutu, or: Memories of United Media, Part I

R.I.P.

As I've mentioned previously, I've switched jobs many times. What I should have been doing is switching careers instead, but that's for another blog post / session with my career counselor / subject to be discussed as the police and a priest try to talk me down from the ledge of a skyscraper.

Sometimes I leave jobs at the wrong time, like when I gave notice to my manager at a job where I felt I'd have no career advancement and she informed me that she had just given notice to her boss and I knew that would have been next in line for her job and that path might have put me in a better situation than the one I'm rotting in dealing with right now.

Other times, like in the case of a more recent employer, my co-workers and I knew our Titanic hit the iceberg (the Seattle office began to absorb the New York–area departments one by one) and I was able to float away on a new-job flotilla before the whole thing sank into Midtown West without a trace.

As I'd mentioned in a bit of an aside the other day, one of my former employers — the site of one of my first real job-jobs, in fact — had finally been liquidated thanks to the acquisition, the unpredictability of the media market, the evolution of the media market, and (I'm assuming) some form of greed.

I left this company, United Media, in 1998, so I'd been long gone before several different mini-upheavals occurred prior to The Big One. However, as the site of my second-longest tenure (three years and a couple of months) at any job, the place summons several memories, and if I can stay focused and not lazy, I'm going to discuss some of them this week.

Lists of Lists, Volume 5: Jobs Edition

Not this Jobs.

How many jobs have you had? Two? Three? I've had several. So many, in fact, that my resume was once three pages long, until a career consultant told me that a three-page resume is for braggarts and lunatics, and I've since found a way to pare it down to a pair of pages.

My lists in this post will concern some of my job history, for instance:

ADDRESSES OF THE MANHATTAN-AREA EMPLOYERS FOR WHOM I'VE WORKED

1. Two Park Avenue
2. 200 Park Avenue
3. 200 Madison Avenue (the same employer as 200 Park; the office moved)
4. 611 Broadway
5. Two Penn Plaza (on two separate occasions, at the same company)
6. Somewhere on either West 21st or West 22nd, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues 
7. 45 West 18th Street (the same employer as West 21st/22nd; the office moved)
8. 130 Fifth Avenue
9. 1176 Avenue of the Americas

Scanning that list of addresses, more than looking at my resume, makes me realize I've worn out a lot of shoe leather during my career. If they wanted to do a bus tour of All The Places Where The Anthony Show Once Worked, it would take about three hours to hit everywhere, not counting the lunch break at Gray's Papaya.

Adventures in Gluttony, Part II

Angel hair = death.

Hello and welcome to the second part of my Confessions of a Disgusting Eater. Yesterday I shared memories of my burger/frozen-hot-chocolate trail of tears, and today I'll tell you about another time I ate like a death-row inmate who just learned that the governor doesn't give a crap about his two-week hunger strike.

TILL MORBID OBESITY DO US PART
About a year into my marriage, Mrs. The Anthony Show and her friend wanted to backpack through Europe. I was offered the opportunity to join them, but declined because

1. I generally hate to travel
2. We went to Greece (Mykonos and Athens and a couple of islands I don't remember) for my honeymoon, and that was enough European roughing it for me
3. I wouldn't have minded a little Anthony Time for a week

Adventures in Gluttony, Part 1

I ate a little too much on Father's Day, starting with this:

Poached eggs = boiled awesomeness.

To be honest, I eat a little too much every day, but I had a rather large breakfast at Toast, an airy breakfast place in Huntington, and then I treated myself to a small Crumbs cupcake (the kids indulged in frozen hot chocolates at the Dunkin Donuts next door), and as we walked around the downtown streets, I had that "I can't believe I ate that whole thing" feeling.

As the contents of my breakfast began to clog my pyloric valve, I thought about those times when I truly, madly, deeply ate too much.