A quick update about work.
For those coming in late, Diamond Comic Distributors, my employer for the past eighteen years, filed for bankruptcy in mid-January. For the past month, since mid-May, I have been working for Diamond under a Transition Services Agreement (or TSA); the company was bought by Ad Populum, but I remained employed by Diamond.
The TSA ends this coming Monday, on June 30th, and that will be my last day with Diamond.
The good news is, on Thursday I was offered a job with Ad Populum to begin on July 1st. The offer emails rolled out over the afternoon, and some people on my team had received their offers before Marketing’s weekly Teams meeting, while others had not, and seeing coworkers receive their offer emails in real time during the meeting was very much like seeing them find a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket.
For now, I will do what I’ve been doing for the past eighteen years, and I will continue working hybrid from home and the former Diamond Select Toys offices in Hunt Valley. That may change. I don’t know yet.
There’s some onboarding on Tuesday — complete paperwork and benefits enrollment, Zoom call to learn about the payroll system, that sort of thing. I’ve never used Zoom.
Pay remains the same, PTO is less (due to accruals and elevators over eighteen years–I thought they might have grandfathered in the elevators), but health benefits are much cheaper. (Diamond HR was always a bit snarky about that, too, openly saying in the annual open enrollment period that they were cost shifting to the employee as much as they legally could. I really think if Larry Swanson could have gotten away with offering no health insurance, he would have.)
I haven’t started a new job in eighteen years. I don’t know what I should wear for my first day.
Peter Capaldi appeared with Scottish band Franz Ferdinand at Glastonbury yesterday.
I’ve never connected with Franz Ferdinand — something I’ve mentioned here in 2004 and here again in 2011 — and I always struggle to explain why. Friends think I should like them, I feel like I should like them, I’ve given them many chances, and they never click. They’re super talented, they make good music, they’re not for me. And that’s okay. I don’t have to like “Take Me Out.”
Still, it’s always nice to see Peter Capaldi, and he’s rocking his Series 8 haircut, I see.
And now I glumly realize that Series 8 was eleven years ago…
Facebook thinks I know…
No, Facebook. I do not know Scott Bessent. I do not want to know Scott Bessent. He is not my friend. I doubt he’s anyone’s friend.
No, Facebook, I will not be adding him as a friend.
On the other hand, Facebook thinks I need this shirt.
While I would not wear that, the design is cool. A samurai kitty, firing a pistol, riding a dinosaur while a volcano explodes. I would watch that movie.
Facebook also has another unlicensed character-themed Washington Nationals jersey for me, this one featuring Godzilla.
You know what? I don’t dislike this, though I wish that, since it’s a Washington Nationals jersey, Godzilla were terrorizing the nation’s capital. Still not going to buy it, and as I said about the Peanuts jersey, it looks like a minor league theme night jersey, but I don’t dislike it. It’s fun.
I do know people at work who would buy the Baltimore Orioles version of this jersey. I will not bring it to their attention, though. I’m sure Facebook will serve them the ad tailored to their liking — and their team — soon enough.
I found my original job description for Diamond Comics, from May 2007, while going through my email archives yesterday.
Now I understand why Dan Manser, the department director, said to me one day, several years in, that my job was the “entry-level job in the department.”
I don’t think there’s anything particularly “entry-level” about it — I had to learn to program VBA! — especially given that, being responsible for the Order Forms, I was very much responsible for the ability of retailers to order product and our ability to sell it to them. The responsibility level, not to mention importance to the company’s business model, doesn’t match the entry-level-ness cited here.
But it does explain the pay, which was a significant cut (five figures!) from EB Games.
Facebook suggested another baseball jersey to me, but a jersey with a difference. It’s not a jersey for a specific team. It’s just a garment.
And it’s Monty Python.
There are a lot of things I like about this.
It’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail-inspired.
It’s Bayeux Tapestry-inspired.
It appeals to both my sense of the absurd and my love of history. I would probably like this more as a poster than as a baseball jersey, but overall I find it clever.
Here’s the thing. And I write this, fully cognizant of the fact that I’m a hypocrite on this point, as I’ve bought a number of unlicensed Holy Grail-inspired shirts from TeeFury over the past fifteen-ish years.
Why isn’t this an official Monty Python product? Why isn’t Monty Python, as a business entity, doing more to exploit the licensing possibilities in their oeuvre? There’s a little bit of official Monty Python merchandise for sale on their official website, and then there’s TeeFury’s regular offerings of unlicensed Holy Grail shirts, not to mention other unlicensed Facebook schlock like this jersey.
Eric Idle, for whom I have no particular love, complained last year about having to work because Python just doesn’t have an income stream, and then I look at people exploiting the Monty Python IP like this, with no money going back to Python, and I wonder–“Well, why doesn’t Python have an income stream?”
There are things Monty Python could do with licensing, and they don’t. It’s been ten years since the Holy Grail POP! figures from Funko. There was a Python Monopoly set that was maybe fifteen years ago. (It was early-ish in my Diamond career. Yes, I have one.) I suggested to Diamond Select Toys at one point Select figures based on Holy Grail and Minimates based on Holy Grail and Life of Brian. People want Holy Grail LEGO, and while LEGO may not be interested — though given how heavy they are into licenses at this point, who can say — there are other manufacturers of off-brand LEGO-like bricks that could run with the license. (I’ve been very pleased with Pantasy’s The Little Prince sets.)
My point is: Monty Python licensing money is being left on the table. I see it every day on Facebook. While underground, unlicensed Monty Python merchandise may be in the anarchistic, anything-goes spirit of the troupe, it is also theft.
Maybe Eric Idle wouldn’t have to work as hard in his eighties if Python’s management got their licensing in order.