And I Have the Memories to Prove It
Today, December 16, marked 27 years since Paul Rugg and I were offered jobs at Warner Brothers TV Animation. We were over at Paul's house watching Zontar: Thing From Venus, drinking coffee, eating chocolate donuts, and smoking. We'd just turned in scripts for some new show called Animaniacs. (Mine was "Draculee, Draculaa.") Paul's wife was off earning money as a social worker, while my future wife was still employed at the magazine I'd quit two months earlier. Rugg and I were performing improv and sketch comedy at the Acme Comedy Theatre. (Along with cast member Adam Carolla.) Money was very tight. The payment for one script would really help out my Christmas.
Then Kathy Page, Tom Ruegger's assistant, called to offer us staff jobs and the trajectory of our lives veered sharply into an unexplored cosmos.
We were amazed, stunned, numb. Walking outside, we smoked more and talked it over. Should we take the jobs or would they pollute our comedy pureness by turning it commercial? We would accept the work immediately.
Now it all seems opaque. If it weren't for the Web and talking to Paul Rugg yesterday, I'd swear the whole experience never happened. But I'm glad it did. (Paul, too.) So thanks to Tom and Sherri Stoner. (And her husband, M.D. Sweeney, our Acme director, who recommended us.)
Note: After thirteen years of blogging, I'm running out of life events to chronicle.
Notes: 2019
A little hyperbole last year. I have plenty of life events and more on the way. Now then, Paul's episode was about a pet shop, I believe. In 1991 I wrote on a Mac Classic. (They look so quaint now, like a fancy radio from 1938.) Jeffrey Dahmer, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma and Louise, the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the number of computers on the newly commercialized Web reached one million.
Notes: 2020
A little hyperbole last year. I have plenty of life events and more on the way. Now then, Paul's episode was about a pet shop, I believe. In 1991 I wrote on a Mac Classic. (They look so quaint now, like a fancy radio from 1938.) Jeffrey Dahmer, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma and Louise, the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the number of computers on the newly commercialized Web reached one million.
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| Not mine, but similar. |
What a year! (Wednesday will be 29 years, but close enough.) Pandemics, riots, politics. It's like 1968 on crystal meth. What's new? Well. You can now obtain the Top 5 Dating Tips of H.P. Lovecraft. Yes, that weird horror guy. For details, go to this nifty spot.
Notes: 2021
NOW it's 30 years. After three decades, events merge together into a clot of time. But I'll never forget that day. A life-changer.
4 comments:
Time....where DOES it go?! I was just reminded of a camping event that's 40 years past. And Animaniacs is now nearly 30?!?! Yowza! And that computer?! Love it.
As for the current time, I wouldn't mind forgetting 2020 ever happened. In five years from now. I want to look back on this time and say it was just a bad dream I had after too much pizza.
If you can, keep your current computer and compare it to the next gadget. Twenty measly years doesn't seem like a lot of time but as technology goes, it's mind boggling!
Great old Mac Classic.
It lasted me many a year.
Is that one of those computers that took the floppy discs? OY! My age is showing. Yet, oddly enough, a fond memory.
Apple products didn't accept the floppy.
It was a cracker-sized disc, but I can't remember any more.
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