He can't count on help from Suzy Hobbyjob because she has a bad habit of refusing to listen when concepts like e-mail
and defragmenting a hard drive on a regular basis:
are discussed. There's a reason for this:
She's still that pain in the arse six year old bawling her fool head off because Teacher is a meanie picking on her because the whole core concept eludes her and we're supposed to defend her being a clod:
"I just spent at least twelve hours on a complicated marketing project..."
Correct reply: "Mom, let's be honest. You've never spent twelve hours on anything. If the amount of time you spent on this project amounts to twelve hours, that means it was an hour's worth of work that you couldn't figure out and stretched into twelve through repeat effort and incompetence. Nobody gave you a project that would require twelve actual hours of work expecting it to be done this century."
"Let's also admit that the 'complicated marketing project' translates to 'posting an ad to Facebook Marketplace.' Which, again, should have taken a few minutes, not twelve hours."
"Let's also remind ourselves that unhinging our jaw and screaming has never accomplished anything. Then again, neither have you, so I guess this fits."
There was a stage in Lynn Johnston's life where she imagined retiring and turning her Toon Team that did her inking and coloring and managing her merchandise into an ad agency, where Lynn would occasionally stroll in and do some drawing for something, like Charles Schulz did with Peanuts for MetLIfe. This story was from about that time period and so it reflected Lynn's desire.
In real life what happened was that Lynn's husband had an affair with one of her Toon Team and so she fired the whole lot of them in revenge. Later on in her biography, The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston, she blamed them for not taking the initiative to start up an ad agency. Of course, it should be mentioned that none of the Toon Team had ad agency experience, so it was a ridiculous expectation.
Lynn's love for advertising came a brief period of time when she was working with Dennise after she quit working at Standard Engravers. This was the glory years of her freelance work. However, it did not last. From The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston:
Lynn managed to build up quite a few regular clients. She was receiving so much work, that she had to hire her friend Dennis Weir to pick up the slack. Lynn had worked with Dennis in the art department at McMaster University.
My work with Dennis began very positively. We were both eager to be on our own -away from the confines of the university and independent from the ad agencies that took our ideas but didn’t pay us for them! At the time, if you were asked to submit ideas for an ad campaign, for example, they might keep your sketches for “review,” reject them, have their “in-house” artists rework your idea, publish it, and claim they had come up with it themselves. This happened to me several times, and I soon learned to mistrust just about anyone who asked for preliminary sketches!
If Dennis and I had been able to work together continuously, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have owned and operated a thriving, and very competitive, advertising agency. He had amazing art and technical skills. He could write and produce everything from fine illustrations to the fast layouts and roughs needed for client presentations. We were well matched as colleagues. When we eventually went our separate ways, Dennis moved to Nova Scotia, where he began a landscaping company. He died of AIDS three years later.
Good point there. Lynn "borrowed" character design for young Michael and Elizabeth so heavily from Charles Schulz, it's amazing that he did not tell her to stop it and draw her own characters.
The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston, she blamed them for not taking the initiative to start up an ad agency.
When I was a teenager, if my dad thought I was being too idle, he liked to say, "Why don't you do something constructive, like learn Italian?" We had some vinyl record albums with Italian lessons. I think I tried one once. Lynn's ideas about her Toon Team forming an ad agency are at least as random as my dad's ideas about me becoming a fluent speaker of Italian, in service of productivity, or something.
The impression I had gotten was that Lynn wanted the ad agency to be her retirement activity. She would stop doing the comic strips, but she would keep making money with a minimal amount of work and the office would continue to be within walking distance of her house.
He can't count on help from Suzy Hobbyjob because she has a bad habit of refusing to listen when concepts like e-mail
and defragmenting a hard drive on a regular basis:
are discussed. There's a reason for this:
She's still that pain in the arse six year old bawling her fool head off because Teacher is a meanie picking on her because the whole core concept eludes her and we're supposed to defend her being a clod:
Reply
"I just spent at least twelve hours on a complicated marketing project..."
Correct reply: "Mom, let's be honest. You've never spent twelve hours on anything. If the amount of time you spent on this project amounts to twelve hours, that means it was an hour's worth of work that you couldn't figure out and stretched into twelve through repeat effort and incompetence. Nobody gave you a project that would require twelve actual hours of work expecting it to be done this century."
"Let's also admit that the 'complicated marketing project' translates to 'posting an ad to Facebook Marketplace.' Which, again, should have taken a few minutes, not twelve hours."
"Let's also remind ourselves that unhinging our jaw and screaming has never accomplished anything. Then again, neither have you, so I guess this fits."
Reply
Elly likes to inflate how important the tasks she pretends to do are. It helps her to avoid admitting how no one is really counting on her.
Reply
There was a stage in Lynn Johnston's life where she imagined retiring and turning her Toon Team that did her inking and coloring and managing her merchandise into an ad agency, where Lynn would occasionally stroll in and do some drawing for something, like Charles Schulz did with Peanuts for MetLIfe. This story was from about that time period and so it reflected Lynn's desire.
In real life what happened was that Lynn's husband had an affair with one of her Toon Team and so she fired the whole lot of them in revenge. Later on in her biography, The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston, she blamed them for not taking the initiative to start up an ad agency. Of course, it should be mentioned that none of the Toon Team had ad agency experience, so it was a ridiculous expectation.
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Well, ridiculous expectations are par for the course for someone who just got handed a career but won't admit it.
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Lynn managed to build up quite a few regular clients. She was receiving so much work, that she had to hire her friend Dennis Weir to pick up the slack. Lynn had worked with Dennis in the art department at McMaster University.
My work with Dennis began very positively. We were both eager to be on our own -away from the confines of the university and independent from the ad agencies that took our ideas but didn’t pay us for them! At the time, if you were asked to submit ideas for an ad campaign, for example, they might keep your sketches for “review,” reject them, have their “in-house” artists rework your idea, publish it, and claim they had come up with it themselves. This happened to me several times, and I soon learned to mistrust just about anyone who asked for preliminary sketches!
If Dennis and I had been able to work together continuously, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have owned and operated a thriving, and very competitive, advertising agency. He had amazing art and technical skills. He could write and produce everything from fine illustrations to the fast layouts and roughs needed for client presentations. We were well matched as colleagues. When we eventually went our separate ways, Dennis moved to Nova Scotia, where he began a landscaping company. He died of AIDS three years later.
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this is really ironic, or do I mean MORonic, considering her tendency to rip off other cartoonists who happen to be more talented.
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Good point there. Lynn "borrowed" character design for young Michael and Elizabeth so heavily from Charles Schulz, it's amazing that he did not tell her to stop it and draw her own characters.
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There is so much more to running an ad agency than being able to draw. What a ding-dong!
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A ding-dong who had her hand held all her life.
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Like many of Lynn's ambitions, she seemed to feel that if she saw someone else do the work, then she could do the work.
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This perspective did seem to make her think she could do anything and everything.
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I think it's good she has confidence, but it is too bad that confidence did not translate into the actual ambition to learn to do those things.
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It's Dunning-Kruger confidence!
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The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston, she blamed them for not taking the initiative to start up an ad agency.
When I was a teenager, if my dad thought I was being too idle, he liked to say, "Why don't you do something constructive, like learn Italian?" We had some vinyl record albums with Italian lessons. I think I tried one once. Lynn's ideas about her Toon Team forming an ad agency are at least as random as my dad's ideas about me becoming a fluent speaker of Italian, in service of productivity, or something.
Reply
The impression I had gotten was that Lynn wanted the ad agency to be her retirement activity. She would stop doing the comic strips, but she would keep making money with a minimal amount of work and the office would continue to be within walking distance of her house.
Reply
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