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Hey Alfred, I have an assignment for you,” said an editorial assistant standing beside my desk.
“Yeah, what do you need?” I asked glowingly. It was my first day at work, and I was pumped that a writer was actually talking to me.
“Well, I need you to order me some blow-up dolls. I’m gonna review them,” he replied.
I accepted the task and roughly an hour later had ordered a fat doll, a midget doll, an old lady doll and even a sheep blow-up doll, which even contained an insertion hole.
My name is Alfred Schulz and over the summer I was an intern at Maxim magazine.
When people find out I spent my summer in New York City working at Maxim, they tend to have some preconceived notions regarding the situation, so I will clarify some things for you.
* “Were you, like, hanging out with models and stuff?” No. Believe it or not, models don’t hang out in Maxim offices, as much as that disappointed me. But I did stop by one photo shoot for about two minutes to drop something off, and the no-name model there was totally into me. Stop laughing!
* “Dude, what celebrities did you meet?” I will answer that question with a question of my own: Does Executive Editor Charles Coxe count as a celebrity? If no, then I guess I didn’t meet any celebrities.
* “How friggin’ awesome was it living in New York for the summer?” Pretty awesome, but when you’re not getting paid to work and you sleep on your brother’s floor in a one-room studio apartment the size of a dorm room in Gannett, you’re not exactly living it up. But yes, it was very, as you say, awesome.
This was not an internship consisting of making copies and getting the staff coffee. We actually did work. My assignments varied daily, but some duties were to be done on a regular basis. The Maxim interns spend a lot of quality time reading the countless amounts of letters from readers. It’s pretty sad when a delusional Maxim fan sends a really lame idea to the office addressed to the
editor in chief and doesn’t realize a 21-year-old intern reads it and tosses it in the trash. No, Maxim does not want to do a story on how much you and your girlfriend party.
When I wasn’t reading the drivel that were the reader’s letters, I was told to do a lot of research. I found contact information on various athletes, comedians and musicians. I looked up archived articles on potential interviewees and sometimes was told to look up obscure trivia. When it came to finding out how to contact celebrities, I had no idea how easy it was. All I had to do was call up some public relations company and say, “I’m from Maxim magazine. Can you tell me how to contact so-and-so?” And they didn’t even question who I was. I could have been some creepy stalker, which I’m not saying I’m not, but I was blown away by how trusting the PR people were of magazine researchers.
Maxim is the No. 1 men’s general interest magazine in the country, but with no office dress code and a bar located within the office walls, the typical midtown Manhattan workplace doesn’t exactly exude professionalism, but everyone works hard, I swear.
People look at Maxim as a fraternity guy’s guide to life, but the writers give a different impression. Made up of an assortment of music nerds, movie buffs and trendy types, the writers can be heard talking about diverse topics from the new Modest Mouse single to how awesome the new Batman movie trailer looks. And by the way, it does look pretty sweet. I hope I’m not destroying the image some of you had of a typical Maxim employee looking like a beer guzzling frat boy, but the office is a tad more low-key.
Maxim is truly a sweet gig for an intern. I was fortunate to have my own desk and actually sit between the sports editor and gear editor. People who I should have been intimidated by were the people I joked around with every day. The other three interns and I were allowed and encouraged to attend the editors’ meetings and pitch ideas. Obviously, the ultimate goal was to get something I wrote published, and that opportunity came more than once.
The critics say that Maxim is a magazine full of sophomoric humor, a bastion of boobies, and beer references. Guess what? The critics are right. But that doesn’t change the fact that I had the internship of my short meaningless life there. And the best part is, I was allowed to keep the fat blow-up doll. Her name is Bertha, and she rocks my world.
Bangor Daily News