So, here's how this happened.
I got an email from Mike Huang over at Vine Line asking if I'd be part of a presentation with Randy Hundley, 1st rounder Brett Jackson and VL photographer Steve Green. They told me to talk about how I hooked up with VL, they'd show some slides of my work, and to plug my blog.
I said "absolutely".
Cut.
Now it's 15 minutes before the thing starts and I'm sitting up on this stage with a microphone on a stand in front of me - it looked like this.
Then Mike walks in with Jackson and introduces me. He's pretty big and looks like a movie star guy, and like a complete maroon instead of asking him anything smart about baseball I tell him a stupid story about Tyler Colvin. Then Hundley walks in. This man was an all-star stud catcher on the '69 team - set a record catching 160 games. That was the first year I remember watching the Cubs.
We shook hands and then suddenly the thing started.
They handed me a sort of outline - I was going to talk after Mike and Randy and Brett. That morning I thought out some stuff I wanted to say and I had some notes and was able to doodle while I had the half hour to get nervous.
Brett was pretty funny, Randy told about his knee injuries and how awful surgery was back then - the surgery itself was a devastating injury.
And suddenly Mike introduces me. I was supposed to talk.
I was gonna say to the crowd something like "I'm just like you guys - a regular slob Cub fan. And I do these drawings from that point of view yada yada..."
Instead, I said this to the crowd: "Uhh excuse me, but you'd TOTALLY do this if you were me."
Then to Hundley I said, "Can I have your autograph?"
It was the only funny thing I did, and Randy played along - I took this photo while it was happening (that's Mike in the background).
Then I finished my story and they moved on to Steve Green.
So for the last half hour I got to sit there and think about how I totally forgot to plug the blog, and that oh yeah, there was a screen back there for a slide show and I didn't even talk about any drawings (maybe they were showing them while I spoke).
Anyway, just wanted you to know that the guy who does this blog?
He's one slick dude.
Here's the autograph.
Mike or Lena, if you guys read this thank you again for the invitation - it was super fun even if I was kind of a bonehead.
