You're not gonna pull one over on ME! Not gonna find MY picture next to the definition of gullible in the dictionary.
Why's that you ask?
Let's go back a few weeks...
I'm looking at the upcoming schedule... normally I just try to take it one day at a time to avoid a total implosion of my cranial cavity. But it was the end of one week... time to look ahead at the next one.
And there it was... staring at me like a gag joke to end all jokes.
On Tuesday... scheduled senior... Taylor Johnson.
WAIT A MINUTE...
Those of you that faithfully follow my blogs know that I have a good friend and former senior in Taylor Johnson. I took one glance and saw that name and my FIRST though was that #MackDaddyJohnson had pulled a fast one on my unsuspecting secretary and booked a faux session as a way to be a wise guy.
It's not a new concept... seems as though friends of mine have been targeting my poor secretary for years. My college roommate particularly enjoys taking advantage of my secretary's lack of overall sports knowledge and then likes to call up... take a false name... and then let her come to me with the phone.
"Bryan... it's Roger Clemens on the line."
or
"Fran McCaffery would like to speak with you."
So with that backdrop in mind... I thought for SURE that THIS type of thing was happening again.
Alas, I was just a jaded skeptic because, not-so-surprisingly, there actually IS a few other Taylor Johnson's roaming the planet... and this one just happened to be from South Tama instead of a member of the East Marshall Class of 2010.
I shared this little coincidence with my senior guy a couple weeks back... and we got a good laugh out of it. And while they clearly aren't the same guy, they did have something in common.
A love for basketball. More on that in a second.
The current incarnation of Taylor Johnson didn't have many requests. His mother, Deanna, told us that she felt fortunate just to GET him here for the session. I was kinda surprised by that after we got Taylor here because instead of perhaps carrying a chip on his shoulder or grouching through the session like guys that REALLY don't want to be here would tend to do, he actually had an easy goin' attitude and a smile to match.
Just the one regular outfit to tackle, I got that out of the way on this cold October day, and then it was time to fulfill that one request.
I asked Mr. Johnson if there was anything he wanted to have me do special with his South Tama basketball outfit... and surprisingly.. he perked up.
"Yeah... just wait a second... let me get my phone."
Taylor went and grabbed his smart phone and proceeded to call up the ONE image he HAD to have.
I was expecting him to perhaps find my website... or another senior image that he came across somewhere... for me to emulate.
What I was shown, was something far different.
Taylor turned his phone around and what I saw... was a video game.
A video game cover, to be exact.
For reference it was the NBA 2K12 cover that features none other than Michael Jordan. I took one glance at the image that I'm sure SOMEONE at 2K Sports was paid handsome sums to come up with, and gave Taylor an honest answer.
"I've never done anything like that before."
Half of me thought it was beyond the scope of this session... and the other half thought it might be beyond my own capabilities. Take a second to Google NBA 2K12... you'll understand my apprehension.
I had been eyeballing some digital downloads for several months now that I THOUGHT might get me somewhere in the stratosphere with this 2K Sports image.. and this was just my excuse to get me off the fence and back in the business of saying YES instead of NO to Taylor's question.
I didn't make any promises, but I told him I'd give it my best shot.
The result, I'm happy to report, is at the beginning of this blog. To say I'm ecstatic about what Taylor and I created would be an understatement larger than saying that the presidential advertisements are getting old at his point.
I posted the image on our core website yesterday at around 12:30 p.m. and I don't think it was even five minutes before Taylor had discovered it was there... shot it with his cellphone and re-posted it to facebook with glowing remarks.
A) Taylor is really stalking my website. B) Thanks man.. for pushing me out of the box.
I'd like to think that our sports stuff is as good as any in the area... but I smell new level of awesomeness coming on with this spark and infusion of photoshop wizardry now in our bag of tricks.
I've got some learning and tweaking to do, for certain. But in the meantime, Taylor Johnson is the beneficiary of not being afraid to ask for the impossible. He might not have six NBA titles, but he does look like he's got his very own video game now... and for that, I bet he keeps on smiling that easy goin' smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment