4:59 PM
Okay, story time:

A few mights ago, my friend Chris and I went out for dinner. We were told it would be about twenty minutes before we could get a table, so we went to wait in the nearby bar. I was sitting there conversing and drinking my Diet Coke when a complete stranger walks up to me and asks, "Hey--don't I know you?"

The clever reader will have noticed that I labelled him "a complete stranger" in the previous sentence and already know my answer: "I don't think so..." I said. To be honest, he looked a little drunk. Maybe he thought I was his long-lost roommate Skippy or something.

He squints at me for a second longer, then grinned and said, "I know! You were in The Onion!"

So I was. Some of you know this already. For those who don't, here's the photo he remembered:


(Those who want to read the full story and can handle a 400K page load will find it here.)

This was six years ago. (And it's a bad picture, I might add.) The story was reprinted once, deep inside another issue, but to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been in any of the Onion's books (though they must be running out of reprint material--I expect it should show up soon.)

We chatted for a few minutes about comics and the late, lamented Pic-a-Book, and then he wandered off to hit on "The TEAM Girls", who were mascots for a local radio station or something.

Afterward, I turned to Chris and said, "No offense, but I'll be lucky to remember you in six years, let alone somebody I saw in a newspaper photo..."

Now if only it had been a single woman who had asked, Chris might have had to find his own ride home. I guess I have to keep waiting to cash in on that fifteen minutes...

(Edited when somebody pointed out that as the date of the story was on the article, I didn't need to estimate how long ago it was published. I is dumb.)