I recently returned from The National Society of Newspaper Columnist Conference, which was held in Ventura, California. My new writing group, BFF, Karen Rinehart, award-winning humorist and author, cajoled me into attending and I have to say I enjoyed every minute—except for that one time I waited in a long line for a drink, ordered a delicious beverage only to find I had no money, but I digress.
I’d like to say that I hung with all of my contemporaries at the Crown Plaza Hotel, but reality bit when I met Jeff Zaslow from The Wall Street Journal and co-author of “The Last Lecture.” I mean really, I write the humor column for the b-town blog (not that there is anything wrong with that) and I don’t recall winning any awards recently or for that matter have any other credentials that allowed me entrance to such an esteemed society. But times are hard and Karen said, “It doesn’t matter, they need people to fill the conference room, all the newspapers are shutting down or going Chapter 11, you could be a graffiti tagger and they’d let you in.” So I went.
