Is This a Joke? No? Really?

Twitter is a wonderful tool.  It connects people all across this planet who would almost certainly have never met any other way.  Recently, I have begun a bit of a dialogue with author Derek Haines after we had both been mutually "following" one another on Twitter for many months.

I believe (dare I say it) that Derek followed me first, although for the life of me I never figured out where he found me.  Someone we both know must have put me on a "Follow Friday" list of some kind and he decided, "Hey, why not?"  I followed back, and I've been reading his tweets ever since.  The really cool part is that he lives in Switzerland, a place I have not yet been, and even if I had been there, chances are good I would not have met him in the lobby of my hotel or hanging around near my tour bus.

Then, one day, he did something I couldn't resist.  He tweeted about the Monkees, and he wrote a blog post about Peter Tork.  You see, the Monkees are a secret vice of mine.  (Yes.  I know.  I got a lot of grief about this from my family, too, especially my oldest sister.)

No ... I was not around for the Monkees the first time around.  I'm on the backslide to 40, but I'm not old enough to have been around in 1966, much less to have bought a record.  But, I was around for the Monkees reunion tour in 1985, and I was old enough to buy records then.  

(And, when I was in law school, I did see Mickey, Davey, and Peter do a concert in Boston on the town green.  And, yes, I still have Monkees paraphrenalia and copies of the TV show in my house.  Satisfied?)

But, I digress.  Derek was tweeting about the Monkees, and, oddly enough, Jimi Hendrix (which is not as odd as you might think it is given that Hendrix and the Monkees have a past ... but there I go, digressing again).  Anyway, I couldn't resist answering tweets about my favorite manufactured pop group.  One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I got the nerve to send Derek (a real, genuine, published author) a link to my Blog Challenge.

Then apparently we all jumped down a rabbit hole, because the next thing I knew, Derek was sending me direct messages about doing a guest post on his blog.

Yeah.  Wow.  I totally agree.

Of course, once I pinched myself, and quizzed him to death about whether he was kidding, pulling my leg, or otherwise playing some European style of practical joke of which I was not familiar, I said "Of course!"

Then I said to myself, "Well, crap, now I have to think of something clever to write."

So, all that was a long way of saying ... hey, I'm writing over at Derek's blog today.  No, all of this wasn't my blog post, it was just a little prequel for your reading entertainment.  You can find the real blog post over at Derek's blog, starting at noon U.S. Eastern Time, or 6 PM Central European Time.  (Those of you in other time zones will need to sort it out for yourselves.)

The link to Derek's blog is here.  If you click it before noon, you will get to read Derek's latest blog post, "Twitter's Very Precious Garbage Dump."  If you click it after noon (give or take a few minutes), you will see my guest post, "Who the Heck is This Murphy Guy Anyway?" 

Ready? Set?  CLICK