And Then There Was the Time I Failed to Recognize Oprah.

And now, a true story from TCAF, the Toronto Comics Arts Festival:

Early Sunday, the Toronto Reference Library. A cold wind blows.

Volunteers like myself are trickling in through the side door. Other potential patrons have noticed this and followed us, but the library isn't open yet, so the security guards are busily preventing non-volunteers from entering. Unfortunately, a lot of the exhibitors left their passes inside, so some of them are getting held up at the door. I notice a tall Asian guy getting stopped. I am fairly certain this is Jason Shiga, who obviously belongs inside.

I tell the grumpy security guard, "No, that guy's OK. He's one of the exhibitors." Turning to the guy, I say, "You're Jason Shiga, right?"

"No," he says, "I'm Brian Lee O'Malley."

At which point my head implodes from pure suck.

Bad enough I didn't recognize the guy on his own, since he's probably the biggest guest of the TCAF. He's only the author of this obscure, little-regarded work. But I was managing his table the day before, so I can't claim I didn't get a good look at him. Plus, you know, I apparently believe that ALL ASIAN CARTOONISTS LOOK ALIKE.

I am dumb.

But I apologized to him profusely afterwards, and he didn't seem angry about it. I got off lightly with a few roundhouse kicks and being thrown into the sun. My face got sooty.

Otherwise, TCAF was fun, despite me, y'know, working the whole time. That is, I was so busy working I didn't have much time to actually enjoy the show. There is a further paradox, I'm discovering, with this stuff: sometimes, you do something like the TCAF for promotion, and you end up so busy that you have little time to actually do the comic that you're promoting, so there's the danger that all the new people you've presumably driven to your site will see nothing new and be angry at you. But hey, this is the new, workaholic me. I did, in fact, manage to keep Lemuria going.

Speaking of which, the third page (not including cover) went up today! And so, belatedly, did the first of a new round of Night Shift! And my traffic spirals downwards! Whoo?