He killed the animal. My dad and I went camping in Wisconsin, and then he killed some animals. A bunch of raccoons. And then he wore them home. It's been so long since we did this. It has been. Testing 1, 2, 3. Oh, that's right. Testing 1, 2, 3 on my mic. Testing 1, 2, 3 on my mic. Testing 1, 2, 3 on my mic.
I'm Todd Meisner. I'm Todd Woodward. I'm Paul Coletti. And we're talking pictures. And we have been away, and we apologize to our... We actually got a tweet note the other day asking us if we were going to do another one. And I had to tweet back and say, yeah, we got two coming. And actually, I haven't posted the Meg one yet because I have to clean up the audio because I forgot to turn the recorder on, and we're kind of going from raw GoPro. It's like the world's worst audio. We may have to just play the important part and then record a conversation with her about what that moment meant a week later, now that we've teased next week's episode. This week's episode is about the fact that we are just coming off...
Yesterday, the Cubs were eliminated from the—and don't worry, folks, we're not going to talk sports. We're coming off the Cubs losing the NLCS, my beloved Cubs. But Todd Welvert, when the Cubs beat St. Louis, said, we need to do some kind of photo project for the Cubs. And so, Todd— Immediately went on vacation. Yeah, thanks. Son of a bitch. So the lone Cub fan remaining and a Cardinal fan went out into Cubdom.
And did a photo project, a portrait project. And we put an ad in the paper on Thursday morning. Yeah, that's right, Thursday morning. A little blurb in the rail that said that we were looking for diehard Cub fans who were on the senior citizen. You know, these people have been long-suffering fans. We didn't want any newbies. We didn't want any 20-year-old kids. We don't care about you unless you're listening to the podcast and you're interested in photography. Then we're really interested in you, but as a Cub fan, we don't care. And so that appeared in the paper in the morning.
And it was posted online around midnight. Now, I went to bed at 1230 Thursday morning or Wednesday night, depending on your perspective. And I made the mistake of glancing at my phone. And now the notes in the paper said to email me or call me on the direct line. Now, thank God I didn't give him my cell number. But I, you know, so I started getting, I'm like, oh, I'll just check my phone one last time before I go to bed. You know, kind of anally retentive and, you know. Always a good move, right? Yeah, tidally tied to my technology. And I looked at, I already had three emails from people volunteering for the project. And I'm like.
God. Okay. That's it. The day is only a half hour old. So I come into work the next morning. I come into the work the next morning. I glance to the left and usually where Paul is sitting and Paul is not sitting where he normally is sitting in the morning. And I glance to my right and there is Paul camped out under the department phone with his back, you know, the chairs leaning against the wall and he's the phone rings and he picks it and he puts it to his ear. Dispatch photo. This is Paul. How can I help you?
I'm an old Cub fan, and I'd like to be a part of your photo project. My granddaughter told me I was supposed to call. Yes, of course, Mildred. How old are you? 105. Great. Where do you live? Aledo. How long have you been a Cubs fan? 105 years. This went on.
all day and to the tune of emails and phone calls like 150 people it was unbelievable the response was great and so but I we got the days mixed up this is how bright we are uh like we thought we had a day before she put in the paper our boss posted this little blurb so we had like a day to do some audio tests and some camera lighting tests and kind of get up to speed because this was you know ask the boss if we can do it yes it's a great idea the next day it's posted in the paper. So we went from idea being approved to having to run out and photograph these people because the Cubs, you know, the season, the series started, what, Saturday? So the series starts Saturday. This is Thursday morning. Now we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
So anyway. So you and I spent all day Thursday and portions of Friday, Todd Meisner, you and I, running all over the Quad Cities, photographing, lighting, interviewing, videotaping these Cubs fans, which was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun, but it was a lot of work, and the phone calls just kept coming. It just kept coming. And my favorite part of the photographs, I wish I had taken a photograph of you, like, hipstamatic picture of you, like, camped out under the phone, you know, already defeated by 9.30, like, when did we start? Oh, my God, I'm a Cardinal fan. Why am I doing that?
And I wish I'd taken a picture of that. And at one point, I thought the narrative might be the story of us trying to do the project, but then we would have needed a third person to wander around with us filming, us filming 100-year-old Cub fans. But the, was the fact that we forgot to tell Gary Cranback, who was working on the night shift, that we were doing this. So my phone started lighting up, but we were out, we were at some nursing home, and Gary's like, there are all these Cub fans calling. What do I do? Like, just take their name, their age, and what city they live in, and, you know, tell them thank you. And some people, you know, it was a really interesting experience. We experienced really happy.
happy people that were happy to see us. Uh, and then we got the people who seemed, who felt like they were entitled to be in the project. Remember we got the, we were, um, we were leaving the nursing home in East Moline and I got a, I got a text message. No, no, no. That was, this was Friday. So we're leaving a house on Friday and like, we got to eat. We hadn't eaten. We started shooting at 10 and at two 30, we're like, we haven't eaten or drinking anything. So we went, we were on our way to Jimmy John's, the recoup and, um, could be a sponsor by the way, Jimmy John's. I love the Jimmy John's number 11 folks. Um, and, uh,
I get a text message that says, when are you going to be here? We have five people waiting for you. From a completely unfamiliar phone number. Yeah. And you said, who is this? I ran through my list of phone numbers like, I don't recognize that number. I didn't call anybody. And it was one of the local nursing homes that got my phone number. I think I might have returned an email. I don't know. I mean, we got so many emails. I mean, I started having to color code my email. Like anything that had cubs in it came up as blue. Because I couldn't, you know, you get enough emails in this gig anyway. But one of the hitches in this giddyup was...
Not photographing 100-year-old people. I mean, they weren't all 100-years-old, but some of them were 100-years-old. Although I am surprised at how many 100-plus-year-olds live in the Quad Cities. A fair number. Like 101, 104, 105, 100. Like a lot of 101-year-olds. Crazy how many people are. Like you said, the biggest problem wasn't photographing them. Yeah, Paul handled the photographs, most of the portraits brilliantly. We finally had to split up on Monday and work separately because we couldn't keep working as a team. We had to spread out.
and uh was the interview because we had this idea of doing this you know nice four minute five minute piece about what it's like to be a cubs fan and how you know you've been waiting 100 years to see them in the world series and we thought we'd get some really nice quotes and people would kind of wax poetically about what it was like to be in wrigley field in 1938 and um and the good stuff we'll put a link on the blog for the finished product and the documentary i finished about the seventh inning and the Cubs were trailing eight to nothing or something last night. So I had plenty of time to finish the edit last night before we posted it. Um, I wasn't distracted by any good baseball or anything. It's a one to nothing game. I can't edit. Um, yeah. Hope, uh, when hope leaves your body, it's a good time to work. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that was, that was when Jason Hamill gave up a three run bomb with two outs in the bottom of the first inning. You're like, I could probably get some work done, honey. Why don't you watch the OJ documentary on lifetime? Um, so that's what she did. She watched, she watched some OJ thing. She recorded my wife. My wife's crazy about the OJ case. I don't know. She should have been a lawyer anyway.
Was interviewing really old people. And I love really old people. But sometimes you get interviews. And I got it queued up here. And this is Paul. And I won't say the word. I cut the woman's name out. You don't get to it. This is Paul trying to interview one of our subjects. And it goes down as the worst interview ever made. And how hard has it been to be a Cubs fan all these years? How hard? How hard has it been to be a Cubs fan? It's no hard. Not hard. I can't. How would you describe being a Cubs fan? What? What does it mean to be a Cubs fan?
What do you mean? It means that I like the Cubs. It's not a quiz. The Cubs have made it hard for some time. Do you have to be patient? Do you have to love the Cubs? Oh, yes, we do. We love the Cubs. Weather makes a great clip right there. How did you become a Cubs fan? It's been so many years ago, I don't know. How long have you been rooting for the Cubs? For years. Jesus Christ. Did you listen to the Cubs or go see Cubs games as a young woman? I did.
I can't go because of the way I am, I guess. But my family does. And they're going to the first game when Chicago gets back. Good. Do you listen to the Cubs? Since you can't get there, do you watch them on TV or listen to them on the radio? Yeah, I watch them on TV and listen to them. How long have you listened to them on the radio? Well, when we're going somewhere, I listen to them. I'd like to be home. I'd like to be home to watch them. Good. And what would it mean to you if the Cubs won the World Series? It'd be something great. What would you do if the Cubs won the World Series? I'd probably go around hollering and waving my hands.
It'd be exciting, wouldn't it? Yes, it would. Very exciting. Could you know the words to take me out to the ballgame? What? Do you know the words to take me out to the ballgame? Would you sing it for me? I can't sing that. No? No, because I can't sing. Okay. Rotator cuff.
Thank you so much. That's wonderful. Paul is, he is never, you never hear frustration get it coming to his voice. You never hear, it's just, but she's got a Bond villain laugh. You know, I've done my fair share of interviewing and it's so much easier when you're not recording. And I mean, I think we all learned new lessons when we went to multimedia and how we have to interview people and how you don't really, you know, most of the time our stuff doesn't have narration. So you really don't want your voice to be heard. So you have to ask these open-ended questions. That was the biggest thing when we started doing multimedia.
six, seven years ago, five, six, seven years ago, was I would ask a person a yes or no question. Yeah. And they would give me a yes or no answer. And then we'd come back and Todd, you and I would sit down with my audio, you know, and it would suck. And you'd say, oh, you know, ask some open-ended questions. Ask them, you know, you know, how long have you been a Cubs fan and why do you love the Cubs and let them ramble, right? Well, and then, and the other thing, she was jumping in before the question was over. So you're like, you were still in the action and she would start talking. And that's another one where you're just like, oh, she was doing a reverse.
And I will leave the reporter's name out of it. We have a reporter that when you try to do multimedia with them, the person will be, you'll ask the person, yeah, you get that, uh-huh, uh-huh, while they're talking. Because that makes it so easy to cut audio and video while you could hear, uh-huh, uh-huh, oh, that's awesome, yeah, cool. Just nod your bleeping head. And then the other thing is when the person starts to answer the question, they ask the question, and then as the person is, just about to finish a really nice answer to the question, they start the next- You jump in with your comment and cut them off. Right. Yeah, exactly. And you're in the editing bag going, I don't want to work with, I don't want to do this again. I mean, it reduces you to tears. And cutting video, I love to cut video, and I think that the, and I'll talk about the learning curve on some of this stuff, is that you can do it-
If you do it every single day, it probably becomes muscle memory. But anyway, but these are the kind of things, interview-wise, that this clip should go to a journalism school and say, you know, and they could probably dissect how Paul was asking questions. And I thought, we asked those exact same questions to everybody. And some people we asked more questions, some people we asked less. But this was just, when I listened to this, you know, Paul's like, here's the clips from this town, you know, that shall remain nameless. And here you go, because he worked on Monday and then was off for two days. And so...
i'm sitting at my desk and i'm sure if there were people in the newsroom could hear you know muffled sounds of what the hell are you doing you know and because now that the advertising department's gonna come running in here you know because they're like this isn't soundproof room we're in photographers are getting yelled that's right and that's just crazy i'm waiting for the door to open yeah that door's gonna open this is another one this is one that i did and the guy was giving pretty good answers now when you're dealing with a guy who's in his 90s and you ask a question he just defaults to the last story or memory that he had. So you're not, it's not necessarily, the answers can get kind of rambly. One guy who you'll see in the video says that, you know, when did you become a Cub fan? Or when did you start following the Cubs? Or what was it like when you were a kid? Something like that. And he answers like, well, in 1937, we moved to Chicago. We live near the ballpark. I worked at night. So, you know, I went over to the Cubs games and watched them during the day because they played during the day. And then he paused and he goes, that's so long ago. I can't even remember. You know, and so that was cute. That was a really nice, cute little moment. And he was a genuinely 104 years old, super nice guy, really patient. He was the first person we did. We had even figured out the lighting setup before we showed up to this nursing home.
and so we're trying to figure it out on the fly, and he's like, how long are you guys going to do this for everybody? How long is this going to take? He was really a guinea pig, yeah. Yeah, unfortunately he was one of the guinea pigs, but he was a really good sport about it. But anyway, this was a guy, I think, and then this is when the interview, everything in the background that could go wrong, goes wrong. And I've always been a club fan through good days and bad days.
Hopefully now we're having some good days. Tell them about your brick. Not only do you get the wife off to the right saying, tell them about your brick, then the clock goes off. I can smell the cat urine in that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. No. Chop. No, no, no. They were a sweet couple. And he gave some really good anecdotes that I couldn't figure out how to wedge into the final product. And he was so patient. He was genuinely really nice. But his wife was sitting in her chair off to the side. And God bless her.
She decided that whatever he was telling me wasn't interesting enough that he needed to tell me about the brick. So anyway, I mean, those things happen. And you just kind of sit there with your arms crossed, smiling behind the camera. I can't use any of this. That's exactly what I was thinking. And for tips, if you're young, from a technical standpoint, if you're getting into photojournalism, you're getting into multimedia, I use a Rode shotgun mic. It's a great mic. But the one thing, if you're within three feet of the person and you're doing an interview.
with a dslr on a tripod always use a tripod um you're gonna you know you're gonna get a pretty good you know your audio is gonna be pretty good but in that i didn't hear the air conditioning unit in their in their house and i didn't have the wireless mics with me i don't know why i totally brain cramped and left the wireless mics in the office so but i'm like well it's pretty quiet here and i you know i so i backed up a little bit and i shot him from about eight feet away you know zoomed in tight you know to the background that we had set up and oh my god He sounded like he was in what they call small room echo. It's awful. The small room echo was terrible. And then you add the air conditioning unit that I couldn't hear. And I put headphones on. I couldn't hear the air conditioning unit. But that would have all been eliminated if he'd been lobbed correctly and with a wireless mic. If you're young and you're getting started, you know.
find the money for, for a wireless mic. And in some case you can, you can get an iRig mic from road and, or not an iRig mic and an iPhone lavalier for road for the, for the iPhone and use your, you know, put your, your phone on airport mode. That's a huge dip. I had that go wrong on me once where I got a call from the newsroom about something useless and it turned my mic off in the middle of an interview. And then I didn't realize it. So I got, I only got about half of what I showed up for. That was fun. You know, it amazes me since we've been doing this for a little bit, how
quickly bad audio kills i mean you can have some really pretty video and uh man bad audio just it's it really and it's i've become so attuned to it now and it really and when i check out somebody else's work or you know i'm online and i'm and the or the audio changes like the quality of the audio changes it's it's like such it's such a red flag i mean it's just like ah yeah and you'll hear that in our project and the and that's because If we had, you know, we thought we had that day, you know, and planning and preparing for a big project. I mean, just doing one interview within two feet of somebody with a road shotgun mic, you know, cropped in tight, you're good. I mean, that's working on the fly. That's not a problem. But, man, if you're going to sit in somebody's house and go to the trouble of lighting them, you know, I mean, we have already invested in LED lights for another project, so we had LED lights on.
on stands to light them so that they weren't, you know, but the best ones were the ones we had natural. Don't you agree? Yeah, that's right. Yep, totally. The thing about the audio is that old adage about those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember that? I did a video about a guy who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident back in 2008 or 2009, yeah. And it was my first video, and that's exactly what you heard in the background the entire time. Well, he had an air conditioner running, and every video ever since, I mean, the audio part of shooting video has been like my steepest learning curve. Oh, me too. Because, you know, this day, you know, back from...
2008 or 9 when I made that video, I'm still struggling to hear those background sounds, you know, and not micing people well enough. Like, you know, that sounds good, or that's going to sound great, and then you get it back, and you're working in Final Cut, and you're like, damn it. Man, I can hear the crickets. I should have closed the screen door. I can hear the air conditioner in the other room. I should have had them turn it off like I thought I needed to. Or the guy's fish tank turned on. Yeah, you're like, oh, oh. You know, and if they're lobbed, you know, and it's picking up the thing, and your gain's not too high, you know, you should be good to go, and it's...
For me, any time I've ever had to rush something, and that's basically what a lot of this was. I mean, we came up with the idea, it got approved, and then the Cubs didn't cooperate by winning any games in the series, which meant we had to go to press last night and it appeared in today's paper. And thank God we have a newsroom artist, graphic artist, Doug Taggetts, who took all of our photos and designed a fabulous page. Killer-looking page, yeah. Great page, yeah. Yeah, but it was a huge four-day run-and-gun that you and I did, yeah. And I'll, you know, I mean, it just...
I mean, I'm looking at it right now. It really does. He did a great job. We couldn't have accommodated any more people. I got a call from a guy the other day, and he said...
hey, I'm calling about that Cubs project. And I said, oh, okay. What can I do for you? And this was Tuesday. And yeah, Tuesday. So this was two days ago. We were already done shooting. And he's like, nobody called me back. And I said, well, we got like 150 phone calls and emails. We kind of just culled through the messages. He said, well, somebody said he was gonna call me back. I said, well, I'm sorry that no one called you back, but we only have so much time and the Cubs aren't cooperating. And so we have to, we're done shooting. We can't shoot anymore. We're done. We're editing and trying to get this project done.
Oh, well, nobody called me back. You know, and I appreciate that. You know, if he'd been 105, we'd have probably been there because we were trying to get, we didn't get all old people because you couldn't, you couldn't go just and do interviews with just people who are 105 or 96 or whatever because you just weren't going to get good interviews. And I YouTubed a project like, I Googled and searched YouTube for projects that might be similar to this. I couldn't find any. No, yeah. This is cool. This is cool. Yeah. No, and I think, I think it was a pretty big success, but it's, you know, it's doing projects like this.
You know, it's just you never know what the response is going to be like. We got hammered, which is cool. But so many times, you know, we've came up with an idea and we're like, oh, there's going to be thousands of guys who are going to want to be part of this. And you get like two phone calls. So, you know, it cuts either, you know, either way. So it's I don't know. I was glad to be able to go on vacation and go on vacation. Yeah. You know, we really we got to do this. We got it.
gotta do this because it has to happen and it was born I'll see you guys later it was born out of Todd Knight's frustration the fact that you know God love our sports department they do a fabulous job but it's made up of all Cardinal fans except for one part-timer Anthony Sandoval my favorite of all the sports writers because he's a Cub fan but you know they're not you know they were too close to it from a situation of the historic nature of it you know they were pissed that they lost their team lost they didn't lose anything I mean nobody in that department turned to double play or threw a home run pitch to you know Anthony Rizzo or anything like that yeah I got a lot to curl by I got swept by the mats anyway We were there. We were there. But I think there's also, too, I mean, this was, in my opinion, this was bigger than the sports page. You're right. You know, there was a pop-cultural element. The Cubs, you know, it turned out we, at least I found something new, that the Cubs played a game here at the high school. Yeah, at Browning Field. Browning Field. I'm like, what, the 30s or the 40s? 38. 38 or 39. You know, so I thought it was kind of bigger than, you know, the treatment it might have gotten, you know, had we not done this. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know how we're going to top next year when they do go to the World Series.
Young Cub fans that don't appreciate it. Yeah, kids who don't get it. Yeah, text us your ideas for photos. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, no, I actually thought about that. And I could not, and every person who's ever tried to tell a story, be it through video or audio or writing it down, finding the narrative, how the story's going to work and be put together was very difficult because we had so many pieces.
of just, it was a jigsaw puzzle. I mean, it was a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. And it, you know, it took me having to sit at my desk after, you know, three or four days of collecting this stuff. It was Thursday, Friday, Paul worked on, we took Saturday off, Paul worked Sunday and Monday. So all those days of collecting raw material, five days. And then I actually was trying to go out on Tuesday.
Tuesday, Wednesday. I was going to go out on Wednesday and try to reshoot an interview with the 104-year-old gentleman to see if I could be more probative. And now that I had more experience of interviewing 104-year-old people. And he didn't feel well that day. And that's the problem. I mean, we caught all these people on good days. I mean, that's a small miracle to get, you know, everybody. Everybody was so nice. Don't you think it was? Nobody's all that nice to us all the time. No, no. Something about the Cubs that does it to them, man. They love them.
And I encourage people to go. We'll put it on the blog. We'll link. We did two videos. And we didn't mention that. You asked the woman if she can sing Take Me Out to the Ballpark. Talk about that. Oh, the one that we heard? Well, yeah. This woman declined to do it. I was in town. I was in that particular town. I got another woman to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Very nice woman.
And I don't know if I'm thinking about the same. No, I'm just talking about the project in general. That was our backup project. Yeah, no, we asked everybody who we interviewed to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Oh, do you know the lyrics? Yeah, okay. And they would sing it. And then Todd did a really good job of cutting together, as many people as sang for us, Todd did a good job of cutting together all their clips into Take Me Out to the Ballgame. And I asked one guy over in East Moline or maybe Sylvester Colonna.
His address is unincorporated, so I don't really know where he lives. But I asked him to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. And he said, I don't want to sing that song. I want to sing my song. And then he breaks into this. Hey, hey, holy mackerel. No doubt about it. The Cubs are on their way. They got the hustle. They got the muscle. Chicago Cubs are on their way. No doubt about it. The Cubs are on their way. I mean, the whole time he Cubs rallied that I never heard. He doesn't tell me about this. Right. So I sit down to edit his stuff. And it's the last. I'm like, oh, my God, these people, you know, I mean, this is just like pulling teeth, you know.
It's just pulling teeth. I mean, editing video and audio is not like clipping quotes out of something and putting it into a story and then writing the description and the help of the narrative. This is, I'm completely and utterly dependent on what comes out of these people's mouths. If they don't sing, they don't sing. And that just, I went, oh.
And as I was listening to it, I kept thinking, don't interrupt him, Paul. Nobody's wife yells from the side. The clock can't go off. Please have him get to the end. And then he ends it with, and that's Jack Brickhouse. And bing, drop the mic, walk off the stage. Boom. This is the end of the video. So I designed it so that we got all these cute old people singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. And then it ends. And then we cut to Paul asking a 101-year-old woman if she knows the lyrics. And she says, well, I don't remember. What did she say? She said, oh, no. In the most genteel.
country lady voice oh no I only know I only know take me out to the ball game part and that and you're like and she just smiles at Paul you know the lithium had just kicked in and no and she just was it was so I mean was just she oozed polite I mean it was just oozing politeness with this big Cubs symbol behind her as she's talking and so I cut to the final clip of this guy Mick that did the take me out to the ball or hey hey holy mackerel and um he starts out not knowing the words, like Paul said. And so you think that it's going to be another funny clip of him, of someone not knowing the words, right? And then the big reveal is he goes into this completely other song. And he sings it with such great animation. He does. He's really into it. Just really, really cool. Good ending. Were you surprised how many people didn't know the words? Yeah, I was stunned at how many people didn't know the words. I mean...
I know the words. I'm not the world's biggest baseball fan. It feels like that piece of Americana that everybody should know. It should be on the citizenship test. It's taking out to the ballgame. Presidents in order and taking out to the ballgame. Go. Ooh, presidents in order. Send my citizenship. I can get us to 16, I think. Anyway, no quizzes.
that take me out to the ballgame, written in 1908, by the way, the last year the Cubs won the World Series. Thanks for rubbing something on that one. That's Americana for you. And we want to speak of the media for a second in relation to the Cubs. I think that when the Cubs get to the World Series, now the media buildup of ESPN, we'll just use them for example. When the Cubs made the playoffs and then they beat the Cardinals, then all these national reporters seem to default.
to the out-of-town stupid stories. They didn't go out and find any news storyline. We went for an old storyline. We went for old Cub fans talking about what it's like to be a Cub fan. This is not an original story.
I mean, people have been writing this story forever, you know, but they go to the Billy goat, you know, they go to the, you know, the, the, the Murphy thing. And it just, it's like, come on, you people are getting paid a lot of money to work for it. Be better than that. You know, I understand the Cubs have sucked off and on for a hundred plus years. I get it. Okay. You know, you know, they, they were a powerhouse, but they couldn't get past the Yankees, the Gehrig DiMaggio Yankees. And you know, when I get that in 38, I mean, that, that, that team that comes at 38 was awesome, but they were up against Lou Gehrig.
Joe DiMaggio. Hello. Okay. Sorry. They got swept in four by the Yankees. But so yes, long history of losing, but it's also this long history of stupid media coverage of going to the defaulting to the, to the comical and not it's, I don't, it just seems too easy. I got so tired of the back to the future thing. You know, it's not, it's not the only movie that used the Cubs winning the world series as some kind of gag, you know, and I guess it's coincidence. They're talking about 2015 and it's just, but it was just like, Oh, come on, let's do something else.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, in this job, and if you're, you know, if you're in this business and you're listening and you're, or you want to be in this business and you're listening, you know, some days it's a really big struggle to come up with some new story to tell your readers or your listeners. And that's one of the reasons why we do this, because this is a new way of connecting and story form for us to work in. But man, defaulting to the billy goat, come on, get over yourself. He said to Cardinal fans on the internet. So do you have anything to add about the Cubs experience and like the do's and don'ts of trying a project like this? I mean, we used LEDs for the first time. That was kind of interesting. That was different. He gave it a good look. The do's and the don'ts. You know, if we had had a data plan, I would say do plan. Don't. Not plan. Yeah.
Maybe we'll try that next time. Planning good. It was a lot of fun. It was just a really good time. I'm going to out Paul right here because some little old lady and she was a spitfire. She hates those Cardinals. 97-year-old. Those Cardinals. She's still mad about the 45 Detroit Tigers. Seriously. She's still pissed off. I don't remember what his name is. Fire engine red hair. She was ticked off about that. But it was all black and white in 1945. How could she have possibly known he had red hair?
Never mind. She turns to me. I'm wearing a Cubs hat, you know, because I'm a Cubs fan. And, you know, ingratiating myself to the elderly Cubs fans. She turns to Paul with a cold, dead stare. He goes, are you a Cubs fan? And Paul's like...
Uh, yeah. I sure am. I grew up in St. Louis, but I love the Cubbies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She had the cane ready and her air tank and she had dropped Paul like third period French. Yeah. No, but Paul made that decision of like, I'm going to roll with this. I'm going to go with this whole thing. That whole photojournalist, like a chameleon thing. I mean, yeah, I guess he was lying, but he did send me a nice text message when the Cubs beat the Cardinals.
He was very nice. Yeah, he was very nice. I saved it. Oh, yeah? I'll hold it up against you in the event. For next year. But it was, yeah, it was really, I'm sitting there setting up a lighter one, and I hear it go, and I paused, and I was like, whoa, what's he going to say to me? You know, after, it comes a certain age that after you successfully, you know, pass it, maybe it's 84 or something like that, you've just kind of earned the right to have people be nice to you. And it's, yeah, not worth, oh, yeah. I'm not there yet. Not worth arguing, no. No, not there yet. But people were very nice to us this week, and Cub fans are really nice people. And I was waiting for someone.
some hardcore Cardinal fan to call me on the phone and say, Well, when the Cardinals are in the NLCS, are you going to do the project for the Cardinals? I said, well, when the Cardinals go another 100 years without winning a World Series, I'm on that project. I'll be 150 years old. I'll be down here doing audio and video, filming myself, talking about, no, filming Paul. We'll bring Will Paul in. I remember when the Cardinals were good back in the 90s and the early 2000s, and then all the Cubs beat them and all went to hell, and we were good for 100 years. There'll be some kid here asking you to sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. 108, he's singing for you.
Get out of here, kid. Anyway, well, folks, thanks for listening. Sorry we took such a long time off, but Todd had to go on vacation and be in the woods, and we're busy with projects and whatnot. But we're back, and we've got another one coming. We've got a big surprise, big reveal for the next one. Maybe we'll get that one taped soon enough and get that out to you. Some big news in the photo department.
Woo-woo. And anyway, I'm Todd Meisner. I'm Todd Weber. I'm Paul Colletti. And we're glad you were here and talking pictures, and thanks for listening. And that was a really shitty closing. Oops, I swear. Now do they have to put it explicit? Do they have to put it explicit on iTunes? Yes, on NBA. Yeah, that's right. Give us that badge of honor there. Yo, yo, yo. All right, folks, thanks for listening. We'll catch you later. Bye. Hey, hey, holy mackerel, no doubt about it, the Cubs are on their way. They got the hustle, they got the muscle. Chicago Cubs are on their way. Hey, hey, that's Jack Brickhouse.
The Talking Pictures Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, The Rock Island Argus, and QCOnline.com. To see some of the photos and videos discussed in our podcast, be sure to go to TalkingPicturesPodcast.blogspot.com. Talking Pictures is produced by Todd Meisner, Paul Coletti, and Todd Welvert. Thanks to Laura Anderson-Shaw, Meg McLaughlin, Laura Frames, and Randy Fisk. The music was provided by Kevin MacLeod at www.incomputech.com. Make sure you subscribe to Talking Pictures on iTunes or SoundCloud.