I Got To Interview Hakeem Olajuwon!

Story is in the first issue of Houstonia Magazine on newsstands this Thursday. Here's a shot the photographer got of me with Hakeem.

Really wonderful guy. Talked for nearly two hours. Pretty amazing.

 

HA! Yeah. Only place to stand in the room. Had to make it really quick so guys could do the shoot of him, but I'll take it.

 

Magazine is run by the same brother and sister team that own Seattle Met, Portland Monthly and about a dozen other similar monthly mags. The goal is to be similar to Texas Monthly. Every other major city in America has a monthly news/features magazine except Houston.

I got the gig writing because one of the co-owners (both of whom are native Houstonians) of the magazine liked my writing in the Press and asked my fiancee if she knew me. He had just hired her as the executive editor of the magazine (she and I met when she was the managing editor at the Press and I first started writing and shooting freelance).

So, the whole thing is a blessing for me. My fiancee got a killer new gig and I got some new freelance work. Bonus.

I pitched the Hakeem story and contacted his people to arrange it. I also have another story in the first issue on the Astros moving to the AL.

 

Good question. Photographer was Justin Calhoun. The shot in the magazine is amazing -- super close up of Hakeem's face.

I didn't talk to him about Clutch Fans -- too much to cover. But, I would doubt it given the fact that almost everyone I talked to about him -- Matt Bullard, among them -- said that he knew almost nothing about technology. Bullard had a hilarious story about how in the year 2000, Hakeem noticed him using a cell phone and thought it was amazing, wondered if Bullard could get him one. LOL!