Our Big Announcement

It is with great excitement that we announce our next Strangerville Live show, an event that is already being described by OWN as "probably a safe place to be in the event of a flood or goat stampede."

We are thrilled to announce our September storytellers, so much so that Jolyn and Meg have had to threaten me to "stop talking about it" and "you sound like a crazy person" and "put your pants back on. Seriously. This is a church." We have a brilliantly-hilarious line-up. In addition to appearances by Meg Walter and yours truly, our September 8 show will feature:

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

TSA: Sir, is this your bag?

Eli: Yes.

TSA: So this giant bottle of self-tanning lotion belongs to you?

Eli: Oh. No. I don't know . . . uh . . .

TSA: What about this Hello Kitty pocket knife?

Eli: Maybe can we talk more quietly?

TSA: And this book called "Love the Inner You" forward by Oprah Winfrey?

Eli: Definitely not mine.

TSA: Sir, are you saying someone tampered with your bag?

Eli: That's actually not even mine at all. You can just keep it.

And then I bought new clothes.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Why is Duncan always looking at the camera like he's Jim from The Office.

Pioneer Day Marathon

Yesterday was Pioneer Day and Tami's birthday so obviously Tami and I did our favorite activity--the one that brought about her existence--and ran the Pioneer Day marathon.

A few things you should know about this experience:

1. I, Eli Whittletown McCann, have gained nearly 30 pounds since November ("What!? You look so fit and beautiful!" stop it you guys).

2. I signed up for this race a few months ago, thinking that having one on the calendar would, oh, I don't know, motivate me to change my life.

3. There were exactly two pairs of pants left in my house that I was still able to button up. Notice I said "were." On Sunday, a button violently popped off of one of those two pairs when I bent over to pick up a piece of fried chicken that I was 10-second-ruling from the floor STOP JUDGING ME.

4. Be ye warned, oh ye little ones, when you turn 33 you are no longer able to eat and behave however you want and anticipate absolutely zero repercussions.

Medical School

If you've been reading Stranger for a while, these might be your general impressions about the people of Stranger:

Bob and Cathie: Hippies who don't want their children to be exposed to any form of indecency.

Matt: Knows how to do everything and speaks to his family in such a strong southern accent that he's technically bilingual.

Jolyn: Inevitably responsible for the upcoming Apocalypse.

Brianne: Eli's organic life support.

Herminda: Bravely forges on after being exposed to repeated accidental nudity.

Rebecca: A (welcome) complication in Eli's life.

Skylar: Completely unaware of anything that happened prior to 2011.

And if the above is true, that's actually a shame. Because it means that you don't know anything about Jolyn's surprising talent for braiding armpit hair. And it also means that you don't know that Skylar is actually a genius and he's going to support all of us one day.

Rebecca and Pillows

Ring ring

Eli: Becky?!

Rebecca: I HAVE TRIED TO CALL YOU 27 TIMES!

Eli: No. You have tried to call me 2 times.

Rebecca: I COULD HAVE BEEN MURDERED!

Eli: Someone was trying to murder you?

Rebecca: Someone is always trying to murder me! That's why I call you!

Eli: I would encourage you to reach out to an emergency response team and not a 33-year-old man 2,000 miles away who just realized he has 11 pillows in his house despite having never bought a pillow in his life.

The World of Embarrassment

We have somehow arrived at Episode 18 in our Strangerville journey. I don't know why it took us so long to do this episode. It is basically It Just Gets Stranger's theme music. Today, three incredible stories about truly the most embarrassing things I can imagine happening to a human.

And that's coming from ME. You know. The guy who once unnecessarily wandered around a Korean airport completely naked.

Today's episode contains a very special treat thanks to all of you. Sometime ago I asked you to share your most embarrassing moments on the Stranger Facebook page. You delivered. And then some. Meg and I were delighted to include some of our favorites from your offering in this episode. So check it out, and feel a little closer to your wonderfully-awkward Stranger family.

As always, thanks for your incredible support of Strangerville and the outpouring of love as we have embarked on this beautiful journey, collecting stories and sharing the best parts of life with you. We love you.

Please enjoy:

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

I swear to you I'm going camping this weekend. I KNOW. This basically isn't even America anymore. I've been writing Stranger for hundreds of years now and during that time I have alerted you no less than 75 thousand and eleventy times that camping is a lie perpetrated by the Chinese to make us all communists. And I know that it's basically unconstitutional that I would do this more than once. AND I'M SORRY OK?!

Please enjoy some Pictures & Distractions:

Post-work snuggles.

Waiting For Brunch

This weekend my 14-year-old niece who is 1,000 times cooler than I could ever dream of being and who will probably never again go anywhere in public with her haggard and embarrassing uncle came to stay with me.

I demand this from her from time to time because it makes me feel like I have friends. I am basically this:

The One Day

Last year, in honor of one of the top 1,200 best lines from the cinematic classic Mean Girls, I tweeted on our nation's birthday the following:

Independence Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) July 4, 2016

For those unfamiliar, there's a line in Mean Girls when the protagonist's voice-over narration says that "Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

I congratulated myself for my well-placed reference, one which was hardly noticed by my seven or so perpetually-disappointed Twitter followers who have correctly surmised by this point that I still don't really understand how Twitter works.

Then, a few weeks later, it was Pioneer Day/Tami's birthday and I realized that the joke would have been much funnier on Pioneer Day. Never one to let an opportunity to recycle a joke and then beat it to death go by, I went for it.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

On Sunday Gmac told me she recently found a restaurant pager in her purse and she doesn't remember where it came from so she's going to carry it around and ask every restaurant she visits until she figures it out.

Somewhere, there is a table patiently waiting for an 85-year-old woman.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Utah! This is the Place!

Last week Meg found herself in a Pioneer Day crisis AND IT WASN'T EVEN PIONEER DAY.

She desperately needed a non-copyrighted audio version of the State Song, UTAH! This Is The Place! for some project at work because Meg has a very weird job.

When you find yourself dealing with paranormal activity, you call the Ghostbusters. When there's a bank robbery in Gotham, you call Batman. When you need to remember how good bread is, you call Oprah. But when there's a Pioneer Day crisis, you call the hell out of Eli Whittlebottom McCann.

So that's what Meg did. She called me right up. She asked me if I could possibly figure out how to play the State Song on the piano, record it for her, and send her that recording.

A few things you should know about my piano skills: they are exactly impressive enough that people ask me to do things but not quite impressive enough that I'm able to do those things.

I asked Meg if she at least had some sheet music I could look at. I don't know why I asked her this. I sight-read piano music at a Kindergarten-equivalent-reading level. In any event, she told me that after searching the ends of the Earth, she was convinced that sheet music for our State Song does not exist.