Wedding Venue

Our wedding is in like two months which somehow simultaneously sounds stressfully close and impossibly far away.

Oh, in case you stopped reading Stranger for a few years and you just suddenly returned to this post, long story short, I got a puppy, chose to become gay, got engayged to a man, and then together we formed the Cult of the Metagalactic Witches of the Fourth Order. Everyone who reads this site direct deposits their entire paycheck every two weeks into a bank account we set up to cover the cost of living for our invisible immortal leader, Liza Spinnelli. And once a year we have a potluck retreat in Ohio where we wear matching t-shirts and play a nude game of steal the flag.

Look. Normally I'm the stress case. Normally I'm the one who is like WHAT IF WE DIE and Skylar is the one who is like WHO CARES THEY HAVE CANDY and then we get into the nice man's van because I'm older and more tired so I give in.

But we are having a total role reversal here because every two hours Skylar calls me and screams into the phone indecipherable nonsense in which I occasionally make out words like "flowers" and "cake" and "Liza Spinnelli."

Last month he nearly had a nervous breakdown because we hadn't yet decided exactly how many threads would be used to hand weave a napkin no one would ever see. So he called the venue and asked if we could come have a meeting to "just go over everything."

It's Raining Men

I say that I’m not a cruise person. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time last week with all 6,000 members of my family on a boat in Alaska. But the good time was had in spite of the boat, not because of it.

It’s probably because I’m a snob that I say this. Not generally. I don’t think I’m a general snob. I think I’m a travel snob.

I’ve got a friend who has a theory that everyone is a snob in at least one way. Even the most laid back person has at least one thing they are a snob about. Maybe you’re a food snob or a movie snob or something really specific, like a toothpaste snob or a Dr. Who snob. We all have at least one thing about which we are particular to the point that we almost subconsciously look down on others for having different (read, worse) taste.

Well, I’m a travel snob.

That doesn’t mean I stay in the Ritz and fly first class. Being a travel snob for me means seeing the world without being a “tourist,” whatever that means. It’s about going to places lazy people won’t deign to suffer. Places where you probably won’t get giardia from a hut in a town not found on maps.

I think the first time I ever even saw a cruise ship was in 2016. My friend Adam and I were in Helsinki and we needed to get to Estonia. We found out you could purchase one-way tickets across the water on a cruise ship that was making stops in both places. It was a three-hour or so ride. We, the temporary-ticket holders, were ushered to the buffet dining area of the ship to find a seat at some table. We sat with the cruisers, our noses slightly upturned, as they avoided us because we hadn't showered in a few days. 

Yahoo! Answers XIV

I've been saving this for a while. Please cast your vote for your favorite answer. There are some WINNERS here.

Question 1: If the Titanic sinking really happened, why didn't the people who died ever say anything about it? I just think it's suspicious that not a single one of them ever talked about their experience.

Pioneer Day: The World's Greatest Holiday

 

“What the hell?”

That’s all the email said. It came from someone in California. It was 2017. The emailer and I knew one another through work and had developed enough of a friendly relationship that he could send me an email like that.

Yard-Life Crisis

Skylar and I had a midlife crisis about our yard and in the last two weeks we have used all of your college funds to toil and labor our Earth.

I'm sorry. I know you wanted to be astronauts. But you're just going to have to settle to be asstronauts instead, which is a job waiting tables at a gay-themed restaurant over by the airport.

I don't remember exactly how it started, but I think it was something Skylar said. We've had an ongoing fight about our landscaping because we have completely competing visions and tastes for this sort of thing. I want it to look like if Walt Disney designed a garden for Joseph Stalin, with straight lines, perfect symmetry, not a thing out of place, and ongoing mysterious disappearances of my political enemies.

But if you ask Skylar what he wants, he's like "IT MUST LOOK LIKE NO HUMAN HAS EVER EXISTED." Skylar wants an organized mess. He wants the equivalent of sexy bed head for the yard.

Because we have a total inability to see eye-to-eye or compromise MARRIAGE IS GOING TO BE SO GREAT we have been at a stand-still all year, vetoing one another's ideas, and getting nothing done in the process.

Until two weeks ago. I had finally had it with this, and so had Skylar. So we had a conversation wherein we discovered that we both really just wished our yard looked like our neighbor Lynne's yard. Lynne has somehow captured both of our conflicting tastes at once. Her yard is like if Disney gave Stalin bed head. And then murdered his political acquaintances.

Zebra Down

Strangerville Live last Friday was amazing ifwedosaysoourselves. A million thank yous for helping us pack the house and have really one of the most fun evenings of my life. Also, Meg is a top five funniest person in the world. (The other 4 are my mother, the cashier at the grocery store down the street from me, Skylar, Jan Terri, and Catherine O'Hara).

Today, please enjoy Meg's story from our show as a part of this episode of Strangerville (written version of her story also below).

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli talk about how the pioneers definitely had it worse. And Meg takes the Strangerville Live stage to tell us about her zebra-print sports bra.

Story

Zebra Down, by Meg Walter

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

It's about 24 hours before our show. I told Meg and Jolyn I don't know what to wear so they've been having me text them pictures of possible outfits I could wear. Meg finally chose something. So if you don't like what I'm wearing tomorrow, please @ Meg, which is a thing the kids do when they're mad.

And also, come to our show. Get tickets here. It's going to be fun. I half promise.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

He had a stressful morning so we went and got a puppichino.

Jaws!

The other night I watched Jaws and I decided to live Tweet my experience and I'm feeling lazy and some of you still refuse to follow me on Twitter BECAUSE YOU DON'T MIND COMMITTING HATE CRIMES and I'm frantically trying to prepare for our AMAZING SHOW in SLC this Friday (get tickets here, please. Meg keeps yelling at me because I'm not popular enough to sell out Madison Square Garden.).

So, here's my experience watching Jaws for the very first time. Also, what "old" movie do I need to see next?

The Alexa

(I know. I KNOW. I'm a broken record. But this is the last week. Strangerville Live is THIS FRIDAY. Please come. Meg is telling an embarrassing story. And I'm telling a story I've been meaning to tell on the stage for four years but I couldn't quite figure out how to do it until recently. Plus there will be balloons and candy (if you bring them). Get your tickets at THIS LINK. Seriously. Go do it right now. We'll wait for you to come back before we start gossiping about The Suzzzzzz and her new face tattoo.)

When Skylar talks to "The Alexa," as she is known in our home, he enunciates and speaks in a formality usually only reserved for an audience with the queen.

Skylar finds talking to The Alexa very overwhelming. If he pauses for too long while initiating a command, she gives up and starts asking him questions, which makes him lose his concentration and start yelling, which makes The Alexa more confused, which makes him yell even more. Basically I'm saying Skylar and Alexa need couple's counseling.

I can't really blame him for the frustrations. We currently have a set of lights in the house called "Christmas" on The Alexa because we had them set up last December and we used their associated devices for the Christmas tree and other Christmas lights. We've been too lazy to change the name of these things (and I frankly don't even know how to do it) so now when we want to turn on the lamps that are plugged into these devices or use these bulbs we have to ask The Alexa to "turn on Christmas." This would work fine if she didn't get confused nearly 50% of the time and start playing Christmas music on volume 10.

8 Seconds of Heaven

My sister Krisanda called me last week and left a voicemail to invite me to a school function for my niece, Kate. It was an assembly, with music. Kate is in the fourth grade. I assume this was the Utah celebratory history assembly—the same one I participated in when I was in fourth grade in nineteen hundred and mumble mumble.

Side note, my new thing is to say twentieth century years as “nineteen hundred” such and such because it always makes people look just a little puzzled, but then they never ask me about it.

Anyway, since I’m uncle of the year, I totally forgot to respond to my sister or to put the assembly in my calendar so I just didn’t go.

Look. I have somewhere between 8 and 20 nieces and nephews. I love them all, but I just can’t keep track of the stuff and things anymore. How did that lady who lived in a shoe do it. It must be different when they’re your own kids. And when you live in a shoe. You probably don’t even have to have a job to afford to live in a shoe. You can just spend all of your time learning your kids names and going to their state propaganda assemblies.

The point is, I’m a suckface who forgot his family.

I'm not sure how it has already been 25 years since I participated in the Utah assembly. We practiced the hell out of our recorders in preparation. The class was ecstatic the day recorder rehearsal arrived because it was something different and because what ten-year-old wouldn't love the chance to own something that makes a very loud and obnoxious noise when you blow into it?