From Tinder to Temple

Today, please enjoy my long-promised story about my first date with Skylar, which I told onstage at Strangerville Live last month. Written version also below.

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From Tinder to Temple

By Eli McCann

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

I do this plug from time to time because I'm needy and I like attention and compliments: apparently the internet gods treat you differently when you receive positive podcast reviews. I don't know what happens exactly, for the internet is Satan's realm and we are a righteous people, but I'm supposed to periodically beg you like a man without pride to go to wherever you listen to your podcasts (iTunes? Is that a thing?) and leave Strangerville a review. If all y'all could do the same for The Beehive, and reference Hive Mind specifically, Meg will have another baby this year and name it after all of you.

The SuzzzzzmyRoseomesauslee has a nice ring to it.

So, yeah. Go do that, por favor. Then please enjoy some Pictures & Distractions:

I just found this old picture of Duncan and now I want to go give him so much kisses.

Provo's Most Eligible

My best friend from law school, Corey, moved to New York City a bunch of years ago. I'm eternally indebted to her ever since she saved my life during our first semester of law school in 2008.

Her husband has been deployed overseas for several months, #thankyouforyourservice, so I decided to go visit her last weekend to make sure she's eating all her vegetables and saying her prayers and paying her taxes and stuff.

I was in New York for three nights and we decided to make the most of it by seeing three shows. We saw Mean Girls, very fun, Dear Evan Hansen, very emotional, and then Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, which, I know, seems like a risky choice, but you guys. It was one of the most fun things I've ever done.

Nest of Hairs

Hola! Please enjoy a very disgusting story from Jolyn this week, which she told on stage at our last Strangerville Live. I've included the text below for those who want to read along and say it aloud with her while you listen so you feel like you are one with Jolyn the same way she feels she is one with you.

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Nest of Hairs

by Jolyn Metro

It’s no secret in my family that I was the unplanned baby. My mom is always quick to add that I may not have been planned, but I was a “welcome surprise” anyway. But she says it with the same tone you use when you’re talking about getting socks for Christmas. I was born 16 months after my older brother Sam, and according to my mom I came out fists waving and independent as hell. She jokes that my independent personality didn’t make me hard to raise, it’s just that it made me very hard to raise. And while that probably is true, my independence is largely something that I am very proud of and that comes with a lot of benefits. I’m happy going to the movies alone, I’m comfortable putting together Ikea furniture myself, and generally am capable of handling the problems in my life--the little to the big--by myself. But sometimes that can get in the way when there are problems so big you literally can’t do it alone.

Prison Steps

The steps leading up to my house are what we in the business call "a mess." I'm not sure what business we have or why we have it, but the point is: mess.

Look

Carrots

There was a man at the Harmon's grocery store down the street from me who LOST HIS MIND over carrots last Sunday.

I was at the store to buy an entire shopping cart full of vegetables so I could feed them into a juicer because I'm juicing now. I started in January. My friend Corey sent me a juicer for Christmas. Now I buy jumbo bags of carrots and then drink them and have regular diarrhea and stuff so I feel great.

I actually have lost about 15 pounds since the beginning of the year. I assume that some of it is the juicing. The other part is that I've been running a lot more because there are eleventy million murder podcasts available currently and I want to listen to them and for some reason I can only get myself to listen to podcasts when I'm running.

The point is, I was buying carrots last Sunday because apparently I don't even care about the Bible anymore, and that's when I saw a man LOSE HIS MIND.

Harmon's is one of the nicer grocery stores in my neighborhood. Historically, I avoided the place because it feels elitist since their produce is slightly more expensive and substantially less rotting than the other grocery store I had been patronizing for several years. When Skylar moved to Salt Lake City, he would only shop at Harmon's or Whole Foods because he's a hippie socialist snob who gets pregnant sometimes just so he can get an abortion.

We have Photoshop so now we're ALL going to college.

Because I STILL cannot stop reading and talking about the college admissions scam stuff, I tweeted the other day 

Could someone out there help photoshop my face onto a water aerobics athlete? I’m trying to get accepted into my mother’s elite sewing group.

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) March 13, 2019

That's only partly a joke. I really do want in on Cathie's sewing group. So do several of my friends. A few years ago I told Cathie that Brianne and Matt had both asked how they can get in and she just laughed dismissively and said something about how they couldn't even get into her C group. Then I found out from my sister Krishelle that there really are several sewing groups and Krishelle has tried to infiltrate the top one but you basically have to be part of the Illuminati to get in at this point.

Anyway, only 21 minutes later someone named Shane responded:

I got you. pic.twitter.com/8pIdxuFobH

— Shane (@_robotshane) March 13, 2019

which is EXACTLY why I'm on Twitter.

The College Scam Details Are AMAZING.

You guys. There are parts of this whole celebrity/CEO/world emperor college cheating scandal that are AMAZING. I have spent the last eleventy hours reading every document I can find on the entire internet and I want there to be ten thousand more documents. AND INTERNETS.

In case you live under a rock or you don't seek out news to find pleasure in others' misfortunes, today news broke that all these rich people are being indicted (and publicly shamed) for engaging in incredibly entertaining fraud for purposes of getting their children into Yale and Stanford and etc. Apparently all of these people hired this guy and paid him literally millions of dollars to totally fabricate application materials and bribe people at the schools to get their mediocre kids accepted.

And I know. If we're like being sups woke we're probably not supposed to find any of this funny and instead focus all of our energy on how rich people milk the system and hard-working kids didn't get into these schools because someone else's parents have money and what would Jesus say and stuff. But y'all can go to Oprah for that stuff right now. Because I'm only going to be entertained by this tonight.

So they fabricated exam scores, in some cases paying this 36-year-old man to go take tests for students, and apparently he could get perfect scores, which, WHAT IS THAT MAN DOING WITH HIS LIFE.

But the absolute best thing about this is that these people were legit paying this man to photoshop their children's faces onto pictures of athletes in the middle of sportsball in an effort to lie to these schools about their kid's athleticism.

What's Your Emergency?

This week we've got our first of four stories from our recent Strangerville Live show. This one comes from the very funny Janilee Johnson. You can find the recording on this week's Strangerville, which also includes very important conversations between me and Meg about such topics as Harry Potter and Meg's parenting. Feel free to check out a written version of Janilee's story below as well.

Enjoy!

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Conversion Therapy

My state has been debating a bill that would try to ban conversion therapy. As you could guess, this is a topic about which I have some thoughts.

I've never engaged in any form of conversion therapy. I'm lucky. That's luck. My inexposure to the torture is not something I chose. I never told anyone I was gay while I was a child, so no one ever thought to force me to go to camps and beat an effigy of my parents or blame my dad for not loving me or undergo shock therapy or pray the gay away and take personal responsibility for my lack of faith when it didn't work.

I was fortunate.

For some reason, I escaped even the private internal torture that a lot of young gay kids and adults experience in believing their sexual orientation could be changed and that they should be ashamed of themselves if their efforts to do so didn't work.

I don't know why, but it just didn't occur to me when I was 12 that liking boys was somehow my fault and that I could like girls if I sought help.  Even as a child, when straight people at church told me that being gay is a choice, I remember thinking "No it's not, because I didn't choose this."

"I Do Love Him"

Skylar worked in Santa Barbara as a consultant for a hospital for over a year and when we were in town last week Mr. No One Will Even Remember Me So We Probably Shouldn't Stop By was finally coerced by a doctor with whom he has stayed in contact to go to the hospital and say hello to people.

It was absolutely no surprise to me when the entire place basically gave him a standing ovation and then carried him around like Jesus with the donkeys and the parade into Jerusalem and elephants and stuff.

I may have combined the Bible with Aladdin. Don't @ me. I haven't been to church since Jasmine escaped the palace and turned water into sauvignon blanc.

Skylar has this way of making everyone he meets feel like they are the most important person in his life, which is usually really lovely but sometimes it causes problems because the person he rode a bus with once can't believe she isn't invited to his wedding.

He's totally sincere about it, too. While we were chatting with his adoring fans/former coworkers I remembered this one time a year or two ago when he was on a call with some man with whom he worked. When they finished discussing their business I heard Skylar say, "Ok, Brad. Thanks for chatting with me. Talk to you later. I love you. Bye."

When he hung up I laughed and yelled "OMG ARE YOU SO EMBARRASSED?" Skylar didn't know what I was talking about so I said, "you accidentally ended that call by saying 'I love you' to that guy!"

Mud

There I was, standing on the side of a street, in front of what looked like an abandoned construction site, barefoot, my legs covered in mud, last Thursday night. We were in Santa Barbara. After a minute or two a woman with dark brown hair and a yellow jumpsuit turned the corner, looked at me, and said, "honey, you look like you're having a night."

She was right. I had been having a night.

It started a couple of hours before when I told Skylar that I was going to go for a run on the beach. He went surfing in another part of town. We had planned to meet back up for dinner after our activities.

The run was getting along just fine, until I got lost. The tide was coming in and it was getting dark and I couldn't remember how to get back to my car. I also came across about nine different dogs that I had to stop and give so much belly rubs.

By the time I escaped all of the unintentional detours I had run over 12 miles.

The point is, I was starving, and tired, and sufficiently cranky.

Skylar had arranged for us to meet some of his friends at an Indian restaurant, and we were already running late.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Hey look! Another Pictures & Distractions! Someone give me a baby because I am RESPONSIBLE.

We are in Santa Barbara. Skylar has spring break. Did I think my vacation schedule would revolve around spring break in my mid-thirties? No, I did not.

For about the first year of dating Skylar, the poor thing was working in Santa Barbara. He would come to Salt Lake City on the weekends and then stay in Santa Barbara during the week. He couldn't even keep a straight face every Monday morning when he looked me in the eyes and said, "I really wish I didn't have to go." He didn't think I was watching him from the front window literally skip to the Uber that took him to the airport. He had to order an Uber because I refused to give him a ride. I was not interested in enabling his lifestyle.

He wanted to come to Santa Barbara for spring break, I guess to visit all of his old lovers. Or, as he calls them, "bakeries." Seriously. I'ma be 600 pounds by the end of this week.

We found the most wonderful Airbnb on the edge of town. Pictures below. I may have uploaded some twice. And I didn't bother cleaning up before taking them. It's been a long day.

Please enjoy this week's Pictures & Distractions: