2020

It was June. I went for a run around my city. This was a Saturday and it had been a very hard week in the exact middle of a very hard year for all of us. Riots had broken out across the United States after George Floyd was killed. People were upset everywhere. We were all heartsick. 

Halloween In These Unprecedented Times

Despite These Unprecedented Times Of Uncertainty We're All In This Together And It Came To Pass, I decided we'd still try to celebrate Halloween. We simply must. It's part of the Gay Agenda. Yes, everyone is given specific roles by Judy Garland when they come out. Some of those roles include things like ruining the definition of family or fixing straight people's houses. But all of us are assigned to celebrate Halloween and we can literally be fined for failing to do it.

Side note, moment of silence for queer icon Cousin Itt:

While the rest of you mouth breathing rat faces were only pretending to fight for lgbtq rights, Cousin Itt was literally passing landmark legislation and being so sexy it was illegal in the process. pic.twitter.com/mfyiLDxCmg

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) October 31, 2020

Shortly after Cousin Itt penned The Gay Agenda, Cousin Itt was asked when would lgbtq people have enough rights and Cousin Itt said “not until Liza Minnelli is all 9 justices on the Supreme Court.” pic.twitter.com/cmAqAm6mwz

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) October 31, 2020

Ghost Town Hunting

We were supposed to go on an adventure last weekend, but our plans were abruptly canceled when Skylar plugged in all eleventy hundred of his nuclear devices at once and blew out our power.

He disputes this characterization, but if he wants to revive his old Stranger fact-checking site, he can be my guest. Until then, I'll continue to unfairly and inaccurately tell the stories without any consequences.

The power outage happened on a Friday evening. "I'll handle this," I declared, in the tone of a homeowner who thinks he's a qualified electrician for no other reason than that he's pretty sure he knows where the breaker box is.

I marched to the basement and flicked each breaker at random for several minutes before finally accepting this problem fell outside my broad expertise. We called our electrician, Raul, who is 100% the best human being I've ever met on this planet. My friend Anna found Raul about 8 years ago and now several friends and I consider him a part of our families. I will for sure name a child after him if Skylar or I can ever figure out how to get pregnant.

Raul told us he could come the next day, which meant we needed to stay home and wait for him. He showed up at noon and climbed through every nook and cranny in the house until he found a wire that had straight up exploded (???).

Indogpendence Day

Yesterday was Independence Day (happy birthday, America. Sorry your party sucked.)

Normally we throw a Fourth of July party where all of our friends come over and lick their hands and touch each other and cough into our open eyes but we decided not to do that this year because, you know, Rona.

The lack of social engagements in 2020 has been a super interesting thing for this extrovert who has knitted two sweaters, three scarves, a hat, and has run nearly 1,000 miles in the last three months and I'm sure none of these things are related. But honestly, I've settled into this and I've been able to find joy in the lessened social chaos.

I'm still working from home and plan to maybe forever? We've seen my family here and there, but not much because Bob & Cathie don't want us to give them the Rona. I have a lot of friends who are worried about their parents and grandparents because they don't feel like they are taking social distancing and mask wearing, etc., seriously enough. I'm grateful that I haven't had that problem with my own parents, but I wouldn't mind having Cathie come over and make comments about my yard that are definitely compliments but worded just so I'm not confident about that ("Oh! I would have never thought to plant a rose bush that close to that tree that I didn't realize people liked!").

We miss our old folks.

Apple Watch

Tomorrow is my birthday, which you all know because of the outrageous celebrations you have planned. We decided to carve out some time for it on Saturday, even though my actual birthday is on Monday, since Skylar could actually give about twenty-five seconds to celebrate with me.

Skylar's big board exams are in like three weeks so he hasn't spoken more than three full sentences to me since about February. He has started about a thousand sentences, but he's only fully completed three. We spend the majority of our day working from home in adjacent rooms where, if you were eavesdropping, you might hear:

Skylar: Hey . . . [twenty second pause]

Eli: Yeah?

Skylar: I was just . . . uh . . . thinking . . . [twenty more seconds]

Eli: What were you thinking, Sky man.

Skylar: Huh?

Eli: What were you thinking?

Skylar: [non-sequitur humming a Taylor Swift song that is presumably not directed at me]

What are you watching?

We're all binging TV shows and movies right now and that's ok. If there is anyone in your life telling you that is not ok, you should get new people for your life.

I can't imagine what social distancing would be like without streaming. You guys. We would have to read books and talk to each other and stuff.

I've honestly been a little surprised that I haven't been watching really that much more TV in the last few weeks than I was previously consuming. Then yesterday I thought about it and realized it would have been kind of hard to starting watching more than I already was. And that made me a little sad about myself. And empty inside. So I filled that emptiness. WITH MORE TV.

I know y'all are already aware that Meg and I record a podcast called Hive Mind where we talk about what we're watching. Bonus this week, Skylar joined us so we could blab about Survivor. And by "we" I mean "I, while Skylar supportively nodded like a good Stepford wife."

By the way, Meg and Clint Betts are doing these daily live shows from The Beehive, mostly to give Utah updates on COVID-19 stuff. They've been amazing. You can find them at noon on The Beehive's Twitter or Facebook accounts (or watch them after the fact). Sometimes they have me on so I can tell stories, usually about poop or vomit. I was on today. You can find my story below around the 20-minute mark. Sorry my hair looks so great.

Beehive Live - April 7, 2020 https://t.co/HNSbYfSZ6Q

— The Beehive (@TheBeehiveHQ) April 7, 2020

Sweet Tea and Facebook Live

Momma's got a few things for you today.

First, I found the two worst movies of all time. I'm serious. We can stop searching now. These cannot be topped.

They are two Mormon films from the early 80s concerning the "Word of Wisdom" which is the set of guidelines around health practices church members follow (don't drink alcohol, coffee, bleach, etc.). I somehow never saw either of these films growing up and now I'm exactly split on whether I wish I had.

If you've been wanting more movie recaps from me, look no further. I wrote about both of these films for The Beehive. Please check them out.

Second, my grandma ("G-Mac") lives in an independent living center. She moved herself into it a few years ago so she could be around her peers and sort of revitalize her social life.

G-Mac is an extreme extrovert and I'm 100% sure this is exactly where I inherited that gene. Her ideal day is to have everyone she's ever met and liked all in the same room with her together for the full 24 hours, and she would like to repeat that day every day for her entire life. And that's how I feel, too. I ache that I can't see you people right now. This whole social distancing business is honestly my own personal Trial of Job.

Obvious, Even

I just came across a picture in my phone from 2015. It's the first picture I ever took with Skylar.

We had met in person for the first time just the day before this. I had flown to Cleveland to go to a wedding with him. I thought I was being crazy. I've told that whole story before.

I felt like a crazy person for trekking halfway across the country to meet up with an internet stranger, but I convinced myself this would make a fun story no matter how it turned out. I felt like when I looked back much later in my life I would probably regret not taking chances like this and being a little more spontaneous while I was young and single. There was very little chance that I would later regret having done this. I mean, if it went bad enough, I would just be murdered and therefore not really able to regret anything at all.

The Role We'll Play

Last week Meg told me about an app called "My Talking Pet" which allows you to upload a photo of your pet and then speak into your phone and the app makes your pet's mouth move like it's talking. Obviously I immediately downloaded this app and paid the $1,600 monthly service fee for this and started using it nonstop.

Well on Friday morning Meg texted me and Skylar "We should do the Imagine video but with our dogs."

In case you've been avoiding the internet, which, if so, what have you even been doing? But in the event that you have not seen this yet, last week 20-something celebrities released truly the cringiest video on the entire internet of each of them taking turns earnestly singing a line of John Lenon's Imagine.

They made it as a gift for us--something to help bring us all together during this trying time. Well, it worked. Because everyone got unified around mocking the video relentlessly.

So when Meg suggested we use My Talking Pet to dub over the mostly off-key vocal performances to short clips of our friends' pets, we obviously had to cancel all of our responsibilities for the day and make this happen.

We started gathering photos of pets who wanted to participate in our imagine project. Meg and I used the sound from the celebrity video to make the individual clips. Then Skylar, who is going to be someone's doctor someday, used his video editing skills to put it all together. And we are honestly so proud of the result: