Help me I'm poor.

A couple of quick things:

First, your comments on the Shannon recap are giving me life. Also, SOMEONE IN THE COMMENTS LITERALLY FOUND HER GRANDMOTHER IN THE FILM. Stranger is 100% adding "reunites families" to its resume. It will go right underneath "once trolled TMZ so hard they had to send a cease and desist." 

Second, we launched a Patreon for Strangerville and Strangerville Live. Meg and Jolyn have both been threatening me through local mafia groups to do this for a while but I just haven't because lazy. 

For those unfamiliar, Patreon is a way you can support content by paying some small monthly amount to help with production costs. We launched the Patreon because we have some plans to expand, this site, Strangerville, and Strangerville Live in 2021 and we are hoping to be able to do that without forcing Meg to sell one of her children on ebay. 

I Made A Sweater

A couple months ago I decided to knit a sweater. I had been avoiding this for a while because every time I looked at a sweater pattern it was like "Hello WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO A LOT OF MATHHHH" and that terrified me, so then I'd just make another scarf or hat.

Then I took on The Scarf That Must Not Be Named, and that thing was so complicated to complete that frankly I probably now have what it takes to solve COVID-19 by tomorrow (but I won't, because busy with TV). So I thought I could maybe take on a sweater.

I found a pattern and showed it to Skylar. It has different stitch counts based on obesity levels and when I measured Skylar he was so small that I actually had to manually alter the pattern because it didn't contemplate someone of his size.

Speaking of, I am growing into my chair during social distancing. It's been four weeks and having zero access to a gym in addition to not even walking around an office, things are getting scary here. We've tried to create a fitness center in our basement using some elastic bands Skylar bought on day one of quarantine but so far the only thing they've done is nearly kill us.

Last week I heard a loud crash and then desperate moaning coming from the basement and I rushed down there assuming it was affairs but instead it was just Skylar and a pull-up bar that he had wrapped elastic bands around and then somehow sling-shot into his abdomen. I nearly became a widow that day, which is unfortunate because his life insurance policy sucks and I'm not even sure if I'm listed as the beneficiary [makes a note to check on that].

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

All y'all, Strangerville Live is NEXT WEEK. It's in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 6 at 8:00 PM. There will be snacks. We are bribing you with food to get you there. We usually only try to bribe you with promised nudity!

I went to Jolyn's apartment the other day and held her dog on my lap while she practiced her story in front of me. Then I told her she was pretty and I would vote for her for president because that's the kind of friend I am.

Her story is wonderful. So are the others. You need to come. Get your tickets here. Bring friends. Tell them the event is featuring a series of lectures on the breeding habits of silk worms. That way they'll be pleasantly surprised when they get there and find out it's really a series of lectures on the breeding habits of chickens.

So come.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

We've joined a cult. 

Something weird be happening on the Internet.

Two things:

First of all, we've announced our next Strangerville Live! Come join us in Salt Lake City on March 6 at 8:00 PM. I'm hosting (possibly entirely through song) and we'll be featuring four other storytellers:

Inventor of the circus

And the Award Goes To

A few years ago Skylar and I started this thing where we try to see all of the Academy Award best picture nominees before the Oscars. Then we fill out our Oscar ballots and Skylar gets all but like one correct and I get zero correct and then I scream at him and accuse him of cheating and then he tells me I just need to apply myself more and do my research and it's very healthy.

The problem is we tend not to go to movies very much until the nominees are announced and then it's a mad rush to see nine films in like the last month, which is a lot of films to see in one month, especially when one of those films is The Irishman. I kid you not, The Irishman is over three-and-a-half hours long.

THREE. AND. A. HALF.

HOURS.

That's the length of two football fields if you convert it into distance. If you unwind the film from the VHS tape, it wraps around the Earth SIX TIMES. The Irishman is so long you can see it from space.

I watched this movie at home a few weeks ago and I legitimately had to take meal breaks. By the time it ended Duncan had grandchildren.

Anyway, we're in more of a predicament this year than usual because Skylar has negative zero time to watch nine films in one month, but he kind of doesn't realize that. I think he has so little time that he actually hasn't found the time to realize how little time he has.

Let It Snow

We woke up to a snowstorm this morning, which is Skylar's actual vision of heaven.

Mine: I'm greeted by a woman making flour tortillas. We become best friends. We travel together and visit antique shops for all of eternity.

Skylar's: It's snowing but also somehow 110 degrees. He is handed mittens, a comically-large scarf, and is seated next to a fireplace with a stack of books. He is no longer affected by dairy or spicy food and can in fact consume an unlimited amount of each.

I don't think we can spend the afterlife together unless one of us is willing to experience hell, since that's how we view one another's paradises.

Our bedroom in our little hundred-year-old house is odd. The prior owners built an addition on the back of the home in the 50s, including two rooms, one which we use as our master bedroom and another that Skylar lovingly calls "Eli's room of forgotten hobbies."

The name isn't really accurate. In it I keep a piano, two guitars, a ukulele, a harmonica, some recording equipment, bike gear ok I hear it now BUT NOT ALL OF THOSE ARE FORGOTTEN.

Cleavage

Guuuueeeeessss whaaaaaa-aaaaaat. 

(I sang the above in an opera voice because Sky and I just got back from the opera. When the show started he said there was something really familiar about it but he couldn't put his finger on it. Then halfway through he gasped and whispered, "Oh! They sound like your laugh!" And then he giggled to himself for several minutes. I still have no idea.)

But no, really. Guess what.

Strangerville Live is going to be on November 8 at 8:00 PM in Salt Lake City. 

We are moving to a new venue this time. It's called Kiln (located at Gateway, 26 S Rio Grande St Suite 2072). The venue is awesome and we are very glad to force you to locate a new spot. We went and met the people who run the place recently. I showed them my cleavage and then Meg showed them her cleavage and then Jolyn showed them her cleavage and basically all the cleavage canceled each other out so in short, they're still letting us come do our show in their space.

Photos of People Having an Authentic Time at my Wedding

I'm going to give you a bunch of details about the wedding with some actual wedding photos, etc. in the coming days. But for now, I want to leave you with this gem.

In the chaos of the morning and the photos with family and friends, someone took my phone. I think it was in my pocket and it was suggested I remove it for the pictures. I don't remember, really. It was all a whirlwind.

At the end of the wedding, my friend Caitlin handed my phone to me, saying she had it for a few hours and "don't worry. I took lots of pictures of people having a very authentic time."

I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and took the phone. On the drive back to the house I started looking through the photos she captured and discovered, well . . .

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.

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.

*****

From Tinder to Temple

By Eli McCann

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.

*****

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.

Ebola

I basically didn't see Skylar for about two weeks because he had some big test on Friday that he had to study 34 hours a day for. And I know that there aren't 34 hours in a day. Don't look at me. I tried to explain that to him and when I did he was like "WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME WITH THIS CONVERSATION I NEED ALL 34 HOURS TODAY TO STUDY."

His brain has been totally fried. Last weekend we were driving home from somewhere and I was trying to coordinate schedules with him. We had this whole five-minute conversation where he gave me his input and answered my questions. We finished the conversation just as we were pulling into the driveway.

When we walked inside he immediately asked me a question that was fully answered by the conversation we just had and in which he had participated so I reminded him of this. He just stared blankly and said "we talked about this already?"

It's one thing to not remember a detail of a conversation from two days ago, but we had literally just talked about this thing and as I recounted the entire conversation, including the parts that he said, he had no memory of any of it.

It was really impressive, actually, the way he has figured out how to put his brain on auto-pilot.

Swearwords

Skylar is making "ramen" for dinner tonight. I always put the thing he says he's making in quotes until I actually see the end the result.

My understanding of how one makes ramen involves placing a plastic non-microwave-safe bowl of water and hard noodles in the devil's box for three minutes, mixing a small pouch of MSG into it, and then burning your mouth off while trying to eat it. Also it's 1994.

His version involves boiling about 600 vegetables in a dutch oven and occasionally screaming "awe fiddlesticks darn!" when he realizes he's forgotten something.

I'm not kidding about the fiddlesticks darn business. It didn't occur to me until very recently that Skylar doesn't swear. I just somehow went several years without noticing this. It fully hit me a couple of weeks ago when I heard him yell from the other room "GOLLY DARN MOTHER MONKEYS!"

I was writing when he said it. I paused for a solid minute, suddenly trying to remember if I had ever heard Skylar swear. Suddenly I had flashbacks to him telling me after watching various movies, "I really liked it, if it wasn't for all the language."

I think I may be marrying my mother.

Mock Depositions

I got to New York City a few days ago because my law firm decided that I should go to this training class.

I decided not to be offended by the suggestion, even though the class is really meant for people who are pretty recently out of law school. It's a deposition class where we spend several days taking mock depositions of fake witnesses while a panel of teachers snorts coffee and probably cocaine to try to stay awake long enough to give feedback because, as it turns out, there is something more boring than a deposition and that is a mock deposition.

It's not all bad. And the less cynical version of myself, the one that sometimes gets enough sleep and doesn't have shingles, would probably admit that the class is really helpful. This, despite the fact that a good portion of it is geared at explaining to the students what a deposition is in the first place, which might have been helpful to hear before I took eleventy depositions over the mumble-mumble years since I finished law school.

Obviously my main objective when walking into the class on the first day was to become as popular as possible because my popularity is an exact measure of my self-worth. And so I positioned myself to make all of the right jokes in all of the right places in front of all of the right people.

But because the class is really geared toward people who pretty recently finished law school, I'm a solid decade older than nearly everyone there, which is not a big deal if you're, like 75, but which is a surprisingly big deal if you're say 34.

Locked Out

Skylar called me just as I was leaving the office the other day to very suspiciously ask me when I was going to be home.

It was suspicious to me, anyway, because when I told him I was on my way but needed to run an errand he seemed disappointed but then refused to explain why.

Eventually I got it out of him. He had locked himself out of the house. I don't know how he did it, exactly. But I had several sudden flashbacks to living with Rebecca when he admitted it and it only seemed fair to give him the same mean-spirited and demoralizing lecture I used to give her on a weekly basis.

I am going to be such a good parent if any of you die and give me your kids.

By the time I made it home, a rainstorm had moved in and Skylar was hiding under the covered patio in the backyard.

He followed me to the door, looking ashamed, AS HE SHOULD, and that's when I discovered that I also did not have a key to get into the house.

Attempted Homicide

The exciting news is that we have a date for our next Strangerville Live show. We'll be back at Church & State on Friday, September 14. And obviously we want every single one of you and your grandmas to come and support the storytellers. But the more important reason to come is to see if I accidentally kill Meg and her unborn child.

It all started when Church & State told us that something happened to their small stage and they don't have it anymore. The cause of the disappearance is still a mystery to me. But they said that if we wanted a stage, we better bring our own.

I asked Jolyn and Meg how many stages they had lying around the house and they had like 50 but all of them were being used that night so they didn't have any to spare. So I asked them if they even thought we needed a stage in the first place and both of them, in unison, screamed "WE WANT PEOPLE TO SEE OUR BEAUTY."

Then Jolyn was like "can't Matt just build us one?" And I was like "I OBJECT" because I'm a lawyer and that's how we talk all the time. And I told Jolyn that I don't need no man in my life to build things for me and I'm perfectly capable of building things on my own.

Salt Lake Ghost Tour

Please enjoy The Suzzzz's Strangerville Live story above, and today's ghost story below.

Skylar's mom visited Salt Lake City this weekend. Skylar was trying to find things to do to entertain her and at some point he made the interesting choice to ask and rely on me and Jolyn for advice, to which Jolyn responded before he even finished the question "TAKE HER ON A GHOST TOUR OR DON'T BOTHER COMING HOME."

There's a company that does these ghost tours of the city and for years Jolyn and I have wanted to go, but we've just never gotten around to it. As we understood it, you buy a ticket and then someone takes you around town on a bus and tells you ghost stories about all of the old creepy buildings and at the end you belong to Satan.

Skylar immediately found a groupon for 4 people and signed us all up.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Last week Brianne was lecturing me about love languages because she said that I need to be better at understanding how to work with people and she suggested that if I knew people's "love languages" I would have some success in this. This seemed like a strange lecture because I thought I was working just fine with people. Then I realized that the whole reason for the lecture was so she could say, "for example, your love language is telling people what to do and just getting your way all the time."

No matter how many times I try to remind Brianne that the nature of our professional relationship is one where I am supposed to ask her to do things and she is supposed to do those things, she refuses to not criticize me for "being bossy."

Please enjoy some Pictures & Distractions:

Mr. Pants lookin for cats.

Stranger Things

We got to the venue for Strangerville Live on Friday a couple of hours before the show started. Jolyn and a woman who works for Church & State started lifting and moving heavy furniture to get things set up while I pretended to be busy playing with the audio equipment.

As is always the case, time flew and suddenly people were coming through the doors, including Bob and Cathie who were already habitually telling me that my story was their favorite even though the show hadn't started yet.

Bob and Cathie's unwavering support for their offspring is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is comforting to have a constant cheerleader section that will reassure you, until their voices are hoarse, that whatever thing you did was the best anyone has ever done that thing. On the other hand, three decades of this have not made facing this cruel world an easy transition.

Suddenly, the show began. Jolyn took the stage and welcomed everyone. The venue looked beautiful. People were smiling. Everything was going just great. Jolyn announced that Rachel Miller would be our first storyteller of the night. Rachel began her story and the audience seemed to love it.

We're Baaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaack

After being poisoned by essential oils in our last Strangerville Live show, we decided that it was probably time to find a new venue.

I'm learning that Meg is one of those people that somehow knows everyone in the entire world. And everyone in the entire world is at least a little afraid of Meg.

Let's just say I'm probably not the only person who reads Meg's texts in a scary dragon voice.

Meg set up a meeting with some folks at such a cool place that you have to name 25 bands no one has ever heard of just to get in the front door, and we're glad she did, because we are very excited to announce that Strangerville Live is going to partner with Church and State to bring you our next live show on March 30 at 8:00 PM.

Church and State is located just a few blocks away from our old venue, at 370 S 300 E in Salt Lake City. We think you're going to love this move.