Today is my dad’s birthday. I’ve talked about how much I adore this man and his incredible creativity and sense of humor before.
In honor of his birthday, I’ve published live one of my latest creations from one of my strangest characters. Check out “Meet Zee: Documentary of a Weirdo” live online now.
I don’t mind if you don’t get her. She’s not for everyone. And I know my dad will love it. And that’s all I care about.
Love you daddy. Now enjoy your weirdo daughter.
I may have mentioned before I’m a bit of a weirdo. I create alternative personalities who live lives on their own. I refuse to admit that I’m the same person as these alternative personalities. Unless you consider what I just wrote as an admission. In which case, I vehemently deny what I just wrote.
I’m confused.
The point is, one of these personalities- and arguably my weirdest by far- is a chick named Zeekeela Tloxlan. She thinks she’s an alien. Who goes on missions. And will be sent home once all her missions are complete.
Yep. That’s the gist of it.
This past Labor Day weekend, I got the joy of bringing her to life with a wonderful team of people I am lucky enough to have met who let people like Zeekeela come alive onscreen. We filmed a short documentary about what a day in her life is like. Hint: It’s weird.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to show it to the world soon. Eventually, I would love for Zeekeela to go on “missions” throughout the United States and maybe internationally. She usually believes she’s on a mission when she’s sent outside of Los Angeles anyway. She’s such a friggin’ weirdo.
I’m excited to see the final product. I was lucky to have such a spectacular team involved. I’m always lucky when I get to create because it’s what I love to do most.
I was lucky enough to interview Steve Hofstetter for my podcast Metaphysical Comedy which I co-host and co-produce with Jose Sarduy.
Steve has a new comedy show on Fox called Laughs.
And he has an interesting perspective on what lies beyond. Check it out in his podcast and show notes.
If you get a chance, be sure to listen and subscribe to the podcast.
Fair warning: I have been a little inundated with tons of stuff on the plate. I do this to myself, but usually I can handle it all and keep up the productivity.
I have guests in town right now. My parents. Not just normal guests. My parents. I call it #ParentalDownpour. I’m noting it all on Facebook. It’s pretty amusing. For everyone else. It’s VERY REAL for me.
Anyway, as a result I’ve been spending more time focusing on hanging with my family and not being super productive. Still productive, but not super-productive.
All this to say… the regularly scheduled Femoir: The Podcasts are gonna be behind for a while. It’ll be about a bit before I get back to them. The expected return date is August 19th. I hope to do a marathon night so I can queue up a whole bunch so this doesn’t happen again.
Until then, there are 67 total episodes you can catch up on. Have you listened to them all? I didn’t think so. So how about you hold up your end of the bargain and use this time to catch up on all the wacky ramblings and the sillies I put out for you every week, and I’ll hold up my end by promising to return to your ear very soon.
That sounded weird. But I’m gonna go ahead and leave it.
I’m in your ear. Deal.
I saw an add for a sperm bank on one of the TVs that plays around my gym. Not like the regular TV that plays regular programming. I’m talking about the TV monitors that just continuously loop in-house ads. Maybe your gym doesn’t have them. You probably pay more per month for that luxury. Good for you.
Normally, I ignore the ads. But one caught my eye the other day. Can you guess from the title of this post which one it was?
That’s right. It was for a sperm bank.
It wasn’t that I was shocked at the content of a Sperm Bank. It’s that the tag line was, “Get one last workout in before you go home” or something like that. Along the lines of “One more rep for a good pump.” Something grossly inappropriate. To the point where it made me laugh out loud. Which I don’t like to do at the gym because I like to stay invisible. But I laughed. And people looked at me funny. And I looked down and scurried off.
I can handle an ad for a sperm bank at the gym. But I cannot handle a witty tagline that tries to relate sperm bank donations to working out. I will giggle every time.
Wouldn’t you?
This week, the first Metaphysical Comedy podcast was published. And I’m really friggin excited.
I’m excited because not only is a fun and interesting show that I think will make a lot of people laugh and be entertained. But I’m also excited because it marks another of those fun journeys from concept to reality that the creative process allows.
I wanted to do an interview-style podcast where, basically, people just told me ghost stories. But then I realized that probably wouldn’t sustain itself and I still wanted to interview people who maybe hadn’t simply had ghost interactions- but just on what they believed. I got an idea for the name, Metaphysical Comedy, wrote it on a post-it note and stuck it to the cork board above my desk where lots of idea reside. Many ideas make it into some form of reality while others sit there in idea purgatory for months and years never seeing the light of day.
But this idea kept nagging.
Then I met Jose. And he and I got along splendidly. And we talked about metaphysical things. And we disagreed on them but in a delightful and entertaining way. And I finally saw how this show would pan out.
He was as enthusiastic and added some great elements and ideas you can see at our website (metaphysicalcomedyshow.com)and has been an awesome partner. We’ve been interviewing people for a couple months whenever our schedules allow. It’s been a delight to talk to friends in a different way and to learn about my own mind while learning about theirs. We finally chose a launch date (this past Monday) and now it’s a thing that’s in the universe. And will continue to be in the universe as we release each episode.
All from an idea written on a post-it note.
Keep pens and paper around to write down your ideas. It’s exhilarating to see an idea become a reality.
Also subscribe to Metaphysical Comedy and share it with your friends 🙂
Ask and ye shall receive.
You guys… I have a gym boyfriend. One more meeting and he’s basically a gym husband at this point.
I’m so excited I can hardly stand it!
Here’s what happened: I got a late night workout in last week. I was doing stuff on the bench press. I remember because I remember thinking how lucky I was to snag a bench press. Little did I know that was only the start to my luck.
I was doing combo moves, one of which included using the bench press to step up in like a horizontal lunge.
Two guys were not far from me on another machine. I didn’t pay attention to them. How could I know one was my future gym boyfriend? We can’t always tell these things!
So I’m between sets, resting for a minute and magic happens. A guy comes up to me and says, “I like your shoes,” and smiles. I was like “Oh… yeah… thanks.” I wore my ridiculously bright shoes. I didn’t even realize I was like a bird in the wild with my crazy colors attempting to attract the opposite sex. But that’s exactly what I did.
Then he smiled at me. Yes. You read that correctly. He SMILED at me.
So I put my headphones back in and looked down. Keep in mind, my last gym fling didn’t last. I don’t know if I’m ready for more gym commitment. I just didn’t know.
But he and his friend stayed closed. He made funny faces at me. I made my eyes wide and awkwardly looked around. He asked if I needed a spot. I didn’t have any weight on the bench press because I was focused on high reps not heavy weight. I said no but thank you. Then I started forcing myself to breathe because this is the most I’d talked to anyone at the gym in a very long time.
Then I went to a different section to stretch. It was by the stairs to go upstairs. He wandered around saying hi and bye to various people. Before he went up the stairs, he made a point to say bye to me. He made it a point, you guys. It was… exhilarating .
I mumbled bye awkwardly and continued stretching.
I haven’t seen him since. But I can’t wait until our second gym date. Maybe I’ll even make eye contact this time. WHO KNOWS!
I saw two ladies at the gym the other day. They were obviously friends.
How do I know?
They were two birds of a feather.
They walked in together. They both had perky ponytails on the top of their head. They had tight black pants with colorful bottoms that matched their colorful shoes. One had a large colorful tank top that barely covered her colorful sports bra. The other just wore a colorful sports bra. They both had colorful Beats by Dre headphones they they played while they worked out. And they worked out together. Side by side. Doing basically the same exercises. At basically the same time.
It was colorfully adorable. If you’re into that thing.
I’m more of a gym loner. I prefer silently stare at people, listen to my podcasts, and live in my imagination for a while without interruption.
But mostly, I don’t have anyone to dress up all matchy matchy with me and go gymming before we (obviously) go clubbing. That’s what I assume you do if you dress up and go to the gym together. You immediately dress up in matching colorful tight dresses and high heels and go dance non-chalantly in a corner of a club.
Do clubs have corners? I don’t know. I spend my Saturday nights reading about monkeys, petting dogs, and prepping poorly thought-out blog posts.
This is getting weird. I’m gonna stop now.
I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the friendliest at the gym. I also don’t hide my emotions well in my life in general. Luckily for all of us, I’m a pretty happy person so I don’t go around scaring people all the time.
So it’s no surprise to me that an older man in the weight room commented on my expression the other day. He looked at me, started laughing (not the first time this has happened to me…) then said, “Looks like you got your game face on.”
I looked in the mirror. I was scowling. Big time.
I laughed and said, “Yeah, I get in the zone.” I said it too loud. I had headphones in. I didn’t want to take my headphones out because I didn’t actually want to have a conversation with this guy. I wasn’t actually listening to music, I was listening to nerdy podcasts. So I didn’t actually have to talk loud. I could hear him fine and had complete control of the tone of voice. But I wanted to pretend like I was listening to loud music. So that I didn’t have to converse with him. Because I didn’t want to converse with him. But I’m midwestern, so if he continued the conversation, I would have had to continue talking to him.
He didn’t. He shrugged and moved on.
A little while later, I’d moved to a different machine and he was near me again. He looked over at me and I couldn’t help myself. I’m a ham. I made a really intense scowl at him then started giggling. He started laughing.
You guys… if you give me an audience, I’m going to put on a show. It’s how I’m hard-wired, dammit.
You can take the girl off the stage, but you can’t take the stage out of the girl.
So now I just added another person to the list of people to avoid at the gym in a constant effort to remain anonymous. Dagnabbit.
In this Femoir: The Podcast episode I tell a couple stories about spillage and dumb requests and end it with a “When Life Hands You Lemons…” reference. You don’t want to miss it!
In all seriousness, though, this podcast is all about not being serious. So I guess I just negated what I said when I say in all seriousness.
I’m a firm believer that you can find funny in any situation. I tell some examples of when and how this has applied in my own life, and encourage you to do the same. And I give some reasonings why I think laughter is so important and why you should get on that HaHa Hayride immediately.
Then again… what do I know. I’m just a chick who’s trying to make a living making people laugh.
*I feel legally obligated to tell you I have no idea who that little girl is. I googled “laughing baby” and she was one of the adorable pictures that came up. I liked her pigtails, so she won.
Briana Hansen 