It has happened to me twice in the last year that I’ve felt like I finally figured out how to eat less, finally got it straightened out so that NOW I know how to do it—and then found out that I had a hidden infection raging in my head somewhere. Five or six days on antibiotics and I have lost my new-found knowledge. Oh come back to me, brief sweet window of simple easy eating!
I think we could market this. Let’s think how.
(Also, if you know someone who’s like, “You just have to DO IT. You just have to CHOOSE to eat right,” she should probably have a doctor check her ears/throat/sinuses. Ten days of Augmentin should clear that annoying little problem right up.)
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SarahLena linked earlier today to this Steve Burns video you should probably watch when you have a spare 17 minutes. (That’s a daunting length, isn’t it? What I do is I think, “I will watch 30 seconds of it, that’s all.” By then I’m either hooked and it no longer seems daunting, or else I close it feeling like I got a sample of what someone was referring to.)
He mentions that he got a lot of fan mail, like FROM LADIES, and that Nickelodeon filtered most of it for him, but that they let one get through. It became evident that his funny story was going to involve this letter, at which point I started thinking “Please not mine, please not mine, please not mine.”
It’s 17 minutes of my favorite kind of talking: something that wasn’t funny at the time but is funny now, some self-deprecating humor, some stuff he thinks about, some little hints about why he left the show (a twinges-when-it-rains injury for so many of us), some interesting discussion about parts of his job I hadn’t thought about, etc. *Happy sigh.* My favorite line, if you watch it, was “And I thought: ‘Believe it or not, this is the only game you have, man’.”
That video was amazing. I love Steve even more, now.
The video and Steve Burns are terrific and hilarious, but the part about Make a Wish…man, I can’t get that out of my head. So sad.
so funny–I was/am already listening to this very video as I read your post. weird :)
Went to college with him for one year…didn’t know him well but he did come to my end-of-freshmen-year dorm room party. He was always a cutie and very talented in terms of acting and music. My only claim to any remote sort of fame is that “I knew that guy from Blues Clues”. LOL!
LOOOOVED this!
When my son (now 16) was about 3, Steve Burns was making an appearance at FAO Schwarz in Manhattan. Not thinking there would be much of a crowd (ha!), we decided to go. The line was around the block. We stood on line and waited and waited and waited. My little one was incredibly patient. After a while, word was announced that there were too many people to come in and meet Steve. The event was being shut down but Steve would come out and “walk the line” to say hello to people. A few moments later, it was announced that even THAT wasn’t going to happen. Steve was leaving and the people outside wouldn’t get to see him. I wasn’t going to settle for that.
I grabbed my son and went into the store — I think I told the security guard that we were going in to buy LEGO or something. I raced up the staircase just as I see Steve coming down. I had dressed my son in his favorite shirt — green stripes, of course. As we passed Steve on the staircase, he stops, pats my son on the shoulder and says “Hey, cool shirt!”
My 3-year old was totally satisfied with the outing.
I clicked through on Temerity Jane’s link yesterday and I never, ever watch videos. I could not click away. I even tried to let it run in the background and kept having to go back and rewind so I could see him say the things that I heard. I’m totally smitten with Steve now and would like to hear him say more things.
This is a great story. I heard it on The Moth on NPR and was RIVETED. As a child who just aged out of the Blues Clues era, I loved hearing about the foibles and follies he encounters now. The story about him crashing the little kid’s birthday party was pretty much the best. ever.
I was JUST reading about him on Wikipedia today, since my 2 yr old has recently started to like Blue’s Clues. Crazy coincidence.
Ooh – it was even more fun to get to watch and listen than it was just to listen (I can’t believe I just watched that whole thing after having already heard the story on a podcast). Both times I was so relieved at the way he treated being “Steve” and how he talked about the show, which is big stuff in my house these days. Thanks for posting it!
LOVE THIS.
My son still thinks Steve’s name is Sneeze, and I hope no one ever disabuses him of this notion.
Margie I watched the whole thing too after I heard it on the Moth Podcast last fall. My husband listened to the podcast twice. Once alone and a second “you gotta hear this” time with me. He is a great story teller.
You should listen to more of the MOTH Radio Hour podcasts, I think you’d love them. They’re all this sort of humor…bad/uncomfortable situations told in a dry but hysterical way. It’s one of my fav. NPR shows (and I’m an addict so that’s saying a lot!) I linked to this a few weeks ago, too. I still laugh when I think about it.
AHHH THAT VIDEO. My favorite part was, “And when the mail came, I FROKE OUT.”
Tess- OH, I’d forgotten that part!! That was my other favorite part! I think we should get that into usage. FROKE.
My younger son was a Blues Clues FUH-REAK (0r Fuh-ROKE, I guess) so this made me cry. Like, a LOT.
I miss those days when we’d sing the mail song (“Here’s the mail, it never fails, it makes me want to wag my tail, when it comes I want to wail, ‘Maaaaailll!'”); when my mom drove four hours to buy a REAL Thinking Chair, not an inflatable one; when Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper had a baby and named it Paprika; those were good times. Good times.
He is such a great guy! It says a lot that he would interrupt a date with a former Playboy model to crash a kid’s birthday party. He sounds like he recognizes the influence he has with little kids, yet is humble about it.
This is the second awesome recommendation I got this morning. This first had my mascara smeared and nose running. This one had me laughing. Thanks for posting.
Also, I’ve told my friends that if I ever start telling people losing weight is just about willpower, suggesting anyone who has trouble slimming down are lazy or weak, they have permission to smack me in the head.
i’m too old to have watched blues clues, and don’t have any kids.. but man, this is just a fantastic video all around. i don’t know him from anything else but i still love him.
ps: “boobs that were designed by dr seuss.” HAAAA.
I always figure out how to eat less once a month. I hit that point and I’m all Yeah!! I am going to be skinny!!! Then my period comes and I realize it’s just the pre-period fullness and I’m back to pigging out. So, I get it.
That video is ohmygodAwesome.
Thank you for showing it to us.
Oh I laughed at that video! And cried! I love Steve!
(Did you actually write him fan-mail?? What did you say?!?!?)
Alice- YES! I was trying to think if I believed him that he was a guy and yet didn’t find it sexy—and then he said “boobs by Dr. Seuss” and I thought “OHHHH, I see.”
Clueless but hopeful mama- Er. Yes. And NEVER YOU MIND! (And also, you know what’s really embarrassing if you are a grown-up who writes a fan letter to a children’s TV star? Receiving in reply the form letter sent in response to children’s letters.)
“Please not mine” made me burst out laughing.
I love Steve. I would watch the show just for him.
Oh, I love him. I would watch the show just for him also. Also, I am already married, but I’m short too! It wouldn’t be an obstacle. :)
Oh Augmentin, that tricky scoundrel of a wonder drug. Never fails for me too: a few times a year I’m exhausted, my appetite is all flipped about, I’m totally grouchy and just feel like crap…AND cue lightbulb: Z-pack time (I’m allergic to Augmentin)
OMG, Thank You for posting that video! Hard to choose, but I think my favoritest part is ‘and I FROKE Out’…in fact, I most certainly need to start using that phrase in my ‘real’ life. Now that I’ve finally found the most accurate phrase to describe so much of life lately, that is.
I can’t believe how long it just took me to figure out/remember who Steve Burns was. We had a full-on Blues Clues party for Angus’s third b-day – we even painted the room blue (okay, the room was already blue). Pinned the flag on mailbox. I love that you wrote to Steve.
Never seen Blue’s Clues, but I totally enjoyed that.
I loved the video and have found myself completely lost in Moth videos ever since. I never knew such a thing existed–it’s like stand-up comedy but so much more. Thanks for sharing, Swistle!
love him.
DH listens to this podcast and made me listen to this story! Love it, love him.