I have been known to look like this on occasion.Welcome!
The story here begins at the moment my lady friend and I pulled the ripcord on our Los Angeles life. We moved to Indiana, partially as an excuse to drive through Memphis and try their BBQ, but also to actually DO that whole home-grown, self-sustaining thing everyone is talking about. I want to get a goat! We're putting a bat-house in the yard! I am thirty-one and one half. Forever. I have no children. I am over-educated and under-employed. I have a 7-speed Schwinn cruiser with chrome fenders and a 2-stroke engine.
This IS NOT a blog. That word is short for "Weblog," which in reality is often short for "internet dumping ground for psychic wounds, neglected childhoods, and obsessive recipe collections." Funny About That is not those things. I unapologetically read some of those things however.
Instead, I offer you a daily moment of all of the following: my openly biased news commentary; twat-filled gossip; non-denominational spiritual inspiration with occasional bearded holy figures, hay-rolling mangers, and camel toes; good ol' fashioned escapism; actually researched reports and editorials for the nerdier among us; book reviews; consumer reviews of products ranging from cheap wine to birth control devices; photographs; artworks; and of course PICTURES OF KITTIES (because no website is complete without them). The lady friend is the aesthete here, she is all things photo and beauty related. She'll be chiming in now and then, especially to correct my atrocious grammar. She has full and final editorial control, so even if you're listening to me, who you're hearing is always up for debate. Whether this is threatening or liberating has yet to be seen.
love, NoelleEvery time you poke your little pointer in this site, please know I am silently thanking you for it. I know you could instead be trolling Facebook, waiting for something not-boring to pop up in the News Feed, so I am sincerely appreciative of your visit to this measly little non-corporate website. And I am endlessly grateful for your time, because, let's face it, I know some of you are either 1) desperate for something better than TV or FB; 2) wearing your pajamas right now even though the sun is out; 3) pretending your children are not painting the dog with lipstick; 4) stoned in your dorm; or 5) stoned at the office, and in any case YOU NEED CONTENT.
Please forgive me for the few advertisements that provide some necessary teensy little financial support to keep this site running, and ideally to feed and clothe myself. To the extent possible, I try to control the ads you see here (i.e. no firearms, tobacco, or credit cards). I hope to someday be able to elect the specific products and services we advertise. In the meantime, the ads you see on FunnyAboutThat.com are generated at random by Google AdSense, or links to things I love, via Amazon, and we never write "advertorials" or paid endorsements.
I can fit a half pint of soup in there.Phil van Hest is a cerebral engineer, linguistic tailor, performing artist, humorist, cat-lover, and coconut buster. Give this man a coconut and a screwdriver and he will make you a cocktail. Having toured North America since 2006 as a one-man comedy show, he is known by some as his on-stage pseudonym, Phil the Void. Phil believes in extreme moderation, sex magic, and home-grown vegetables. He rarely wears deodorant, and sometimes garbage makes him angry. In the future he hopes to make a living just pointing things out to people.
Raised in Santa Barbara CA, Coventry RI, Indonesia, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Davis CA, Phil presently resides in Indianapolis with Noelle and their two cats.
If you're interested in others' opinions of me and my exploits, you can find them here on my Press page. You can also follow Battlecat on Twitter, where he posts nothing but the deepest, darkest secrets he's held onto since childhood. @Battlecatrules Phil's twats are mostly just info-fluff. @PhilvanHest
Only in the Atrocity of Los Angeles can you eat authentic German weiners during the day and and join an international beach bonfire weenie roast at night, complete with exuberant gunfire, interracial hostility, and a walking gallery of cosmetic surgery (airport pollution blurs the scars). Noelle thinks Los Angeles is a trash heap for middle-class popular kids and the self-loathing elite. The Atrocity of Los Angeles documents her visions of a city that is horrifying, beautiful, unique, and common.
Did you hate book reports in school? I was the kid who offered to write yours for you. For 10 bucks, and then more at the University. Yes Mom, I'm sorry, I sold myself to the highest bidder on more than a few collegiate occasions to make ends meet. I love book reports, and now I do 'em for free! I will sin no more! Until, y'know. Everyone has their report price.
Um, exsqueeze us, but we do have cats. Two of them. And if Noelle gets her way, there will soon be another category called The Poodle. We learn great psycho-spiritual lessons from animals, cats especially, and ours are some of our greatest teachers. We now know what it means to be truly, truly careless. Yin-Yin is as gentle as a piece of yarn, and as fat as a manatee, and she is presently working on her novel Eat, Nap, Nap, a feline companion to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love
The definition of the word "consume" is pretty terrible. Sometimes I feel pushed into it a little hard, and the entries in this category are what happens when I fail to react calmly.
Sometimes we make things and are proud of them. And sometimes we think you might like making them too, so we'll tell you how. Oh...this category is short for Fine Arts, or Artworks. It has nothing to do with Farts, in spite of Phil's best efforts.
Not to make an obvious joke, but this section will do a lot of growing over time. It is a project dear to both of our hearts, and involves things like giving advice about how to make budget planning sexy. (Guys, free hint: Any kind of budget planning is sexy. Just saying something like "I think we should have a budget meeting" will probably get you loved down.) Maybe you got away with it in your 20's, but as you edge into the 30-zone, you're not going to retain the physical love of your life without a clean kitchen and a book of matches in the bathroom.
Wanting to avoid the frumpy dump humpy lumpy slob wad feeling of domesticity, Noelle long ago began donning high heels and evening gowns while she did her chores. The ensuing sexification of household tasks inspired Hot Domestic Sass, a documentation of our achievements in hot, heavy domesticity.
There's no real sleight-of-hand here; this category is pretty straightforward. Our new home town -- we're watching you.
Letters to our Congressman, to Hershey's Chocolate Factory, to the President, to our local police division, to our employers, our moms, Mickey Mouse, and anyone else upon whom we feel compelled to foist our blasted opinions. NO ONE IS EXEMPT.
If you would prefer to hear our voices, visit our audio stream in the Listen category. Podcasts TBA. Noelle is rather quiet, so mostly you will hear Phil speaking on all topics under the sun, his most favorite of course being himself and his own ideas about things. We are not sure exactly who gave Phil the impression that everyone at all times wishes to hear his thoughts, but nonetheless he developed as one of those special people who could really TALK FOREVER. Noelle has met two other people like that in her life, and they are named Becky and Cookie. Becky and Cookie have never been in the same room together, but Phil has been in the same room with both Becky and Cookie individually.
Photos, people. If you like looking at photos, then LOOK. Occasionally we take photos we think are better-than-disposable-camera-level, and we post those on the LOOK page. Other images may get mashed up in our Funny About That posts, but only the extra special receive the distinction of LOOKers.
Uhhh... have any of you been, say, CONSCIOUS for the last ten years? HAVE YOU LOOKED AROUND? Fuck. What the hell else would we have called this category? "The Pretty Little Life-Bits Around Us"?!?! No. The world, by which we mean A MAGICALLY SPINNING SPHERE OF A GAGZILLION DIFFERENT LIFE FORMS
Sex is important, and it doesn't just happen all by itself you know. Ok, it does, but sometimes you don't want it to be all haphazard and unfocused. Sometimes you want to get together and MAKE IT. Communication is one of several keys on the ring. Communication is not always easy or fun. Fortunately conflict is essential to good writing.
Do you ever get BRILLIANT ideas, like, in the middle of the night, and you think to yourself, "heh, that would be a good one," but then you never write it down? And if you tell anyone, it's a couple of dudes who are stoned and won't remember it and are definitely not engineering students? WELL. We write ours down and share them with you here, because we are jerks. As in, we are like The Jerk
You know, I'm not going to try and describe Mimi here -- that's what she has her own category for. Please enjoy this temporally classic example of ladyship gone by.
We moved! In many senses, we are still moving. The only thing constant is change, as I recall, so any articles associated with geographical relocation or shifting phases of the mind are likely to be located here.
The English language, we find, is rather restrictive in its lexicon.
We read books. And use technology. And buy products. And then we write about those things, so that people of the future, like yourself, may learn from the wisdom of their elders. We don't buy into the whole commodified culture shopaholic MONEY LOVING FREAKNUT nonsense, so when we do purchase something, we like to choose wisely. If you like to do the same, please enjoy our reviews, NERD.
Not. Safe. For. Work.
They're like regular videos, but instead they have Phil in them. Previews, clips, highlights and the standard assortment of narcissistically self-aggrandizing auto-flattery that the internet seems so fond of these days.
This is all Noelle, from a time before during and after she knew me. After reading her you will be forced to acknowledge that most other literature on the web is pretty unsubstantial and lacking in form or lyrical content. She'll probably re-write what I just wrote into something better as soon as she finds out I put this category here. If so, the part you're reading right now will probably be gone.
Shhhhhhhhhh. Seriously.
Sometimes Phil's need for attention reaches a peak and drives him to seek out a physical stage, with real physical people in front of him, PAYING ATTENTION. He has been compared to an attention Sham-wow -- his powers to absorb attention really know no bounds. Thankfully, many people enjoy Phil's neurosis, and so we announce his shows here, and also post links to audio or video of those shows. OUR THERAPY BILL THANKS YOU.
Shit goes wrong every day. Shit that could potentially destroy either the earth, or a small part of people's faith in it. This is some of that shit.
After years of "Free-Titting" it out in the world, a certain someone is rediscovering a new world, a new era of bra technology. What dreams may come?
Noelle is the primary author for this category. Who or what "The Stinker" is remains a mystery, though many academic sociologists have their various cocktail theories. Phil is pretty sure she started this category while mad about something, and hasn't renamed it yet.
People say things, and we find them hilarious and odd, and we record their words for posterity. We especially LOVE IT when people utter words that might be original utterances, like, the first time ever that anyone has ever uttered those words. But it has to be organic and unintended. If you TRY to say an original something -- that doesn't count. That's why we don't call this section "Things People Say On Purpose."
Videos of ourselves, our people, our cats, other people, other people's cats, other things, and all others. Hand-picked media for your viewing pleasure. If it's tube-time you seek, click Watch. Well, don't click the word watch righ there, that doesn't do anything. Go up to the the browse section. Alright now.
What Am I Looking At Right Now? Now you can know. Not always updated in real time, this category might more accurately be called "What I was Recently Looking At and Have Just Now Been Able to Upload."
Holy Mackeroly you made it all the way to the bottom. Send me an email to let me know you made it and I'll send you a laugh from faaar away in both space and time. Unless you're a wise-ass and email me from your phone while we're sitting next to each other or something. Then I'll be forced to go all relative on you just to keep my previous statement true. Until then!