Pink Monkey at the Honky-Tonk with Laura Hawley

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Zak Rosen (0:31)

Hey, it's Zach, this is Weirdly Helpful, and I'm going to share with you the least fun thing about me.

This feels like a confession.

I don't care for Halloween. I've never been excited about dressing up. I think wigs smell weird. I don't like scary things. The only horror movies I've seen are Scream and Get Out. You probably don't even think those are horror.

I've never considered decorating my house for the holiday. Thankfully, She-Ra feels the same way I do. But I feel bad for my kids. Their parents are wet blankets on Halloween. But tis the season, and today, Weirdly Helpful correspondent Laura Hawley is back with some weirdly helpful Halloween wisdom. First, though, the shenanigans keep on coming. You know, shenanigans. Those weird things you do to make fun out of nowhere. This call came in from Brandon.

Brandon (1:28)

I listened to your episode on, it's my first time listening and it was Rebecca's episode on shenanigans. And I just wanted to add a little on nanananananagans to the intentionally mispronouncing names. It's something that I've definitely done with all of my children and my coworkers. It drives them nuts. I love making their eyes roll. I find that if I hold my pinky out, when I say it and I say things like, I believe it's pronounced the zagna, then it gets the best reaction.

And I've done it so much that people that know me, I can just text it to them. I believe it's pronounced and spell it with the proper spelling. They know how I'm saying it. It's great. Anyway, you've got a new listener and I'm excited to hear more. Thanks. Have a great day.

Zak Rosen (2:22)

I believe it's pronounced list-ener.

Love a new listener. Thank you, Brandon. Love a shenanigan. I am forever fascinated by your shenanigans. Call me on the Weird Helpline and share your shenanigan with me. 844-935-2378. That's 844-935-2378.

Okay. Next up, Laura Hawley. She's the one who called in 6 years ago to tell me about why she howls like a wolf on Friday evenings. Howl.

Laura Hawley (2:55)

Or whatever you're feeling at the moment. Maybe grief for somebody or maybe outrage or maybe just kind of a longing to be nearer to other people. That's very satisfying practice. I've been doing it for a while now.

Zak Rosen (3:10)

She's since become a regular on the show and not just a friend of the show, but a friend to the host of the show.

Laura Hawley (3:19)

Okay, first of all, though, I'll tell you, like I was listening to your show about shenanigans and I had a really good one. So do you want to hear about it? Of course. So this is only a one-off. This only happened one time. So it leads into the Halloween story. So I had this wonderful nephew. His name is Kyle and now he's like 35 and he actually has a baby daughter. But when he was a little boy, we were really tight.

When I first met him, he was like four and he was not interested in new people coming into his world. And he was really rude to me and my ex, his aunt. And then one day we were in a car and I said to him, pink monkey at the Honky Tonk. And suddenly he was like, okay, I'll be your friend.

Zak Rosen (4:03)

And you had never said that to him before? There was no context for it?

Laura Hawley (4:06)

I had never said it to anybody. It just seemed like a good thing to say. I still like to say it.

Zak Rosen (4:12)

Pink monkey at the Honky Tonk.

Laura Hawley (4:14)

Yeah, pink monkey at the Honky Tonk. And then we made up a story about pink monkey and he had this friend named Little Biggie, this like lion, like a black lion and a pink monkey. And they were like bop around the Honky Tonk. Then he was my friend. So when he got older, he, I came over once for Halloween.

I think he was seven or eight, you know, and his parents were very preoccupied for good reasons. You know, they had another child who needed a lot of care. And they, you know, they were just, they didn't have a lot of time, you know, they were very good with him, but they were tired. And so I went over once for Halloween and I was like, I thought his costume was lame. I thought they had not had the time to make a good costume. And I was like, I'm taking this. So the next year, he and I are walking around this huge grocery store, this like, I think it's Vietnamese, but it's enormous. It's like the Kmart of Asian grocery stores. And he finds this like a rice strainer, but it's sort of shaped like a hat, right? So it's made out of, it's woven out of rattan, it's made something like that. And it's made, and he says to me, can I have this? And I thought, where's you can have that? Right?