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Tea’s Weird Week: The Marvelous Miss Fit
If you’re new to Tea’s Weird Week, well, hi, my name is Tea. I’ve written 5 published books to date. My first was titled Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement. As the subtitle applies, it’s a dive into the Real Life Superhero (or “RLSH”) movement or subculture. It was an incredible adventure– I traveled around the country to meet RLSH on their home turf to join them on patrols, charity events, and humanitarian missions. I had some wonderful moments as well as some terrifying ones. I met some cool, interesting people, some that I’m still in contact with today (and I’ve met some new RLSH since). I began work on the book in 2009– in addition to trying to figure out just what this whole RLSH thing was all about, I was also figuring out how to write a book. I sold the book and turned my manuscript in to Chicago Review Press in 2012 and it was published in 2013.
One memorable RLSH I met was Denise Masino aka Miss Fit. I met her at an RLSH meet-up in San Diego in 2011 called HOPE. I loved her story because it smashed the whole “RLSH are all nerdy Caucasian virgin LARPers” misconception that floated around the snarky corners of the Internet. Miss Fit is a Brooklynite (via Puerto Rico), professional bodybuilder, model and erotic entertainer, athlete, and a RLSH with a charitable mission.
During some downtime at HOPE, I had a chance to talk with Denise, and I thought it might be fun to arm wrestle her–I don’t know, I thought it might be good material for the book. But we quickly found out this was a mismatch because Miss Fit has short but very muscular arms– those pythons ain’t no joke– whereas I, on the other hand, have long, gangly arms like a tree branch. We called it a draw, but I’m sure she would have won and was just doing me a kindness.
I thought of her being a good Tea’s Weird Week guest because she recently had a documentary about her, The Adventures of Miss Fit, re-cut into a web series.
Here’s what’s really great about Miss Fit, though: every year since I first met her ten years ago, Denise has led the Miss Fits 4 Life, a superhero themed league that raises money for a great cause, St. Jude’s Childrens Hospital. The team solicits donations leading up to them entering a warrior dash obstacle course race– it’s a pretty intense one with wall climbing, plenty of mud, and a little bit of barbed wire. It’s all for a good cause and the Miss Fits 4 Life have been amazing at fundraising. This year they are hoping the team will be passing the $200,000 mark for fundraising over the last decade– not bad for a rogue bunch of heroes!
You can help the heroes make their goal this year– the best way to stay up to speed is to look for announcements from Miss Fit on how to participate and donate via her YouTube: www.youtube.com/MissFitHero
Please Clap Dept.: I’m honored to say that last week I was awarded a gold Excellence in Journalism Award by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more about how the article shook down as well as a link to the article and an audio file of me reading it here: https://teakrulos.com/2021/05/22/i-won-a-gold-milwaukee-press-club-excellence-in-journalism-award/
Tea’s Weird Week podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: Hear my interview with Miss Fit, plus me and Heidi talk about citizen journalists, revisit upcoming UFO disclosure, and talk about another Real-life Superhero, ShadowVision, who claims he is “hunting” a serial killer in Little Rock. Plus we close out with an appropriate song for the episode– “Hero,” performed by one of Miss Fit’s RLSH friends, Rock N Roll of the California Initiative!
Listen here:
Tea’s Weird Week, S2 ep02: The Marvelous Miss Fit (podbean.com)
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Check out my books:
American Madness
Heroes in the Night
Tea’s Weird Week: Hold on to Your Buttocks, TWW Podcast Season 2 is About to Shake Down
There’s many things I like about the Tea’s Weird Week podcast, but one reason it is dear to me is that it’s been a part of my social time, a chance to talk to cool, interesting people, some I’ve known a long time, others I’ve just met. After wanting to do a podcast for years, the pandemic downtime finally caught up to me and like a million billion other people, I got that podcast rolling. TWW has a great crew– my co-host Heidi Erickson, sound engineer Android138, and trivia host Miss Information. We did a 13 episode inaugural season that ran January through April. Like a lot of things I do, it was a case of building an airplane while flying it, but I think it turned out well.
In season one, we had some really fun original music by Android138 and other music guests, an interesting array of interviews with people like writer and UFO podcaster Ryan Sprague, the yodeling dominatrix Manuela Horn, Lake Monster expert Scott Mardis, and Patch O’Furr, a furry investigative journalist, just to name a few. We also did things like an episode based on audio from my 2017 tour of the Luxury Survival Condos.
I love having a weekly discussion with Heidi for the Tea’s Weird Week News segment about topical stories and classic strange cases; a couple people won big answering Miss Information’s trivia, and we closed out each episode with a track by an awesome indie band. I guess the podcast follows a sort of weirdo late night show format– opening monologue/interview, weird news talk, bonus skit stuff (like some of the music bits and the “Comedy Roast of Zorth“), trivia question, song. We try to have fun and inform you about the very weird world around us.
You can listen to the entire season on your preferred platform choice– find the episode list and links to all platforms here: Tea’s Weird Week Podcast | (teakrulos.com)
We’re working on a new 13 episode season 2 (summer season) right now and we’ve got a lot of great stuff going. I’m going to tell you about the first 3 episodes we got in production and some of the ideas we have beyond that.
(S2, EP01.) Hodag vs. Snallygaster. We love local lore at Tea’s Weird Week. Many small towns across the country have some story about a monster that lurks in the woods, stalks a creepy country lane, or swims in the local pond. We talk with the proprietors of the Hodag Store in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and the American Snallygaster Museum in Frederick County, Maryland about their homespun monsters. (airs 5/21)
(S2, EP02.) The Marvelous Miss Fit. I met Miss Fit– bodybuilder, charity fundraiser, and Real-life Superhero star of The Adventures of Miss Fit while working on my book Heroes in the Night. A stereotype of Real-life Superheroes is that they are dorky, delusional Batman-wannabe white dudes. Miss Fit bench-presses that idea, then body-slams it, then puts it in a headlock. She’s just rad, is what I’m saying. (airs 5/28)
(S2, EP03.) Lost in the Schroeder’s Books Vortex. Imagine a bookstore that looks like something out of an episode of Hoarders, run by a mysterious and eccentric woman, a hodgepodge tsunami of books ranging from the worthless to the priceless. Well, you’ll have to imagine because the West Allis, Wisconsin Fire Department shut Schroeder’s Books and Music down years ago, but we get one last look as the store is being cleared out and remember the sights and smells of the store, plus a dramatic reading of some of the store’s Yelp reviews. (airs 6/4)
After that I’m not sure what order these might appear, but we have episode ideas in the works that include interviewing Nick Redfern about his new book, a visit to our friends at Dead by Dawn Dead & Breakfast in Manitowoc, a Bohemian Grove episode, and much more, plus some great music and intriguing trivia.
After that, we’ll take a short summer vacation and then season 3 will really be all out because it will be our fall season– lots going on. As I wrote in a 2019 Tea’s Weird Week column, “October is Mad Boo-Business.” We’ll be recording live from some events, doing our own live events, some ghost investigating.
You can see me and Heidi do the news segment live in the Tea’s Weird Week Facebook group (and hopefully I’ve figured out how to hook Streamyard to YouTube), we’re going live this Friday, May 14, 5pm CST for S2, ep01.
Tune in!
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Follow me:
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Check out my books:
American Madness
Apocalypse Any Day Now
teakrulos.com 