Chump Lady Video!

So here it is! Stupid Shit Cheaters Say come to life!

I’m sorry I couldn’t immortalize all 1,000+ submissions of crazy, but please accept a cow mooing “I am not defined by my relationships.”

Some of you saw a sneak peak on Facebook. I didn’t want to put it up here last Friday when the site was being so wonky.

I created the video as a book trailer for my book The Chump Lady Survival Guide to Infidelity, to build some buzz. But the fun part was just going around my small town in Texas getting people’s reaction to stupid. You’ll be gratified to know your average Texan is horrified and incredulous at Stupid Shit Cheaters Say.

“You just gotta get away from these people!” said Wayne, the guy with the vegetable stand. He took my request to be in a book video with a laid back equanimity. And then his own chump story poured out (which I think I shared here earlier). His first wife cheated on him, ran away to Mexico with his kids, and when he came home he discovered she’d dug a hole in the front yard and buried all his stuff in it.

“Seems kinda funny now.”

Wayne eventually went on to happily remarry and have four more kids, but you could tell the experience scarred him. “I still wonder what I did and why she would do that.” So even though we were going to just keep it at stupid shit cheaters say, we added Wayne’s solid “You gotta get away” advice.

Other cameos include Blacks Barbecue (who were incredibly kind and game. If you’re ever in Lockhart, Texas eat brisket here!) They let four guys on shift come practice saying stupid shit on camera. But the runaway stand out was the guy who appears and improvised his line with “Sweetheart.” He kept cracking up that anyone could seriously say “I cheated on your belief that I would not cheat on you.”

The morose Polish kid is our exchange student, giving an excellent rendition of cheater self pity.

And the mooing cow was courtesy of Tinker, a friend of my husband’s who runs cattle on his ranch and whose dad owns one of the other BBQ joints in town, Chisholm Trail BBQ. (Check them out too if you’re ever in Lockhart — they’re the local favorite.) This wonderful man drove Nick, my camera guy, and me out in a jeep to film his cattle who he promised would moo on cue for treats. But the cattle were feeling sulky that day and were not in a mooing mood. So poor Tinker kept teasing them with treats, and poor Nick kept standing in a field of cow flop trying to get a defiant cow to moo on cue.

Another note on Tinker — he was my husband’s realtor in this small town. Right after his D-Day, he found himself emotionally slopping all over Tinker for some reason, and with perfect calm, Tinker invited him to go feed his cattle that day to cheer him up. Today, these same cattle get to deliver my husband’s ex-wife’s serial cheating line that she was “not defined by her relationships.” MOOOOooo!

I was only able to create this video thanks to the mighty talents of Jennifer Lindberg, my dear friend who is a super high end wedding photographer and her fellow photographer Nick Enghardt, who teaches audio visual skills at St. Edwards University here in Austin. They knew how to do lighting and set up a mike, and have a million other video super powers. I just roped nice people into saying stupid things for $20 bucks.

And a big shout out to my husband Paul who scripted this video and thought of the sequencing. (Are you stuck with stupid?) He’s a trial lawyer who can tell a story. If left to my own devices, I would’ve just stuck a bunch of stupid shit cheaters say up on the screen. This is much better!

Please feel free to share and social media the heck out of this thing. (My new server goes live today!)