His blog creed is to speak about himself in a kind, gentle and positive way — “to be nice to me” — but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to the see the personal side of ANT.
“This is the first time I have shown a side of myself I have kept private,” says the comedian and reality TV host. “I am willing to get emotional and cry on my blog — and, I have.”
Appropriately called The ANT Colony — its members are colonists — the daily video and text updates see him talk about his blind dates, pet peeves, and those terrible migraines he gets.
“They happen at the most inopportune time —when I am awake,” said ANT, who is performing at the Ha!ifax Comedy Fest on Thursday and Friday nights.
It was while he was hosting VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club that he came across The Tonight Show’s Ross “The Intern” Mathews updating his own blog, that ANT decided to start one.
“I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m blogging. I literally write about my life and people find it interesting.’ And I said, ‘That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in my life.’”
Cut to two weeks later; ANT started his own blog and was hooked instantly. It now averages more than 1.7 million visitors a month, and has even proven a source for some of his comic material.
“It’s amazing,” says ANT — whose name was Anthony Steven Kalloniatis before he legally changed it. The openly gay comedian recently went on one of Rosie O’Donnell’s R Family Vacations cruises with some of his Colony members.
“We were at dinner and there was this thing on the menu called Unicorn. One of my colony members asked for the Unicorn. I asked what it is, and the waiters said ‘It is fish,’” he says in a snooty accent.
“The woman said she would have to chance her order. I said, ‘Lydia, when it was a magical horse, you were OK eating it, but now that it is fish, forget it?’”
