If you're male and you're reading this blog, chances are you've had a crush on Lisa Loeb at one time or another. It's fully understandable: she's smart, artistic, talented, and cute as a button. Since she burst on the scene in 1994 with her hit song "Stay", she's kept in the limelight via her music and various TV projects. She's done guest spots, cartoon voicework and a Food Network show called Dweezil & Lisa, in which she starred with her then-beau, Dweezil Zappa.

Now Lisa's got a new series, called #1 Single, airing Sundays on E! On the show, viewers follow the 37-year-old singer on dates as she searches for "the one." In her search, she utilizes every method she can think of, under the loving supervision of her sister Debbie and friends like Juan Patiño (another ex-boyfriend) and Illeana Douglas.

Lisa was gracious enough to talk to me by phone this past Friday. In Part 1, we talk about her show, her concerns over how it was going to be produced, and her love of feta cheese omelettes.  In Part 2, which we will post on Friday, Lisa turns the tables on me, getting me to talk about my dating life and giving me tips on where I should meet people.

It was quite an eventful 38 minutes, I'll tell you that:

[Photo: Kevin Westenberg]

Joel Keller:  So you've been doing a lot of promotion for the show.  I heard you on Stern, and I think you were on Craig Ferguson's show the other day, right?

Lisa Loeb: Yes. I hadn't done Stern before.

JK: I thought he was very respectful towards you and that he didn't go in the directions he usually goes into.

LL: No, he didn't at all, I was really surprised; I thought he was really going to be over the top. I've done a zillion interviews with DJs who try to be Howard Stern who are not very good at it. And he actually was easy to talk to and had a lot of good questions and was really complimentary. I was really surprised, actually.

JK:  So where are you calling me from now?

LL: Los Angeles.

JK:  You're out there for a little while now to take a break from filming the show?

LL: We're actually finishing up post-production on the show and doing promotion for it, and I'm working on a new record.

JK: So how was the whole process, now that you're done with it, and you've gone through all of these dates?  I mean, I'm out on the dating scene too, and I know what it's like.

LL: Oh really? How old are you?

JK: 34.

LL: Ok, so, similar situations. Where do you live?

JK: In New Jersey, about 30 miles away from New York.

LL: So, you date in the city, mainly?

JK: In the city and in New Jersey, yeah. Depends on what their geographical requirements are, because people who live in the city like to date people who live in the city, so..

LL: Yeah.

JK: But how'd the whole process go?

LL: It's good. It's actually a little overwhelming, because a lot of people say, you know, there's no good men left, but there are so many good men and so many great people out there. It's a little bit hard to get to everybody and to meet everybody and to give myself a chance to meet all the people that I really wanna meet, y'know? It's like it's sometimes a little bit hard to focus, which sounds terrible, but there's so many great people out there.

JK: Let's start at the beginning.  Why did you decide to do the show?

LL: Well, first we can just talk about why I did not want to do the show.  I just thought it might be really invasive to my personal life.  I didn't necessarily want cameras around during a period of time that was really important to me, meeting another person. But then I realized that I do talk to people a lot about my personal life, and I am used to
being in front of the camera.

Some people from a production company that I'm friends with, who make documentary films, wanted to make the show.

JK: So they came to you with the idea?

LL: They came to me with the idea, and I said no a lot of times.  Finally, we agreed that we could do a version of the show without already being attached to a network, make a kind of a pilot for the show, and I could see how that felt, if I was able to go on a date on camera, if it felt OK. So we did that, and it actually felt fine; it wasn't too bizarre -- it was actually a little bizarre for the guys but not terrible -- and I felt like the way it came out... when I saw what we had shot and how we had edited it together... it did represent a different person than what's on reality shows typically, and I thought well other people might really relate to this.  Then E! picked it up and they were excited about developing it further, and letting it be what is, which is different from their other programming.

JK: How do you think it represents a different person than what you see in reality shows?

LL: Well, it's not quite so over the top, it's not quite so celebrity-driven, it's not all about being a crazy celebrity.  It's not a big set up, know what I'm saying?

JK: Was it tough to put yourself out there knowing that you're a woman in her thirties out there on the dating scene with some celebrity, and the audience is going to see a lot of your insecurities?

LL: Not really, because the only thing I was concerned about was how it would influence my personal life.  Because I didn't want it to get in the way of the flow of my personal life off-camera, you know what I'm saying?  And once I realized we weren't going to be shooting 24 hours a day I felt like it was OK.  Again, I'm used to speaking to a lot of people; I have a lot of friends and family, and I perform music and speak in front of a lot of crowds.  So I share with people already a lot in my life.

For me, this wasn't so complicated, and I felt like it was something that I did have to offer to other people, because I feel like... when I watch certain TV shows or movies, when I relate to the people in the shows, I feel like I'm not alone, and I feel like I learn a lot through other people's experiences.  And I thought, you know, there's not a lot of people who represent what my friends and I represent who are on TV. I'll enjoy it because I'll get to share my experiences with other people and I think a lot of other people will relate to it, so that actually wasn't too complicated.

JK: Your last show was with your ex-boyfriend Dweezil (Zappa).

LL: Right.

JK: It was a Food Network show; the two of you were cooking together?

LL: Yes. Yeah.

JK: Did that factor into any decision?  Now an old relationship of yours is out there for everyone to see.  Everybody knows it's the last show you did, and now you're looking for a new boyfriend.  Did that factor in at all?

LL: [laughs] No,  not really.  That didn't really factor into it. 

JK: So that was something that you just completely considered separately from your last experience?

LL: Yeah. The last experience was a cooking show, and this is more of a real reality show, in that it's less like an instruction-based TV show, it's more personal experiences, and this show I'm more involved in the production of the show than the last one. Dweezil and I thought we were going to be more involved in the production and then when things got going it turned out that they didn't let us be involved.  [hesitates] Not Food Network; the production company we were working with didn't involve us in the way we had agreed to be involved, whereas on this show I learned from that experience and I'm really involved.  I only agreed to do the show if I was really involved in the production, which I think is helpful in representing life and people's sort of well-rounded personalities: my sister, my friends, people who hang out with us, our other friends, me, all of us.  I feel like it's more well-rounded. But on the other hand, it doesn't have the main topic of showing how to cook.

JK: But food is a part of it, obviously...

LL: Yeah, well, food is always a part of everything.

JK: Well, I live out here in New Jersey, so we're all about food out here.

LL: [laughs]

JK: Diners everywhere.

LL: I love it.  The only way to get vegetables at a diner late night is to order the omelette.  A feta cheese and broccoli omelette.

JK: I'm a feta chese and mushroom omelette guy.

LL: Oh yum! It's good like when you confuse the feta cheese for a piece of egg white but then you find out it's feta cheese. Isn't that exciting?

JK: See, well I leave the yolk in, I hate to admit that, but..

LL: I do too!  You know sometimes they don't scramble the eggs really really well.

JK: You're right.  So it's kind of gooey..

LL: No no not gooey, it's well done, but you just get that chunk of egg, and you think it's like a pice of egg, but it's actually a piece of feta.

JK: And I like the places that just stuff it full of feta, because feta's just a very flavorful kind of cheese..

LL: Ah, it's so good.

JK: And it's like... you want to taste it so that's why if it's a big omelette with lots of feta in it and some mushrooms...

LL: It's really good.  Although I'd like to say that cheddar cheese is also good in the omelette right in the middle, because then you take a little bit of the cheddar cheese and you put it with the french fries, and you have cheese fries and the omelette.

JK: [exhales] Ah, see, that's good.

LL:  That's sneaky, right? And tasty.

JK: I'll have to try it the next time.  You showed a couple of methods on camera about how you found dates.

LL: Right, like throw a little party, or I did online dating.

JK: Where did you do the online dating?

LL: It was Airtroductions, the "meet on the the airplane" thing.  A lot of the people come through friends of friends, like everybody else.  There are people who want to set me up with other people and they agreed to go on those dates on camera.

JK: How many of your dates didn't want to be on camera?

LL: Well, there were a number of dates I went on during those last few months that were not on camera, at all, ever.

JK: So there wasn't a situation where if he didn't want to be on camera, it was a dealbreaker?

LL: No, not at all. It's totally understandable.  Although I also don't hold it against somebody if they feel like going on camera.  Unless they really, really want to go on camera, and that's kind of strange. So far I don't think I've experienced too many of those.

JK: There's a couple of factors that you have to deal with there, though; you have to deal with the fact that you're Lisa Loeb and you have to deal with the fact that you're on camera.

LL: Right. The camera part, it's surprisingly easy to discern what's going on while it's happening. I can tell if somebody bizarrely feels separate from me because they think I'm a singer and they're treating me as [singsongy] "Lisa Loeb, a singer."  There are other people who just feel like a peer who respect what I do but they don't act bizarrely impressed or anything like that.

JK: But if you meet someone and they know who you are, is that a problem for you?

LL: Again, I don't hold it against somebody if they don't know who I am -- I don't know who a lot of people are.  If somebody knows who I am, that's fine too; I have a lot of friends who I used to watch on TV and now I know them as friends, and there was a transition period, where I finally had to say "Oh my gosh, I'm a huge fan!" and then I'm also friends with them.

But I understand all the different levels of recognizing people or knowing something about them before I met them, but I also know you can make a transition into being a friend with them...

JK: Person to person.

LL: Yeah, exactly.

JK: You do both coasts I guess at this point?

LL: Yeah, and also Texas [laughs].

JK: Where your family lives.

LL: Yeah.

JK: Where do you feel the most anonymous, because you do have a distinctive look, Lisa, you've got your glasses... Where can you walk down the street and people aren't stopping you?

LL: It's pretty similar all the way around. Sometimes in Dallas, I don't know if people recognize me, because I've lived in Dallas growing up; I know a lot of people there, I have a big family and we all have a lot of friends, so people stop me because they went to my bat mitzvah. I know them, they're friends or they're friends with my aunt or uncle or whoever it is.

In LA, people... people are always trying to see who's walking in the door, but there are a lot of different people who are on TV live in LA, so I get recognized but it's not a huge deal.

And in New York, I can see people turning their heads, but again, it's New York, so you feel more anonymous there, because people are... I don't know, they're just normal and straightforward in New York, so right now it's just kind of like being in a party all the time, where people you know might come up and say hello.  It's not a problem.  It's OK.

JK: I heard you went to a JDate mixer.  How'd that go?

LL: I did go to a JDate mixer.  In some cases it was good, because I met a lot of interesting people who aren't musicians.  On the other hand, there were a few people who, once they said, "Oh, you look like the singer Lisa Loeb", they acted like... you know, it separated me from them.  Some people, they were just normal; they asked me about my job like I asked them about their job. But other people asked questions like "What's it like to be Lisa Loeb?" and things that make you feel like you're not a peer.

JK: "What's it like to be Lisa Loeb?"  Somebody asked you that?

LL: People asked me that!  It's "uhh..."

JK: What do you tell them?

LL: Like "Well, uh here I am!"  It's just a weird question.  It's not very specific.

(Come back Friday for Part 2; when I'm the one on the spot!  Damn, she's good!)

(We also discuss the interview - and play clips-  on our weekly podcast....)