As many of you likely remember, Rob Ford, the late Mayor of Toronto, and I were enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time back in the 1980’s.

We became drinking buddies then, and I got to know his family a little bit and have found myself in the entirely surprising position as being in a Book Club with Doug Ford, his older, angrier, more politically conservative brother, who was just elected Premier of Ontario.

Here is a partial transcript of the meeting of our last Book Club:

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Doug Ford: Okay, okay, quieten down.

Lucy: Oh, I just watched the movie and it was SO scary.

Me: Was it the original or the remake?

Doug Ford: Jesus and goddamn, put a sock in it!

Me: Sorry.

Doug Ford: I’ll make you sorry Murray. You and I, shot put field after this. No excuses, and for Christ’s sake, use a coaster! This isn’t some chicken shack, here!

Lucy: I would love it if this was a chicken shack.

Doug Ford: Goddamn Lucy, you are on warning!

And if there is one more interruption from either of you, Sweet Jesus, you don’t even want to know. Just try me. ( Several seconds pass) Yeah, you just try me. Okay, that’s what I thought.

Okay then. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.

Story of a businessman who saw a really, really sweet real estate deal. He takes advantage and moves his family into this great house and it turns out it’s haunted and everybody gets scared and they run away from the best investment they ever made. But why the haunting, what does that symbolize?

Lucy: It’s the story of Colonialsm. The house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, and some white settlers arrived and did not honour this, so the haunting is symbolic of the suffering and fury and pain of our first peoples whom we’ve commodified and marginalized.

Doug Ford: I think I’m going puke.

I’ve never heard something so stupid in my entire life.

The ghosts are big government regulations that drove the businessman crazy. He made a good investment. Was doing some renos. Providing jobs for his community. But every time he goes to do something, say make a panic room or dungeon chamber, there’s some inspector pecking, pecking, pecking at him. Everywhere he turns: regulations, taxation, bureaucracy, protests, special interests. Even when he’s trying to have relations with his lady, regulations show up in the form of some spirit!

It’s exhausting. And you think it’s the ghosts who are the victims?? You got a screw loose, Lucy, a goddamn screw loose. The businessman is the victim here, harassed by the state to the point of madness, it’s a miracle that he was strong enough not to go on a mass killing spree!

Me: So you’re saying this book is a cautionary tale against big government?

Doug Ford: Slow clap for Einstein here. Yes, dammit, of course the book is a cautionary tale against government interference, and it’s as plain as this expensive gold chain around my neck.

And if you can’t see that, well, there’s nothing that can be done, you might as well move to Russia, comrade.

That was a bit of a kick in the junk, I tell you, but I’m not the sort of person who will let Big Government keep him down! With this in mind I have started an Adult Entertainment Film Company called Naughty America

and have been writing a series of pornographic scripts for American patriot and sex bomb county clerk Kim Davis, who gained international attention after defying a US federal court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Script #1

(Kim Davis, wearing sweat pants and a sports bra is sitting in the stands at a baseball stadium drinking a beer and watching a young man take batting practice. It is early evening and it appears that Kim and the nubile athlete are the only people there. Sax music plays in the background.)

Kim: You’re just as black as night, aren’t you?

Baseball player: Un día voy a ser rico a través de mis esfuerzos , si Dios quiere.

Kim: (Takes off top and tosses her mullet) I like the way you handle that wood.

Baseball player: (Stops hitting, spits on the ground) I will sex with you once, $100, no lip touches.

Kim: Let it rain, baby, let it rain.

Script #2

(Mug Shot of Kim Davis, background slowly turning into an undulating American flag)

Voiceover: My name is Kim Davis and I’m an American patriot. When God said let there be marriage, he said it was between Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, okay? I am a warrior for God, damn it, and if they put me in prison, well, they’re just putting me closer to God, so it’s really like a promotion. Like the Good Book says, “Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison. So there.”

(Fade out and then fade in to scene of Kim Davis naked in the shower. She is very slowly washing herself, and as this progresses, this slow, tender cleansing, she begins to speak to Jesus)

Kim: Clean me, sweet Jesus, clean the hell out of me. There Jesus, there’s a real dirty spot! Clean it, my divine Lord who looks just like Kid Rock, clean it faster!!

That’s it, that’s the purity I’m looking for sweet Lord, that’s it. Oh, you are a good and just Lord, amen, yes, amen!
Script #3

(Kim Davis is in a confessional, Pope Francis is listening on the other side)

Kim: Forgive me father for I have sinned. I am like, crazy turned-on by hot homo guys going at it. (Scene changes to gay sex between two men, while Kim’s voice continues her confession)

Oh, I like them when they’re smooth and when they’re hairy, I like how hard everything is and how they’re as powerful as America or a truck. (A naked Kim Davis is now in the scene with the men) It makes me want to roll around with them, to be their carpet and absorb everything!

Pope Francis: It sounds as if the fever dream a young priest once told unto me in a quiet and dark nook of the Vatican. In his telling, the Rosary beads were for more than just praying, they became a conduit to truly transcendent, Godly feeling. Oh, Brother William, I miss him so.