It was a pretty busy day, and in almost no time at all I found myself separated from Rachelle and Jones. These are the texts from my wife that followed:
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Rachelle: Where are you?
Rachelle: The Bat Cave?! That sounds dramatic!!
Rachelle: Really? That’s weird!
Rachelle: I thought it would have something to do with Batman, too. Maybe a tribute to Adam West or something.
Rachelle: Adam West.
Rachelle: He just died.
Rachelle: He was the original Batman.
Rachelle: No, Michael Keaton was not the original batman.
Rachelle: Thought for sure you’d know that.
Rachelle: Well, because you’re seasoned.
Rachelle: That’s not an insult.
Rachelle: Seasoned things are delicious.
Rachelle: Like Ikea meatballs.
Rachelle: I still can’t believe you ate 19 of them that one day .
Rachelle: Yes, it was very impressive, very alpha male.
Rachelle: However, if you’d pushed through to 20 it would have been even more alpha, I think.
Rachelle: Just saying.
Rachelle: Where are we? How nice of you to ask!
Rachelle: We’re in the kid’s play area, right near the tepee.
Rachelle: I have discovered that medieval headgear is really heavy!
Rachelle: What have you learned in the bat cave besides the fact that Michael Keaton was not the original Batman?
Rachelle: And beside the fact that you’re old.
Rachelle: Bats eat mice like you eat meatballs.
Rachelle: Pickle, I am glad that you can still learn new things.
Rachelle: Sorry?
Rachelle: Why don’t you want Jones in the tepee?
Rachelle: Cultural appropriation?
Rachelle: No, I don’t hate my First Nation’s brothers and sisters.
Rachelle: The tepee was just a nice, quiet spot for Jones to sit and colour for a bit, that’s all.
Rachelle: I mean, it is expressly there for the kid’s to use!
Rachelle: You don’t know what the Great Spirit wanted! Perhaps that’s exactly what the Great Spirit wished for!
Rachelle: Lord, you have to spend less time on Twitter.
Rachelle: I swear, people should have to take a test before they get on that thing–like kids having to be a certain height before going on a ride.
Rachelle: I’m sorry Pickle, but you’re just too suggestible.
Rachelle: Last week you were insisting the Russians were cyborgs.
Rachelle: Regardless, it’s not a “cultural appropriation” tepee, but more of a “spirit guide” tepee.
Rachelle: I had a vision when I was in there.
Rachelle: Of Justin Trudeau.
Rachelle: He was dressed in his tepee denims and smelled of pine needles.
Rachelle: Shirt?
Rachelle: No, just the jean jacket.
Rachelle: Yes, unbuttoned.
Rachelle: I know. Yes, you and some other kids beat him up in grade school.
Rachelle: You know, that’s probably something you shouldn’t be so proud of.
Rachelle: No, you couldn’t.
Rachelle: No, you simply could not do a plank– no matter how much you trained or hard you tried.
Rachelle: It’s like the 20th meatball for you, a bridge you shall never cross.
Rachelle: Oh, no!
Rachelle: He didn’t speak at all, he just smiled at me, and when he did I knew that everything was going to be fine. Sunny ways everywhere!
Rachelle: Oh! I think I see you Pickle!
Rachelle: Do you see us?
Rachelle: Look! Jones has a dinosaur he wants to show you! He’s running to you now, our little sunny way is running right to you!
The other day my book A Van Full of Girls
was selected by Kerry Clare, author of Mitzi Bytes and literary rainmaker, to be on the One-Of-A-Kind list. https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2017/03/02/The-One-of-a-Kind-List
If you’re thinking that “one-of-a-kind” is some sort of backhanded compliment and that this designation is like being sent to the Island of Misfit Toys,
well, you’re an idiot and you have never been more wrong about anything in your entire, often wrong, life. This is a tremendous honour, and as if that wasn’t enough, Kiley Turner, who owns a goddamn company AND is managing editor of 49th Shelf, implied, very, very strongly implied, that I had written the BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN HISTORY for my book A VAN FULL OF GIRLS, which you can order from any fine bookseller or from me, a shady bookseller.
Put on your sunglasses and read this:
“Have you ever been in a van full of girls? All the girls are alive and they’re happy. You’re all heading off to do something whimsical and flirty and maybe a little bit drunk. You’re going to see a Beach Boys tribute band. You’re going to the casino to bet it all on red. You’re going to a séance that you just know is going to end in skinny-dipping. Something like that. A Van Full of Girls is a collection of short, dizzy, funny things. It’s zippy and unpredictable, like a mongoose, but it’s dead sexy. You will want to take Polaroids of each precious, little missive contained within and then tape each one to your fridge. You will want to give this book to somebody you need to love you.”
That’s the description.
The best book description in the history of the world.
At any rate, all of these accolades have inspired me to write a letter to Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood. This is the letter:
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Dear Margaret:
You probably heard that my book A VAN FULL OF GIRLS was recently awarded the prize for BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Let that just sink in for a moment.
Maybe a little longer.
Okay.
You feel it?
Peggy, I beat Crime and Punishment.
I beat Paradise Lost.
I beat The Shining.
I beat every book you ever wrote.
I even beat the fucking Bible.
You might be on a stamp,
and one of your books might have been made into a movie, (Only 29% on the Tomatometer, though), but nobody, not even a drunk person, has ever declared that you wrote THE BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
So next time you see a small man dressed in as much Adidas wear as he can afford and using supplemental oxygen
waving frantically at you while you’re out for one of your ponderous, unfriendly strolls through the Annex, you might deign to wave back to him, because you know what? That man is me, your literary better.
Michael Murray
PS: We have one spot available in our fantasy baseball league this year if you care to finish behind me in yet another competition!
This is a link to Kerry Clare’s new book Mitzi Bytes: http://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443449229/mitzi-bytes
Kiley Turner is Managing editor of @49thShelf, dictator at Turner-Riggs ( http://turner-riggs.com/) and content manager at brand-new ReaderBound: the easiest way for publishers to get a great website.
And you can order my book here: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/a-van-full-of-girls/9781554831685-item.html
]]>This is what it looked like:
Will you be murdered by a robot?
1. Do you think you’re better than a robot?
A. Yes
B. No.
C. Hard to say, it really depends on the robot.
D. Generally, yes, but very specifically, no.
2. Would you ever consider marrying a robot?
A. Yes, absolutely!
B. No, marriage is a union between two animate beings.
C. I’m very curious about robots.
D. Been there, done that.
3. Do you take public transit?
A. Yes, I ride the subway everyday.
B. Occasionally, but it’s not a habit.
C. I believe that the subway is a robot snake that lives underground devouring commuters.
D. Never.
4. Do you think 9/11 was an inside job?
A. Yes! I mean, come on, Building #7!
B. No, it was the terrorists, and they’re definitely not robots!
C. The Illuminati are robot gods from the future.
D. Robots worked tirelessly in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11! They’re heroes!
5. Do robots hate you for your freedom?
A. Yes, they really resent humans for enslaving them!
B. No, robots can’t feel emotions, so they don’t know anger or jealousy!
6. Do you like to watch robots fight?
A. Yes, it’s entirely awesome!
B. No, I think it’s barbaric and should be outlawed.
C. First rule: There is no fight club.
D. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots was my favourite game as a kid.
7. Feeling curious and maybe a little bit excited, have you ever ventured into Robot Town late at night?
A. Yes, but I didn’t do anything.
B. Yes, but it was part of a stag party.
C. Yes, quite a bit.
D. No, I didn’t even know that there was a Robot Town.
8. If a robot had a favourite National Hockey League team, what do you think it would be?
A. Montreal Canadiens.
B. Minnesota Wild.
C. Robots wouldn’t watch hockey, I can’t even pretend.
D. Toronto Maple Leafs
9. When referring to something you think is “stupid,” do you often say, “That’s just so robot!”
A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Probably in the past, but not now.
10. Do you currently socialize with any robots?
A. A robot and I were great pen pals, but then I had to block it after things got weird with the Snapchat pics.
B. I joined a Choir! Choir! Choir! group that has several robot members.
3. No, robots are tools that aid my life, not friends!
4. I like to watch the robot that lives across the street, but I am too shy to introduce myself.
11. Do you have a robot taxiderimist?
A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Only for my owls.
Give yourself 10 points for every answer that corresponds with A, 7 points for B, 5 points for C, and 1 point for D.
If you scored 60 points or above it is a certainty that a robot will murder you. Repeated blunt trauma is the most likely method by which the robot will kill you, although the possibility that it uses knives or crossbows is still very much in play.
If you totalled between 35 and 60 points, it is very likely you will be murdered by a robot, just like the rest of humanity.
If you scored between 25 and 35 points, it is more likely that you will die from non-robot-related causes than be murdered by a robot. However, your death remains inevitable, and you should avoid public transit if at all possible.
If you tallied less than 25 points, you probably won’t be murdered by a robot, but will likely perish at your own hand, as do nearly 80% of Toronto Maple Leaf fans.
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A sprawling outpost on the edge of the city, the place has always reminded me of an airport. It’s insanely busy, there’s a multiplicity of languages and cultures streaming through the corridors, and the store, the things that they sell, are never truly what the consumer wants.Ikea is more of a way station, a place in your life where you pause, and finding an acceptable but temporary solution, move forward from who you are toward the glittering horizon of the person you’ll one day become, a person who will eventually be able to afford the sort of “adult” furniture you might one day pass down to your children. And so, when you find yourself at Ikea on a Sunday afternoon, you discover, in both a figurative and literal sense, that you are not where you want to be. Ikea, is not your beautiful house.
Perhaps as a result, most of the people there, like commuters, have a slightly dazed and unhappily obliged expression to their faces. However, one couple looked happy, like they were starring in their own movie and the rest of us were just extras there to lend contrast. Located somewhere in their beautiful twenties, they were animated, as if playing games in an amusement park or falling in love while ice skating. Wearing a shiny, silver miniskirt that showed off a splashy array of tattoos, she was a platinum blonde with a kind of retro burlesque vibe, and he, well, he didn’t look quite as confident as he was dressed, but he was trying hard.
They were in Ikea as tourists, treating the place a bit like a museum where the exhibits weren’t the storage solutions and furnishings, but all the weary, humbled people shopping there. It was a cultural excursion for these two, an anthropological journey that was meant as symbol of the quirky, self-conscious lives they were trying to fashion for themselves. She, independent-minded and unpredictable, loved the carnival food on sale there, the secret passageways through the intricately designed shopping trails and the way that things were piled up like giant toys, and he was planning on getting a tattoo of the Ikea Monkey to commemorate the great day, both of them smiling secrets at one another, certain that they would never grow into the compromised, dream-beaten people they imagined blending into the background all around them.
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Prince:
“ It was in 2004 and I was on a flight from London to Dubai. While flipping through the stations on my headset I started to listen to the Oldies station because they were playing a little known Beach Boys song that I just adore called “I Can Hear Music.” I just sort of fell into the station the way that you do, and then as if plucked from my nightmares, they played “Purple Rain.” I will never forget the cheesy announcer saying, “He may be a gracefully aging king now, but he’ll always be a Prince to us.” I wanted the plane to crash.”
Bryan Adams:
“I was at the fucking Home Hardware buying a couple of those big 5 gallon water pumps for my studio, okay?”
Michael Stipe of REM:
“I was paying for gas in Michigan. Funny, though, it didn’t make me feel old or irrelevant, it just made me feel beyond time. How long did it take for that to happen? 20 years? That’s really not very much time, but that’s all it took for us to become a part of musical history, to become the music that your parents loved. “
Sarah McLachlan:
“Oh Christ, I wish you hadn’t asked me that! I was in a Vancouver wine bar with a friend and the place was playing some generic radio station, and I don’t know why, but I was listening to the DJ just as she announced, “And here’s an oldie but a goodie by our own Sarah McLachlan—a classy woman.” And then my song “I Will Remember You “ came on and all I could think about was some woman in a retirement home singing along, broken and out of key, while thinking of her dead husband. Oh, it was just awful, I mean, it shouldn’t have been, but it was, it really, really was. And my friend Liz, who was sitting across from me, could see the obvious look of mortification on my face, and she just said, “Classy, classy woman, that Sarah McLachlan. “
Randy Travis:
“The God honest truth is I’m not positive that it was an Oldie’s station, but I was damn sure at the time that it was. I was in jail, that first night after my infamous DUI, and as I was getting processed one of the clerks was playing her radio and my song “Forever and Ever, Amen,” came on. I looked up, startled and ashamed, thinking about the words and what was actually happening to me, and I must have looked a fright because she turned it off immediately.”
]]>It’s a great space. Cool and sophisticated, it was an effortlessly busy spot full of confident looking people undaunted by the presence of beauty. It emitted a really charismatic, downtown vibe. Waxed mustaches, iPhones and carefully considered lighting were all around us. The chefs working in the open kitchen at the back were illuminated as if actors on a stage, coming across more like artists than cooks, so theatrical and precise were they in the execution of their tasks.
The food was great, arriving like sculpture on plates, each one a conversation piece to photograph and post on Instagram. It was a little bit precious and eating the food almost felt secondary, as if it was the destructive, privileged indulgence of ruining somebody else’s creation (think of a bullying child knocking over a sand castle) rather than a simple act of physical restoration.
Much of this feeling arose from the comically small portions that are served at Ursa. It was as if a parody, with the experience of dining in a restaurant having virtually nothing to do with actually getting fed. Our main course, that cost $26, was artfully arranged, but it had less than three ounces of beef in it. My appetizer, one piece of tofu that was embellished by a broth poured at the table, $12, and Rachelle’s beet salad, which I think contained one beet, was in the same ballpark. You weren’t being fed, you were being fluffed, and walking out of the restaurant– now hipster laden and cocktail shaken– we had to figure out where to go to eat. Seriously. It was as if the theatrics had been done with– as well as a good chunk of money– and now it was off to get something less “arranged,” but more sustaining.
By definition the foodie culture is judgmental. It’s implied that you need a certain level of education to appreciate what’s in front of you, but unlike other art forms, the consumption of the food does nothing to elevate you. It doesn’t make you a better, more empathetic person or lift you up and out of yourself, but simply moves you into a class above others. It’s the surface taste of things, and the love and nourishment we imagine present in meals is oddly displaced, with each trip to a restaurant more like a visit to a museum than a participatory, reciprocal expression of something shared and humble. Taste, as they say, is not a moral virtue, but a privileged acquisition that has more to do with “belonging” than the content of any given individual.
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