is now trying– for the third time– to become the Democratic candidate for President of the USA. The man must like power, I guess. At any rate, he has espoused all the political views at one time or another, and now, at 77, he must truly believe it is finally Joe time. What follows is a list of alternate jobs, other than President of the USA, that Mr. Biden might fill:

Greeter at a prestigious riverboat casino
NHL Ref
Dr. Joe, marriage counselor and TV personality
Gourmet hot dog street vendor
Permanent host of The Academy Awards
Mayor of Caramel-by-the-sea, California
Colour commentator on Monday Night Football
Private detective who lives in Hawaii
Head barber and owner of Joe’s Man Cave
Prince of Whales

The crowd outside the stadium in TO is wild! Can you hear the cheering?

I could not hear it, but I could hear the occasional whoop coming through the open window as people made their way up or down the street.

Sitting in the dark, listening, it felt like a blackout had washed the city free. Everyone was experiencing the same thing. Everyone was happily displaced, vibrant.

In the wake of the victory some of the broadcasters have been anointing the Raptors Canada’s team, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The Raptors are Toronto’s team, reflecting a sensibility in league, sport and composition that is unique to the city. The players in the NBA, much more partners than faceless subordinates, are a revolution unto themselves. And in Toronto where the culture wars seems to burn so much brighter and hotter that the ROC, the Raptors embodied not just the demographic of the city they worked in, but the aspirations of the people who lived there, too.

For awhile now, particularly amongst people younger than me, the Raptors have served as connective tissue, the casual language spoken at parties and bars. This is not your father’s corporate sports team. This is something else. It’s youth, it’s velocity, it’s progress. The Leafs and Jays were institutional legacies passed on from bygone eras, but the Raptors were not, they were the living present of the city.

And last night there was such joy and hope. People were experiencing things they would never experience again. Their lives were being written, histories formed. They were young and beautiful and united, and the world was changing not just before them, but from within them, and everything was cresting, limitless and glowing.

And today, some 40 years later, Jones and I are walking on the sidewalk between snowbanks on our way to daycare. But Jones is an adventurer, he needs more life than that, so I help him up to the mountains. We’re holding hands as he balances on the changing topography, and he could not be happier. “I’m taller than you, daddy!”, he shouts. The sun is behind us, our long shadows cast before us like a path. Jones the long one, mine the short. He looks at me, smiling, “Daddy, are you happy?” A question of such unexpected beauty. My radiant beast, so vividly alive, caring whether his father is happy or not. I tell him that I am very happy, that I could not be happier, in fact, and Jones says, “I’m happy, too!” And so we continue, both stronger now. The sunlight bouncing off the thin membranes of ice covering the branches in the trees above us. Everything imperishable.

*******************************

Rachelle: No, it’s not.

Rachelle: I’m sorry Pickle, you’re wrong.

Rachelle: It’s not the Marie Keto diet.

Rachelle: There are two different things. The Keto diet where you eat steak, and Marie Kondo, a Japanese spirit who tidies apartments when you’re sleeping.

Rachelle: It’s an easy mistake to make.

Rachelle: I don’t know how you’re expected to keep up either!

Rachelle: The world moves quickly, it really does.

Rachelle: Did you drop Jones off at daycare?

Rachelle: “Only Jones and Hulk make the rules now?”

Rachelle: He said that to you when you asked him to put on his boots?

Rachelle: OMG, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard!

Rachelle: I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world like that, either.

Rachelle: Can you imagine?

Rachelle: There would just be SO MUCH SMASHING.

Rachelle: Marie Kondo should be part of the Hulk and Jones team, quietly tidying up after they raze city after city.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: How is that sexist?

Rachelle: And disrespectful to Asian culture?

Rachelle: It just is? Is that all you’ve got???

Rachelle: Look, proclaiming that you’re tolerant of everything but intolerance is not an explanation for why you think I’m sexist and racist.

Rachelle: No it isn’t.

Rachelle: It doesn’t even really make sense.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By extension you don’t really make sense either.

Rachelle: Yes, all your friends know that.

Rachelle: For a very long time now.

Rachelle: When you really get going we call it “Murrbling,” as in, “Man alive, was Michael ever Murrbling last night!”

Rachelle: I don’t have time right now, Pickle. My hockey game is about to start.

Rachelle: Okay, I’ll pick up some Jackson Triggs on the way back, and of course I’ll come home with my shield, or on it. They don’t call me the Blonde Volcano for nothing!

Rachelle: Love you, too, and don’t let Jones and the Hulk push you around. You make the rules!

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By that I did mean I make the rules. xo

In it, I am wearing a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.

This picture was taken from a Christmas Assembly at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Ontario, and I was performing a rap as an “urban Santa.” Although I was not in black face as some have asserted, my family and I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and I had a very uncharacteristic tan. I am deeply apologetic for that triggering tan, the privilege that implies, and for my blatant cultural appropriation.

It is also true that I wrote, “I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CRAZY CRUSH ON YOU!! in Marie-Therese Vitzhum’s yearbook in 1983. I am deeply embarrassed by my insensitivity to my brothers and sisters who struggle with mental illness. After finishing in the bottom third of the standings in a fantasy hockey league two years ago, I, too, fell into a depression, so I need you to know you have an ally in Michael Murray, not an enemy.

I love you.
I hear you.
And I am listening.

These past behaviours of mine are not in keeping with who I am today or the values I have fought for throughout my career as Commissioner of the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey League. I want to offer my sincerest apology, and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey Community set for me when you elected me Commissioner. I understand why your faith in me has been shaken, and I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused.

I am ready to do that important work.

Humbled and grateful for this teachable moment.

Your fantasy hockey Commissioner,

Michael Murray

Doug Ford, the Conservative Premier of Ontario, is known for many things.

He is the brother of Toronto’s late, fun-loving mayor Rob Ford, is the canny businessman who led Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary to a top 12 business ranking in the greater Etobicoke region for three of the last five years, and is an avid hockey fan who coaches a Peewee team in Etobicoke. What follows is the speech Ford gave to his players between periods during a recent game:

*************************************************

“Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that’s what we have here, today, boys. This game sits before us like an undervalued property waiting to be bought and turned into condos by an alpha businessman! Do we have the necessary capital to make the purchase? You’re damn right we do! Do we have our mortgage rate advantageously negotiated?

I can’t hear you!

I still can’t hear you!!

I. SAID. DO! WE! HAVE! OUR! MORTGAGE! RATE! ADVANTAGEOUSLY! NEGOTIATED!

That’s better.

You’re damn right we do!!

We have the best flipping mortgage rate in the entire city!

We have all the talent and all the character we need to take this game from the Tornadoes, we just need to stop playing like a bunch of goddamn Midwives out there! You’re were playing like little girl witches out there in the first period. Sweeping your sticks about like ladies with brooms instead of chopping with them like they were axes. It’s like we’ve been cleaning up after the Tornadoes, not dominating them, and the Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils don’t clean up after nobody!!

Jesus H. Christ.

Defranco, please tell me I did not hear you interrupting me with a stupid question asking what a Midwife was. I will bench your skinny ass. Don’t think I won’t. I would welcome the opportunity. You just try me, Defranco. I dare you.

Yeah.

That’s what I thought.

Not so tough now, are you, you pitiful little puck bunny.

Okay, now that Midwife Defranco got his question out of his system, we can get back to strategy. Boys, I want you to think of the Tornadoes as a greenbelt that we are going to raze in order to develop. We are going to chop those little bastards down. We are going to throw their nests from their trees and shit in their brooks. We are going to show them what it feels like to be developed by the Etobicoke Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils! We are going to bring the full might of the free market down upon their socialist heads!

ARE WE OPEN FOR BUSINESS?

YES!

YES, WE ARE GODDAMN WELL OPEN FOR BUSINESS, NOW LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF WAR, BOYS, AND TAKE THIS MOMENT AND MAKE IT YOURS!!!

As many of you will have heard, I have started a daily Podcast with Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund.

This is an excerpt from our most recent episode:

*****************************************************

Me: Well, that was awfully nice of Ontario Premier Doug Ford to come in for an interview and show us his old shot put from high school!

Heidi: Heidi no get shot put.

Me: What don’t you get?

Heidi: It just metal ball you can’t chase! Why have ball if not chase? Like big circle rock, and if circle-ball-rock not used to crush cat or squirrel or dumb bird, what the point?

Me: Well, as Premier Ford explained, it is a display of both mental and physical mastery.

Heidi: Heidi don’t think so. Heidi call bullshit.

Me: You ALWAYS call bullshit.

Heidi: Heidi calls them as she sees him. Why she respected journalist.

Me: You are a good journalist, it’s true.

Heidi: Heidi know. You could learn thing or two from Heidi.

Me: Like how to eat really, really, disgustingly quickly and spill my kibble all over the place?

Heidi: Grrrr. Grrrr.

Me: Well, it’s a shame that we never got to find out if Premier Ford would have won the gold medal for shot put at the Olympics. He’s right, the boycott back in 1980 really did just punish the athletes.

Heidi: Can’t give communism a foothold anywhere! But still, Heidi think something fishy about story.

Me: What do you mean?

Heidi: Well, if he and famous Ford Pack big part of Illuminati as he say, then they control Olympics. They do what they want!

Sex parties and gold medals and meat fat all the time!!

Me: But if they were part of the Illuminati, that would explain the family’s mysterious rise to power! I mean, his brother, a crack addict, was mayor of the city! How could something like that happen if not for the power of the Illuminati?

Heidi: Heidi know thing or two about Illuminati, and all Heidi say is Ford Pack not Illuminati material.

Me: Am I Illuminati material?

Heidi: Heidi not sure. Heidi very, very hungry. Maybe if she had treat would help her think.

Me: Would a liver treat do?

Heidi: Not ones from Dollar Store, liver treats from Italy.

Me: I said liver treat. Not treats. Singular. Not plural.

Heidi: Give Heidi treat.

Me: Okay.

Heidi: Not Illuminati material. Not even close. Bug Illuminati at best. Maybe dirt Illuminati.

Me: Let’s just move on, shall we? I have to say, I really thought Premier Ford dodged the question I asked him about the #MeToo movement! What did he say? “Shot putters never have to worry about the ladies?” What do you think that means?

Heidi: Heidi don’t care. He use Ralph Lauren Chaps cologne to try to hide smell of lies and anger, but smell too strong.

Can never escape his own stink. He all lies and anger.

Me: So when he said he would rather take barbarism over socialism, you believed him?

Heidi: Two-leggers all so naive. Barbarism only system that works.

These are the text messages I received from my wife Rachelle the other day:

Rachelle: I’m not sure I think that’s a good idea.

Rachelle: Look, if you’re putting a pretend cast on our three year-old boy’s arm in order to attract the attention of celebrites at the Film Festival, you truly are a horrible father.

Rachelle: Because you’re using him as bait!!

Rachelle: You are exploiting a child.

Rachelle: Yes, even if he agrees to “play dress up for daddy.”

Rachelle: Jesus. Don’t ever, ever make me type, “play dress up for daddy” again.

Rachelle: Really???

Rachelle: That was actually your tag on Lava Life?

Rachelle: That is maybe the creepiest thing I have ever heard in my life.

Rachelle: I think I might vomit.

Rachelle: No, really. I cannot continue this text conversation.

( TWO HOURS LATER )

Rachelle: Really??!! You got Hugh Jackman to sign Jones’ fake cast for me???!!

Rachelle: That is the best thing you have ever done in your life.

Rachelle: Way better than that prank you pulled on the restaurant manager!

Rachelle: No, it was a good prank.

Rachelle: Yes, a really good one, I don’t think he saw it coming at all, but this, this is HUGH JACKMAN!! What did he smell like? Did he like what Jones was wearing? What did he write to me?? Jesus, did you touch him, did you put your hand on him at any point? What did he feel like? Did he talk to Jones?!

Rachelle: For the love of God, just try to remember what he smelled like!! Try. Try as hard as you have ever tried at anything in your life.

Rachelle. I know you have seasonal allergies and it diminishes your olfactory sense, but just concentrate, goddamit, what did he smell like? Was it the ocean? Was it the moon and stars? Was it roast beef and pumpkin?

Rachelle: Really?!!

Rachelle: Roast beef and pumpkin, I knew it!!

Rachelle: I don’t know how I knew it, I just did.

Rachelle: Yes, sometimes my friends and I talk about that sort of stuff.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: You truly want to know what my friends think you smell like?

Rachelle: Jesus.

Rachelle: Okay then.

Rachelle: Ottilie said she thought you smelled like the interior of an old airplane, one that still carried the ghost smell of crappy sandwiches and cigarette smoke.

Rachelle: Well, if you don’t believe me you’ll just have to ask her yourself.

Rachelle: Just out of curiosity, what do you think you smell like?

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: I have to say, that was a very unexpected answer.

Rachelle: Was Hugh very concerned about Jones? Did he want to know how he “broke his arm?”

Rachelle: Okay then, “fractured his wrist.”

Rachelle: Hit by a pitch?

Rachelle: You told Hugh Jackman you hit our son with a hardball?

Rachelle: Jesus, Pickle.

Rachelle: NO FUCKING WAY!

Rachelle: You got him to sign, “Rachelle, play dress up for daddy, love Wolverine?”

Rachelle: OMG, that is the sexisest thing ever, wait until I post a photo of that in my Annex Parents group! That’ll knock Vivian off the front page for a day or two!

Rachelle: And did you touch him? What did he feel like? Was there any give, or was it all rippling, equine power?

Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who sparked a player protest movement by taking a knee for social justice during the national anthem, has just signed on as the centrepiece of an advertising campaign with Nike that will last until 2028.

I have mixed feelings about this.

It might be inevitable, but I always find it distressing when activism is transformed into product. A recent and particularly ham-handed attempt at this occurred when Pepsi used Kendall Jenner as an instrument to co-opt the symbolism of the Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to sell soft drinks.

The ad was a failure in just about every way, but it was particularly stupefying to watch one of the most privileged people on the planet try to show us that drinking Pepsi was actually an act of resistance, and that protest itself was more like going to a really sexy block party than say, having a fire hose turned on you.

No matter, Colin Kaepernick stands on different ground, and everything I have read about him suggests he’s a good and sincere man, one who has quite clearly been denied an opportunity to work because of the way he has been expressing his political beliefs. There are rational, if unappealing, arguments on both side of this issue, but his activism, and the price he’s paid to for it, and the money he has donated to it, seem real enough. So real, in fact, that although he hasn’t actually played football for over 2 years, his jersey is still amongst the top sellers.

Nike, who not long before they signed Kaepernick, extended their deal with the NFL to supply them with uniforms and equipment for the next eight years– at a price in excess of a billion dollars– saw an opportunity to have their cake and eat it, too. The NFL is a monolith, a powerful institution that is comprised of almost 70% black players, players who are almost certain to suffer lasting and severe brain injury as a result of their jobs.

It’s a gladiatorial spectacle that has always exploited it’s workers for the benefit of gamblers and billionaires, and as wonderful as the game might be, the league that governs it is really kind of evil, and in spite of Nike’s deep and longstanding partnership with the NFL, they want to be seen as a white hat corporation. When we see that swoosh, we’re  supposed to think of commitment and excellence and fighting against the odds. We’re supposed to think of character.

Nike doesn’t want us to think about how they enable and profit off a violent and dangerous sport that cares little for the combatants,  so they hire the iconoclastic Kaepernick to sell shoes to us, thus “seizing control of the narrative.” Nike now pays Kaeprnick for his activism. In the old days, people would say they bought him. And so, with Kaepernick as the face of Nike’s campaign, we are to believe that they are the Rebel Alliance and not the Death Star.

We are to believe that Nike is about civil rights, not sweat shops.

Anyway, I don’t begrudge Kaepernick a single thing. I like his protest and I like him, and I hope that the fortune he has now earned makes him happy, and gives him an opportunity to further his activism and do whatever the hell he wants. He has earned that. Just don’t believe that Nike “has seen the light.” No, they’re just presenting the face they think we want to see, while keeping their own concealed.