R: My hockey game just ended and I should be there in about 10!
R: No fights.
R: There are never any fights.
R: Well, thank you, I guess.
R: I appreciate that you think I would be good in fight.
R: It’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.
R: Very romantic.
R: Oh, you got the best seat in the house!
R: Well done, Pickle!
R: Yes, your charm is considerable.
R: I bet the hostess didn’t stand a chance.
R: Those new sneakers really give you a lot of confidence, don’t they?
R: Imagine how you’d feel if you had a driver’s license and a job, too??
R: You’d be made of confidence! You’d probably take over a country or something!
R: I’m not being sarcastic.
R: I’m being cute, playful and funny.
R: Hockey doesn’t make me mean.
R: Oh, Pickle, you know I love you, and I do appreciate that you got there early and used your charm to get us the best table in the place.
R: Yes, you do have a commanding presence. It’s clear from the way that animals always obey you.
R: Our dog, for instance, she really listens!
R: And remember when the squirrel knocked you over and gave you a bloody nose when it stole a lozenge from you?
R: No? Well, you did hit your head pretty hard, it’s possible you got a concussion.
R: Yes, you just keep up with the online brain games and I’m sure you’ll be fine.
R: I know you skipped grade three, but honey, that was a very, very long time ago.
R: WHAT????
R: REALLY??? HOLY FUCK!!
R: For the love of Christ, DO NOT SAY A WORD TO HIM!!
R: I CANNOT BELIEVE JIM CUDDY IS IN THE RESTAURANT!! OMG!
R: NO!!! Do not tell him that you really admired his work in the Bare Naked Ladies!
R: You know damn well he was in Blue Rodeo.
R: But it’s true, I would be a bare naked lady for him!
R: How does he look?
R: Yes, it is interesting that you got the best seat in the house and not him. HOW DOES HE LOOK?
R: Oh, he’s wearing ugly sneakers, is he?
R: I still love him. I would love him in any weather.
R: Whatever you do, pleasepleaseplease don’t speak to him.
R: Please, promise me that.
R: Look, I’m allowed celebrity crushes.
R: I know you’ve been looking at the nudes of Jennifer Lawrence.
R: I know you say you’d never violate her and that it’s a sex crime to look at stolen photos, but your Internet history tells a different story.
R: Look, let’s cut the bullshit, just make sure I’m sitting where I have a clear sight line to him, I’ll be there in 30 seconds.
]]>I have been a huge fan of yours ever since Winter’s Bone. You are my Ozark Mountains, and our substantial difference in age, looks and talent does not make the purity of my affection creepy. It makes it real, and you Jennifer Lawrence are real. We should be together.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I dreamed that you and I were walking along a beach together, holding hands. I was worried that a small sand crab might bite one of your bare feet, but you weren’t. “Hush now, my little turtle, “ you said, the salt air breezing through your hair.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I saw you in The Hunger Games and I have to say, “I’m hungry for you!” Haha! 
No, that would be creepy and I’m not creepy. Would you come to my birthday party? If the answer is yes, please where a white dress in your next televised appearance, but black if it’s no.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I consider myself a feminist and believe in equal rights for women. I just want you to know that. I would fight for your rights.
Michael Murray
PS: Anne Hathaway is a bitch
Dear Jennifer:
I think it’s really cool that you served as an assistant nurse at the summer camp your mother ran while growing up. I tell you, if I was attending that camp, I would have been sick with stomach problems all the time! You should star in a movie about a nurse who falls in love with an older hernia patient and then has a forbidden and torrid affair with him. I have some drawings and notes if you’d like to see them.
Michael Murray
PS: Please send an autographed photograph.
Dear Jennifer:
The other day I had a dream that some breed of super rats were attacking me. I was valiantly fighting them off, but there were too many of them and all I could feel were their horrible teeth and claws slashing at me. And then you came into the room and everything smelled like pumpkins and the rats vanished. Holding hands, we ran together into a forest, the sound of waterfalls in the distance.
Michael Murray
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Table Tennis reminds me of a Wes Anderson film and I like to watch it wearing shorts and drinking coke. It makes me feel like a boy, a boy with an unlimited future where anything is possible including an Olympic gold medal in a child’s sport, instead of the middle-aged man who keeps getting ads for Gout medication popping up in his Facebook feed.
Sailing is a sport I like to watch while drinking gin and tonics. I usually dress for this event, in the sort of outfit that would get you beat-up on buses or in certain towns. Actually, I should tell the truth here, I don’t really watch sailing, but fall into a kind of glamour stupor with sailing as the backdrop. I dream, and yes, these dreams include supermodels in bikinis and helicopter pads and then supermodels not in bikinis. Long live the one percent!
Perhaps my favourite part of the Triathlon is the name. It sounds like a Japanese monster that took on Godzilla. Beyond that though, I find myself drawn to the hopeless masochism of it and the strange psychology that propels people through it. “No, I do not want to do one thing well, I want to dedicate myself only partially to three different things!” I can relate to that. It’s an event for the ADD age, celebrating the doomed scattering of ambition rather than the focused of achievement of excellence in one field. It’s what people who don’t expect to win a marathon, bike race or swim meet do, it’s a hedge. I drink chocolate milk when I watch, as well as play video games, surf the net for good Groupon deals and unload the dishwasher.
Beach Volleyball has finally been saved. I couldn’t watch it before as I found it demeaning to women. I mean, why did they have to wear bikinis? And why weren’t their bodies more like, you know, women’s bodies? They all looked like a tall, thin and often leathery species from outer space. Nobody needs that kind of objectification. Now, in sensitivity to nations where the female body is rightly feared, especially if it’s revealed to look like it came from outer space, participants will be allowed to wear more traditional Burqas or clogs or whatever flies in your country, religion, etcetera. This year Beach Volleyball will be a learning experience, and I will treat it with the solemnity it deserves, watching it while sipping tea in my library.
* PS: This was recently published in and written for Ottawa Magazine.
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