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Rachelle: You’re still mad about losing at Ms. Monopoly, aren’t you?
Rachelle: A resignation is a loss.
Rachelle: Yes, it is.
Rachelle: I know.
Rachelle: It was clear you were thrown off your game when you weren’t allowed to use your special dice or your customized Hat marker.
Rachelle: You didn’t quit because it was unfair.
Rachelle: You quit because you knew you had no hope of winning.
Rachelle: Yes. Times change.
Rachelle: That was the POINT of the game.
Rachelle: It was designed as a twist on the original, inverting the societal hierarchy we labour under, giving women $240 every time they pass Go, while men only get $200.
Rachelle: I have no idea what Jordan Peterson would say about that.
Rachelle: Who is he, anyway?
Rachelle: Boy, that’s an awful lot of links to YouTube videos.
Rachelle: Okay, okay, okay.
Rachelle: I’ve heard enough.
Rachelle: Fine. Equal opportunity and equity are different things.
Rachelle: So that’s the reason you quit Ms. Monopoly just when you were about to lose?
Rachelle: Okay. Resigned.
Rachelle: Principles.
Rachelle: Oh yes, we certainly do need more community leaders like you, Pickle!
Rachelle: Quitting a board game with friends and running off to “catalogue your comics” was indeed a brave and principled stance!
Rachelle: You bring honour into our home with your actions!
Rachelle: No, that’s not right.
Rachelle: You do not support our family by scavenging the garbage cans of Toronto for comics and then never bothering to resell the soggy, disgusting ones you retrieve.
Rachelle: You know it makes the neighbours very uncomfortable to see you doing that, don’t you?
Rachelle: Pickle, they have no idea what you’re looking for.
Rachelle: They’ve started to leave their empty wine bottles in front of our apartment.
Rachelle: I can’t believe you didn’t notice.
Rachelle: On Monday there must have 30 of them!
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: That bottle increase had nothing to do with the film festival, and everything to do with the neighbours trying to charitably address your disturbing, garbage-picking ways.
Rachelle: Yes, it is nice of them.
Rachelle: Most people are nice, Pickle, it’s true.
Rachelle: I honestly don’t know if Cate Blanchett is nice.
Rachelle: I can’t imagine you having dinner with her.
Rachelle: You’d lose all composure, drop your cutlery, knock over glasses. That sort of thing.
Rachelle: My guess is Jennifer Lawrence is nicer.
Rachelle: I suppose you’re going on another celebrity watch today?
Rachelle: Okay. Just don’t be creepy, and remember to pick-up some coconut water! Must get back to work! xo
]]>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:
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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?
]]>We’re related, although the mechanics of this familial connection remain distant and unknown, and we only met once at a huge wedding about 15 years ago in Chicago. I thought we got along entirely brilliantly, but he proved reluctant to continue any sort of correspondence or relationship with me after the fact, growing more and more biting and bitter–as many aging actors who have never won an Oscar do– as the years passed and my career took off while he played the voice of Garfield in some movies.
At any rate, as some sort of promotion associated with the Toronto International Film Festival, Friday was declared Bill Murray Day and I was asked by a local publication if I would use my “special access” to the faded star to secure an interview. This is the result:
Dear Bill:
It’s your cousin Michael here, the funny Murray. Remember me? I was the one wearing the bowtie at the wedding in Chicago in 1998. I requested I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith at the party and because you were a really big ham and sang it to the wedding couple in that cheesy-we’ve-all-seen-it-a-million-times-way, it became “their song” and everybody thought you were a hero.
Nice one, Bill. Anyway, it didn’t end well for that couple. Botched murder-suicide. Not that you’d care.
I have some questions that a newspaper wants me to ask you, okay?
Here they are:
1. What was it that attracted you to the role of Garfield? Was it because you were horny for Jennifer Love Hewitt? She’s less than half your age, you know.
2. What do you think of the massive nude celebrity leak? Was it a good thing for democracy?
3. Why wouldn’t you ever enter any of my fantasy baseball leagues?
4. Are you sick of making movies with Wes Anderson yet because an awful lot of people are sick of seeing you in movies by Wes Anderson?
5. Do you know any of the details regarding Traci Murray’s alien abduction back in 1987? She didn’t have any tattoos before, but three after—very puzzling. It is a great family mystery and you should perhaps consider making a movie based on it once you’re finished with the Garfield trilogy.
6. You’re a big golf fan. Would you say that’s your greatest embarrassment? If not, please explain.
7. Are you “above” correspondence? My mother always said that your side of the Murray family always thought they were “special.”
8. Did you know that I won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest?
9. Have you won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest?
10. You made some pretty controversial remarks about Jewish people back at the wedding, would you care to take this time to elaborate upon them?
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Not only were the bikes like riding something from the 19th century, but the program struggled financially and has been being rebranded to “Bike Share Toronto,” and is currently looking for a new corporate sponsor.
I have submitted a list of new names for “Bike Share Toronto” hoping that they might prove appealing to the public and sponsorship!
1. Le Dificyle
This name will honour Canada’s bilingual nature, the city of Toronto’s multicultural character and be completely up front about how hard it is to ride the massive bike.
2. World Class Bicycles
This name would highlight Toronto’s status as a World Class City.
3. The Bumbaclot
Inspired by Rob Ford, the world’s greatest Mayor, this name harkens back to his drug fuelled rant in Jamaican patois that was filmed at the Steak Queen. Bumbaclot, as everyone now knows, is Jamaican slang for a cloth or rag used for menstrual blood before tampons were widely available, an accurate reflection of contempt considering how most people feel about the rental bikes after using one.
4. The Film Festival Flash (Triple F)
Tying in with Toronto’s World Class International Film Festival, this name will publicize the great event and all the stars, posers and wannabes who populate the streets during it’s run, and the bikes will also be promoted as a safe and alcohol-friendly conveyance by which to get from party to party!
5. The Velociraptor
![1085840330[1].jpg](http://michaelmurray.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/raptor9.jpg)
Piggybacking on the success of the Toronto Raptors basketball team, and cleverly using the French word for bicycle as a nod to Toronto’s great multicultural personality, the Velociraptor would make for a stellar moniker for the bike rentals! (Suggestion: dinosaur arms holding a basket protruding from handlebars of bike)
6. The Catapult
Given that the streetcar tracks all over the city streets spell doom for cyclists, especially those (tourists) not familiar with the roads, and typically catapult cyclists into cars and streetlights, the Catapult is a perfect name for the bikes.
7. LAGFPPS’s (Little Above Ground Foot-Powered Private Subways)
In keeping with Rob Ford’s promise to bring more subways to Toronto, this name will revolutionize the public’s perception of just what a subway is and will, as usual, save the taxpayer billions of dollars.
8. The Ton O’ Fun
This playful name will combine the weight of the bike with the joy of cycling, making an adventure on the city streets as much fun as a carnival ride!
9. The Ontarian
A classic homage to this great province in which we live!
10. The Pussy Wagon
This name, once again inspired by Toronto’s Mayor, references his statement that he “has more than enough pussy to eat at home.” Gritty, urban and controversial, it gives Toronto the World Class, Tarantinoesque edge it has always sought.
And so for first-time director Aaron Wilson, who debuted his film Canopy at the festival, it must have been a validating and exciting experience. The movie has a very simple premise. An Australian pilot gets shot down while battling the Japanese over Singapore and improbably bonds with a Chinese soldier similarly trying to elude capture.
The central characters of this film—which is almost devoid of dialogue—aren’t really the actors playing the roles, but the jungle in which the story unfolds and the hyper-accented soundscape that surrounds them. Wilson is trying to do something different here, but in so doing Canopy comes across as more of a concept of a film than a film itself, an interesting idea in theory, but in practice maybe not so much.
It’s impossible to see this movie and not think of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red line.
I don’t think that there’s a film on the planet that compares well to it, and Canopy is no exception. Although Canopy is beautiful to look at, it never establishes an emotional grip on the audience, relying too heavily on the mechanisms of filmmaking rather than the film itself. For instance, after a spell, the wordlessness of the movie becomes burdensome, a cinematic imposition rather than an organic necessity of circumstance and disparate languages. Clearly, the director wants us keenly focused on the canopy of sound covering the silent action, but he points us so intentionally in this direction it’s as if we’re following a neon-signs-lit detour route. The acoustics swiftly become a clumsy, almost naive contrivance that is master rather than servant to the film, pulling us away rather than in.
Perhaps if the actors were more expressive or physically compelling, the director’s reach wouldn’t have so exceeded his grasp. As it is, in spite of its lyrical flourishes and allusive passages, the movie has a constructed, almost humid weight. As we move from one poetic war trope to the next, as if in some theme park yet to be invented, Canopy does little more than ask you to like it.
When it ended, the near-full house applauded, as if in encouragement, it seemed, rather than appreciation. The director and his key people took the floor, ready for a Q & A, and the last amongst them to do so was the lead actor, Khan Chittenden. As is often the case, he was smaller and more vulnerable than you would have expected after having just seen him up there on the giant screen, and as he youthfully bounded down from his seat, he threw up an arm to the crowd, he too hoping for more than what was received.
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