Dr. Oz was on.
Somebody talking about nuts
Which ones were good for you, which ones were bad.
We were a rapt audience in the waiting room, each one of us happy for the bland distraction, but also sincerely curious. Something had happened in our lives that had changed us. We’d all crossed a line, moving from our natural selves to the types of people who now hoped if only they ate the right kind of nuts then everything would be okay. A woman leaving the clinic stopped and looked at me. Having noticed the oxygen concentrator on my back she abruptly said, “I HOPE YOU DON’T SMOKE!” I assured her that I didn’t, that I had quit, and as I was saying this the person who had accompanied her said– in a voice meant to convey to us that we should think of this woman as a child–“It would be great if you could quit, too, Beverly! Maybe this man can tell you how to do it?” And we all stopped watching Dr. Oz. We all stepped from our anxieties. No longer thinking of ourselves as people who needed to be helped, we thought of ourselves as people who needed to help. And in this, we were released. The grief that had hung in the room dispersed, and as if by saintly intent, we were left there, still and light for a moment, the tv flickering irrelevantly in the corner.
]]>******************************************
Rachelle: I’m sorry, honey, that’s just not the way that it works.
Rachelle: Although you identify as a two-lunged person, it does not change the fact that you only have one lung.
Rachelle: Yes.
Rachelle: Yes, I think it would likely disqualify you from being hired as a bodyguard.
Rachelle: Hate speech?
Rachelle: Really? You think that’s hate speech?
Rachelle: Well, yes! You should Tweet about it then!
Rachelle: That will really help get things done!
Rachelle: I like the way you fight for justice, you really are the sharp end of the spear!
Rachelle: Oh Pickle, if it’s of any consolation, there are all sorts of reasons beyond you needing supplemental oxygen that would likely stop a person from hiring you as a bodyguard.
Rachelle: Well, you’re pretty weak.
Rachelle: I know.
Rachelle: That rope hang test back in primary school was hard!
Rachelle: I don’t know what they were thinking.
Rachelle: I agree.
Rachelle: It was biased against those with upper body strength issues.
Rachelle: I’m sure you would have gotten a gold star if not for that test.
Rachelle: Well, bronze for sure.
Rachelle: Regardless, my love, I think it’s time to let that go now.
Rachelle: It was a long time ago.
Rachelle: Okay. If Tweeting about it will make you feel better, you Tweet away!
Rachelle: I’ll wait.
Rachelle: What did you Tweet?
Rachelle: FUCK THE ROPE!
Rachelle: Well, that will show them!
Rachelle: Do you think people will know what that means?
Rachelle: Yes. I am very naive.
Rachelle: I believe you. It probably will go viral.
Rachelle: But look, there are other reasons you might not flourish as bodyguard.
Rachelle: You’re kind of clumsy. You move like a pigeon, all jerky and unpredictable.
Rachelle: Also, you don’t enunciate very clearly. I think people would have a hard time understanding the things you reported into your lapel microphone.
Rachelle: Yes. There could be confusion.
Rachelle: Communication is key for a bodyguard.
Rachelle: You’d have to repeat yourself all the time. Lots of wasted time. A terrorist only needs a second to blow himself up.
Rachelle: Oh Michael, I am not “shitting on your dreams.”
Rachelle: His name is Richard Madden. He’s the star of the tv show Bodyguard.
Rachelle: THAT IS NOT TRUE!
Rachelle: He is not an asshole.
Rachelle: He’s just very organized and knows what he wants.
Rachelle: It’s called confidence and strength, and it can be very, very sexy.
Rachelle: A commanding, strong man.
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: That’s not hate speech either.
Rachelle: If I was an “Alt-Right Nazi” who wanted to “exterminate” those who lacked confidence and strength, do you really think I would have married you, Pickle?
Rachelle: Yes, it is true.
Rachelle: Your potential was, and still remains great. Very great.
Rachelle: You’re my favourite bodyguard.
Rachelle: No.
Rachelle: Sorry.
Rachelle: I was mistaken when I wrote that.
Rachelle: Richard Madden is still my favourite bodyguard.
Rachelle: He could guard my body any time.
Rachelle: Yes.
Rachelle: Sexually.
Rachelle: Well, as much as it would pain me, if a beautiful actress asked you to be her bodyguard, I wouldn’t stand in the way.
Rachelle: I expect Jennifer Lawrence already has a security team in place, though.
Rachelle: But maybe she’d still hire you on. I hear she has a big heart.
Rachelle: You could be The Littlest Bodyguard.
Rachelle: Maybe get on Ellen.
Rachelle: Yes, it would be the Christmas story the world needs right now.
]]>I was suprised to be contacted by Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently.
As many of you will remember, I was an old drinking buddy of his brother Rob, who was mayor of Toronto for a controversial stretch of time back a few years ago.
Rob and I attended Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time in the 80’s and it was there that we became drinking buddies at Rooster’s, the campus pub. We were never best friends or anything, but much later, when I moved to Toronto and we re-connected on Facebook, Rob would habitually open chats with me when he was drinking and looking to revive the “good, old days.” According to his brother, Rob truly valued what I had to say and as Doug put it, “If you were good enough for Robbie, you’re damn sure good enough for me!” and with that he offered me a job as a staff writer at his office. My first job has been to write some follow-up ads promoting that fact that Doug’s new government made good on their promise to make it legal for beer companies to lower the price of a beer—if they want to—from $1.25 to $1.00.
This is the script for my first ad:
( Doug Ford speaking to camera from his basement den )
“ I haven’t had a drink in over 25 years– not because I have any sort of problem. I don’t and I never did, and I will sue the bejesus out of anybody who says different.
Just try me. ( Two second pause)
No, I stopped because I’m disciplined. Good governance and fiscal restraint require discipline, a quality I learned as a shotputter and as the no-nonsense businessman who steered Deco Labels and Tags to be voted– by the readers of Etobicoke Style magazine– as one of the top three Label and Tag operations in all of the region.
For four years running.
We’re proud of that.
But none of this means I don’t remember what it was like to have a nice cold one. I do. And I remember how powerful it can make you feel. You and your crew, cruising the streets of the city looking to blow off some steam. Not looking for trouble, but sure as hell not afraid of it, either, and The Stones are blasting, maybe Street Fighting Man, and you’re all piled into your dad’s Beemer, roof down, and it feels so good. Oh, and all the ladies in their summer clothes? (Doug–make direct eye contact with then camera and then smile, teeth showing) Ah, the stories I could tell… (Doug– chuckle to self) Well, those were different times, I guess, but we felt like rowdy, young gods, and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario thinks everybody should be able to afford to have that feeling, too, which is why we’ve now made it possible for Ontarians– both men and women– to enjoy a 25 cent reduction in the price of a beer!
Government by the people, for the people.
I’m Doug Ford, and I’m your premier.”
( This is the first ad the Doug Ford ran before I got involved:
https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2018/08/03/doug-ford-says-buck-a-beer-coming-by-labour-day/ )
]]>My level of celebrity has gotten to the point where people are digging up my ancient Tweets.
Several of mine, written way back in 2008 when I was only 42, have surfaced. Now that the fires of controversy, anger and hurt have subsided a little, I would like to address these Tweets. First of all, the Tweets themselves:
“More like No Country for Old Mansplaining! Can’t believe that piece of shit won best picture! Tommy Lee Jones was the worst, and there were no nude scenes!!! Zero!! #OscarsSuck!”
“ But it’s true, those goddamn orientals do work like dogs! How can we keep up! I really like the potential of this young buck of a councilor! Look out for Rob Ford, Toronto, he tells it like it is! #Orientaldogs”
“ I wish some great hacker would steal all the private, nudie photographs of hot movie stars and then release them to the general public! #EspeciallyJenniferLawrenceSweetJesusSheismyJesusMySexySweetJesus!
“I don’t know. Just something I don’t like about Barack O’bama. Maybe it’s the ears. Such a Ferengi. And we have no idea where he was born. #WhatAreYouHiding!?
“The blacks sure dominated the Olympics again!” #Beijing2008
***************************
Although it’s difficult to apply the cultural values of one era to another, I categorically apologize for my Tweets and to anybody whom they brought pain. I want to be clear that in no way do I endorse hatred, racism, homophobia, xenophobia or any form of bigotry or intolerance. When I made those Tweets I was young, immature and stupid, but regardless, there are simply no excuses for any of them.
In the fullness of time I have come to realize that No Country For Old Men was a great movie, in spite of Tommy Lee Jones talking an awful lot about weird things and there being no nudity. Women are not purely sex objects. I see that now. I am sorry I didn’t see it earlier.
I had no idea a hacker would take my Tweet as inspiration and that The Fappening would one day occur. I am sorry that I was an unwitting party to this sex crime. In the wake of #MeToo, I have come to understand the constant sexual harassment and intimidation that woman daily suffer, and women out there, I want you to know that not only do I hear you, but I am listening. Thank you.
The Obama family were exemplars, and I am very sorry to have doubted them, particularly the girls. But perhaps more importantly I want to apologize to Star Trek fans and the fictional race of the Ferengis. It was not my intention to imply anything negative about this great and proud and kind of greedy species. In no way was I trying to say that they were Jews, and by assocication that Obama was a jew. That was not my intent. I was drinking heavily that year. I think Jews are great.
Lastly, I want to apologize to the all the blacks of the world. My words were insensitive and ignorant, and I now understand that not all blacks are good at sports. Just look at the Mets. I want to thank you, black people, for this gift of awakening. You have changed me.
I appreciate all the constructive criticism I have received. I’ve genuinely learned so much about how to be a better person and wish everyone all the best.
Namaste,
Michael Murray
PS: Please buy my book A Van Full of Girls. It’s the only chance I got.
I used to spend an awful lot of time in taverns.
Typically, I’d take my place amidst a stretch of solitary men drinking at a long bar. The conversation was a slow background rumbling, almost like distant thunder, and it lasted all night.
Sports.
The weather.
Women.
TV.
The past.
Strangers who had no expectation of seeing one another again, with little in common beyond the drink in front of them, making a conscious effort not to be alone, to try in some way, to connect. These conversations were beautiful to me, and I’ve come to miss them.
As a substitute, I’ve taken to listening to Sports Talk radio at night. The other day was a call-in show out of Toronto. Lacey from Oshawa had a few things to say about the Blue Jays. She was stubbornly defending third baseman Josh Donaldson:
“ Josh is far and away the greatest Blue Jay, and just because he’s injured the team shouldn’t quit on him! He’s given them everything, and now they just want to abandon him? That’s just so crappy. You can’t treat people like that. It’s wrong.”
The voice was familiar, and as I listened I realized that I knew her. Lacey from Oshawa was part of a group of patients I did pulmonary reahb with at a facility in Toronto. She was so thin then, and so angry, and every single day she wore a Blue Jays jersey with Josh Donaldson’s name on the back.
Her path had been difficult, and the heavy veil of sadness and pain that shrouded her was rarely lifted. Maybe at Bingo, if she got a line, she might allow herself a thin, bitter smile, but that was about it. She simply could not bring herself to socialize, and what we found out about her was through observation and hearsay, all of which reduced to this: when she fell ill and became incapacitated her husband left with their young son. That was how her life had worked out.
As I listened to her on the radio, hearing her speak more than I had in the two months we shared at rehab, I heard a stronger, braver voice. She was– with this phone call decrying a lack of loyalty to somebody doing their best in the face of physical limitations– making a conscious effort not to be alone. She was reaching out, and it felt like a miracle that I got to witness this, that I got to imagine her recovered and at home, fully herself now, and fighting for somebody she loved.
]]>A beautiful woman in a sundress, her hair still wet from the morning shower, was trying to unlock a door. The sun was falling upon her, the wooden porch, the entire red brick face of the home. She didn’t have the right key and was struggling with the lock, with how her morning was assembling itself, and she tossed her head back in frustration. Tiny, almost imagined droplets of water were cast from her hair and caught in the sunlight, and everything seemed to stop for a moment.
And then a raccoon, having slipped from night into day, emerged from behind a tree. With his detached animal knowingness he stared directly at us. Jones, astonished, squealed at the miracle, while the raccoon, keeping to the shadows, disappeared back into the night of some protective greenery. Up at the corner, at the mulberry tree and raspberry bushes, so many berries had been crushed on the sidewalk that they looked like paintball splatters. There were berries hanging above us and growing from the earth beneath us, and it was like we’d passed into a different realm and were now moving through a fertile, green tunnel. As I was picking a raspberry for Jones, a woman sprinted by us toward the subway. Plugged into her iPhone, with a knapsack on her back and a briefcase in one hand, she was ready for the big meeting, ready to present the best version of herself to the world. She was moving fast, like an athlete who still retained her running form from college, days that had recently started to feel further and further away.
An older man, immaculately dressed in wardrobe that looked from another century, ambled up the street coming to pass a college-aged woman wearing a bright yellow dress. Her face was still new, and she carried with her a pronounced, heaving limp that was mysterious and beautiful and sad, and when she smiled past us, there was the unexpected scent of clove cigarettes and skin cream. A butterfly then appeared and it was a sign. Perhaps a spirit guide, and Jones declared that we must follow it, and so we did– everything around us like still lingering dreams from the previous night, only now beginning to fade into the waking day.
]]>the White House Press Secretary to President Donald Trump, was refused service at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia based on “moral grounds.” The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, simply did not want to serve somebody she found so politically offensive, and so she didn’t.
Since then the Red Hen restaurant in Washington, DC, which has no affiliation with the one in Lexington, has been getting attacked by both left and right on social media.
Keep in mind, this is not the restaurant that refused Sanders service. No matter, even after they explicitly stated that this was all a case of mistaken identity and they had nothing to do with the Huckabee Affair, people still demanded that they take a political position on the matter. The Red Hen responded by saying that businesses in DC are prohibited from discriminating against people for political affiliation because they are in a federal district. This wasn’t good enough. People still pressed them. Okay, we know you’re not the restaurant that was involved, and we know that you are subject to different laws and therefore don’t have a choice to make in the matter, but what if you did have a choice? What if you were the restaurant she walked in to? What would you do then?
And so it goes.
And now Donald Trump is tweeting furiously at the Red Hen in Virginia ( the right one) in the hopes of destroying their business.
The owner, likely seeing in herself a patriotic exemplar, stands by her act of micro resistance while the pitchfork and torch crowd– from both the left and right–gather, eager to burn some shit down.
So surreal and terrible and hilarious and scary.
It’s amazing to me just how quickly things are reduced to the symbolic. All the nuance, history, vulnerability and complexity that informs a person– or a restaurant, even–are swept to the side, reduced to little more than the baleful projections of a furious, roiling, unconscious. The appetite right now is for enemies rather than friends, so if you’re caught in the public eye you become what that public needs you to be, not who you might actually be.
And so when I see Sarah Huckabee Sanders tossed about in the media, I think of Monica Lewinsky.
They really look alike.
. 
I mean, they really do.
But beyond that, remember also how Monica Lewinsky was treated by the press and public? She was despised– crucified, by both the left and right, for the sins of Bill Clinton. Honest to God, I think it’s a miracle she didn’t jump out a window. But she survived, admirably, in fact, and it’s as if her ghost is now visible in “the perfect smokey eye” of Sarah Huckabee, and the antipathy that Lewinsky withstood is now being visited upon her. Both of them appear as privileged white girls, Beckys, really, and their ambition, greased by a system that favours people like them, propelled them right next to the most powerful man in the world, and this, this seems to be something our society simply cannot abide.
Ask Hillary Clinton.
And so these women rise up into the culture like cautionary tales. Reduced to cartoon figures, they float slowly above us, soft targets, while we, the rabble beneath cast stones and curses. If you’re a woman and your cultural centrality can in any way be traced back to a powerful man, you will be hated for it– by men, and by women, it would seem. This is America, and if you’re a woman and you fly too close to the sun, you’re declared a witch and you’re going to get burned, whether you deserve it or not.
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So far his short career has been pretty mediocre, indistinguishable from countless other players who quietly fell short of the expectations set before them. There’s an obvious poignancy to this, I think. The consensus was that Manaea was going to be a pretty great, and throughout his entire life he’d probably been even better than that. Every time he stepped on a field, all eyes would have fallen upon him. He was the single-combat hero of whatever school, town or city he came from. A transcendent athlete with limitless horizons unfurling before him, he’d likely never encountered an appetite his talent could not slake.
And then, once in the Big Leagues, he just wasn’t very good anymore. Other players were better. The axis of his life had shifted, and now he was the kid who couldn’t get anybody out, rather than the unblemished golden boy.
He’d fallen.
He was no longer the best.
He’d become like the rest of us.
Because of my involvement in Fantasy Baseball, I had watched a lot of his starts over the years. There’s something really intimate in that, to be so closely focused on another person. I saw parts of him he couldn’t keep hidden. I saw how disappointment revealed itself on his face and then crept into his body and effected his game. I saw him battle that. I saw how he responded to incompetent teammates and punishing heat, I saw victories and uncertainties, and eventually I felt like I actually knew him, as if he had grown up just two doors over.
In spite of that, I fell out of the habit of watching his games, and then, about a month ago I happened upon one by chance late one night. He was pitching against the Boston Red Sox, which is like saying he was pitching against a nightmare as their batters are so overwhelming and intimidating. It was maybe the 6th inning, and Manaea looked good. Really good. In fact, he had not given up a single hit.
And from this point forward, as he pursued a no-hitter, the tension just ratcheted up. The camera was trained on him so tightly you could see beads of sweat forming and then rolling down his face. Everything became quiet and important, and each step closer to the no-hitter was a miracle in itself, and these miracles kept piling up until finally the game was over and the inconceivable had happened, not a single player had been able to get a hit off of Manaea.
His teammates, child-like and abundant, jumped all over him. Manaea, as happy as he was amazed, had a rollercoaster grin on his face. He was in paradise, everything bright and spinning and timeless. He had become the perfect version of himself. And for those of us watching, it was as if something beautiful had been restored, and without even knowing it I had been pulled from the sofa, and alone and in the dark, I stood applauding something I had grown to care about becoming what it was always meant to be.
]]>