Author: Michael Murray

On Wednesday, I received this email from Goran, my Russian bookie. ************************************************ Leedle Bug Man: Is Goran, master bookie and DJ of all of Greater Toronto Area, including Mississauga, bitches! We know that you no good in betting against Goran. You lose and lose and lose, like leedle Canadian bug! You lose so much money…

The name Tessa Virtue sounds so artificially pure that you could be forgiven for thinking it belonged to some girl detective or a porn star. But no, she’s a Canadian figure skater who has the wholesome, natural looks of a particularly attractive pioneer or maybe a TV star from a different era. She’s barely 20,…

Probably everything that you really need to understand about the Tiger Woods press conference/apology can likely be gleaned from the timing of the event. It was on a Friday, a day of optimism and relief, a day when people are generally felling just a little bit looser and forgiving of the world around them. Just…

This is a collection of vignettes that I wrote for the Missed Connections section of Craig’s List, where people who hope to reconnect with somebody that they saw only briefly post about their almost-encounter. All of these compositions are located in my neighbourhood of Riverside. ****************************************** Audrey Hepburn girl in The Leslieville Cheesemarket You were…

Today the Blog has been handed over to Heidi, Rachelle and Michael’s Miniature Dachshund. ************************************************************** Once again Heidi get nothing for Valentine’s Day! Not know what going on with that! My coat shiny, my breath bad, why no other dog like me?! Must be stupid pink camouflage collar two-leggers make me wear! So 2006! Make…

It’s difficult to know what to say. Some things simply can’t be ignored. –Fiddlers and tap dancers, all dressed like it was 1988 and they worked in a Scottish themed punk bar in Montreal, tap-synched and fiddle-synched, as if in an Off-Broadway production of Lord of the Dance. –A W.O. Mitchell inspired aerial phantasm of…

The other day I took our dog for a stroll up to Old Chinatown. Along the way, on the sidewalk near the Chinese Baptist Church, I found a set of keys. This discovery was both exciting and mysterious. The keys, they could unlock anything!! A time machine. A medicine factory. A treasure chest. I felt…

The shirt I want costs $260. $260. I visit this shirt every once in awhile, holding out the slim hope that somebody in the store will screw-up and they’ll sell it to me for $26, but so far that’s yet to happen. And so, I just go in and look at the shirt. Like it…

Every community event, even one taking place in as beautiful a venue as the Wychwood Barns, has something of a Christopher Guest movie to it. Saturday was Wychwood’s annual fundraising trivia night, in which the organizers hoped to raise money for a variety of community projects. When we* walked in the space was full of…