This Week in Janice: John Cleese and Twitter

John Cleese. Formerly Cool.

Claire’s Note: Just one email. Sent today. It was so good I had to post it immediately.

Subj:  tweet tweet twitter

for my b day, I wanna Twitter account with a little picture/icon of sth. cute and a fake name. Can U set 1 up for me? Or not? I need pre-approval please.

Hey, wouldn’t it be great if Bill Murray AND John Cleese were in a movie together- something about Weird granddads? They are both sparsely white haired these days. And Cleese is only pulling 3, 000 hits on “you  tube” for some of his stuff.I watched his “house tour” this weekend—sad. THE MAN HAS CATS !!!  I was going to ask you kids to go online each day and look at his stuff just to get his viewership #s up—the poor man is poor-3 ex-wives, 1 super thin teen daughter, no prenups !!! Help the less fortunate!!! You know you love them both. Take care, Love, Mom (Finally found a “charity” I CAN SUPPORT: Restore Dignity to the Formerly Cool)

1-800-Bill-Murray

So GQ recently ran this amazing Q&A with Bill Murray.  It’s incredible for a number of reasons—length, style, journalist-celebrity repartee, the fact that he mentions lying on a marble floor in Venice—but what’s most incredible is that fact that it happened at all. Bill Murray doesn’t talk to journalists. Or anyone, really.  He’s kind of weird.  If you’ve ever seen the movies Broken Flowers or What About Bob, this won’t surprise you at all.

But what we didn’t know until now is that he has a 1-800 number that you can call and leave messages asking him to do things. Things like…agree to be interviewed for a GQ article.  Or if you’re me and Marc: hang out with us.

You see, Marc will be here in October and while I’ve already “met” Bill Murray (read: I saw him in the street and made eye contact but nothing) he has not. So we’re going to call his 1-800 number and ask him to do something fun.

We don’t have his 1-800 number and we don’t know what we want to do with him. Whatever we decide, we’re not sure how to convince him to do it. We have one fact on our side (Bill Murray and I grew up in the same town) but other than that, we have no way to convince him, via 1-800 number, that we are more awesome than anyone he will ever meet. (Even though we are.) But we will triumph. Oh, how we will triumph.  Unless of course we fail.

This Week in Janice

Here are some emails from my 58-year-old mother, Janice. I should probably mention that due to circumstances beyond her control, she is heavily medicated at all times.

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E-mail 1) Background: I lived in a Chicago suburb called Wilmette until I was eight. Then we moved.

Subj: local news for U

Double murder/ suicide in Wilmette this morning. (And you wonder why I wanted to move when you were in third grade). Ask your pals if I made the right decision in retrospect. Love You, Take care, MOM

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Background: I needed to talk to people for an article but they weren’t calling me back. Here is my mom’s attempt at helping:

Subj: still need interviews?
Had a thought. Richard Marx is big time music name and his 3 sons are all at your old high school. Bet he would let you interview him if he knew you were a local kid.

Also, what about Mr. Faullty Towers- he of the great commercials, of late–or, for a severe long shot- Bill Murray- but I think he NEVER does interviews–Wilmette boy and Loyola Academy grad. Harold Ramis and family were around here somewhere. (Then you would have all of “Ghostbusters”???)

And there are lots of Pivens and Cusacks. I think the  Cusack Sister and family are now in (nearby town). There is also a woman from “Housewives of the O.C.” who now lives near me. See, you have connections with more celebs than you thought. Are some of these suggestions too old??  Do you want me to ask around and find out what Sports stars are currently living here?

Take care, Love, MOM
My response: Thanks, mom. That’s really sweet of you, but none of these people have anything to do with what I’m writing about.

Janice’s response: But if you talked to Bill Murray, do you think anyone would notice? No-HE is bill Murray!