Good evening. It is I Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce this week’s blog. As you may remember we were trying to recover Demeter, Artemis the Persian’s sister . Ruffles the bulldog had just pulled his owner’s van into one of the stalls in the large empty parking lot behind my favorite summer restaurant. We had all scrambled to the tinted driver’s side window to see what would happen next. The black marketers had pulled their garish orange Hummer into a space on the far side of the lot and shut off the engine.

“What’s the plan, Gigi?” Charlotte the Chow asked me.

“Find out who they’re meeting and if who they’re meeting is planning to buy Demeter,” I replied.

“What kind of humans do you think they’re selling them to?”

“If I were to wage a guess, I would assume one of two types: a cat breeder or a cat exhibitor.”

“What is a cat exhibitor?” Bruiser the Jack Russell asked.

“Someone who owns show cats,” Edison the Manx said.

“Someone like my owner,” Madeline the British Shorthair said.

“You’re a show cat?” Ruffles said stunned.

Madeline licked her paw and preened her fur. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“We both are,” Artemis said, licking her paw and preening her fur as well.

Just then the passenger side door of the Hummer opened and the woman in the silky camo dress emerged from the inside. She started making a beeline for us with a determined gait. The menacing tattoo man climbed out of the Hummer, locked the vehicle which made a loud chirping sound and followed her, his fists curled and ready for action.   

Bruiser began jumping up and down nervously. “They’re coming for us!”

“They’re coming for us, they’re coming for us,” Titus and Tyler, the twin dachshunds exclaimed.

“Act like you are animals,” I said. “Act like you do around the humans you own!”

All of us got down from the window and landed on four paws. The cats began to meow and we Canis lupis familiaris began to lower our standards by whining. The two black marketers marched up to the van and peered in the window. I heard tattoo man gasp.

“This is the motherload,” he said.

“We can’t be sure all of them are worth selling,” camo woman said skeptically.

“That British Shorthair and that Persian look like purebred show cat grade to me.”

“Maybe.”

“Must belong to some pet hoarder or something.”

“Perhaps.”

“I think we should snag them.”

“Imaginably.”

“We need to do it fast, or their pet hoarder might come back.”

“We have a deal to handle first.”

“Don’t let the customers know about the van.”

“They’re going to see the van, Cedric.”

“But Cutie pie, someone is going to get to this windfall before we do.”

I jumped up on the window and barked at them just in time to see a Cadillac Escalade pull into the parking lot and park nose to nose with the Hummer.

“Our customer is here,” Cutie pie said. “We’ll deal with this merchandise later.”

Cedric and Cutie pie turned and headed back towards the orange Hummer. Until next week, I bid you adieu.

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: BLACKBERRY (2023)-NETFLIX

Winner of 14 Canadian Screen Awards (the Canadian Academy Award), the most in history, this brilliant biographical film is one of the best biopics to come out in years. Shamefully, it was nominated for zero Oscars which went to somewhat less impressive fare such as Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, Past Lives and Poor Things. This proves once again how rabidly vapid Hollywood continues to be and how it keeps missing its mark in judging excellence.

The film is directed by Matt Johnson who won Achievement in Direction for his outing here. Johnson wrote the script with Matthew Miller, and both won Adapted Screenplay which they adapted from the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. Johnson was also nominated for Performance in a Supporting Role, Comedy.

Set in the aptly named Waterloo, Ontario, the story is about Mike Lazaridis (brilliantly played by Jay Baruchel who took home the award for Performance in a Leading Role, Comedy), an electrical engineer who co-founded the company Research in Motion with his best friend and fellow computer-whiz engineer Douglas Fregin (Matt Johnson). The two have been working on a device they call PocketLink which is essentially the first smart phone. The young men are waiting to have a meeting with Jim Balsillie (a knock-out performance by Glenn Howerton who took home the award for Performance in a Supporting Role, Comedy), an Ivy League Business School graduate. Balsillie, who is a huge hockey fan and an all-around reptile, at first dismisses the guys’ proposal.

But after being fired for presenting his company with an intricate way in which they can avoid paying taxes, Balsillie heads to the bank, mortgages his house, and hunts down Research in Motion. He offers nearly all his money for 50% of the company and a position as CEO. Lazaridis agrees to the deal provided they are Co-CEOs.  Balsillie staunchly makes it his mission in life to drive the business to ultimate success. He bullies Lazaridis and Fregin to round up the crew and throw together a prototype of the PocketLink to pitch to Bell Atlantic who will eventually become Verizon. Instead of PocketLink, Balsillie changes the name to BlackBerry. But Balsillie’s ambition knows no bounds and Lazaridis struggles to keep up with the imminent future as the company soars to prominence.

Rounding out the cast are Saul Rubinek as John Woodman, Rich Sommer as Paul Stannos SungWon Cho as Ritchie Cheung, and Cary Elwes as Palm Inc. CEO Carl Yankowski.