Skip to main content

Michael Ironside




Mike was still at the Art college of Ontario when I met him. He somehow got into my afterhours club with somebody and soon became a regular. he was in his early twenties exhuberant, totally careless and very full of himsel and very much a pain in the ass. I had to take down my dartboard because he hit a bystander in the leg he was always too full of fun and too loud etc. etc. He won an award for a  student film he had made and one night and brought 30 film students from the awards and was very troubled when I wouldn't let them in. But I didn't really like him and he was mostly a pain in the ass. But after a few years of him hanging around my place and sleeping it off there more than a few times.
We finally became friends.
One night at my new bar at Queen and Bathurst was very crazy. We had a special bar made from some really old planks from a wrecking company and planed them and wanted to cover them in acyrlic. So my partner Greg got some crazy friend of his to do this. It was a big job and all of us were breathing too many fumes etc. But somehow his friend got it wrong and the plastic never set and you could't lean on the bar too long without sticking to it. So some weeks later Mike was on a tear and when I closed the bar he was passed out in a chair so i left him. My Apartment was a bove the bar and I wake up to this thumping on the floor. So I get up and go down to the bar. Mike had woke up for a minute and crawled on top of the bar and went to sleep. so he wakes up and his face is glued to the bar. When I got there he had managed to reach a pool cue and bang on the ceiling. I finally stopped laughing long enough to pry him loose without too much loss of skin. Michael and I hung out together most of the time for a few years,(see Kathrine O'Hara) I could probably write a book. One Afternoon we met a couple of chicks and decided to get them drunk etc. We went to liquor Store and got ingrediants for a giant Sangria complete with a bottle of brandy.
So we smoked some dope drank a bunch of wine and woke up about 8 hours later very naked and very hung over. My camera was laying on the table and when I got the film developed we discovered we had got drunk and the chicks had taken our clothes off and took pics of us.-more to come

Comments

  1. Gorgeous story...definitely worthy of a book. Thank you..lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This doesn't begin to tell the tales

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elway Yost

  My sister Gaille was Elway Yost's secretary for a few years at TV Ontario. "I had the incredible opportunity to meet and engage in conversation with the talented Elwy on multiple occasions. On two separate occasions, I was even asked to be a stand-by guest for his show, Magic Shadows. Though I never had the chance to step in, just being considered by Elwy himself was an honor I will never forget. As a devoted fan of Magic Shadows from the very start, these moments were truly unforgettable.

Keenan Wynn

This is me with Keenan Wynn during the shooting of 'The Ballonist' a "Littlest Hobo" episode shot in my parents home in Uxbridge Ontario in the Summer of 1980. It was directed by Allen Eastman (Alien) and Keenan enjoyed tormenting him a bit.  Keenan and I spent the breaks talking about movies like 'Dr. Strangelove' etc. it was a fun afternoon. Keenan had the shakes a bit and didn't want to sign autographs, he always had the continuity girl around to take poloroids and gave out pictures instead .

Roy Payne

I first met Roy at the Horseshoe in the summer of 75 The horseshoe was across the street I was a regular and a good friend of Morty Starr the manager. Morty pointed to Roy setting up on stage. Morty told me that Roy owed him 3000 dollars so he had hired him for the whole month of August so he could get his money back. He told the waiter and the bartender not to let Roy have anything to drink until the last half of the show that night. Morty went off to the office. I was sitting in a booth opposite the bar with Morgan Vice who was leader of the usual house band. suddenly I felt something grab my ankle. it was Roy he had crawled under all the empty booths going back to the stage so that Morty or the Bartender couldn't see him. Get me a beer bye he croaked. I ordered him a beer and we became fast friends. He was at my bar pretty well every night for the month. At the end of the month Morty told me Roy owed him 6,000 dollars. One night Roy found a water pistol somewhere and squirted me...