Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Shout out to… - Code Yellow & Murphy’s Bar Mitzvah

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

“Dave’s relationship with hospitals over the years has not been without problems.”The two Stuart McLean stories on today’s episode are connected in a very cool way. Both contain secret shout outs to people Stuart loved. Jess tells the backstory behind the little easter eggs like this that Stuart occasionally hid.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We've got two Dave and Morley stories for you today, two stories that are connected in a very fun way. But I'm going to have to tell you about that connection, because you'd never be able to guess it. Both of these stories contain secret shoutouts. Little private hellos or thank yous to people Stuart loved.

I probably told you before that Stuart was a very private person. He didn't like to talk publicly about his private life or his family or friends. They were always very much separate from his life as a performer and broadcaster. That said, from time to time, he would hide a little something, a little hello in one of his It's like a little Easter egg that only someone in the know would find. He did this in a bunch of ways. Sometimes it would be a reference to a shared place or a vend. Sometimes it would be as simple as repurposing a name.

Let me give you an example. When Dave decided to become a dog walker, one of the dogs was a Portuguese water dog who hated the water. And her name was Summer. That was a little inside joke for me. At the time I had a Portuguese water dog who, yes, hated the water. And her name, it wasn't summer. Her name was spring. So I would have understood that joke. And so would my husband Josh and my dad and a few of my mutual friends. But that's about it. But it was a way for Stuart to acknowledge that all of his stories were assembled in anecdotes.

And that all of us who walked in and out of his life helped contribute to his work in a number of small ways. I started thinking about this lately because someone on Facebook commented that they heard an episode of the pod where Stewart had used their name in a story. In that instance, it had been part of a fundraiser and an auction prize where you could bid on the chance to have your name be included in a Dave Marley story. One of the charities that Stewart supported for many years was Phoenix in Halifax. They do amazing work to provide shelter and support for youth. And Stewart would take part in their fundraising gala each year. And the name in a vinyl cafe story became a very popular proposition in the auction. People would have a ton of fun outbidding each other with

Stewart egging them on, of course. And then Stewart would have a ton of fun coming up with kooky, one-off characters to use those names. That's when he remembered to actually do it, which wasn't always the case. Often we'd be right at the deadline. Like, we'd be backstage the night we were recording the show. And he'd be like, wait, I put that name. from Phoenix in the story, right? And then he'd walk right out on stage. Anyway, here's our first story. In this case, the private shoutout is not the name of a person. It's a street name. It's the street that one of Stewart's friends lived on, someone he cared deeply for. He repurposes it here in this story. A little private way for him to say, I know you're listening. I know

you're listening and I'm so glad that you are. A way for him to say, I know you're listening and I love you. The street is called Anderson Mill. It's a fleeting reference. See if you can catch it here. This is Stuart McLean with Code Yellow. Morning, but an unhurried morning. Dave and Morley are in their kitchen. Both of them doing their own stuff, both of them getting ready for the day ahead. When Dave says, I'm going to visit Marty this afternoon in the hospital. Morley, who has her back to him, turns with her eyebrows arch, really? She says? Come on, said Dave, that's not fair.

Wasn't it? Fair? Dave's relationship with hospitals over the years has not been, well, without problems. Why the very first time Dave and Morley were in a hospital together, Dave had fainted flat cold. It was a week or so before Stephanie was born. They'd gone with their birthing class. The big tour.

And halfway through it, the tour, when they were led into the actual birthing room and Dave came face to face with the moment of truth, with the birthing table. His knees had buckled and he had staggered against the green concrete wall. Three of the other fathers

picked him up and carried him across the room and laid him out on the table. It was Ron the class clown who had put Dave's feet into the stairs. Come on, said Dave. That was over 20 years ago. Because what? said Morley. Things have changed since then.

It isn't that Dave is a full-blown hypochondriac. Morley'd never say that. He isn't. But there's no denying he has hypocondriical tendencies. And those tendencies mixed with his, well, with his personality, those tendencies tend to get him into trouble. There was, for instance, the time he inhaled the fly. And he became convinced that the fly was alive. in his lungs was colonizing his lungs.

We know this because Dave's friend Kenny Wong caught him in the record store late one night. After closing hours, Dave had a lamp over on the counter by the cash. He had taken the shade off the lamp. He had the lamp on and he was hovering over the lit bulb, his mouth wide open. Kenny looked at him and said, It's moths that are attracted to light. life. Dave said, you're right. What are flies attracted to? There was the time in the drug store when Dave got himself trapped in the cuff of the blood pressure chair. All his friends gathered around

them, friends and neighbors watching the machine and his blood pressure inch up. They wait until his nose started bleeding before they called the fire department. Have to cut him out with the jaws of life. What, what, are you telling me? I can't go. Dave? Of course not, said Morley. Of course not. You should go. I'm just telling you that just don't do anything stupid, Dave. Just

don't embarrass me. Or Marty. Marty. Dave's pal, Marty from the early days. Of all the guys from back then, no one would have pegged Marty to be the guy who'd have a stroke.

Two weeks ago standing in his living room. He's walking again, said Dave. And they're talking about moving him to rehab. But he has to use one of those walkers. And Lillian says he's depressed. She says he doesn't seem to care. It's like he's given up.

I have to go see him. I'm not saying you can't, said Morley. I'm just saying, I don't want any phone calls from the hospital. Marty had a bed on the seventh floor. When Dave got there, he was lying in his bed looking pale and deflated, like someone had let the air out of him. His eyes were shot, his mouth was open, he was drooling a little. Marty, said Dave, you look great.

Look terrible, said Marty. You think they don't have mirrors here? They sat together for half an hour, not saying, much, sitting quietly the way old friends can sit when the only things to say are important things. There was a box of tissue on the side table and every 10 minutes or so, Dave grabbed a tissue and wiped Marty's chin. He threw the tissue in a garbage pail in the bathroom. Every time he was in there, he pulled out a little bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed some in his hands. I can smell that stuff, said Martin.

What, you think strokes are contagious? David, being there maybe an hour when he suggested they go outside. We should go for a walk, he said. Marty rolled his eyes. We could take a wheelchair. I could push you. Marty said, I'm not going out like this. Dave said, come on, it's beautiful out.

It'll make you feel better. Marty said, I'd feel like an idiot. Dave looked at his friend at his sunken gray face at the blue hospital robe. Who would want to be seen looking like that? He was going to argue, but he didn't argue right, said Dave. He said it twice, right. Then he said, I'll be right back. I won't be long.

He almost sprinted out of the room. When he got back, Marty was asleep again, lying on his back, his mouth open, snoring quietly. Dave reached out and put his hand on his shoulder. Hey, he said softly. Hey. Marty opened his eyes without moving it. Took him a moment to register what he was looking at.

And when it did register, he shook his head back and forth. No way, he said. Dave was standing beside the bed, beaming. He was wearing a light blue hospital gown and nothing else. Dave said one for all, all for one. There was a wheelchair beside him. He leaned over and he grabbed Marty under the arms

to help him out of the bed and into the chair. Unfortunately, he hadn't put the brakes on the wheelchair. It was not the smoothest transition. At one point, Dave ended up sitting in the wheelchair with Marty sitting in his lap. The chair rolling across the room. It looked like some sort of new geriatric go-karty sort of event. But they finally did it.

We did it, said Dave, panting. As Dave pushed him down the corridor, Marty said, where'd you get it? Dave said, well, they have him in the lounge. Marty said, I mean the robe. Well, that's what had taken him so long. He looked everywhere. Finally, he had followed a porter onto an elevator. The porter was pushing a steel cart full of linen.

As the porter gazed at the floor numbers, chunking by, Dave reached out, grabbed the gown from the cart, and stuffed it under his jacket. He changed in a washroom on Marty's floor, at the far end of the hall. Wear your clothes, said Marty. He'd rolled his clothes up and had hidden them on. a shelf of supplies in the hallway.

What, you don't think that's a good idea? Shelf on a cart with swabs and masks and gowns and sterile pads and Dave's clothes stuffed at the back. They took the elevator down to the main floor. The gowns they were both wearing were the ones that tied in the back. Dave's ended just above his knees. He looked ridiculous, which of course was exactly the way he wanted to look.

They went out the back door into a little garden, and they sat in the sun. After a while, Marty said, you're right. It is nice out here. It makes me feel lighter. Dave said, how about going to Rebecca's for a coffee? Marty looked horrified. Marty said, are you crazy? I can't leave the hospital grounds. Some guy tried that last week. Some old guy, you should have seen one. What happened? What had happened was they'd called a code yellow, missing patient. Marty twisted around in the wheelchair trying to make eye contact. They shut down all the elevators. There were

guards on all the doors. Times of change, Dave. You can't fool around the way we used to. Dave wasn't listening. Dave was already pushing Marty toward the sidewalk. Dave believed the outing would do Marty good. Marty just closed his eyes and slid down in the wheelchair. Oh no, here we go, said Marty. They were heading to a little cafe in Anderson Mill, a place

Marty went to all the time. They got their coffees, two flat whites. They took them across the street to a little park by a school. It was nearly four in the afternoon when Dave wheeled Marty back to his room. Dave wasn't about to admit it, but he felt a sense of relief when they got there to be back. He had spotted a security guard watching them in

front of the hospital, and he'd felt a rush of panic. He thought the guard was going to bust them, and dear God, he was determined not to, you know, mess this up. Marty hadn't noticed. Marty said, that was good, the coffee. You were right. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. You were right. I enjoyed it. it, he said. Dave said, we'll do it again. Thanks, said Marty. I've been feeling he didn't want to finish the sentence, but Dave didn't say anything, so he had to. I've been feeling sad, neither of the mood for a moment after that. Then Dave leaned over and gave Marty a hug. I'll see you, he said. And then he turned to leave, and as he turned, he reached around to his backside, thinking to himself that when he was leaned over, hugging Marty, there must have been a full moonrise.

And so he laughed, and he wandered down the corridor to the cart where he had hidden his clothes. And when he got there, the cart was gone. This is the part of the story where I catch up with you. We're all on the same page now. Dave looked where the car was supposed to be. He said, oh, come on. There was a handicapped bathroom down the hall. He went in and locked the door behind him.

He just needed a moment alone. He needed a moment to figure this out. Stood there in the darkness for a minute, staring at the locked door, and then he flicked on the lights, and when he did, he just about jumped out of his skin. There was someone in there with him. Excuse me, he said, jumping.

I'm so. sorry and the stranger jumped at exactly the same moment he did, exactly and said exactly the same thing, which is when Dave realized he was staring at his own blue rope south in the mirror. He was just about to open the washroom door when he heard the announcement, Code yellow, code yellow, code yellow. The woman on the public address system repeated herself three times. Standard procedure. Dave stood there with his hand on the door, listening intently, were they talking about him and Marty had the security guard filed a report.

The PA system interrupted his questions. Cold yellow, said the woman one more time. Then she said, white, middle-aged patient, brown hair. Could be anyone. Which meant, of course, could be Dave. Locked in the seventh floor bathroom, Dave frowned. Something told him this was not good news. news. What did he know? Well, he knew this. He knew he had to get out of the hospital without a

scene. And to do that, he knew he had to get out without anyone seeing him. He opened the bathroom door and he looked around the hallway. There was a stairwell at the far end of the hall. Figured there'd be a fire door at the bottom. He figured right. And he made it all away to the second floor when he heard the burst of radio static coming up the stairwell toward him. And so he stopped and he peered over the railing and he saw the security guard from outside. Now how could he possibly explain himself? Sneaking down the stairwell in a hospital gown during a code yellow. All he knew was he didn't want morally getting a phone call from hospital security. And so he slipped through the exit door and out onto the second floor, and then without

stopping to think, into the first room he came upon. A patient's room, and gloriously empty. He went into the room, and then he went into the bathroom, and he shut the door behind him. His heart was pounding. He waited in there for, well, what seemed like an eternity. and then he came out and when he did the security guard was standing in the hallway waiting for him

and their eyes locked and Dave smiled and in a moment of divine inspiration he did not break the guard's gaze he just smiled and then he turned and he crossed the empty room

and crawled into the empty hospital bed the guard came in and stared at him and Dave just closed his eyes and pretended he was going to sleep. And he heard the guard leave. And while he lay there trying to settle his heart, he pondered his next move.

And while he did that, a nurse breezed in carrying a dinner tray. Hello, she said, my name's Dana. It's supper time. And she placed a tray on the tall table by the side of the bed, and she pushed it in front of him, and then she stood there. only thing Dave could do was eat the meal it's good said Dave as he spooned the cold mashed potatoes into his mouth

eat your dessert said the nurse she was pointing at a bowl of applesauce thanks said Dave I'm okay I mixed your medication into it she said it'll help you sleep and she picked up his spoon and Dave watched in horror as she dipped it into the drugged applesauce and she held the spoon up to his mouth open up she said what else could he do she

made sure he finished every last bit he woke up four hours later and when he woke he was on a gurney and there was a man in blue scrubs wheeling him down a corridor hey said the man in the scrubs you ready What? said Dave, and he tried to sit up. But he couldn't sit up because he was strapped to the gurney. What are these straps for? said Dave. And the man in the scrub said, well, people often lash around during the procedure. There's been a mistake, said Dave.

I don't need a procedure. And the orderly said, that's what they all say. Then he maneuvered the cart around a corner and into a room that looked exactly like the birthing room. Except it wasn't the birthing room. Dave caught a sign on the doors that swung shut behind him. Proctology. By the book.

The orderly should not have left Dave alone in there. But he did. It was only two minutes, and he was, after all, strapped down. When he returned, Dave was still strapped to the gurney, but he was no longer lying on top of it. He flipped it over. The gurney was on top of him. Dave was trying to squirm his way to the door with a gurney tied on his back.

No hands. It looked like a seal on a piece of ice. The next time he came to, he was in the emergency war. A young intern was stitching up a gash in his forehead. Marty was sitting in the corner. Marty was beaming. Marty had heard the code yellow and put two and two together.

It was Marty who had identified him. Hey, said Marty when Dave opened his eyes. You look good. I looked terrible, said Dave. And then he looked at the intern. He told you I'm not the missing guy, right? Oh, yeah, said Marty.

That was some guy who was supposed to be having a proctology procedure. Dave sat up and looked at the clock on the wall, it was after eight. Dave said, I'm so out of here. The intern was shaking his head. Head injury, said Marty. You're in for 24 hours' observation. They put you in my room. An hour later, they were lying in their respective bands. Dave tugging at his ID bracelet like it was a pair of handcuffs. Marty was having the time of his life. Marty was holding up his cell phone, waving it back and forth.

You got a phone her sometimes, said Marty. Dave said, you call her for me. Tell her there was an accident. Tell her I'm in a coma. Marty said, I'm a stroke victim. That's too sophisticated for me. And he flipped the cell phone across the room. And Dave caught it.

And Marty sank back on his pillows, and he reached out, and he, turned off the lights and the two of them lay there in the darkness for maybe five minutes and then Marty snorted and giggled and smiled and across the dark room he said good night john boy he hadn't had this much fun for years that was the story we call code yellow we recorded that story in the wonderful station theater in Smith Falls, Ontario. Actually, I should see, I love that theater. I should see if we can find the piece that Stewart wrote about the station theater.

It's a lovely story about a community coming together to save a local landmark. I'll play it for you on the pod sometime. But not right now, because right now, we have to take a break. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This one's a shout out to my husband, Josh, Joshua Kilberg. Josh likes to joke that I only married him for the story ideas, and like all the best jokes, has a lot of truth in it.

When Josh and I first started dating, both Stuart and I were mesmerized. Not by his stunning good looks, he's tall and handsome, not by his towering intellect he is, for the record, one of the smartest and most interesting people I know. But by the absolutely endless list of totally messed up and ridiculous things that have happened to him, or rather that he's done to himself, Stuart cannibalized Josh's life. I mean, I feel like for the first few months of our relationship,

Stuart was always there with notebook in hand. Like he just kept uncovering more and more ridiculous stories about Josh. The story where Dave gets himself stuck in an elevator, inspired by Josh. The one about the car wash, informed by Josh's years working at a car wash when he was a teenager. And when Stewart wrote this next story about a bar mitzvah, it was Josh that filled in a lot of the details. And one of the characters in here is a Kilberg and is loosely based on Josh's late grandfather, his Zadie. Zadie was a man who all of us, including Stuart,

admired for his tenacity, wit, an absolutely dogged determination to live through anything and everything with grace and good humor. This is Stuart McLean from back in 2012 with Murphy's Bar Mitzvah. It was a misunderstanding of monstrous proportions.

Understand a bull, I suppose, if you're the understanding type, though you might disagree with that. It was lunchtime. The telephone rang. It was Murphy's grandmother, Murphy's Bubby on the line. Murphy is Sam's best friend. Sam is Dave's son. It was Dave who answered the phone.

Now, to be fair, Bobby was not delegated to phone. No one asked Bobby to do this. She was excited. She was trying to be helpful. She took it upon herself to start phoning people to make sure they had received their invitation to confirm that they were coming. In Dave's defense, Bobby's first language is not English.

She speaks English, but she speaks English, but she speaks it with a thick Eastern European accent. Whenever she's missing a word, she throws in a Yiddish phrase or two to cover up here or there. If you're not used to her, Bubby can be hard to understand, especially if you happen to have spent 20 years of your life working rock shows in arenas from here to there and back again. I'm not trying to say Dave is deaf.

Just saying there was a lot that played into. this. So Bobby called and she went over the date and the time and the place and Dave, who was the only one home, wrote it all down meticulously, doing his meticulous best to get it right

and to both of their credits, he, they got it right. Everything right. Until Bobby started to talk about the rabbi. That's when things went south. Because when Bobby said

rabbi, Dave heard rabbit. And by the time they said goodbye, Dave was under the impression that Murphy's bubby had called to request that he attend Murphy's bar mitzvah in a rabbit costume. Why would they want me to do that, said Dave. This is later the same day. This is late in the afternoon on the same day at Kenny Wong's cafe. Dave dropped by for a little late afternoon snack, spot prawns and ginger sauce, and Kenny is standing behind the counter, dishing advice with the food. People do this sort of thing, said Kenny. Michael Canigsberg's son had a medieval theme.

They had suits of armor around the room, and a giant papier-mache dragon, and all the wait staff was dressed as knights and maidens. Dave failed to notice that Kenny was failing to make a distinction between the party at the hotel and the service. service at the synagogue. Probably said Kenny, picking up Dave's plate, probably said Kenny, they're assigning everybody an animal. So that weekend, Sam, a teenager now, suddenly long of everything, of arms, of legs, even his hair a little longer than he used to be. Sam came galloping

down the stairs all long and gangly, wearing a white shirt and khaki pants, a red, tie and a blue blazer. The tie a little big for him and the blazer too. Down the stairs and into the kitchen to find his father, bending down and peering into the fridge wearing a faded blue faux-fur rabbit costume. Deep pile borg. Dave stood and turned. He was holding a carrot. He saw Sam staring at him in horror. He flourished the carrot and said, said, eh, what's up, Doc? The service was at the Beth Israel Synagogue, half-hour drive across town.

Sam was sitting in the front seat, his arms crossed, furious that his father wouldn't take off the ridiculous costume. Dave was nonplussed. He was convinced that his son was overreacting. Bobby had been clear. Kenny, too. teenagers tended to be like this. At that precise moment, the moment that Dave and Sam were driving across the city in Stony Silence,

Rabbi Eli Kilberg was sitting at his desk in the basement of Beth Israel in Stony Silence himself. A few minutes earlier, his Cantor, Cantor Belsberg, had sighed theatrically and walked out of the office. In a huff, the rabbi would later say. He left in a huff. The canter and the rabbi had been bickering for months. The canter believed the 77-year-old rabbi should retire and be replaced by someone younger, hopefully someone a little more conservative, like his nephew, for instance,

fresh out of rabbinical school and looking for a job. He seemed to delight in, gently pointing out the rabbis every little slip, every little faux paw, every little seniors moment. You're working too hard, rabbi, he would say. You need a rest. The two of them had been sitting there waiting for a photographer to arrive so they could have their picture taken with a Kruger boy and his family. And now, alone in his office, Rabbi Kilberg pushed his chair back. the pictures would have to wait until after the service. He picked up the Tulles, the prayer shawl that he would present to Murphy.

As long as he had the shawl, the boy would not be able to wear anything made of linen to the synagogue, for it is written in the Torah, Deuteronomy 2211, that ye shall not wear wool and linen together. The rabbi fingered the knotted fringe of the shawl and told himself, to remind the boy of this thing. The rabbi's chair scraped across the floor as he pushed it back from his desk. He put both hands on the top of the desk and pushed himself up.

When he was standing, he reflexively felt the top of his head for his kippa. Maybe the canter was right. Maybe he was getting too old for this. Maybe he was working too hard. Maybe he did need a rest. Dave and Sam, just down the street from the synagogue, were stopped at a traffic light. The car beside them honked its horn.

They both turned to look. The man in the car was giving Dave the thumbs up. Dave waved and then turned to Sam and said, see, this is fun. Sam said, no, it's not. This is a nightmare. Dave pulled into the synagogue parking lot. As soon as the car stopped rolling, Sam jerked open his door. He wanted to get in fast and warn Murphy about the rabbit costume.

Also, he didn't want to be seen with his father. I'll see you later, said Sam. Later, called Dave at Sam's back. But Dave's mind wasn't on later. Dave's mind was on now. The thing about a deep-piled Borg-fur-fur blue rabbit costume is how hot it can get inside, especially on a hot summer day,

especially in a crowded synagogue. Dave was hardly out of the car and he was already sweating. But that wasn't the worst of his problems. Because uncharacteristically, Dave had anticipated the heat of the morning and the effect that it might have on his suit itself. Uncharacteristically, Dave had taken precautions. On his back, out of sight, under the fur, Dave was wearing a nylon camelback.

The camelback is designed to allow long-distant athletes to stay hydrated without stopping for fluids. Unfortunately, on the ride over, he was so hot that he had been sipping obsessively on the plastic straw that crawled up his back and looped over his shoulder. Dave was wearing a five-liter camelback. He'd already drunk maybe four liters of water. A fundamental law of physics was about to assert itself.

His bladder felt like a water balloon on the edge of rupture. As Sam bolted from the car, Dave had only one thought on his mind. and that was to find a washroom. His peripheral vision was already beginning to fade. Sam spotted Murphy standing by the memorial board in the upstairs lobby. Murphy was talking to a man wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket. Sam had never seen Murphy in a yarmaca before. The small, round hat made his friend look serious and mature.

Sam felt suddenly shy. He wondered for a moment if he was supposed to be in a rabbit costume. He shrank back against the wall and watched. When Murphy spotted him, Sam was standing in the corner biting his nails. Murphy shook hands with a man and came over. Sam took him around a corner where no one could hear them, and Sam said, my father's dressed in a rabbit costume. Murphy said what kind of rabbit?

Sam said blue. Murphy said I mean like the Easter rabbit or the playboy rabbit. There was a crowd at the front of the synagogue. Dave didn't want to navigate a crowd, didn't have time to navigate a crowd, not in his state and especially not in his oversized costume.

So while Sam had run to the front door, Dave had bolted for the back. The bathroom he found, was not large. A room more suited for one than two people. He staggered in, gratefully. If he had been in his right mind,

he would have thought something wry about finding salvation in a synagogue. But he wasn't in his right mind. And anyway, salvation is never that easy. He staggered into the washroom and reached for the zipper that ran down the back of his costume.

And that's when, Dave discovered one of evolution's major flaws. Rabbits don't have opposable thumbs. He couldn't unzip. Handicapped by his thick furry arms, he couldn't even reach the zipper. He was hopping around, desperately pawing at his back, and obsessively sucking on the mouthpiece.

When the bathroom door opened and a boy walked in. The boy was about the same. age as Murphy, about 13 years old. Probably he was a friend or a relative, but who cared who he was? All day he cared was that the boy had thumbs. The door swung open, the boy stepped in, and the boy and the rabbit stared at each other. I need your help, said the rabbit. Unzipped me. The boy started to back away. The boy said, they warned me about people like you. And he turned and walked out of the room. And wouldn't you know it?

That was when the rabbi walked in. And I know, I know it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. A rabbi and a rabbit in a washroom. The rabbi says, what are you doing here? The rabbit replies, I found the Presbyterians too dower. That's not how it went down. The rabbi didn't ask a question. And the rabbit didn't say something funny about Presbyterians.

At first, the rabbi and the rabbit just stood and stared at each other silently. The rabbi looking absolutely horrified. Could Canter Bellsburg be right? Was he losing it? Then the rabbi, who had all his life, told his congregation that they should trust in the mysterious ways of God, shrugged, shut the bathroom door, and said, What is it that you need of me? Five minutes later, inside the shul, the canter was standing at the Bima.

Here, oh, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. The rabbi was standing behind him. Next came the standing prayer, the amida. And the congregation stood. And the canter began. And just as he did, his voice caught. A small stumble. stumbled you would not have noticed unless you were listening for it. The rabbi was listening for it.

And there, he stumbled again. And the rabbi smiled and glanced over at his canter. The canter was staring into the balcony. Where all alone, where only he could see it, hopping up and down, was a giant blue bunny. Just as the rabbi had requested. The rabbit appeared every time the canter stood up. Only three people could see him. Murphy, the rabbi, and Cantor Belsberg. At the end of the service, as they were walking out of the shoal, the canter cornered Murphy and said,

Did you see the rabbit up there? During the service, every time I was leading prayer, Murphy looked puzzled and shook his head, just as the rabbi had asked him. The rabbi had come to him just before the service. service began and invited him in on his little joke. A reminder, he said, that becoming an adult does not mean a man has to leave all fun and games behind him. As for the rabbi, when the canter asked the rabbi about the rabbit, the rabbi shrugged and shook his head too. Then he put his old

hand on the canter's shoulders and said, Canter Bellsberg, maybe you've been working too hard. Maybe you need a rest. Dave changed out of the rabbit suit before anyone else saw him and they went to the party and the rabbi was there but not the canter. And slowly the story spread

through the hall until more or less everyone had heard about the rabbit in the balcony. And someone worked it into a speech and when they did Dave stood up and took a bow and Murphy's grandmother whispered to the people she was sitting with

It was my idea, actually. Dave and Sam drove home a few hours later, and not far from the light where the guy had honked his horn, Sam turned to his father and said, knock, knock. And Dave said, who's there? And Sam said, consumption. And Dave said, consumption, who? And Sam said, consumption be done about all these wabbots?

And that's where we'll leave the two of them. driving home. A father and a son driving home telling bad jokes. As they pulled onto their driveway, Dave turned to Sam and said, Lacham. And Sam said they were saying that all night.

What does that mean? It's a toe, said Dave. It means, well, I don't know much Hebrew. So this is a very rough translation. But it means something like to the rabbit. That was the story we call Murphy's Bar Mitzvah, It contains a very lovely shout out to my husband, Josh, and his family, the Kilbergs. And it makes me happy every single time I hear it.

All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including this one. At first, Arthur seemed excited as they got there. But as the afternoon wore on, he became increasingly anxious. His tail stopped wagging each time the doorbell rang. By suppertime, Arthur would hold himself up at the downstairs bathroom and wouldn't come out. It's understandable. You put six dogs who don't know each other in a house together, any six dogs, any house,

and there are going to be moments. And there were no doubt about it. The first walk, just getting out the door was fearsome. Dave picked up a leash, one of the sixth leashes, in the back. basket by the door, and Preston, who was sound asleep on the living room, couch lifted his head, and both his ears flicked up, but he didn't budge. He was waiting for one more jingle, and there it was. And with a second confirming jingle, Preston went from sound asleep to full speed running and barking. It happened in the blink of an eye. Preston was asleep, and then he

wasn't. He was running to the doors if he'd been running for hours. Preston had one thing on his mind, birds. And he wanted to tell everybody, birds barked Preston. Birds, birds, birds, birds, birds, that he passed summer on his way to the door, and summer jumped up to garbage, Burbage, Summer, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, the two of them barking right past Noonu, who's asleep in the corner, and Noonu joins in, although she has no idea why she's running, she has no idea what's going on. She's just running, and by the time she's made it to the hall, she's so excited she stopped twice to pee. That's next week on the pod. I hope you'll join us.

Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Bada-da-Bad-da-B-da-B-da-What-up, Greg D'Clute. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis and carrot-munching Greg DeClute and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.