Bill Murray is Everywhere, even in my dreams

By Mark A. Leon

While most Americans were enjoying turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, green bean casserole, football and pie on Thanksgiving, I was spending my holiday on the warm Gulf Coast of Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  A paradise of snorkeling, dining, massages, Mayan ruins, yoga, beach walks and margaritas.  I am not here to tell you about the amazing memories we made, but one particular one that left an interesting and uncertain impression.

Living in Charleston, Bill Murray tends to slip into your dreams once or twice.  How could he not; he is everywhere.  Whether you see him at Rutledge Cab Company, The Alley or a RiverDogs game or on his recent Christmas Special on NetFlix, Bill is a busy busy man.  Maybe some of you just think I am bonkers and he has never been in your thoughts or dreams.

Either way, my story is still on the odd side.  Resting comfortably in a third floor penthouse overlooking the ocean 2700 miles from home, he is the last person I would have expected to be a critical character on an all night dream sequence.  Well, he was.  Bill Murray was in my dream.

I am still not sure why, but the details are worth sharing.  Mr. Murray (as he has earned that distinction with his illustrious career) invited an “elite” group of Yelpers led by community manager Scotty to an inside look at his restaurant.  I know what you are thinking, it must be Rutledge Cab Company.  It wasn’t.  This one was large and unique with a variety of rooms and an outdoor seating and garden area and it was somewhere in the Summerville area.  The structure of the restaurant seemed to be more than one floor.  Not in a traditional structural way, but almost an ode to M.C. Escher.

Oddity number one:

When we arrived, he was laying on the ground pretending to be dead.  After we moved closer and hovered over him, he popped up like a gymnast and said hello.

Oddity number two:

His staff comprised of celebrity athletes, most being NBA basketball players including Tony Parker.  My partner in crime dismissed that section as a connection to Space Jam, but I hadn’t see or thought about that movie in a long time and these athletes were much younger and current players unlike the immortal Michael Jordan.  The celebrity service staff members were friends of Bill and did this for fun on the side.  I was like ok, why not.

Oddity number three:

Not so odd.  I wanted to snag Bill for a candid interview.  I am sure somewhere in my psyche I would love to sit down and discuss things and the only time I met him, he threatened to kick me in the neck thinking I brought a script to the RiverDogs game for him to read.  It wasn’t a script, but with the manila envelope in my hand, an honest mistake.

I am manifesting this incredible set of Q&A with no focus on film, television, celebrity status or even baseball.  It would have been a legendary cross of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Mad Magazine.  A true Pulitzer piece of journalistic art.

I chickened out.  I didn’t completely chicken out.  Respect won over personal achievement.  Now that I think about it, why wouldn’t it.  It was a dream.  It was not even reality.

As I followed him and even got a couple of random comments from him, I just didn’t see the right moment.  He was inviting us into his fictional restaurant and what right did I have to step over those boundaries.

At the end of the dream, as I awoke, I was still there in the restaurant, no interview and no idea how any of the food was.  How could I have not even tasted the food at this fictional restaurant?

I went downstairs to the kitchen, made coffee, watched the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico and lingered perplexed as I wondered how Bill Murray got in my dreams as I vacationed far from home in Mexico.

Some mysteries may never get answered.

Thank you Bill Murray for invading my nocturnal mental chamber.