This is not Mayor Berry Vrbanovic. Photo by Mika-photography via Wikicommons.
A leaked memo between members of City Council and several council insiders revealed a shocking insight into the working life of Mayor Berry Vrbanovic. City Councillor for Ward 11, Torquil Innsegall revealed to the other members of council that, since he assumed office one year ago this month, Mayor Vrbanovic has only communicated in quotes by rap artist Eminem.
It took a teenager’s eye
Councillor Innesgall’s high school age daughter, Agnes Innesgall reportedly caught the pattern none of the middle-aged Councillors picked up on. “lol sooo obvi (sic)” said Agnes via a smirking Snapcatch selfie. In a follow up ‘Snap’ “lol who listens to eminem anyway (sic)” said Agnes, with immense duckface.
Reviewing the evidence
Waterloo Honk’s unpaid interns spent the last seventy-two hours digging through the piles of speeches, presentations, and Council Meeting minutes acquired by the Waterloo Honk’s information request. It would seem that Agnes’ assessment is correct. During his 2014 bid for Mayorship now Mayor Berry said to a crowd of supporters: “look, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in a moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?” He concluded that speech with his Mayorship slogan: “This world is mine for the taking, make me king!” taken from 8 Mile (2002). During a 2012 Finance Committee meeting, then Councillor for Ward 2 said “I don’t rap for dead presidents; I’d rather see the president dead. It’s never been said, but I set precedents,” (Encore, 2004).
Some quotes appear to be mish-mashes, or just small segments of lyrics. Recently, during the announcement that an Ikea is opening in Kitchener, his Mayorship said “Life is like a big obstacle, see daddy had a job, but his job was to keep the food on the table for you and mom. 20 job in the back! Cold brew?” Our interns were unable to source all the Eminem quotes in that statement. In fact while listening to early recordings of the Mayor it appears that some of his quotes are just completely nonsensical.
How did nobody notice?
We contacted psycho-linguist Miguel Shavi to ask her about how no one noticed some of the Mayors more nonsensical quotes. “This seems to be sort of confabulation. The Berenstain vs. Berentstein Bear debate is an example of this. You may think you heard him say ‘Kitchener’ or ‘Prime Minster Elect Justin Trudeau’ but the truth is, you didn’t. Your brain inserted the missing pieces so where your ears were hearing one thing, your brain was understanding something totally different. For example, when the Mayor was quoted on the 24th of August 2015 saying ‘We welcome the Waterloo Technology Corridor’ that was just your brain parsing what he actually said which was: I’d like to welcome you all to the you all to ‘The Eminem Show.'”
What does Berry have to say for himself?
Mayor Berry is currently at the Paris Climate Talks and is unavailable for comment, although this morning at 4am he did tweet a picture of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley with the caption: “Her palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy / There’s vomit on her sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.”
We want to hear from you. Did you notice the Mayor’s penchant for Eminem?
The Waterloo Honk 