Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - The Cricket - The Cricket & I Need to Pee

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

“He’s not well, Stuart.” We’re going way back today with two pieces from pre-Vinyl Cafe days! One is a favourite you’ve been requesting, back from Stuart McLean’s regular appearances on Peter Gzowski’s Morningside. (Spoiler alert: You’ll see what happens when two presenters get the giggles on live radio.) Excerpt from Morningside reproduced by permission of CBC Licensing.  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. On today's episode, we've got a couple of gems for you. Two of Stuart's early recordings that are, now there's a way kids would say this, there's a term adjacent. Two stories that are Vinyl Cafe adjacent. They are from way, way back, pre-Vinyl Cafe days, when Stuart was making regular appearances on Morningside with his good friend Peter Zosky. A lot of you have requested this recording, and I am so excited to finally be able to play it for you. to finally be able to play it for you. And later in the episode, we'll be playing another recording from back in the day, something that I suspect most of you have never heard before,

a hilarious story. I've been thinking about this episode for a while. It started last summer after that bonus episode we did called Bloopers. So many of you wrote in to say how much you enjoyed hearing Stuart and I talking together in studio. And if you if you don't know what we're talking about, you should go back and listen to it. It might be. Anyway, it's one of my favorite episodes from last season. It was a bonus episode, and it's still there in our podcast feed. So wherever you're listening to this right now, just stop and scroll back and you'll see it there. It's called bloopers.

Anyway, what you said after that episode was how nice it was to hear Stuart and I laughing together and how that made you laugh too. It's so hard to keep a straight face when you're listening to people laugh together. It's contagious hearing people laugh and I loved it and I know you did too. So I was trying to think about other occasions where that happened. And once I started thinking about it, I realized there's no better example than the next piece I'm going to play for you. So here's your challenge. I defy anyone buy anyone to keep a straight face while they are listening to this. This is Stuart McLean and Peter Zosky having a conversation on Zosky's wonderful show, Morningside. This is The Cricket. Stuart McLean joins me now.

Good morning. About ten years ago, it was this country of the morning, we sent Danny Finkelman out to see what he could buy for one Canadian dollar. And last week we asked Stuart to find out what a shrinking dollar could buy in an age of steady inflation. How'd you do? Well, of course, the first thing I did, fine. First thing I did was phone up Dan.

And see what he got. I can't remember all the things that he bought. Oh, I do. I remember that. I don't remember. I didn't remember everything. I remembered number one on the list. That was just a wonderful moment of radio.

The number one on his list was the styptic pencil. Right. He brought in the styptic pencil. So I thought... I've never seen one. Well, my father, my stepfather had one. The styptic pencil? Yeah.

Well, you've got a beard in your face. I know. Well, I didn't always. Anyway, he got that. Yeah, and he got the styptic pencil, he got the penny match. Yeah. Or this is now, he didn't remember the whole list either. And Dan, you're a little wrong in the intro. Dan didn't do everything for a buck. Dan did, it was Dan's bargains. Oh yeah? Dan's bargains for a modern world. So he had the styptic pencil, the penny match, the coat hanger, So he had the styptic pencil, the penny match, the coat hanger, city water, and the toothpick. Oh, yes, yes.

Now, those were his. So I stood out there on Friday with my crisp new Canadian dollar bill leaving the house. And attitude is key here, right? I took the crisp new bill. I mean, it's like in the locker room before the big game, because if I'd gone out with the old, worn-out, crumpled bill, or four quarters, you can't get much for four quarters, right? So I went out with a new bill and my job to do, and I talked to Dan. And so I thought I'd just start with Dan's list. Okay.

Right off the top. I went off and went to the drugstore. You bought what he bought. Well, I went to see if I could fit any of his items into my list, right? So I started with a styptic pencil, went to the drugstore, almost croaked. I suppose we should tell people what a styptic pencil is. There's some people standing out there. A styptic pencil is a white piece of what looks like ivory, I suppose,

about the size of a golf pencil, like a pencil sawed in half. It's all white. And what you do is when you cut yourself shaving, you dip this into water, put it on the cut. Do you? You dip it in water? Yeah, you dip it in water. Oh, no wonder. Put it on the cut, and it's not unlike pouring salt

or rubbing salt into the wound, and your cut goes like that, and you stop bleeding. Yes. And so it's just to stop you from bleeding when you cut. What they've done to this diptych pencil is they got it on cardboard backing, and this is an odious social trend. They put the shrink wrap around it, and they're selling...

You can't go in there and sample it. I mean, if you run into the drugstore with your bleeding chin, you can't go and grab the styptic pencil. Well, come on, Soski. Nobody would do that. They used to have the styptic pencil in a little cardboard box. You'd pick one up. It was about 10 cents. Now it's two for $1.39. Now maybe Sweeney Todd could go through with more than one styptic pencil in a lifetime.

But these things last forever. Now, no one that I know will ever come close to finishing one. I know it's like Tabasco sauce. You never run out of that. You never finish your styptic pencil. Have you ever noticed how Tabasco sauce changes color? You know how you get it red? Yes, it does? It goes brown.

Right. Don't use the brown stuff, folks. Anyways, on a per unit basis at $1.39, say you've got a thousand, you get a thousand cuts out of the septic pencils. A good buy, but not for me. Okay? On this shopping trip, I had to scratch the septic pencil and go down the list. Number two,

the penny match. Now, the penny match is up to two cents. Is it? Yeah, it's two cents, the penny match. Now, the penny match is up to two cents. Is it? Yeah, it's two cents for a penny match. But you get 20 matches, and I got these. Wow, you should know these things. No, I have a lighter. Well, I got these ones here, Eddie Lights, from a drugstore on Spadina. And what I love about them is, look at this package of matches. This is the little book, folks, that they sell at the front of the store. There's no advertising on these ones. Well, that's...

Now, see, I'll pay two cents for that because we're the only country, I think, in the world that makes you have to buy people's advertising on their penny matches. Yeah, well, these ones have no advertising. They were made to be sold. And you know what else I love about the penny match? Is they're sold on the honor system.

Right? That's right. You grab some and you give them some. They always leave the cardboard box by the cash register and you're supposed to throw in your pennies and if necessary, you make your own change. And now I've been in some stores where if you're, say you're a few cents short on the item you're buying, you're buying a different product, the store owner will reach down into the box and pull out those extra few pennies for you and give them to you. Now, I've also seen people throw in their change pennies into the box

without buying matches. And the way I understand it, it's okay if you don't have pennies to take the matches from a store without paying, as long as you throw some extra pennies into a box, any box, some other day, somewhere else, right? Now, Dan said it all 10 years ago. You used to have to rub two sticks together for an hour to get fire. Now we've got the matchbook. I bought a pack. Two cents gone. I've got 98 cents in my pocket. Okay. Next on Dan's list, the coat hanger.

Cheapest I saw them were 12 cents each. Who buys a coat hanger? The cleaners buy the coat hangers and you get them free. And they breed in my cupboard like rattlesnakes. I know. Who can imagine going out to buy a coat hanger? I mean, if I'm running short, which is an impossible situation, I just have to send something to the cleaners. It's simple.

When they ask folded or hangers, I say hangers, and I get as many as I need for free. Right. I didn't buy the coating. Good. City water. City water is an incredible bargain. Now, it's gone up in price about three and a half times since Dan sat here. Has it?

Yeah, but it's still a deal. In 1986, the city of Toronto will sell you a thousand gallons of water for $2. Now think about it. They'll install a delivery system right to your house. They'll get the water to you, cleaned and purified whenever you want it, deliver it to you 24 hours a day, no reservations, no advance warning. It's there when you want it, and you can do what you want with it. Right? No questions

asked. And when you're finished with it, no matter what you've done to it, they'll take it back. I buy 25 gallons of cleaned and purified water. Costs me a nickel. Now, for those of you who can't visualize this, 25 gallons of water is enough to fill up a phone booth, approximately. Lie the phone booth down, fill it up with water.

You can buy that much water from the city of Toronto, five cents. I don't think 25 gallons would fill a phone booth. You don't? No. You know how I figured this out? When I was a kid, we had the five-gallon glass tank. I don't want to stop you on this. I forget the mail. Right.

Somebody's going to try it. Officer, I'll put it back when I'm finished. Doing my research. Okay, you got the water, you got the matches. We can start a fire and put it out. The toothpick, it's termified. Now, this was difficult. The toothpick is no longer the indispensable oral aid it once was.

It's been blown away by... Floss. That's it. A dreaded floss. I mean, it's indisputable that floss goes places that toothpicks can't. But do you know how many toothpicks, Oscar, you can buy for 33 cents? No. A heck of

enough to fill a phone book. About 725. Now, I didn't try and count. This is the way it's marked here on the box. And I just love this box. Take this box. Read the label there. Everything on the front page. Magantic, sanitary, flat style toothpicks. And what's it say down there in the bottom right corner? About 715. 725. Oh, well, I got, oh.

It's awfully small. Well, they're awfully small product. It's the red, green, and white box. The box hasn't changed since before I was born. I bought the toothpicks. This is my big-ticket item, right? 33 cents. But I didn't buy them for their utility. No? Their collectibles.

I can say with certainty that 35 years from now, one afternoon, I can totter over to my kitchen cupboard and remember this very moment as I peer at that very box with say about 650 toothpicks in it. I like the toothpicks a lot. Yeah. How much are that? That was 33 cents So I have I had the bar goon. That is a big bar It's about 20. It's about more than 20 toothpicks for a penny Wow now I have the toothpicks I have the water I got the penny match and I still got 60 cents in my pocket. I Went to a pet store to get a goldfish.

And I could have done it. 49 cents in Woolworth's basement for small ones, which will grow at least six times their size. 69 cents for the large, which will just triple. But I did better, Zosky. I got a pet for a dime, and I brought it with me this morning. Okay? I'm just going to reach down here.

This is a live thing? This is a live thing bought for dime. It's in a peanut butter jar. Yeah. Just pop it open here. Oh, my God. I know it's still there. I hadn't checked this morning.

No, it's still there, alive and kicking. There you go. Bought a cricket. Aw. Now, I've only had him since Saturday. He's not well, Stuart. He is well. He is not.

He's got the sponge with the water. He's got the Nabisco shredded wheat, which you can see he's eaten about a half of. Just the one little square. He's not well, Stuart. Why do you say this? He's fine. Have you seen this cricket? This is an insipid critic.

People believe me. Trust me. The cricket is fine. He doesn't eat a lot. He doesn't drink enough. This cricket has had the biscuit. Listen, the crickets don't do much of anything. I got the mail.

He's supposed to make, I got the mail because the mail has the wings. And the, with the chirping, it's the wings is how they make the chirping. Don't blow smoke on my cricket. I'm not. The wings are supposed to make the chirping noises at night. And you know what I like? Did he? He hasn't.

You know what happened? I got all excited. I had a record on and the record had a song, you know, and the way they mix in all of the new stuff. It had't. You know what happened? I got all excited. I had a record on, and the record had a song, you know, and the way they mix in all of the new stuff. It had the cricket noises in the background. I got all excited. I turned the record down. The cricket noises disappeared.

I thought, God, I've got to keep the music up. They're even chirping. Finally, I figured out that it was on the music. You know what I like about him? No. I don't think he's got the long lifespan. I think he's playing the back nine of cricket existence this morning. I don't think I'm going to have to worry about boarding this little cricket field in the summertime.

And I don't think, you know, a dead cricket in a peanut butter jar is a whole different thing than a cat on the front lawn. It's going to be a little easier on the family. How much was he? He was 10 cents. Yeah. Maybe we better put the lid on. I would hate to... He's not going to get out of there.

This cricket is healthy, trust me. I went to a stationery store. I bought a piece of chalk for Penny. I've got to get a hold of myself. Yeah. They had the cardboard box like teachers used to have in the classroom, about the size of a pound of butter.

Now, pieces of chalk in there that you can buy for a penny. If you've got a kid under five, a penny's worth of chalk is a whole morning's entertainment. The cricket. We've got to get around the cricket. You hold onto the piece of chalk until spring. You take it out onto the sidewalk. You can draw with it. Okay, you hold onto the piece of chalk until spring. You take it out onto the sidewalk. You can draw with it. You got it.

Oh, folks, we go from the... We got the cricket. We got the scotch. We got the... This isn't good. We got the chalk. Finally,

if you shop around, you can get a postcard for a dime. Which leaves you 34 cents change. You buy a stamp with that. There's nothing funny about this. Now, we've talked about this before. I'm big on the post office.

It's him, it's not me. More music or we pull it off? No, I'm going to introduce the music now. Okay. And then I'm going to talk about equal pay-for-rate. Give me one last item here. Okay, yeah, no, I can get myself together here. Okay.

34-cent stamp. Okay, now the post office, we've talked about it before. You'd have to look a long time to find somebody to deliver a postcard anywhere across this continent for 34 cents. I mean, to hand deliver it. I think that at 34 cents... Still a bargain. Big bargain, yeah. One more.

Okay. Okay, I do have one more I can buy. Don't make me laugh. I will not make you laugh because we're talking about the street. This will bring us up to the dollar here. Okay. We're talking about the street around my house. On Bloor Street, which is a major artery in Toronto, you can buy one hour of parking for 10 here. Okay. We're talking about the street around my house. On Bloor Street, which is a major artery in Toronto,

you can buy one hour of parking for 10 cents. Okay? Now, for 10 cents in a parking meter, you have the right to leave over 2,000 pounds of your personal property

right there on the street. Now, do you have any idea how much rent you have to pay for a storefront along Bloor Street? An hour at a dime. Did you look this up?

Yes, I did. Yeah. It's thousands of dollars. Yeah. So an hour for 2,000 pounds, I think is a great bargain. And this brings me up to my buck. We got the postcard for a dime. Yeah. We got the stamp for 34 cents. We got the parking for a nickel, for a dime. We got the toothpicks. No, the parking was, dime or nickel, I forget. Toothpicks, 33 cents. Water, 25 gallons for a nickel, the matchbook for 2 cents, 20 matches for 2 cents,

the chalk for a penny, you take it out in the street, the kid plays hopscotch, you write something. How big is that piece of chalk? It's the regular, no, it's the regular size piece of chalk. You know, the big, it's about 4 inches long. Yeah, and that's how much? A penny. Right.

You can't do better. It's 2 hours worth of entertainment. Right. Notes to mom and dad coming home from work. And then the cricket, folks. Ten cents. All of that totals up to a dollar. And that's not bad.

No. And that was ten years that you compared that with Danny Fingerman ten years ago. Ten years ago. Well, we'll make some notes and this cricket will not be here to review this ten years from now. You're all right now. You've stopped this silly giggling. I've got myself under control. I hope I have too. You do the right now. You've stopped this silly giggling. I've got myself under control. I hope I have too.

You do the music now. Stuart McLean. That was the cricket. And we are so grateful to our friends at CBC Radio for giving us permission to include it on this podcast. So how'd you do? Did anyone listening manage to keep a straight face? Not me. Definitely not me.

We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another recording from the vault. So stick around. Welcome back. It's time for our second story now. This is I Need to Pee. I took a carrot with me to work the other day. And I put it down on my desk and then I didn't touch it. Not that I'm opposed to eating vegetables.

To tell you the truth, I forgot all about the carrot until the next morning. When I came back to work and I found it exactly where I'd left it. Except it didn't look like the same carrot the next morning. It was limp and it was lifeless. And it had lost the crunchiness which is what attracts you to a carrot or me to a carrot. Now I wasn't sure what I should do with my limp carrot. It seemed like a waste to throw it out, but I wasn't about to eat it either. So I decided to do what I do when I'm confronted with a problem which is too big for me. I decided to ignore it and see if it would go away. And darned if my little carrot didn't do

its best to do just that. Over the next few days, it began to dry up every day. It shriveled up a little more until after a week, it was a wizened, dehydrated shadow of its former carrot self. And I thought to myself, I guess that's what happens to you when you sit around a third-floor studio day after day. And then I thought, wait a minute, that's what I do day after day. Now, I don't know if you get out much. I know I don't get out much. But when I do, I've noticed that people are a lot more conscientious about drinking water than they

used to be. Every second person you pass is carrying a water bottle these days. And up until I watched that little carrot shrivel up I figured that I absorbed all the water I needed when I showered in the morning. Now I thought if this poor little mummified carrots life had any meaning it was to tell me that it was high time for me to get aboard the water wagon. So have you ever tried to drink eight cups of water in a day? I tried for two weeks and found out that like staying on a diet and following a modest exercise program and not watching cheap talk television, it was just one more in a long list of righteous ambitions destined to humiliate me and send me like a school child to swim in the sorry pool of self-loathing.

It's one thing to dream about representing your country in the Olympics and have to face the fact that at 50 you can't run a mile in under eight minutes, let alone under four, but it's a failure of an altogether different magnitude to find out you cannot drink eight glasses of water in a day, even when you set your mind to it. So after two weeks, I decided that I was going to do this if it killed me. And I bought myself one of those fancy water bottles, ones you see the kids carrying all the time these days. I got myself a ripstop nylon holster so my bottle would always be within reach. I set my watch to beep every hour, and I promised myself that I was going to empty that water bottle every time my watch beeped if it was the last thing I did.

Almost was. By noon, by noon on the first day, I was well on my way. By noon, I was driving along the 401 highway, heading for an appointment, and I was feeling on my way. By noon, I was driving along the 401 highway, heading for an appointment, and I was feeling pretty pumped up. I'd been up since 7 o'clock, and so far my watch had beeped five times, and I'd emptied my water bottle each time it beeped.

Don't get ahead of me, ma'am. Buddhists would tell you to stay in the present moment. It was noon. I only had three more bottles to go. And that's when it was suddenly brought to my attention that the reason I hadn't been drinking eight glasses of water a day was simple. Man's body isn't designed to drink eight glasses of water a day. The notion struck me with a force of a fire hose. I looked out at the window. I looked at the eight lanes of traffic whizzing

around me, at the concrete retaining walls, the narrow shoulders, and I realized I was in serious trouble. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably and I began to wonder just how many glasses of water a man's bladder, mine, could hold. And what actually happened when there was no room left? It was beginning to feel as if there hadn't been a redundancy built in. I felt a pulsing, stabbing pain and I left the world of rational thought. As I drove along the highway my eyes began to narrow and my tongue began to flip in and out of my mouth and I entered the world of instinctive behavior. I embraced my lesser reptile self and all I knew was that I had to get off the highway right away but even

my lizard self could see there were no exits. So have you ever tried to cross your legs while you're driving a car? This is not something you should do at 130 kilometers an hour. And then somewhere deep in my prehistoric brain, I realized that no matter how fast I drove, I wasn't going to find an exit in time. I realized that no matter how fast I drove, I wasn't going to find an exit in time. I realized I needed to find something to pee into or I was going to have an accident, and I'm not talking automotive.

So I looked around the car, and all I could see was the water bottle on the seat behind me. This is where I catch up to you. But the water bottle was full, so I drank it. Water went straight to my bladder. Now, if you think driving a car and talking on a cell phone is dangerous, you don't know anything. I didn't care. I had the empty bottle.

So I filled it. But I wasn't empty, if you get my drift. By then, I didn't care anymore. I pulled over. Now, this is something you see people doing all the time in the country. You see a car pulled over on the edge of the road. You see a man or a woman walking into the woods at the edge of the road holding a child's hand. Child's a decoy. Well, there were no woods to walk into where I was.

It was just me and all of these cars and the shoulder and a concrete wall and the eight lanes of traffic, about a thousand cars a minute. Now, there is a certain pose that a man with my problem has to assume if he is about to resolve his problem. And I don't care who you are. You cannot disguise this pose. You can stand by the edge of the road, reach into your pocket, and pull out your cell phone and pretend you're talking on the phone. But when it comes to the moment of truth, everyone is going to know exactly what you're doing.

So I stood beside my parked car, and I'm bouncing from one foot to the other, and I thought to myself, if I was wearing a dress, this would be a lot easier. If only I had a dress on and different plumbing, I could manage this. If I didn't have to aim and shoot, if I could just shoot. I could stand by the roadside and pretend I was looking at birds. I could stand by the roadside and pretend I was looking at birds. And at 110 kilometers an hour, who would notice? But I wasn't wearing a dress. And then I knew what I was going to do.

The solution came to me. I would open the hood of the car. I'd lean against the bonnet like I was checking the water level. And while I did that, while I was hidden behind the hood, I would quickly finish what it was that I had started. So I hopped behind the hood and I got into position. And just when I was getting to the crucial moment, well, you know what happens when you have a breakdown on the edge of the highway? Some Anglican stops to help you. So I'm standing there all ready to let go, and this guy pulls over, and he gets out of his car, and he walks up to me. He says, what's the problem?

Without thinking, I say, I think it's flooded. And this guy says, I'll stick around until it dries out. And that's when my watch beeped. And when I heard my watch beep, you know what I did. I reached for the bottle. And that's when I realized I had to get out of there. I slammed the hood shut, and I jumped into my car, and I waved at the the guy and I drove off knowing there, well, there had to be a Tim Horton somewhere close by. And as I left, I'm thinking to myself, if only I'd listened to my mother. She always told

me to eat my vegetables. And if I'd only eaten that little carrot, none of this would have happened. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That was I Need to Pee. Like I said, I suspect probably most of you haven't heard that one before. We had to go way back in the vaults to get that one. Okay, we're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a sneak peek from next week's show. So stick around. All right, that's it for today.

But we'll be back here next week with Dave and Morley stories, including this one. I saw a magazine, said Sam. He was fidgeting. He wouldn't look his father in the eye. I noticed a few things I'm. He was fidgeting. He wouldn't look his father in the eye. I noticed a few things I'm interested in. Uh-huh. That's what Dave said. It seemed like the safest reply. What is a musky aroma of motherly bosom, blurted Sam. Uh-oh, said Dave under his breath.

Sid Barrett driven completely from his mind. What, asked Sam? Just which magazines have you been reading, asked Dave. It's a magazine about, it's about, well, that's one of the things I'm embarrassed about, said Sam. Now, Lord, said Dave, take me now. It's about eating, said Sam. It's a food magazine. Huh, said Dave. And I read this article about truffles, and it said that a truffle tastes like, it says it's one of the most wonderful tastes in the world. Thank you, Lord, said Dave.

And I don't know what a truffle is, said Sam. Yes, said Dave. What's a truffle, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I'm not sure I understand everything there's to know about truffles. When I was a boy, we didn't, it's not the sort of thing a boy would talk about with his dad. Sam was frowning. Not that there's anything wrong with truffles, added Dave quickly. A truffle is a beautiful thing.

A truffle is a very special thing. You usually share truffles with someone who's very special to you. When I met your mom, for instance. Not right away, but after I'd known her for a while, I got her a truffle. Actually, to tell the truth, I gave her a box of them. Truffles. And I'd never done that with any other girl before in my life, which shows you how special your mom was. And I knew that, and so did she. That's next week on the podcast.

I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone I know would never bring a carrot to work, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.