Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #764

Episode Date: December 6, 2020

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of media in Canada and what you oughta know.

Welcome to episode 764 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. CDN Technologies, your outsourced IT department Palma Pasta enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville StickerU.com create custom stickers, labels, tattoos and decals

for your home and your business Sammy Cohn Real Estate for a complimentaryals for your home and your business. Sammy Cone Real Estate. For a complimentary evaluation of your home, contact Sammy Cone. Sammy at SammyCone.com. K-O-H-N is how you spell Cone. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921.

I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week for his November 2020 recap is Mark Weisblot from 1236. Hey, Mike, do you remember anything about November 2020? Because I certainly don't outside of me flaking out of an appearance we were going to do in the middle of the month, I think due to inclement weather.

I can't remember exactly what the reason was. We wanted to recap what was going on in the podcast industry. We'll get to that one soon. It just didn't seem like the right time for it. But now we're at that point in the coming winter here in early December where I think it's a little

cold outside. You've had to wear more than a t-shirt for a change. That's true. That's true. Let's tell the people who, you know, you can't see us, you can only hear us, but we are outside. What would you say the temperature is right now? You're the meteorologist here, right? Weather specialist Mark Weisblatt. What would you say? Like minus one? I would think maybe minus one. But a wind chill of minus six or seven. of minus six or seven. But sunny. Like, it's not bad because it's sunny.

Like, I feel like, because I'm, you know, I'm recording out here with Peter Gross tomorrow and then Bob Wiseblood, he's your brother, Bob Willett and the Pandemic Friday guys will be back here. I hope it's as nice as this. This feels real nice out here today.

You made a comment a few times about how you didn't like doing these Zoom episodes because, what, five seconds after they ended, you forgot that you had any kind of experience at all? Pretty much. Well, with a few exceptions. Yeah, like they don't stick with me the same way. Like it doesn't resonate with me the same way. It's not as fun. me the same way. It's not as fun. I had the similar experience when I was invited to be on Canada Land. That was a day after I last visited you here

in the backyard, just before Halloween. And yeah, it was like a disjointed technological undertaking, where there I was talking to Jesse Brown over the computer, through the lines. He had a producer monitoring it all, doing what he does with his podcasts, editing them down to try and get to the point,

which always seems like a challenge for me when I'm on there with him. And I'm not sure that I said anything all that profound. We were just like role playing. It was a simulation of the experience that I would have being in a studio with him. And I was left with a longing to have that happen again. It just wasn't going to cut it to do it that way. And I think we're leaving behind here in 2020, like all these disembodied podcasts that people have done at a long distance, including some episodes that I did with you. And I'm not sure this is what we signed up for.

This was not the experience that we wanted to have. But I know you wanted to talk to people. And a lot of times this year, the only way you could do it was by Zoom. And you had Leigh Aron from Vancouver, followed by Erica M., who I guess in trying to navigate the podcast universe, felt that she had to make some appearances to plug what she was doing, the reinvention of the VJ. But I'm not sure the real talk about herself was where she wanted to go. So, yeah, I'd be curious as to your feedback from you regarding that episode

because she kind of disclosed the fact that years ago, and we talked about this many times, but years ago, I invited Erica M on Toronto mic. And she basically said in a nutshell that she did not want to talk about much music anymore. She was tired of talking about much music. And then of course that's where it all broke down because how do you get Erica

M on Toronto mic to not talk about much music? So we agreed not to record. And then years later through like a different channel, like I literally, she was promoting something completely different. In fact, the joke is that I forgot what she was supposed to be promoting in that episode. Like I completely, completely forgot.

Called Out of the Book or something like that. Long story short is she basically now does a lot of talking about MuchMusic. So what did you think of Erica M on Toronto Mike? I guess there must be a reason why Erica M has anointed herself the interviewer in the context of tracking down all these other on-air people from Much Music. The tables have turned. I tend to operate on a similar plane.

When it comes to people maybe wanting to give me attention, I can turn it around and instead ask them the questions instead. And that appeared to be her comfort zone, because when she herself was being interviewed, I don't think we got as good as an interview as she is doing as the interviewer of others. And putting out these VJ podcasts, catching up on these lifestyles, I don't know if Rick the Temp's experience ever since leaving Much Music was all that compelling.

George Strombolopoulos, we know, has a better story to tell, and it was the episode that I thought worked the best of all was Nam, Namke Wenuka, who's now on TVO, on the agenda, and her story was a genuine one of coming out of a dysfunctional family and struggling to make it on her own,

and then finding that opportunity on camera and much music. That was a kind of story. Strombo has got that story to tell himself. You know, of somebody that didn't have family connections, there was no nepotism involved, they just had a dream, a goal, an ambition to be part of the media somehow. And what this Much Music channel was in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s helped to facilitate it for them.

And that was the best that I got out of those podcasts. As far as Erica's own journey and what found her talking to you, yeah, maybe a little bit more defensive, but then, look, she took a lot of lumps along the way. She was the one that broke the ice as far as being one of the first to do this type of television in Canada. She's turning 60 next year, which I think surprises a lot of people. But yeah, fun chat with her. But again, Zoom, right? So it's like, how different would that conversation

have been if she were in my backyard where you are today? Like, it's a whole different dynamic. You might have gotten a little more real talk out of her. Leigh Aron. Yes. A whole other story there. Again, somebody that didn't quite know what they were getting into. And she might also take the honors

of having the most Canadian accent of any guest that you've had on Toronto Mic'd. I'm not sure who the rivals would be in that department. Are there any others that you can think of? Oh, no, I can't. A distinct dialect that could have only come out of the 905 area code. Is that a Brampton accent? Is that what that is?

80s, 70s, 80s Brampton. Oh, man. Shout out to Brother Bill. I know he's listening right now, and he was part of that scene. And so we learned a lot about Lee Aaron. And there she was describing herself as what? Just like a dorky keyboard player in the background. Right.

herself as what? Just like a dorky keyboard player in the background and lured into the forefront that, you know, she, she herself could become the metal queen, not quite knowing what she got into. And by the age of 30 was told that her time was up. Right.

Right. Because basically grunge, right? Like grunge, right? Like grunge hits and nobody wants to hear that style of, I don't know what you'd call it, hair metal or whatever you'd call it from the mid to late 80s.

Yeah, she was done. Meanwhile, yeah, she was still very young. So interesting story. I could tell she wasn't too fond of going to that, you know, Attic Records

non-US distribution story. But she did, to her credit, she did go there, but against her will, maybe. I'm not too sure. But it was fun talking to Karen, a.k.a. Lee Aaron. And what song did I just play? So I played a song while we were chatting. It's called Monica Lewinsky.

Who's behind that? That was St. John, the rapper who had the hit song Roses. I always like to bring you the latest TikTok rock that I've been discovering over the month before coming here. It's a way that I can project some sort of youthful energy here as we ourselves are not getting any younger. No. And try and make this monthly 1236 recap sound like I've got my fingers on the pulse of what's going on in the popular culture.

As usual, we'll have to work through the rotation of topics here all leading up to the end. There's lots today. Like, I'll say this. Where we do the obituaries. And again, this is our first time recording on a weekend, right? Like, normally it's a weekday afternoon, but this is our first weekend recording.

It's Sunday. This is our first time, to the best of your recollection. Yeah, and in the pandemic on the TTC, a subway ride that might as well have been in the middle of on the TTC, a subway ride that might as well have been in the middle of the night. It was so smooth and unpopulated. Okay, so we learned that Lee Aaron now

resides in an undisclosed location in the Vancouver area. So on that note, let's just hear a bit of this guy and then talk about this off the top here. Now, admittedly, I'm a big fan of watching Maple Leafs games, but I rarely catch them when they're in Vancouver, which has been a while now, but I'm old. I need to sleep. These games start very late on a Saturday night typically, but this is the Vancouver Canucks anthem guy.

And what's the news with this gentleman? Oh, you want to hear more? Okay, sorry. Mark is standing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for you and our flag. Mark Donnelly is the name of the Vancouver Canucks' go-to national anthem singer. That clip, in fact, was from the most infamous

Vancouver Canucks game of them all because it was followed by the biggest riot in the history of Canadian hockey fans. Game seven against the Bruins. Or seven? Game six. Was it six? That they got knocked out of contention.

Okay, okay. I thought it went to seven, but my memory is foggy. Okay it six? Okay. That they got knocked out of contention. Okay, okay. That was in... I thought it went in seven, but my memory is fogging. Okay, 2011. Right. I remember Boston. I thought they won in seven, but what do I know? You're the hockey expert.

So, like, the story I read, and you'll confirm this for me, Mark, is that he was singing at an anti-mask rally of some sort. It was game seven. I'm not the hockey expert. Come on, I'm the hockey expert around here. I'm a co-host of Hebsey on Sports. Come on, you know that. Mark Donnelly of Vancouver made an appearance at an anti-masker rally,

the British Columbia equivalent of the kind of events that we've talked about here over the months that have happened particularly in Toronto. Have you attended any? Have you been at any anti-mask events?

I haven't gotten that far, but developing their own cast of characters. A gentleman named Chris Sky, who I booked on Humble and Fred. So I had days worth of text messages back and forth. So that's my Chris Guy story. I did not invite him on Toronto Night.

When he was questioned about why he named his group Mothers Against Distancing, and he had to explain that he himself was not a parent, that he himself was not a parent, but simply representing all the mothers out there and hugs over masks. But his 50 minutes is done, right? I feel like his moment is over. Am I wrong? We get to that when we talk about the Adamson barbecue guy.

Francesco Aquilini is the owner of the Vancouver Canucks. And after finding out that his anthem singer appeared at this anti-mask rally, he made a point of tweeting that the Vancouver Sun should change their headline to former Canucks anthem singer after a decade. It turned out that he had appeared at political events before, like an anti-abortion rally in 2012, which got some attention, stirred a little bit of controversy, but they kept him on.

They saw him as an integral part of the Vancouver Canucks experience. He switched from pro-life to pro-death is that the deal there with the anti-masking just just checking in there okay please continue so adamson barbecue in toronto was uh a big topic here on a toronto mic'd episode uh as you talked uh about the uh pandemic experience of uh? Palma Pasta. Yeah, Anthony Petrucci, CEO and president of Palma Pasta. That was last weekend, I think. And yeah, we made a heart-to-heart,

and I let him share his perspective and thoughts on all of this, including the Adamson guy. And now, while he didn't support the approach that this Adam Skelly was taking, his style of civil disobedience, what I got out of that chat is at the same time, much like Doug Ford, Palma Pasta also being in that same category of not being legally allowed to let people dine in, let alone sit on a patio, even at, even at this windy time of year, uh,

what that, that he, he stopped short of, of condemning his actions. He was pleased that we were now having a conversation about the topic. Like he credits that fiasco whatever you call that that whole thing that happened a couple weeks ago he credits that event with sparking conversations much like this one right now and the fact that i had you know anthony

on to talk more about it because anthony pacucci uh a small business owner is uh very sympathetic to the causes of the small business owners during this pandemic. And he says he's not, he didn't go so far as to say he supports the Adamson style and, but, but he feels like it did raise the convo and spark the conversation. It takes a certain kind of agitator who knows how to play the media. And from what you could tell at the outset,

when Adam Skelly pledged to open for business, is that he knew who he was speaking to. He seemed quite literate in the certain type of contrarian media that was out there that was going to be by his side. Of course, there was Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun. Right. David Menzies from the Rebel News and the whole Rebel media machine was

fired up. They did like a three-hour long broadcast dedicated to the Adamson barbecue revolt. Places like the Post Millennial. That website was going to be on his side. Other people who were supporting this agitation. And then the more mainstream media, which still turned out in droves. On the road to Great Lakes Brewery, right? They all drove up with their vans,

and they knew that they were going to be able to feast on the material that the Adamson barbecue opening was going to provide for them all, right? I mean, this is what they were waiting for. This was somewhere to descend upon and make an example out of this guy and at the same time provide the kind of commercial content that they're required to look for and find every single day. It was handed to them on a platter. Right. I mean, CP24 was sort of like on location around the clock there.

And of course, I was watching the tweets come in from Toronto Star journalists who were kind of tweeting from the scene and covering everything. Quite the circus. Before we even go any further, though, you mentioned that Great Lakes is down the street from this barbecue joint. And they suffered greatly because, you know, cops were stopping people from entering Queen Elizabeth Boulevard. You had to kind of tell them you were going to the brewery but most people see cops blocking and they don't even bother to talk to the cops they just turn around and say another day

so let's all get out there and support great lakes uh beer the the circus is has moved on i'm told i'm actually recording live from glb uh next saturday because there's a big food drive there and uh people like Neil Hetherington and some others in support of the Daily Bread Food Bank. So I'll be live on location next Saturday at Great Lakes, not at the barbecue place. So shout out to Great Lakes. Thanks for sponsoring

the program. They change locks. You can't get into the barbecue place even if you're the owner who's now out on bail. The hilarity ensued after they spent the day on the barbecue watch, the Barbecue-anon, as it was trending on Twitter. I think it was Jesse Hawkin that coined that one.

And that's where these characters like Chris Sky, they all descended upon the place, right? Here were, I guess, the superstars of white supremacy. They saw an opportunity to rally behind this dude. Yeah, like the Avengers of white nationalism. Am I right? Like they all just kind of like, we're like moths to a flame.

I mean, I did avoid that street that week, like many people did, sensible people. That seemed like, go ahead. The concept of intersectionality, which is associated with the far left, it turns out it also corresponds on the far right, because I think there's like a whole rack of causes that all intersected and were intertwined, and whether it was a place that you could go and join the carnival for whatever cause you were trying to get attention for, all this media in one place, and it seems like the common denominator was this idea that here we are being held hostage.

Right. without any specific data corresponding to the idea that they would have been spreading COVID-19 by having at least their patios opened, right? Because first they shut indoor dining, and then there was this whole thing, well, you can't have tables outside either. Which, quite frankly, makes no sense to me. Were they doing this just to scare people, to make an example that people would follow so you wouldn't invite people over into your house? This is the big battle here going into the holiday season.

How many rules are too many rules? Right. Why are Walmart and Costco allowed to be open and at the same time someone with a small boutique that's usually only going to have one or two customers in at any given time? Why are they being forced to shut down when you've got the supermarket lineups as usual? This conversation, as of course in Toronto and beyond, comprised like hours upon hours of talk radio and Twitter discourse. But it all came back to Adam Skelly from Adamson Barbecue. And after spending the day covering the carnival going around the barbecue joint, it was at least one reporter from the CBC who thought that they should let Twitter know that they ended up with a parking ticket.

How dare these cops who we want to shut the barbecue place down are enforcing parking rules at the same time? I don't know what the cognitive dissonance there was supposed to be, right? Were the reporters saying they should have been allowed to park for free, that they shouldn't have to follow the rules at the same time that they're covering Adamson Barbecue as a place that's displayed this level of civil disobedience. And then they dig further and further into the life of this guy that it turns out his dad came into money because he started a plumbing supply business. Right. Retired at a relatively young age. Had a bit of a family tragedy involving his brother that got some press attention. I guess it's just one of those milkshake duck situations where people start Googling around trying to find everything they can about how this guy came to be the barbecue king of Toronto

and that he wasn't really this working class warrior that he might have presented himself as. this like working class warrior that he might have presented himself as. In fact, it was, it was Jesse Brown who tried roasting him. I don't know how successful he was, mostly in response to the fact that Rex Murphy wrote a column where it was like, you know, uh, Adamson is, is here fighting for the little guy, Toronto Star digs a bit further. And then they find out that he has another location that's been operating for all these years without a business license,

even though he was paying all the fines that were levied upon the fact that he couldn't get a license no matter how hard he tried, and that he was still paying the city anyhow, and it revealed really something about how this business license enforcement game goes. That, in fact, probably a lot of places out there operate in this gray area. And they had some other infractions against him. Just try to dig out all this dirt that they can find at the same time that his GoFundMe keeps going higher and higher and higher, over $300,000 in donations, partly to pay his bail, but at the same time, I guess, give him a bit of a cushion by the fact that his location here in West End, Toronto, was closed down by the authorities.

They changed the locks. He tried kicking in the drywall. I saw that, yeah. But they won't let him in working there anymore. What's your takeaway here? I'll be very honest. I feel very similarly to this guy

as I do about your pal, the chair girl. Now, let me hear you. I personally, like even I gave you that, I don't know what that was, seven, eight minutes. Let's tell this story because it's on the list. Personally, no interest in the story. Like I can't

tell you how little interest I have in hearing about the Adamson's barbecue story at this point. Like I was coincidentally biking by on Royal York, okay, because there's a bike lane there, even though it's just paint, it should be separated, but that's a whole separate rant. And I could, you know, you can't miss it from royal york you couldn't miss the commotion and then i took a photo cam gordon joked he thought i took it from the tree because it was quite the vantage point over the hill there but you had all the the cops on their their horses and you had so many like it was just a mass of people there and it was just i'm sorry like like we're in a pandemic there's a lot of shit flying around. I feel bad for the small businesses.

I just spent weeks trying to raise awareness about a big food drive we did yesterday. There's a million things. I hear about this 300,000 in his account. I wonder how many people we could feed in the city. You know, meanwhile, there's a homeless shelter thing going on here. And there's a whole, there's just, I just don't really care too much for the barbecue guy. There's just, I just don't really care too much for the barbecue guy. Like we're all kind of suffering here and modifying our normal behaviors due to the fact, you know, we're in this global pandemic. And I personally, I don't think we should have shut down patios, but they decided to do it.

And I feel we need to like adhere to these particular guidelines. So I'm hoping we don't have like a like a weekly there's no beach boy song about barbecue that i'm gonna be playing next week maybe you know bar bar bar bar barbecue bar bar right i don't hope that doesn't happen but that's my thoughts it's like i'm tired of hearing about this guy but you're still into the story right you like these renegades we gotta talk about something i know well i have a long list we have have a mutual friend, one of my favorite FOTMs, who I believe he's the FOTM that you've known the longest in your life, right? Mike Wilner, someone who I met as a young teenager at high school.

Over the years, he's been a tremendous guest of Toronto Mike, I feel like he has used your show for psychiatric purposes more than any other regular guest. And you learn a lot about Mike Willner if you listen to his episodes of Toronto Mike. And I learned even more when he was on with Ralph Ben-Murgy. Right. In not that kind of rabbi episode. I think it was one of the very few episodes that Ralph got to record in your basement before everything went Zoom. I think Wilner did a back-to-back. Like, I think he came in, talked to Ben-Murgy.

Then we recorded Toronto Mike with Ben-Murgy sitting in for the first, like, 25 minutes or something. So there was this double header, to use a baseball phrase. And I think that might have been early March. Like, that just before, or if it wasn't early March, it was late February, but Wilner had just come back from, or was just going to just back from spring training. Oh, maybe he was just leaving for spring training. Bottom line is Wilner is not only a great guest, but he shows up at, at as many TMLX events as he can. He was at the TMLX 5 at Palmer's Kitchen. He was at TMLX 4 at Great Lakes Brewery.

He's just a great supporter, become a good friend, and I thought he was excellent at his job, and I'm very, very sorry to hear after 20 years Sportsnet gave him the pink slip. A very dramatic announcement, too, because there was a tweet from Rogers rogers sportsnet pr announcing that they had parted ways and uh this might have been uh coordinated enough but it took a few more minutes to get the statement from from mike wilner himself right and very emotional saying I would never have believed as I listened to Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth,

and even before Jerry Howarth, from the transistor radio underneath his pillow growing up at Bathurst and Steele's, and this was his dream job. Everybody knew it was his dream job. Yes. And over the years that you've had Wilner and you've asked about me, I'm not sure he knows exactly what it is that I do, why I'm on your podcast all the time,

but I did know that doing play-by-play for the Toronto Blue Jays was Mike Wilner's job that he always dreamed to do someday. You know what ticks me off a little bit, maybe more than a little bit, is when you get the official, like this was a Rogers, sort of like a press release, I guess it was a tweeted statement anyways,

coming from their PR department, which basically celebrates how amazing Wilner is at his job and how important he is to baseball fans in this city. And basically it's a sell job in Wilner, which is wonderful, except that it's, hey, we decided we don't want him on our team anymore. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this whole contradiction of, like,

this guy is the best. Everybody would want Wilner talking J's for their media, whatever, outlet. Meanwhile, we'd made a decision after 20 years that we do not want this man as part of our team. Like, i don't like that whole in uh insincerity he must have done all right for all those years because his his role there with jay's talk coincided with when rogers bought the blue jays yeah and this was this

was the dawning of the era when in toronto, the media company broadcasting the games also became the owner of the team. Right. Now, did he get in trouble at any point for all those years? Yeah, with Cito Gaston. Overstepping the line about corporately what they want to do.

Cito Gaston. He was told to go home for a week or two because of criticism of the way Cito Gaston was using his bullpen, I believe. Yeah, we talked about this at his first appearance. I go back to that very first Mike Wilner appearance on Toronto Mic'd and he was very open about it. They never gave him the reason, but it was inferred.

Like they don't put it in writing. Okay, go home and stop being on the air for a little bit. They don't say because of what you said about Cito Gaston. But it was clear to him why he was being suspended, if you will. And yet he was there for all those years that followed. He was a loyal soldier,

right? A company man, representing Rogers Communications, doing this Jay's Talk phone in after the game when people would call up and they would give their own opinion about what was happening on the field, and then he would retaliate and get into these arguments on the air that I don't think ever got all that heated, right? I mean, people sort of understood.

This was a friendly dialogue that he was having. Because of the way he... Sparring about sports. He approached those calls, which I liked and I found it very entertaining. A lot of people did find him... The two words that kept coming out, I remember this well when I had him on the first time, all these people, he's condescending and arrogant.

That was sort of what you took away, some people took that away from the way that Mike Willner handled the callers who want to trade like, you know, make ridiculous trades and quick fixes and give up on players that are like 21 years old. Although that sounds like Hebsey who I think wants to give up on Vladdy,

but that's another story. So it was difficult to take someone so polarizing and make them a play-by-play guy because the play-by-play guy can't be polarizing. Like it just doesn't work that way. And then, so they worked with Wilner. They took him off Jay's Talk and put someone else there. Scott MacArthur was brought over from TSN

to be the Jay's Talk guy. Scott's no longer doing that. He's a morning show host on 590. But Wilner got to focus on being in the booth and stuff and I thought Wilner was a hell of a play-by-play guy. I thought he sounded great. Tom Cheek died. How many years ago

was that? It was 4,306 games, consecutive games that Tom Cheek showed up for. I know that number because it's right there in Mike Wilner's Twitter picture. Right. In honor of Tom.

Well, the thing that I noticed is that Wilner was very close with Tom Cheek and there was a lot of mutual respect there. But I mean, I had Jerry Howarth on the program and Wilner never came up once. There's a definite silence being deafening. There's definitely not the same warmth between Mike Willner and Jerry Howarth as we noticed between Tom Cheek and Mike Willner.

2005 is when Tom died, and then, I guess, a transition period, which led up to Jerry himself taking retirement, right? At first, it was. Who were the other Blue Jays play-by-play guys? Ben Wagner. Okay, Ben Wagner is. He's still there. He's still there.

So they bumped him up. He's now the front-line guy. Well, him and Wilner were out of the booth. They were co, this is where it was a bit weird. They took turns. Like, they were both play-by-play guys, Ben Wagner. That's probably why Wilner's not there today, because there were two of them. That's personal like feeling on this one like you can cut one and save some money because there's two of them so ben wagner who came from the uh the

bisons like he's a he's a buffalo guy and then he came over uh but in the meantime you had guys in the booth with jerry howard before like joe sid, uh, came over here this summer and a few guys like that. But, uh, and you know, you had, I'm trying to think now, but you had like,

uh, uh, you know, former, some former blue Jays, uh, I think maybe, uh,

Jack Morris, I think, and people like that who, uh, took a turn. Alan Ashby was there for a while, but, uh,

yeah, Wilner's been there and now he's gone and, uh, it's just too bad and we see that as i think maybe symbolic of members of a certain generation generation x are our age cohort maybe maybe not being allowed to prove ourselves unless our name is justinudeau, right, that here was a whole league of sports broadcasting people. I think of Jeff Merrick or Elliott Friedman, a whole bunch of others. You've had the stories, the people here on the podcast over the years who basically started as volunteers, right? For these big corporations. Just kind of asking to intern,

to call in, do these game reports. Strombo would have also been in that category. Sleeping on the floor of the stations in between shifts, pushing the buttons, any opportunity to be a sidekick, doing an overnight show, and then still

being around later the next morning. All these measures that these people took to try and realize a dream, which was to be on sports radio. And Wilner was just one of several examples of those who made it to the top and got to fulfill their aspiration of what they always wanted to do. made it to the top and got to fulfill their aspiration of what they always wanted to do. Here was this guy begging Peter Gross for any scraps that he could give him just to get on the radio, just to have a few seconds on the air on 680 News and turning that little bit of validation into a legitimate career. When somebody like that gets knocked off their perch, downsized in one of these corporate circumstances

that everybody dreads, but at the same time imagines is eventually going to happen to them. I mean, look how many people got cut from Hockey Night in Canada in all the years since Rogers took over. They had to learn not to take it too personally. And now it was just Mike Willner's turn.

His number was up, and you're right. Like, why are they putting out a press release about how great he was for all these years and at the same time not being entirely clear about why he's not there anymore? Then his own statement comes out, which comes as close as you can to confirming that this was not his choice.

I think that was ultra clear, I think, that Mike didn't just wake up and decide, I don't want to do this anymore. No, clearly they tapped him on the shoulder and said, time's up, which is a story we hear all the time in the show. Real quick, just to bring it full circle of the FOTMs, is that Scott Ferguson was on the show this last summer, and it made the best of that El Grego throws together.

And of course, it was Scott Ferguson quitting his job on 590 as the Blue Jays guy, quitting that job to take a similar job with the team, 1050. And that's why I think it was Nelson Millman who tapped Wilner on the shoulder and said, okay, you've got, you've got the job. And that, that's a huge, that was a huge break for Wilner in his career and, and,

and ending up living his dreams. So it's, it's interesting. Would a guy like Wilner then end up working directly for the blue Jays? Because there are enough examples of people who are in sports media, who, who end up being recruited, uh,

to have a media role with role within the team itself. Well, Richard Griffin runs that show there, right? He's a Toronto Star guy forever. So who knows? Who knows? I have no idea what's next for Wilner. I just hope it all works out. And maybe one day we'll find out on Toronto Mike if Mike Wilner has figured out what exactly

I do for a living. That'll be my first question whenever he makes his way to the backyard here. exactly I do for a living. That'll be my first question whenever he makes his way to the backyard here. Real quick here, Rogers, you know, Wilner being a cut made by Rogers this past month, November 2020, there were other

cuts too. Can you surmise the other Rogers cuts that happened? Well, the biggest cut of all, at least the rumor, based on some legitimate sources, was they were going to cut the Sky Dome out. Right. Just they were going to cut the sky dome out. Right. Just like uproot it from the ground, send in the wrecking ball.

Blow it up. That was on the same day that we found out that Wilner didn't have his job anymore. It was kind of like a double whammy. And then they had to clarify, well, we were looking into doing something with the stadium, but the whole COVID-19 put that on hold. You've done the research. Rogers doesn't own the land, right? They just own the building. They own the concrete.

They don't own that land that the Sky Dome is on. Because you don't pick that up for 25 mil or whatever they picked it up for. Yeah, they're intertwined with the deal. They have to figure out with different parties involved, I guess, what hangs over the whole thing. And there

was Paul Godfrey on a podcast with out with different parties involved, I guess, what hangs over the whole thing. And there was Paul Godfrey on a podcast with Jonah Siegel. Oh, the Toronto Sports Media guy. And going through the whole history of how the SkyDome came to happen,

and how, what, hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money ended up subsidizing this thing that they said wasn't going to involve those public funds at all. And then the end, Rogers Communications bought the whole building for $25 million. Right. And that's still... And renamed it. Yeah, that's still like a sore point.

Because the naming race should have been $25 million. A statue of Ted Rogers outside. The guy that made this deal happen. The company has never been the same ever since. And whatever becomes of a stadium, whether it ends up in the Portlands or they throw the current stadium down, build another one in its place.

I mean, everybody kind of agrees. It's an outmoded, big concrete behemoth. Yeah, and it's not old enough to have any, like, I don't have any, like, oh, heritage feelings about it. Because it's 1989. Like, it's not old enough to say, oh, we have to preserve this thing. Yeah, too cavernous. And there's no reason for concerts to be held there anymore. Ever since the Scotiia bank arena opened it's amazing how the

corporate branding of of a stadium becomes i guess a part of our culture right that as soon as they slap it on there you want to be able to uh do everything you can to not give a plug for the company and you know that when somebody calls it the Sky Dome, that they're trying to make a point and saying, I'm not giving in here to the man. I'm not following the gospel of Ted Rogers. No more free advertising. I'm going to call this thing the Sky Dome

until the day I die. Because we built this for, as I remember, it was the cost of a stealth bomber. I think that was the Toronto star infographic. I saw a stealth bomber and a dome were both a half a billion dollars or whatever they said. But anyway, it's,

it's, you know, there's great memories from the dome. And if they, whatever, I mean, as long as the Jays play in Toronto, I think we're,

we're all looking for a park like you have in Pittsburgh or something, some kind of a charming, smaller outdoor park ever since Camden yards. Cause Camden yards was built shortly. Like it's only five years after the Dome. And it's like, we all loved the Dome for five years. And then we saw Camden Yards and we went, oh, that's what we should have done.

It's like, we were just like ahead of it all. But who knows what the future brings. But we do know there's other Rogers cuts, right? Like Rogers- All over the place. It looked like they were getting rid of every morning show in a mid-small market radio station in Canada. Right.

And in some of those markets, bringing in Roz and Mocha. Oh, Rick Ringer alluded to this. Did you hear the Rick Ringer chat? I did, yeah. Rick Ringer, who was on Chum FM for so many years, and I guess he would be lamenting the fact that there would be more syndicated radio morning shows coming across Canada. He was lamenting. And yet, I think this was entirely inevitable, because it's a trend that already took hold in the United States.

It's just cheaper, right? Razamoka, I don't know what their compensation structure is. I'll try to find out for you. But they're doing this show in Toronto, and it's not much more effort and expense to spill that into all these, like you said, these mid-markets and small- Also, this iHeartRadio

in the United States, we've spoken about that here, whether it was these shows like The Breakfast Club, or Elvis Duran from Z100 in New York, another one called The Woody Show, which airs in Peterborough, Ontario,

that I guess through the modern computerized way of doing things, you can do multiple markets in the course of a morning. You can insert segments that are specific to a certain city and people will be hearing stuff. Some of it might be happening live, but even more likely what they're getting is something that was recorded earlier that morning, that they're kind of working with a jumble of stuff,

figuring out where the music goes and where we want to put this talk segment in, keeping it generic enough that it's not specific to any particular city and that they can throw in enough shout outs and, you know, master control. It sounds like it sounds like there's there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of work to do, but the personalities are there who can pull it off, and they've been trained in this certain way to simulate a local enough morning radio show, have some newscaster in the local radio station doing their drop-ins, their news, weather, and sports, and they can live up to their local promises. At the same time, they can give up to their local promises at the same time

they can give it a bit of nationalized glitz and glamour. And that's now happening to Roz and Mocha. Now, don't get me wrong. I still think it sucks, but I totally see why they're doing it.

But, you know, Roz and Mocha are both FOTMs and Jason Barr is an FOTM. And is it true that Biggs and Barr are getting more markets as well? It must be. Because they started by

flushing away all these morning hosts on these top 40 pop stations, and then they moved into the rock radio owned by Rogers. Layoff after layoff after layoff. Right. The plug-and-play solution that's ready to go. They've been promoted through podcasting as like a national entity. And I think they run, maybe they run bits from their show at night.

Biggs and Barr from Ottawa, Ontario. They're next in line, I guess, to be Rogers' attempt to create a nationally syndicated radio morning show. Mike, it's not that exciting. I don't know. But it's a step up for Jason Barr, I guess. They were in Hits FM. This was a big deal. This guy who used to be the, what,

technical producer of the Humble and Fred show. Yes, he had a Scottish accent, as I recall. What was his name again? Danger Boy. How do your friends Humble and Fred feel about the fact that they were tried out quite a few years ago? Kingston, Ontario. K-Rock. Right.

Tried out in the morning over there. It didn't go over very well. Do you want the real answer? Because they weren't a local morning show. And now their old flunky Jason Barr is going to be installed there uh instead i know it's like eight or nine years later but these guys don't let a grudge go well one word i think and it starts with j i'll leave that with you to decide which j word but uh speaking of people who worked at uh mornings on 102.1 i was was reading on Mike Stafford's Facebook page,

he says he's at work tomorrow. So he says he suffered that broken neck and he had a long leave there. But he says he's back on the air tomorrow, but he will not have the co-host he had when he was last on Global News Radio. I think this is a significant story. I'm seeing it all over the place,

even places from people who would never tune in 640 are talking about this. Talk to me about Supriya Dwivedi and how she left Global News Radio 640 Toronto. Oh, Supriya was hired there with Matt Gurney. It was originally 2016. They were recasting AM640 as global news radio. And I guess they were trying to do something that was a little more cerebral

than the typical talk radio station, that they hired really like a couple of young woks to do this morning show. Gurney had a background as the comment editor doing op-eds, opinion pieces in the National Post. Supriya Dwivedi, she graduated law school and was in radio in Montreal

with Matt Gurney. Weren't they at CJAD? Didn't they have a serious show? She was on all over the place. She also worked in politics. She's been on CBC, Power and Politics. I see her on there all the time.

For all this time, I guess her allegiance would be to the Liberal Party. She became a trusted consultant on behalf of what was ultimately the winning team. When she first showed up in Toronto, I knew who she was because what was ultimately the winning team and uh when she first showed up in toronto i knew who she was because she was doing the communications for david sock nacky right

who was running for mayor and uh i thought it was moderately clever to try and market this this plain uh budget chief from the city of toronto this kind of, you know, nondescript, nondramatic character that he would be the perfect antidote to Rob Ford, that he would just kind of come in and get the job done like a blank slate, have no particular personality. Right. And I think the fact you heard about him at all when he was trying to run for mayor had a lot to do with Supriya Dwivedi. In fact, she was the one that designed this whole campaign around him. So that's part of her credit, part of her history. They were trying to do something different with the radio morning show and started off with Matt Gurney.

And I don't know that they got too many people to listen because in the context of talk radio in Toronto, they demoted John Oakley from the morning show. The best I understand, they cut his pay. He was getting a lot of money to do mornings on that station. They lured him over in all those years to try and make. They took over for Humble and Fred. They're trying to make 640 in Toronto into something marketable.

It could never quite get off the ground there uh uh global news got folded into chorus and they figured okay global is a name that everybody knows we can apply it we can do we can do this form of of global news radio uh Matt Gurney wasn't wasn't who the listeners wanted to hear the person who they wanted in the morning was Mike Stafford. And he got tapped on the shoulder for the opportunity to be the morning show co-host himself. Except they kept Supriya around. And she did the show along with him. And from what I could tell, the response was pretty good.

From what I could tell, the response was pretty good. There was even at least one radio ratings period where they were beating News Talk 1010. John Moore. They finally found some momentum there for all the years that Stafford was around the station. I think when he was last here in your basement kicking out the jams, he was in pretty good spirits, right? Yeah, honestly. He was on a roll doing morning radio, getting a chance. After 35 years,

somebody finally offered him the opportunity to do a radio morning show? Yeah, I mean, you know, my history of Mike Stafford is a complicated one, but generally speaking, I think there's a good mutual respect. I think we even like each other. You know. I don't try to pretend to understand why Stafford would snap at me on the air because of a conversation I had with Lou Skeezes. You might remember I asked him if Mike reached out to him

after he was let go, and Stafford did not like me asking that question. The answer was no, by the way, but glad he's recovered from the broken neck and he's back. But tell us the circumstances behind Supriya quitting her role at GNR Radio. I learned that she gave two months notice about the fact that she was leaving. And this is uncommon. They trusted her enough to keep her on the air that she wasn't going to launch into any kind of unhinged rant that she was seen as professional enough to see it through. I mean, it was either that or behind the scenes.

And we're trying to figure out what are we going to have to do here legally when her story about why she's quitting comes to the surface. And we found out, courtesy of Vice World News, that she is filing a complaint, which they haven't decided whether they're going to hear yet, to the Ontario Human Rights Commission about how she was treated as an

employee of this radio station. Now, I don't know if anyone would find an argument against the idea that when you're opening your email as a media personality, that you shouldn't be receiving threats aimed, directed at your baby daughter. Stuff about your husband right and racist stuff about yourself isn't really what you want to read the the natural inclination amongst the journalist tribe is to never read the comments right now all these news news news websites got into this thing oh we can we can boost the traffic and increase online advertising by having all these comment sections,

turn it into a free-for-all. It still happens to this day on Facebook. And people don't, you know, you don't actually have to click through on the article to make a comment about it. Twitter now has a prompt, you might have noticed, that if you tweet a link to an article, something pops up asking you whether you have read the story that you are leaving a comment about. reaction that certain people are getting where their comments end up being ratioed. When there's an article, it doesn't really fit into what, you know, when it's a kind of comment that stirs the kind of reaction that makes the person who the response is

directed at wonder why they're in this business to begin with. And Supriya hit that wall based on the story that she told. She didn't want to take it anymore. Went to her boss and said what can we do here to limit this reaction that I'm getting? Well, one thing we can do is turn down

the heat on this radio station. Get these other people who are on the air to change their tune about the things that they're ranting about. Going on and on about globalists and the great reset, because then she thought it was part of her job

to go on the air and refute their comments and correct the record and say something different from what they were saying, that she was there open and eager and willing to debate. And what happened in turn was even more abusive messages would come in. I mean, where do you turn? Like if you were in a position where you were getting that amount of feedback and i think i i've i've seen some of the unfavorable reactions that you've started to receive regarding podcasts but it seems to be at a level where you can tamp it down like if somebody makes a a crude cruel comment that you don't want to hear i think you're in a position to be able to manage that right

supria got it from all sides. Even if you go to torontomike.com and read the comments about whatever the last thing I wrote about her, just something in passing, maybe something about Mike Stafford becoming the new morning show host at 640. Read the comments about Supriya. She was polarizing and there was some angry

and a lot of it felt I was uncomfortable with a lot of it, which seemed to be regarding her race. And then some things that just like, I don't know how she lasted this long, to be quite honest, with that listenership. In response to this Vice article, they got in touch with Howard Levitt, right?

A familiar name all over News Talk 1010. Not only does he buy his own airtime, where he has a call-in show, but they're using him every day. He shows up with Jerry Agar, Barb DiGiulio. You can't avoid Howard Leavitt. He's like an hour a day on that station here in the time of the pandemic. Lots of questions about employment law and whatever rights that people have during this time of turmoil.

And the comment that he made that stuck with people was that if she took issue with how things were going at the radio station, then she was not equipped to work in talk radio as it is currently practiced in North America. And this was him taking a principal position that the way that this talk radio station was set up, it was it was all about getting people that loved you and also people who hated you. And she was she was on the air in a context of of doing debate. Right. Whether it was with whatever conservative co-host that she was pitted with. And the whole thing was that if you took this job

at the radio station, especially at this time of Twitter and Facebook and social media, that you would have to be accustomed to getting a certain level of feedback. Right. Like came with the territory. That's part of doing talk radio here in the 2010s or 2020s.

But there's also a point where you can't take it anymore. No, I mean, I think we need to be better than that. Like, I think that's too low a bar. Well, you want to be better than that, but then the argument here is whether the station needs to be better than that. Well, that's what I'm referring to. Like, I'm not, yeah. I mean, you can't.

Because you can't control who's tuning in. Right. There's always going to be whack jobs tuning. Well, that's what I'm referring to. Like, I'm not, yeah. I mean, you can't. Because you can't control who's tuning in. Right. There's always going to be whack jobs tuning into the radio station. There's nothing better to do, especially when it's just the email away.

But don't you think that the station, the onus is on the station to do something to try to, you know, curb this hate that she's receiving because of her presence

on the station? Well, they got rid of Conrad Black, who was doing a call-in with John Oakley. But she's, she's receiving because of her presence on the station. They got rid of Conrad Black, who was doing a call-in with John Oakley. But she told Vice... Too inflammatory for the station. She told Vice that he dropped the N-word on the air. Like, there's...

Did you read that, Vice, Sophia? Yeah, that was a few years ago, and she complained about that, and they didn't take action there. So she brought that up as another example. Okay. And then Mark Stein, a close friend of Conrad Black,

was also on with John Oakley all those years. He stepped aside as well. He wasn't going to do his thing anymore on the radio station in solidarity with his pal Conrad. These were the people providing the content for John Oakley's show, where he would have this banter

back and forth with these characters and got some people tune in. Listen, I don't know where this all goes. I just know we had another subplot. We talked about it here. Uh, Ryan Jesperson,

who was a host in Edmonton for the same chorus, global news radio, they fired him from the radio station because the politician complained that he was racist because he called his staff a bunch of chimpanzees. It was a right-wing politician who ordered this liberal guy off the air, and they yanked him right away with no hesitation, all because this right-wing politician weaponized this idea that he could get rid of an enemy that was on the radio.

I don't know where it ends. I think it's that global news radio will ultimately have to become as milquetoast as global news on television or the global news website. That doing this kind of opinionated media is just no longer a match for these big Canadian media companies. And there's no place for this kind of broadcasting anymore because they're not equipped to deal with it.

And that it's going to have to go in the direction of people starting up their own broadcast. I mean, Ryan Jesperson turned around. He set up his own thing with his home studio, podcasting and YouTube,

doing it on his own. Seemed to have a bunch of advertisers doing what he calls real talk out of Edmonton. He had Supriya Dwivedi on. They talked about the situation a little bit. So they're both entangled with the company for entirely different reasons, but it reflects a system that maybe doesn't work anymore.

I miss the days of Stafford doing Simpsons trivia. That's what we need to go back to. More Stafford Simpsons trivia. I hate my generation. Rest the days of Stafford doing Simpsons trivia. That's what we need to go back to. More Stafford Simpsons trivia. I hate my generation. I've told you on these recaps how great Jay Ferguson was, and I've given you credit, right, for being the spark that made me finally get Jay on the show.

Maybe if I haven't done it, I meant to do that. You're really the spark that got me to get Jay to drop by this backyard and he was fantastic. He was fantastic. And did that make the Al Grego recap? No. What's, yeah, what's up with that?

Toronto Mike? Come on, Al. Be better, Al, be better. Okay, I'm playing Sloan's I Hate My Generation. And this is for a station I never heard, but I knew of it. 89X. What's happened with 89X? Talk about square pegs in a round hole of corporate radio was the fact that Chum Radio inherited this radio station in Windsor, Ontario, broadcasting to Detroit.

That in 1990, 1991, thought maybe there was something to this whole modern rock radio thing. That there was a void that they could fill in the market south of the border. And as a result, they created what became in the 90s a legendary radio station. It was the 1990s version of the Big 8, CKLW, the border blaster, right? That here was a Canadian signal that managed to become a big deal in the market across the border. And so when alternative rock radio became big business, that's how a band like Sloan found themselves with a significant following in Detroit,

all because of this radio station. Well, just the same way, right? Like we can see Lois to the Low can play in Buffalo and have a full room because the Buffalonians were listening on 102.1, the same kind of spirit there. And you got to keep in mind that this is at a time when the FM signal could be the main influence. Right.

When it came to getting these kinds of careers off the ground. Pre-internet, in other words. A whole legacy there. Let me play a little promo here. Hold on. 89X, the modern rock alternative. 89X, the station that played Pearl Jam first. Don't call me daughter.

89X, new music from Ariana, Depeche Mode, Counting Crows, Beck, The Cranberries, and U2 every day. Modern Rock, 89X. Lock it down. Alternative Lifestyle. Nobody in Detroit radio sounds like 89X. Now, we look back at something like that as like real corny, contrived corporate broadcasting. Everything there was all backed by big budgets and major corporations.

But, you know, at a time, I think you could feel special if you were a teenager discovering a radio station like that. Look at the story of CFNY with that, you know, little yellow house in Brampton, Ontario, and how it's fueled the discussion on hundreds of Toronto Mike episodes from what was created there with David Marsden in the pilot seat. And Marsden went off to Vancouver to try and replicate his success on the West Coast. And at the same time, here was this thing happening in Detroit. So it was owned by Chum. So it had that DNA of Chum Radio applied to what was happening there. And also that precedent where CKLW on the AM dial

was seen as the most influential radio station in America. Right. And there was actually broadcasting from Windsor. They made a deal with the CRTC where they only had to run 15% Canadian content. Really? Which didn't have any other radio station. That's a way that they could be competitive. That's a way they could make room to say, keep pumping up the Pearl Jam

as the first radio station to to play them the the the late mark elliott he he was not on 89x but but he was around the station at the time and you know talking to him uh about his experience there in windsor that was when he was doing the people helping people show you know and there he was in in his 40s, recovering drug addict and alcoholic, doing his style of radio and I guess being up against all these young Turks who thought that they were like the most alternative people on earth. And there was Mark Elliott, an old hippie who'd been there and done that and seen it all before. But he also preached what they were doing. A guy named Dean Blundell got his big break at 89X thanks to the fact that his father was a

longtime sales manager for Chum and put him on the air. But look, I mean, it's nice to think that this only happened because of nepotism. I don't know that Dean would have had another place to prove himself if he couldn't slide in there doing that morning show.

But a big part, I think, of the history of the modern rock radio format, not only in Canada, but in the United States. And over time, as the advertising dollars started flowing from south of the border, in fact, 89X had its own Detroit studio, its own Detroit personality. So what you had was a Detroit radio station that had to play 15% Canadian K-pop. See, you had, as a result, like an interesting cultural collision there, which continued when Bell Media came in taking over Chum. It must have been making some money because they kept it going for a while, but then it was, I think, three, three and a half years ago,

they closed the Detroit studio. They laid everybody off. They said, oh, we're just retrenching back to Windsor. I think it was a surprise that they kept the station alive in the years that followed. That was kind of a harder rock format. I guess it would work in those grunge oldies. You would describe it maybe as active rock, similar to St. Catherine's, 97.7.

But Bell Media, not really a big rock radio company. That's true. Even though they've got some stations along the way. Not in this market, that's for sure. No, they've got Shome in Montreal. I think that this 89X was kind of walking wounded there for a while, and they knew this day would come when they would

call the whole thing off. It finally came in November 2020. What is it now? What is the format? What's it now? What's the new format for the night? Country! What else? Pure country, which is a national formula from Bell Media

that they can do as much national programming as possible for all these country music radio stations. A lot of them are in small markets. You talk to some of these people on the inside of radio, they wonder if Bell even wants to be in radio at all. But they devise pure country to try and make all these stations solvent. And the other one is Virgin Radio, which I also flipped in Windsor, and that was another station called The River,

which was like an adult alternative format, a lot more low-key. It was 89 acts. They issued a warning, like, we're changing our format and you're not going to like it. But look, it's not 1994 anymore. I don't think there were riots in the streets, just some nostalgic articles about the fact. Well, we're talking about it now, even though it's

way out of market. It's made Toronto Mike. It's a part of our heritage, Mike. I only know it because of the Blundell. I knew Blundell came from there, but I'd never heard it. And my buddy lived for a while in Troy, Michigan, and he told me about the station because he would listen in. This is like late 90s or something.

But I actually personally have never heard the station. But, you know, I'm all about talking about these big deals when they end anyways. Well, yeah. When it ends and they cut somebody off the air, they tell them you're losing your job without letting them finish

their shift. These are the stories that keep the modern media industry ticking. And in turn, a station in Detroit flipped over to an alternative format right away to try and capitalize on it all. But again,

I think it's just another satellite format coming out of nowhere. That's all I know. Oh, by the way, next week Bob Willett wants to kick out his favorite Pearl Jam song from every Pearl Jam studio album. So that's happening, like, I don't know, maybe it's Tuesday. It's a good thing you know Bob, the one person on earth who would want to do something like that. In fact, so he gave me his list, and then the final song for the final album, I'm like, oh, I don't know about this album or this song.

Like, I had tapped out before that, but I'll be learning from Bob this week. Okay, bingo, Bob. Coming over to make you feel old. Right. So here, I know this guy. The Weeknd. Not his real name, by the way. The Weeknd.

This is In Your Eyes. I guess the kids are enjoying this banger. I don't know what TikTok thinks, but I was reading a little bit about this, but you're going to fill us in on what we need to know. The Weeknd is pissed at the Grammys. Didn't The Weeknd know what Flavor Flav said? Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy, I believe?

What is The Weeknd pissed at the Grammys for? Yeah, things have changed, huh? Because you used to think the guy was too cool to be nominated for awards. It used to be kind of like you didn't want to be in that club. The cool musicians didn't want Grammy recognition because they never recognized great artists.

Neil Young never won Grammys when he was in his... Tell me about The Weeknd versus the Grammys. The Week in his... Tell me about The Weeknd versus The Grammys. The Weeknd has been announced as the halftime show at the Super Bowl. There might not be anybody in the stands watching the Super Bowl. Where is it? Obviously, it's a warm weather location.

But I can see that if that's in Florida or Texas, there'll be people in the stands. Those warm weather states seem to be allowing people. I remember the World Series when it was in Texas had people in the stands. So not as many as normal, but there's people in there. It's Tampa, Florida.

Home of the Toronto Raptors. Yeah, that's right. Also hosting the Super Bowl. Mark my words. At least 20% full that stadium for the Super Bowl. And they'll be seeing thend heading the halftime show presented by Pepsi. Certainly the sign of a sellout.

He's got Kenny G adding saxophone stylings here to this track. Wow. Wow. You should have led with this. We're bearing the lead here. Is Kenny G playing the Super Bowl halftime show? Better late than never Hooray for everything That's amazing But infuriated that he didn't get any Grammy nominations

Despite having the biggest radio record of the year And there he was accusing the Grammy Awards Of shutting him out Because he had booked the Super Bowl In place of appearing on the Grammy Awards of shutting him out because he had booked the Super Bowl in place of appearing on the Grammy show. Now, of course, everything this year into this winter is going to be completely disjointed. I don't know what's the difference between appearing on an award show

and just doing your own thing on YouTube. It's all kind of blurred together at this point in time. Does it really make that much of a difference? But apparently the weekend it's like he feels robbed of his Grammy glory that he was shot out in all those categories. Again, the devil's in the details, right?

Like apparently the voting for Grammys took place before it was public knowledge that the weekend was going to be at the Superbowl. Like apparently this doesn't make any like actual sense, but these headlines will travel far and wide. So the weekend then, then has old frenemy Drake standing up for him saying,

this is proof that the Grammys no longer matter. Drake himself has been a dissident when it comes to award shows. You know that Drake would not participate in the Juno Awards in recent years. Like year in, year out, people would wonder why aren't Drake songs, Drake albums being nominated for Juno? Oh, he didn't submit them? Yeah, he didn't submit them. Even though earlier in his career he hosted the Juno Awards. He felt that, I guess, he was above having to deal

with them. He didn't have to submit his music any further. So here we're getting, you know, the richest musicians on the planet. People from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who are leading that resistance against the Grammys. Justin Bieber, too. He said, I made an R&B

album. I mean, here he's playing a race card, I guess. He's saying, like, I didn't want to be nominated as a pop artist because my music is now R&B. But I think everybody is just laughing that off. Justin Bieber saying that he should be taking up space that is otherwise going to black artists. That one didn't catch on as much as The Weeknd did. 40 years ago. The murder of John Lennon. All the time.

It's getting better all the time. Better, better, better. It's getting better all the time. Better, better, better. Look, I am aware that this is primarily a Paul McCartney song, but it has more John Lennon on it than most of the McCartney compositions did after the Beatlemania era ended.

I know all this stuff off by heart because I was there in December 1980. For some reason, I had a day off school, and I went to the Bayview Village Mall, bought a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At a time when I was figuring my way around the Beatles, I had some compilation albums, a bunch of books, and there was the thrill, I don't know if you have any equivalent, Mike,

of just discovering this act by buying all these albums that by that point were 10, 15, 20 years old, but they were brand new to me. Neil Young, yeah. In picking up one Beatles album after another, Neil Young, yeah. there. And that was on December 8th, 1980, when I bought the Sgt. Pepper's album. Later that night, while I was asleep, John Lennon was shot outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City. Wow. But I wasn't old enough to be awake to hear this in real time. It was past my bedtime.

Right. Only found out about it the next morning. My father might have been watching Monday Night Football. Right, right. When he heard Howard Cosell mention it, alerted me to the fact that this guy from the Beatles was murdered. me to the fact that this guy from the Beatles was murdered. And I went to the TV and watched the morning of the Today Show.

And I don't know if I was old enough really to process the enormity of everything that was going on. But look, this had become my new passion, my new hobby, the only thing I wanted in life, which was to buy all of the Beatles albums, or at least keep track of taping the songs on the radio. And that happened to reach an apex on the day that John Lennon was shot. an apex on the day that John Lennon was shot. And, I mean, look, we've gone through so many different waves of Beatle nostalgia at this point in time. You know, we saw it all. I mean, so many John Lennon memorial compilations and documentaries.

I remember when the movie came out, john lennon imagine movie 1988 the white piano and uh is this the one i remember catching it yeah that was that was like one of one of the first uh flashback things and then the beatles anthology sure in 1995 and right free as a bird and all that right um the beatles a compact discs when they came out in 1987. Remember that was a big media event, right, that they had held out for a few years before putting the Beatles out on CD. And it all comes around to the fact that now I'm constantly listening to Beatles podcasts. What's your favorite Beatles podcast? YouTube. What's your favorite Beatles podcast?

YouTube. What's your favorite Beatles podcast? You can only pick one. Spectrum. There's one called Something About the Beatles, where in the tradition of Lennon and McCartney, the two hosts of the show, had a breakup,

some kind of antagonistic relationship between the two of them. One of those hosts went off to host one called The Beatles Naked. There's one called Fabcast, which are some guys with a real attitude that they try and bring, talking about the emotional side of the Beatles experience. And a guy with a Beatles podcast died a week ago in a car crash.

Ryan Brady hosted a Paul McCartney Take It Away podcast. That was also really sad. Yeah, a whole other universe of Beatles stuff out there. I figured, how can we do an episode here in this week in December of Toronto Mic'd Without Acknowledging

the 40 years since my pop culture consciousness was awakened and just absorbing everything I could about the death of John Lennon. I still am to this day. That's the

first celebrity death I was aware of. John Lennon. And I think a lot of people of our vintage have the same recollection here. Alright, you might know him as a drummer on this track. This is The Watchman, of course. The drummer is Sammy Cohn, K-O-H-N. He's also a fantastic real estate representative,

and he's going to throw in a free drum lesson in exchange for any real estate inquiry. So you can go to his website. Sammy's website is drummingupresults.com. See what he did there. And Sammy at sammycone.com is how you can reach him. Reach out to Sammy, tell him you heard about him on Toronto Mic, and yeah, score that free drum lesson while you're at it

because he's a hell of a drummer. StickerU.com. Mark, you know that's when you need your 1236 stickers. When I'm on my bike rides, I look for your 1236 stickers. I envision you just putting them everywhere, but you've got to order them at StickerU.com. Quality stickers. You can get decals and temporary tattoos and such.

Thank you for the wonderful partnership. They're in Liberty Village, but again they're online. Anywhere where you can hear my voice right now, you can go to StickerU.com and order your stuff. Good people. Speaking of good people, Barb Paluskiewicz. She's with CDN Technologies

and they're there if you have any computer or network issues or questions. They're your outsourced IT department. Barb is barb at cdntechnologies.com. Or you could phone her. I know Stu Stone likes to call her up when he's lonely and just chat up Barb. 905-542-9759.

And I'm looking over at you, Mark, because you're not wearing your Ridley Funeral Home toque. You haven't lost it, have you? Because I can get you another one. Mike, I don't know what to say. I've never been busted for not wearing a Funeral Home branded content piece of apparel before. That's fair.

Ridley Funeral Home, they're at 3080 Lakeshore. That's at 14th Street in New Toronto. Brad Jones has been an awesome FOTM. I actually have a walking date with him Monday evening. So we're going to walk and talk from six feet apart. And at Ridley Funeral Home, of course, you can

pay tribute without paying a fortune. Learn more at Ridley Funeral Home dot com. Today, every wrong step could bring disaster as our players attempt to cross this bridge and win a prize package worth over $5,000. So watch now as they brave the dangers to win a fortune

on Pitfall. Come on, Dan, you should know better. You're standing on a pitfall. Hang on, Rosemary, you're right. That's one, too. And now here comes the man to guide you through all the pitfalls. Alex, come back. Thank you, John Barton.

Always a great pleasure having you folks tune us in here on Pitfall. You noticed our champion, Dan, looking very serious that time on the elevator. That's because he knows it's getting to be more and more difficult reading this audience coming up with the way they arrive at the most popular response to all these crazy questions I have in each half hour. We're going to put him and the challenger to work right now, but let's meet them up close, shall we? First, here comes the challenger, Alex.

She says she'll try anything once. You remember Pitfall? They ran that thing on global TV all through the 80s. At the same time that Alex Trebek had shown up as the host of Jeopardy, the job that he would do for the rest of his life, there were still airing reruns of this quintessential Canadian game show. Alex Trebek at the helm of a show that in his memoir that came out in the summer,

he talked about the fact that he was signed up to do the show, a whole string of game shows that he was contracted to do. Pitfall came along as an opportunity in Canada, went back to his home and native land, and when it came to filming the second season of the show, it was $49,200 that he was going to be paid to do this show for 13 weeks. Tried to put the check in the bank and the check bounced.

That's Canadian show business for you. And he framed the check, and it ended up there in his book, The Answer Is. Now, we knew that Alex Trebek's time was coming to an end ever since he announced that he was diagnosed with, what, stage four pancreatic cancer. Yes. But defied any doctor's prediction as far as his ability to hang in there and still work as a host of Jeopardy!

for long enough to keep filming this current season right up until like 10 days before he died. He was still in there hosting the show. And as we speak here in early December 2020, those episodes are still airing. Originally, they said the last of them was going to run on Christmas Day. They shuffled that around a little bit, and it will be in the first week of January that we get the ceremonial last Alex Trebek episode hosting Jeopardy! to be temporarily replaced by Ken Jennings.

And this itself was a subject of some controversy. Because when they announced his new season, it was like Ken Jennings was going to be on as a contributor, a sidekick, right? He'd be waiting in the wings. He'd ask some questions. He'd ask some questions. He'd contribute in the show.

But they said that he's not going to be replacing Alex. And, of course, they were hoping for the best that we'd have Alex around for as long as possible. They didn't want to give him the evil eye by saying, like, this guy's going to be taking over any moment now. And so even when it came to announcing who was going to initially take over as a host of Jeopardy, they're still not saying that Ken Jennings is a permanent replacement. They're making it out like there's going to be a series of temporary guest hosts that will be filling his shoes, and they'll go through that sequence, but they're not going to announce who the actual host is.

I think it's safe to say it's going to be Ken Jennings. I think so, too. But, yeah, they're going to rotate different guests. Will they or won't they rotate? Because they haven't announced who the second person is going to be in this rotation. Although there's another show that the three goats from Jeopardy, they're going to be on this primetime version of The Chase. And that's on the ABC network, and that's also

in early January. It's going to be a situation where Ken Jennings is competing in one game show, at the same time he's turning up as host of another. Interesting. So, through this tragedy of losing Alex Trebek at age 80, I think

that means we'll be getting a lot more Ken Jennings, but he's the one who, being this contestant, how many games, how long was the streak? Long time. He was on, what was it, 82 shows in a row of Ken Jennings. I think at that point it was pretty much understood that here was a guy who had that kind of all-American charisma, right? He's a witty guy. He has the bona fides because he's lived it.

He's proven to be one of the best Jeopardy! contestants. I think he's a good bet to take over. We also learned that at one point in time, Alex Trebek was on the verge of possibly being the host of Hockey Night in Canada. Right. Right. Instead of Dave Hodge. This was quite the reveal.

I thought this was very interesting. Who was it that had that information out there? The Hockey News. I told this to Bob McKenzie when he was on the show, and he hadn't heard it yet, but it was the Hockey News had this. Who's the guy from the Hockey News? Ken Campbell of the Hockey

News. They were looking for a younger host to take over. Hockey Night in Canada, this is like, I don't know, 45 years before Strombo got to be that younger host. Right. And what was the issue? His mustache.

Yeah, they didn't like his facial hair. They didn't want some filthy hippie hosting Saturday Night Hockey across Canada. And that was a great story that we learned left out of his memoir. Fascinating little nugget. And by the way, since I can just quick promotions, I know it's crass during the memorial section, but Dave Hodge will kick out his favorite 100 songs of 2020. He'll be on the show in about 10 days.

74 games in a row is Ken Jennings' streak. Wow. Well, great loss. The loss of Alex Trebek. Great, proud Canadian and just beloved guy. I think everybody's got a good thing. All the way back to when Eugene Levy played Alex Trebek on SCTV, a sketch which Norm MacDonald credited as the inspiration for Celebrity Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live.

Right. That he said he just straight up ripped off the whole idea of half-wits. Right. You know, the befuddling contestants on a game show and Alex trying to keep his composure. And, yeah, I think that was a big part of our heritage too, that people not only thought of Alex Trebek, but also thought of Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek

on Saturday Night Live. And Norm MacDonald as Burt Reynolds, of course. Turd Ferguson. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim. Mike, do you remember watching this show at all? Because it ran on TV Ontario, originally produced in 1975, but from what I could tell, they re-ran it all through the 80s. I have no memories at all. I have memories of Scott Pilgrim versus the world.

I have no memories of Timothy Pilgrim. Long before Scott Pilgrim, there was Timothy Pilgrim. Just missed it, I guess. FOTM Rick, who starred his own website. Rick's TV. Tributes to TV Ontario shows on the internet, on his GeoCities website or something. Something like that.

It's still online. Angel Fire? I don't know. Rick's TV. Yeah, he was the one who drew my attention to the fact that David Hemblin was, in fact, the guy on The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim. Wow.

The character was Zachariah Gibson. Now, here's what was going on with Timothy Pilgrim. This was like a young teenage kid there in hard scrabble Liberty Village of the 1970s. Scenes shot around Parkdale, like when the streets were a little bit rough. I mean, this was a part of Toronto that I myself, watching a show around that time, I don't know if I even remember from the first run, but definitely into the late 70s. I mean, I had very little, no concept that this was what Toronto was all about. My Toronto was much more suburban, at best, the Eaton Centre,

Yonge and Dundas. What was all this stuff? These dusty streets in the west end of Toronto. The grimy coal. Yeah, they're all preserved there. In the videos, you can find some episodes on YouTube Retro Ontario had at least one or two of them. Retro Ontario has been

very vocal about this and this might be a good example where he wants TVO to open the vaults there's way too much stuff in the vaults it's pissing off Ed Conroy correctly so and this sounds like something else that might be stuck in those damn vaults Timothy Pilgrim is again like a young teenage boy living by himself in one of these

lofts in Liberty Village. I mean, back then it's just a warehouse, right? Right now it's a condo that you can buy for a few million bucks. Right. And he finds this magical trunk and climbs into the trunk and he finds this, like, magical trunk and goes, climbs into the trunk, and he finds himself transported back in time 100 years, like 1875 Toronto, where he meets this traveling salesman, Zachariah Gibson, and he's able then to experience what life was like 100 years before.

Other episodes in which Zachariah got into the trunk and he went to 1975 along with Timothy. I may be making this out to be more of a complicated show. It sounds like a fever dream, though. It actually was. It sounds kind of amazing. And thanks to Rick, I learned that David Hemblin, an actor who died on November 16th at age 79, he was Zachariah Gibson in The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim.

So a stage actor from Toronto with lots of theater credits behind him, but this was his first chance on TV. And from there, he was in a whole bunch of movies directed by Adam Agoyan. You can't get any more Toronto than that. The series La Femme Nikita, the one they produced in Toronto, had a part in Tech War.

He was on Earth Final Conflict. It seemed like he was best remembered because he played Magneto in the X-Men cartoon series, another Canadian production. And he had a recurring role on TNT, which was Mr. T. This sounds like a Pandemic Friday topic this show. This is like the kind of show you would expect to see Stu Stone would have somewhere

in the credits of TNT somewhere having a role as some smart-ass 11-year-old kid. That was shot in the late 80s in Toronto with Mr. T where he plays a lawyer, but the character that Mr. T is playing can't be anybody but Mr. T.

Right. How could Mr. T be playing a role that doesn't telegraph as Mr. T? That's a good example of a show I watched as a younger person and I had no idea I was watching Canadian television. That's a good example. Because it was Mr. T, B.A. Baracus from the A-Team. But I think the A-Team was as far as Mr. T could go as far as acting on American television.

Except, yeah, he played Clubber Lang, right? He played Clubber Lang in Rocky III. In Rocky III and then B.A. Baracus on the A-Team. But what was he going to do for an odd... What more opportunities were there for Mr. T to do? We've actually got another one of them coming up in the obituaries, but

in his Canadian show, he played T.S. Turner. A city smart kid fighting his way off the street until he was framed for a crime he didn't commit right and he meets a young crusading lawyer who uh appeals on his behalf to put him back on the street but now he's gonna be a cop he's gonna he's gonna be a private eye right tnt right t and t

with mr t dynamite and the late david hemblin uh a supporting cast member on that show. But yeah, the one I'll remember most is watching The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim. Oh, Charlena! Oh, Charlena!

Big I can't wait to share with you when you tell us about who he lost here I need to blow your mind with one of those coincidence stories just like when you picked up Sergeant Pepper you tell us about who he lost here. I need to blow your mind with one of those coincidence stories. Just like when you picked up Sergeant Pepper and then went to bed and woke up and found out a beetle had been murdered. But please, tell us who we lost. This is Richie Knight and the Mid-Nights. The bass player for

Richie Knight and the Mid-Nights, this was like their big one 10-50 chum hit. Charlino. The bass player, Doug Chappelle, who died of a heart attack at age 77 here in early December. Can we do that? This is the November 2020 recap.

I noticed some names on the list of people who died in early December. Is that okay? Are you breaking any rules we've set? Did you consider holding on to this one until the end of the month? No judgment here. I'm just curious how stringent we

are of the rules. But okay, this gentleman died in early December and Doug Chappelle? Yeah, Doug Chappelle. There he lived the life, I guess, of being a 1960s Canadian rock star, open for the Rolling Stones. They were part of the Dick Clark caravan of stars. And then he went on to work behind the scenes in the music industry in the 1970s,

became the main promotions guy for a&m records of canada and then he was put in charge of a a couple of smaller record labels that would like set up shop in in these victorian houses in toronto uh the companies were island Records and Virgin Records as they were looking to make inroads in the Canadian market. This was at a time when the record companies weren't as consolidated as they ended up being at the end of the century, and there was still the opportunity to run a sort of multinational independent record label. And after a few years at Island Records, he was in charge of Virgin.

And one of the recent FOTMs got their record deal, thanks to Doug Chappelle. The Northern Pikes. Wow. Amazing. And that was the first band that he signed. And he was responsible for their deal. Maybe it was,

who was the Northern Pikes guy that you had on Toronto Mike's? From Saskatoon, yeah, Saskatoon's own. Remember, you had the guy from the Northern Pikes. The problem was it was via Zoom and it doesn't stick. Now you Google that and I'm going to share a quick story and we're going to come back to that. FOTM Kevin Shea and I coincidentally were exchanging emails

because he was in love with an episode I did last week. Okay. And he thought it was excellent. We were just chatting back and forth. And he said he wanted to tip me off as to a few guests I should have on that I might not be particularly familiar with. So two days ago, which was December 4th, and I'm looking at the email. It's time stamped 944 a.m. Kevin Shea writes me, Doug Chappelle.

Timestamped 944 AM. Kevin Shea writes me, Doug Chappelle. He says, Formerly in the Toronto band, Richie Knight and the Midnights, Oh Charlena was a huge hit in the mid-1960s who went on to be a president of Island Records Canada, Virgin Records Canada,

and Mercury Polydor. Fabulous guys who viewed the Canadian music industry in a unique way. A thousand great stories. This is essentially Kevin, two mornings ago, selling me on the idea of having Doug Chappelle on Toronto Mic'd. I wrote him back and said, sold. I'd love to talk to Doug. Can I have the info? About 20 seconds after I send that email to Kevin, I see a tweet from you, 1236, basically announcing that Doug Chappelle had passed away suddenly. I wrote Kevin back. Like, oh my goodness, you won't believe this.

And I tell him. And he's like shocked to find out that just happened. So that was an exchange with Kevin Shea two mornings ago. Alright, who am I missing from the Northern Pikes? I'm embarrassed. Jay Semko. Jay Semko, of course. The guy from the Northern Pikes. Very nice man. It turned out

Doug Chappelle had passed away the day before we found out that news. Gotcha. But yeah, what a character. You know, he had this huge mane of hair. You would see him at all the Canadian music industry events in the 1990s. He'd be one of those characters that myself and all the young alt-weekly writers would sneer and snicker at,

who's this old guy that won't go away? But it turned out he had real credentials and played a big role in the history of Canadian music, not only with Richie Knight and the Midnights, but running these smaller record labels, Virgin and Island. And at the end of his career in the record industry, was put in charge of Mercury Polydor, where he inherited one of these big money rosters of artists.

And one of them turned out to be Shania Twain. Wow. She had a previous album. They didn't really have huge expectations about how the follow-up would do. The one that she made with Mutt Lang. Right. And, of course, that ended up selling many millions of copies

and underwriting all kinds of artists and giving people Christmas bonuses for many years to come. artists and giving people Christmas bonuses for many years to come. And that's how Doug Chappelle capped off his career working at the record companies until 1997 when Mercury Polydor was merged into Universal Music. But a great career through the Canadian music industry, just starting off as a bass player,

and there ending up being in the corner office for these big record labels. A life well lived. Doug Chappelle, dead at 77. Thank you. There used to be these instrumental pieces that you would hear on Canadian radio stations that they would use specifically for the end of an hour, just before the newscast came on. One of these old-school, easy-listening stations.

They needed something that would be ideally Canadian, so they could get a point for Canadian content if they let it run for long enough without talking over it, but at the same time, they could fade it down in time for those tones that would indicate that the newscast was coming up. Things were very formatted back then. Sure, of course.

At the time, you would often hear this piece by André Gagnon, a song called Wow, which was, I guess, as big as it got for his disco sound as a pianist from Quebec. I mean, there's so much infused in this tune. What lyrics would be able to live up to the debauched aura created by this instrumental music? You know what it reminds me of a little bit?

Like the Danger Bay theme. I don't know if the Danger Bay theme is in the Andre Gagnon catalog there, but it's got that vibe to it, you know? Yeah, really like living the 1970s instrumental lifestyle here. And I don't know if English Canada gave Andre Gagnon a lot of thought.

In fact, they might have confused him with another Andre Gagnon. Yeah, the impressionist, right? Andre Philippe Gagnon. That's who I thought of originally. I said, oh, he died, but no. Different dude. Andre Gagnon, in fact, died at age 84, and for all those years was a real icon there

as far as Quebec classical music was concerned. But in the 1970s there, he had like a dalliance with Anglo-Canada and he ended up doing the soundtracks to some of these tax shelter movies from the late 70s and early 80s. He was on call. Oh, the Cannibal Girls?

Yeah, the ones he did were Running and another one called Phobia, which was directed by the legendary John Huston. Right, of course. Of course. Of course. But, you know, I don't think this was a tax shelter one, but there's a great story behind it. We're going to get it tomorrow.

Rip-Off, the follow-up to Going Down the Road by Donald Shabib. We're going to dive deep into that one tomorrow. Who's talking about that one? Peter Gross and Donald Shabib, who turns out is in my hood. The Hot Touch, another one. Roger Vadim, ex-husband of Jane Fonda. He also made a movie. Like, this is, I don't know, 15 years after Barbarella,

and Andre Gagnon did the soundtrack to that one. I hear his name all the time, Andre Gagnon. I can't say I gave him a lot of thought, but there it was. We heard about he died here, once again, age 84. Breaking the rules! December 3rd, Mike! More rules to be broken. Howie, for those who think there's a casual attitude on the Canadian squad tonight

with a 3-0 lead in this series, not so. And there's a big reason for that. Without Jarvis, U Trombley, Shud and Napier, they're really intense and want to win this thing in four straight. So they get some rest and get some people back for the semifinals. If as seems likely, they're going to reach that round you play offense. Sure, they have great skaters and great puck handlers, but offense is teamwork, and this is what they're doing here. It's been a Robinson, Le Fleur, Lemaire period, and here we're going to show you just some fantastic highlights of why the Montreal Canadiens are so good. Watch this. Great to Savard, and Le Fleur heads for an opening.

Savard gives it over to Robinson. Now Robinson back to Savard and LeFleur heads for an opening. Savard gives it over to Robinson. Now Robinson back to Savard. Now can we just unwind it? Back it up just a little bit, Topo. Watch what Robinson does to clear the hole. Okay, away you go. Now Robinson knows that he wants to create an opening. Now LeFleur works two on one. He comes over to the Leaf player, McDonald,

and there's Lemaire coming in. look for a great angle a great shot but the the secret of creating good offenses continually to work two on one all right here they do it again coming out of their own zone the floor robinson with the puck just holds the Leaf defense together. LeFleur stops to keep from going offside, and he'll drop him. Now here they'll work two-on-one again. Watch this. Right in the back to Savard. They work two-on-one.

McDonald leaves Savard all alone. Savard has all kinds of open ice, could have walked in, and he rang that one off the post, but could have got in closer. They create open ice so well. So this is my pal Dave Hodge chatting up, chatting with Howie Meeker on hockey night in Canada.

I once got compared to Howie Meeker. Do you think I sound like Howie Meeker? I don't speak to the people anymore who want to. Oh, it's a long, long time ago. Well, you both sound fantastic to my ears, but who are you kidding? Howie Meeker had his own lingo, right? Meekerisms. Jiminy Cricket.

And Golly Gee Willikers, all in that squeaky voice that I might be able to imitate more successfully than others. But it came up, didn't it, on Hebzion Sports after Harry Meeker died at age 97 on November 8th, and he had just turned 97 four days before. He's not part of the Toronto collective memory of of watching hockey i have no howie meeker that he was more of a west coast phenomenon that in fact his his participation was more geared towards the the western games uh at during the during the years that he was on there

uh and uh i guess he was the the yang to the yin of Don Cherry, the more aggressive style associated with grapes that culminated in his unceremonious exit last Remembrance Day. Howie Meeker hung in there. He was synonymous with a show in which he would teach hockey skills to the young people. But then he would get on there for the old folks watching Saturday Night and banter all that rink lingo with Dave Hodge.

And, yeah, it's amazing that Dave Hodge is an FOTM. Like, Dave Hodge has gone from talking with Howie Meeker on a gig that he got because they didn't like Alex Trebek's mustache. And now I'm sitting here with you in the backyard on the same show where Dave Hodge is going to show everybody just how cool he is counting down his top 100 songs of 2020. Kind of amazing, isn't it? Kind of amazing.

But yeah, Howie Meeker, great loss, especially to people of a certain vintage. I missed out on him, but it sounds like I would have enjoyed him. But he lived a long life. That's a good number. You get to 97, that's pretty great. So... Night after night I held you in my arms Darling

Night after night I sampled all your charms Night after night Lately I can tell You're marching to our wedding bed Only wanna do what's right Let me know if anyone compares your voice to this guy's. And another death from December. Illegal procedure, but I'll allow it.

You're the man. It's okay. David Lander, best known as Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley, died on December 4th at age 73. And how Lenny and Squiggy fit into the Happy Days extended universe was the fact that they were the male parallels to the Laverne and Shirley character. But the story of David Lander went back to being connected with Michael McKeon, the Lenny and Squiggy duo, a comedy troupe called The Credibility Gap

that also had Harry Shearer. And when Lenny and Squiggy were popular enough on Laverne and Shirley to have their own album, Lenny and the Squigtones on this song, you've got some guitar playing from nigel toughnall oh yeah uh i was gonna say how come he missed out on uh the spinal tap uh christopher guest well well here's here's here's where the story gets a little sad it was the fact that uh he was struck with multiple sclerosis and it kind of put a lot of live performing out of reach for him.

But there, David Lander did a lot of voice work, including a whole resume of animated cartoons, including Roger Rabbit. Wow. And there he was having to deal with this MS for for all those years at the same time where these guys from from Spinal Tap and Saturday Night Live that he had been rolling with were more in the public eye. And he made it all the way to age 73 and put up a good fight there. And everybody remembers Lenny and Squiggy, who was old enough to watch Laverne and Shirley. I mean, they would have known if you said David Lander. Maybe not a household name, but if you said, look, it was Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley, everybody would have known who you were talking about.

Indeed, indeed. And dead at age 73 on December 4th. Nobody knows this song. Not one of the bigger James Bond themes, that's for sure. But it was the only James Bond film with Sean Connery that came out in my lifetime. And yours. Never Say Never Again in 1983. Are you a big Bond

consumer? I think I was. I think I partly got into it because of the theme songs. Live and Let Die. I missed the whole, like, James... I've only seen in my life to date one single James Bond movie. Believe it or not.

Here's the thing. They're all kind of the same movie. Well, I also would just like to reiterate I've yet to see Top Gun. So I have missed out on a few of these touchstones. So who did we lose? Of course,

Sean Connery. That's a big one. That was November? Wow. Not just from Celebrity Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live, but also

from a bunch of James Bond movies that he did in the 1960s. It's a big one. I still loved him as Indiana Jones' dad in The Last Crusade, but this is a big one. I still loved him as Indiana Jones' dad in the Last Crusade, but this is a big one.

Absolutely. Yeah, here's the thing. He wasn't typecast. Maybe he had to chill out a little bit after the Bond movies that he originally did, except that was up until 1971

and charted his own that was up until 1971 and charted his own path as his own kind of character actor but there in 1983 you had the experience of dueling James Bond

movies where Roger Moore and Sean Connery both played James Bond in the same year. Wow. Never Say Never Again, which was a remake of Thunderball, although they were all kind of the same movie. All the same template. And, you know, Roger Moore was seen as the younger James Bond, but he was older than Sean Connery. I love those fun facts.

Wow. And there he had Octopussy as the official James Bond movie, but then the rogue Never Say Never Again with this theme song by Lanny Hall, the wife of Herb Alpert. And what else? The Untouchables with Sean Connery? Oh, yeah, he got an Oscar for that one, right?

That was a big one, yeah. Take a knife to a gunfight, whatever. It was great. I Oscar for that one, right? That was a big one. Yeah, he had to take a knife to a gunfight, whatever. It was great. I remember at the time Untouchables was a big deal. And you know, he did, I don't know, I'm trying to think. He did that, what's Michael Douglas,

Catherine Zeta-Jones movie was kind of a big deal. And you know, he had his moments, Sean Connery, definitely. And I guess he was a very outspoken, he was in favor of Scotland becoming an independent country. Am I right on that? Or do I have him on the wrong side of that one?

But he was very vocal, as I recall. Well, yeah, it was part of the Highlander image that he cultivated. Finding Forrester. Oh, yeah, I remember this. 20 years ago. Pound the keys. That was his last big flick, and he retired from acting a few years later, made it all the way. Aged 90, died on October 31, 2020.

Claudia's battle for Diego was not only driven by love, but also by unusual religiousness. y sobrevivir a la humilde expresión de enfrentar la adversidad con afán de ganarme a cada paso la vida. En un potrero forjé una zurda inmortal con experiencia, sedienta ambición de llegar a Cebollita, soñaba jugar un mundial y consagrarme en primera tal vez jugando pudiera a mi familia ayudar Tampoco que debutó parado, parado la dos se fue que corrió

parado, parado y solo tenía una estrella que navegó en el cametá y todo el pueblo cantó I had no idea he could sing. This is quite the jam here. Do you think Diego Maradona, on a global scale, was the most famous person to die November 23rd? Oh, so it would be Maradona versus Sean Connery, right? On a global scale, I would say you're hard-pressed to find anyone, maybe Pele, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more famous than Diego Maradona.

He made it to age 60, but Pele, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more famous than Diego Maradona. He made it to age 60, but going over his biography, a lot of people are amazed that he hung in for that long. That he lived the kind of life that... A lot of cocaine. Yeah, reflected a fast track to the end. Look, I'm a guy who

was not raised with soccer. I didn't play soccer. I was unaware of any soccer stuff. In 86, I wasn't even aware enough to watch the World Cup, so this is all kind of in retrospect. But as you start to watch some documentaries and learn about this man, like, yeah, larger-than-life global figure,

this guy, hugely famous. And you learn about the hand of God, the 86 World Cup, that Italian club team that he kind of comes to and you know turns him from like borderline relegation status to champions like diego maradona a big fucking deal but you're right uh sounds like he lived a hard life with the cocaine and the partying and i guess 60s, what you expect when you live a life like that. Of course there was Maradona music

just like there were Maradona video games and Maradona soft drinks. I remember like songs like I think late 80s, early 90s like dance tracks like Oh, he's done it again, Diego Maradona like these 12-inch singles would come out about Maradona, but I didn't

realize he was a singer. I had no idea. Pleading ignorance on this one. But you know, that's why you're here. You uncover these things. For all I know, he was a huge success in the Spanish-speaking music market. I had no idea. No idea. No idea. I think we forgot to bring up the fact that Howie Meeker was also a hockey player on the Leafs.

I just remembered that. I guess when you live to 97, people don't remember that you won a Stanley Cup 70 years ago. That's very true. And so, can you give me tiny, do you have any context to like, as a singer,

Miradonna, like would you hear his songs on like Argentina radio? Like I don't know if you have any clue or no, but like is this just like a novelty thing or was he like a bonafide,

like he had hits in that country? And if you don't know that's cool too i just really i think i think singing was like part of the gig of being being a soccer star in argentina i don't yeah okay i don't think you could get away without making records okay good stuff here speaking hold on here. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, hey, hey There'll be food on the table tonight Hey, hey, hey, hey

There'll be pain in your pockets tonight My God is wrenched out, it is crunched up and broken My life that is lived is no more than a token. Who struck the flint upon the stone? And tell me why. I always really, really like this song. Who did we lose from Midnight Oil? Oh, the bass player of Midnight Oil,

a guy named Wayne Stevens, but went by the stage named Bones Hillman. Because if you're going to be up there with Peter Garrett, the big imposing Midnight Oil lead singer, you've got to have a name like Bones. And there he was, the bassist, joined Midnight Oil in 1987, right when they reached this very unusual

commercial peak. Here this Australian band, very politically active, found themselves making some American hit records. As far as unexpected commercial

successes of the late 80s, I think they would be way up there as an example. And multiple hits, right? Because you had Beds Are Burning, you had The Dead Heart, and you had this one. That's at least three big North American hits.

Maybe more than I'm forgetting. Who knows? Bones Hillman also recorded, toured with Matthew Goode from Vancouver. Of course. During the time when Midnight All were on hiatus. And even though they were a very Australian rock band, in fact, he had moved to the USA. And when he died on November 7th from cancer, age 62,

it was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Matt Goode is the very first musician I ever interviewed. There's a fun fact for you out there. Before the podcast. Yeah, before, yeah, sorry, yeah, for the blog for Toronto. I literally interviewed him and typed out the answers on the blog. Part of the brotherhood of bloggers. That's right.

That's right. There was a whole thing there, and he was always doing stuff with Raimi the Minx. And I'm like, well, fuck him. He's talking to Raimi. He can talk to me. I actually like his music. So it happened. But so right here, we lost Bones.

And how old was Bones again? 62. You want more than that was Bones again? 62. You want more than that. You want more than 62, but... One, two, three. One, two, three Oh, that's how elementary It's gonna be

Come on, let's fall in love It's easy Like taking candy From a baby ABC Len Berry Yeah, there were all these 1960s one-hit wonder people that somehow got embedded in my brain

just from the amount of oldies radio that my dad exposed me to in the 80s. In the backseat of the car, and I would know nothing about who any of these people were. And several decades later, I don't think I knew much more about them until they die and you find out Len Berry the guy behind the song 1, 2, 3, that was not his real name. He was born Leonard Borisov.

Oh, okay. Close though. He just took the first syllable and made it like a hockey nickname. And he was one of those people who came up through the world of American Bandstand and Shindig and Hullabaloo, all these mid-60s TV shows. And he managed to crack the code of how to get a hit. It was as easy as one, two, three. Easy, easy, but do it again. Let's see you do it twice.

Well, it was only a matter of time before Motown Records realized that this song had long common with a B-side from the Supremes, a song called Ask Any Girl. And Holland dog's your Holland that wrote all those all those supreme songs i mean they just cranked out hit after hit after hit right like how how could you you would have to figure mathematically speaking how could someone just come come out with a song out of nowhere right had had to have been inspired by something else and it turned out they were right and they uh entered into litigation and it turned out that holland do that Holland Dozier Holland ended up getting credit and royalties

for Len Barry's one hit one, two, three. And, yeah, he's one of those guys that, I mean, the whole psychedelic era came, and there was no way for a guy like that to fit in and just kind of faded away as one of those one-hit wonder characters from the 1960s. Well, Len Berry has the same number of hits as Len. You know the spirit of the party starts to come alive until the day is dawning.

You can throw out all the blues and hit the city lights cause there's music in the air and lots of loving everywhere. So give me the night. Woo! Give me the night. Give me the night. Give me the night. Is this Yacht Rock? I need to know.

Is this Yacht Rock? You're thinking about it. I think it's too pure to be Yacht Rock. What year is it from? I'm putting you on the spot here. That's what I do. 1980, George Benson, Give Me the Night. I think it might be Yacht Rocky-ish.

It's great jam regardless. I'll have to ask Stu for his opinion on that. He'll have to tell us how many members of Toto were involved in playing in the background on this song. Right.

This was one of the shining examples of something called the Accusonic recording process. And it was devised by a recording engineer named Bruce Sweden, whose parents were in fact Swedish. Ended up in Minneapolis, and where he ended up moving to Chicago connected with

music producer named Quincy Jones back when Quincy was specializing in jazz and they took their act together Bruce Sweden as the engineer, Quincy Jones as a producer for the biggest albums by Michael Jackson Together, Bruce Sweden as the engineer, Quincy Jones as the producer

for the biggest albums by Michael Jackson, which has Toto on that as well. At least a couple of the members, at least. And Bruce Sweden died at age 86 on November 16th. I was going to say, the first recognition he got as an engineer was Big Girls Don't Cry by Frankie Valli in the Four Seasons.

It sounds a bit like Squiggy from Lenny and Squiggy when you listen to that falsetto he does there. You know the album Quincy Jones, The Dude? It was Quincy's name on the album Quincy Jones, The Dude? It was Quincy's name on the album, and that's where James Ingram and Patty Austin were first discovered. Right. Yeah, that album is really the genesis for so much that followed as far as yacht rock was concerned.

for so much that followed as far as Yacht Rock was concerned. I mean, all Yacht Rock spawns from that album. Wow. When we do the Yacht Rock sequel, we'll make sure special guest Mark Wiseblood from 1236.ca, the newsletter. Well, sadly, we do it here in the course of the obituaries going through all the music people who we lost. But it turns out in this recap, not a lot of music.

Like, it was all right this month. We didn't have a big, long list of people who died connected to the music industry. You know what this is, Mike? I know of, I know it's the Empire Strikes Back music, but I don't know exactly what song I'm listening to. I should, right? Did I miss out on this? Is it a Dr. Demento staple?

No, it's a theme from the Empire Strikes Back. Oh, I thought you were asking specifically about this dance remix or whatever we're listening to. By Miko. Miko, okay. Yeah, of course. And that's something I may have opted out of the James Bond, but I was really big on that original Star Wars trilogy.

David Prowse, who was a bodybuilder, weightlifter, big tough guy. He was in A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's movie played a manservant and George Lucas saw him as the perfect guy to fill the suit of Darth Vader. And he died at age 85 on November 28th.

One of the things I learned after he died that he went out on some kind of speaking tour after the initial Star Wars movie came out. And he actually gave away the plot of the sequel

by telling people that came to see him speak that Darth Vader was in fact Luke Skywalker's father. That's a big spoiler. That's a big spoiler. That's a big one. Now, the news didn't travel far enough for him to get fired. I would think today that would have resulted in his cancellation.

The ultimate spoiler. Right. Yeah, it might be the ultimate spoiler, at least for our generation. Things didn't work that way in 1978. Yeah, no one was going to tweet it, I guess. Yeah, we've lost a lot of these original Star Wars members lately. Chewbacca passed away recently, and the R2-D2 passed away, right? Of course, we lost Fisher.

We lost, yeah, Princess Leia passed away. It's been a tough, tough few years for the Star Wars trilogy stars. How old, remind me, David Prowse, how old? 85. 85. How old was Darth Vader supposed to be in those movies? Let me think.

Anakin, he probably had Anakin when he was like, I'm going to say he was supposed to be approximately 62, 63. I'm just thinking of when they took the mask off at the end of Return of the Jedi. That's my guess, but I have no idea. That's my guess. There's some chewy for you. Okay, here, homestretch here. guess but i have no idea that's my guess there's some chewy for you okay here home stretch here Thank you. Hugh Keyes Byrne died at age 73, also in December.

December 3rd, he played Toe Cutter, the villain opposite Mel Gibson in Mad Max. And they brought him back in 2015 for Mad Max Fury Road. And so reminding people of the age in which

Mel Gibson was considered the next great action star Billing he may not be living up to to this day as he currently appears as Santa Claus

in some movie that was dumped into whatever theaters were still open. And video on demand online. Fat Man is the current Mel Gibson film. If you want to see anti-Semitic Santa. He's a problematic Santa. But we did enjoy Bad Santa, which was pretty good, I thought. But yeah, it sounds like a...

And how old was our... Sorry, I don't have his name here. Oh yeah, Hugh Keyes Byrne. How old was he when he passed away? 73 years of age. It's the mystery on my show, the best show, Mr. T. Mr. T! Mr. T! Oh, my God! Earlier this year, we talked about one half of Ruby Spears,

the duo that originated Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo, where are you? Two guys who created Scooby-Doo. Their names Ken Spears and Joe Ruby. Joe died in August and in November 2020 at age 82,

we lost Ken Spears. And we're talking on a previous episode about how after they struck gold with Scooby-Doo, all these licensees would come to them to create an animated series, even if there wasn't much of a premise behind it. So when the Rubik's Cube got popular

and what had to inevitably follow was a Rubik's Cube cartoon, it was up to Ruby Spears, who had had this success beforehand with Scooby-Doo, with Captain Caveman, with Jabberjaw, that they would just invent a cartoon for anyone who was looking for it. That included the aforementioned Mr. T. We were wondering what opportunities were there for Mr. T to cash in

on being Mr. T. That included the Mr. T cartoon. This was the legacy of Ruby Spears Productions. Both these guys ended up retiring nicely that they had Scooby-Doo behind them. But there we have the Mr. T cartoon theme song

as an example of what opportunities were afforded to them to cash in on what they developed before. I don't remember the cartoon show, but I must have been aware of it because I knew all the cartoon shows back then. But I don't know if maybe I just blocked that one out of my memory or if it was a short run. I'm not too sure.

But I do know that there's a kind of a neat little show on Netflix called Mike Tyson Mysteries. And it's got the voice of Norm MacDonald. And I actually kind of dig it. I'll put it on and enjoy it. And I always thought maybe that could have been, like, that could have been

a Mr. T thing. It could have been the Mr. T mysteries. But Mike Tyson beat him to the punch like he probably did with Nintendo's Punch-Out!, one of my favorite games,

going back to the original Nintendo. You know we're coming to the end of the line of the obituaries when we've managed to make two references to Mr. T after the A-team. And he's still with us, though.

Knock on wood. Hopefully we're not talking about him at the end of the month. We're outpacing Pandemic Friday here. I have never heard them get as obscure as exploring the latter-day celebrity of Mr. T. Sure they have. They get more obscure than that. I just want to say when you're outside and we're in, what, minus one or minus two

or whatever, it is tough to do the three-hour episodes. Like, I feel like, are you numb? How's your feet? Well, the battery and the phone

and the computer are died on me, and that makes me sound less intelligent than I'm usually able to do. smoke and mirrors. That's why we're doing this discreetly, no cameras.

Okay, three more to go. That's why we're doing this discreetly. No cameras. Okay. Three more to go. Let's kick this one out. I'll be your candle on the water My love for you will always burn I know you're lost and drifting But the clouds are lifting Don't give up. You have somewhere to turn.

I'll be your candle on the water. You know, we never marked the death of Helen Reddy. We missed out on that one for some reason. Fell through the cracks. I didn't want to do it the month after. And once we missed it the first time, I can't remember what happened. Mike, what are the rules here? We can't do the month before and we can't do the month after. You know what happened?

We merged two months into one episode. So a lot of big names got left on that cutting room floor. But all the names are on. We're getting everybody today, including... Who is this, and what are we listening to? Malcolm Marmastein. He was a screenwriter of Pete's Dragon, one of those Disney movies that mixed animation with live action. I remember Pete's Dragon.

I was more of a Robin Hood fan. Robin Hood, Little John walking through the forest. But I remember Pete's Dragon. I guess you can enjoy both, but you know. So Malcolm passed away. How old was Malcolm Memerstein? 93 years old. Oh, good for him.

92. Oh, it's not as good, but still pretty good. 92. Here's hoping, right? That's a target for you. Quite the jam. Highly forgettable, I'd say.

This is called Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon. I don't know if the kids were singing this in the schoolyard, if I remember back. I'm about to play a jingle that I remember very well, and it ties in nicely to the last Pandemic Friday when I got roasted because I chose a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song from their soundtrack that you could buy at locations of this pizza place. Are you ready for some

nostalgia? Here we go. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Ooh-wee, ooh-wee, taste too spicy. Ooh-wee, ooh-wee, good pan pizza. Hot pizza, hot pizza, hot and nothing but. Sloppy, slippy, hot and drippy. Ooh-wee, ooh-wee, good pan pizza. Right now, get a large pan pizza for the price of a medium. Just write large medium charge on any piece of paper and bring it in.

You'll get your favorite large for a medium charge. Frank Carney was the co-founder of Pizza Hut. They borrowed $600 from their mother. It was two brothers, Frank and Dan Carney. They started Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kansas. Never would have guessed that. And built up from 1958, the world's biggest pizza chain.

And that acapella, personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. That was appetizing to you, I guess. I just remember it really well. I think it must have got high rotation on maybe during, like, Who's the Boss or Growing Pains or some show I was watching, but I remember it very well. And the owners of Pizza Hut ended up selling to PepsiCo. That would have been where the money was.

And built all those Pizza Hut custom-built restaurants, which are all across America, and a lot of them are not pizza huts anymore, but you can tell from the design of the pizza hut that it will remind you until the end of time that this used to be a pizza hut. And I'm sure, in fact, I think I've seen blogs and stuff devoted to used to be a pizza hut or something like that, where people send in their photos of, yeah, and now it's like, it's now it's whatever this, this new, new place,

but it still has that frame of the Pizza Hut location. All right. Well, anyway, they made millions of dollars off of selling Pizza Hut to Pepsi and ended up investing in other business turned out to be a disaster. And as a result in the mid nineties, Frank tried to get a job back at Pizza Hut. They wouldn't hire him. And he ended up working instead for Papa John's.

Whoa. Take that, Pizza Hut. He was in a TV commercial for Papa John's where he said to a bunch of Pizza Hut franchisees, sorry guys, I found a better pizza. I won't take that. And he got his revenge on Pizza Hut.

Even if the greasy recipes remain, we lost Frank Carney of Pizza Hut, age 82. Died on December 3rd. The Slugger's Wife is a baseball picture written by America's most durable playwright,

Neil Simon, famous for such great comedies as The Goodbye Girl, The Sunshine Boys, and The Odd Couple, just to mention a few. Hey, thanks to Retro Ontario for having that one on YouTube. thanks to Retro Ontario for having that one on YouTube. It's the opening from a show that ran on the Barrie Ontario TV station, CKVR, for a show called Showbiz. And the reason Showbiz came up was because inconspicuously in the newspaper obituaries was the fact that a woman named Claire Kerr had died at age 96 and mentioned in this little listing that she was originally a personality on CKEY radio in Toronto. And this went all the way back to the late 1940s that she would be on doing this mid-morning music radio show. This was at a point where there would not be a DJ on the air,

but like a theatrical presentation where there would be skits in between the songs rather than kind of DJ patter, the banter that would follow as these things settled in about how to do radio, that she went all the way back to that era of doing that sort of broadcasting in Toronto. She was under the surname Claire Olson when she turned up in the 1970s on Barry television, on Channel 3 in Barry, and that she would do these celebrity interviews flying back and forth to the movie junkets

with a loyal sidekick, a guy named Brian Linehan. Oh, wow. I kind of smelled, like sensed it coming, but there it is, Brian Linehan. Wow. And then they both did interviews for their respective shows. It was Brian Linehan on

City Lights on City TV and Claire Olsen on Showbiz on CKVR. She retired in 1986 was the last we saw her on TV back then.

But you've got to say, quite a career and something of a find, which made the rounds. Here, I mean, somebody dies without much notice, even though they were once a fixture in the Toronto Canadian media, that they had that versatility to have been there on the radio in the 1940s, all the way to doing these celebrity interviews that you would see on weekend afternoons in the 80s. So what seemed like a life well lived and a distinguished career, not only then, I think, the most obscure obituary that I was able to bring this month,

but also the oldest person of all, because you like to end it with one of them. And that was Claire Olson, as we knew her, who died in November, or sorry, she died in May. The newspaper obituary didn't appear until November at age 96. Mark, another fantastic appearance. Can't wait. You're going to be here, hopefully returning at the end of the month.

Hopefully it's of a temperature. We can still be doing this in person. Your idea that you would be going to Zoom, that ain't going to happen, Mike. You want to remember the episodes. You want to be able to say that you froze in the name of getting this recap done. I absolutely

did. I can barely feel my toes. I will let the listenership know that if they have not yet subscribed to the 1236 newsletter at 1236.ca shame on you. It's just free. It's still free. You're not charging. People can just sign up and get this email every day at 1236. Yeah, Shame on you. It's just free. It's still free.

You're not charging. People can just sign up and get this email every day at 1236. Yeah, I think we'll talk about the newsletter business when I'm back for the next recap

and reflect upon where the media went in the past year because these email newsletters played a big part. Okay, we'll talk about that next time and that

brings us to the end of our 764th show you can follow me on twitter i'm at toronto mike mark is at 12 36 1 2 3 6 our friends at great lakes brewery are at great lakes beer i'll be there saturday palma pasta is at palma. Go back and listen to Anthony Pacucci last weekend. Sticker U is at Sticker U. CDN Technologies are at CDN Technologies. Sammy Cohn is at Sammy Cohn, K-O-H-N. And Ridley Funeral Home, they're at Ridley F-H.

See you all tomorrow. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome phone. Rome phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RoamPhone.ca to get started.