Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Blake Murphy: Toronto Mike'd #733

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Mike chats with The Athletic's Raptors Reporter Blake Murphy about his years writing at Raptors Republic, for The Score, how he got the gig at The Athletic, Carl English, Columbia House Party, and more.

Welcome to episode 733 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. Pumpkins After Dark. Save 10% with the promo code MICED, m-i-k-e-d cdn technologies your outsourced i.t department write barb at barb at cdn technologies.com sticker you.com create custom

stickers labels tattoos and decals for your home and your business. The Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. Write me, mike at torontomike.com and let me introduce you to Austin Keitner. And Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week

is a good irish lad every time i see the name blake murphy how you doing buddy i'm doing great how are you how much ink you got on that body like how many tattoos you got uh i don't know how to count the sleeves because they're technically different pieces but they make up so i'm down down to the elbows on both arms and then one on each forearm and one on my back have you ever considered getting a neck tattoo no i don't think i think the idea is anything i could cover with a long sleeve shirt is fine who said that who's the guy from the jump jive and whale guy from stray cats uh whose name i'm gonna have to google it'll Google it. But the lead singer of Stray Cats, he said, yeah, if you can be in front of a judge wearing a suit where the judge can't see any ink, then it's all good. So don't put it on your hands or your neck.

Yeah. I like the way that stuff looks. Maybe not the face tattoo extent. You know, I'm not going Post Malone or Lucas Bebe Nogueira or anything like that, but I don't mind the way hand tattoos and neck tattoos look. It just, you know, I don't need to, I don't need anything like that. But I don't mind the way hand tattoos and neck tattoos look. It just, you know, I don't need to worry about it. I can't imagine at this point I'm ever going to go back to like an office job or something, but just in case. But you're a young man. Youngish.

You're youngish. You're a lot younger than me. By the way, I want to make sure I don't forget to come back to this. Brian Sedzer is the lead singer of Stray Cats. Have you ever even heard of the Stray Cats? Yeah, and the Brian Setzer Orchestra, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you're older than I think.

No, I'm 34, but, you know, I have an appreciation for good swing music. It's funny. I was talking to Ralph Ben-Murgy yesterday about James B. Do you know the name James B? I do not. Well, the discussion was how famous is James B? And as we speak, I should just point out that, before I get back to James B,

that just before you arrived, I had everything set up and then it started to rain. And I was, it was a nuts. I had a brand new, in fact, maybe I'll bring it closer to me. But there was a brand new umbrella sent over by Ridley Funeral Home. Like, you know, when it's raining and they're by, you know, in the gravesite, this is the official, I've got one of those but like i was like covering everything cameras board laptop like and the rain was coming down and it just let up and i just felt a few drops but just if i run quickly to grab umbrellas just know what's going on but back to james b so we were trying to discuss how famous is james b because to me james b is famous but if i went to like a

100 random 30 or 40 something i'll bet you in toronto i'm talking i'll bet you maybe only like seven or eight know the name james b but he was part of that like swing revival that we had in the whenever that was late 90s or whatever that was like maybe when uh swingers came out yeah swingers and i feel like the Mask, the Jim Carrey movie, gave it a little bit of a boost. You know, people who were maybe like preteen or teen at that point got the introduction to it. Did you see Joe Biden's Joe Biden?

Did you see Jim Carrey's Joe Biden impersonation? I did, yeah. Didn't you think it was just The Mask? Yeah. I mean, this is the thing with the current political climate and even just like the news cycle in general is like SNL's work is too far cut out for them. It's like South Park ran into this problem too, is like,

how do you even parody this stuff anymore? Right. Because it's so over the top. Yeah. When reality is ludicrous, where do you take it? Like, it's almost like you got it.

Yeah. It really messes you up from a satirical standpoint. Absolutely. All right. I got a quick note. I want to shout out a very good FOTM. His name is Brian Gerstein, but he tweets as Raptors devotee. Have you, do you remember this handle from Twitter and your Twitter travels? Yeah. I've interacted with him before about some Raptor stuff. You haven't called the police. He's not a stalker. I just want, you know, he's safe. He's a good guy. i'm just kidding just busting brian's chops there um so brian right off the top he says he noticed your before and after pictures of your weight loss and he wants to say he says congratulations congratulations it's like those those phone spams i get i too lost some weight

but needed a dietician to guide me what worked for you was it all on your own or did you get some help uh and accountability and he goes hashtag real talk so firstly did you lose a bunch of weight yeah i dropped um i think i'm at 36 pounds since um you know over the last i don't know however many months um good for you buddy thanks it's uh yeah i fluctuated weight a lot in my life. Like there was one, at one point I had gotten pretty chubby and like lost like 60 pounds when I was in university and then, you know, slowly got into going to the gym and stuff. But then that lapsed. And then once you have that gym base, the fat packs on really quickly.

Like once you have the frame for it, you put the fat on really easily. That's why I avoid the gym at all costs. Like don't give it anywhere to go. Yeah. So, and the early parts of quarantine had gotten pretty sloppy with, uh, you know, a lot of things like you see in front of me here, great, great lakes, beer deliveries, and, uh, a lot of Uber eats and stuff like that. So, um, no, there wasn't anything big to it. I mean, I'm fortunate that I had gone through it before and I really enjoy, um, reading about things like nutrition and fitness. So, so to kind of figure out what would work for me. Um,

I like, I like learning about that stuff anyway. Uh, but mostly it was a return to a healthier lifestyle for me. You know, my job is sitting at a desk chair most of the day. So, uh, just more reminders to, to kind of get moving. And I, I, I foster dogs regularly. So I had one with me all summer. So it was nice to get out for walks and runs and stuff like that. But mostly it was just, you know, cut back on the booze a little bit, cut back on the switch out Uber Eats

for my own bland cooking and then just kind of get back to living an active lifestyle. So this is a terrible segue because now I feel bad, but I'm going to give you some beer to take home with you. Yeah, no, that's great.

You're okay. Yeah, that's great. It's all about Okay, okay. It's all about balance, right? Right. I don't know that if anyone goes, like, all the way. I mean, there are obviously people that'll work for, but the going all the way, you know, cold turkey,

getting no treats or cheat days or whatever you want to call them, that's not going to work for me. You know, I'm going for wings shortly after this. Distanced wings. One guy's picking them up. On a party. Oh, okay. You're going to go to a park or something? Yeah. One guy's picking them up. On a patio. You go to a park or something? Yeah, one guy's going to pick them up and we'll table about this length because we have a friend moving out of town.

So we're doing a little going away wings. Have you done an indoor restaurant since March 13th? I haven't. I haven't even done a patio. The closest thing I've done is takeaway coffee. It just doesn't seem like a necessary thing now i haven't i've done a few patios uh primarily like when i visit my son in waterloo we go to a patio or whatever but i i have yet to do the indoor restaurant that's where i draw the

line like i'm not gonna dine indoors in a public space or whatever and and uh it's interesting how people have such a wide variety of like a range of like sensitivity to the COVID. Like there's some people who I have some people that don't even want to come in the backyard and sit 10 feet away. And you've got a lot of space here. Yeah. Like we're comfortable. We couldn't. At least 10 feet between us.

And we're outdoors. Man, that cloud is moving over us, Blake. We'll be all right. You let me know because it's getting darker and I get concerned. I have to go grab these umbrellas. But you got others are kind of not wrecked. I won't say some are reckless.

I try to avoid those people. But there are some people who are kind of just, they're going to the restaurant with their buddies and they're sitting six to a table and having a meal. And to me, that sounds crazy. Like I'm not there. Yeah, it's wild. And like, you know, as the daily afternoon update goes from,

you know, one person saying, stop doing all this, shut down the gyms, shut down indoor dining. And then other people being like, ah, just use your best judgment. My brother's getting married in November and we're kind of just like week to week wondering if that's still going to happen. Like they've already gotten right now.

The plan is 50 people, max six max per table. The tables can't co-mingle or anything like that. And then they'll, they'll lay out. But indoors, obviously it's November. Yes. And then they'll lay out the tables based on who is already in each other's bubble. So like I would be. Keep talking.

I would be in a bubble or at a table with my mom. My stepdad and my brother. Who I would be staying with. When I go back for that anyway. I got to say I really like this umbrella. As much as it's maybe dour. It's very emo. The all black umbrella.

Like it could absolutely fit in a My Chemical Romance video. And like you said at like a funeral scene. In a pop punk video. It's great. This is the real deal. So this umbrella, which you can only see on the Periscope now, obviously, but I think you can see it. Like was delivered, hand delivered by Brad Jones at Ridley Funeral Home for this exact purpose. Like if I'm ever in a recording, and this has happened before, because I'm a bit of a nutter. So it's going to happen again.

But if I'm in a recording with somebody in the rain start i can grab the ridley funeral home umbrella so yeah and it's like you could see it somebody you know a well-dressed uh uh what are they called undertakers yeah yeah holding this at the side of a grave site like on a kind of now i want to play some guns and roses november rain but we're a bit early because it's only october but okay so good for you to lose all that weight thanks that's awesome thanks brian and uh yeah i think brian lost a similar number of pounds actually so uh but somebody said i think leave a fumka who's also an fotm said that uh brian was trying to compete with me for like covid19 shaggy hair hairstyles. So shout out to Brian.

You're from Cambridge, right? I am. I was going to jump in when you mentioned Waterloo. It's a great time for the 519 coming off the Jamal Murray playoff run and everything. Right. Kitchener. You can walk to Kitchener from Waterloo. I've just learned that.

Okay. So whereabouts in Cambridge were you raised? So Cambridge is split into like, Cambridge used to be three small towns called Galt, Preston and Hespeler. And then they merged into Cambridge, but everyone still identifies as being from Galt, Preston or Hespeler. And there's like, you know,

the little rivalries about, like Galt and Hespeler argue over which one's better and then both agree that Preston's the worst one. But I bounced around a little bit, but I was, you know, in Galt in Cambridge. And then I've lived in Kitchener as well. And my family now lives in Drumbo, which is kind of like half an hour outside of Cambridge.

So is this the Tri-Cities? Yes. Or the Golden Triangle or the Region, if you want. A million names they give themselves. There's a question from Limo Legs. That's a great handle on Twitter. Limo Legs. That's a great handle on Twitter. Limo Legs wanted to know which is the best of the Tri-Cities. Well, are we, I have to say Cambridge because I'm from there, but I would say, you know, if I were picking one of those

places to live, I would go with Waterloo. Um, I think, you know, Uptown Waterloo has done a good job kind of re-imagining it's up like, like Waterlooimagining it. This is King Street, right? Yeah, deeper into it. I think Waterloo is obviously a university town and a tech town, and I think they've done a good job reimagining Uptown Waterloo for late 20s, early 30s professionals, buying your first condo kind of living, and a good mix of craft beer places and restaurants and

things to do so i'd probably go waterloo but it's also a little pricier than the kitchen cambridge so but how do you end up in uh bc to go to school yeah so i i have uh i got a business degree from queens in kingston and was working at a the toyota Cambridge doing some operations management kind of stuff and blogging on the side. And I just like, I was finding myself carving out more and more time to do the blogging stuff. And I hit a point where I was like, I'm either going to get like in trouble at work or, or so I got to drop this entirely or I got to chase it as a real thing. So I know I've lived this moment where the side hustle, like either this is either going to be a side hustle or the hustle.

Yeah, you can't do both of them at half speed. You got to full speed one thing. No, I've been there, man. So yeah, I went out to UBC to do a master's of journalism. I ended up dropping out after a year or they, sorry, they like to say I jobbed out or got hired out. They prefer me to say that. Right.

So the score, I left there after a year to go to the score. But the year there was awesome because I basically just used it as an excuse to write all the time. And I was doing every sport and writing for anyone who would take me and working for the athletic department and getting to do some play-by-play and stuff. What sport did you do play-by-play for? I did the play-by-play voice most of the time for women's basketball.

And their, their program went to the, the CIS final, or I guess you sports now final eight that year. I did the men's team. Sometimes it was kind of just a rotation based on, you know, how many of the teams were at home that week. And then I did some color commentary on the women's hockey team and they had like a, an historic season that year, which was really cool. They went from being like a two win team to to a playoff team wow with this huge turnaround yeah

it was a lot of fun awesome okay so tell me about um like is it raptors republic what's the first like place where people sort of could see blake murphy and what and see how well he writes well the it wasn't how well i write at the beginning if you go back and look at some of that stuff um i started my own blog called The On Deck Circle. It was just like kind of writing for friends and just like a free WordPress page or blogger at that point, whatever it was. But yeah, Raptors Republic was the first time I really got on somewhere that people could see my work other than me just sending it to friends. And I should say a little before that, J.E. Skeets from the starters, or No Dunks now, was very good.

He was the ball-don't-lie guy at Yahoo at that point, and he linked out to a couple of my things a couple times. So that was a nice bit of early feedback. But Raptors Republic, so there are two gentlemen named Zarrar and Sam who had their own Raptors blogs right at the time that ESPN had brought in Henry Abbott, a true hoop. And the idea was let's get an affiliated blog for every team and we'll all link to each other and it'll be a content sharing system.

There was no financial relationship, but you know, we'll all share content and we'll collaborate on stuff. So they got Sam and Zarrar to kind of merge their two sites to be the raptors republic and then they brought me on as kind of the third guy okay and so tell me about these like heady days of you know i mean it's kind of fun to look back because i mean i was kind of all all around it on the peripheral but i was kind of doing my own thing at torontomic.com but like give us the goods like what what was it like because you spent like nine years nine years writing for the Raptors Republic. Yeah. So at first it was just like, you know,

like I said, it was on the side. It was just something I was doing for fun. The first thing I ever wrote there was breaking down DeMar DeRozan's summer league after he had been drafted, before he had played any real game. So, you know, it was a sad day when he got traded for that personal connection.

Right. But no, it was, you know, at first True Hoop was a really cool thing and there were 30 functioning blogs sad day when he got traded for for that personal connection right um but no it was you know it at first true hoop was a really cool thing and there were 30 functioning blogs and there was lots of content sharing and um you know i got to go and cover the sloan sports analytics conference as part of true hoop uh which was really cool um you know out of pocket but they got the credential and everything um so that was great um eventually, you know, the True Hoop Network kind of died a swift death. Henry Abbott moved into a different role at ESPN and then left altogether.

And, you know, I think like something like 13 of those blogs are still active, but True Hoop Network does not exist on its own. But at that point, we were fortunate that Raptors Republic had gotten big enough that we could, it was to to keep going and part of that was we were early on having things like forums obviously real GM forums rule the basketball world especially for Raptors fans and Reddit has kind of taken that place now the Raptors have a really great subreddit even discord now there's a really active Raptors discord but at the time our forums helped drive some of the traffic and keep us going and then from so i want to say from like maybe 2012 to 2015 i like ran it but not really like i was in school and i

was at the score and i would like try to come up with the content schedule and write as much as i could but it was basically just all of us chipping in wherever we could right and then in 2015 how many writers like approximately anywhere from five to like a dozen depending on the time and like you know it's it's one of those setups where as an independent blog especially in the the early 2010s like we couldn't really pay and it's unfortunate the amount that i've written for free over the years is uh you know i i would hope like you don't get a share of AdSense or something like that. I mean, we do, but like the site costs a little money to run.

And so we would do things more like we'd have a party at the end of every season and we'd foot the bill or we'd have a Christmas party and foot the bill. And unfortunately, some of our writers weren't in the city. So they didn't, but we also, you know, the model we use now is at the end of every quarter, everything that the site has made after expenses just gets shared among the writers so um you know it's not like we don't like it's not like

hey you're gonna get 25 an article or whatever but it's hey whatever we make is gonna get shared among the writers so and it's a good opportunity of course to improve your craft right this is a place to put in your reps and you have real like real feedback because the the the raptors devotees of the world are gonna read what you're writing and uh you can you can you can improve yeah for sure and it's you know I the the years from 2015 to 2018 when it became kind of my full-time job between the score and the athletic we did like 14 million a year in traffic so that's that's a lot of eyeballs on your work that you know you can't you can't get if you're just making your own blog site or whatever and i think we've always done a good job of finding the next people and the next voice and it was there was a really cool moment during the nba finals one of the games

in toronto there were eight people credentialed there who had written for raptors republic at one point or another and only one of them was there for raptors republic they had all gone on to different jobs can you name these other all eight of them okay so me them was there for Raptors Republic. They had all gone on to different jobs. Can you name these other, all eight of them can you name? So me, I was there for the Athletic. Eric Green, my colleague at the Athletic, had written some stuff for Raptors Republic between National Post and the Athletic. William Liu, who's at Yahoo Sports, is probably the biggest Raptors Republic success story.

Louis Zatzman, who's at Raptors Republic still and freelances around, he was there for Raptors Republic success story. Louis Zatzman, who's at Raptors Republic still and freelances around, he was there for Raptors Republic. Vivek Jacob, who is also a freelancer now. I can't remember if he was there for Complex or for Yahoo or for Sportsnet. He's kind of done work for everyone. So that's five. James Herbert of CBS Sports had done some stuff for us

in the past. Zach Harper, who is with, oh, no, he wasn't there. There was someone else. Maybe Alex Wong. I can't remember if Alex Wong did stuff for us. I know he did Raptors HQ. And I might be short a name. But that's an impressive list.

Yeah. Like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah. So you've mentioned a few times you were also at the score. So what exactly are you doing at the score during this time? in the industry if you're checking scores and you're checking stats. But 2013 was around the time that Sportsnet bought out the TV side and Score spun off into Score Digital Ventures, which was at that point just the app. So they were kind of trying to reimagine what that looked like, and they were expanding the newsroom. They did have a group of bloggers already,

like Dustin Parks and Drew Fairservice and Justin Bourne, some really great voices on the blog side. But they wanted to beef up the news side, where not only would you come here for scores, this is where you would come to get all your sports news. So they hired a bunch of us for jobs that were somewhere between straight aggregating and what I would call more of like the job title was news editor. I would say two-thirds of the job was maybe aggregator at the start. And then you were doing a little bit of analysis on top of that, or, you know, the, the idea was that longer term, you know, doing all of that new stuff would give us

the wiggle room to chase things like features, or if one of us stood out, do some analysis or move over to that blogging group or whatever uh those plans changed around sometime in 2014 i think that the blog side and the podcast side got eliminated um kind of ironically because they were actually way ahead on the podcast thing they just you know then it didn't click right away and then like two years later that was the thing every sports network is trying to do we call that the bleeding edge yeah um so you know things changed there a little bit and they decided over those two years that you know maybe we maybe they weren't going to do a ton of independent feature stuff or maybe they weren't going to do a lot of original content and you know it's still i would say it's still a good

place to work and especially if you're fresh out of school, that experience in a newsroom and hey, there's eight games on and four injuries just happened and there's a trade rumor. You build up your sports news chops pretty quickly. And it's a fun environment to work in when all that chaos is going on. But for me, I was pretty hungry and it's not, in the sports industry, especially starting out, you're working some hours that are not conducive to a normal life and you're not making a lot of money at the start. So for me to want more out of the job as well, you know, I just thought it was time for me to try something different. So I did two years there and I would say like a year and a half of it, I really enjoyed. And then half a year of it, I was like, okay, what's next, what's next, what's next?

And did you also do some work at Sportsnet and TSN? I have done, I have never written for TSN. I've done radio for both. I have done, I did in between my time at the score and when I was full-time at the Athletic, I did freelance work for Sportsnet, where it was kind of, obviously they have Michael Grange, and then they have some good number twos like Steve Leung and Arden Zwelling

when he comes over from the Jays or whatever. But sometimes they didn't have anyone there. If it's Blue Jays season or it's the holidays and Grange is off or Grange is on the road or whatever, they'd call me in for some stuff. So I've done radio for both, and then I've written for Sportsnet. Okay, cool. Now I've got to get to to the athletic here so uh where do i begin first i'm gonna read and actually this is also from uh brian gerstein so like i said he's a great fotm so i let him have several questions he's a big fan of yours so he's entitled uh he says he's an athletic subscriber uh when they

had layoffs and this is going to segue into another question I'll have in a moment, because timing is everything. When they had layoffs, I told you and Eric Corrine that I wasn't going to renew if either of you were let go. Thankfully, both of you are gainfully employed. Is that true? Are you still gainfully employed? I am. You didn't get any notes today.

You're still there. No, we're okay. Good, good. I was worried because anyways, we'll get into that in a minute. But so thankfully, both of you are gainfully employed. I do have an issue with your employer discounting it to new subscribers for almost free.

So I guess that's the move, right? Like the low hanging fruit has fallen. So now you heavily discount to get people to try it out and hopefully stick with it. So he doesn't like that move because he feels he should get the discounts that the new people are getting. Yeah, that's the common. I get that at least once every time we have a new promo. And, you know, this one was to celebrate that we hit 1 million subscribers and try to, you know, kind of build to the next number or whatever.

It is crazy cheap right now at like $1.25 a month or whatever. I don't think it's too bad a value proposition at full price anyway, but, you know, I certainly understand. Brian wants his rebate. Yeah. But you know what? What is it? My wife says, oh, if you buy something at Costco,

or maybe it's a bunch of stores, you buy something, and if it goes on sale in the next certain period of time, you can go back and get it for the sale price. This one's above my head. Supportattheathletic.com. You could ask them, but I don't think, uh, I don't think I can help you out there. And I think James Myrtle replies to all those emails. Yeah, I bet. All right. So how did you get the gig at the athletic? Yeah. So when the athletic was launching, Toronto was one of the first cities that they launched. And so they looked at Toronto as a pretty fertile market with, um, you know, the the raptors were good the leafs were kind of coming out of that dark period

uh the jays were like po like in the hangover of those those two playoff runs right so it was a pretty it looked like a pretty good market and a market where you know i think part of the early strategy was like who will credential a new publication? Because obviously without the access, you can't offer quite the same sales pitch to people. So Adam, one of the founders, came to Toronto and he met with, I don't know if he met with Myrtle then or Myrtle was, because Myrtle came after the initial hiring burst. Well, he was early for the Toronto launch.

He was there for the Toronto launch, right, Myrtle? I don't think so. I guess he came over. Because he left the Globe and Mail to do the Athletic. I think David Alter was their first Leafs hire. And then, you know, within a year, they brought Myrtle over to be, I think his job title is Editor-in-Chief.

So yeah, I don't think Myrtle was immediate. But Adam came and he met with Eric Green had been let go by National Post only a few months prior. And so he met with Eric and obviously Eric's terrific. And if you're going to start a Raptors beat, he's a good guy to have on there. And then he met with me and we talked about freelance stuff. And at that point I was running Raptors Republic, but that doesn't pay the bill. Like an independent blog doesn't pay the bill. So I was freelancing everywhere by Sportsnet, anywhere who would take

me. So I was like, yeah, sure. Whatever the business model is, as long as the, as long as the check's clear. But no, I was kind of a believer in it because as far back as like when I was in undergrad doing a business degree, something I had thought a lot about was, and this wasn't because, you know, you, we weren't really seeing the same seeing the same job shrinkage in the industry just yet. But, you know, I was doing all these blogs and I was seeing friends and peers I was making do blogs and none of us were really making money off of it yet. And I was curious what the next step was. And I had always thought that like something like a microtransaction market might work. And obviously you would need a lot of content creators together to make it feasible that, hey, I'm going to pay $50 with my credit card,

and then when I go on Blake Murphy's website, I can click a quarter to read that. And there's not a transaction fee every time, and you don't have to log into PayPal and stuff. And then I'm going to go to J.E. Skeet's blog post, and I'm going to pay a dime to read that. And then I'm going to go to Henry AbbE. Skeets' blog post and I'm going to pay a dime to read that. And then I'm going to go to Henry Abbott and pay a dollar to read that or whatever.

So when they told me what the athletic model was, it completely made sense to me. Like I had Slam and Sports Illustrated forever. So, hey, we're taking the magazine idea and we're moving it online. It just made sense for me. Some people, for example, Steve Simmons from the Toronto Sun have come on this program to say that

that model there's, there there's, they think it, it, it's not built to last the model because for example, like, I mean, you mentioned there's a lot of big time writers writing at the athletic in

addition to yourself and the, uh, Myrtle, for example, you know, he quit a job at the Globe and Mail to work at the athletic. So he's not coming over for, you know,

30 K a year. So there's, there's some real money being tossed around. And I know there was a lot of money invested at the Globe and Mail to work at the Athletics. So he's not coming over for, you know, 30k a year. So there's there's some real money being tossed around. And I know there was a lot of money invested at the beginning, but I just want I just hope it's sustainable because I think the market needs it. Yeah, me too. And I think, you know, if it is successful in the medium term, I think it offers an interesting case study for other parts of the journalism industry. And obviously, you know, news itself is, especially on like the politics side and the local side is, you know, it's to some extent a public service, right? Like we don't, we maybe don't want all of that behind a paywall where then people can't get their, you know, COVID updates and stuff like that without being behind

the, behind the paywall. But I do think, you know, if you're looking at something like the New Yorker or, you know, other things that have traditionally thrived on either online advertising revenue or physical magazines, you know, it's an interesting case study. So hopefully it works out. You know, I know there's skepticism, you know, not only with things like you said, you know, how much do you have to pay these people to come over but does the person who signs up for a dollar 25 a month stick around in year two when that bumps up to the full price and things like that but i think you know so far so good obviously the pandemic is one thing and i don't have access to our our bottom line or anything but um you know what do you mean you don't have access they should open the books um but yeah passing a million subscribers and seeing subscriber growth during the pandemic to me is is pretty encouraging What do you mean you don't have access? They should open the books for Blake Murphy. But yeah, passing a million subscribers

and seeing subscriber growth during the pandemic to me is pretty encouraging. You know, I don't know. I mean, I think absolutely it's worth a try and people who enjoy, you know, more than just the, you know, the type of content you can't, that goes beyond what you get on Twitter,

because Twitter's great for news and for jokes and for having fun watching the game. But if you're the type of content you can't, that goes beyond what you get on Twitter, because Twitter's great for news and for jokes and for having fun watching the game, but if you're the type of person who likes content that goes beyond that, you know, I think you want to, even if you're not a subscriber yet, you want to root for something like that to succeed, if not us, something like that, because, you know, the online ad model just, it doesn't work unless you can really scale it and to really scale it you have to go with the absolute lowest common denominator content you know are you friendly with uh and i always andrew stodden uh is he a buddy yeah okay so not just because he's a peterborough guy right yeah we've had some beers in kensington okay i was gonna ask because i

invited him on once and he was into it but we had a geographic uh issue yes tough to get him into the city especially when the jays aren't playing right right right right and this is you know pre-covid when i was like i'm not doing a phoner like i had a whole like no phoner no zoom rule but that of course did change with uh with with covid but the news and i mentioned timing is everything. So I caught, I follow Andrew on Twitter. He's a great tweeter. And he writes that today, this is today.

So the eighth of, what are we in here? October apologies to all those who subscribed via my content recently, but it turns out that today was my last day at the athletic. Have you, Blake Murphy had a chance to speak with andrew today like what's what happened yeah we dm'd a little bit this morning um i don't know how much i could like i i'm not gonna say anything that andrew didn't say himself in the tweets um you know i know that

it's not we we were assured that it's not like a continuation of the the layoffs that we saw early in the pandemic um i think eight percent of our staff um was let go at that time right and there was and that's what brian alludes to earlier yeah and there were some pay cuts and things like that and i think axios and a few other places had the details if you're interested um in stoughton's case uh we were told that it's not that um but i want to i'll just defer to you know i I figure whatever Stoughton wants out there about it is in the tweets that he sent out. So I don't want to talk at a turn on that one.

What you're saying is I have to violate the six foot rule and rough you up a little bit. Grab you by the scruff of your collar. I don't want to talk at a turn with anything other than, you know, it's not a sign of like another round of layoffs or anything like that. Okay, because one of the questions that came in which is now a little uh redundant uh is from chris in toronto so shout out to chris in

toronto who wanted to know he said andrew stodin was let go from the athletic today are blake's and eric's jobs safe so as far as you know you and eric are okay as of my arrival here today yes so at 241 we can confirm uh blake's a-okay yeah no we're still good i i don't think it was uh you know again you you'd have to ask andrew for the details and what he wants to share but yeah they they told us that it wasn't uh you know there's not we shouldn't expect more coming or anything like that well like yourself andrew's a great writer so it's just we're all of course naturally we're all curious yeah i mean i've been i've been reading stoughton since him and parks had drunk jays fans on a Blogspot site.

So, you know, when I came to The Athletic, he was actually, so to kind of bridge back to where we were before, when Adam came in 2016, I think it was 2016 when it launched and I was freelancing for them. So I freelanced for them for two seasons. And then they asked me to come on full-time, I think because I was writing for like five or six different places. And why would you pay for my stuff in one place if you're getting it for free everywhere else?

But no, Stoughton was one of the people I talked to about it because he had been there full-time and I wanted his take on what it was like. So yeah, I mean, I consider him a friend. I was super excited to get to work with him. And hopefully, you know, those who followed him or came to The Athletic for him

have found enough value to stick around. But also, you know, I'm sure Andrew's going to have some sort of Patreon or something like that to continue the kind of Drunk Jays fans to Birds All Day legacy because he does have a built-in audience because he's really good. He's one of the best voices,

if not, you know, my favorite voice on the J the jays yeah he's got his own audience there which is probably where his heart lies but i when i had keegan matheson on recently uh you know we talked about how he built up this thing called baseball toronto like he builds this thing up and then he sells out like just sells out for an mlb.com job. And I always think, you built up the brand, just go find a good writer. Go find the next Keegan Matheson. Anyway. And I mean, that's one of the things

that I'm proudest about with Raptors Republic, I think, is that contractually, I'm not there anymore. I can't write for them. I can go on their podcasts and stuff like that,

but I can't write there anymore. But like, Mizar Arsam and one other guy who handles the form side like that's kind of still our baby and to help kind of find the next writers and try to give people those opportunities and yeah find the next keegan or the next vivek jacob or the next you know katie heindel or whoever it is well because if you do that, and you know this because you watch this space so closely, but Keegan got the Gregor Chisholm role. Yeah. And Gregor Chisholm got the, is it Richard Griffin role? Because Richard Griffin took a gig with the Blue Jays PR.

So there's always got to be a backfill, if you will. It's got to come from somewhere. Yes, you'd think. I mean, the other option is that the number of jobs just continues to shrink and there is no backfill. But yeah, I mean, this is why things like Twitter and just online in general are great because, you know, if you have the patience and the drive or even just the passion to do it, you know, there's a chance it clicks and you get found out. Now, obviously, there's the other side of that where if you have, you know, if you have to write for free or for cheap for a long time to make it, that bakes in an element of privilege to the industry that I think we're all kind of facing. because mom and dad paid all their bills and stuff. And I always say that, which is essentially you've just made this an impossible dream for anyone who isn't fortunate enough

and privileged enough to be able to work for free for years. Yeah, and like this is, you know, I graduated Queens with a lot of student debt. Like I paid for it myself and worked like a factory job in the summers. But I got a decent job at a school and, you you know saved like crazy for a couple years so I could go to journalism school and then you know that gave me

a little bit of runway to write a lot for free or for cheap and you know I was working side jobs like I was when I was out in Vancouver I was an extra in tv and movies and I was washing windows and nice and you know the athletic department played paid a little bit but not that much so I was I was kind of doing everything um and but then even like you know I the athletic department paid a little bit, but not that much. So I was kind of doing everything. But then even, like, you know, I did two years at the score, and I wanted to do my own thing and go freelance full-time and try the Raptors Republic thing. And even then, you know, I had the benefit of being able to, like,

I did the standard, the blogger trope of I moved into my mom's place for six months just to, like, I left Toronto. I was living in Drumbo, and it was just, like, I I left Toronto, I was living in Drumbo and it was just like, I need to make sure I'm going to be able to pay my bills and do this. Cause I didn't want to, you know, and so obviously there's, there's some level of privilege there,

even for me as someone who kind of paid my own way through school and stuff. I just got out of student debt like last month. So, and this is OSAP? Um, bank loans. Yeah. Okay.

So student lines of credit. Yeah. That's a dangerous, that's a, that's a, that's a tough road to hoe as they say. I know. I. Yeah, that's dangerous. That's a tough road to hoe, as they say. I know. I feel it, man. I know. So it should be, I think, when we talk about systemic issues in our industry and how privilege gets baked into who gets the opportunities and who can make it.

It's not just who has the grind and who's the best and who, you know, will stick with it the most. It's who can afford to spend 15, 20 hours a week making 50 bucks for that, you know, for long enough to build up a following. So it's, you know, it's something that I hope, even someone, like I said, someone in my position who paid for my own education

and worked really hard and worked side jobs and stuff, you know, there's still an element of privilege there for me that, that I was able to, you know, get a, an undergraduate education and that I was able to live at home for a little bit. And so, you know, hopefully as we have these conversations and had the last few months, um, people in positions like mine or higher up or the people who are doing the, the hiring at different outlets, um, you know, hopefully we're all a little bit more aware about that now. I get mad because when you think about Rogers or Bell or Chorus, let's pick on those three.

So the amount of revenue that those three companies generate and the idea that they won't pay $14 an hour. I mean, just $14 is the minimum wage, I believe. Pay $14 an hour. The whole 14 bucks is a minimum wage i believe like pay 14 bucks an hour like what the whole unpaid internship it should be illegal like it should it should be illegal yeah i mean i'm i'm firm i don't think it's uh it's fair and i don't think you know i i don't think that the way it gets framed that the experience is worth more than uh money is fair because people still need to live right like you you still have to pay rent and eat.

It's not fair for all those people who can't afford to do that. Yeah, and it's the same thing now where we obviously have this huge, maybe more in the US, I'm not exactly sure what the OSAP situation is like countrywide here, but we have this huge student debt crisis

where not only have, uh, has post-secondary education become borderline unaffordable for anyone who's not upper class, uh, without, you know, getting into serious debt, but also now out of school, you're having, you know, the standard is you're working an unpaid internship or a low paid internship. And then, you know, you have entry- level jobs asking for two, three years experience for an entry level thing. And so, you know, it kind of becomes a system set up where, you know, obviously there's privilege baked in at every level. And also like, you know, you wonder why certain markets or the economy is so sensitive and things like that, or why CERB is necessary and it's because the the whole the

whole way it all works especially with post-secondary education and early career jobs it's just it's not sustainable I think for like us as a society and this is you know it's something that comes up all the time obviously I think it was a topic in maybe not the debate but it came up it came up with one of biden's speeches recently about you know what do we do about this student debt crisis and you know at least for people who make under x amount of money so um anyway to take this back to the sports industry um yeah i mean you're saying stick to sports no no i just i i mean that you one of the reasons you can't stick to sports is that you know all of these issues these issues that permeate the economy and our society in general are present in the sports media industry, too, where, you know, I'm a part of a very white media covering a predominantly black sport.

And, you know, those percentages don't need to be equal, but the opportunities need to be equal. And I don't think we're at a place where they are yet. Yeah, that's a subject that comes up often here, particularly because forever. but the opportunities need to be equal. And I don't think we're at a place where they are yet. Yeah. That's a subject that comes up often here, particularly because forever. And now there is a joke. There is a, there is a currently,

there's currently a program with, if I can speak with Eric Smith and Paul Jones, but which pretty new now that they got an hour, I think at 1 PM, I think on fan five 90. But prior to that, it was, it was all,

you know, wall to wall white dudes on the fan five 90. Yeah. And I mean, that, it was all, you know, wall-to-wall white dudes on the Fan 590. Yeah, and I mean, Ashley Docking was on the morning show, but only briefly. Yeah, she gave her a year and then she was let go.

Yeah, and it's great. I mean, I'm glad Eric and Paul have that spot. And Paul Jones was also named to the Canada Basketball Board of Directors today. Nice guy, right? Yeah, great couple of weeks

for Paul Jones. And he seemed like a sweetheart. Yeah, he's good. He's, you know, and obviously an important voice these last couple months on social media and on his platform on radio and TV. So, yeah, congrats to him on the radio show and Eric and then to Paul as well on the Canada Basketball. And Eric's also a very nice guy.

I've met him several times. And he was on the program a couple of weeks ago. And he's a good guy too. Yeah, we're pretty fortunate on the program a couple of weeks ago and he's a good guy too. Yeah. We're pretty fortunate on the Raptors beat. No assholes? No.

I mean, I don't know. What about Doug Smith? Somebody told me he was a jerk. No, Doug's the best. Doug is probably doing this exact thing right now, but without microphones and headset, like just sitting outside having a beer. Well, you know, Doug was in the calendar to a point where that morning he had a really good excuse.

Like I think he had to take his wife to an appointment or something. And it was a really good excuse, but we never got it rescheduled. I know he's got a book. He's got his book now that's come out or coming out soon. Yeah, I think it comes out later this month. But we need to get Doug, if you're listening, and of course you are, we need to get you back in the calendar to get yourself on Toronto Mic'd. You've got to do that.

Yeah. I mean, he's got a book to promote and his son has a book out. His son wrote a book about the Brock University Women's Basketball Program. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah. I had no idea his son was an author. So that's very, very cool. We're going to take a pause for a moment because I did reference that you had the beer.

By the way, they're fresh from the fridge. No pressure, but they're cool. Oh, I would love one. Yeah. I didn't know if they were set up this way or if I could crack i do make them pretty for the camera but you can move them there you own those uh so what are you going to crack open there the i'm going to go with the canuck pale ale first uh just because it's uh a lighter one at 5.2 percent and we're in the middle of the afternoon i might have to work a little later i guess the blonde is a little lighter none of them are too

heavy actually yeah well even the burst is not it's like it's a really delicious ip oh yeah the burst is only four and a half right because i used to do the uh the haze mama and oh yeah that's uh yeah i think that's what i had in my head when i looked at the burst yes no i know you're right because they have the similar similar and they're both the new england ips but the haze mama like if i take two down in a row like that's like i need to slow down now like so i have to start with the the burst like i can't just you know i have a very low tolerance here see i i normally have a very high tolerance i can sit down and have some beers i'm a beersman as as you might say um but and a beardsman yeah um over the last couple months so i have i have cut it back a lot because i've been trying to

lose a little bit of weight and be a little healthier. So when I went home to visit family a couple weekends ago, I had like a socially distanced bonfire with a couple people so we could sit the distance you and I are sitting right now and kind of catch up. And I had two, I can't remember, it might have been a haze mama. It was like six and a half percent. So yeah, maybe seven. Yeah. I had a couple of the heavier ones and I was like six and a half this year around now so yeah maybe maybe seven yeah i had a couple of the the heavier ones and i was like like i think i was three or four in and and i was just like whoo like normally it takes a lot more than that for me to you know need to settle my feet when i stand up from a campfire chair but yeah the the break from it change change the tolerance at least in the short term i I'll get it back. Yes.

I'll be ready for the season. Yeah, I was going to say, get on that, man. I'm going to help you out there. So yeah, and there's also a pumpkin ale. It's a really nice, subtle pumpkin taste. It's a really nice pumpkin ale and the blonde lager. And yeah, enjoy. Enjoy your Great Lakes beer there.

And that's a frozen lasagna beside the beer there. That's from Palma Pasta. So I should ask this way before you show up in my backyard, but are you a vegan or vegetarian? I am not. Okay. This is good news because that's a meat lasagna. That's the awkward moment where I'm like, I need to bike you another one when I get it. No, that's okay. It's that's one of those things where, um, morally I realized that veganism lines up with how I feel about things. And, you know, I, I really try to limit my red meat, um, intake because I know,

for health purposes, um, for health purposes, but, and because, you know, the beef industry has a huge impact on, um,

uh, climate change. Well, I will, so I produce a podcast called green economy heroes for Dr. Diane Sacks, who was the last environmental commissioner of, uh,

Ontario. And, you know, she, as she says, if you're going to do one thing, if you're only going to do one And, you know, as she says, if you're going to do one thing, if you're only going to do one thing for the climate change,

for the climate emergency we're facing, only to make one change, stop eating meat. Like that is the singular greatest effect you can have on the planet is to stop eating meat. Yeah, I'm a picky enough eater that this is an excuse,

but I think I would struggle to find enough meals that it wouldn't be super redundant to go full vegan. But you can just eat cheese lasagna. Yeah. Oh, vegan. Because vegan, you can't have cheese. Yes.

It depends if you do vegetarian. I think I'd do vegetarian. Okay. Yeah, you might be better off there. And then there are the ones who like they'll still eat eggs or what is it? Pescatarian.

And you can have seafood still. Fish and chicken, I think. Yeah. Maybe or something like that. It's all very complicated. That's pretty close to what I am anyway. Like short of a special occasion, I don't really eat red meat much anyway. Like I had access to a barbecue recently, so I had a steak.

But like that's a once in a while treat. But if we are going to put any sort of dent in the climate change as individuals, I don't know if we even get the occasional treats. But I also don't think that necessarily should fall on us when most of the damage is being done by the big corporations. See, that to me,

that mindset, and I get where you're coming from, but that mindset to me, it's sort of like, okay, so you're going to do nothing because you're just one guy and look at what China's doing. But if every just one guy does something, then maybe it makes sense. And it feels good to be a part of the solution. Even if it's just you. Don't get me wrong.

So I try to limit it. I don't have a car. I public transit or walk everywhere. And I try to limit the red meat. Your carbon footprint is smaller than your average Torontonian. Yeah, it's been cool to see, too. I'm a big music guy, and seeing some of the artists who obviously bands that tour around, that is something that also has a pretty good carbon footprint.

And some of the bands that I like, like the Toronto band Pup, they're friends of mine. Okay, cool. So what they've started doing is they try to make sure all their tours are carbon neutral so uh they raise money throughout the course or or uh throughout the course of a tour or they'll just donate out of their own um to offset the carbon footprint to climate change organizations i know the tragically hip had a deal with the bullfrog power where they would do that offsetting where you pay the premium on the Bullfrog Power. And I distinctly remember that. And by the way, there is a Bullfrog Power episode

of Green Economy Heroes. There's some cross-promotion there for you. But having said all that, there's some beef, right? There's some beef in that lasagna. You're going to love it. No, no, it's good. I'm looking forward to it. My roommate will appreciate it too.

You're going to absolutely love it. StickerU.com. It was raining, so I didn't grab the Toronto Mike sticker. But before you leave, when we take our photo, I'll get you a sticker. Toronto Mike sticker. Thank you, StickerU.com. That's where you go for your stickers, your decals, your temporary tattoos. I know Blake likes real tattoos, but it's all there online.

That's a good Liberty Village company. And you guys should support them. If you're looking to buy and or sell real estate in the next six months, let me know at mike at torontomike.com because I want to introduce you to Austin Keitner. Have a brief conversation with Austin. You can thank me

later. He knows his stuff and he's a great guy and that would make you a fantastic FOTM if you would do that. I want to thank CDN Technologies. CDN Technologies are your outsourced IT department. They're there if you have any computer or network issues or questions. You can phone Barb and ask her anything about this

at 905-542-9759 or you can write her. She's Barb at cdntechnologies.com. And last but not least, it's October. This is the final month. We're going to be talking about Pumpkins After Dark until hopefully next year. Pumpkins After Dark is a drive-through event

in Milton, Ontario. And it's amazing. You schedule your time online and they scan your ticket through the window off your phone and you do this 2.5 kilometer route and there's like thousands of sculptures and pumpkins illuminating the night sky and there's tunnels and it's bigger and better than ever and the kids will love it. The grandkids will love it and you can save 10% of the promo code miked. M-I-K-E-D. So everybody should do that.

Blake, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Eric Smith the other day, and I don't expect you to have any more insight than Eric had, but I need to know, what do you know? What's going on with Masai? Come on. What do you know?

Knew it was coming. Not much. You talk to different people, and different people have different concern levels about it. Like, obviously, there should be at least 1% concern until pen is the paper on an extension. Like, until it gets done, there's a chance that it doesn't. And there have been times where it's seen more likely and less likely. My colleague Eric Green wrote something a couple weeks ago that kind of touched on the idea of, well, like, what if it's not, you know,

the Knicks or the Wizards you have to be worried about? Like, what if with his Giants of Africa charity and with his work getting NBA Africa off the ground and with his work with political activism, you know, maybe the next move for Masai isn't in basketball. And that's why he's making sure to take care of Nick Nurse and Bobby Webster and, you know, maybe the next move for Masai isn't in basketball. And that's why he's making sure to take care of Nick Nurse and Bobby Webster and, you know, Shelby Weaver just moved up within their organization. I'm sure Teresa Resch will get taken care of on the same kind of contract timeline. So maybe there's something like that. And he's taking care of his people as a sort of transitional period.

It's also possible that Masai is being truthful in his season-ending press conference when he said, you know, we haven't talked about it yet because it's not immediate. I have a year left on my deal and I want to take care of all this stuff first. So I don't have anything like inside on that. You know, having observed Masai the last couple years, I don't think he'll negotiate through the media or, or kind of litigated in the media in less things go awry. Then, then you might see, you know,

Bruce or Granger or someone like that get something, but yeah, I, I, I don't know. It's if it kind of in my head, it's the start of next season is the date where, Oh yeah. If you enter the season lame duck, especially with the designs they have on making moves in 2021, like you either need Messiah in place longterm, or you need that succession plan to be very clear to sell guys on, on what you're building.

Yeah. And I think you, you guys are going down the right road there where, you know, he might have a higher calling, so to speak. We might not lose him to another basketball operations job, but it might be, I don't know, United Nations? I don't know.

Yeah, it's tough to imagine a better basketball situation where MLSC pays him well, and he has autonomy on the basketball side and to take care of his people. And MLSC, as I understand it is very helpful with the giants of Africa, um, programming and, you know,

allowing, uh, Masai that platform. So, um, I'm not sure there would be a better basketball situation, especially considering that autonomy factor. Like I can't,

the Knicks rumors always rubbed me weird because like, as if Masai is going to take his basketball orders from James Dolan's day to day whims. Like, but that is New York would be a place you might go as a gateway to that next life. Yeah. And,

and I thought, I thought New York was interested before they hired Leon Rose. I thought New York was actually interesting for Bobby Webster. Cause like, you know, that's where he met his wife and his wife has her own company. And, um, so that, but that would have been maybe interesting, but. And Blake, uh, because like you know that's where he met his wife and his wife has uh her own company and um

so that but that would have been maybe interesting but and blake uh if you and this is unrelated to messiah or the raptors here but uh did you want me to turn on this uh i'm staring at the uh outdoor heater right here like i could flip that switch are you okay no i'm good temp wise yeah i mean i got a little chillier once I cracked this New England pale ale burst from Great Lakes Brewery, but... If for no other reason, I want to know if you notice a difference, okay? You're like a bit of a guinea pig. Like, I just got this thing.

Is it turning red? Yeah, it is. Orange more than red, but yeah. Okay, orange. We'll take it. So your job in a few minutes will be to tell me whether there's any... If you can even feel any heat. Anything yet? No, nothing yet, no. Okay, Orange, we'll take it. So your job in a few minutes will be to tell me if you can even feel any heat. Anything yet? No, nothing yet, no.

Okay, because Stu Stone, I used it with him because he gets cold very easily because he spent some time in L.A. and it ruined him for Canadian falls or autumns or whatever. But yeah, he said he couldn't feel it and I feel like maybe I'm feeling like maybe I got ripped off. So I'll check in in a little bit and find out if you can even feel any heat coming off my, at least it turned orange, but geez, maybe I have to put it closer.

Anyway, all these things we're figuring out. This pivot, man, this COVID-19 pivot, like the fact that we can actually have a face-to-face is kind of amazing. Like we could have done this on Zoom, but here we are, like, you know, safely in my backyard face-toface, like the good old days. Yeah, 10 feet away. You don't need to be closer than that for a podcast. No, and I mean, it's about how far can your outdoors,

where the ventilation is 100% or whatever, so how far can my spittle travel? And our faces are in kind of different directions, too. I mean, I feel comfortable. If I tried, if I horked a loogie, I don't think I could read she right now. And I'm not going to do that. Yeah, please don't.

Don't worry about that. Nice comment from Scott Stratton. Scott says, no question. This is because I said, do you have a question for Blake? And he said, no question, but let Blake Murphy know. Every article he writes about the Raptors is a joy to read. Sports journalism at its finest. Oh, thanks, Scott.

So when you hear these things, because I'm sure you hear from people that they love your work, how does it feel? How gratifying is it that there are people who read what you write and think it's great and enjoy it? That's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, it's one of the best parts of the job right and especially coming from like a blogging background getting to be that kind of liaison between the fans and the team and not in like a not in a way that my my article is going to be fan service or you know pr or whatever but like fans especially hardcore fans are hungry

to get to know the team more and whether that's the personal side of players or just why certain things are happening, getting to kind of bridge that gap is really fun. And obviously comments like that are greatly appreciated. The way I'm wired is I could get 100 of those and one negative one, and I would think about the negative one. Sure, that's human nature, but that happens. Um,

no, it's great. It's, uh, and you know, this is, uh, the athletic comment section has tended.

I know this is not universal across every beat, but, um, you know, I think we, we seem to have cultivated a pretty, uh, good community and then the Raptors comments at the athletics.

So that's always fun. And then, you know, Twitter is Twitter. So there's, good community in the Raptors' comments at the Athletics, so that's always fun. And then Twitter is Twitter, so there's a lot of bad that comes with it, but I do think that Raptors' Twitter and the Raptors' online community is great, and it's not just for stuff like feedback from Scott like that, which is greatly appreciated, but just the community in general raising different voices

and obviously the championship helps. but just the community in general raising different voices and, you know, obviously the championship helps it. I don't know if, if Raptors Twitter came along during the, the leaner Colangelo, Rob Babcock eras. I don't know if it would be as good a community, but that's great.

So thank you, Scott. I'm going to take you back to an entry I wrote on my blog, torontomic.com. I wrote this in 2003, so I actually copied and pastedcom. I wrote this in 2003. So I actually copied and pasted it. So you ready?

Okay. There they were in the second round of the 2003 NBA draft with the 52nd pick overall. Still available. And I wrote, this is me writing at the time. So it's weird when you write something in the moment and you have to read it, you know, 17 years later or whatever. 17 years later, that's crazy. Still available, surprisingly, was Carl English,

the kid from Patrick's Cove, Newfoundland. This is a no-brainer, right? Draft the Canadian kid from the Rock and give the fans something to get excited about with an otherwise underwhelming second-round selection in a shallow draft. And the Raptors choose with the 52nd pick of the 2003 NBA draft hope I say it right Ramon Van de Heer and then I put who question mark so I wrote that in the

moment yeah in 2003 so uh you wrote a book about uh Carl English I did um So first of all, Ramon Van de Heer, not only did he never make the NBA and not be a good draft pick in that regard, he is the rare, this draft pick turned out so poorly. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He never even like, like I think he played on.

So in European basketball, uh, every country has its own league and maybe a couple of divisions. And then, um, it, it works closer to soccer where there's like Euro league is running at the same time. And then there's Euro cup and then there's champions league. Like there's different tiers. Uh, I think he only played a couple minutes, even like as high as Euro league. So he, not only did he not get the NBA he barely got

a cup of coffee in the top European leagues so uh bad pick I don't like it like I just feel for PR I felt at the time it was a shallow draft and no expectations on the 52nd pick and we got nothing so good thing there was no expectations but I just thought it would be a great story if they drafted Carl English like just for some pr purpose so so um for anyone who doesn't know carl english is a longtime canadian national team player he's from newfoundland where my family's from uh he was the first player i ever interviewed for a story when i just had my own blog i was like you know what maybe the new fee guy will talk to me use the new fee connection to to bring something up so um we had kind of become not you know as close as uh a writer and an

athlete can can get uh over the years and then he asked me to um write his help him write his biography now i agreed to do that before the raptors went on a championship run and uh had i known that they were going to go on a championship run the the timeline might have been different anyway uh it was great but one of the most gutting parts of the book and carl's life is filled with a lot of non-basketball tragedy as well um but one of the tougher parts of the book is draft night when he him and his agent rent a bar in Toronto, and all his friends and family are there, and there's lots of cameras from CBC and TSN and all that stuff, and everyone expects him to get drafted,

and then that Raptors pick comes up at 52, and he doesn't get selected. He actually said one of his more interesting perspectives in going through that book process with him was he thinks the PR thing actually went the other way where with the 50 second pick whoever you draft if you bring them into training camp you know there's like there's a good chance they're going to get cut and not make the team like second round picks don't always and he his thinking was that maybe there was too much of a PR risk of we bring this guy in and then we cut the Canadian we drafted. Remind me, who's GM

in 03? Remind me, I know. I can't remember. Yeah, whoever was before Babcock. Grunwald? Yeah, Glenn Grunwald. That's an interesting thought. To me, that's a bit crazy that you would think the PR would be worse for cutting

the kid than for just not drafting him at all like that's a bit of a yeah especially it looked especially bad too because um he got signed as an undrafted free agent like right away so it was like some other nba team clearly thought this guy was worth investing in at the nba level like that's just such a sad story. So to give it proper, again, to let people also know, it has started to rain again. So I've got my Ridley Funeral Home umbrella and then I've moved the camera

and hopefully I'm not going to lose thousands of dollars of gear here. But the book is called, wrote, sorry, it's called Chasing a Dream. Oh yeah, yeah. You're okay over there? Okay. Yeah, just moving my backpack out of the rain.

Any heat coming off the, anything? A little bit. Just a little bit, eh? Yeah, not a Dream. Oh, yeah, yeah. You okay over there? Okay. Yeah, just moving my backpack out of the rain. Any heat coming off the, anything? A little bit. Just a little bit, eh? Yeah, not a... Could you melt it? Would an ice cube melt with that thing or no? Maybe, slowly. All right, so maybe I have to get it much closer to my...

An ice cube would, an M&M wouldn't. We'll put it that way. All right. It would melt on your hands. Okay, but it's called Chasing a Dream, the Carl English story. I was actually, I'm a day one Raptors guy. That's a nice thing about having a team show up in 95

when I was old enough to appreciate it. A day one Raptors fanatic, you know, Jean Tabac era. Yeah. And, I mean, Alvin Robertson hit the, I think he had 32 that first game. But this whole idea that, you know, we went with the Ramon van de Heer over Carl English,

it really, really bugged me then. And it sounds like I got to read Jason A Dream, the Carl English story, because I'm already angry and upset about it again. Yeah, it's tough. It's, you know, Carl had some bad breaks in his career with injury timing. And, you know, Carl, Carl had some, some bad breaks in his career, um, with injury timing and, you know, he, he's an interesting, one of the chapters is about

kind of what happened when he was, when he went on drafted and he opted to go to the D league route, now the G league, but at that time, the D league, but at that time, the D league didn't operate the way it operates now. Like the Raptors didn't have a D league team and you would have been on a team with guys you know you're you're playing with a guy next to you but you're also competing for the same potential nba opportunity and so it's uh it was kind of a weird time for the d league as the nba was figuring out exactly what it was going to look like and they were like experimenting with a bunch of dumb stuff too like hey uh there's no such thing as three-pointers until the last minute of the quarter and stuff like that.

So, you know, Carl English, a three-point specialist, that takes away some of his value. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, like I think there was one year that like Matt Carroll, who had a decent NBA career, shot like 60% on threes because the only threes that counted were in the last minute of a quarter. And then like the fourth quarter or something like that, it was silly time, silly time. Okay.

That's too bad. Now. Uh, I like this question cause it's going to segue nicely into my, the next topic I want to address, uh, John Harris jr. So John Harris jr.

Asks, uh, ask him if he has actually purchased anything from Columbia house records. Yeah, of course. Yeah, from Columbia House Records. Yeah. Of course, right? Yeah, that was the name. That was the impetus for the name. So obviously I'm 34, so I'm kind of on the border of people who would have ordered Columbia House.

Because I did a lot of Columbia House. So my dad did a lot. And that's where you get the the 12 for a dollar or whatever, 12 for a penny. Yeah. Penny. Yeah. And then you have to meet the certain order volume the rest of the way that that's how they get you.

Um, so, you know, there was usually when my dad did an order, I could throw a CD or two on there. So, um, yes,

I did the first album I ever got off of there. And the first album I ever bought with my own money was Frog Stomp from Silverchair. Yeah, Tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

And Anna's Song, is that on there? Is that the next one? No, that's later. But Tomorrow is the big jam. Yeah.

I actually, that's like, Tomorrow's a great jam. Yeah. And they were just teenagers, right? Yeah, yeah,

and like crazy to go back and look at just how young, like I had no idea. I was like, I don't know, 12 at the time or something like that. But to go back and look at just how young like i had no idea i was like i don't know 12 at the time or something like that um but to go back and look at just how successful they were at that age and like

obviously some of that was the labels being like we had to capitalize on nirvana yeah and then you have daniel johns the lead singer who is also like a very attractive person it's like well maybe we can do but maybe we capitalize on nirvana and the boy band first at once right no uh and i remember it courtney love had a quote at the time about how he how much he looked like kurt yeah it's like a quote courtney at the time here and it's weird so so um daniel john's the lead singer he ended up getting um arthritis pretty early on so he i think he had to either he had to ditch the guitar or just minimize it. So he is a solo artist now, and it's not great. I had no idea because the last I heard from them was the year 2000,

Anthem for the Year 2000. Yeah, so that was off an album called Neon Ballroom. Right. They might have had albums after that but that was that was the last silver chair album i listened to no i do remember i saw him on edge fest touring off that album and i remember for some reason it's one of those bands where you know tomorrow was the big jam and they didn't want to play their big hit it was one of those guys and i well they they did like do a pretty hard pivot in sound um for neon ballroom

the album so anthem for the year 2000 sounded like a silver chair song but a lot of the rest of that album did not sound like a silver chair album like they went very soft and uh more like ballady um and i don't know how much of that was like i'd have to i'd have to look into how much of that was like hey daniel johns's hands are really sore and he can't play that level of guitar anymore um i'm not sure but they they definitely pivoted for that one what would you rather have uh kyle lowry's butt or og ananobi's calves this is uh this is a little arrogant uh i kind of have both i do i uh my i have a good lower half it's uh i have a check under the table yeah i do have a i have what you might call a hockey ass and then uh i think i do too yeah and i cycle a lot and i think it helps like i think

i've got a bit of a hockey yeah as will As William Liu once called me at a charity tournament, he called me PJ Trucker Hat instead of PJ Tucker. So that gives you the idea of what the lower half looks like over here. But I think functionally you'd go OG's Cavs. Like Kyle Lowry's butt is only really helpful in basketball terms if you're going to take a lot of charges like Kyle Lowry does. OG's calves will give you, like, that's a vertical jump muscle. So I think you're better off going with OG's calves.

What was your favorite thing about the Fantasy Sports Network and Liberty Village? Ooh, who does that question come from? That's also John Harris Jr. So I think I only did two or three hits there um with with ashley docking and chris uh a gentleman whose last name i'm forgetting i think he was at the athletic for a little bit um i did some fantasy baseball stuff with them at one point um it was cool i mean that was one of my first on-screen uh opportunities so your personal

friends of Ashley? Yeah. So how's she doing? Is she doing okay? Good, yeah. I follow her on Twitter. Yeah, I mean, I know she was out of town. She had to do the precautionary quarantine at some point.

So she was at her grandma's place or something like that. But I think she's doing well. Okay, cool. One day we'll get the real talk from Ashley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to like the St the certain situation i i'm not gonna say what i'm good at holding the water yeah i don't know what i'm allowed to say and what i'm not allowed to say so i know you have to ask her and uh i'm now holding two umbrellas of two hands because it's actually raining quite a bit and uh i i saw the cameras were getting wet and i don't want to lose those guys so i can't't actually, you know, move anything.

Yeah, I can't do any scrolling. Do you want me to come over and scroll for you? Would you come hold an umbrella for me here? Tell me about the podcast. So tell me about Columbia House Party, and also, I guess you have one also at the Athletic, right? Raptor's Reasonablists? Yeah.

Did I say that right? Reasonablists? Okay. Yeah, that's a Parks and Recreation joke, uh, I didn't get it at all. Yeah. So there's, there's the group of, um, like, uh, end of the world truthers, uh, in parks and rec who like think like every couple months they rent the park out because they think it's going to be the end of the world.

And like, they did the math and like, this is when the world's ending. And, um, but they call themselves the reason reasonable lists because if you disagree with them or argue with them by definition you are then not reasonable so it almost insulates you from criticism or disagreement so that's where our name comes from that's a podcast i do with the athletic usually with eric kareen today actually i had I had Malcolm Miller from the Raptors on. That was a great chat about what life was like in the bubble and player activism. His sister works for the National Fund, and he has a philosophy background and was pretty active before the NBA relaunch in terms of protests at his home in D.C.

That was fun. Mostly, though, it's just a generic Raptors podcast it's just Eric and I agreeing 85% of the time Eric's a guy he was booked too just like Doug Smith he was in the calendar and he asked to postpone it and then never got back in the calendar so look I'm

looking at this backyard and I think it's fenced in all the way around safely he could bring Walter his dog here let Walter run around like crazy. Totally. So, Eric, if you're listening, you can bring Walter. That's absolutely true.

This other podcast I'm very interested in as a former Columbia House patron. Tell me about Columbia House Party. Yeah, so Columbia House Party is a music podcast I host with my friend Jake Goldsby, who some people might know from Degrassi. He hates when I get brought up.

Because he's with the Jesse Brown Empire now. No, I'm thinking of the wrong Goldsby, maybe. Right. I think you're thinking of Jonathan Goldsby. Right. Okay. My apologies. Please continue.

Two Jake Goldsby's on Twitter is confusing. No, so my friend. Okay, from Degrassi. What character on Degrassi? He was Toby, who was like a bit of a nerdier tech guy. He was Drake's best friend in the show at some point. Oh, I was thinking the older school Degrassi. No, not all the way back. So Drake era, Drake era Degrassi.

Gotcha, gotcha. So he doesn't like being defined as the Degrassi guy, but for anyone who's listening who doesn't know Jake for his music podcast, he was on Degrassi. So yeah, I mean, Jake and I are like concert buddies where we worked together at the

score and we weren't actually, weren't really friends. But then once he left the score, we would like run into each other at concerts and is okay. Crack the second one. They're all yours, man. Yeah.

You own those beers these beers from great lakes brewery are just too delicious what have you cracked open just let me know okay in the first so the because because you originally were going to have that first and then you switched it to the burst yeah the burst was great okay good so now uh for the record blake murphy's enjoying his connect pale ale from great lakes brewery yeah and they do delivery by the way uh you know during the covid they'll deliver you cases of Great Lakes beer. The guy on the can kind of looks like me. That's Gordy Levesque.

Yeah, so Jake and I, we weren't, you know, we didn't hang out that much or anything when we were at the score together. But then we would run into each other at concerts or be going to the same show and we kind of became concert buddies. And now we're really good friends. I was supposed to officiate his wedding uh this month but uh obviously weddings

are not really happening here in toronto so that's postponed um but yeah so we you know obviously if you're friends and you go to lots of concerts together you have lots of music takes and jake has a lot of hot takes on i love people who have hot takes on things yeah i'm so neutral all the time it's yeah i'm so i'm very korean invented the hot take uh expression right yeah i i don't know about that but he's certainly uh someone gives him credit and someone i trust gives him credit with that so yeah yeah uh eric's latest thing is he he has used hoisted by his own petard like 400 times in the last couple months but it's in his credit like a lot of people are being hoisted by their own petards

lately so um but no so jake and i uh we had this idea jake actually had the idea for the podcast and what it was originally was um my favorite murder but for music so in my favorite murder they they go deep on um different murders or crime mysteries and stuff like that and kind of one person brings the story to the table and they react to it and talk around it he wanted to do that for albums um and where we kind of got with it was after some back and forth and some trial episodes was well we're just gonna you know we're not gonna frame it like that but we're going to go deep on some albums, either we love or the guests love. So go ahead.

No, no, I love this. Please can know. I love this premise. Yeah. So, you know,

at first with Jay, with the tastes that Jake and I have, you know, it was going to be pretty pop punk and emo centric and like turn of the century, kind of like late nineties, early 2000s stuff. And, you know, the idea was we would get guests on and we would just ask them like, Hey, emo centric and like turn of the century, kind of like late nineties, early 2000s stuff. Um,

and you know, the idea was we would get guests on and we would just ask them like, Hey, give me three albums that really influenced you or you really love, or you really like to talk about, and then we'll pick one and we'll just, and like Jake and I have like a rough format that we follow. Uh, and we trade back and forth who's kind of the lead for an episode,

but really like, especially once we get a guest on, we just start talking about the band and see where it takes us. And like we follow, and we trade back and forth who's kind of the lead for an episode. But really, especially once we get a guest on, we just start talking about the band and see where it takes us. We had a guy named Sam Sutherland on for an Alexis on Fire episode, and we were going on tangents like 10 minutes off to the side about Protest the Hero or this local Toronto show from the early 2000s or whatever. So it's a lot of fun. We've had a couple musicians on now too,

which has been great. And, you know, it's not necessarily a Canadian music podcast. I think only something like eight of the 52 episodes we have in the can are Canadian bands, but, you know, some Canadian music guests. And it's been a lot of fun. Honestly, it sounds like it's right up my alley.

And I think a lot of people listening to Toronto Mike love that stuff. Like what I do is I have guests back a second time to kick out the jams. So you basically like, like, you know, Damien Cox has done this. There's been 75 of these things. So people tell me their list of 10 favorite songs of all time and we play them and chat about them.

And I honestly want to get a hand free because I want to play a song and ask you about it because I have one of your favorite songs loaded up here. So I'm just going to see if I can do this without destroying all my gear. Oh man. Do you want me to get up and help you? Well, I know you're trying to stay six feet apart

so I don't want to... I can put my mask back on. Okay, so if you hold this one up high and I will not breathe while you're in my presence here. Safety first, as I tell my kids. Safety first. So, all right.

So, yeah, you can even get high, high, high. So this one here, you're going to hold that right there. You got that okay. I know this is the lengths we go to here. And I'm going to start playing a song, and I have a few loaded up. I don't even know which one to play, but let me start one here.

You've got this new head filled up with smoke I got my veins all tangled close To the jukebox bars you frequent The safest place to hide A long night spent with your most obvious weakness You start shaking at the slide You are everything I want Cause you are everything I'm not

And we lay, we lay together just not Too close, too close How close is closing in? We lay, we lay together just not Too close, too close I just wanna break you down so badly I'd like to get this just now. Too close, too close. I just want to break you down so badly. We'll act up over everything you say.

I just want to break you down so badly. In the worst way. Am I an articulate stopper? Blake, what are we listening to, buddy? We're listening to Make Damn Sure by Taking Back Sunday. Tell us why you love this song. Yeah, Taking Back Sunday is one of my all-time favorite bands. And I think, in my opinion, one of the bands from the pop-punk explosion of the early to mid-2000s that hold up really well. Like, I would say their album, Tell All Your Friends,

is still one of my favorite albums of all time. And when they were... Actually, one of the last concerts I got to go to before everything went the way it did was Take It Back Sunday playing Tell All Your Friends front to back, as well as the album that this is off of, which is called Louder Now. So I picked this song just because it's a little, I mean, I think it was also their most popular radio song.

But Take It Back Sunday are one of my favorite bands. And I think one of the, like that Tell All Your Friends album and this album, Louder Now, are some of the impetus for the Columbia House Party podcast. Like when Jake and I sat down and talked about the idea of a podcast i was like absolutely this is the one like these are the albums that i'm gonna want to talk about ironically we're a year into the podcast and haven't talked about taking back sunday yet but uh it's coming uh okay i'm gonna try to i'm gonna switch screens i do have a question about the podcast here maybe i'll do it real fast here real quick quick like this. Real fast.

Flip that out. Okay. Good. Steve Leggett says, could you ask how large an audience Columbia House Party has in the United States? I noticed they have had ads from US government. Also, what is the bumper music they use

on Columbia House Party? Sounds like a pop punk version of Today by Smashing Pumpkins, but I'm not familiar with it. Nice. It does sound like that. It's not an actual song. It's just like there's music available to purchase for exactly that purpose. So we went through a bunch of pop punk and ska sounding ones

and just picked that one. So it's royalty-free? No, I think you pay a little bit for it. So you license the song. Yeah, and there are dozens and dozens of them that you can get through the service, and we whittled down a few of them. So what we should have done is my friend Steve Slykowski,

who's the guitarist for Pup, I should have just forced uh my friend steve slikowski who's the the guitarist for pup i should have just forced him to make us one but uh i have not called in that favor yet i got ill vibe who's a local rapper producer to do my uh opening theme so yeah it's great it reminded me of uh back when i did a podcast for the baseball site beyond the box score a friend of mine named connor who raps under the name kill a khan did me an awesome like 30 second intro that like had baseball history in it and like advanced stats and it was great oh i love it I run away, I run away with you This is the part you gotta say, all that you're feeling, feeling Picking it back, leaving tonight while everyone's sleeping, sleeping

Let's run away, I run away with you Cause you make me feel like I could be driving you all night And I'll find your lips in the streetlights I wanna be there with you Baby, take me to the feeling I'll be your sinner in secret When the lights go out Run away with me, run away with me Baby, every single minute I'll be your hero

When the lights go out Run away with me Run away with me Up in the clouds High as a cloud All right, what are we listening to here, Blake? We're listening to Run Away With Me by Carly Rae Jepsen. Now, great pop song, but I wouldn't have guessed you for like a big fan of this kind

of pop music. But tell us why you love this. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed me for a fan of this type of music a couple of years ago either. So Carly Rae Jepsen has kind of represented like my I guess I would call it like my pop awakening. So this album came out, I think in 2015. And to that point, I was not in like, I don't know how to describe it, but I was there, like I had blinders on for pop music. Like I was, I like punk and I like emo and I like some indie stuff

and I like a little bit of hip hop and pop music was just like not for me. Like it's too saccharine. It's too sugary. You were snobby against the top 40 music. A little bit. And, you know, the secret about top 40 is that that stuff gets popular for a reason. Because sometimes, I mean, look, some of it isn't good, but some of it is really good.

I mean, look, some of it isn't good, but some of it is really good. And in my head, Carly Rae Jepsen was the call me maybe person. Sure. And then this album, Emotion, came out. And I saw some positive tweets about it and some positive reviews from people I trust. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot. I was training for a half marathon at the time.

And it was, so I was like fired it up on, on some of my longer runs. And it's all songs like this where, you know, emotionally and lyrically it's right up my alley in terms of the, like the heartbreak pop punk. And then the musically it's so good and upbeat and so fun. Um,

all of her music is like really good workout or running music. And I mean, this album is just, and she also released a full B side off, uh, from emotion and they're both just like hacked with great songs like that. Like warm blood is another song off of this album. That's just incredible.

Um, so as I, it was one of those things where, like, have you ever had something where, like, you like it at first and you like it ironically, and then it sneaks up on you that you like it actually? I think so. I think I've experienced that, for sure. So, like, I used this song.

The Raptors started the 2015-2016 season 5-0, and they had this incredible win on the road against Oklahoma City with the Westbrook-Durant thunder. And it was like, people went into that season, they were coming off of two straight sweeps in the playoffs. Sorry, coming off of a sweep in the playoffs at the hands of the Washington... Is this the Rudy Gay year,

or am I got the wrong year here? No, no, later than Rudy Gay. Okay, yeah. This is Damari Carroll-Bismack Biambo year. So they start 5-0. They have this incredible win in Oklahoma City. The headline at Raptors Republic for my postgame for that one was just, run away with me.

And it was just like, you know what? This team is like, there's something here and they're a little better than we thought. And then obviously that year ended up being the year they went to the Eastern Conference conference finals for the first time and took the calves to six games and like up until the championship like clearly the best and most fun raptor season yes indeed uh there had been so um you know around that same time i i obviously it was or that early enough that season i i used that headline um but i love that album and it was kind

of it was kind of a wake-up call of like hey i i engaged with this because like oh yeah haha carly ray jepsen has a song i really like and then it's oh yeah haha carly ray jepsen has an album i really like and then it's like wait a second maybe i should be giving more of this stuff a chance and around the same time um robin released honey which was her first album in a really long time. And that was really good. And then this is maybe even weirder than Carly Rae Jepsen, but not long after that, Nick Jonas released a solo album that is like really synth poppy like that. Tegan and Sarah, a band who I really liked for like kind of emo music, they went synth pop too. And then Paramore, who were like the female-fronted pop punk band,

went synth pop too. And it was like, you know what? Carly Rae Jepsen opened the door for me to find. Churches are not a band that made a pivot, but like one of the absolute best. Oh, yeah. Marry Me Archie, is that them? No, that's Always. Always, right. absolute best oh yeah they're they're uh marry me archie is that them no that's uh that's always always yes um no churches uh churches have had some songs but not a ton yeah indy 88 played the hell out of uh yeah indy 88 when their last album uh love is dead came out indy 88 like uh

their their first concert on that tour was at the danforth music hall and it was an indy 88 right yes thing oh they went heavy on churches. But they're great and it's like for me as someone who likes to be active and go for runs or go to the gym or whatever this kind of I'll use synth pop as a term to kind of capture all of

the more upbeat pop and often female fronted but not always. It's very good like activity music in a way that like a lot of the more emo or indie stuff i listen to just like isn't high energy enough like like i love the hotel year but they're not like they're certainly not going to give you that extra juice uh on a run or a bike ride or something like that in the way that um you know a really good pop song can.

So you basically took the guilty pleasure and stripped out the guilt. I no longer believe in guilty pleasures. Okay, I like this. Yeah, so Carly Rae's another one. We haven't done an episode on yet on Columbia House Party. Part of that is because

she's become like a pretty prominent, uh, artist in terms of LGBTQ community representation. And we would like to get someone from that community on to, to kind of speak to that. Um, so we want to kind of save that, uh,

for a little bit. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, she was responsible for my, my pop awakening. awakening and my girlfriend likes you well at DHC And she's so smart and independent

I don't think she needs me Quite half as much as I know I need her I wonder why there's not another Guy that she'd prefer And when I feel like giving up Like my world is falling down I show up at 3 a.m. She's still up watching Vacation

And I see her pretty face Josie! Blink-182. All right, tell us why you love this jam. One of my first favorite songs. So, Damn It was actually my first big Blink-182. All right, tell us why you love this jam. One of my first favorite songs. So, Damn It was actually, like, my first big Blink-182 song. When I was in, I want to say seventh grade, maybe sixth grade, I had to go to, like, a child psychologist.

I was having some, like, behavior issues and stuff. And Damn It was on the charts at that time so um london i think it was 95.9 fm had like that was their alternative station like that was their version of the edge right and they would do the top seven at seven and basically my reward for going to uh therapy on wednesdays or whatever day it was was my appointment was six to seven and then on the drive home I would get the whole Top 7 at 7 in on 95.9 so you get songs like Flagpole Sitta

from Harvey Danger and Damn It by Blink-182 so Dude Ranch was like my album at that point and for a lot of people and Blink-182 I would say are still like you know one of my all time favorite bands

they were actually you know in terms of Columbia House Party Jake and I went to so when Blink-182 first toured with Matt Skiba in Tom DeLonge's place they played the Molson Amphitheater and Jake and I got very drunk and went to that concert

so that's like part of the podcast origin story. And when we pitched it to Space Monkey Inc., the company that through Stringer Labs produces our podcast for us, the example we used of what like an arc of the podcast could look like, because every episode connects to the last one, was built around Blink-182. And we're and we're like look hey we could start with pixies and pixies are like an obvious blink 182 influence and matt skiba is now in blink 182 so we'll go from pixies to alkaline trio because there's a song by alkaline trio called um love love kiss kiss that basically steals a

pixies guitar riff to start, or maybe a bass riff, I can't remember. And then we'll go from Alkaline Trio to Blink-182. And then from Blink-182, we'll go to Plus 44, which was the Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker side project. And from there, we'll go to Travis Barker. We'll go to Lil Wayne's Rap Rock album because Travis Barker was the drummer on it.

And so we use that to kind of illustrate all the different ways that the connections could go. But yeah, mostly though, Blink-182 are one of my favorite bands of all time. And I think what the song Josie is great for is that punk and emo and pop punk have been, I mean, music in general, but especially that genre in the late 90s, as it was starting to pick up momentum. You know, it's not great when you go back and listen to some of that stuff in terms of the way relationship issues are framed.

It's not, I don't know if it's like fully misogynistic, but it is certainly like, you did this to me, you jerk, I hate you. And Blink-182 were like one of the first and certainly the first popular band to kind of spin that and be like wait a second I'm an immature jerk at 23 you know maybe I'm part of the problem and maybe you know turning and then like obviously they turned it introspectively in a very jokey way but a lot of the bands that they influence that you see now like I mean they're not together anymore but modern baseball or a joyce manor um those kind of bands their lyrics

are far removed from what you would get from late 90s pop punk where now it's um you know it's not as jokey as blink-182 but it has that more introspective like hey i'm uh and you know dashboard confessional was probably they're not obviously not pop punk they're they're firmly on the like indie emo side um but the way that they tackled that kind of teen and young adult angst from uh hey you're not the problem and i'm not the problem necessarily it's like the emotion itself is the problem how do we work through that um so so something like that and then somebody like blink coming through and being like hey we all need to maybe hold up the mirror and like you're a jackass and it's a little understandable if if josie um you know after after months and

months of you showing up drunk at 3 a.m and eating her leftovers uh if as happens in the song damn it she leaves you for another guy um so you know i i love that song for kind of i think it captures the way blink obviously blink's commercial success really influenced uh the way labels and major labels and radio invested in pop punk but in terms of the bands that came after them and listened to them uh the way kind of lyrically a lot of the stuff pop punk tackles shifted oh that's very interesting. Oh, very,

very interesting. Now I need to final two questions here. Uh, been fantastic. I guess I've never worked so hard during like a 90 minute conversation because yeah, you're, you,

you've gotten quite the shoulder workout holding up those umbrellas. I just, it's just, it's all my goodness, but it does look like the skies are blue above us right now. It has turned into a beautiful afternoon now. I know. And I don't think we lost anything.

Like everything seems to be functioning still. So I think we got away with it here. My posture got worse. That's the only, you're holding up the umbrellas and then I forgot we were on. Are you dry there? Yeah, I'm great. Okay, good.

And that mic of course is dry. Yeah, we're good. The stand is a little wet, but we're good otherwise. Yeah, the stand's okay. Now there's no heat getting to you though from my uh brand new uh backyard heater it's not a lot i think what you might need to do is get a one more sponsor for the podcast to get i get a heater sent out here i am so disappointed if it was a little closer like i can feel it a little bit maybe if it were closer but or maybe if it was colder you'd notice it more yeah like like if this were november

december i don't know if that's cutting it i'm trying to extend my back it's like nine or ten degrees today we're fine all right i don't think we've answered steve leggett's uh question i'm gonna be like the moderator should have been last night for the vp debate here but you what are what's up with the ads from the u.s government oh um so this is like pulling back the court the curtain a little bit more but that's what we do around here yeah so um you know patreon supporters of ours uh can get like an ad free version but the ad version so sometimes i'll get an ad read like like you do obviously and that gets inserted in um but sometimes we we have it structured where um there's a pre-roll which is before the

podcast and then there are two mid-roll spots in our podcast breakdown um so if we don't so you don't control what the ads are going to be for not all of them right so if we you know i might have a manscaped one and have to talk about shaving my bits um or i might have you know some record label has a new album coming out and and they're advertising with us or whatever but if there are any if any of those three spots are open um the whatever i can't remember what the what the thing is but there's some broker in the middle who just inserts in an ad that yeah exactly and that's where those u.s government ones yeah and they've also like we've run into it before like one time one of them is in spanish and like something got something got

messed up in the code or something like that and it was just like uh this this should not be on our podcast i don't think right okay maybe it was the episode we did on de saparacitos or something like that and they thought hey that's a that's a latin sounding name well maybe it messed with the audio yeah i'm not sure so i'm sorry if you're getting u.s government ads but we we only control the ones that me or jake are reading right okay that makes sense to me and last but not least uh does the nba does this crazy very long 2019 2020 nba season does it come to an end Friday night? What does your crystal ball say? Is it all over Friday night? My crystal ball is foggied by the fact that I bet on Lakers in six specifically

before the series. So I'm hoping Jimmy Butler pulls out one more. I would like it to extend one more game, both because I'm not ready for a couple months without basketball, especially since normally when the season ends, it's like, okay, you know what? It'm not ready for a couple months without basketball, especially since normally when the season ends, it's like, okay, you know what? It's going to be a couple weeks, and then it'll be the offseason, and then I'll get Summer League. I'll be out in Vegas and get all these games with guys no one's ever heard of.

We don't get that this time around, so more basketball is better, and also I would like to cash that bet. Miami wins Friday, and then we get one more. Lakers in six. It could happen. It could easily happen. Now that game four I watched actually my 18 year old who lives in Waterloo came here for the Thanksgiving

week and these classes are on Zoom anyways so you can do them here. So I watched the game with him and he I guess he he's only 18 but he decided to do this prop bet. He bet 15 bucks that LeBron James would score 30 or more points. This was the prop bet.

You might remember there was a three-point shot. They reviewed it and said the foul happened before the shot, and it didn't count. And LeBron, he had a very slow start scoring-wise. He ended up with 28 points. It reminds me why I don't ever bet on these games. I just enjoy them because it can drive you bonkers. It can, and it's why if you were going to bet regularly,

obviously if you want to make money off of gambling, you have to have a huge sample size. You have to bet a ton and put a lot of money on the line so that those swings even out. But that game, I had a beat like that in that game as well. I had bet on heat plus 7.5. So when the intentional foul game starts at the end, That game, I had a beat like that in that game as well. I had bet on heat plus seven and a half. So when the intentional foul game starts at the end,

and it's like, hey, maybe we'll get the ball back, and everyone's rolling their eyes, and the game's over, stop it. And the Lakers go back ahead 10. I'm like, well, that sucks. And then with one second left, for no reason, Tyler Harrow hit a three and covered the spread. Right. It's like on The Simpsons when Lisa got a meaningless field goal to cover the spread, right?

Yeah, exactly. Tyler Hero just padding his stats. That's right. Dude, you were awesome in your Toronto Mike debut. We did the three jams, but at some point you got to come back to kick out 10 other jams. Yeah, I could do seven more. Yeah, 10 more. Whatever. You have to do 10 others. I have a music podcast. I could do 10 other jams. Yeah, I could do seven more. Yeah, 10 more, whatever. No, you have to do 10 others.

I have a music podcast. I could do as many jams as you want. We kick out lots of jams on this program, even tonight, actually. We are kicking out killer jams. So Stu Stone and Cam Gordon are coming by for our 30th Pandemic Friday episode, and each of us pick five killer jams.

And we're going to talk about Stu's new movie, Faking a Murderer, which is now available. I actually have seen it and I'll talk about that tonight, but back to you, Blake Murphy. Long may you run. Continued success and may the

athletic promote you to chief bottle washer at some point. Or something like that. And that brings us to the end of our 733rd show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Blake, remind me, what is your Twitter handle? It's at BlakeMurphyODC.

What does ODC mean again? The very first blog I had was called The On Deck Circle, a baseball blog. And somehow Blake Murphy was taken. Okay, well, Blake Murphy is a popular name in Dublin, I believe. A lot of Blake Murphys. Blake's making a comeback, right? Like in terms of a first name, Blake is making a bit of a comeback. I guess.

I mean, it's gender neutral, which is always great because when you're naming a person, you don't know how they might identify yet. Well, my youngest is Morgan, so same kind of deal. Absolutely.

You're absolutely right. So follow Blake on Twitter. He's a good follow. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U.

The Keitner Group are at The Keitner Group. CDN Technologies are at CDN Technologies. And Pumpkins After Dark are at Pumpkins Dark. See you all next week. It's true because everything is coming up rosy and green. Yeah, the wind is cold. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls.

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