Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - FOTMCast: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1774

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

In this 1774th episode of Toronto Mike'd, and 7th FOTMCast, Cam Gordon and Tyler Campbell visit to recap the previous quarter of Toronto Mike'd episodes and discuss what's new in the TMU. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

I'm Lauren Honnickman, lawyer and former City TV's legal specialist. In the following episode of FOTM cast is intended for real heads only. If you're not deeply immersed in the TMU, a devout FOTM, do not listen. I'm not kidding. Stop playing this episode. Now! Somehow our innocence is lost. A little flat on innocence, but other than that, it was great. We'll go again. One more time.

Somehow our... That's my sound, man. Stu Stone. Yeah. Who's Stu Stone? Combing the depths of the team. for a quarterly review of fact checks, figures, and phrases that you didn't know you needed. It's FOTM cast with your hosts, Toronto Mike, Cam Gordon, and Tyler Campbell. Welcome to episode 1,770.

74. That's our birth year VP. It is. Of Toronto-Miked. What a year of us? Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer.

Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma pasta. in Mississauga and Oakville. Blue Sky Agency,

the official distributor of Silen's quiet, comfortable and customizable office pods. Create sanctuary within your workspace. Nick Aienis, the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Building Success, two podcasts you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.ca, committing to our planet's future,

means properly recycling our electronics of the past, and Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, I guess you already said this part, right? In the opening part, I'm going to do it again. Returning for this seventh FOTM cast. It's Cam Gordon and the VP of Sales, Tyler Campbell. Woo!

You know, this is a good part of the song you don't always get to. It's just kind of nestled in there. Yeah, but... They would like the breakdown. Yeah, a little middle-eight break. Love it. How are you guys doing? Let's start with UVP since you got here first.

How are you doing, buddy? I'm great. Thank you. It's been nice hanging out with you and Morgan while we prepped for the show. Yeah, great to see you both. Good job on this. let the listenership know. You put this opening theme together. We were talking

about what should it be and we've decided there will be a song from each quarter that will be used for the opening theme. And this is the Sophie B. Hawkins song Damn, I wish I were your lover. Very appropriate. And that's a song from this past quarter. I know you're

about to explain what we're doing here but I want to know how the hell my good friend FOTM Hall of Famer. You're also an FOTM Hall of Famer, Tyler. But how are you doing Cam Gordon? Yeah, all good here. Just rolled in through rush hour. Put you on suicide watch over here.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm just collecting my thoughts. Yeah. Trigger warning now. No, no, no. I'm all good. Thank you. Thank you. Just like I said, we do this, you know, four times a year. And I must say, like, I was sort of saying, I was texting you guys, every quarter, it seems to get that much harder to get over here by TTC and more obstacles. well I'm sorry to hear that no that's okay I'm kind of used to it

but yeah I don't know anyway always good to be here and I don't take for granted every not only be able to do this but just every quarter that we have what did you two think of the cold open by Lauren Honnickman Oh right yeah that was good I like it Yeah I love I love yeah

Okay what the hell are we doing here Tyler set us up What is FOTM cast I hope that everyone heated Lauren's very stern warning so if you're not a real head then please turn this episode off go listen to I don't know

something else Toronto Legends Toronto Legends there you go that's what you should listen to if you're not a real head the Paken podcast So like to reiterate what Tyler just said like this is our seventh FOTM cast and we're not almost two years we've been doing that's right

we're not fooling around anymore okay this is a quarterly episode for Realheads Only and to be blunt, and I say this, I look at the download numbers. Ian Service has given me this analytics portal. The download numbers for the last FOTM cast were just too damn high. Really?

Just too damn high. Can you give us a sense of what that number is? In my opinion, I won't be too specific, but I feel like there are non-diehard listeners that are tuning in to FOTM cast. And I feel like if you're not fully immersed in the TMU, you should not listen to FOTMCAT. Basically, unless we achieve record low numbers,

this whole exercise is a complete failure. I'm staying up all night, refreshing the analytics page from Ian Service. And if I see the number of downloads for this episode of FOTM cast, if I see it exceed 100, not 100,000, if it gets greater than 100, I honestly think I'm going to blow this up and start again.

Like we did something wrong. But is it the case, Mike, that anyone who is already subscribed to the show would be counted as a download? Depends on your podcast app. I was going to say, yes, subscribers. Because we might be sunk already, you know. Well, okay, I hope not.

But I do want to say hello to the real heads who have joined us on the live stream, live dot Toronto mic.com. That is, of course, Andy, she's a real head. I'm glad she's there. Ian Service, who we already mentioned, definitely a real head. Canada Kev.

Now, that's a real head. And Leslie, who I just saw, I saw Canada. I did not see Canada again, but I saw Andy and I saw Leslie and I saw you two at TMLX 20 last week. It was good to see you there. Yeah, it was a great time. This might be my low-key fave TMLX event. I sort of like the timing, sort of after Labor Day, everyone's back from summer vacation. Smaller crowd. Yeah. Smaller crowd. No live recordings. So you just kind of hang. We were capped at 40 people at GLB Brew Pub. So thank you to Great Lakes for hosting us. they are going to be sending beer over to Palma's Kitchen for TMLX20,

and we have a date for that. It is November 29th, the last Saturday of November at noon. That's happening. And everybody listening, of course, that's less than 100 people. But everybody listening is invited. I would love to have more real heads at TMLX20 in Mississauga on November 29. Did you have a good time at TMLX20, Tyler? I had a great time.

It's always good to see fellow. F-O-T-Ms, real heads were not. Had a nice catch-up with Larry, our mutual friend Larry. Who had an episode this past quoted. Oh, shit, like Scott Thompson. Yes. Oh, my God. What does Larry look like? He's a tall

man. He's very tall. He has a beard or like a goatee. He's a handsome man. Did he leave a bit early? He did. Okay, yeah, yeah. I think told me it was the first time him and his wife had been downtown in some time. Oh. He was sitting in the corner. Yeah, yeah. But Arlene, his wife, who was

also there, and they're both lovely people. She's the one who actually is the Scott Thompson manager, agent? I don't know what the turn is, but absolutely, we will talk more Larry. Yeah, yes, that's right. So, Tyler, here's what I want to do, because I know this could be a very long episode, because

I lost again to, but I just want to as succinctly as we can, I want to tell the tale, and Cam, you'll have to do a lot of listening here because you weren't at either event. But Tyler and all, I went to two concerts at the Budweiser stage. That's right. sorry, the freshwater stage.

We were at Neil Young, and then we were at The Who. That's right. And I, this is not like we bought two tickets to go together. Like, I just got a ticket. I rode my bike over, and you also were there riding your bike over, and we're like, let's hang out for these. But I'm hoping maybe you'll pick it up because people are probably tired of my voice because it's on every episode trying to mic. But I want to hear from you the interesting TMU tale that spins out of the Neil Young concert and then we want to hear about this TMU tale. I don't think Cam's going to even believe

it. That's right. Some, some great times. And first of all, say, it's always a pleasure. I'm very glad to be hosting, co-hosting the show with both of you. Because this is not like a Tom cheek and Jerry Howard situation where it's like they're on the air together and then they go their separate ways. You know, like we, we, we hang out socially. It's, you know, we enjoy each other's company. So, so this is, this is something that we enjoy doing. And we, we, we, we, we, sometimes go to shows together. Set your watch to it. Can I crack open a great lake while I listen to these tales?

I would like to do that as well, actually. Okay, on the mic, please, VP. One, two, three. Oh, yeah. Okay, cheers to you two gentlemen. Okay, pick it up. So you and I find ourselves at Neil Young. At Neil Young, we're on the lawn, sort of at the very back.

And we're hanging out. Langer is there. Key part of this story. Yes. Langer went 20 for 20. He attended his 20th TMLX event last week. That's right. And when we say Langer, we're speaking of Michael Lang.

The guy who put on Woodstock. That's right. The guy who put on Woodstock. A veteran of the TMU. Good guy. He and I have a bit of a sort of a k-fabe rivalry in the... Which I love, by the way. It's one of the more enjoyable aspects of the team.

It's great. But the secret is that we're actually pals, you know. Well, this story will speak to that. So we're having a good time. Neil's on. He's playing. In the meantime, you have sort of walked over because we've realized that our other friends from the TMU. I said tell the story and I realized I actually wanted to tell the story.

So we're going to both tell the story. So the three of us are together watching Neil Young. It is me. It is UVP. And it is Langer. Okay, I know. And I'm on, uh, I checked my phone to learn from our not so secret FOTM WhatsApp group that two gentlemen are also on the lawns together,

Canada Kev and Andrew Ward. That's right. And I decide, I think I knew where they were. They said where they were. And I said, oh, that's just over here.

They were very close to us. I said, I left us three to go find them, to bring them to us so we would become five FOTMs. That's a right. So that's what I did. I brought them over. The great uniter.

VP, take it away. Yeah. The great connector. That's right. So we're standing there and joining Neil. and Andrew Ward, Wardo, pulls out a little container

containing some marijuana cigarettes, if I may say. Splifts? Splifts, if you will, yeah. And very kindly, very generous of him. He offers them around. What a mention. Not just passing a single joint around,

but offering a full joint. A full joint was offered to all three of us. To each of us, yes. You took one? I did take one, yes. Langer took one. Langer took one. And I politely declined.

I was enjoying a IPA and I didn't feel I need it. I was high on Neil. You were good. You were good. Yeah. I was smoking Neil. That's right. So,

um, we know, we're enjoying the, the night. We're enjoying Neil. We're enjoying the, the, the,

the, the, as Andy has said. We were just a bunch of doobie brothers. Yeah. And I look over and, and, well,

some sort of, um, it was during a very quiet sort of song and these paramedics started coming through with, and their walkies are just squawking. And so I was a little annoyed because, you know, come on, like, let's... Because you were behind me. Yeah.

You were criggling me. That's right. Let's respect the, the atmosphere here and, like, maybe turn these walkies down. Sure. You were swaying. Yeah. So they sort of brush past me. And then out of the corner of my eye, I see a little commotion.

Yeah. And there's a group of paramedics around someone who is down on the ground. Right. And I noticed that that person is wearing a tea party t-shirt. That's a giveaway. There's only one man that could be. And I was about to turn to Langer and say, hey, there's another guy wearing a tea party shirt down on the ground. Just to clarify the ban, not the political movement of, yes, that gave us Trump.

Sarah Palin. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so I turned to Langer to say, hey, there's another guy in a tea party shirt who's down and he was not there. And that was when I realized it was Langer who was down on the ground. So I'm in the front, maybe because I'm the shortest. And I'm enjoying my Neil Young.

and then I kind of hear Tyler say something about it's Langer or something. And then I go, I look over and I see Langers. Yeah, he's sitting on the ground with his back against the fence and there are paramedics treating him. Like, Langer's down. He was down. So this is right at the top of the hill. Yeah, right next to the Nol.

Yeah, because he's against the apparel bar. Okay, yes, yes. Right, right. But I got to say this about the wonderful VP of sales, what I'm looking at right now. He didn't hesitate. Neil was kicking ass and VP said, I'm going to Langer.

side. He went directly to Langer. Yeah, as I would hope any of us would do for any other. I would have done it, but you were there and I said, okay, Langer's got somebody with him and I kept an eye on it as I continued to sway to the music. So Langer, I think, you know, he was, it was the excitement of the night. He had a couple of drinks. The, the weed from Wardo was powerful. This was, this was not sort of your bunk neighborhood weed. This was like medical grade. Could have been the Willie Nelson, could have been the wine. Exactly. Who's to say? Who's to say? So Langer, they help Langer to his feet. And he's sort of standing there leaning against the back fence. And he's, I'm sort of saying, are you okay? Are you all right? And he's like, yeah, I think so. I'm just, you know.

But at this point, to interject myself into this story, is that I can see now, I see, oh, Langer's on his feet. And I'm like, oh, good. He had a little water. Yeah, he'll be better. He's going back and enjoy Neil Young with us. And at that point, Langer went down again. Langer went down again. I witnessed Langer going down. And when you say down, was this. like... The knees buckle. Yeah. Like, you know those toys where like you hit the bottom and like this like with the elastic and they go, whoa. Exactly. Sort of like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. Kind of wobbly. Yeah. And at that point, the paramedics are like, that's it. We're taking it. They called it.

There's a time of death. Shout out to Ridley funeral home. So at that point, it's a caravan through. They're making way through the crowd because it's a big crowd on the lawn for Neal. And it was a full. Yeah. It was the parting of the red sea leading Langer and me to the medical tent. A lot of chairs.

So I'm with, right, absolutely, because there's a lot of oldies at this Neil Young show. Now, Langer, sorry, Canada Kev, Andrew Ward, and I remain, but I do see that VP's going with Langer to wherever they're going, but I got a text at that moment. I get a text from VP to say, we're off to the paramedics tent. So I'm hoping it'll be a short time,

but we continue. And I can tell you to get to what happened on your side, but I can tell you from where we were on the lawns. three songs later I said to the guys I definitely said like we should go and just check in on one of our guys is down we should go find this paramedics tent

and check in on him and I think it was Canada Kev or both of them they were like three more songs man three more songs and then when I did eventually get them to come with me to see how things were going at the paramedics tent

we went down a level and then Canada Kev wanted to show this trick he has for when he leaves the lawns and this will speak to our Who story, which is going to be even more exciting. But, like, this trick he has to go to where he hasn't paid to go. Like, he paid for a lawn, but he gets down low by doing this slow dance along the so from the west, so east to west, he does this, I don't know, this grateful dead

buggy or something, like slow motion from one side to the another. And he's like, this is how you can get to the good. So it's like the Charleston or something. So there's a lot of that point. But tell us how things were on your end. Yeah, so we got to the medical tent, which is like way almost out of the venue. You can barely hear, you know, Young from the medical tent. It's like, when you're walking, you know where that sign is where everyone gets their picture taken?

It's like kind of beside that in a fence day. Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. So that is far. Yeah. So, yeah, Langer and I get there.

And there's like five other guys all of roughly the same age who are in the same situation. They've clearly partied too hard. They had one of Wordo's. Yeah, wordo was passing it out. Yeah. Yeah. And most of them had their very disappointed wives standing over them next to them. So V-P was the disappointed wife. Yeah. Yeah. Langer had me. And so, yeah, they were feeding Langer these tall boys of water. Yeah. Yeah, you have to crack these waters. Yeah. Cans of water. Oh, wow. Is this like special water? Like just it's just or just regular water, but you get to crack the can. And they were, you know, checking his blood pressure, checking his blood oxygen level. He had,

that pulse ox thing they put on the figure tip. I like that thing. Yeah, it's great. It's kind of an ET type. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, uh, yeah.

So, and he's got one of those, uh, actually, I don't think he had the blanket. They had the, you know, those, those metallic, um, aluminum foil blankets. I don't think they had one for him, but a couple of guys had that. Like he's just in a marathon. Oh, that's because of the, uh, it protects you from the 5G. That's right. Yeah. But, so meanwhile, I'm with, I'm with, I'm with Wardo and Canada Keb, who have had multiple of these

potent jazz cigarettes, okay? Remember, I've only had one IPA, so I'm like the leader here. I'm like, oh, somebody's in charge here. And then I finally ask a security guy, I'm like, hey, where's this paramedic tent? And he tells me you've got to go to services or something.

There's a place you go. And then I went there and I asked them and they said, let me take you there. And they took us there. And we get to the paramedic tent. And we see there, we see. Langer looks like he's on, like... He was not feeling good.

Death's door. Like he's sitting there. He looks unwell, but he's got that thing on his. finger. He looks like, you know that scene? You mentioned E.T.

Cam, but you know in E.T. when he had all those things strapped him and they're checking his vitals. And then the paramedic looks at me and goes, his vital signs are okay. He can go home or something.

And Canada Caves in the live stream, which I'm glad he's there, to say that the EMS folks were great. They were great. That's good. Yeah. Wasn't Wardo recruiting one? Ordo was trying to figure out what union

the paramedics were in because he's a union guy. And he was going to get one to move to Niagara on the lake Stony Creek or something And he said you can get better benefits or something He knows, he knows But it was so yeah

So yeah So we sent we basically Do you remember we walked Langer to the gate So he could get on Get him get his ass home And we told him We assume he made it home Well we said

Because he had a car at the ghost station We said just take an Uber from the ghost Like don't drive the car Yeah Take an Uber from the ghost station And we checked and made sure he got home But you remember I said to that security guy How far can I go

before and still be allowed to go back because I wanted to catch the end of the Neo Young Show and he goes you can go to that gate and then I get up to the gate and the other security guy's like whoa and he's like pushing me out like I went too far and I yelled at the security guy and I said that security guy said

I could go to this gate I'm not leaving this venue and then we made it back for rocking in the free world so how many songs did you miss? Oh that's a big number right I missed a lot of but I want to say before we move on to the Who which is a fascinating story

but shorter story I want to say the love I witnessed, like it made me so proud to be the godfather of the TMU, if you will, that I saw these two gentlemen who have that, you know, they go at each other lovingly and that glint in their eye. And the way that VP was there, he was standing by his man, Tammy Wynette style. And I know Langer appreciated it. Like, there's true love between these two men. It's beautiful, Cam. Yeah. Okay. As I say, I think any of us would do the same for, for any other of us in the TMU.

Would you do that for Stu Stone, Cam Gordon? I do it for like 90%. Yeah, for Stu, of course. Who were the 10%? Would you do it? Let's name FOTMs and say that off. Yeah, let's just name FOTMs until we'll find out who we do it before. So now let's fast forward because I realize we have a lot to cover here.

The main thing is I'm glad Langer's good. Langer's fine. You know what he said that he, he, that particular strain of cannabis just hit him like a fucking ton of bricks. It happens, you know? It could happen to me. I've been there. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Exactly. Could have been any of them. You know, could have been the Willie Nelson, could have been the wine, like Cam says. So, fast forward. Yeah. I got a ticket. I've told the story so many fucking times on Toronto Mike, but the real heads are listening, so they've heard it. But the 7-11, no, it was 11-11, right? 11-11.

Yeah. I got a ticket on the lawn for $11 and $11. Me too. Plus a $10 search. So we each got these really cheap tickets to say farewell to the Who. They were lawn tickets. So there we are. Now, we're both on the lawns for the Who.

Yeah, roughly the same spot, a little further ahead because it's a little less populated. And who's opening? Tom Cochran, Canadian legend, Thomas Cochran. That's FOTM. FOTM. So we're, actually, I loved, I loved it. From the band Red Rider. That's great. Oh, sorry, from the band, Tom Crocun, Tom Cochran and Red Rider. We'll fix it in post. Let's just say that you're on the lunatic fringe over there, but shout out. It's funny, I've got multiple phone calls during this FOTM cast. Who's calling you now? Peter Gross. I feel like we should get it. Yeah, you should probably answer that. Put him on the mic. Yeah. Peter Gross, you're on FOTM Cast, how are you, sir?

Oh, are you working now? I'm on FOTM cast. What does that mean? Well, you're an FOTM Hall of Famers, I'm glad you called. But is there anything urgent, anything I can help you with? It's incredibly urgent.

No, I just have a question. Is there such a thing as a competition slash award for podcast of the year? Probably. Do you think we're in contention? Well, I would submit that one. I'm getting some real... Oh, Bill, this is actually

timely because we're talking about... For down the stretch or what? No, for Bill Atanasoff, right? Oh, right. Who have you got there? Okay, so I have here, Tyler Campbell and Cam Gordon, and we're actually discussing... Fellow FOTM Hall of Famers. Hello, fellow FOTM Hall of Amers like you.

But we're discussing Toronto-Miked episodes from the previous quarter of which your excellent Bill Atanisov episode is one. Well, I've been getting some interesting comments, and I think that although it's obviously not going to track huge numbers. get more than this one podcast and if there was such a thing as you know the outstanding podcast of the year I'm going to talk to Al Grego about that

yeah let me talk let me talk to some people and I think it is worthy of an award it was a fucking great episode like really really interesting guys loved it and I have all the feedback on it

has been absolutely wonderful I keep getting notes from people who knew him and worked with him and they're just grateful A that you did this and B that I record recorded it. Why am I not seeing all these?

I saw one or two. Okay, well, I've sent you, I've sent you a few. I'll, after this recording, I'll get you some more. Okay. But, uh, do you, do you know what the numbers were for that? You mean download numbers? You can't say. A million.

A million? Okay, that's a good number. All right, brother, got to go finish this, uh, FOTM, finish, but, uh, we're going to start this thing, but I'm glad you called of that because we will be talking about your episode in about 90 minutes. Okay, good, bye. Bye. Wow.

That was exciting. That was exciting. I was excited. I like that. This is what I like. I like the live on the floor because that just happened. You never know what's going to have. We didn't arrange that.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it was about an episode that aired last quarter. Okay. So we're at the Who. We watched Tom Cockham from the lawns. We both thoroughly enjoyed it from the lawns. And then I get a text.

Who is my text from? the great Paul Farberman, F-O-T-M, Paul Farberman. Paul Farberman is texting me and he's like, come say hi, I'm in the front row. So you know how you have those floors or whatever, but he's in the front row of the... How does it work? Yeah, I think it's the 200, the first elevated section. Right, where you have the set seats, whatever, yeah. So he's like, come down and say hi.

So we make our way down to say hi to Paul Farberman before the Who starts. Now finish this story so we can get to the fucking episode. So Paul, Paul says, why don't you guys, there's some empty seats here. Why don't you guys stay? And Mike said, well, like, are they ticketed? Like, do you have these tickets? And Paul said, no, but, you know, they're empty seats. So just stay.

And like, would you rather go back to the lawn? Well, if I remember correctly, he introduced us to this, I wish I could remember his name, a famous Rolling Stone photographer who's been photographing every rock band you ever heard of for 50 years or something. And he had Bob Grown, Grun, maybe? Like, I can't remember the name. But he said there was an empty seat beside him. And I said, I think I said to you, Tyler, is like, I'll take this empty seat.

You sit beside me. And I said, if somebody comes through your seat, we'll both go to the lawns. Like, I won't stay there and let you go to the lawn by yourself. So we basically took this big gamble. We sat down. And somehow we stayed for the whole fucking who set. That's right. We watched the who from the second row.

We did. It was amazing, right? It couldn't have been a better advantage of one. We spent $11 and $11 on our tickets. That's right. Thank you, Pete. How did he know you were there? Did you tell him, like, earlier?

Yeah, I'd met him at an event for Snow. Sadly, he was sitting Shiva for his sister. Oh. But I learned, this is when I learned that you get an hour off when you sit Shiva. So he gets an hour to leave, and he spent that hour to come to this event that Snow was putting on for his Appleberry, Appleberry community. Do I got the right name? Appleberry. So basically, there was an event I attended with, by the way, with.

Alan Berry. Alan Barry, thank you. with Keith, well, my wife was there, and Keith Stein, who called just before Peter Gross, but I didn't want to put Keith on the air there. That just happened. I got multiple phone calls and I'm going to get all the other calls that come in. I'm going to answer live. But we're going to move on now to FOTM, guys. But I just thought that's amazing. We both pick up these super cheap lawns to see the final Who concert. And thanks to Paul Farberman, we end up in the second row. And I thought it was great. Paul looked at us like a proud father.

At the end, yeah, he kept, and then at the very end, he texted me, don't I always deliver Farberman delivers And then today happens to be the anniversary Of the Catherine McLanahan Oh my God Debutt It all comes together

Can I see you guys two questions About that concert? Yeah and then we're gonna work I think you both said it was sort of better than expected Definitely Definitely What was like I'm not Don't take this as a pejorative

But like what was good about it? It sounded good for guys in their 80s Did it seem like a real? Did it seem like a real? I'm like the who. I mean, I said that. I thought so. It seemed like very old guys. Sure. Um, wearing very comfortable shoes. Okay. Yeah. Um, but I mean, Pete still sounds great. Like, his voice is still great. Um, he still plays. Roger sounds great. Roger sounds great. Like, there's, we had some discussion in the secret, not so secret, uh, WhatsApp group about whether his

scream, uh, right, piped in. Well, we've been told by Robert Lawson. Robert Lawson says it's Sweden. Yeah, well, I think, or just entirely. tape. Right. Sure. But it sold me. Like, just like I was sure, it was a two and a half count there that Orndorf put on Hogan at the exhibition place.

Scream aside, Roger's voice does sound good and he's saying very well. I had a great time and I thought they put on a great show and they have so many big fucking hits. Like these are epic jams that they're playing here. I just felt like I got my $11. I remember that, like we're talking about it won't get fooled again. Like the scream, which was famously in a Q107 commercial. That's right.

For many years ago. And Alan Cross kicked it out as his, I think he kicked it out is the best scream in music or something like that. So anyway, quickly, question two, two. And Mike, you point this out this quarter. I thought this is funny. I'm just looking at the set list from Tom Cochran. He played eight songs. Awesome setless, all big hits.

Got Boy Inside the Man and Big League. And obviously, life is a highway. But Mike, you point this out, it's like, I'm looking at Setless FM. it says six of these eight songs are covers. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're not Tom Cochran. They're either Tom Cochran or Red Rider or they're Red Rider, and two of them are Tom Cochran.

This is why you... It's so stupid. They speak in America of Tom Cochran as a one-hit wonder because in America, life as a highway was his only hit. But they don't actually count like lunatic friends. I guess technically Tom Cochran is a one-hit wonder, where Tom Cochran and Red Rider or Red Rider. There's a lot of bands like, oh, is that Bruce Springsteen?

is that Bruce Springs in the East? Is it Tom Petty and the heartbreakers? Fucking Neil Young. Neil Young and Crazy Horror. Who did we see? Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts. The Chrome Hearts, right. So that's all just like, you know, database fuck-ups.

You know, nothing new under the sense. Got to clean your data. Can I shed a light on something interesting? So there's a, uh, sorry, there's a provincial lunchtime show called Ontario Today that airs on CBC Radio 1. So if you're in Ontario, you get the show called Ontario Today. and they have callers. So they introduce a topic,

people from Ontario call in, and they have a nice little chat about things. Okay? You ever heard the show? No. Just pretend you have. I've heard it many times. Yes, I hear it all.

Ontario today. I always listened to the show and assumed everything was on the up and up and that people would call in and they'd have these conversations, and it was all live. But then I got an email this past quarter from a producer of that show

to say, hey, we saw your blog entry. I don't know how many years ago I wrote it, maybe 15, for goodness sakes. But we saw your blog entry about working at the C&E, we would like you to be the first caller tomorrow at noon or something like that. And I explained, oh, I can't call in tomorrow at noon

because I'm talking to Sophie B. Hawkins at noon. And, you know, I can't. Oddly specific. Didn't ask for that detail. I give details. Okay, I'm a detail guy. Anyway, she said, oh, that's okay. You can do it at 11. So long story short, and I'm not going to play the whole thing. I did five minutes. I'm looking at it right now.

I'll just play a little bit of this, and then we'll talk about that. What are your most memorable stories from the Midway? 1-888-817-8995. I can call that number. And we got Mike on the line from Toronto. Hey, Mike. Hey, how are you doing? Good.

Listen, I hear you were once a game booth attendant at the C&E. When was that? And what memory does that bring back for you? Oh, my goodness. How much time do you have? But I was a game booth attendant for three summers, and what a job it was for 15-year-old Mike. A few memories, Omar, if you don't mind, maybe I'll ramble a few at you. Well, yeah, what was it like to work at the Midway? Yeah, I can paint us a picture.

Okay, so firstly, it was a 20-day exhibition back then, so you worked 20 days in a row. So basically, as a teenager, you're there long days, 20 days in a row. I remember at the end of the day when you're tearing down and it gets quiet after a busy day, the Polar Express every single night, I don't know, around 11 p.m. or something, would play Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. And I can tell you, if I hear that song in the wild, and it's everywhere, I'm taken right back to like those calm, quiet after the storm nights, work in the C&E, working the game.

So there's, you can find this on Toronto Make.com. It's five minutes of this, but I can tell you a couple things. One is it was not a live phone call. They called me and, right, they called me at 11 o'clock, is how that happened. Dina Pookelazy. Also, the other fun fact is they edited what I said because I went longer than five minutes and they edited out. I started singing, let's go to the X, oh, baby. Like maybe they said, oh, this guy can't carry a two.

They didn't want a shanana filed a cease-sendicist. So that happened in the last quarter And I thought this might be the time Why did I not know that Honestly, I don't recall this at all That you did this And when you share literally everything you do In a given day

Tyler, come on my not remember this Well, I did listen when I told the WhatsApp group I probably posted about it on Blue Sky And then I literally wrote about it On Toronto mic.com What more do you want me to do? I don't know

And now I'm talking about it on Toronto Mike the podcast Anyway. Okay. Yeah. So that happened. That did happen. Also, I just want to, there's another podcast.

I have nothing to do of this podcast, but it is kind of right, they're younger than us, but it's right up our alley. It's called Big in Canada. And they talk about songs that are big in Canada, like because of CanCon rules. So I think the,

I think the primary focus is the song that is huge here, but Americans have no fucking clue what that is. It would be like Victory Day by Tom Cochran or something like that. You know what I mean? And I have a little clip, though, because I came up on the show,

Okay, so let's listen to this minute from Big in Canada. Yes, speaking of snow. Well, actually, I found it because on YouTube, I was searching Bear Naked Ladies' Snow Job, and then Bear Naked Ladies' Snow, this video appeared. Yeah, so you sent me a video of the, I think it's the Toronto Mic'd podcast, which is the key that this guy's been making,

this guy makes, it has like thousands of episodes of podcasts with like vaguely famous people from Toronto. Some more than others, you know. And in this episode, he's talking to Snow, the first internationally famous Canadian rapper Snow. And he's got beef with the bare naked ladies that they stole his flow for their hit one week. Two white guys talking about the flow. But then the video gets even wilder because it's revealed that Stephen Page and Snow, Stephen Page of 4. formerly of the bare-naked ladies are second cousins.

What? But Snow goes, no, we didn't see them. Like, my family was two gangsters. Okay, so. I thought that was pretty interesting. I think it's great that they act, because a lot of times I'll hear in a podcast, they'll get some fact from my show,

but they won't fucking say what show they got it from. So thank you, Big, from Canada, for St. Toronto, Mike. Excited their sources. Again, much like Wikipedia, we'll get to WikiLeaks soon, but I do like these facts you on earth than getting spread further out into the... Like, I had no idea those guys were even cousins at all until I heard it

on the show. So it's the only place you can get that. You know, we knew about Ashley McIsaac and Jack White, but now we know about, you know, this all came out and he's going to come back next quarter, by the way, snow I'm referring to here. But I did find it interesting that he says, he did say I speak to vaguely

I wrote it down, vaguely famous Toronto people, but and then he says I'm talking to snow. sorry, snow is not vaguely famous snow is a global fucking sensation. Number one. You can't say I only,

I talked to vaguely famous people and say, here you're sitting down with snow in his, in his basement here. It's one or the other here. So it's a big fucking deal. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, yeah,

big ups to them for, for saying their sources, which I'm honored by. But they need to, they need to be educated. Maybe you can. I wonder how old, I always find it like,

I'm just looking at photos. So these two seem like they're maybe like... Millennials. Yeah, I'd say like at least 10 years younger than us. Yeah. But you look, they're talking about I'm out of Earth and Amanda Marshall and here's base's base. So again, it is just interesting because they probably have a totally different perspective

on all this. Well, what I did notice, yeah, I should get them on. What I noticed is there's, I don't think they've lost the plot in the sense that I think it was about Canadian famous stuff. And then it sort of has stuff that is actually very famous in the United States. I think they do slip a little bit. Like, I think the idea of the show was stuff that's big in Canada because of Cancon rules. Right.

But I think they have slipped and they might kick out a song like that is actually big in the States as well. I feel like Biff Naked had a bit attraction. Like she was on some movie soundtracks and stuff in the States. Right. I know she was on the Boys Club soundtrack, I believe. That's right. Starring. She was in a moist video.

Or two. And allegedly in the offspring video, which we edited out on Wikipedia. Okay, well, that's what you're here for. Do you guys think we should start this show? We should. Actually, before we do that, I just have one question for you, Mike. Of course. So the Toronto Blue Jays are in the playoffs.

I don't know if you knew that. They play tomorrow at 4-4-4. They play tomorrow against the New York Yankees. You've been very open about your... I took the season off. You took the season off. So my question is, will you be watching Blue Jays playoff baseball? Well, this is a bigger question than you think it is.

It's not a big short one because I'm kind of doing this experiment on myself here. and I was interested in the last weekend of Blue Jay baseball and then I turned on the game Saturday and I turned it on against Sunday because I realize I have a responsibility as a father to make this moment exciting for my kids. I don't want, I'm thinking specifically of 11-year-old Jarvis who is excited by sports

and I don't want Jarvis to miss out on his home team having a playoff run. so absolutely I'm going to be tuning in these playoff games but then tomorrow for example at 4 o'clock I have scheduled something with my oldest son who doesn't give a damn about baseball so I'm probably going to miss game one and I don't think I would have missed game one in previous seasons so I think I'm like definitely going to watch and if it's a clinching game I'd like to see it yeah and if we advance I want you know maybe we'll hit the streets okay we'll bike downtown and partake in some of the excitement but it definitely

definitely feels different. Like I don't feel so much like, oh, this is my team. Like, it feels a bit like I'm a little disconnected. But I was doing a lot of catching up on Saturday and Sunday, actually, because other than the game we all attended, which we only watched a little bit of that game. And then I went to a game of Michelle where I watched a full game and Jay's one and it was a full hell. It was very exciting. But other than that, I haven't seen an inning of Blue Jay baseball. I tuned in Sportsnet for the first time on Saturday. And I realized this is a mind blow. You ready for this? And I'm a, I was at least a big sports fan. That was the first live. sports I watched. You're ready for this? Since the Edmonton Oilers lost in game six to the Florida Panthers. You took like the whole summer I saw the Florida Panthers beat the Oilers. I live with an Oiler fanatic only in playoff time though.

And then my next game I watched was on Saturday when I watched the Blue Jays win. So are the little ones? Are they into the Jays? Only Jarvis. Is he excited? Is he excited? He is excited that he's going to watch with his papa. He's going to watch the home team play

playoff games, like he did when the Leafs were in the playoffs. Give him a beer. It would be his first beer. So one out of four kids is excited. And to me, that was enough to bring me in. I'm not going to let him miss this because who knows, maybe we're going to win our third real series. And also, I have fond memories, as you can imagine, of the Raptors run in 2019 and soaking it in with my oldest, who was a big fan.

And I could cry thinking about us watching that final game. And I would love to have that with Jarvis. So I would like the Blue Jays to win the World Series for Jarvis. I feel like every year that we'll go by, they'll become more and more remarkable that they won. I know. It was a perfect storm. You can't get free agents, right?

You needed everything to line up and it did, and we did it. And flags fly forever. May I start the episode? Please. Go ready. I actually never knew who that was. That's right. Tough enough.

I thought it was Delimitri. Stevie Rayvon's brother, Jimmy, and the other guys, the other Thunderbirds. Sorry, Stevie Rayvon's brothers in the fabulous Thunderbird. Yeah. Oh my God. And you know, Stevie Rayvon, I was working the C&E when he died, by the way. Oh, wow. I had nothing to do with it, though.

You know, he was a mentor to the great FOTM, Colin James. That's right. That's right. It all comes full circle. And Colin James still isn't fucking sure what he did in that. the Tovico basement for 90 minutes. He still doesn't know what happened. Some sort of hostage situation.

Yeah. He does not know where he was. Okay. Okay. I feel like they'll come up with a Kathleen Robertson. You know, possibly. Possibly. But Kathleen, unlike Colin, his PR person, drove him here.

That's right. It's like the PR person. Was that an Alper? That was an Eric Alper. Okay. Right. So we'll get to the Kathleen, but it was a different, a completely different. She got herself here based on friends.

Yeah. We will talk about that. Okay, so lead us. 2.3 of 2020. I'm ready now. Let's start this effort. T.m. Facts and figures.

Let's go through it. This was the 53rd quarter of Toronto Mike. There were 50 episodes, exactly 50 in this quarter. That's a nice round number. Very nice round number. It's a little bit of a lighter quarter. Since the start of the pandemic, you've averaged 52 a quarter, so a little bit below. But I warned you, that's my kayak quarter.

Yeah, and I was going to ask you, how much kayaking did you do? because I didn't really see a lot of kayak content out there. I am kayaking on Tuesday. Okay. I think I kayaked a little less than last year. I have to go to the Strava facts because I do record each one. And it has been a bit. Like I think I was trying to do Tuesday kayaks and I think life got in the way.

I am going to kayak on Tuesday. Good. Good. I like to hear. But I did a lot more biking. Basically, I try to enjoy the great weather when we have it. That's all you can do. Thanks, man.

So 50, though. 50 to me sounds like a hell of a lot of show. A healthy number. So you give me a hard time, Cam? No, he's just seeing facts. I know. He's just facts are facts. 50 episodes. Yeah, 50 on the dot.

I feel like I let you guys down. Not at all. No, no, no. You warned us. You warned us. 51 individual guests down from 68 in Q2. There were no gang episodes really this quarter. There were a few guestless.

No Joe Carter classic. No guestless episodes. Just 27 first timers this quarter down from 39. in Q2. Big milestone this quarter that you celebrated 1,000 guests. See, I think that's more impressive than the fact this is episode 1,774. Yeah. There's a thousand unique guests. That's right. How, that's amazing.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Len Lumber's. Yes. From today in Dave Steve history is the lucky Mr. 1,000. He was on with Blake Bell, who also runs that account with him, and the great Stephen Brunt. It was a really fun episode. I enjoyed that. That was called the Dave Steve belongs in Cooperstown.

That's right. And he does. I agree with that. So you think he belongs in Cooper's San? I do. Oh, yes. I think so. Yeah.

Okay. I say probably not quite. He's close. All very good. Yeah. Okay. I think he was a better, although it didn't play in the big games. So Jack Morris has the World Series and the 11 inning shut out and all that stuff.

But I think overall, the better pitcher was Dave Steve. I think Steve had a higher peak. And I think he was robbed of a lot of awards. For playing for bad teams And for playing in Canada Yeah and he didn't have the wins right Like it was all about wins Right

So you know Complicated history What are you gonna do? But he doesn't care If he's in Cooperstown So after that episode I realized why the fuck should I care If he doesn't care

Like I think he could do himself A great service by lobbying for himself Like go make the rounds And say I belong here's why I believe that's how Burr Bileven Like Jack Morris was like Oh he was very vocal

But the better example is Bert Bileven Right He's in the Hall of Fame and he lobbied very hard for himself. He did. Yeah. So whatever. Good for Dave Steve.

Okay. And good for Len Lumber's. Good for Lunders. Guest and number 1,000. Yeah, it's a great name. That's a good like ball player name. Yeah, it is. Next time we take a photo by the tree,

Len Lumber has to hold a baseball back. Actually, you know what's the catcher for the Tigers? Dylan Dingler. Yeah, that's a great name too. Good, good name. Yeah. Some great baseball. Okay, now, can you tell us what you're doing here, Tyler?

Like, are you going to go from the most, the most, the first episode of course? We're going to start at the top of the quarter and we're just going to run it through. All right. All right. And then if Cam and I have anything to say. We're going to stop along the way. I've got a few clips.

I think you have a couple clips. Making stops along the way. And then, yeah, so just feel free to chime in. Okay. Cliff Thorburn, episode number one of the quarter. Snooker champion. Cam didn't listen to that episode. I mean, I did not listen to that one.

You can tell. I'll say he's a world champion snooker player and I didn't know him either, but Gary Chowan, told me, you need to talk to my friend Cliff. He's, he can visit the basement. He's got great stories. And I said, yes, sir. Why not? Why not?

And I got to say, I thoroughly enjoyed my chat with Cliff Thorburn. I enjoyed it too. I enjoyed listening to it. He was, it's some interesting stories. Michael Mangiarty, his first appearance. Michael Montchiarty has become a good friend. And we meet for coffees and we don't even record the conversations. That's how much I like him.

Yeah. He's from the network. that took the Humble and Fred show from Ian's services servers to stick ads in it. I don't know how we feel about that. Well, I love Ian, like a brother. Yeah, Ian's a wonderful guy. Yeah. Okay.

Steve Simmons is sort of the first, you know, repeat guest of the quarter. And he, you know, these sort of old-timey sports guys, you keep having him back. And it was a great chat. He's got lots to say. Yeah. I was going to say this one, I have two thoughts on one. there's someone in the group chat could see Steve Simmons

milling about in the Jay's playoff celebration. Was that you? And then I saw it. There was Rosie DeMano right beside Kevin Gossman in the club. I thought the clubhouse thing

was really fucking weird with the lights. Like it had a real disco vibe and half the guys are shirtless. And they're just like in that big walkway outside the clubhouse. Yeah, it was a little weird. Yeah.

But one comment about Steve Simmons, Mike, the three of us did talk about this exact topic multiple times during the quarter in our private group chat. But as always, I applaud you for giving the mics open to these people that other people consider problematic. Like Steve Simmons, I feel like in some circles, he's not quite canceled, but I feel like a lot of people take issues. He's polarizing.

So there are people who will chat. The typical comment would be something like, Mike, I love your show. I listen to every episode, but I'm skipping this one. Like, they feel a need to tell me they're going to skip Steve Simmons, to which I say, listening is optional. You can skip all the fucking episodes. It's not an airport. It's not an airport.

You have to announce your departure. I want to talk to Steve Simmons because I enjoy these conversations. And he's seen a lot of stuff. Yeah, and they're great conversations. Like, they're very listening. I love the Steve Sims episode. Absolutely. Shout out to Andy, who just wants to say she enjoyed the Cliff Thorburn episode far more than she thought she would.

I don't think non-snooker heads are familiar with the name. Like, I wasn't familiar with the name. and Langer's Colin Honickman. Apparently you might have disparaged him in your story. Not at all, no, as I said, nothing but respect for my fellow geriatric ginger. So Steve Simmons, I loved it, and then we rolled into the Dave Steve. All his episodes. It's always good to get Brunt on.

What a survivor too, like in media, too. Oh, Simmons, yeah. Oh, my God. Incredible. Yeah, the Steve episode, Brunt is always fantastic. And Blake and Len were great. Ed Keenan, of course, was just here yesterday for his. his Q4 visit.

He was wielding a bat. He's the first guest to wield a bat in the Toronto tree photo. I love the Ed Keenan chats just because they're so they're so Toronto centric. It's really the dirt about what's going on at City Hall, about what's going on in our city. And he's really got his finger on the pulse. So I'm so glad that you do those quarter gaps. I listened to part of the most recent one on the way over. Which we won't discuss my two hour bus ride.

We'll talk about that in January. Yeah, yeah. We talked about Olivia Chow's new boyfriend. Yes, big scoop there. Yeah, well, I think it's an open secret because it's not a secret. Like, no one's cheating on any. It's not like he's not a staffer. Yeah.

Torreys was a secret because she was a city hall staffer. And the public perception was that John Tori was married. That was public perception, right? Even though they were actually separated. Okay. So this is just a single woman and a single man of both adults having a relationship. So I felt like I could break this one. Yeah, just two guys in the basement on my microphones publishing about her personal life.

You know, I'm happy for her. Yeah. That was our big scoop. Olivia Chow is a boyfriend. If you want to know who it is, I named the man in the most recent Ed Keenan episode. James Lockyer. Yeah, and he's kind of a famous guy. I've heard of him before.

He's helping wrongfully accuse people. He's a lawyer. He's a real deal. All right. So after Ed Keenan was the return of. Jill Deacon. I always let you two go first because I see if you have anything.

Yeah, and Joe, you know, great to hear from Jill. I know she's battled a lot of health challenges, but she sounded in good spirits. She's, uh, her dog was with her. Yeah, which is always exciting for you, I know, having another, another beast in the, in the room. But yeah, no, great, great chat with you. I will say, I didn't listen to that one either.

Maybe he's not a real head. I am a real head. Do you remember she had her talk show? Like, it was sort of a Dini Petty type show. Yeah, but we covered that in her first visit. I know. This was more like, tell us about the long COVID. How is the recurrence of cancer?

Why did you leave here and now? Like, we had a lot to cover. It was important. On the mic. Thank you. I enjoyed the return of Jill Deakin. I was legit worried about her. Like, I was worried we were going to lose her.

Yeah. So the fact that she's there, she's got her dog. She was in good spirits. she sounded great, meant a lot to me. I love it. I like her very much and her bag of hammers. Scotty Mac next up. Speak of people,

will you worry about? Not quite as much as some people. Well, I have a question. Is this a Scotty Mac in the basement? This was Scotty Mac in the basement. The other one was the previous quarter. So I didn't know he'd be in the big. So he did assume to catch up.

But I didn't know I'd be able to get him in the basement so quickly because he was on his way to Scotland. That's right. So he was here. I thought that was fab. I thought Scott MacArthur back in the basement, just shooting from the hip. He's a really interesting guy. I really like his story, you know, left sports media because it wasn't floating his boat

anymore. And he's just, he's sort of found purpose. Because he's going to be a social worker working with people who have been incarcerated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good for him.

I was finding his episodes, almost like philosophical, but not like a schmaltzy way. Like it, like just very like genuine. Yeah. Yeah, I like Scott quite a good. And he does a very good macho man, Randy Savage. Well, we might hear a little bit later on. So you let me know when you got to play something. I will, I will.

I'll get to tell you what to do. Next up was the first of three toasts in the quarter. Always wonderful to hear from the great Bob and Rob. I jams. J.D. Bunkus was next. Did Cam listen to J.D. Bunkis? I think I did listen to that one. Like, that would have been in July, right?

That was July, yeah. So there's a lot of chatter about. JD after the episode because there was some talk that maybe he was a little prickly maybe he was not digging the Toronto Mike vibe I didn't

I didn't really get that like there were a couple of moments one of which I'm gonna play in a moment there were so there were moments in that episode where I thought possibly it was gonna go south I thought a couple of times

he was what do you call baiting me like picking a fight yeah bold baiting because I remember telling myself nah. Like I had this like quick internal monologue Don't do it, Mike. Like, nah.

Like I see what he's doing it. Like, nah. Well, let's listen to a little bit of J.D. Bunkas here. Like, it must be tough for sports radio in the era of podcasts. Like, I don't want you getting yourself in trouble. And I'm just one, like, it's got to be very difficult. Well, there's a few things, though.

Like, my show is called the J.D. Bunkis podcast. And that's because I always, always believed it was podcast on the radio. And actually, like, I love that pan. I, I, I, the one thing I actually don't think I get any credit for in this market is no one was doing that style before me on the radio. If you look back to my first days of doing good show, it was, I was already doing a podcast before then. And again, I liked long form podcasting. So one of the things that I probably get in trouble for is that I go long in my segments and the back half of my radio show is usually fairly short.

So I never looked at it like, okay, I'm going to come in and it's the top of the hour and hit the story. It's like, I like the conversation. I like it like a podcast. So if you listen to my work, which I'm guessing you don't, based on that question, that's a pun. I've always been podcast versus the radio is a bonus. But what I will say about the radio is it still is something comforting where you're either

streaming it or you're listening to it in your car, where it's the comfort of knowing that something is going to come on at a certain time. People are creatures of habit. I think that's why COVID really hurt our industry is that people change their habits and were forced to adapt so much. But, no, I still really value the being live component and knowing that it's going out on signals that are just not a podcast stream. I view that actually as like a really valuable asset where you're looking at it being like, this is a podcast, this is radio, this is digital streaming. This is all of it encompassing. Do you listen to Toronto mic?

No. Okay. So I just want to make sure. I threw that out there because, you know, you're calling me out for not. listen to your podcast. Yeah, but I'm a guest on your show. See what I mean? Cut that tension. So there was so, you know, I do this a lot. Okay. I do a lot. I do a lot. I do a lot episode. A thousand unique guests. And nobody's stormed out yet. That's fucking amazing too.

You know it would be a fun exercise. You get Mark Wiseblot down here. You strap him to the chair. Play him that. It's like, Mark, you're not leaving until you react to what he just said. Because you'd have just a bet, you know, everyone's trying to figure out this media and, you know, it's a living. and da-da-da and he was invented podcasting I would never like I'd have him on again

of course I'd have him on again it was like that was a moment in a longer podcast that didn't feel like that the whole time but I did get

there was feedback from that because now you know this was a long time ago so I'm now remembering the J.D. Bunkas podcast and there was a lot

of feedback from people who said the vibes were off and my vibes are always a fucking same like I sometimes I adapt to the guest vibes but I feel

he came in with a bit of a... Yeah, I had a chip. He had a chip. You know, so I am, I mean, that question that sparked that whole thing was me asking, like, because I do wonder, he's on AM radio doing a sports show when everybody can tune in a podcast that specializes on the sport of their choice. Like, it's, that's an on-demand medium where you can skip ads and you can, you can pause and all, you know, all the, you know what a podcast is, right? I've listened to some podcasts. So, fair question, right? Yeah.

But it seemed to, he seemed to get his backup. And he's like, this is a podcast on the radio. I'm like, oh, so you can't pause it. And you do have to stop down for the ads. I can't skip. Like, that's still a radio show. It does sort of, you know, sort of like a chicken or egg. Like, what is, is it a podcast?

Is it radio? Another program that I think is sort of like this is, uh, Alameen on CBC commotion. Because I think of that as a podcast, but I get, but is that like first and foremost a radio show because it is like, I think it like goes on the airwaves. the radio airwaves and then becomes available as a podcast. Like, ultimately it doesn't matter, but do you need to, like, pick a lane? Like, this one seems like it's kind of like half and half, really.

Okay. So, Tyler, what did you think of the JD Bunkus debut? Yeah, I enjoyed the chat just because, you know, he's an interesting guy. He's got an interesting story coming from, I believe he's from the Yukon. And, you know, he's an engaging guy. He's definitely got a bit of a self-mythology going. But he also has some swagger. Yeah.

Which is fine. Like, you know, he's a character and you'd rather have someone who's going to be coming a little hot and have a take versus... 100%. Yeah. 100%. So I enjoyed it. It was a good chat.

Yeah, you know what? And also when you get those awkward moments and we'll talk later about another episode of an awkward moment, but I kind of think that's exciting. Of course. Yeah. It's not paint by numbers, PR spiel. Like we had a real conversation and sometimes in a real lengthy conversation with somebody you just met, there might be a moment or two where it's a bit grisly.

And then, I didn't, when he said, I clearly you don't listen to my show, I didn't, like, I'm like, oh, that's kind of a shot right there. And I'm like, this fucker probably doesn't listen to Toronto Mike. So it's like, we're on the same page. But he's a guest on your show. Yeah, he's a guest on my show. So you asked him over. I invited him over. And I'm going to do it again, JD. So check your, check your email. I'm going to invite you back. God bless anyone in the, like it's a tough business. I met him at the Keegan Matheson book signing. That's how that came to be. Yeah. But I also met a guy, uh, Kate. Caleb Joseph, who said he would come on, and he does not reply to my text.

Oh, boy. He's really good. Yeah, I enjoy. I want to have Montrona Mike. Yeah. JD Bunkas did reply and came over, and that's everything. So thank you, J.D. Bunkers. You didn't have to do this.

Thanks, buddy. All right. Rolling on, John Wing here to talk about Ron versus Dawn in a part one of two series. To refresh everyone's memory, the Ron versus Don thing, our good friend and FOT, Graham, Gere Joyce wrote a story about Don Cherry, who sort of had his final podcast. Then there was some discussion about whether that was actually his final podcast. It sounded pretty finally. He sounded on death's door at the end of that show.

Toot-l-l-l-lo! And so, Gare wrote a story because Ron McLean, he had a conversation with Ron McLean, who sort of disclosed some information about Don being quite ill. during one of his last years on Hockey Night in Canada, where he had to go to the hospital. And then there were denials. And then, of course, Joe Warmington got involved, as he always does. So John Wing, the great Canadian stand-up,

was on the show to chat about it with you. And it was a great combo. I think he's very smart, John Wing, and great comic. And any excuse to chat with John Wing. I picked him. I'm like, I'm like, I need to do this episode. I was going to do this with Gare. Gare was not ready to talk about this

because he had a bigger piece that hadn't dropped yet. And I'm like, well, I want to do it now. I think I had to go camping. That's what it was. I was going camping. I was going to go camping. I need to do this before that. I can't wait for your big thing to drop.

I'm going to do this with someone else then. And I just picked John Wing because he's a huge hockey fan, huge Leaves fan. He knows Don Ron. He's a Canadian, even though he's living in the enemy territory there. But he's also just a good. guy to talk to because he's a smart guy. Yeah, I enjoyed

my chat with John Wing. I would say whatever the situation is with Don Cherry, kind of a very sad end to just like his career in media if this is indeed the end. Like just this really ambiguous is this podcast he's doing because I guess he

unceremosely lost his other job because of some stuff. Is it the last episode is a nod we don't really know and then you know, sadly at some point soon like he won't be with us, Amor, and that's, that'll be serve his final, his final, you know, kind of the final whistle. The final tutelor. We'll hold the rest of your Ron Don analysis for part two. It's coming up soon.

All right. Part two. The next episode is, uh, graven or graven. I think it's Graven. Craven. I will admit that I did not hear this episode. Okay. Well, you're not a real head. Get the fuck out of my basement here. Graven's a, he's your kind of guy. He's a singer, songwriter. And, and I know that I made a joke during the Graven episode about calling him. my lawyer, Lauren Honickman, which is a line I drop quite a bit. One day it'll be on an FOTM cast, how often I drop the, let me call Lauren. And he's been using it, like, he's been in my Twitter, like I'll post, not Twitter, sorry, what the hell's Twitter?

Instagram, I'll post a pic, and he'll go in and go, oh, what did, what did Lauren say about this? Or did you consult Lauren about that? Like, he's really running horror with the Lauren Honnickman thing. So I'm like, okay, Graven liked that reference. and I would like to go get a beer with Graven. Okay. Maddie McKechnie, I believe, was his real name. He sort of looks like, um, he's that vice guy.

Oh, uh, uh, with the mustache. Gavin McGavin. Gavin McKenna. Have it Gavin McKinnis. Here's a photo of him with, uh, Stephen Stanley. Oh, look at that. Look, Stephen Stanley. They did a tour together. Okay, that's cool.

Using graffiti alley. Okay. So everyone should listen to Graven. Uh, next up is the, you guys didn't. Well, I'm going to. Well, I'm going to. Well, what makes you skip an episode? Because you have a pretty good batting average. I try to listen to all of them.

Like you don't know Graven, first of all. That works against him. Yeah. Yeah. If I don't know them, then I might not. But you didn't know Cliff Thorburn. Yeah. No, I mean, I think I missed maybe two this quarter.

And it's not anything against Graven. It's just time kind of gets in the way, you know? Understood. Yeah. The next one is the gong fishing mickeymentary. Right. Yeah. About the famous.

I was going camping. So I put this together and dropped it before I went camping. No topic has been explored in such. in such depth as the the gong on a change of hearts smile album. And you really got to the bottom of this.

So this is the A to Z. If you want to know about this gong that Gilmour hit produced by Bob Wiseman, this is the episode for you. I would say... Talk about targeting a very niche audience. I would say that if you listen to the gong fishing

micumentary, you are a real head. What percentage of podcast listeners in Toronto do you think know the band Change of Heart? Podcasting. There's no answer here, right? There's no answer. They're very small. Right?

I think, change of heart. Oh, like they don't know change of heart. Even though they were like trigger and there were songs you know from the radio. But okay. Sure. So that's a small number of people who know change of heart. So trying to, you know,

hey, there's a album smile, which you know even less people know. And hey, there's a gong in there. But I wanted to put it all together because I think it's an important part of our history. And I did because I dropped it and then I went camping. and I called it gong fishing and I thought it was clever

because I'm gong fishing I'm fishing for the gong we get it but also I'm gone fishing yeah see cam how that works on two levels like this I should be the demo for this and even I'm struggling to get I just the good news about this

mickey matter is that it's very short yeah and we saw the three of us went to see change our heart this year was a great show if you don't get if you're not piquing Cam Gordon's interest I know it's a problem this change of our gong. Yeah.

Who listened? I got to go check those stats. I think it's mainly when you asked Ian Blurden about this. He even seemed like he didn't really know. Nobody knew. That's in there. But we did discover the Bobby Wiseman part. That was a bit of a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know what? Maybe less people are going to listen to the gong fishing episode than listen to this particular FOTM cast. I would say I do know that this gong is mentioned in Michael Barclays. first, or I don't know if it's his first book that have not been the same they did with Jason

Schneider and the other guy. Yeah, he mentions the gong? It is in that. Yeah, it is in that book. But he mentions the gong by Gilmore? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll take a photo of it when I'm home. I'll just send it to you. Yeah. I actually didn't, I have to revise that episode. Like, I need a part. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's there. Okay. Have not been the same as a great book.

One thing I want to say about Michael Barkley is that he's an excellent dancer. We saw him at the change of heart show. And he was, he was grooving out there on the floor. I see him at a lot of shows. He's, uh, he's living his best life. Good for him. And I subscribed to his newsletter and it's very good. Next up is Stu Stone, talking about the complicated legacy

of one Hulk. Oh, wow. The Hulkster episode. Remember, that was booked before Hulk died. Yeah, what timing? And then it became all about Hulk. And I think that was, you know, warts, I said to him, I said, Stu, I'm going to do this with you and I'll give you as much time as you need. But I'm not going to just celebrate Hulk as a hero to us as kids. I said, we're doing warts and all. And he said, he accepted that.

And I think that was a very good portrayal of Hulk Hogan. The heights of Hulk, the depths, the warts, and all, I was very proud of how that turned out. Yeah, he's... Tell me you hated it, Cam. I need to know. No, no, it was great. And, like, Stu, obviously, is the perfect ass, not just because he literally works in the wrestling industry now. But, you know, someone that I saw for...

Me and Stu Stone literally saw Hulk Hogan together back in the day, too. so like sort of a lived experience and I don't know like even beyond all the racist stuff and although the stuff with Gawker and whatnot like Jesse Ventura has been very vocal but it's the stuff with the unions and stuff but I mean the whole industry is so bizarre

I don't know like just it's almost hard to judge anyone in that industry because it's just there's nothing like it yeah yeah everything about like Vince McMahon is a complete like psychopath to speak of like complicated legacies and like Hogan whatever he did I think is very comparable

to like what a lot of wrestlers did for sure. Yeah you put aside all the the N-word stuff though but like even like Steve Austin I like he he had like domestic like issues like domestic disturbances and whatnot that were very well documented

and he just seems everyone's okay with that now like most of these guys and girls in some cases in that industry have I don't know it's a fucked up industry to make a living as much as I love it. Cam, you don't see a lot of movies. I need to know if you've ever seen the movie Donnie Darko. I have seen Donnie Darko, yes. So you did see Donnie Darko. Okay, did you know Stu Stone is in that movie? I did know that, yes. And he plays the best friend of Jake

Gillen Hall's character, Donnie Durko. And did you know there's a scene taking place on Halloween? Absolutely. When I saw them, like, oh my God, Stu, come on. Come on. And what, who did Stu Stone's character dress as for Halloween in that movie. Was it a four-time WWF champion Hulk Hogan? I rest my case. Hollywood.

A case well made. Yeah. All right. Did you guys, I mean, you are at the big event. I know that. I've talked about it every episode. Were you like a wrestling? I was a big wrestling fan.

Did you see Hulk Hogan? I saw him, I think I saw him once in Hamilton. Okay. Don't you dare miss it. Yeah. And I had his autograph because my cousin worked for a time at the Royal York Hotel at the front desk. Okay.

I bike by it today. And Hulk was staying there and was checking in with him. And so he got Hulk's autograph for me. That's amazing. Yeah, it was pretty great. I loved, he was like my guy, you know. Sure. Yeah.

I do know. I saw him fight Kamala, the Ugandan hunter at Maple Leaf Garden specific. Because Kamala's like one of the few guys who actually like legit scared me. He had like that mask. Oh, yeah. He was terrified. Yeah. Yeah, the spear and kimchi, the hand layer.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. Anyway. But a real... Tonal change here. He was a real American. That he was. That he was.

He is a real American. Didn't we lose John Derring? Or not John Derringer, Rick Derringer. John's still with us, I believe. John Hayes is real name, by the way. Rick Derringer, we did lose him recently. Yeah, like this year.

Yeah. Shout out to Ridley Funeral. Crazy. Anything else to say about Stu? No, just we love Stu. He's an FOTM Hall of Famer and he will be back and we might hear his voice later in this episode. Oh, wonderful. Good, good, good, good, good.

Kathleen Robertson did not know who he was. Oh, yeah, we heard that in the open. We did. That was a great moment. Larry Klopott was next and Larry is someone that's connected to me because he's a friend and work colleague of my dad's. and Larry, my dad, Roger, who we sang happy birthday to it, TMLX19.

Yeah, who, uh, who's, you know, I see him every day. Um, he, uh, he said to me, uh, stop bragging. He said, uh, Larry is, uh, dealing with something. Uh, Larry's son died, uh, a little over a year ago. Uh, and he's really having a hard time. And he's thinking that he might want to do a podcast. Um, So would he, would Mike talk to him?

And so I sent a note to, to you and asked if you'd be willing to have a chat with him. And, uh, you were kind enough to say yes. And so you chat with Larry and I mean, I'll let you take over, but you record it. When you tell the story, I hear enough of my voice. Yeah, but you, uh, Larry recorded a podcast with you, uh, about, uh, the loss of his son and how he was dealing with it. It was basically his journal. Um, he just read his journal entries as he, uh, dealt with the loss of his son. son Alex. Very powerful stuff to, to hear, like very, um, raw. And, uh, like he's, he's, he and

Arlene, his wife, uh, are really dealing with. It was very sudden and unexpected. Uh, their son Alex had some, uh, some mental health challenges. Uh, and he sort of had an episode and, and that was that, right? And, and Larry was with him when he died. Larry saw it. Yeah. Uh, and so that's, that's a lot for anyone to, to, to process and he is so grateful to you for helping him and encouraging him to record and you've become very good friends with Larry. I want to say Larry and Arlene have been to the last three TMLX events. So because they came to the Christy Pits. They came to the Great Lakes Brewery and they came to the GOB brew pub last week. And I'm hoping they'll be at TMLX 21. No doubt they will. November 29th.

And I'm holding in my hand a Toronto Raptor's hat and a Toronto Maple Leafs hat and these hats belong to Larry and Arlene's son Alex and they were gifted to me when Larry came over to record this episode of Toronto Mike

which I called coping with the death of a child. And I've heard from people who have lost a child who told me that that episode helped them feel like they were not alone in how they were dealing with this loss that all three of us are fathers and we can't even

fathom it. We can't even put our heads there. And yeah, I'm glad I could help Larry. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's a, he's a good man. And he's, uh, he's very, very grateful. And, and, uh, you have his, uh, undying thanks and, and Arlene's as well. And, uh, Arlene, uh, Arlene happens to be the manager or the agent of Scott Thompson of kids in the hall. Which is a wild coincidence. On a lighterness. On a lighter note. Yeah. Well, that was a, that's a fun fact, absolutely.

And that's how Scott Thompson ended up in the basement to make his Toronto mic debut in 2025. That's right. Because of that connection. Unreal. So you never know what will happen if you say yes to a conversation. You know what? You're inspiring the fuck out of me, VP right now. But I mean, even if Arlene did not know Scott Thompson, I would have said yes.

I would, any human being who is, is hurting inside and needs to zoom with me gets the fucking Zoom. Let's put your number. What's the phone number? Let's put it out there. You can't call my Zoom until I create it, okay? I could like charge for this. Mike at Toronto Mike.com. There you go. That's right. Anyway, but that's an important series and I'm glad we have it. And it's out there now. People can

find it very easily. Larry Klobott's podcast series. It will help people. I was going to say, again, I sort of mention off the top, but one more like, never take for grand that we do these episodes at all because I feel like every quarter that goes by like shit's hard out there. and there's all sorts of stuff happening. I feel like so many people might know.

Save it for the Ben episode. Yeah. Yeah. No, like seriously, or people losing their jobs or people dying or accidents or whatever. No, yeah. It's, yeah.

It's, yeah. And you never know what people are dealing with. Like you don't know. If you met Larry, who, I'm 5'9, so when I meet Larry, he's,

oh, I mean, Cam's right beside me. It's the same thing with him. But these are tall guys and they're big presents. And you just have no idea what people are dealing with. you have no idea and you know sometimes you got to give people a break and can cut them some slack

because you don't know what kind of a year they're having you don't know what kind of a day they're having you just don't know i think especially with like co-workers where like it's a very transaction what's that like i don't have any yeah it's just like VP is my co-workers so i say all the time to like my boss or like my colleague like we don't know anything about this person yeah you don't know what's going on working here this is just a transaction it's awful what happen to Larry and Arlene. And anything that can ease that pain, sign me up. Absolutely. All right. Moving on, Eric Corrine of the athletic Raptors writer. It took a long time to make this come together. Yeah. And if I recall correctly, correct me if I'm

wrong. Oh, I will. There was a little interaction like on Blue Sky where you and Eric were sort of tagged into the same conversation. Maybe with Bruce Arthur. Yeah, I think that's right. And you said he mentioned Eric that Eric should do your show and you said, oh yeah, I've invited him many times and then Eric kind of got his backup a little bit and then... He's like, you haven't invited me lately or something like that.

Anyway, so, yeah, so back in the Twitter days, I definitely invited Eric over and we were going to do it and then he, I can't remember why. Maybe it was car problems. I can't remember, but he politely took himself out of the calendar. Then a pandemic hit and then I just sort of moved on

and I just took the hint. Maybe Eric doesn't want to come over which is fair games. And then, yeah, that interaction on Blue Sky with Bruce Arthur, beloved FOTM, and he says, you haven't asked me lately. So I'm like, okay, I'm asking you now. And then we set a date and he came over.

And Eric Corrine has a very dry wit to him. Yes. So he's like what I would call sneaky funny. Yeah, I would. And I like funny. Yeah, I like that episode. I didn't realize, and there is apparently documented proof of this, that he invented the term hot.

take right did you know that cam gordon well yes because i did listen to this episode so i did hear his to him put the claim on that one um i guess like he's like a day one guy at the athletic yes he is yeah he was hired before yeah myrtle yeah yeah i will say like i do follow the NBA really really closely and like hoops rumors dot com i look at he he's like referenced a lot as like any raptor stuff he's quite often the guy they they quote too like when you're like exactly Lowe or someone, like, refer to someone. Yeah, he's a big fucking deal. He might have signed on with your former colleague, David Alter.

That sounds right. Yeah, 2016, I'm just looking at the... Okay, and then... James... I think James Myrtle is not there anymore. Am I wrong? You know what? That's news to me.

No, he's there. Is he okay? Sean Fitzgerald is no longer there. He's gone, yeah. And who's the older guy who wrote for the... John Lott? John Lott's gone. Yeah.

Long gone. Yeah. And, uh... Kee be tired, though. Caitlin McGrath left to go to go to... She's gone. Tennis Canada, I think. Right, that's right.

So I got to address Brian Gerstein for a moment. Please. Gerstein, I think, felt like I had fallen away from the sports media episodes because I was heavy on sports media. I just quite frankly lost interest in talking to somebody from SportsNet or whatever. Like, I just want to move on to other things, particularly musicians. I wanted to do other things. But I want to say this past quarter, we've already talked about Steve Simmons,

Stephen Brunt, Scott MacArthur, J.D. Bunkus. So much sports content. And now we're talking about Eric Corrine, and there's more to come. Are you not entertained, Brian Gerstein? So Gerstein, you know, we haven't even got to Damien Cox yet. There's more coming up here. So much more. Girstine, that's sports media content for you, okay?

Yeah, directly specifically for you. Property and the 6.com. We love Brian Gerstein. And Gary Joyce. We're about to talk about it now. Yeah, we're talking about Gary Joyce. Yeah, this is part two of the Ron versus Don. And this is directly from the source, the man who wrote the, I guess there were two stories.

that he wrote about. There was like one big story, but he did drop an early one was that there was an exit strategy and we talked about how unwell Don Cherry was during that playoffs and he visited a hospital as per Gary Bettman to Ron McCain or whatever. And it was interesting to hear how

Gare Joyce, we talked about how he was literally just calling Ron McLean to talk about the cottage on Wolf, speaking of Stephen Stanley, the cottage on Wolf Island that Don Cherry owned for decades, I believe, and then sold that,

around that same time he was having the health struggles. He sells this cottage and Wolf Island. And he says something about how his wife doesn't want to make that drive at night to Kingston or whatever anymore. And then Ron just fucking... And Ron just sort of volunteers all this stuff. Like health stuff, you shouldn't talk about

anybody in public. And the whole exit strategy, which I'm not sure that... I don't know. I got to talk to Ron about all this. But it was fascinating to talk to Ger Joyce about how the story came together and just how fascinated we are in this country with Ron and Dawn.

Like still. Yeah. Has Ron just been over the one time? Just one time. Which is like 10 years ago. Long time. Yeah. Long time ago.

Yeah. No, I mean, like such giant personalities in the Canadian media, media scene, just because obviously hockey is so, so huge. And such a fixture in our homes on Saturday nights for so long. And then suddenly dawn and. is gone. And it was a smaller world, pre-internet when you don't have an app on your, it just, it was completely, those VHS cassettes. Oh, yeah. Sock. I'm like, just, I got a moral, number four, Bobby Orr. I can hear Steve's voice doing that. Let's go. Let's go. Yes.

Hockey man is what I am. Every time I hear a sharp dress man, I think of, when I, when I was a kid, I, uh, when I was not good. And, uh, one night I started, I was, I was really going to get focused. And I, I was, I was really going to get focused. And I, I laid on my bed with the lights out and I listened to Sharp Dress Man by ZZ Top. I scored, I got a hat trick that night. That's a fucking wild story. Yeah, yeah.

You waited this long to tell us that one. That's amazing. Yeah. Because you're not good and you got a hat trick. I got a hat trick. And then I was my leading team leading score. I just think thoughts coming ahead and I spit them out. But I just recently talked about my O and 15 year

with the CN Towers playing in the Swansea Hockey Association. I did not score a goal that year. we went 0 and 15 and multiple people referenced it to me so it was like they're bringing i'm like oh yeah like i'd be o'n 15 here i remember it well but i didn't get no fucking hat trick i would have listened to sharp dress yeah and that was that was my routine then after i was busy watching the video for legs over and over again thinking that would help me sure sure was um was this like the john galliger like sports news um i want a new drug was the intro music because i was listening to hughy lewis this week for some reason um um

As one does. Yeah, as one does. Or is like a theme song for like George Michael's sports machine or something? Oh, yeah. I used to watch George Michael's Sports Machine. If you like it was a theme song of like an 80s sports thing. That would be a good theme song actually. Anyway.

By the way, John Gallier will come up soon. So, okay. So hold on to that one. We had a blow. Get Peter Gross back on the line. We had a mind blow early in an episode. We'll talk about soon. Okay.

Time to talk about the only. FOTM to have passed away this past quarter. We lost an FOTM this past quarter. We did. And the next episode I can see on the list here is I put together this like remembering FOTM Nick Panaseco, who was better known as Promo Man. And I put some of the stories in there. Can we pay our respect to Nick, the promo man, by listening to this clip from that episode?

I'm worried people skip the episode not knowing the name Nick Panaseco. they made a huge mistake. These stories were legendary. You want to hear one? Let's hear it. Please. All right. I want to know, Nick, about your experiences with Bill Cosby.

Well, that was a classic because he overwhelmed me at the time. We had a group called Spinners who were coming off of a head rubber band man opening for Bill Cosby, which was a little strange having a rock band, soul band, opening for a comedian. But we decided I would give him a nice box of cigars, Cuban cigars. So he ended up opening the box, getting a cigar and calling me over to the side

and telling me that next time that he ever performs, he doesn't want the N-boys opening for him. So he called these guys the N-word. Yes. Wow. And so I was a little shocked and taken back. And actually a couple of spenders wanted his autograph, and he basically select them off and wouldn't sign anything for him.

I never thought I'd hear a bad word about Bill Cosby. Wow. That's shocking. Who would have thought? Yeah. Who would have thought? Yeah. Wow. Jesus. So add racist to the list of Bill Cosby things.

Okay. So that's just a minute of that episode, but there's a lot of wild stories. I played in a previous. I think when he first passed away, played the Keith Moon clip, which I have loaded up, but I won't play it again for time purposes. But go revisit that episode, remembering Nick Panaseko, the promo man, we lost him, and my condolences to his friends and family. Yeah, great, great stories and a textbook grout episode.

Yes, really. Just filled in a lot of gaps if you care at all about any of the shit that you do down here, Mike. This, this was like, it fit right in, like a jigsaw puzzle piece. loved it. Absolutely. Anyway, RIPP, Nick. Shout out to Ridley.

Cosby, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe Cosby. America's dad. Said that about the series. Good band. It's some big hits.

Who's that? Spinners, yes. That song's apparently sampled in a Girl Talk album. I'm just looking at who's sampled because I thought there was like a more famous. Girl Talk did come up with a certain FOTM we can talk about soon because I played some Girl Talk for Paul Cole. Oh, yeah, that's what I go. Yes.

And she had never heard it, which I'm like, oh. Yeah. Okay. Where's my resids? I think that was a free album. I don't know. I was going to say, that's why I feel like that's why we don't hear from Girl Talk. Illegal.

Well, they call, he called it, the label he called it, illegal art. Illegal art. Yes. Yeah. I saw Girl Talk live in Austin, Texas once. Okay. That's an interesting story. I saw him at the Phoenix.

Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. We're all fancy. Terrible. It's like him in a laptop. Like, it was like this. It was like this.

It was like this. Hey, can we saw a famous band that was just a guy in a laptop. That's right. Yeah, we did.

Band in a box. Andrew Budziak. Andrew Budziac, the nature photographer. Oh, this was a Tom Hobson recommend. Yes. Yes.

Tom of Tom and Gord fame. Who was at TMLX20? That's right. And I hope he said TMLX 21. They were jetting off to Ecuador and the Galapagos right after. What a life they live.

I'm so glad those guys could get away. It seems like they never, you know, this is years in the making this trip. Anyway, I really enjoyed this episode. Andrew Budziak is a photographer who specializes in taking photographs of wildlife throughout the city, of which there is quite a bit. You know, he, the one thing I took away from this episode. Very, very wholesome. Yeah, very wholesome.

The one thing I took away from this episode is that he is very adamant that you should not feed wildlife. Yeah, this is the big thing for Andrew. Yeah, no shit. Don't stop, and I think we did it. I said, anyone who feeds the wildlife in the city is banned from TMLX events. Yeah, yeah. Good. And I mean it.

Yeah, and then they should stop listening to this episode as well. Lauren already gave that warning. But I love, you know, as you know, did I ever mention on the show I bike the city? Did I ever mention that? Yes, once in a while. Fun fact, did I mention them a vegetarian? Well, that's not true. That's why I didn't mention it.

But okay. So I do a lot of, I can see a lot of, wildlife when you when you bike to say and kayak the city. You know, I took that footage of those beautiful deer, okay, in my Humber River paddle recently. I loved hearing about all the wildlife

that we have in this city. I want to know what I haven't seen that's out there. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. And to your point, like, if you go off the beaten path just a little bit, you'll see more wildlife than you can even imagine. Beavours. Yeah. Yeah.

Minks. That's right. Have you guys ever seen a possum? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were talking about... I have them here. They're like nasty little critters. They're scary looking, but they're apparently friends. They're good, they're good because they, I think they eat mice or something.

Yeah. There's something they do that would be something to be favorable. Like they're good, they're good animals to have around. They are. Keep going. Chipmongs, skunks, raccoons. Foxes, coyotes. Deer, of course.

Yeah. Yeah, coyotes, you said. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of fun of the wildlife you can find out there. Love it. Love it. Yeah, that was a fun episode. Ushwin Singh.

Yeah, stand-up comic, funny guy, interesting story, and he does this. I don't want to butcher it, like some kind of a Hindi singing. I don't remember the... Yeah, he has a great voice. Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed that visit. Yeah, he was great. He was very funny.

He was about to do a headline show for Just for Laughs. Right. He's a rising... We're catching a rising star. So it's like, oh yeah, my podcast back in 1980 when I had that Jim Carrey on. You got to catch him on their way up. And good on you, Ushwin, because I thought it was...

Yeah, there was a lot of time spent on the correct pronunciation. Well, I do that. I've got some bad habits. Yeah, fair enough. Breaking news from the live chat, by the way, Andy says that Andrew Budziak went to the same high school as her and Ken Dryden. Huge of truth. Okay, hold that Ken Dryden fire.

He's coming up in this show. That's E.C.I. That's right. My nephew goes there. Shout out to Nate. Very good. Very good. Next up is the great official historian of the TMU. Jeremy Hopkins talking about the Sunnyside Pavilion. I'm drinking it right now, my Sunnyside IPA.

I love this episode as I do every Jayho episode, learn so much. I really, you know, I'm close to the Sunnyside Pavilion and I go past it quite often, but I've never gone in and I feel like I need to now. Absolutely. We'll do it together. Okay. We'll film the whole fucking thing. I've got to say hi to Jayho because he came to TMLX 20 and he wore the suit and the hat. Always so well dressed. So you, sorry, have you ever swam there? I never have. No.

I've been the pool there. Like, it's quite an experience. Yeah. It's a cool. Yeah. I've been there. Let's do an FOTM cast swim next day. I would totally do that.

I'm going to start doing sit-ups right now. So I got a six-pack when I do that. See, Cam's got a six-pack because there's no flesh on that. my belly. I can tell it just right here. It's all muscle. So let's do that for sure. Part of our history. What else? I went, I went to Jayho's event too, which was pretty good. I believe that was the last quarter up by the, Lee side aerodome. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Just think about this for a minute. And I'm speaking to the 100 or less real heads who are actually listening to us right now. This is great. Jayho is just a guy who came to an event at Palmer's Kitchen.

That's right. I didn't know what a Jeremy Hopkins was. So a guy, a well-dressed man, like anybody who comes to a TMLX at Palmis Kitchen, that's where I do the live recording, he pops on the mic to say hi. He tells us about who he is. He listens. He loves a show.

He's his historian guy. Next thing you know, he's on the podcast every single quarter. Unreal. Yeah. That's how it happened. The official historian of the Toronto historian. I learned so much from him.

I knew who he was because I had followed him on Twitter because he used to post. these historical black and white photos that he had colored. Oh, half of it would be old. Yes, that's him. I remember that too. And I was like, oh, shit, you're that guy. And look at us now.

And now he's such a core member of the TMU. Absolutely. You know, next to Andy, I'd say he's the most important pillar. I would say every time I see him, I always, because as you guys know, I have this track changes things. So I always talk about sort of cultivating, you know, online content and archives and whatnot. and we were talking about the internet archive, but also how the proliferation of all these

sort of shitty like Toronto history and you see the same photos on everyone. It's like Joseph Bluer and it's... Because no one's putting in the time. It's the world's biggest bookstore. Yeah. Nobody's putting in the time and effort to create original content. They're just rehashing, recycling,

what they find of a quick Google search. Well, like Jeremy and I, we were talking about both of our visits to the Toronto Reference Library, just looking for stuff. And there's a treasure, of stuff up there. You've got to put in the work, though.

People are lazy. It's not much work. People are lazy. You take your phone. You like take a bunch of photos. You say it's not that much work. But these people of this, just farming out this content,

they just need something quick at their fingertips on the Google machine or whatever. Between this and like the fucking AI slop? It's like where is this all heading? This is heading nowhere. Don't get me started on the AI slop. My goodness gracious. You see stuff the leader of the free world

has been like tweeting out the last few days. Some news thing. What the fuck do? Does he think he made that speech? that's my concern. I think maybe. It doesn't even exist. We have like,

don't fear the reaper around if you saw this. That's right. Yeah, I saw that today. Yeah. I didn't even see that one. What the fuck were you doing?

Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. But think about that podcast that it was searching YouTube for bare naked ladies snow job. And ends up learning about the relationship between snow.

That's how it worked. That's original. That's how we do it. I had to get snow in the fucking basement. Get them comfortable. Get them talking. and then it comes out and now you can find it and reference it

but somebody's got to put in that work Snow and Page co-episode win you know it's you just reminded me we just had talked about Steve Simmons in the basement again this past quarter Steve Simmons is

Stephen Page's cousin so Stephen Page is connected to, sorry Scott Scott said so Steve Simmons is connected to Stephen Page who is connected to snow. But as far as I know,

there's no relation between Steve Simmons and snow because that would be a mind-blown. Where does Phil Kessel fit into all this? Hot dog! Or as my daughter would say, my daughter was entertaining. And she goes,

Daddy, say hot dog. She says, because she is amused by the fact that I say hot dog. And that came up in a previous effort. as are we. Tyler, I feel like this has dropped off. We had the Mike Trigger words. I feel like that thing

that's like in a bun that's like a tube a tube steak. That would be one for this person over here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The Toronto Mike triggers will be back. Not to fear. Not to fear. Okay. We got to move on. This is a big one though. This is a big one. Colin Cripps. Big one. So what I love this episode so much. Colin Cripps is just a fascinating guy.

Just a real kind of connector in the Toronto Like he's great He's a musician Yes That guy is a fucking musician Yeah absolutely Yeah

Part of some big bands We know and love Yeah absolutely So we got your Just like the through lines He was in the spoon He was in the spoon That was a Rob Proust exclusive

I had no idea there Till Proust tip me off Yeah Crash Vegas Crash Vegas Your junk house Your Blue Rodeo Yeah

Stop Stop Speaking of Kathleen Edwards, let's listen to Colin talking about his former lover, Kathleen Edwards. So when you hear this song in the headphones, what are you thinking? I was, you know, I was surprised at first. Not because there was any animosity between us at this point, you know, at the point that this song can not. Kathleen and I were, you know, we're together for eight years, we're married. I devoted all that time to her and her work, and it's, you know, it's still a very, very fond memory for me.

I'm very proud of the work that we did together, and I'm proud of her. And so, you know, I obviously have a lot of love for her. And when we split up, it was tough for a couple of years. know, I couldn't really have that connection, you know, it was, it was hard to, you know, there was definitely some, there was some healing to be done, you know, and, but when I, you know, but when we started to reconnect, it was on all the good things that happened in, in a relationship where we done this great work together and we still loved each other. And so when I heard this song, it's like, she, she essentially, you know, she auditions a lot of her material to me even now,

before she makes the records or she's kind of like you know she's she just she's i think she honors our relationship that way and so when she first played me this song i you know at first i was kind of laughing about it i went okay well that's you know that is a you know it's it's it's it's an honor to be part of somebody's work and uh i'll never lose that feeling about it and uh i think it's a great song This is a candidate for episode of the quarter. Yeah, absolutely. So many, like, years of Canadian, like, the spoons through, like, you know, Kathleen,

in the track changes the era of, like, Kathleen Edward, like, that's, that's, that's, like, 25 years of Canadian music. Yeah. Very, like, almost like, Forrest Gump, like, you sort of there for all this. And let me ask you this. Is there a bigger Canadian band? Well, I say this, but then I think maybe the answer is, like, something like Nickelback or whatever.

But is there a bigger Canadian band now that the tragically hip are no more? than in Blue Rodeo. Like, wouldn't that be our biggest band right now? They're in the conversation for sure. Yeah. Especially in Canada. Big in terms of what? Like, in terms of tickets they could sell.

Like, I'm talking about a band, like a band, that tickets they could sell to see them live. And, like, number of people who would say, like, yeah, I like Blue Rodeo. Like, I'm a blue rodeo fan. Yeah. Like, I don't think you get a lot of people. That band fucking sucks.

I hate them. Yeah, exactly. Like, they have a pretty high approval. It's making it as simple. It's like asking a Canadian resident. They don't have to be a citizen. Like, do you like Blue Rodeo? I feel like that would be the most yeses would, in terms of bands, would be Blue Rodeo. I agree. They got a different reaction like Bear Naked Ladies, certainly Nickelback. Even someone like the Arkells, I'm sorry for like, me, on the Arkells. I think it's Blue Rodeo.

Yeah. Why would you just like them? And they sell out the Budweiser stage and they sell out Massey Hall. Yeah. I think it's Blue Rodeo. and Colin Cripps is a member of that band. Before we leave Kathleen Edwards, did you guys, I think it was this quarter, kind of her new cycle, she had moved to Florida.

Yeah, I did hear about them. That was sort of really interesting because she was pretty unapologetic about it. I mean, obviously, Mike, you have your own feelings of anyone to even step foot in the U.S. right now, and here's one of our great musicians. Pleasure purposes.

Like, if you own property or you have family there, I know Rush Mike had to go because he married an American who had to go visit her family and stuff. Like, or work. Like, if Wilner has to go see the Buffalo, uh, the Buffalo Bisons,

the Buffalo Bisons because the Toronto Star wants him to write about them for his blue jay work. Like, so for work purposes, family purposes, maybe you own property down there, uh, I can understand. I don't love hearing about people going down there for like a good time and

then coming back. Like, like spend your entertainment dollars in any other country, maybe here at home in Canada. Okay, you can do it. I'm not the boss of you. I'm not the boss of you.

But I don't have to like that you do that. Sure. You don't have to like anything. You're someone who moved out right. She's not an interesting career because she did the coffee shop thing. Yeah. Quitters. Quitters. Yeah.

Close up and now she's done and she's a new album. And the context around Colin Cripps and Kathleen Edwards' relationship is that she left him and then started a relationship with Justin Vernon from Bonnie Vair. It's a big, big fucking deal. Big fucking deal. And then that relationship ended. Soured. And then she and Colin didn't obviously romantically reconcile, but they came back together.

They were working together again. They were playing together. And it was very nice to see. What a mature take that he had. Well, that's the thing. I felt with Colin, I felt like I could ask him anything. Well, he said, you were sort of a little trepidacious about kind of broaching the subject with him.

And he said, yeah, you can. Ask whatever you want. Yeah, because Kathleen Edwards, if people don't know and haven't heard yet, the Kathleen Edwards wrote a song about him, like basically thanks for the seven years. The song is called Glenn Fern, which incidentally is a street in Hamilton. It used to be. That they lived on. Yeah, they lived on that.

My ex-wife lived on a street and Glenn Fern was at the top of this. And you wrote a song called Glenn Fern. I did write a song about Glenn Fern also about my ex-wife. It's on your SoundCloud. So I'm just, I just want you know, in my Google Doc, I have highlighted this episode as a potential episode of the quarter. It's in there. Because now that I'm thinking about it, I remember it was stellar. The Colin Cripps episode of Toronto, Mike, that guy hit it out of the park.

It's kind of a rare common. It's, in some ways, it's grout. But, like, he's also just a big fucking deal, too. Yeah, yeah. Played with everybody, like, a top grade guitars. But he was an OG junkhouse guy before, because he was. I don't think he played on. He was best friends living with Dan Aiken.

I think they were very, very, very close. Him and Dan Aiken. Like, he could have. wasn't, but he could have been, he was there to be an OG junk houseer. He was in he was in bands with all those other guys. He wasn't in OG junk house. No, he wasn't. But then he came in after he passed away, yeah. After that first

out, after Strays, I guess. He joins again. Yeah, Dan. And you know, he, that would be entering his next visit, we could spend more time talking about Dan Egan. He's so like grouty. I was about to say he was also at the Change of Heart show this, that we saw, it was not him. It was Glenn Miltcham. Right. I was going to say he He also dated Michelle McAdoury. It's like, it was not him.

It was Greg Keeler. Right. Michelle McIgdory. But again, he's just this through line through like all this stuff. So glad I got him got him over here. Yeah, that was I really, really enjoyed it. Very humble too. Yeah.

What a good guy. Easy to talk to him. Okay, this next one's heavier. Yes, Shy Klein. So he was a, he was present at the music festival on October the 7th, that anniversary, two-year anniversary is coming up in a few days. and he told you the harrowing account of his experience at that festival on that day. And it was really quite a gripping conversation.

Cam, did you hear that episode of Shai Cling? I heard about 10 minutes of it and I got, I'm going to be honest, I don't remember much beyond sort of the drama of it of what I heard. Obviously, a very happy topic I knew going in. Well, that's as heavy. Like, he was at the music, Nova, the Nova music festival. And he, the way he tells the story, like, I just sat back and let him go. I was going to, I was like, cancel my four o'clock.

Like, however long he needed, the way he told the story, too, he talked about taking psychedelics, because that was the EDM music and it was part of the culture and all this. And he talks in such fascinating detail about when he saw, oh, what was it, they hear the shots and basically play by play of what it was like to be in his show. shoes on October 7th in Israel. Horrific. But also they're like living history. And he took photos, right? He kept taking photos. And a film camera, by the way. That's I'm like, I had to stop down and like, so you were, it was a film camera. Yeah.

It wasn't a digital camera. But he took these photos and some of these photos are people who died. Sure. You know, are no longer with us. And a lot of people did reach out to say that thank you for that conversation with Shai Klein. So I got the origin story was I was, I told it, I think, to him, but I'll just tell it again really quickly, is that I was invited to a frozen pizza opera, like an opera for Dr. Okers. So they said, hey, come to the TD Music Hall, which is attached to Massey Hall, and we're going to put on an opera, and it's for Dr. O'Ker's Frozen Pizza. And I guess I was like, okay, I'm going to bike over and do this thing. Like, I just was going to do it, just because I was curious who's there, what is it vibe like,

and I had the time to do it. So I bike over, I'm there. Everyone's dressed up like they're going to the opera. These are younger than me. I was the oldest guy there, I think. But everyone's dressed up like they're going to the opera. Because we're going to see an opera with real opera people. But it's about frozen pizza.

Sorry. It says PR stink all over it. Yeah, not to be an asshole, but like 15 years ago, I invite you to fucking Birx for like the diamond-encrusted LG phone, open bar food. You won't come to that, but this fucking frozen pizza opera like schlock. Like, what the fuck? you got four kids like what i don't get it i think you were living downtown when i invited you to burks you were living across him the strip club it was like one block over at burks

oh jesus christ sorry just open up wounds yeah at some point completely ignoring you became a sport like i started enjoying it's crazy i do like you sell the emails too i had kept them all i don't delete it not since 2004 anyway okay so just to put a bow and that's stories. I'm there. Younger, much younger people than I are dressed to the nines, like they're going to an opera. And I'm like, I really couldn't believe. I was, look, I was taking these mental nose like, oh, fuck, like, was I supposed to dress like I'm going to a fucking opera for frozen pizza? Like, because I was in my biking. You don't even own a collared shirt.

I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt because I'd biked over. So this was sort of like, do you remember that thing fake prom they used to have? Like, people, they had it on the boat, the floating restaurant, Captain John? Oh, Captain John. Oh, yeah. Oh, I have something for the fact. But like it was sort of like hipsters would dress up like they're going to prom. Like this is sort of what sounds like this is. Well, this is okay. So I guess I don't know.

I'm there. I went to this. Yeah, I went to. I did go to this. I think I went to it because I was like, oh, they were going to give you a beer and free pizza. And I said, I'll bike over see this opera. I get it. But they're much younger, much better dressed.

They're all doing like, it's all about the gram, right? They're all taking these selfies with this background, like everything. I'm like, holy shit. Did you recognize anyone? Yeah, I did recognize a guy. I recognize a couple of people from back of the day. Crap, I can't remember her name. No, but who was in that group?

Yes. Was she really? Oh, my God. Casey Stewart was 100% there. I'm like, oh, I'm in a time warp. Ramey the Minks, was she? No, she wasn't there. But Casey Stewart was out.

I was like, oh, it's like 20 years ago. Nothing's changed, okay? But then I saw a guy named Joel Levy. Levy? Joel Levy. Let's go of Levy. Yeah. And I remember he was working with Tellus on a campaign where they,

They took me to the gold medal game of Canada versus Russia, World Junior Championships at the ACC. And they gave me a jersey and they gave me a seat. We won that game. Connor McDavid scored a goal. Max Domi scored a goal. Quite an exciting game, actually. And I remembered him from that.

And then we're just shooting the shit about these young people dressed to the nines for this fucking frozen pizza opera. I'm like, where the hell am I? And then he told me about his cousin, who is a survivor of October 7th. and is a Canadian-Israeli guy and he's coming back or something. And I just said, would he come over and tell his story? And that's how Shy Klein ended up in the basement. My God.

Who would have thought? Okay, that was a long way around. But how would you dress if you were going to a like a PR thing for frozen pizza they were launching Dr. Oakhers and they said it's an opera at the T.D. Music Hall. How would you dress? So it's like black tie quality. First of all, I'm not going to that. What about free beer and pizza?

No? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. It was a good bike ride. I really enjoyed it. How was the opera, by the way? Oh, it was opera-e. Like, it was a professional singer.

The good singers, I don't know. They were singing about, like, I can't remember anymore, but something about how this, I need, I don't remember, but the plot was about the pizza in the oven. Oh, yeah, the guy was fictional. It was like a single woman who had this fantasy guy, the Italian fantasy guy who somehow the pizza got involved. I fucking can't remember, man. but this happened. This feels Kirkland, 4390. Okay, but the pizza was pretty good, Doctor.

And I just said Dr. Oakhers 20 times in this episode of Toronto. My kids will be listened to by dozens of people. That's right. What did you think of that venue, by the way? I've been in that venue, I was in that venue on the red carpet when they had the rock. Canadian songwriters. Canadian rock of fame.

So, my friend. Alan Fruh, for sure, because I was in the elevator of him. You said, who gave me the lasagna? He said, in a Scottish accent, not whatever the fuck I just did. Don't forget me. All right, we got to, guys, we got to cook here, man. So we're not just cooking frozen pizza on this show.

But you know me, if I'm going to eat pizza, you know where I'm going? Palma's Kitchen. You guys know that, right? Hey, do you guys want a lasagna? I would love one. I'll take a, I have a, I have a pasta lasagna. I have beef.

It's pure, 100% beef. Just a block of beef. It's just beef. It's just beef. It's just beef. It's just beef. All right. Thank you, Palma,

We got to move on. Brie Taylor. Brie Taylor. I did not listen to Brie Taylor. How was that? She was fun. She's an up-and-coming country singer, and she's got Spunk, and she dresses sort of like a rocker chick, but she's country. And I can see why you'd skip it.

But when she's winning CMAs and when she's a big fucking deal, like Tate McCray in a couple of years, you're going to be like... She's wearing like a leather vest? Yeah. A boostie? You got it, brother. Is this the first guest to ever wear a leather vest? I think more people viewed the photo than listen to the episode. The video is very popular.

Brie Taylor Realheads only. Who is she connected to? Like this seems like she might have had a connection or does someone pitch? No, I was pitched her and it was convenient to have an hour chat with Brie Taylor in the basement. I'm glad I did it because one day she'll be a big star and oh yeah, no, you know what drew me in? I remember now. Sorry, you're jogging my memory. What drew me in is that she's deaf or almost deaf.

So I was really drawn in by this rocky country chick Who wears hearing aids Because she can barely hear Like I just thought that's interesting For a singer who has such a major hearing disability So good for her So that was like that's what drew me in Yeah

Keep an eye on Bree Keep an eye on Bree Taylor Next up is an episode that I did listen to Damien Cox Finally! Oh my God Okay Brian you take a note Damien Cox Just the selfie's okay for now

What did you guys think of his return? You know, I always love the chats you and Damien Cox have. I always despise Damien Cox's columnist persona, but every chat that you have with him is... Do I humanize the beast? You humanize the beast. And, you know, it sounds like he's doing well. It sounds like, you know, he's not super involved in sports.

He's not writing a lot these days. But he seems like he's living, living his best life and seems... Listening to Coldplay? Yeah. Seems, was not, was not crusty. I don't, I mean, if you care to have, to hear Damien Cox in that kind of an environment, I don't think there's anywhere else you can go. Like, I think I'm the only one is put in that energy to, to create that dynamic.

He looked fit as a fiddle, too. Like, he looked like he's, like, just healthy. He plays tennis. Looks sleek. Yeah. Yeah. So, there you go. I think, and the reason I invited Damien over is because I had such a good time with Steve Simmons.

I'm like, oh, I need some more. I hit another hit of this. Yeah, that same vintage. And I'm like, oh, he's. By the way, there will be a Hebsy episode in the next quarter. All right. Because he's got a book coming out. Good.

And I am in the new book. Very exciting. Not just referenced in a story, but I'm also, a photo of me is in this book. It's about like, why is sports media shit. Yeah, the rise and fall of Canadian sports media. Yeah, I look forward to reading that. And look for Hebsy next quarter. Next up, Tom Brown.

Okay. Tom Brown. Formerly of CTV. Toy Mountain. Toy Mountain guy. Tom Brown brought his fiancée with him. Daisy. Couldn't be happier.

Daisy. The happiest man. One of my favorite, you know, one of my favorite episodes of the quarter was Tom Brown and Daisy. Yeah. Yeah.

Great energy from those two. And Daisy particularly, and this, this, he's just so fucking happy. Yeah. And it was like days before their wedding. They've since been married.

Yeah. Saw those wedding pictures. Glimber in his eye. He just, just like, this guy's like he knows he won this lottery. He's got this beautiful woman. And Tom Brown, who he's just a ball of energy, but he's fun to talk to.

And he gave me the whole story. And there's a Price's Right component. And I found the whole thing pretty good. I think that's also a candidate for episode of the quarter. I really like the Tom Brown episode. Very fun episode. Yeah. Next up was you on our good friend, J.D.'s tragically hip top 40 countdown.

You ripped this one from his feed and dropped it in yours. With his permission. Of course, with his permission. Of course, I'd probably do it anyway. I fucking did this episode, I'm taking it. But I did ask him. Yeah. He asked you.

That's right. And he's having his big event on Saturday night. Tomorrow. And he's revealing the number one song. So that's very exciting. The number one song is either Grace 2 or ahead by a century. It's probably a head by a century. I think for sure.

I hate to say, is this going to conflict with the Jay's game? Well, I'm not, I've got other plans for the Jay's game. It's at the rec room. It's right. Oh, so it's right out there. Right there. So, well, that's interesting, right? Because this event with JD is a 7 o'clock start by the dome.

And the J's game is four. Yeah. So things they could bump into each other. But I'm biking, so I don't give a fuck. Cross pollination could happen. But I have other plans. Before I go to the 7 o'clock, I'm a, with my oldest for a couple of hours.

So I think, like, I think really I'm, like, offline from four to seven. Yeah. So at seven o'clock, I'll check my phone. Oh, you know what? I'll check the fan's reaction. Yeah, you'll be right there. I'll be right there on my bike. Yeah.

I hate to say, like, whenever I think of that venue, I just think of drunk Kelly Gruber. Just making Ashley docking. Did you know Ashley docking is a dear friend of J.D. Bunkus? I did not know that. Do you think that's any reason? he was a little bit, the vibes were off. Like maybe he got bad,

bad press from Ashland. Was hers a weird episode or? A little bit. Yeah, there's a little bit of weird energy there. Once in a while, I hit a, I hit a wobbler.

Like, they're not all home runs on Toronto Mike, but sometimes, you know, Ashley's one that I think I'd like back. But I mean, I did my best, but it's just the vibes were off possibly.

Sometimes you just, yeah. I told her how to make the lasagna. Oh, yeah. She said I was mansplained. Mansplained. and had to make the palm of pasta lasagna. The main thing is I met Lloyd Mosby that day. That's all I matter.

That's all I care. Oh, and the late Dr. Ron Taylor. Oh, yeah. Whose son I got to interview for a client of mine. My dad was very excited, fellow North Toronto. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was a woman who was on Toronto, Mike, whose aunt was a victim of Hamas killed her aunt? Oh, yeah, she did the dock on Ontario Place.

Yeah, she did the dock on Ontario Place. Allie Weinstein. Allie Weinstein. Thank you. Oh, right. She worked on that document. She was about Dr. baseball with Ron Taylor's son.

Uh-huh. Okay. It all comes back to that. Okay. All right. Okay. So where are we at? We're about halfway here.

Tom Brown. Okay, the tragically hip. So J.D. had me on. I talked about Fiddler's Green. Yeah. We recorded a very long time ago and I'd forgot everything about it. And when I listened, it was like I'd never heard it before.

Yeah. So it was very exciting to hear yourself on a podcast that you don't have a what song you're kicking out, let alone what you're going to say. That's right. Okay. Emily Whedon. Emily Whedon. I didn't hear this episode.

I have nothing to say about it. Oh, you know what? You're going to lose your gig, okay. Look, I'm like 100%... Emily Whedon was surprisingly interesting, and it was a delightful chat. She's connected. You know, just, okay, she's connected in ways you wouldn't imagine. No, she has a friend of Blair Packham.

Is that how that? I can't, fucking can't remember. But I don't. remember exactly if she came in through Blair Packham, but guests do come in through Blair Packham. That could have happened. I don't think this was through Blair Packham. She writes all those dystopian novels. Yeah. And she wrote a book about Hemosapians. Hemosapians. Hemosapians. Hemosapians. Hemosapians. Hemosapians. Emily was great. And I got notes from people who know her, like Blair. I don't think she came through Blair, actually, but like people like

Alan Swig, she was in an Alan Swig movie. Emily Whedon, better than you'd think, and you might want to check that out. Trust it. I will. Check it out. Okay, and the next one was a, uh, like a thing I couldn't get out of my head on bike rides and I had to throw it down. Songs that mention Toronto or Tio. No, it couldn't mention Tio. Like the whole idea was it had to say the name Toronto. This came in my head because of the Kings. So that's where it started. The way they said Toronto's reference and then I started thinking about songs that say the name Toronto and then I had to throw down all the ones I could think about. I'm sure I missed a bunch but I just threw it together and it's kind of a fun listen I think maybe I don't know I enjoyed

sneaky man of a hip-hop the last 10 years Toronto mentioned right the gay con I think and also speaking which this isn't quite mentioning Toronto did Neil play ambulance yes he opened the first okay he opened that was before Langer went down that's yeah that's right Langer heard that. That was a first song. And that's a great song about the Riverboat Cafe. It's a great song. The Elizabeth and they tore you down. The Isabella, they tore you down.

It's a real Jeremy Hopkins. Oh, yeah. Let's have a lot of Jeremy Hopkins breakdown. Okay, Jeremy, if you're listening, we want an ambulance blues episode. Okay, so that brings us to Martin Popoff, which was one I threw together very quickly because I heard he was taking his, he's got problems with the tariffs. And he has a, his mail order book side of his business. going to take his sight down, and I wanted to hear what was going on with Popoff and Trump's

tariffs. Popov, Popov. So what did you think of Martin Popoff? I enjoyed it. He's a fascinating character, like, just so dedicated to writing books about metal. And obviously, like, it's a real cottage industry for him. Like, he's clearly got hardcore fans who were just happy to, you know, scoop up whatever he's putting out. Like, it's like deep purple. Yeah, yeah. 1975 to 97, like, just so specific, but he's just like a machine, like churning. He's got a lot of rush books. Yeah, it's impressive. He's got a lot of books, hundreds of books.

Super cool. So Popoff, who I wanted to get him back on and we did it. Yeah, I thought that was sort of a rare one because that was right in a news cycle of like, what are the real effects? That's right. And it was sort of interesting. Here's like a small business owner. And it's really fucking this guy out in some ways. Yeah.

So to hear it first hand was, yeah, super interesting beyond the fact he's writing about music. Yeah. I learned about de minimis from Martin Poppaw's episode, which was the law where they don't charge duty on goods. Like the $800. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we learned a lot from Martin Pop-up. We did.

The next one was a toast, which we do every single month. Yeah. Always a good time to hang up Rob and Bob. Okay, and Lyndon McIntyre. Yeah, yeah, he was great. What a character. And it really felt to me like he was leaning into the East Coast accent on your episode.

Well, I want to hear a bit of him? So I pulled a clip because, okay, so I thoroughly enjoyed Lyndon McIntyre. No, MF listened to this one. And I know it's a good one because when I go on these bike rides and I revisit things and I think about things and there was one little story he shared.

I couldn't get out of my head. So I carved it up and put it on YouTube. It's just two minutes. Yeah. But this is the story. Oh, man. Get goosebumps even thinking about it. So listen to Lyndon McIntyre

in the basement with me in this past quarter. I went underground myself when I was in university. I needed the money for, you know, so it's summer work. And one summer, in northeast coast of Newfoundland, I was working underground. I had my 19th birthday underground. It was an overnight shift. And I remember the next morning, my father came into the room. He was living in a different part of the camp.

He came into the room, and I was still in bed because it was overnight. And the door opens, and this guy clumped into the room. And he says, here's your happy birthday. And he threw my birthday present on the bay. And the birthday present was two packages of exporting. So anyway, I got up and I opened one. I lit, we each lit a cigarette. I can still see him because it was a very meaning.

We didn't have a lot of meaningful conversations, but this one was. And I can still see him tapping the ashes into an empty Coke bottle. And eventually at a crucial part of the conversation, he dropped the cigarette into the Coke bottle. And I can still, as I sit here in your studio, see the smoke rising up into the, the coke bottle. It's amazing what moments sort of stick with you. And I'll tell you why. Yeah. He says, I had just completed my first year of university. And he says, did you get your marks yet? I said, the marks came in the other day. He says, how did you do? I said, not great. Have they kicked you out? No, they haven't kicked me out yet. Good, he says, you're all set for

next year. And I said, you know what? I'm going to take next year off. Oh, yeah, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to stay in here, earn some money, work underground. I like, working underground. It's a very macho thing to do, and it's very rewarding to go down there and come up at the end of the day, bone tired, filthy, and have a shower, and take the rest of the night. He looked at me, and he says, you're going back. I said, I want to stay here. He says, you're just passing through here, son.

And I said, well, no, he said, you're going back. That's the only time he ever laid down the law, you're going back, boy. Gives me chills, man. Yeah. What a great fucking story. Yeah, I would listen to endless stories from Lyndon McIntyre. And yeah, definitely

leaning into the the East Coast maritime story. So at some point in that combo, he says he worked very hard in getting rid of the accent and I said, you know, you still have it.

Yeah. I mean, I thought he was fucking joking with me. I'm like, you're fucking kidding with me. You think you got rid of the accent. Yeah, definitely not. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I really enjoy. that conversation. He's a fascinating guy. And married to Carol off, right? So that's a, you can add that to like MF and Cam Gordon, for example. FOTMs who are married. Paul Hunter and Mary Ormsby.

There's a few. Did I tell you I was hanging of Ben Johnson this past quarter? That's right. Still love that guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Jack Berkovitz. Oh, yeah.

What a character. I just want to hear what you guys thought of Jack Bergerna. Yeah, so that was a wild episode. He's, uh, he's a character. He's a storyteller. I'm going to play a clip of Jack. Okay. So the way I understand this, and this is right off the top,

you asked Jack to cut a promo for Toronto Mike, and this is what he said. Right. I'm Jack Berkowitz, and I wear many, many hats, including the Armika on my head, which signifies my Jewishness. I am the jewel of the radio industry. I'm also the jewel of the jewelry industry,

and there's so much more. You got to get to know me, to find out how many hats I wear. Thanks, thanks, Jack. So, yeah, so I've done that quite a bit lately. You know who got that right? It's somebody like Steve Paking got it right. Like, you know, there's the best guy to ever.

So it's just, let's cut a promo, and then we'll roll into the episode. Yamika. Yeah, yeah. So I got to ask you, like, did you enjoy? Because I feel like people are split on this. Some people feel there's a lot there to, I think, I can't take this. Yeah. Maybe they don't believe it.

at all or something. But some people, like Lauren Honickman and others, absolutely loved hearing Jack's story. Yeah. Like, I don't know. Did you listen, Cam? Oh, yeah. This one I actually listened while I was on a long car ride. I was actually driving at the time, hands on the wheel while listening to Jack, spin his tails. Ten and two o'clock. Yeah. I mean, it was interesting because it had, you know, certainly the media stuff. And like, a lot of radio stuff. I feel like I ask you, like, every three months, it's like, Mike or L.S. Wiseblood, the Melissa DeMarco show, is that paid? I was hanging with her the other day, too. Yeah, like these, I'm so, or Joey Vendetta or, I'm trying to even Mark Salzman, like his tech show is like paid content. Oh, yeah, he told me.

Yeah, like, if I find these arrangements kind of interesting, but would Jack, it's not exactly that, but kind of a step removed, but in his rendition of it, it's not that at all. Well, yeah. So the weird coincidence is once he stops advertising on a station, they cancel his program. Yeah, that's wild. But also like what he does for the ratings. I mean, Sunday at 10, what, 11 o'clock, it went from like, as he tells it, like 15 listeners to 30,000 or something, thousands of listeners. Was that on Saga 960? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. Like it's, I like him talk about the store with every Saturday. There's just lineups of cars. coming into it. Remember, there was a hit on his life. And we talked about Harold, the jewelry buyer. Yeah. And like Cashman makes an appearance. Just a

fascinating conversation. A very interesting guy. He's so clearly full of shit. But still a great storyteller. You know? Like, were you not entertained? Yeah. Absolutely. I was entertained. Yeah. I will say like he did I don't really offend that easily,

but he did say a few things. I'm like, ugh. Yeah. Like just some of the terms dehumanizing language. I'll just say that that he used. I'll just leave it at that. But yeah, it was a compelling, a compelling podcast.

Yes. For sure. Remarkable, he might say. Remarkable, yeah. It's a good word for you. I'm trying to think,

does he have a radio show now? I can't remember if he's stolen. No, no, no, no. There's a saga thing. He went, he started at 10, 10. Yeah. Then he went to 640.

Then he went to 960. And right now I don't think he's on any station. Yeah. Most recently on Saga. Yeah, that's correct. Then a change chance of that. Maybe next. Maybe he's a TMDS production next.

Who knows? Who knows? Who's to say? He could be a sponsor of the program for the next FOTM cast. Just the final thought. When he was describing sort of the change of like who's leading that station and going and describing the family, I'm like, dude, don't, like, I thought he was just going to like really go off on the folks on that.

It's like, dude. Yeah. To his credit, he didn't. He backed away. Yeah. So. All right. Sophie B.

Hawkins. Oh my God. Sophie B. Hawkins. Wow. What, so fascinating that, you know, you don't often have people with such tenuous connections to Toronto. So, I believe, was this an Alper special as well? So this was a favorite, Eric Alper.

Okay. And what a favor it was. Like, it was a great chat. And it leads to another episode, which we'll talk about later. So, like, you know, Sophie B. Hawkins, damn, I wish I was your lover, like, such a huge song. Iconic. iconic, played in many TV shows, many movies, huge hit. Everyone knows that song, right?

Even if you don't know Sophie B. Hawkins, you know that song. Also one of those songs, like, you hear it, you're like, 1992. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so specific, the sound and that boom-bop, like that boom-bop type beat. And she had that other big hit, too. As I lay me down. Yeah. But just a great chat.

Fun chat. You and she had fun chemistry. I have a little clip of Sophie talking about how she wrote Damn, I wish I was your lover, so let's listen to Sophie. Damn is having sort of a renaissance right now. Okay, so let's do this.

I wanted to talk about your Toronto history, but first I just, you don't be offended in many great songs, but there are two songs that I think are banging around everybody's head right now when I say the name Sophie B. Hawkins. Like one of them is, Damn, I wish I was your lover. But I don't want to like discount

because I was playing it last night, and it's huge as I lay me down. That's a huge jam. That's the longest running hit single in the history of music, apparently. 67 weeks on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Singles chart. Yes, well, you got it.

Six weeks at the number one spot in this particular Billboard chart. Yeah, big deal. That's a lot. And I thank also the songs for really, they really support me. Because even though there's not radio,

anymore, they make people find me in other ways. Like being on the jam, John Hamm, which we both haven't seen, but that does, you know, I can't, when people say they don't play their, like, to play their hits on tour, I'm like, are you kidding me? That's what, that's how people know you. That's what brought them in, you know? I hate bands. Like, if you, like, I, if I went to see Sophie B. Hawkins in North Battleford, Saskatchewan,

and she didn't sing, damn, I wish I was your lover, I would throw my can of beer at you. And I agree with you, and by the way, it's a great song to sing. It is as challenging as any Janice Chaplin song because of the range. And the emotions, and I will tell you, this is honest. Every single song I've ever written that I sing on stage, I always discover it fresh in front of the audience. I really sing as an, I think more of it like an act. I don't know if this is actually, but I don't sing by rote. I sing and I find new things because this is sounding negatistical, but it's true.

The lyrics are so good. The lyrics are so real. I always find new meaning in my songs. And even as I grow, especially as I grow older, I go, wow, that's really profound. You wrote that song. I want to make sure the listeners know, you're not just some hired gun up there of a great voice. You wrote that song. I write the lyrics and the music.

I write everything in my rooms, wherever my room is. And that's how I remember where I was. When people say, where were you in blah, blah, blah. I think what songs? I wrote that song when I was living in 1983. Street. I write everything. I recorded in my bedroom. I always have a studio in my bedroom. I always have.

And that's how I go. And sometimes people like my demos better. And I'm yet to release an album of the original demos of everything, but that will be a lot of fans' favorites, because they are better than the studio recordings in many ways. And am I right that a song like that we just talked about the John Hamm series,

which people are digging right now on Apple? But it'll show up in a whole bunch of things, right? Like Euphoria or Stranger Things or Ozark? Yes. Yes. Yes. huge shows. They are. They are. And that's again, thank the Lord. That's how I'm putting food on the table. Sophie B. I thought I was doing Alper's heavy lifting there. So she's her tour and well with someone else we'll get to in a second. So this is only Western Canada in the prairies. It's North Battle for Saskatchewan. It's Alberta. It is Saskatchewan

and it is British Columbia. So interesting. North Battleford. It's like, oh, Sophie B. Hawkins. No, I know. And some other person we'll talk about soon. But great, because she was outside, so we're Zooming, obviously, and she's outside, and she was in good spirits. And I didn't know what, she's an unknown commodity. I didn't know what to expect. And she was great. Enjoyed it very much. What did she think of you? So I don't like, now, here's the thing. So I love that moment because I didn't ask for it. That's why you put it on YouTube. You clipped it.

Yeah, of course. But I didn't ask for it. She gave it. to me, and it felt good. Then I fucking, I hate, like, I wish I, you know how I don't edit things, and I wish I could take back prompting from the other person we haven't mentioned, because she's coming up later, I ask for it, and then I get it because I ask for it, and I'm, I'm cringy now telling you, because I don't regret a lot of shit I say on Toronto Mike, but I regret fishing for that one from the other person, but I'm not, I, but see, if this didn't happen, that wouldn't happen, but this happened organically, and I like this.

one, and I don't like me fishing in the other. Less meaningful. But, you know, I don't edit. It's all, you're talking to a fucking big star. And it's like, sometimes your brain has these different thoughts and you're quickly, which one am I going to spit into this microphone now? And I just, that's the one I picked and it sounds grinchy. When I think of the name, so, Sophie Biakins, I picture Carly Simon. Oh, interesting. Do they sort of look the same? Am I wrong? I mean, not really. Yeah. Like, not earthy, you're so vain. I'll bet you the same. I'll bet you think this song is about you.

Okay, we got to cook. Do you realize how long this is taking? We have so much more to go. Okay, let's go hard. Okay. So, Bob and Rob, love him. Okay, we love Bob and Rob. Yeah.

Rewinder, rewind, ah. Blair Packham. That's the second rewinder. Second Rewinder. So we talked probably more about it the first time. Another great rewinder with beloved FOTM, Blair Packham. Yeah. Love Blair, great guy.

And I really love the concept of that show. You know, it's the anti-FTAQ. It's supposed to be the opposite of this. Yeah. And, yeah. Like you can let this one, this one, don't fucking listen to this one. Yeah, everyone should listen to Rewinder with Blair Pack. Yeah.

All right. Next up, Lauren Honickman in his first of two appearances in the quarter. This one was cut short due to some technical difficulties. And this one had a very interesting segment where you wanted to get Lauren's opinion on something very important to TMU. And so let's listen to that exchange now. I'm going to play it one more time. And then I want to hear from you, Lauren, if you believe that is Mark Daly's voice, okay? So one more time now that you're thinking about your friend Mark Daly. You ready?

I'm certain. Like, I want to end this debate today. That is Mark Daly. Okay, I can't help you, Mike. But just, okay, you can't say definitively. You're such a lawyer. But to your, to your ears, your expert ears, does that sound like his timbre? Here's what I could say. If you told me it was Mark Daly and I would not be able to say to it, no, it's not. But if you're saying to me, is it, you know, John Doe or Mark Daly, I'd say it sounds like Mark. But again, um, we're not in court here, Lauren. No, I know. And we're spending a lot of time on this. So I do want to be able to give you whatever you know i want to help you as much as i can i just wanted your

analysis uh like listening you're talking about my ears trying to hear something embedded in a song and you're asking me because there's this incredible debate out there is that mark daily uh so my answer to you is it to the best of my ears ability it it sounds a little like mark daily and i think I hope I've helped you there and I want to thank you for inviting me downstairs and I'll see in two years and we'll get into some other stuff. Do you feel

like we wasted too much time discussing that sample in the Rush song that I believe is Mark Daly? Because I have somebody here who worked with him. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you that whoever is listening to our interview right now is going to be saying Lorne, thank God you got Mike off of that. I saw you

working to get off of that. he wouldn't let you get off of it I appreciate that you did your best I think that's what people are going to say about that okay I need a ruling okay I did by way I took out the stopwatch I start subdivisions chatter

at 1720 of that episode and we abandoned subdivisions chatter at 2333 yeah six minutes solid six minutes so personally I love it because it's so uncomfortable and Lauren is so clearly done with it. He hated it. But I guess that's, I see both sides of it, right? Like, it's the Toronto-miked way to like just bore into a subject and not let it go until you've, you've had your way with it. It's like, look at all this

shit. Like what do you think this is? Exactly. But on the other hand, like, when do you, when do you take a cue from a guest to say, all right, this guy is not digging this? Like, let's move on. And I'm not saying you should have because I well it wasn't it wasn't like Colin James where he's like where the fuck am I in the first time I met him right? Yeah he knows what's up he's been on well worn over yeah

I produced a podcast for the man right I felt like that's something the TME you would be interested in yeah and his idea that you know people are going to be grateful he tried to move me off it like get off this this is off this terrible I think he just doesn't get the show when he says stuff like that. And I can tell you right away, I had an email from his colleague Al McCormick is the gentleman's

name. He comes up in a later episode with another FOTM Hall of Famer. We had a call about it earlier and about three hours ago. We had a call about it. But Al McCormick was just, his favorite part of this episode was the six minutes we spent talking about subdivisions. Yeah. He loved it. Okay, so I loved it and that's all that matters. I'd say sort of, I have three quick thoughts. One, I think this like again textbook guy slowly losing his temper yeah he almost told me

very just like a slight rage setting in two I'm trying to think what the closest parallel like I think of Gino Vanelli could get up black cars is sort of the more but that's a more

a far more abrupt he had a smile though with his but I feel like Lauren that's the closest Lauren Honnickman has ever come to telling me to just fuck off you know what I mean but you were right he did serve

and I saw some like PR like my servo I glaze my eyes and oh this sounds like PR his spin he's putting on here but you said lawyerly we're not in court yeah

he did sort of lapse into like his sort of you know lawyerness and you know so I guess you're going to get to this the fact that we thought we lost that episode

yeah I mean I alluded to it there were some technical issues and you had to stop the recording so we got 40 minutes in and then I got a dialogue box on this thing to say a hard drive is full, but

both, I recorded two different channels, like I said, there's a backup and there's the primary recording, and both crashed because of the hard drive being full and I couldn't resident, like I spent long time trying to recover the audio and I believed it to be lost for good. So Lauren said, hey, we'll do it again

and I'll come back in a couple of weeks and we'll do it again proper. And he seemed grateful that we lost this subdivisions episode. He did not like it. He really did not like it. No. But then he leaves and it's like he thinks it's gone. It's not going to ever see the light of day. First time in the history of Toronto Mike, I lost an episode.

I would say like it's sort of almost like dark humor, but I do like it kept the fucking party hated. And then he's going to his long soliloquy about what, Kristen Amalk, which case was it? It was like Christine Jessup. Christine Jessup, like a really serious and like something that was a big part of his career. Nope, that part's gone. Yeah. Yeah. So we were going to do it at that part again.

With the subdivision stuff, we got that. I saved it all. I got it all. We did a 40 minutes recording. I got it all. I went, I literally, and I even talked to Andrew Stokely, the audio guru, like we, I sent him what I had. It's a big deal. Which was a corrupt MP4 file and he couldn't fix it. He says, it's gone. So it was gone. I'd moved on, but I was Googling things to do, obviously, because I thought I'd like to save this 40 minutes, mainly for that subdivisions thing he did there. Subdivision. I found a website that repair. Cleverfiles.com and I uploaded my damaged MP4 file and a long time, later, I downloaded a MP4 file that had the audio intact and I was able to extract the audio. For free? I didn't pay a penny. So I saved the 40 minutes. Subdivisions. And he did say,

why did you, why? Al McCormick told him, hey, I just heard you on Toronto. And Lauren's like, what? Like he told me it was gone. But so it is, that was an interesting 40 minutes, but he would come back later. And I'm glad we did the six minutes. That's kind of amazing. You have a corrupt audio file. just send it to some free website and sends it back to you and fix it. And I took a note of the URL because I thought it was amazing. Repair. CleverFiles.com. Greg Siskinen, who is a real head and is listening to us right now, on social media, they shared the top 10 songs from CFNY 102.1, the spirit of radio.

This is October 1982. And it's just interesting because number three is subdivisions by Rush. Chris Murphy's favorite Rush song, by the way, more than that. and it's interesting to see our own friend beloved FOTM Rob Proust and spoons, not these spoons, but spoons at number seven with areas and symphonies.

I guess that was sort of like Rush's almost new wave phase because they were like leaning on the keyboard lots of keys. Yeah. Remember the video. Like, oh my God. Like I'm trying, I dug up the school

that was filmed at. Great memories. And it's all because I spent six minutes talking about subdivisions. I love it. Another five minutes on subductions. I loved it. Okay.

So did we ever tell people that Sophie B. Hawkins said, you're handsome. We did. We did cover that. How come that clip didn't get pulled? Because I think you've covered it in us. It's on YouTube.

Yeah. Anyone can find it. Thank you. All right. Remembering Ken Dryden with Steve Paken, Bruce Dobigan, and James Maloney, first time guest, James Maloney.

Our, so Tyler and I live in the same riding. That's right. He's our MP, James Maloney. Yeah. Seems like a good dude. I thought that was a very good

retrospective on the life and times of Ken Dryden. Yeah, it was great. You know, I think like, like you said in the app,

like he was a little before my time. So I never really saw, I never saw him play. I never saw him play. But certainly. And Cam's younger than us. That's right. Certainly very,

read the game. The game is a fantastic book. And very, you know, obviously he was the president of the Leafs for a long time, was a member of parliament for the liberal party.

just a fascinating, very intelligent man who had a significant impact on Canadian culture. And it was good to get Paken and Dobigan together again and to bring James Maloney in. And this all ties to Tobacco Collegiate Institute, which is in James Maloney's writing. It's where Andy went to school. Who else went to school there?

Somebody else? Andrew Budziak. Andrew Budziak went to school there. And Kendryden went to school there. and he wrote a book about what happened to his classmates. And that was sort of his last book. That's right. There you go.

Was it Ken Dryden who brought in John Ferguson Jr.? Do you remember? I believe it was, well, he brought in Mike Smith. I think JF's May. J.F.J. might have been after Kendra. They brought back Cliff Ledger to like mentor John Ferguson. Like it was just not working.

That was rough. It was not working. Some dark years. So now we're on to episode 1759. Avie Fettergreen, filmmaker. Spelt a lot of time with this. Prolific film producer who just directed his first film, which I had the pleasure of seeing.

And I've known him for a long time. I've been producing his podcast for a while, but he finally made his Toronto Mike debut. He was at the party where me and Stu were in the ballroom. Was he not there? Yeah, at the Hollywood Sweet Breakfast. He was there. Oh, absolutely.

Star-studded room. Absolutely. That was fun. A lot of Ben Johnson was there. Absolutely. A big name. you get in there, Cam? Oh, yeah, yeah, because this guy, okay, now, now I'm going to, like, rage again. He big time, Stu Stone and I, we're, we're on the step and repeat wall. It's like,

there's Jake Gold. I'm going to go just fuck off my friends here. We're about to do a photo. Oh, there's Jake Gold across the room. Got to go talk to Jake Gold. So rude. I'm working on something with Jake. That's fine. Wow. We need five seconds. What were you doing there, though? You didn't get an invite to the Hollywood Street. I was at work, and I came over to see you guys to say hello to my Friends. Avi Feddergreen episode is great because he talks about how he couldn't get this movie made. He couldn't get financing. And he basically planned to kill himself.

And he was a discover, bottom line is, he didn't kill himself. Spoiler. And he, you know, his father-in-law financed the film. And it's fucking beautiful. And it's a great film. It's called Home Free. Okay. See it if he can.

Where can we see that? Well, he did explain that in his episode. I'm trying to remember now. But at some point, it's going to be on Hollywood Suite at some point. Shout out to David Chines. And that's why he was there. Like, talk about it tough. Like, just, I can't imagine getting something like that done.

Yeah. Like, God bless. Oh, yeah. Well, this next episode, we talked about it as well. Yes, that's right. Kathleen Robertson. All right, please. Tell me what you thought of this episode.

Kathleen Roberts. Now, the show can start now. I'll press record now. I'm going to fill up my hard drive on this episode. Yeah, Kathleen Robert. What a great episode. Fantastic. Like, so many connections to the TMU.

Obviously, she knows Rob Pruse, because her sister is married to Rob Pruse's best friend connected to Tom Wilson because her friend is Tom Wilson's wife. Correct. Margo, I believe.

Margo Bernal. I knew Kathleen Roberts because I went to high school with her for two years. You're in the same yearbook as her. I am, yeah. And actually, she pointed out the fact that she was actually there for two years.

I thought it was only one, but it was two. And she had no recollection of me. And she leaves your high school, basically to work on Maniac That's right. Yeah, she left after grade 10 and the next thing we knew, she was on Maniac Mansion.

And that's her big break. That's right. Yeah. And just what a great character and what a fascinating career she's had. Yeah. 902 and 0. Like 902 alone, like the biggest crazy. And it's weird. She just shows up on her own and sits in this basement

to chat me up for like an hour and something. And I'm like, she doesn't know where she is or what's going on. but Tom Wilson and Rob Pruse but I think Tom was the big guy at first pushing this thing Tom Wilson said you got to do Toronto Mike

and she did so bless her heart good for her yeah really enjoyed Kathleen candidate for episode of the quarter I actually googled her after I watch this because I wasn't really aware

of what she was in but she was in scary movie like scary movie four do you remember this it was like hot shots I remember the first scary movie No, like, she was in, like, one of the big one, like, she's, like,

scary movie three or something. Yeah. She did a series. That's a big fucking deal. She did a series with fucking Kelsey Grammer. Yeah. Right. And she was claimed for that work as well.

Absolutely. Solid career. Frazier boss, I think it was called. She was in the Gordy Howe story. That's right. And the torso, the Evelyn Dick story. Right. Halloween,

Hamilton story. And she left this studio because she had to do a fitting for, Reacher. She's in Reacher right now as like a wife of some kind of a, I don't know, a congressman or something. Yeah. So yeah, great, great chat. Again, getting by just one final coming, getting back to her and getting back to Avey and also Stu Stone, like all these people and sort of show business, even the way she described the stuff at the end and she had the script and development and then COVID happened, then they're trying to find the financier. Like, what a crazy industry. I said to her. I didn't quite follow like, but what's the status?

Well, that's what I said there then. If Kathleen Robertson has trouble getting things made, how does... Anyone. Emily Whedon get things made. Yeah. You know what I mean? I know.

Just to randomly pick someone who was not on 902 and O. That's right. Anyway. Okay. All right. So Kathleen Robertson, big name shows up, and then the name's Bo, James Bo. James Bo.

Did not listen to James Bo. Okay. He's an author who connected with me on Blue Sky and pitched me a visit from James Bow. and I wanted to give him some exposure. And we had a good chat about different things. And, yeah. What does he write about?

Young adult novels. So his sweet spot is young adult novels. And he's kind of a prolific writer. He lives in, I hope I don't get this wrong. Is he in Guelph? He's like somewhere he can drive from, but it's a long drive. Friendly, he writes a weekly column for the Kitchener Post community.

Oh, no, you know what? He lives in Kitchener. I'm taking back the old wealth nonsense. James Bo. And we talked about, what's the show that scarred me? Because it came on before. Doctor Who? I can't even say the name.

But he's a huge Doctor Who fanatic. So we kind of dove into that and I shared my experience and I learned a lot about Dr. Who from James Bo. But he's just an author guy. Like he's obviously not a natural-born broadcaster. type guy, but he's just a guy. He writes and he's from Toronto, but then he moved out to Kitchener

and we had a good chat. But then a natural born broadcaster came on the next day. Humble Howard. Humble Howard Glassman from Humble and Fred. This was Howard, I neglected to mention it off the top. This was Howard's 10th appearance on the Toronto Mike podcast.

I also did want to shout out the great Bob Willett from Toast hit the 40-timer club this past quarter. Oh my God. That's a big number there. for Bob. So, yeah, Humble, I think Humble was worried that he would have nothing to say. He didn't understand why I'd want to talk. We've talked about everything. Yeah. Why would you invite me back? Because I invited him back. Right. Yeah. But, you know, you have a way of drawing things out of people. There's lots to talk about. For sure. However, yeah. And we, we had no problem

filling up a good 90 minutes. Absolutely not. No, it was, you know, always, always great to hear from, from the humble one. I have a note from 1236. I forgot to say. when we were talking about John Wing. So this is going back about three hours, okay? This is a quote from Mark Wiseblood, FOTM Hall of Famer. John Wing offhandedly referencing Phil McKellar of CKFM regarding Don Cherry is one of the oddest obscure references in TM lore. So I say that sentence and I won't, don't ask me any follow up.

I think he's told me the Phil McKellar story. I can't remember it enough to cite it with a, you know, But there was an interesting story about Phil McKellar on CKFM that John Wing referenced. Sorry, what was, and he said oddly specific? Is that what he said? Oddly obscure. I have to go back and listen to. Wiseblood told me the Phil McKellar story.

Yeah. It's before our time here. And it is a very interesting Toronto radio story that John Wing referenced. So I'm sure by the end of this, one of you will have Googled it and can remind me, Phil McKellar on CKFM. He said, like, my memory is of Mark Wise about telling me again, I didn't take no, but he said something on the air. Ah, okay, like booger, perhaps. Pretend like nobody.

That's right. Well, that's what we're doing on this right now. Pretending that nobody's listening. I think we're... We took this note from Dr. Johnny Feeder. Okay, so, we're cooking with gas. Decisive comes back to make a big announcement. Yes.

I will just say, I liked this guy before I met him. I liked his music and I liked his spirit. And anytime Decisive wants to drop by, and he can be the Mike Richards of the rap game here. He can make announcements on whenever he wants. Seems like a very sweet dude. What was that announcement? He's going to have a podcast series about Young Decisive, and it's going to be chock full of Toronto pop culture references.

And he's going to try to get voices of people like Steve Anthony, and he's got this thing. What he's describing is something I think that TMU would gobble up. So I will shine a light on it should it ever see the light of day. It feels like it would be a complimentary to Toronto Mike, retro Ontario, sort of a tapestry, that, that thing at the laundromat. Toronto legend. Right. Well, the guy, there's a guy who is in the, I gotta get the name, I can't, but there's a guy in the cat. Fake appearance at the laundromat.

There's a guy who wanted me to know our names are side by side on this, in this laundromat, and he's coming on. Oh, I think I know who is it. Is it Rudy Blair? You know what? I'm man. Has Rudy Blair ever been? No, he's making his Toronto Mike debut this coming quarter. Yeah. Famously, one of the few journalists who told me off him. I want that story. I want that story here. I want that story. Okay. So he told you to fuck off?

No, this was the same event. I think I told Libby Snymer like told me to talk to the hand. Oh, wow. This was in the era. Well, you wouldn't remember Mike. You didn't take my fucking email. I was waiting for an offer invitation. It was another LG event. This was like a press conference with Jamie Fox. Oh, wow.

And we only had five, I think we had five one-on-one spots with him. So this was like E-Talk. Did I get one? You did not get one. That's why I completely ignored your email. So is E-Talk Entertainment Tonight Can. I remember Andrea Case.

Oh, yes. I think still there. Still there. I think CBC got one. Friend of Dana. Probably like City TV or something. Would I crack that top five if it was today? Rudy was greatly offended.

He didn't get it. He told me he talked to Jamie Fox many times, and I totally get it. He's the entertainment guy, 680 news, big deal. Libby was mad because she wasn't invited to the events. I said, well, you work at the classical station. I don't know what. And she just said, like, she just talked to the hand.

I don't just work there. Like a non-ironic talk to the hands. Anyway, it was a cool event. It was at the Bay Blower Center on the roof, whatever that, up there. Yeah. Maybe Life Center? Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway. It used to be called panorama. Panorama. Panorama. Exactly. Wow. So it's like 2008.

Okay. So Lauren came back. Lauren came back. We had a longer conversation. I thought it was very good. And he teased the fact that he was contributing to something Peter Gross was putting together regarding his former colleague and now current friend Bill Atanasoff. But more on that in a moment.

Yes. But here's the episode we need to talk about. Now we start FOTM can. Now we can really begin. Ben Rayner. Ben Rayner, episode 1765. Probably the most discussed episode, certainly in our WhatsApp group. And I think you heard a lot from other people who listened to the episode.

Huge amount of engagement. Most engagement of any episode this quarter. Many interpretations. Yes. Yeah. It's like that green dress. Yeah. It's good analogy.

Yeah, yeah. Very much so. Yeah, so Ben obviously is, has had some challenges, lost his job, lost his marriage, his ex-wife moved to the East Coast, and so he sort of picked up, oh, he also lost, he got renevicted. So let me get us straight. Okay, so he loses his full-time job. Yeah.

Then he loses his new part-time job managing cop's records on Danforth there. then he's renevicted and his wife gets a divorce. He's divorced, separated, divorced from his wife. Yes, who then decides to move with their daughter to the East Coast. Yes, his now ex-wife tells him, I'm moving with our daughter to Dartmouth. Right. So rough, rough few months for our friend Ben.

And so you hadn't talked to him in a while, at least not on... Not voice to voice. Yeah. So you had him on. You connected with him via telephone, old school, because he was hiking somewhere in Halifax Harbor or something. And the sound quality was not great, which I think contributed to people's opinion of the episode and his mental state. So yeah, lots of people were concerned for Ben, were maybe concerned and thought that you should take the episode. episode down. Multiple people suggested I remove, I delete the episode of Ben Raynor.

Yeah. Um, so I, I listened to the episode twice. Uh, the first time I heard, I, I missed the first like 10 minutes of it, um, but listened to the rest of it because I was sort of out and about. Um, and then I, after all the, the conversation, I wanted to go back to listen again, because my takeaway from it was that, yeah, he's had a rough go of it, but he seems pretty, not, I wouldn't say optimistic, but he's in good spirits for someone who's gone through all that stuff, right? And so I listened again, and I didn't, I still, you know, I still felt like he overall is going to be okay, you know,

like anyone going through that kind of thing would certainly struggle with their mental affect as, as he has been. but, you know, I thought it was, I came away kind of uplifted because he's talking about it. You felt hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. He's open about his challenges and he was able to convey his state of mind. And it was, it was a very personal chat between two friends is how it felt.

Cam, what did you think about the Ben Rayner episode? Yeah, like, and then I'll speak to what you said. Yeah, like everyone else, I have many thoughts on it. I mean, sort of at the end of the. day, I feel like, regardless of what people's reactions were, it was all coming from a place of care, because I think Ben has a very high approval rating. Like, one of those guys, how could you not like this guy? I'll say that, but I just was sort of jotting down like that. I thought this was really interesting, and all his episodes are really interesting because he touches on, you know,

the dying of Canadian media, you know, being sort of misplaced in this industry. He's touched on divorce. You know, what do we do? I mean, the three of us like talking. about this because we've all been through this before and it's you know even when it goes cleanly it's it's still kind of sucks a lot of ways it's rather disruptive yeah to say the least touched on the cost of living in Toronto you know the fact is his beloved beach at ontario place not there anymore right um and then just a you know mental health substance issue like all these things it's there's a lot of threads there but i think i used in it like ben is just going to be like ramble the earth and then one day he's not and

that'll be that. I don't know. Like, he's, he's like a very high, I really admire he has like a real high concept existence because he, you know, he sounds like he was saying he was broke, but like he also lives in a way that he is very low overhead. Like, he seems like a guy he could win the lottery and he'd still probably live the same way. Yeah. You know, which I really admire. Like, he's not beyond his, you know, UFO books and some records. I don't think he needs much to be happy, which I think is like really admirable. for a guy that I think is like

Aussie like really talented and just really interesting great writer. Yeah. I don't know. I think that we often say men should talk more about their mental health. Like we should all open up and we should lose the stigma

because there's still a stigma attached to mental health challenges. And we should get rid of that stigma and we should all talk more about it. But I think when somebody does that like Ben Rayner, it can be a little bit jarring to hear. And I think part of that like, he's just openly talking about his mental health struggles and what he's dealt with and where he's at. And I think for some people, that can be a little bit jarring. Like, I think possibly that leads to this reflex action, which is, oh, delete it.

Like, they kill that episode. A couple of things on that note, because multiple people did suggest the episode should be deleted, that I want to just say that Ben enjoyed the weekend. told me so afterwards, posted on X about how much he loved the chat and he was sharing the link to his followers on X. I've talked via email with Ben several times since that episode because so many people are saying, I heard this. I want to, I want to, can you share his email or connect me to Ben?

I want to, I don't know, help him in some way. Like so much of that, including today, like people are, you know, that I'm hearing, Ben is thanking me for this and he's telling me about so many people reaching out and so he had a great experience. So the whole idea I would delete this episode to me would be so unfair to Ben. Like Ben of sound mind and body recorded an episode of Toronto Mike with me via phone

and like you, Tyler, I felt hopeful at the end. But this whole idea that I should delete the episode that he loved, like I would not do that. If Ben came to me and Ben Rayner said, Mike, I regret some of the things I said, would you mind deleting that episode? I don't think I was in the right head. space for that. Of course I would

delete it. Like if Ben asked me to delete the episode, I would delete the episode. But I was kind of proud of how it all turned out. I quite liked the episode and I listened back because in the room I thought when I got this reaction I thought oh maybe I went on a bike ride and I listened and I tried to like

channel my, I'm just a listener and I tried to hear it like that and I still came away from it feeling like this is just a guy opening up about some of the shit he's gone through and sharing where he's at and I felt hopeful for Ben and I still do. again that's why i think your analogy of the dress or like ink blot or 3d picture or you know that that that drawing where it's like a woman looking this way or the old lady looking that way

like it's or the stairs going up or the stairs going down all that stuff i do this is one every reaction i heard to it i could say yeah i could i could see has someone honestly because the stuff him talking about like you know situated with his ex and the kid and stuff i'm like just as someone who would never talk about any stuff like that. Yeah, just in a public form and having like receipts, like on the internet. It's like, especially now with like transcription tools. Yeah. Just like is that all this Google bull?

I don't know. Yeah. It was again, compelling. It was a compelling listen. And again, I think we're all rooting for this guy. Like everyone is for sure. Of course. And I'm going to like, you know, keep in touch of Ben.

Yeah. You'll get his updates along the way. Midtown Gord is now in the live stream. and he says when he listened to the Ben Rainer episode, he felt he sounded okay considering everything he had gone through. Like he's been through some shit. Yeah. He's been through some shit, Ben Rayner.

And he's sharing like, okay, this is what I've been through since March. So this is how my last six months have gone. This is where I'm at. The guy needs to, like, you nailed it also on that up. He needs to fucking walk some dogs. I've never seen, dude, you are a dog walker. Yeah. Just walk, get like, fucking six dogs.

walk them around Halifax. There's a lot, you know, decent amount of money to do it. Multiple people said they heard that suggestion and it was like, bingo. Like, this is what Ben needs to do. But as I learned from my Mike Stafford experiences, is it has to come from within.

Yeah, you can't force people to do things. Just a quick update for you. Phil McKellar, I did find one little... Did he say something on the air that got him fired? All I found is a 34-year broadcast veteran, his career basically ended when thinking the microphone was off, he repeated a racist remark on the air at CKFM on July 31st, 182, broken man, he died a few months later of a heart attack.

Okay, that's the, it's right. So he didn't know he was live on the air in the hot mic, and he said something racist, I believe. Yes. That looks like a geo-city. Yeah, this is, like there's clouds. This is Dale Patterson's rock radio scrapbook. Oh, that'll do.

I know this guy. You said that to me. It's track changes. He's a guy should come on trial, Mike. Yeah, I read this site for decades. So, uh, that reference. from John Wing that he just slides into the sentence, Wise Block quite loved

hearing that obscure reference. And now you know the rest of the story. So Ben... Danny Thomas. Ben Rayner had the most engagement of the quarter. So many notes and comments and messages about people who just

could, they didn't know that. Now, another thing just slide in before we, I share some Jim Moore update here real quick is that what was it? So now I'm thinking of the Jim Moore update. I wanted to slide in something about the Ben Rainer episode. Does anyone know what the hell I was going to say?

Well, there was the Toronto Star article. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. I think a lot of listeners heard all this for the first time and were shocked by it all and felt like he was opening up with me on this stuff. But, I mean, I knew about it before it hit the star,

but I didn't ask Ben to talk about it until he published a story in the Toronto Star. Like, he published a story with all that detail in Canada. his largest newspaper. That's what I wanted to point in. This is almost peeling the onion of media. So you got the Toronto Star op-ed. So that's one layer. And then he went on Metro Morning to talk about that. And they came here if you really want sort of

you know, the frail the fragrance and the odor. If you want a longer form chat about it. The essence of it. You're right. You're right. You're right. So we love Ben and we'll keep everybody posted on how Ben's doing in the Maritimes. Wonderful. So you. Did we point out though, those toast episodes we shouted

out. I had special guests on a couple of them. Yes, she did. Snow was a special guest on one of them. So there was snow this past quarter. And Jim Moore, the original bassist from Rusty, he was also in a band called One Free Fall that predated Rusty. He debuted on an episode of Toast. I brought him in to talk about misogyny from Rusty. The song to be clear. The song, right? But then Jim Moore made his Toronto made a debut from a jolly old England. I have a quick update for everybody on something regarding this episode. Let's hear.

He teases that a big Canadian band was covering Rusty. That's right. But he didn't name the band. He didn't want to name the band. And the update I have is I now know the name of the band. Oh, I know who it is. That is covering Rusty. By the way, also covering the Doe Boys.

And I'm going to announce right now before I name the band that's covering Rusty and Doe Boys, I'm announcing in this next quarter, John Castner's making his journal league debut. Wow. That's kind of a glowy, that's kind of a grouty guy. Very exciting.

Wow. You know, there'll be some madman talking. Jim Moore, did he said that, he said he was going to set this. So Ken McNeil heard the episode. Yeah. He connected me. Then Jim Moore connected me.

There were multiple connects made to be to John Castor, thanks to that episode. Oh my God. Ken McNeil loved the Jim Moore episode of Toronto Mike. So the name of the band that is covering Rusty and Doe Boys is Alexis on Fire. Holy shit. Yeah. Let's give me, I'm curious how they're going to do that.

You've got the yellow guy. They're covering the hip, too, and I heard that already. So they covered fully completely. And it kind of sounds like if Alexis on Fire played fully completely. Did you have Wade McNeil in the calendar at the point? 100%. What happened with that? Good question.

He was in the calendar, and I can't remember why it came out, but it wasn't me that booted him. Maybe he canceled it. Was this like a few years ago? Within the last two years, I want to say. Maybe, maybe three. I don't know. It's all a blur to me.

But yeah, absolutely way a big deal. I see, I have notes for his episode in this very Google dog. He was in like another gallows or something, like a British sort of hardcore. Did he have a show on CFN Y? Was he a, did he host a show on CFN Y? I believe he did. I feel like. this the shouty singer for

he became a firefighter oh yeah George Pettettit he lived in Hamilton yeah yeah really kind of interesting band like all those guys like yeah I know okay we're winding down the 50 episodes of this past quarter and then there's other segments guys yeah we got we got to get Morgan to bed at some point but please back to you

Tyler so Jim Jim Moore I know yeah I know okay yeah this was a light quarter um Paula Cole Paula Cole is the next episode Paul a fucking Cole yeah this is it's wild to me that you would have Paula Cole

on Toronto Mike. I don't want to wait Yeah. Yeah, it's wild to me too. Because of the Sophie B. Hawkins episode. Okay. So I had this great chat with Sophie B. Hawkins. I really liked it. Like, I surprised me how easy it was the chat with her, how much I liked her.

And then I found out, I didn't even find out until after the recording that Paula Cole is along for the ride. Like, she didn't mention, I don't think she said that. No, she didn't mention, I looked. Like, she's promoting this Western Canadian tour. And I'm, oh, so Sophie B. Hawkins is going out west. Interesting. But she's going with Paula Cole.

Yeah. And I think you asked Paula Cole at one point, like, were you added later? Yeah, I thought maybe it was a Sophie B. Hawkins tour and they added Policole. But no, it was always the two of them. So I don't know why Sophie B. Hawkins never mentioned. So it never came up. No, not one. It never came up. I found out later or someone told me in the chat. Somehow I found out that Paul Cole and then I wanted to talk to Paul Cole.

and then the Little Affair documentary came out. Yeah, I mean, what's perfect timing. And then I watched the Little Affair, but I already booked her before I watched it. And she's all, I mean, I think I asked you, Tyler, before I watch it, like, is there Paul O'Cole? Yeah. She's all over this thing. That'll be helpful, like, just selling tickets for this. I know.

Yeah. And, like, she just seems like such a lovely person, like, just so, she seems very peaceful, you know, like, just a very soft-spoken, calm, sweet person, but like tons of, like, you know, toured with Peter Gabriel, you know, obviously the Lillifair stuff, Dawson's Creek, like just what a career she's had. Fucked over by her label. Yeah. And just a, just a wonderful chat. Like, I really, really enjoyed listening to Paula Cole.

The Paula Cole, Sophie B. Hawkins, episodes almost make you wonder why I don't do more Zooms. Almost. I'm trying to think how many of your Zooms, like, was the person outside? That was Sophie B. Alkins and Ashley McIsaac. Oh, Ashley McIsaac. Yeah.

It's like sort of the free spirits are always inside. Yeah. We can't, you know, cage that. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else to say about Paul Cole? So just to say about Paul O'Cole is that it was timely to have her because a little affair thing.

And also they just had a Dawson's Creek reunion. Oh, yeah. And I don't know if you know this, but I don't want to wait is the theme song. But as I unfolded, on the most recent toast, which was actually next quarter, because it was after October, even October.

Was it Wednesday? Yeah, it was. Okay, so it was October 1st. So we can't talk about it. But I can tell you, I explained how the original theme they wanted was an Alanis Morris at song. Was it hand in my pocket?

I think so. One hand in my pocket. Okay, so they wanted that. Atlanta said no. And then they commissioned Jan Arden to write a song to be the Dawson's Creek theme. song. So Jan Arden sells like for a flat fee, sells them a song

to be the Dawson Creek theme song. But then they, the same label I guess had this Sony. I can't remember now. I said it in the toast episode. But the I don't want to wait was a last minute was put in and that just worked. But when they went to like streaming and they went to DVD

they didn't have the license for I don't want to wait. This kind of ties to Paul Nicole's label difficulties. She doesn't own her masters in that let's shit. So they put back the Jan Arden song. Yeah. So many people. So there are people, although Bob Willett made fun of me and said, what is there like two people? There are actually, there are people who discover Dawson's creep on streaming.

Because it was on Netflix with that. Right. So if you discover Dawson, if you didn't watch it on the WB, because you're not old enough, for example, and you discover it on streaming. And it's got a Jan Arden song instead of Pollockol. That's all you know. Totally different show. Yeah. That's the theme song, though.

So you're, you're shocked to find out that wasn't the way it aired. Yeah. Actually, take it back. It's not totally different. But it's just a fucking credits It was a memorable theme song Yeah It's a great song

That Jan Arden song is terrible by the way But Some people will tell you On Reddit for example We'll tell you The Jan Arden version is better Because that's the one They fell in love with

That's the one they know So now I will disclose The episode I did after Paula Cole Was because of a sponsorship deal With Waterfront BIA Waterfront BIA And I will

like if you do sponsor Toronto Mike, you get an episode. Nick Guiney's got one. Could have one. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think all, some sponsors didn't take me up on it,

but most do and that's part of the deal. So Waterfall Festival, which is happening this coming weekend, we talked about it, and it was kind of neat to talk to people at the ports, Toronto ports, and the, oh, the Benway, a woman from the Benway,

and I was thinking about how we would meet for Benway beers. There you go. Hey, so there you go. Is Tim Kosher related to Joe Kosher? No, I have my first question. And he pronounces it differently, cocker. Coker, oh, okay.

Is the music garden part of? Waterfront? Yeah, because I saw this little concert down there. I know if you guys saw the band Land of Talk. Oh, yeah, I saw that. There was actually another show there tomorrow with a Charlotte Cornfield. Yeah, I know. There is an FOTM playing there.

Yeah, like I'd recommend it if you ever see one of these free shows. It's just real. The chillest of chill vibes. So I'm hoping Waterfront BIA comes back next summer. Yeah. That's the hope here. And I liked working with them very much. But then there's a big episode to talk about.

Yeah, like you saved some big stuff for the last couple episodes of the quarter. So unfortunately, we have much more to say. There's no one left. I honestly, I just checked the live stream. Nobody's left. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson from the band Sloan.

what a great conversation. What can you say? Obviously, they've both been on the show before. Multiple times. Multiple times. You've also had Patrick Pentland. You've also had Andrew Scott. So there was some content from those episodes that you wanted to share with them and get their reaction.

I did pull a clip from this. Someone asked a really good question near the end. wanted to just play that and hear their answer. This question came in from Tyler. He said, Andrew talked about Sloan time. This is in quote Sloan Time in reference to the fact that you're all busy people with families, side projects, and other interests. How do you determine when it's Sloan time and has it gotten harder to get everybody on the

same page for when that time should be? Well, if by Sloan Time, he means getting everybody together, that's not that often. But Sloan time is almost all the time for me. I'm always working on something. I'm here. I'm Sloan time right now for me. It doesn't make me unhappy or anything, but I just mean I spend a lot of time editing video and doing, you know, doing stuff or what are we going to do next? And so I think about it all the time. And I do have other things on the go, but, you know, because part of, part of having Sloan continue is to let people take time off

you know I can't push Andrew to do more than than he'll do and I get you know he's kind of painted himself as someone who's like an immovable object but whatever he'll do some stuff sometimes you know sometimes we need to make some money but uh you got a big tour coming up yeah and we'll we don't we don't even

have to go to the states for example it's not this calendar year um we wouldn't have gone to the states in this calendar year anyway because we have lots to do and um but uh slow i i slow in time for me is certainly every day like part of the day and uh you know j and i talk a lot more than andrew and i talk um we're always trying to think about what what we should do next what do you want to have at the garage sale next year you can't have that conversation you have that date yet it'd be your late may or something probably yeah but you can't have that conversation in April.

Like, you have to think, you know, if you're going to make a manufacturer vinyl, you got to, we kind of have talked about that already. Or there's always thinking about, like, what do you want to, I mean, even as well as stuff with the garage sale, just like, do you want to do another box set? When do you want to do that? What would be a nice new deluxe item for direct-to-fan kind of stuff? So there's always Sloan work to be done that's beyond the brand new record or press and stuff like that.

So as Chris, there's always stuff to think about and plan for it for sure. So there's, there's the kind of running it in the presence, you know, new record, what can we do, touring, and then when we've kind of done all those things, then it's like spinning the plate of like, do we need to manufacture more twice removed records? Because we're trying to, trying to, we're like a small business and we have, you know, there are manufacturing issues, there are timing issues, there are, should we, you know, should we be upraising these videos? They look like, they look terrible. you know, this kind of stuff. But it's all stuff I enjoy. Yes, you're always on Sloan time. Even when you're doing, you know, you're doing stuff. Because even when you're in TransCanada High Women, you're singing Sloan songs, right?

We're going to get underwhelmed and we're going to get all these great Chris Murphy's Sloan songs. So, Jay, you're always on Sloan song? Sorry, Sloan time. I feel like I think about Sloan a lot or other times just working on, I mean, I don't have kids like the way Chris does and the other guys and things like that. So maybe I have a little bit more free time to think about. Sloan stuff but also time to work on new songs thinking about oh would it be fun to release a one-off single or a one-off streaming song or it'd be nice to have you know a stockpile of songs if Sloan makes another record I'd be kind of you know you know up

and running a little more than just starting from go if it's like here we have to start making a new record next month you know so there's always stuff to think about and plan for sure I think about it a lot and I enjoy it too like I like especially the reissue campaigns that we've done on all the limited edition things and I think we have more stuff in the can that we can release. It's just about how to partition it out throughout the next few years. For the record, I'm also always on Sloan Time. We kind of need like a little light in all our rooms just because of Sloan Time is on now and something like that.

Absolutely here. A little bulb in the corner of your basement. Great question, Tyler. Thank you. What a thoughtful, like what an long, interesting answer. Like, no PR bullshit there. Yeah. they were pretty honest

I mean they didn't sort of name names but it was just you know we get Andrew and we get Andrew and didn't mention Patrick really too much and like how much I'm trying to debate myself how much I want to get into this but like if you're just like oh that's the best band of all time

just tell me again how awesome their new album is and everything then there's a lot of places I think you go to hear that like there's Sloan podcast out there but I'm more interested in the dynamics of the band like I'm legit first of all I'm big fan big booster love these guys like personally and I just have always

loved him since I've heard and underwhelmed love them is great too like it's really really good yeah but I'm very interested in the you know the four members of Sloan they all sing they all write songs they're 25% of the band each and I'm very interested in the dynamics

and I'm in a place now where all four members have visited this basement in 2025 and I'm trying to paint a picture of the band and it's not all going to be tell me again how awesome all 12 tracks are based on the bestseller like I'm not PR as far as we know like do any of these guys have other jobs that are completely unrelated to music I actually don't know that off I don't know of any of them having a job unrelated to music I think we know all sorts of other like can con faves that have

other jobs if not like full-time careers some of them are drumming up results right now yeah absolutely or like, you know, Stephen Stanley was like the art director. Yeah, strategy magazine. Yeah. Ken McNeil's a bricklayer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Great example. Or they Conline Crush guy, like is a what?

Paramedic or a nurse or something. Yeah. Yeah, so Sloan, you know. Gondarva's guy, like a geogeologist or something. Absolutely. But I am curious for you to what your takes were on the Sloan episode because I did re-listen to it. It's another episode which got a lot of interesting feedback.

And I re-listened to Sloan and I was listening to listen. Was I too, I don't know, mean to the guys? Like, was I harsh or something? And I relistened and I fucking loved the episode. Like, it's what I'm looking for. And I didn't think it was too mean at all. But I'm very biased. What say you? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I, again, you've, you've built up a rapport with these guys. They know you. They know what to expect when they come down here. And yeah, you went back over some, some ground that you've covered before. But I think it all is part of the whole Sloan tapestry and it's important to paint that picture and to reestablish those those avenues because it's it's part of the part of the narrative that still continues today,

right? Like you can't you can't talk about how they're making an album today without talking about how they made an album at the beginning. Right. You get it. I think so. You get it. And what you did seed a question to revisit something that Patrick said about twice removed, I remember. Yes. Yeah, because he had said that he doesn't like twice removed, and he maintains

that they should have made something more like Weasers Blue Ours. Yeah, which is a fascinating story he shared with us, and then if I get Chris and Jay in the basement, how do I not bring that up? Of course. I really don't know how to have Chris and Jay in the basement without asking them, but some of the things Patrick and

Andrew said in this very basement earlier this year. wouldn't you? Right. Otherwise, what's the point of all this? Like, well, just shut it all down. Yeah. Just a small build. We talked about, you know, what is media? It's a podcast on the radio or whatever. But this is actually a rare occasion where like these guys came because they were on like a press junket for this. Like, I don't know if it was earlier that day or the day before. They were like on the global morning show here with Jeff MacArthur and Carolyn McKenzie. Right. Michael Power guy. I don't think they got into, well, Patrick said the Weaser blew out. album on morning. So it just shows, like, if they want the real talk, and, again, credit for them, like, they sort of didn't mince words. They, they didn't. And I thought they were, like,

very open, honest, but, like, very diplomatic at the same time. There was a moment. I don't know. So, do you have any more? I don't have any more clips. Okay. There is a moment. Yeah. I mean, I was in the room. Okay. I was in the room. Uh, I thought it was fine, all fine. They, they, they were fine. You know, Chris was a little low key off the get-go, but I think it's been busy times for him. Like, he was doing the thing at Chorus Key while we were at TMLX20 at JLB Brew Pub and then he was at Indy88 because Mimico Joe was telling us about that. Like they're doing a lot of stuff.

You see him on Global there. They probably did, I don't know if they did breakfast television, but they might have. They did a lot of stuff. Yeah. Because they're promoting this new album. Yeah. They did a lot of stuff here. So, well, think, the one moment though, just really quickly here. Yeah.

Is, of course, I played the clip of Andrew Scott saying he's not entering, he's not crossing the border. He's not going in the States. He, this is the guy who gave us control your dogs from that episode like what an episode by way

revisit the Andrew Scott episode fucking amazing Patrick Pentland too wow but he said I'm not entering the states I know from

when Ron Hawkins came over last quarter they were going to do a Sloan Lois de Low thing in Buffalo and they canceled it

because I don't think lowest of low one into this go to the states right now too clearly though it was very clear to me

that Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy would like to play Buffalo and that makes money for the band and they're in the business of making money off of Sloan. And it was a bone of contention on some level.

And I could sense that was the moment. I think I made a- Get your dogs out of control. Oh, yeah. That pun-in-put-intended. Sorry, like Ben Raynor. You should be a dog walker here, the dogs are-or-control. Control your dogs, Ben Rayner, a bone-of-contention.

So when I did bring up the whole, I just played the clip of Andrew, and I asked them for their thoughts on that, their reaction to that, there was a moment where they didn't want to talk about it. They were both, they both kind of shut down. I think he says something, we don't have a memorand. Like, we don't have a, there's no, nothing written down that says we will not cross the border or whatever. But Andrew Scott's not crossing the border, which means Sloan's not playing because Sloan is four people. So which is all part of the facet, I'm fascinated by that dynamic too.

But think of it this way. Like for all four of these guys, Sloan is their job. It's their profession. Right. Strip away what they do for a living. these are four co-workers. Think of other jobs you've had in the past where you go on a live

microphone said your co-worker said this and it's created workplace conflict. You and your other co-worker, what's your opinion on that? I would, again, I would be horrified. I wouldn't say anything close to what these guys said. No, it's true. It's hard.

Then that's life in public is a popular band. We love them. You talked about this a little bit on toes, but there was some feedback like on the Sloan subreddit where people were complaining about the episode. Well, I didn't bring it up. Somebody put it into the live chat, I think. Yeah, I think I did. And then Bob was very excited by it. Bob was very excited about it because somebody said I suck or something and he was very excited. Yeah, yeah. But people, yeah, they said that they, they won't be listening

to FOTM can. No, they will not. They said that the episode really went downhill or like the guys were like totally put off right after that uh after you played those clips i did not no it got it got it definitely they didn't want to elaborate very much yeah which fine of course crossing the border thing and it's clearly to me anyways clear to me that uh jay and chris would like to play concerts for buffalo sloan fans because that's how they make money that's the job right and they can't do it without Andrew Scott because I guess at this point that band is all four have to be, you know, be on board for there to be a slow show. Yeah. To the credit, it's a democracy. Right. Yeah. So this is just, it's just a, but that's, that's, that's interesting and you're not going to get anything like that

on Global's morning show. You are not. Probably not. And that's, that only comes about because I, you know, I get somehow got Andrew Scott to knock on the side door and agree to sit down for 90 minutes. and let me ask him questions. I've never heard him speak anywhere else. It's remarkable he came here. I don't think he does many interviews at all. Can I say one other just like a footnote? A nice byproduct this could be.

I could totally see a world in the future. Rob Proust plays with these guys. Oh, yeah. And you could take, I think you could take credit for that, if that does happen, Toronto Mike. They absolutely, and I'm happy. So we, you know, I'm happy. I did the, that episode started with Brother Bill.

Right. Right. Yeah. Because, oh my God. Yes. You know, so that was, I have to, you know, FOTM Brother Bill. I hunt him down in White Rock and see if he'll do this thing or whatever. He's doing stretch.

Are you seeing this? VP's doing stretches over here. We got to wrap this up. This is called wrap. It's like three and a half hours here. We have so much more to cover. Thank God. So, guys, listen to the Sloan episode.

I'm fucking proud of it and I love it. And I love those guys. And I think they know it. I'm wearing this shirt today for those guys. The penultimate episode of the quarter was Peter Gross. He called about four hours ago. Peter Gross came on to tell us the story of Bill Atansov, and that might be the episode of the quarter. That was an amazing episode.

Incredible. Like Peter, Peter Gross did such amazing work in getting Bill Atanasov to open up about his accident, about how it is living as a blind, essentially quadriplegic. and his memories of the accident, his memories of his career as a cameraman at City TV working with Peter and with Jim McKinney and John Whaley John Whaley and Lauren Honickman. So many different contributors to that episode.

And just like big kudos to Peter Gross for pulling all that together because it was really well done. And we heard from Bill's sister. And we heard from his caregiver. It was so thorough and fascinating. And again, amazing to hear from Bill. So I got a lot of praise for that episode, and I just replied the same to everybody,

which is all praise is due to Peter Gross. Like, I just recorded it. Hopefully he wins podcasts of the year. Well, you heard that call came in. Like, he's obviously getting some good feedback, and he wants to win podcast of the year. Okay, the final episode of the quarter was a gentleman. This one, I like the book ending here.

This is, we're going to move on from Rapp, but the book ends. The first episode of this quarter, which we started talking about five hours ago, was Cliff Thorburn because Gary Chowan said, go knock on this door and talk to Toronto Mike and we did that and thank you Gary Chowen who's also an FOTM by the way

but Gary Chowen also told Fred Malin his friend Fred to come on Toronto Mike but Fred doesn't visit Toronto very often so we did it via Zoom but the Fred Malin episode was the final episode of the quarter what did you think Tyler? I thought it was great I actually I almost didn't listen to it because I was running out of time

but I was working on some stuff I was like all right I don't listen to Fred and he was great and like what weird varied career like um Santa Jaws Santa Jaws like had a comedy music group in the 70s that did this Santa Jaws thing produced uh Dan Hill sometimes when we touched sometimes has uh produced records for Jimmy Webb the great songwriter a ton he's created a publishing company so he his publishing company did Jesus take the wheel almost said Santa take the wheel but yeah Jesus takes the wheel. Him too.

He, Santa Jaws lost at the 1976 Juno's to the Homecoming by Haygood Hardy. Oh. And side note, you and I were talking before the recording about sort of deep dive podcast about music. I think there is a podcast to be

made about the ephemera of the Junos and like you look at the who was nominated for like a most promising group of the year in 1976 and like you've never heard of any of these fucking people interesting um and you could go very very deep on that anyway that's because that's my sound man for forgotten can kank on where do you think i get like this shit okay so any final words about fred i great episode everyone should

listen to fred ball and did you listen to it okay well you said forgotten can kankan yes wow holy shit the stopwatch on that uh wrapped segment holy shit and i i was worried we wouldn't have much to talk about. I got to put Morgan to bed soon. She can put herself to bed. Atlanta Biles, everybody. I always forget, so you know what this song

is, Tyler, do you? You're going in cold with this song. Oh, this, I don't know what. No, I never tell. This is totally cold, okay. And I haven't heard it, by the way. I loaded it up when you sent it to me. You'd never heard this song.

Maybe I should play. Okay. Main question, Tyler, let us know when. or if you recognize this song? I definitely recognize this song. I'm like, it was one that was like, oh, yeah, yeah. And I can do the same game because I didn't play this yet.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's go. Help me. Yeah. This goes hard. This goes hard. I can't believe I'll see the word.

Why can all these broken dreams come true? This sounds familiar, but I think only Just in like a general music sounded like this Absolutely, I mean The name of this band is World On Edge I'll be honest, I did that name did not ring a bell I watch a video for this song, is ridiculous I recommend go watch out on your own time.

The name of the song is still beating. Okay. This song is from 1991. Oh, wow. Sounds very late 80s to me, to my years. It sort of remind me of DeGrassey schools out where you've got all this harem, scaram, and all these very 80-s sounding songs,

even though that was a 1992 production. I thought this guy sort of sounds like the guy from Live, but fronting rock set. Like, it's sort of, of guitars, but it's so like process and the drums are so big. She was Romeo in black

black jeans. Am I, what am I? Is it like Michael Penn, Michael Penn? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I thought also the band Go West, who's saying the King of Wishful Thinking, like sort of whatever that, or is there something I should know Information Society?

Oh yeah, I want to know what you are thinking. I want to know what you're thinking. Anyway, this band was from Montreal. And this song came in 1991, was sort of a moderate hit in Canada. I went to like kind of in the 30s on the, on the charter there, P.m. Not much, to be honest, not a lot about this band online. I did find they were on a cassette called Rock 91 alongside other Cancon classics. Okay, I'm going to run these down quickly.

Glass Tiger Animal Heart. Alanus too hot West End Girls formerly unfurly on Kankan not like kissing you I think that's the song we actually talked about alias waiting for love Oh wow

Don't remember that one at all And then also weirdly vanilla ice Play that funky music This band World and Edge were nominated for best Most Promising group at the 1992 Juno Awards They did not win the other artists nominated

the West End girls were nominated the Rankin family Wow something called the Young Saints so I don't know that is they were like an East Coast band from Newfoundland

but the band who won fronted by an FOTM the infidels So yeah To Molly Johnson Beloved FOTM invented the liar Okay so sounds like

Leslie does recognize So Leslie's still on the live stream So she is absolutely a real head okay not just a redhead, but a real head. She says she recognizes this song. Yeah, like this, I bet you might hear this song like boom. But Andy remembers it from CFTR.

Yeah, that sounds right. It was sort of like into the hog era. And just really quickly, I'll just burn through this. They did tour with Roxette in the Canadian leg. Do you guys like Roxette in any relationship? Like is a strong word. They're there. They're around.

Yeah. I have no feelings about Rock. I never purchased a cassette of a Rockset. and then look at discogs like I'll see these band members just totally disappeared I guess they gave up music although vocalist Rob Meyer did put out a song in 2002

a fundraising album for the Ukraine called Why People War and the name of the song was Freedom. Not the Freedom 90 Yeah, not that original songs Wham had a freedom and George Michael Andrew

This fundraiser was out of fundraising album was out of Lithuania Did you guys pick up this album? Did not get it. It's right here. Anyway, still beating World on Edge. Forgotten CanCon, but I didn't forget it in a few people borrowed it.

The chorus is kind of catchy. Like, still beatin. Like, I, uh, it sounds familiar to me. Yeah. You're like, does that sound like something to be on CFDR? Yes. Yeah, for sure.

A thousand percent. It doesn't, I mean, it doesn't sound terrible. Like, I've heard so much worse. Like, it's kind of still be. Sure. It's a song. Yeah, it is a song. World on Edge, okay?

That is absolutely, though, that is absolutely forgotten CanCon. So, well done, Cam Gordon. Ow! Lexicon Corner. Got some good stuff this quarter. A couple things. So there's one term that I'd like to add to the Lexicon. It's been batted around quite.

This is exciting when this. Can I tell you, by the way, this episode might end up being four hours. I know. You have to talk. We'll talk. We'll have a meeting. Maybe for RAPT, we can't do every episode. I think maybe not. Maybe we do 10? Yeah, I think we're going to have to cap that. We'll talk later. I don't want to spend longer. Okay. So yeah. And I think we actually do need to capture this lexicon, maybe on TorontoMike.com just with like a list of definitions. What I wanted to add was Blindspot. So this is a problem. Oh, I do say. That's good. Pocket of pop culture that you haven't been exposed to.

Most often it's music. So like the world of smooth jazz is a total blind spot for me. It could be a TV show. Like Modern Family was a blind spot for me and ever watched it. Up next. I watched Modern Family. Up next month. I watched quite a but the first few seasons I watched.

Yeah. So anyway, Blind Spot, I think it's important to that we sort of enshrine that in the lexicon. No, I'm glad. And sometimes there's a TV channel or a state radio station you did not listen to. Exactly.

so that's a line. CTV news. You know what? When Tom Brown came over, I only knew him from promos I'd see watching, like, other programs. Like, I don't know, Wheel of Fortune or something. Toy Mountain. Yeah.

Okay, so Monica, I can't take that right now, actually. She's like a video call. It's, well, she's in Montreal. It's a whole thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think I mentioned to Tyler. But, well, please.

So. Steel. Beal. We already put. This episode is still beating. Yeah. We already put control your dogs in the lexicon, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I do have one other, actually two other things. Okay. I want to share here for the lexicon. Bone of contention. Yeah. So this is not a term for the lexicon, but I think it is a,

um, an artifact that should be in, in the lexicon. Um, over the years, you've had a number of people on the show who, for one reason or another, do a, an impression of, uh, Randy Macho Man Savage. Ed Keenan. Ed Keenan, for example. So I've just put together a very quick little super cut of some of the macho man impressions over the year. So let's give that a listen. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, you might just cream of the cream of the crop. Ed Keenan, cream of the crop. Oh, yeah. Toronto, Mike, yeah, down in the basement in Toronto, but I'm not going to tell you exactly where he lives because I don't want you coming to his front porch. Oh, yeah. This is macho man. Keep holding.

Oh, yeah, baby. Tito Santana. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. Toronto Mike, yeah. Heaven, Scotty Mac on the podcast, yeah, for a cup of coffee, cup of coffee. It was delicious.

It was a good conversation. And I'm going to have to get back. There you go. I think that was great. Yeah. But you know what? I only recognize Ed Keenan and Scott MacArthur.

Is there anyone else in there? There are two other voices in there. Yeah, I noticed. Who did they? Stu Stone. One was Stu Stone and the other was you. Oh, God. I was, but I got to say Scott MacArthur wins.

Who ever said to Tito Stintana? That was the worst. That was Ed Keenan. You know, he did his best. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to WikiVix. Good.

If my phone rings again, I actually have to answer it because she might be worried about us. God. Sorry. We've been doing this so long. I'm just eating my... You know, I actually made papooses. Oh, delightful. I'm glad I told people to not listen because it's just too much.

Very to see. Even I'm, and I host this fucking show. This is exhausting. I'm tired and hungry. Well, the good thing is we only have four Wikipedia updates. Oh, good. I'm going to burn through these really.

Okay, good. Then we're going to go to five. Um, okay, the first one has nothing to do with, uh, Toronto Mike. I did update when, uh, God, So fucking snobby. The Nihilus Spasm Band. Oh, yeah. I remember you remarking on it. Yeah, well, one of the

their vocalists used that term loosely because it were kind of a noise band. Bill Exley passed away. I saw this because actually Thurston Moore put this on Instagram and he called Bill Exley the greatest vocalist in Canadian history. Wow. Which is a lofty

remark. Yeah. So I updated Wikipedia about that and also like kind of officially announced Bill Exley is dead. Like, as you can imagine, the Nihilus. Spasm Band, Wikipedia entry is not that long to begin with. So I added that on there. Sorry, as a side, they had another guy in the band, Greg Kernow, who passed away in like 1992, but it was also a visual artist. If you ever, I think, I'm sure we'll connect on LinkedIn. If you see my LinkedIn photo, that's actually his art, but you guys might like it

because there's a lot of bicycles in it. You might actually want one of his prints. Like, I've always wanted to get one because there's some very cool bike stuff. Anyway, complete aside. Three other Wikipedia entries, Rosie Gray-Tio made this, I was going to say this term, this quarter. I was on Spoon's Wikipedia and they had Post Spoon's career for everyone. So I actually added for Rob that he co-hosts Toast, a Toronto Mike podcast with Bob Willett.

Very good. Did that stick? Or has it been stripped? Yeah, it's in there. Yeah. I added, I was listening to Rewinder, Blair mentioned he went to Jarvis Collegiate, so I said, I just went over to Jarvis'Colizate.

Wikipedia, I said, notable alumni, put Blair Packam on there, all sorts of interesting names. You do an important work. And then, last but not least, this is from the Jim Moore. He sort of mentioned about him playing drums in the Rusty Reunion, and that was sort of fucked up. So I just want to clean that up. I guess he played bass in the reunion.

Yeah, the wiki suggested that he played drums and the. drums in the reunion, but he did not. Yeah. So next time you're chatting, you say, okay, the Rosie Great Tio, fix that up. I also included a fresh line about their cover of a season of the witch, which was quite good. I said, you know, Chris Wardman, that was actually, Chris Wardman put that on Sanclan in 2012. That's been out there for like over a decade.

Only hearing it now, but that was a solid, I'd love to know what movie that was supposed to be on the soundtrack for. I would like to know, maybe Ken remembers, or maybe Chris remembers all the F-O-T-M- I feel like it was like, you know, the craft or one, you know, there was a lot of sort Wicken movies or like, uh, scream or something in the late 90s. Uh, good cover though. Like, it was, I was impressed. Yeah, absolutely.

Anyway, that's WikiLakes. Well, thank you for your, uh, contribution. Breaking the law. Breaking the law. Breaking the law. Breaking the law. Breaking the law. Breaking the law.

All right. Time for Mike's favorite segment of episode. CM cast. Okay, because I actually have one. Oh, okay. You may recall that last quarter announced a contest. I received hundreds of emails sending in mistakes, errors throughout the quarter. I thought it was thousands. Well, it was hundreds. I don't want to overstate what happened. The first one that I received was from FOTM, Andy, who is on the live stream right now. talking to the same six people. She was just very quick off the mark.

Tons and tons of other emails came in, but Andy's, Andy was first, so she's the winner. She'll receive a signed headshot of the official fact checker of the TMU. Robert Lawson. That's right. Who was at TMLX 20?

He was there. Yeah, great to see Robert Lawson. So let's get into it. What Andy pointed out was that in the Ed Keenan episode from Q3. Toronto Mike said that Jane Fonda, played the C-3PO character dot matrix in space balls. Obviously, it was Joan Rivers.

I must have been thinking, Joan, and it turned into Jane. Because I know it's Joe Rivers. Regret the Earth. Jane Sinclair. I know it's Joan Rivers, so I don't know why my mouth said that. Why did you say? There was an episode last quarter where I was talking about going to the island with Professor Pricklethorn, and I had to meet him at the where Captain Johns used to be.

And I said something, I think it was to Michael Mangiarty, but I said something, like there should be a plaque at the foot of one young street. Yes. Is what I said. And then I think that night I was there and I saw there was not just a fucking plaque, but like the anchor is there. There's a plaque. That whole pier is called Captain John's pier.

Very well memorialized. You just have to go to the, you can't see it from Queens Key. You got to go deep to the waterfront is there. And you can see got an anchor, a plaque in the name of the fucking pier. How do you know Heritage Toronto didn't just like expedite? that when they heard it because they do you'd be liking that. Highly possible. No doubt you regret that

error, Mike. I regret the fuck out of that error. Scotty Mac on his episode, he said Dave Steve's one hitter that was broken up by the Julio Franco bad hop single was in 1987 as part of the collapse of, it of course, was in September 1988. Correct. It's like three in one year. Scottie Mac. He's younger than us. Regrets the error. Mike, in the Colin Cripps episode, you attributed a comment that I submitted about Colin at one time living with Dan Aiken and a former colleague of mine, you attributed that to Hamilton, Mike. Oh, you know, I did hear from Hamilton, Mike. You said he didn't say it.

That's right. Oh, I don't know anymore. Well, that was me. It was Hamilton, Tyler. No, doubt regret the year. So you relate to David Aiken? No, different spelling. He is related to Feist, though.

Or, yeah, he's related, yeah, that was disclosed. What about Willie Aikins? No. Willie Mays. Still with us, though. Still with us. Last one. No.

What's he in jail? Willie Maysake. Yeah, but I thought Willie Aiken's got out of jail and cleaned up. Yeah. Did he have? Yeah, okay, he's good. Sorry. Cam regrets the air.

Okay. And then finally, Blair on Rewinder said that Stephen Colbert and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett were going to be teaming up for a new show. This is not true. This was debunked on Snopes. It is not happening. He fell for that one. Blair, no doubt, regrets the air.

The world is Stu Stone Hello Toronto Michael and the rest of the TML universe and the gang that's there recording, hello. Hey, Cam, how are you, pal?

This is the segment that I know you guys I've just been waiting to hear. Where in the world is Stu Stone? Well, first off, I'll tell you where he is. He's on cloud nine. He's on cloud nine because the Blue Jays, the team that Mike gave up on. Cloud nine.

Thank God. You know, he would have just brought us down anyway. The Blue Jays are on the precipice of greatness, maybe. Best record in the American League. Best record of the American League East. Getting ready to start the ALDS, top seed. God bless the Blue Jays. And in case you're wondering, right now I'm in Detroit.

So I'm basically going to need a telescope to, like, look over the border and watch the game. But I'll figure it out. love you guys miss you guys go jays go and until next time i will uh talk to you then always good to hear from stew stone it's good there he is we found him betr sincere thank you but you know to both of you obviously uh thank you cam gordon but a bigger thank you to tyler campbell because i know how much work you put into these pho tm cast like you pulled clips like just i know know you're in the FOTM Hall of Fame, but I want you to know how much I appreciate this.

Labor of love. Labor of love. Always a pleasure. I loved doing this every quarter with you guys. Maybe we get it under three hours. I don't know. I think we can do that. Or if not, that's fine. Yeah, that's fun too. What's a quarter? Yeah. I got to already be. Yeah, exactly. Friday night. What else are we going to do? Which one of you two, or both of you, if I can find another one, but which one of you two is going to wield the bat? Or is it too dark to even know? Like, it's a dark photo.

Hey, there was one thing I was going to throw in. Oh, go ahead. I've been working on an impression that I wanted to share. And this is FOTM, Andy Frost, and he's about to take a call. He used to host Leafs Talk after the Leafs game. This is Andy Frost about to take a call on Leafs Talk.

Go ahead, sir. That was good. Thank you. Wow. You saved the best for last. Yeah, there we go. was incredible. I'd be leading with that.

That was good. By the way, assembling, this is a fun fact for everybody. Assembling a silent pod takes less effort than finding the last free meeting room on a Monday morning. These silent pods, I'm just saying, if you need to get some space, some private space, some dynamic, creative space. Talk to Doug Mills from Blue Sky Agency. Okay, he's Doug at Blue Sky Agency. dot CA. And you guys got your measuring tapes. We shouted it out, Ridley Funeral Home,

but recycle my electronics.ca, you know that's where you go with those old cables. Right, Cam? Of course. And that! I'm exhausted. I'm actually drained, exhausted. I have a nine-year-old girl I'm responsible for

upstairs. I've neglected for like fucking four hours. I'm sure she's fine. I think she's fine, too, but her mother calls multiple times. and I don't answer. That's probably not great. She knows what you're doing too.

Well, she's like, he's not doing this for four hours. She should get on the live stream if she wants to communicate with you. Yeah. She can go to the live stream and see what's going on over here. It's like when Zach Morris called his dad on the cell phone. He's like, is this the only way I can get a hold of you? Yeah. Like they're in the same room.

I remember that episode. Yeah, powerful. Saved by the Bell is where Tori's spelling got her start. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And that. brings us to the end of our 1,774th show, 74 for Tyler and I.

I'm so out of gas. Can I get through this outro? Go to tronomimeck.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. Much love to all who made this possible. That's patrons like you. Go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike and become a member today. I'm actually posting there. Great Lakes Brewery.

You guys got some fresh crap beer. Palma Pasta. You got a lasagna too. Nick Iienes is back. My goodness gracious. Nick Iienes is back, baby. Recycle MyElectronics.ca. Blue Sky Agency and Redley Funeral Home.

See you all next week when my special guest is opens his Google Calendar to reveal because I have no fucking clue. Come on, Mike. You're running at a song. Why won't Google load? Where's my internet?

Hold on. Hold on. Loop it. Loop the song. Leslie Spit Trio's own, Laura Hubert. See you all then. That's exciting. Oh, fuck.

Holy shit. That was insane.