Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - FOTMCast: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1828

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

In this 1828th episode of Toronto Mike'd, and 8th 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, 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. 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. A little flat on innocence, but other than that, it was great. We'll go again. One more time. Somehow, that's my sound, man.

Still love that. By the way, you always go on about FOTM cast. That's probably my new favorite thing. You know, people ask me if I'm tired of playing this song. I'm not even close. Perfect. Shoes and I boarded the plane It's good

Touchdown in November The sky was blue In love the pouring rain Combing the depths of the TMU 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 I'm raving Shout out to Energy 108. And Scott Turner and DJ Trance. Amazing. I never know what the opening song's going to be until I hear it with everybody else.

And two thumbs up, VeeB. Thank you. And welcome to episode 1,828 of Toronto Mic'd, an award-winning podcast proudly brought to you, Great Lakes Brewery, order online for three local home delivery in the GTA. Go to Great Lakes Beer.com. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more.

Fusion Corpso, Nikainis. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Burmapest. building success, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle My Electronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. That's my first mistake of 2026. Hmm. Take a note, Cam.

Oh, I love it. I love this version. But let's not forget Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of my raven shoes and I bought in a plane. the community since 1921. How can you not love this song? Joining me today for this eighth FOTM cast, remember this is for real heads only if you're not a real head in the TMU.

Shutter down now! It's FOTM Hall of Famers, Cam Gordon. and the VP of Sales himself, Tyler Campbell. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Sorry, I'm done. What's this part? Hold on.

I'm going to make you going to keep it in the same. I am loving this. Isn't it good? This is not the original like I'm raving. No. So this is a wrap pack, which is a cover of the original dance mix by a duo. called Shut Up and Dance. Right.

That one came out in 1992. There's a legal challenge from the Mark Cone camp. They had to pull all the singles. The proceeds had to go to charity. So it became a very rare single to have. They cut a new version of the song that had the same lyrics but a different melody.

So you might find that out there. This is Rat Pack. It's hard to say when this was done like 92, 93. And then there was a German group, Scooter, that did it in 1996. Scooter. Yeah.

Okay. I'm Raven. There you go. Loving it. I'm loving that MF is on the live stream. Did you know that, Cam? Yeah, I just saw. So, behave yourself.

Happy New Year. MF says, Happy New Year. Have you wished your Happy New Year yet? Happy New Year to the TMU and all the FOTMs. That's from MF. Quick check-ins on the live stream. It's a very communal event. I'm very excited to see you guys.

First episode of 2026. We're going to cover a lot of ground. Jeremy Hopkin is here. He set an alarm to be here. Moose Grumpy is here. I love seeing Moose on the live streams. Al Grego, the Royal Pain himself, is here. He says, Happy New Year.

Leslie's here. Excited. She can see VP, because I changed the camera angle. And we're going to do this thing. How are you guys doing? Let's start with you, VP of Sales. I am great. It is the start of another new year. You better butter your cue finger, as they say.

Uh, I'm good. I'm, uh, I feel happy to be here. I feel alive. Uh, I feel cranky. I'm a little cranky. Yeah, I noticed it right away. We're going to talk about that. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, great to, great to be with you both as always. And let the record show, I like you a little cranky. Good, good. Yeah. It, I got, I got some things to say. I actually like Rob Proust now. Oh, he's so salty. More than I did prior because he showed a little salt with regards to Mark Cohen's walking in him. Sure did. Nice. Nice. Nice this man. Uh, uh, uh. in the TMU universe. I thought so too, and that's kind of boring, right? A little edge.

There's some edge on him here, but how are you doing, Cameron Gordon? I'm great. I'm great. 2026 has been awesome so far, looking forward to some big things came up this year, major announcements, looking forward to it. Is it true? I was checking my Toronto Mike recording schedule for 2026, and I see, will you be on Toronto Mike at some point without Tyler to make a major announcement?

It won't be an announcement. It will be to talk. about a major announcement, so sort of, yes, yes. But looking forward to it, it'll be big. This will be big. Is the Calgary market involved in any way? There's a bit of Calgary. Yeah, it's a sort of a cross-Canada thing. Sure. Excellent. You know, I honestly encourage any and all major announcements be made on Toronto Mike. It's the place to do it. And I feel like it's like LinkedIn lunatics when they say, you know, personal announcement or whatever they do here. So Cam Gordon has some personal news.

Some personal news, right. Hashach some personal news. So stay tuned for that in 2026. I can't remember how to begin these things, but what if I just spit out an observation I made? Please do. Sure. Because 2020, not only did the fourth quarter of 2025 come to a close,

but the entire calendar year of 2025 came to a close. And here's an interesting coincidence that emerged. And it's just no one will care except the real heads. And we're only talking to the six or seven real heads that are still listening. But the three episodes of Toronto Mike that spent the longest time in my calendar in 2025 were these episodes. Actually, two episodes. I'm going to rephrase that. Two episodes that were in my calendar the longest time in 2025.

One was a visit from Rick Westhead. No, it's three. I'm going back to three. Oh, my God. I'm off my game. I haven't recorded since Festivist, so bear with me here. The one was Rick Westhead, who was in my calendar for like six months because he had a book coming out and he was going to visit. Another was Paul Myers, who had a week in Toronto to promote his book about John Candy,

and he was excited to visit the basement studio. And the third was, and I think, Cam, you'll know this name, Stark Naked and the Flesh Tones. Of course, yeah. They were excited to be in the calendar because they were going to promote some show, and they were going to do a deep dive into Stark Naked and the Flesh Tond. So those were the three episodes that spent the longest time in my calendar, and you probably know where I'm going. You want a fun fact about these three episodes?

Sure. Yeah. None of them were recorded. Oh, my God. None of them happened. So the three episodes that were in my calendar, the longest time in 2025, did not happen. Have they been rebooked for 2026? None of them have been.

Oh, my God. Rick Westhead was just on some podcast. I feel like it was like Josie Dyes podcast, maybe. I feel like he was just on there. How dare he? I feel like he'd still be good to get on. I mean, I would have them on. No, this is not me.

No, yeah, I know. I know. It's a book publisher booked him. Right. And at some point, kindly said, there's some craziness going on of the promotion. we need to like postpone this, but it never got rescheduled. So it basically died on the vine.

That's unfortunate, yeah. Okay. In a happier news since we last gathered, and I don't know what, maybe I should let, like, do you have notes, Tyler? Am I step in? I have so many notes.

And we're probably saying the same thing to the same 10 or 12 people, but I'll say it again anyway, just in case some Rando has clicked play on this by accident. FOTMcast is a very meta recap of the previous quarter of the Toronto Miked podcast. So if you're a listener of the Toronto Mike podcast, maybe you missed some episodes. This is the place to come to get a full recap of what happened in the last three months. We'll talk about the facts and figures. We'll talk about some of the more notable or remarkable episodes, if you will. And it's just an opportunity for us to get together and reflect.

We've been accused in some camps of being a little, I don't know, complimentary. Kind. Kind. Right. And, you know, you need to fuck the shit up a little more. It's a good. It's a point well taken. It's a point well taken.

So I'll just. Like you suck. Well, I did want to say this is probably the worst quarter of Toramike that we've, we've had. Some real fucking stinkers. You were not at your best. I mailed it in. Yeah, you mailed it in. You mailed it in.

Very little real talk. So not a lot to celebrate. Well, that will make his day. Who is that? The unnamed person who said you were too kind. It's more of a general comment from the community. and you know he's winking at me everybody

we take notes sorry I'm just trying to air drop our or cheat cheat you know what keep going but we never did test so when we do play your first oh yeah I thought about that yeah I know

this could be but I'm where I always am and I'm sure it'll work but I'm like halfway so we're mailing in this episode because this quarter is gonna be shitty to yeah it's it's bad it's bad

so yeah so I have brought my grievances I have a lot of, you know, problems with you people, as they say. Right. Shout out to Elvis. Excited to air them with you gentlemen today. I think we'll push back where you need to be pushed back on. There was a lot of that.

But we should say we made a format change because we felt it was too long. It was only five or six people listening, but still too long. And we're going to name check every episode and we will stop down for 15 of them. That's right. So for 15 and then we will extrapolate. a little bit. So I want to say this off the top. If you're not one of the 15, because we're going to get some numbers from Tyler

in a minute, like how many guests and all that jazz. But if you're not one of the 15, you're probably not listening anyway. But also, no offense here, man. I love that you came over. We had a great chat. And it means a lot to me, and I probably think about it every night when I'm falling asleep. But we're only going to talk about 15.

There's only so much time. Time is the enemy. Yeah. We did three and a half hours last time. That was egregious. Too long. Yeah. Too long. Um, so I think we'll, we'll start with a little bit of mop up from the, from the last quarter before we get into wrapped.

Okay. Um, I just had a couple of things. Um, so one of the, the episodes, which we're not going to talk too much about, um, but I did want to, uh, to comment on was, uh, Stu Stone, who was here, um, the, the great Stu Stone, Hall of Famer. Uh, he took you to task for your comments. Oh, so you're doing this now because we're going to go in order. I know, I know we'll go in order. But I think it's important for us. to talk about this here because you took a lot of grief from Stu and deservedly so. Right. I failed to see the crystal ball. Yeah.

Tell me that this Blue Jays team would be uber exciting. They deserved better from you. And Stu made sure that you were held to account. But I did want to say that you weren't alone in that. The three of us had a conversation in April. Right. where we had just been to one of the first Jays games of the season. It's like the second game of the season.

Yeah, Max Scherzer started. That's right. So I just wanted to play a little clip of the three of us talking about the outlook for the Toronto Blue Jays. What did you think of the vibes of the dome on Saturday? In the actual seats was really flat. It's interesting. We may have seen a very historical game as perhaps it could quite conceivably be Max Scherzer's only game he ever pitches for the Blue Jays. there's that.

But yeah, the vibe was not great in the stands. I quite like just hang out in the bar. And when I went home, I told both my daughter and my wife separately about you guys should go with your separate friends. Because I did find quite fun just to hang out back there and see all the food and walk around and stuff.

And the fact that you can get tickets very cheaply now, you know, it's kind of a place to hang out. You know, the 3 p.m. start time's kind of fun. It's like, I don't know, G.L.B. Brew Pub.

and have a cheaper drink and watch on the television? Yeah, but I don't know. I also, like, remember we, like, for the last inning, we're on that little overhang looking over the Orioles bullpen. That was kind of cool. I don't know if I'd pay to go in there at this point, but it was, it was fine, but yeah, in the stands, kind of lacking, I would say.

What did you think, Tyler? Yeah, same, like the vibe in the stands was really flat. Bad vibes at the don't. Tense of empty seats. Terrible. for the opening series of this season, which is usually a pretty well-intended. Divisional rival?

Yeah. Now it is still, or was still March, so maybe people aren't. And it was rainy. And it was rainy. So, you know,

definitely some other... We do have a dome. So definitely some other factors at play. But yeah, it's just the vibes around this team in general are just so lousy. And, you know,

they were terrible last year. Vladdy's probably gone at the end of this year. Bo is probably gone at the end of this year. Well, well, maybe gone. to follow like or half a friend of nobody.

Dudestone says Ross Atkins is doing a great job. Ah, is. Yeah. Yeah. What's, uh, what was the word that he used to describe Trump?

Remarkable. Remarkable. Yes. He's doing a remarkable job. It is much like the job to be remarked upon. This age like milk. Like, like a piece of,

uh, cheese from like no frills like the cheap stuff out in the sun for two minutes. Oh yeah. Like, think about it. Like who would buy a ticket for these vibes? Meanwhile, fast forward,

whatever it is six months or, whatever, and people are, like, mortgaging their home to get a 500-level seat for a game. Truly remarkable in every sense of the world. Like, what a season? What a team so lovable? Who would have thought? Yeah. You know, who thought we'd go to bed dreaming of barger, you know, and like, all these, just,

just, um, Yiskevich. Stavish, love, Dmitry, Yuskevich. Absolutely. Dmitzegovich made a comeback. Like, what a fuck. I mean, I already ate that shit with Stu Stone. Yeah. Yeah.

I just wanted to say that, uh, for. stew for anyone else. It's not just you that said those things. You were not alone. I feel good. I was not alone as Michael Jackson once saying. That's right. Excellent. Okay. And you have another clip. I do. Because then I'll do the mop-up before we get a wrap. So this one is,

you know, you've talked about this a little bit, but I did want to just kind of make a little announcement here. A little note of congratulations to the great Toronto mic. This is the only positive thing I really have to say about you this quarter. but it's, you're an award-winning podcast.

That happened. And I think it's well-deserved. You know, the podcast community has looked upon you and granted you a great honor. The academy is spoken. Well, how the fuck did that happen? Because it wasn't, one thing to win, this is a big country. We have a lot of podcasts. I won.

I didn't really, I did write a blog post that was nominated. because I said, oh, I'll just call myself a nominated podcast. That's cool. But I didn't do any talking it up or anything. It just, I win. I mean, Al knows how this feels. But the category I won in, do you have it there? News and current events.

I think that's the, yeah, news and current affairs. Like, in all of this, in all of Canada. Okay, here it comes. Toronto Mike is simply the best news and current affairs podcast in Canada. Just like Tina Turner saying. No argument from me. I'm trying to think Is what you do news?

Sometimes. Yeah, but sometimes it is. There's certainly some topicality. Do you know, I guess you don't know who else was in the running for this? Well, you see if I watched the YouTube live stream because I wanted to, in fact, I captured my little speech here. I could play it for you if like maybe this is the time to play it. Sure.

But I did see there were five nominees, but there wasn't any like big names that everybody's gonna know i didn't like it's not like i beat out canada land or whatever but here it is this is only 40 seconds here we go and the winner is toronto miced wow this is an incredible honor i thought being nominated was rad enough but it turns out winning is way better than just being nominated this is awesome so outstanding news and current affairs series what a heavy category. Toronto miced. Man, what a labor of love this has been. Thanks to the Academy. Clearly non-scripted. Thanks to the listenership. And thanks to everybody who voted for me. I am truly honored and humbled. Thank you.

Presenting Outstanding Science Series. Oh, see. Who wins that one? Okay. So clearly unscripted, but they asked all nominees to submit the acceptance speech. So this was like an online ceremony? I wasn't. A couple of questions I've been asked. Like, what did I get? Like, And, like, do I have a plaque or do I have a trophy or do I have a medal or something? And I've received nothing so far, so I don't expect anything. But also, like, where was it? Like, it wasn't a live ceremony.

This was all virtual. So, in fact, I'll be honest, I recorded that, like, six weeks before or something. And I didn't know the awards were being handed out that night. And I found out because Al Grego came into our WhatsApp group and congratulated me on my win. And I was like, what are we talking about? So thank you to Al for breaking the news. I had no idea. But, yeah, that's exciting.

I now added to the intro that it's an award-winning podcast because why the fuck not? And I look forward to asking you, where do you keep your Canadian podcast award? Good question. I'd love to have one. So thank you for the kind words. And I am humbled and honored to receive such a prestigious major award. Yeah, it's cool. Because it's, um, who's the organization that runs it?

Canadian podcast awards. Is this called the Canadian? Okay. It's a couple. It's like Katie and. No. Oh, you had, you had them on, right? Link? Jesus, we've got to dig this up.

John? John, for sure. Link Gates. Link something. I got, I'm going to look it up in a moment, but the lovely couple did visit the basement. Yeah, I remember. Okay. Very cool. Well, it happened. You know, what do you? I'm not going to give it back. Don't, this false modesty. Come on. Too many, but I do want to say.

You literally have like this Toronto star on your wall. Like, you're clearly not beyond accolades. I'm still under the radar and I like it that way. But I also, that was nice. to win that award. I really am honored and I'm going to, you know, hype it up a little. Why not? But I think the greatest accomplishment from the past quarter is I was asked and I humbly accepted the honor of being the Grand Marshal for the atobico Lakeshore Santa Claus parade. Like to me, that, that's unbelievable. Yeah. It's like literally a pillar of the community. Like, like seriously, just in your own backyard to be asked. And it had a banner. I mean, there's photos and

everything. People saw this. I was waving to people. I was waving to people. people. Like I was the, you know, Princess Diana or something. And there, I had a banner that said, uh, Happy Holidays and it had the Toronto Mike that you had to carry that I carried with Peter Gross, fellow FOTM Hall of Famers. So I just wanted to say that happened in the last order. Were people watching the parade did? Were people like, Toronto Mike? Yeah. So I felt like, wave. A couple of people would like say things that told me they listened. I had a lady say, uh, bring back Mike Stafford. Okay. That was yelled at me. Yeah. Sure. What you did? And a bunch of people who Hey, Toronto Mike, who just knew who I was,

but the overwhelming majority of people smiled, waved, and I'm pretty sure they're like, who the fuck is Toronto Monk? Not since Ken McNeil shouted you out from the stage at sneaky D's. Honestly, that's right up there with that. One last note here, and we're going to get to wrap here, because it is too positive for you know who.

But I was quoted, and I don't think this has happened. Oh, it did happen. Maybe I, no, I don't think I've been quoted in the Toronto Sun before, but I was quoted in the Toronto Sun by Joe Warmington. Oh, night scrawler. That happened in the last quarter because he called me up to chat about retiring, John Oakley, retiring from 640, John Oakley after a long career. And I gave him some couple of those sentences and one of those sentences ended up in the Toronto Sun.

Let's get that sentence up on the wall. I got to get that framed here. So that's enough for me. I'll leave it back to you, Tyler. I do want to say it because I'll say it at the end, but I'll say it now. You do the heavy lifting on this FOTM cast. I have to be here because I got to record it

but Cam just sort of shows up but he does listen and I appreciate that very much and he brings his unique point of view but you're doing like clip exercising you're excising clips you're playing these clips

you're playing these clips you are sharing Google's documents with like which order of what I really think you're doing the production on this episode EP technical production by see EPs I found out

just a vanity title Vanity title. We'll talk about that. Oh, is it? Okay, so just the P. We'll talk about that. You just want to be a P. You just want to be a producer.

And speaking of the producer, I have an email from a producer that I will share later in this episode regarding an episode where we talked a lot about executive producers. And it may have been the last episode of 2025. So we'll get to that in about three hours. Wonderful. And just to say, Al Grego has rightly pointed out that it's John and Jen are the... And they're lovely people. Yeah.

Two nice people who are FOTM. They certainly are. Should we, should we wrap it up? Let's wrap it up. Oh, you know. I thought you, why don't you play these clips? Come on, why am I doing this? I don't know.

Wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap. I'll take it. Wrap it up. I forget who sings, is this the bar keys or? No. Little feed or something. That is the fabulous thunderbirds. Oh, right.

But it's a cover of a salmon dance. But I do sometimes think that's, who's the popper band? John Popper's Oh, uh, blues travel. Sometimes I think it's I can see that. No, no. Stevie Rayvon's brother, Jimmy.

Right. Right. And the other. And they were on the cocktail soundtrack, right? Uh, they were. Powerful stuff was the name of that track. Because I, I had the cassette of the cocktail.

I never, I have no memory of seeing the movie cocktail. I actually just watched it, uh, a couple of months ago. Uh, it's, it was as bad as I was here, right? Uh, yeah, largely filmed here. Big, uh, the, the Lakeview Diner plays a big, is there a Casaloma scene maybe? No, Casaloma.

There's a Don Jail. So the big sort of stage bar is in the Don Jail. You should do an episode about Cocktail. Jayho, this is Jayho's territory. Am I wrong? I think it might be. Like a scene or two? Okay, but has Cam Gordon seen cocktail?

I don't think I did, but like talk about an iconic soundtrack. Coquamo. Comeo, don't worry, be happy, son. Yeah, that's right. Okay, that's monster, by the way. And it did, that cassette did find its way into my collection. Sure. And I remember the fabulous Thunderbirds being on there.

Yeah, powerful stuff. Flipping, what are those things, shakers, tumblers? Shakers. Cocktails and Dreams was the name of the bar. Okay. See, I got to watch this again on Stella. All right, take it away, wrapped man. Okay. The 54th quarter of Toronto Mike has come to an end. Wow. 56 episodes in the quarter, which was up from 50 in Q3.

Oh, wow. Making it the sixth busiest quarter of all time. The average quarter is 33, but since the start of 2020, the average has been 52. Okay, so this is above average. I do know I try to lighten it a bit in the summers, which means you come off the summer for one last quarter of 2025. I feel I would go heavy for that quarter.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Since it's year end as well, a little year-end wrap, so 218 episodes for the whole year, making it the second busiest year ever. Well, that means I hit episode 2000 in 2026. You sure will. Wow.

Unless I shut this fucker. down. 2023 was the busiest year. It had 223 up, so you were very close to being the busiest year ever. Wow. I'm trying to slow down. Yeah, it's not working. I'm like Owen Wilson over here.

Wow. Wow. 61 individual guests in Q4, which was up from 51 in Q3. I have a question. Yes. Are you counting I am not. Voices on TMLX? What's it called? TMLX. I did not count multiple voices on TMLX.

Well, then this is a false number, right? It's not, though. What do you think? Um, yeah, I don't know. That's almost a, I think it's a separate category. Here's the, here's the, just people hopping on the mic. Here's the rule that I, here's the rule that I use.

I'm listening. If they're named in your description of the episode. Oh, I got to rewrite that description. Because then, then I have to like sit there with a fucking pen and say, oh, there's. Okay, so what was the number excluding TMLX21? What was the number? 61, guessed. That to me is wild because there's only like 90.

days or something, 91, 92 days and a quarter, right? Yeah, you have some episodes So two out of every three days. I know, of course, there are episodes of multiple guests, but still. I'm trying to think what are the one-off hopping on the mic episodes.

There's the party for Marty, that global thing you did, global news. Oh, yeah, the 640, that was at the GLB group of those two for sure. I feel like live from Christy Pitts is sort of a series because there's been a few of those. Two summers ago, I did a few of those.

Yeah, yeah. And then TMLX events. And now it's down to one a year where people jump on the mic at Palma's Kitchen. And we'll get to that because it was an episode. But I got to say thank you to Palma Pasta for hosting. And thank you to Tyler, who drove me to that event. Always a pleasure. And we picked up the Great Lakes beforehand and some hop-pop where we had to almost smuggle it.

That's right. To Palmer's Kitchen. They're very, the good people at GLB are always a little suspicious of you when you come in and say, give me beer. doing the, who's at the camera. Yeah. I'm just going to take this beer now and this ice. Well, that's that works. It's like I'm holding them up if they're new, right? And they don't know who I am. And I'll be like, yeah, I need five, I think we got five cases and then they're like, and I'll say, and I won't give the secret, but I'll say, in the POS system, put it under this. And then I think they'll sometimes say, is this the employee discount or 40% off? And then I'll look them in the eyes and say, it's 100% off. And there is a moment.

Right. Is he joking? Yeah. Does he have a gun? Is he robbing us right now? Yeah. There you go. Always fun. Yeah, but we always come out with him.

And we had Morgan with us. And she enjoyed the apple cider that Mike Majeski. That's right. I think his wife was serving it. And we did flirt with Majesky and consider maybe he comes back in 2026. Do we have an update on that VP of sales? The conversations are happening. And I hope to have an update very, very soon on that.

All right. Thank you. Just the last. Thank you for your efforts. Of course. My pleasure. The last note, 32. first-time guests in this last quarter up from 27. Too high. I don't know if I need to have

that many first-time guests. It's a lot. Okay. Fresh meat. Okay. So that's, uh, that is, those are the numbers, the figures from Q4. So let's, uh, let's run down those apps. So am, am I going to say the episode name and then we'll just acknowledge it happened? And then we will stop down for 15 of these. Yeah. Um, I, yeah, most of these are terrible. So I'd rather you say the, the, the He's winking everybody. I feel like, it is the real heads listening, so keep with that shtick there. It's good.

Okay, so this was the quarter four of 2025, and it began with personally profound jams that was Toast 46 with Bob Willett and Rob Pruss. Rob Proust drives here every month. Yes, I do like to throw in the fact. He ties his visit to my basement studio with a visit to his mommy and Burlington. Yeah, good for him. I just want to throw that in there.

He's a good boy. He's a good son. So when mommy dies, we'll see if he's still coming over every moment. Come on. Shout out to Ridley funeral home. All right. The second episode, as is typical, actually, every quarter. Ed Keenan dropped by and he'll be over next week. There you go.

Love it. Love it. Yeah. So the third episode was FOTM cast. This is the snake eating its own tail. How was that episode? I thought it was great. Probably the top episode.

Highlight. Yeah. Always a highlight. Yeah. Yeah. And then the first, what I would say, like new guest, regular episode was Laura Hubert. from the Leslie Spit Trio. How was that?

It was honestly, honestly it was great. Yeah, I need to go back and listen to that. You need to listen to Cam? I did. Underrated band and one night I sort of didn't know too, too much about the backstory and stuff. Interesting.

Like a dog was in the band. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And Laura was great. What's a movie, Roadkill or Route 60, Route 61? What's the movie? That first McDonald movie?

Yeah. Highway 61. Was it Roadkill they were in. They were in one of the movies. But both could have been in both. Both. Like acid test. Yeah.

Okay, great. Now the first clip we have is from an episode with Rudy Blair. Yeah, I really enjoyed that episode. Rudy had, he's what a career. He's sort of carved out for himself, you know, being an entertainment journalist in the newspaper and on the radio, like just a, a self-made man almost. So let's hear Rudy talking about what happened to him at the end with the Red Company. Why does your time at 680 news come to an end? So here's what I'm going to say to you. Are you reading this from a lawyer letter? No, because everybody who has asked me this, I've always given them the, if you want to call it, lawyer list of, you know, well, you know, they said this was going on and whatever.

I'm going to give a little bit more of my truth. And the thing is, somebody ended up in a higher position who did not. like me and as soon as I knew that person was in that position I said I'm not going to be here for long and it took about a year before I was dismissed they said it had to do with what do you call those guys again who who will listen to your station and then come up with consultants consultants thank you that's the word I'm trying humble and Fred like to talk very poorly of their many radio consultants yeah consultants don't know what they're talking about anyways they were told that uh nobody listens to entertainment on

680 that's the lowest thing which i did not believe at all because i know the reactions i got from people especially because doing entertainment got me a two-year uh run on rogers television on the mic with rudy blair that i did that had amazing ratings so um it just bottom line is somebody who i clashed with for the longest time because i did not agree with the things that they did um got into the right position and then suddenly i was told i wasn't doing entertainment uh i had to do other things nobody was assigning me stuff so i had to assign myself stuff even though you know you're looking up at the wall and i've got like you know almost 20 RT DNA awards you know and most of those are just mine alone uh it it was frustrating and i think it was just you know

know, I was beaten to the ground, bottom line. And I, it was frustrating. And I was doing everything I could to make this work. So I was trying to come up with stories and things like that. And, and but nobody was, nobody was helping me. And then finally I walked in one day before Tiff, I got called in. I saw human resources that, ah, here we go. My, you know, what is finally out of here. How long had you been at 680, or at least with a Rogers radio? 23 years. Okay. Now, did they sever? you fairly again i never said it as to anybody but i'll say it to you they gave me opportunity which i will always be i will always love that they did that they gave me a platform to do

what i wanted to do for the longest time i got a chance to meet people and and do things i never would have done i mean i'm having i'm having dinner with lionel richie you know and and things like that but when it came down to pay i was drastically not paid well. That's a hefty dose of real talk. Yeah. I mean, wow. I feel like this is such a tip, but we've seen versions of this story time and again with our friends in the media.

I feel like just, you know, going in a different direction, these sort of legacy guys and women as well. I've heard this song before. It's like it's tough. And yeah, like what a career. Rudy had. Like, it's incredible. Well, remember those comments from Rudy Blair, FOTM Rudy Blair, because

later we'll get a woman, a beloved radio personality, echoes those sentiments. And I thought that was rather refreshing. But Rudy just said, fuck it. I'm going to tell it like it is. And that's a guest. I love chatting up for 90 minutes. Yeah. He was, he was really an interesting listen. Again, like a career that he has carved out for himself because nobody was going to create that position for him. And, you know, I felt badly for him, obviously, you know, given the state of the, the industry, but also, you know, even hearing him talk about the, or answering your question, were you severed fairly, he, he responded with, well, they gave me an opportunity.

Yeah. Which is, you know, not. Not severance. No, right. And he had that big. Yeah. Sometimes those gas speak volumes, you know, the size. It's going to say there's all that.

And yet he continued. used to grind away. Can I make a comment about Rudy Blair? Please. So you guys might know I was a big Rafi head. Sure. You guys know that about me? Yeah.

Yeah. A corner grocery store. Love that. Sure. So obviously I've taken a few runs at getting Rafi on Toronto Mike. I want to talk to this guy. He just got the order of Canada or something like another day. I definitely saw a little YouTube clip within the last week of Rudy Blair talking to

Rafi. Yeah. Well, Rudy, because I follow him on Instagram. I think I be still at events. he's still doing his interview series. He's talking to Rafi. Again, that's a big kid. He should, I don't know if he has a podcast.

He might not be eligible, but he should be winning Canadian podcast awards. I want Rafi on Toronto Mike. Rudy made it happen. Much respect to that man. At the record show. And I had a prickly history of Rudy. Yeah.

Like I'll say before he sat down, I was like, I was, you know, we definitely had a few. And he owned most of it, I think, in that episode, which I appreciated. But kind of a dick to me multiple times. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I mentioned, like, I had some not the most pleasant, like, PR journalist's experience, which, you know, PR people are generally not fun to deal with. You were in PR? Yeah, yeah. But I don't know. It's like, completely ignored that. He seems to have a real sort of strength of conviction for what he's doing and just clearly loves it because he's still doing the entertainment stuff.

So props to him for just, you know, keeping it real with what he's doing. So great. That's one of the 15 is Rudy Blair. Then that was followed up. Very interesting because Rudy Blair is seasoned veteran. He'd been on the air for over, you know, two decades, still doing his own thing. But then a young country singer named Hayden Ryan,

and my interview with her was her first ever interview. Kind of, kind of an interesting follow up to Rudy, because Rudy spent a lot of time focusing on those sort of up-and-coming artists, like he, Avril Levine. Right. So, you know, you did exactly what Rudy said to do, you know? And I do mix in.

Like, so this was somebody, a beloved FOTM, asked me if I do it. And yeah, I do want to talk to some of these, you know, bigwigs. I want to get Bruce McCullough down here. You know, I need to talk to, you know, John Castner. We'll talk about that. But at the same time, I'm happy to chat up a young up-and-coming artist like Hayden, Ryan. And Ryan's with two ends, by the way. So that happened. Okay. Although I did listen. At the end of that episode, I said if she came to TMLX21, she could sing a song that did not happen. Did she say she was going to come? No. She just, uh, It didn't come, so we did not get a song for me.

Okay. The next episode, I'm going to shout out. It was Steve Teakins. There, I found this would be a very interesting episode, but it was particularly interesting to me because my son Jarvis was the co-host for this episode, making his Toronto mic co-hosting debut, because it must have been a PD day or something. So Steve Teakins and Jarvis, and I want to say it was a great job by Jarvis. He was excellent.

He really asked some thoughtful questions. He was very respectful. It was great to hear him. you know, he's got a future in this if, if he wants it. Absolutely. Now we have a, the next episode, we'll play a clip from, do you play the clip first or do I name it first? We can, you can name it.

Okay, Sonny Greenwich Jr. From Bootsauce. The infamous boot sauce. Fuck boot sauce. Yeah, fuck Boots. Let's hear Sonny. Yeah, we were very bad boys. Let's just put it that way.

Well, Sunny, I'm glad you brought it up, okay? Because, you know, I talked to lots of different musicians and we're going to get into a couple and specifically in a moment because I'm going to ask you about one particular tour but you know there's some musicians don't love don't love you guys in boot sauce like there's a

do you know this that some Canadian musicians aren't big boot sauce boosters well look I can't see we were I mean we were idiots basically you know I mean I was I was the oldest guy in the band and I had just like turned 30 or something You know, so it's not like, I mean, we were more musically advanced than, than as humans, you know.

We probably did a lot of things that pissed people off, and we were not short on ego anywhere. And we basically didn't let anything get in our way, you know. And I think that that, we, we, we. probably stepped on a few people's toes that we shouldn't have and and and in fact that i never really wanted to anyway it just happened that way because most of the time we were so drunk we couldn't figure out what was going on anyway except for the shows we were always sober for the shows and then after the shows got trashed well sunny i feel like this is the start of the boot sauce redemption tour here okay because you guys like you said you were idiots you were uh you had some

substance abuse problems. You had no shortage of bravado, because when I read old old interviews, and it's, you guys, you guys thought you guys were pretty hot. And I think that the Canadian mentality is to be a little more humble, more

modest than I think, to hear that kind of brash, like we're awesome attitude can rub certain Canadian musicians the wrong way, perhaps. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, without doubt. But I mean, you've got to think, I mean, Drew and Perry had just come back from London

and they were, you know, doing whatever they were doing over there. So they, I don't think they, we never really thought of ourselves as like a Canadian band. You know, we just thought, you know, we're here and we're doing something special and, you know, no one's going to get in our way kind of thing. But it was ridiculous. I mean, although we did make some friends along the way. I'm sure there was one or two. okay well so let's walk through it so just just before we get to it because i have some key questions as you know john said i'm looking for you like quite literally i i decided one

day i need to talk to a founding member of boot sauce to find out like from your perspective like like how it all came to be and then because i didn't think it was fair to you guys at i don't know art bergman for example whose name will come up in a minute but art'll come on my show he'll be in the basement here and then he'll it'll essentially be fuck boot sauce right And I feel like, no, like, we need to talk to boot sauce and understand, like, you know, where you were at at that time and where you are today and all this. I think it's only fair to boot sauce. Go ahead. Let's let me put it this way.

I love art. I've always loved art. Art was one of my favorites. And, in fact, the reason we had him on the tour is because we loved art. And also, also the Sons of Freedom Room, I absolutely loved. But the thing about art, art was having a hard. time at that time as well as we were. And the problem, we had management that basically would not let us do anything to help anyone, like for instance, to help art. I mean, a couple of

times he was having problems getting from one town to the next. And the tour manager just said, no way, he's not getting on our bus, forget it. It's not happening. You know, and I mean, oops. BP, you're going to lose your Hall of Fame status. But I was clinging to, yeah, seriously. Give him a moment, everybody.

This is a live presentation. It was one of my favorites. And in fact, the reason we had him on the tour is because we loved up. We went back, eh? And also the Sons of Freedom Room, I absolutely loved. It's okay. Not let us do any. do anything to help anyone like for instance to help art i mean a couple of times um he was having

problems getting from one town to the next uh and the the tour manager just said no wait he's not getting on our bus forget it it's not happening you know uh and i mean we got we got the blame for it but the problem really didn't stem from us i don't think we why would we care if art got on the bus with us. I mean, we had great fun with art. I love art. You know, still to this day, I mean, it kind of makes me kind of sad to think that he might think that I don't like him. Wow. Wow.

I feel like that tour could be a documentary. It was called like Big Bad and Booty or something. You know the problem is? Because I'd make the fucking dog myself, except that band, Sons of Freedom, is such a blind spot to me. Am I the only one in the room? I have no connection to Sons of Freedom. Same. I totally remember them on C.F. and why?

I know. How come I don't? Like, you know, like, they had two songs, maybe? Well, I remember Gandharvas, and they're two songs. I don't know why I don't remember Sons of Freedom, but this is on me, obviously. That whole tour, there was four bands, so I think Bootsau's headline, Art Bergman, Sons of Freedom, and Pure, and as a speed freak and denial and whatnot. Yeah. Four bands, a different, I don't know. Anyway, I think it was great having Sunny on.

I feel like it really humanized boot sauce, who were also just sort of a weird band in the history of CanCon, because they were showed up in the late 80s. They were on CFNY, but they were kind of a punchline type band. Well, ask Brother Bill about boot sauce. Yeah, Canada's Red Hot Chili Cup first. And yet, they clearly had the industry behind them for a while because they were around, they were on much music.

They were touring headline tours in Canada. Art Bergman, Ivor Hamilton. Iver Hamilton, whose name will come up later, the last episode of 2025, to be specific, was he his, what was he, UMG? Where was he at? He was at one of the big labels. BMB.

And they were heavily pushing boot sauce, and he was a huge, in fact, I will say, I started saying fuck boot sauce because multiple guests were saying fuck boot sauce. And I started using the term because clearly the Canadian music industry says fuck boot sauce. And I was getting a little mild flack

that I was too hard on boot sauce. Therefore, I had to find the only member of boot sauce who seems to be speaking publicly is Sonny Greenwich Jr. And thanks to John Castner, who we'll talk about it in a moment, I got Sonny on and I'm really listening to that clip. It felt cathartic almost.

Like, okay, they own it. They do play a bit of the blame game. They blame this. So really, they're saying, say, fuck Boot Sauce as manager is what I'm hearing there. Like the fact is, oh, there's no room on this. for Art Bergman, therefore art has to hitchhike. This is the famous

lowest of the low song, Life imitating art. This has been well documented on Toronto. I feel like this is the shit I exist for. Who else gives a fuck about this? But you have room on the bus. You like the man. He's a living legend. He's, you know, from the K-Tales or

whatever, the Canadian, young Canadians, whatever. You know, going to fucking Hawaii. I love that song. I don't know how you don't let Art Bergman on the fucking bus to get to the next tour stop. If you like him, you respect him. He's a legend. He needs a ride. You have room on the bus. Let Art on the bus. Couldn't have said it better myself. Okay. Yeah, no, I mean, like, Fergie. Who's this manager? Who is the manager? Who is? Yeah. This manager of Bootsaw,

who basically says, Art Bergman has to fucking hitchhike to the next town, even though we have a bus going to the same place and he's on the same tour and we like him, we admire him. We admire him. We respect him. He's a living legend, but he can fucking hitchhike because we're not letting him have that empty seat on our bus. Yeah. I think every time I hear this story or I hear the song life, my mind just goes to hardcore logo. Like certain scenes from hardcore logo, especially, you know, they were in the Rockies. Well, we talked about Highway 61 and the road kill.

Touring in Saskatchewan and whatnot. Like how the fuck does anyone make any money in this industry in this country? It just, it's such a big country and it's so hard to work the country. Yeah, so let art on the bus. Let art on the bus. So, anyways, it felt to me cathartic to talk to Sunny. Yeah. And to hear Bootsauce, they know they were assholes.

Their manager particularly, they made them out to be like industry bad guys like, you know, Lee Marvin or something. I just watched, because I just watched. Great reference. I just watched the man who shot Liberty Valance, okay? Yeah. You got George Bailey there, right? you got Marion is his real name but you got John Wayne in there

it's just an unbelievable movie you have to see... A man culture Yeah, you know his name's Marion Yeah, good theme song too Yeah, but the song ready? I didn't I couldn't So I played the song for my kids Because I kept singing it before I watched the whole thing That song I could not find in the movie

Like where that song? I thought the song would be in the movie I couldn't find it I feel like they made that song about the movie But it's not in the movie I have to do some Googling on this Take it away VP because I'll I'll just talk for 90 minutes about Sonny Grannis Jr. Whose dad has the Order of Canada.

That's right. A great jazz guitarist from Hamilton. Shout out to the hammer. That's right. And Tom Wilson. Love Tom Wilson. Okay. I think we can move on.

Oh, I have a clip for this next one. So the next guest was Lisa Brandt, okay? Not her real name, okay? Shocked. But more on that in a moment. Because I pulled a clip from, and it's called, I wish I had the name of this. I really didn't do enough homework.

But there is a lovely podcast. with Aaron Davis and Lisa Brandt. Pop that Great Lakes beer on the mic. That's a premium logger. Thank you to Great Lakes Brewery. That's all we're going to drink in 2026. Cheers to the VP of sales going above and beyond. Here is about 30 seconds from the Aaron Davis and Lisa Brandt podcast.

You know what I was happy about was driving from my former radio partner, Mike Cooper's, to Ottawa and listening to a podcast with my friend Lisa Brandt and a fellow called Toronto, Mike, who talks radio and music. just as a tremendous podcast at Toronto Mike.com and just listening to your stories. And I cannot believe that after knowing you for probably the better part, the best part of 20 years, I learned stuff about you, Lisa Brandt. Did you? So there's a little teaser, but they go down a long list,

including just a long list of things that Aaron Davis did not know about her BFF, Lisa Brandt, but she learned about on Toronto Mike. And I thought it was cool to get referenced on Aaron's podcast. I think it's very cool to be really cool to be referenced on Eric's podcast. And I think you got great pipes. Have I told you that before?

You've mentioned it before and I appreciate that. All right. So next, going back to my list, everybody, we are going to cook of gas here. The next one, I have a clip for this one too. So the next guest was Kelly Katrera, a good personal friend of mine, who hadn't made any public appearances,

I don't think, of substance, since she was let go at AM 640. Okay? So I found this clip to be sort of an echo of the Rudy Blair clip, although a lot shorter. Here is a moment, 20 seconds or so, of Kelly Kachara, basically the moment she knew

she was going to be fired at AM 640. And I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, I don't get your show. Mike Ben Dixon. And I just went, well, like, you know, the voice in your head, I mean, there were a lot of things that it was saying.

One of them was, fuck you. The other one was, I'm fucked like that's raw Kelly Katrera I was surprised it's the realist of real talk right there I actually thought the Lisa episode yeah Rudy

Lisa Kelly in succession you know versions I feel like Lisa's story is a bit different from what I recall but certainly Kelly and Rudy I feel like there was a lot of commonality and yeah Kelly brought it that was a signature episode in my opinion

well thank you very much so I wanted to acknowledge that episode and Kelly, who I did see at a Kelsey's, at a Humble and Fred event at Kelsey's recently, is planning to launch some kind of a podcast. So we'll have the news in Kelly back in the basement when she's got the new podcast ready to announce. Okay, the next episode was a gentleman named Rick Sargent

from Local Radio Lab. Local Radio Lab is the company that owns Indy88. Shout out to Bob Willett. Shout out to Bob Willett. And Bob's now on like all these small stations, like voice tracking. That's right. He's like Mornings in Milton or something like that. don't know. He's all over the place, but he'll be back for toast very soon with Rob Pruth.

I saw Rick Sargent at TMLX. Do you know I didn't know he was there? Really? I'm now, it's wild how I learn about guests, people that were at TMLX that I did not know were there. That's nice to hear. Yeah, Rick Sargent came to, uh, so I didn't know he was there. So, thanks for telling me. Of course. My pleasure. The next episode was, um, David Kynes helped make this happen. He said, you need to talk to a founder of City TV. And I'm like, well, Moses won't talk to me and he said well there is another and i got to talk to jerry grafstein so jerry is a founder of city tv he's in his 90s but he's a sharpest attack and he had lots of

interesting things to say and he was my guest after rick sergeant senator jerry grafrey right of course i'm just scrolling like pagan take care of that part yeah like i'm just scrolling through his wikipedia page it's robust like it's incredible some of the stuff this guy's done i mean the city TV is a very small part of his product. Oh, I know. And don't forget YTV, too. And CFMT, I think. But I did say in the episode, I said, look, there's a huge chunk of the story that's him

as a senator, and you can find an episode of the agenda with Steve Paken for that. For everything else, you come to Toronto, Mike. Also, you get your fill of Bill Davis. Right, always. And several books. Shout out to Steve Paken. Okay. A rash madani came by, and he's another guy who's been pretty

silent since he was fired. So he was a little more careful. I want to say. But, you know, I respect that you have to be careful sometimes. You can't burn all the bridges. Sudo colleague of Stu Stone over there. Yeah, the bodog. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine Arash is still under some sort of non-disparagement, non-disclosure kind of paperwork. So good to hear from him, though. He's great, talented dude. Yeah. And I like him.

They didn't want him to host the, or to be the Grand Marshal in the Santa Claus parade. You tried. I will, I don't know. Did I say this in public? I think you did. I can't. Sometimes I get confused and that causes.

me trouble. But when I was asked to be the Grand Marshal for the Atobicole Lake Shore Santa Claus Parade in 2025, my first response was, we can do better. And I proposed some very famous people who live in this little neighborhood of mine, New Toronto, one of whom is Mary Berg. That's right.

But I don't know Mary, but I said maybe Mary Berg. And then I said, Arash Medanee lives in the hood, and I actually know him, and I have his email address. And apparently they did ask Arash, but Arash, maybe he was out of town or something like that, but he... No sold it. Anyway, I ended up doing it.

I said, I had one condition, though. FOTM Hall of Famers, not Sto Sto Sto Sto Sto. Peter Gross, I wish Sto Sto. That would have been remarkable. Well, you know, next time, I needed Peter Gross by my side. Okay, the next episode, which we're going to play a clip from, and it's funny because we just talked about Sunny Granitz Jr. from Boots, who I was connected to because, I'm trying to remember now, was it somebody from Rusty?

I'm trying to think, was it somebody, was it Jim Moore? I thought it was Jim Moore. Jim Moore might have connected. me to Sunny Greenwich Jr. We love Jim Warren. He listens to every episode. But, uh, you know, John Castor was my next guest from the doughboys. You, and you had been chasing him for years, I feel like. Do you know who his wife is? Of course.

Well, regardless of that, I mean, just doughboys. Yeah. We all love the doughboys. Huge. Huge. I made it funny. And, uh, this, more at the Elmo. This episode was, yeah, we'll talk about that too. Uh, this episode was, was remarkable, remarkable because you took two swings at it. There was a short-lived, uh, very, very, brief because he was a no-show. He no-showed me and I let him know via the Toronto Mike podcast feed and then he rescheduled

and I deleted that episode. Yeah. So that was a very rare and limited edition episode that no longer just... Put it on a torrent or something and the pirate bay. But I will say if the audience that might have heard that is listening to FMcast.

I heard him. I heard it. Yeah. Now does Cam know what we're talking about? Sorry for the forgotten episode. I remember. Oh, you do remember. Yeah, because you, you called him on it too.

And he gave, and he didn't really have an excellent. Like it's just, I think just, I think just shit happens. You know, he's a Hollywood guy now. Yeah,

exactly. Okay, so you got a client. So, so yeah, so John, John was a very interesting cat. He had a lot to say.

And I think there may be some, I don't want to say exaggeration, but some, some things that may or may not be true in there. but it was a very interesting chat. And so here is John talking about Scott from Rusty. Okay. So how do you meet the rest of the guys?

Well, Scotty was like, Scotty, the guitar player for the Do-Boys, he played in the asexuals a little bit. He rehearsed a lot with us, but he never managed to make it to any of the shows. But when I was like a little kid, like 10 there was this guy

Chris Roller that lived across the street and he had a band and Scott played guitar in his band and I used to sit under the ping pong table and unplug the lights

I did their light show I'd unplug it and plug it in and plug the lights and Scotty who plays in Rusty he was like he's a you know

he's a 62 or I'm a 66er and he's kind of like he was the guy that I looked up to like Scotty's got some, you know, he's got very good taste. He knows what's good and what's bad,

and he's kind of been someone who's kind of showed me a lot over my lifetime. You know, Scott's a special dude. But, okay, then that begs the question, why does Scott, and I did have Scott on this program, he was in the basement here with, you know, Ken McNeil. And I'm trying to remember now, but it sounded a bit like, I don't know, was he kicked out of,

the doughboys? Why did he leave the doughboys? You just stopped showing up. I mean, Scott was like, here's a perfect Scott story. Like when we were like the first doughboys tour you know, a lot of us

we were like collecting welfare. Like, you know, we weren't making much money. I booked all the tours. Our record we were on tour in America. Our record hadn't come out yet. So it was just like, you know, go see the X singer of the asexuals new band.

Luckily, about a week into the tour, we hooked up with MIA and the Descendants. We played a few shows with them in Sumter, North Carolina was the first one, and then they took us on the rest of the tour. But on that tour anyway, you know, I remember, like, pulling up at a truck stop after a show, going into McDonald's,

Scott meets some girl, slips out the back door, and then disappears for 24 hours. He comes back. We're using all of our welfare check to get gas to the next city, and he's gone off with some chick that he's met at the truck stop. Well, we waited in the car, in the parking lot of McDonald's. Well, that's rock and roll, man. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think that, you know, Scott just, he had, he was on a different plane. You know, I think he was a lot more talented than us, and he, did he get kicked? out. He just stopped showing up, really. I mean, quite honestly, if we would have had the choice to have kept Scott in the band from day one till the end, we obviously would have. But he just stopped showing up. You can get me these clips, right? Because when I've been told by Jim Moore that Scotty Mac, Scott McCullough, the guy we're talking about there, founder of Rusty, who was in the Do Boys with John Castner, he will return to the Toronto Mike studio in the first quarter

of 2026. He's going to deliver me some fluke vinyl, which as you see, I've got new shelves. It's going to go right here. Wall of vinyl. The wall of vinyl is going to go right here. And I will play that clip for Scotty and get his reaction to that. Yeah. Very, very interesting. Caster's an interesting dude. Like, just very entrepreneurial and just sort of willed his career into existence. And doughboys were great.

Yeah. Like, I think asexuals were like a fairly big deal, sort of in the more punk sphere. Yeah. I don't know, toured Europe a lot, toured U.S., moved to L.A., married a TV star, because he was involved in what Canadian music week, he was like the programmer for a while. Am I imagining that or North by North or East? Is that right? You know, you might be right. I don't know. I can't call you a liar. I'm not going to call you a liar. He, uh, the, the part that that kind of caught my ear was when he talked about all the

bands that he's managed. Right. And he was mentioning like the lemon heads and the placements, yeah. Sabado and like, really? Yeah, but who knows that what?

That is true. I did Google it. He's part of like a management company that did handle tours for those bands. So I think it is true and you can sort of see it is that like that generation too.

It's all sort of like 90s bands still touring. I never had a moment in the John Castner episode where I thought, oh, this guy's full of shit or whatever. Yeah. And not to say he's full of shit. Just like it, I don't know.

And I got to. to say it was a long time coming, if you will. I've wanted John for a long time. So thanks again to Jim Moore and we made that happen. And I just want to let the world know that the Aaron Davis Lisa Brandt podcast that shouted me out is called Gracefully and Frankly podcast. Very good. So maybe we had a workshop that title. But that's the name of the podcast if you're looking for it. Al Grego on the live stream says my mission for 2026 should be to find out who the manager of sauce was, to have them on the podcast. I won't say this name, because I don't know if it'll get me.

I don't want, you know, Lauren Honnickman's in my right year telling me, don't say the name. But I would start with name redacted. Manager of Martha and the muffins and one of my teachers at Trebis Institute, I can totally hear him say, fuck boot sauce. So there's some leads there for me to follow up on in 2026. Threads to pull on. Treads to pull on. And just confirming, for anyone who cares, much might be nobody.

He was the programmer for Canadian Music Week, John. Okay, John Castner. Oh, I care. You're talking to the only two people who care. The other thing in the Castner episode was the little thing at the end where he talked about being a Tom Green's wedding. Yeah. And he said he'd get Tom Green on the show. How has that going?

I didn't follow up yet. I will probably send him a note now that you reminded me. Because Tom Green belongs on Toronto. He does. He absolutely does. He's not bigger than snow. Of course not. Yeah.

That happened in 2025 as well. And the Scott Thompson episode happened at 2020. What a year. What a year. What a year. Let's do three hours on the year and review right after we record this episode here. So, okay, the next, oh, I love the John Castner, and it was great to pair that with the Sunny Granite's Jr. For sure.

Actually, very important to me. My 90s, I know Paken won't listen to either of those episodes, okay, but they're important episodes to yours, truly, and you've got to keep me interested here. Speaking of interesting, Alan Zweig returned, because he has a new documentary. Yes. And, yeah, talk to me about the Alan Zweig episode. So this episode was interesting to me because it felt like a whole other Alan's Weig. It was a very different man. It seemed to me as someone who does not know Alan's Weig.

He just seemed very positive and not chipper, but like he was, he was very complimentary towards you. Yeah, he sounds like he's working on himself. Yeah, and good for him. His quote at one point was, your whole thing is amazing. Oh, I like that quote. Yeah. Like, just talking about... You didn't pull that clip.

I didn't pull that clip. There's so many clips. I'll be here for five hours. I think he was impressed, because I referenced it a couple of times, he was impressed that the opening theme and everything was live. Yeah, right, yes.

I'm here, I'm fading down. I'm sick. I fucked up the intro today just to prove it's live. I fucked up a clip. Also, I didn't update my intro, even though a sponsor was only seasonal. Oh, yes. And I, so I was in real time editing that file.

That's what happened there. So you got to be able to re-reel. Real-time production here, okay. But Alan Swig was just letting the listenership know he was impressed by the fact that I don't do the intro and post or whatever. It's all happen. Everything's live to tape here, no edits or whatever. And I love compliments from a great filmmaker like Alan's Wig. And I do think maybe he became, I think maybe he wasn't proud of what went down at the TMLX in 2024 at Palma's Kitchen.

Because I noticed that the TMLX, because he came back, thankfully, to the TMLX at Palma's Kitchen in 2025. and it was absolutely a kinder gentler because I did try to stir a little shit I've been known to do that and I had him on the mic with Brad Bradford and it was peace and love Kumaya.

And I know Elvis was upset but I respect that and then Zweig on his episode of Toronto Mike was absolutely delightful and he is turning over a new leaf. Maybe I get partial credit for that. Maybe you do.

Maybe you do. Anyway, I enjoyed that shot with. What says Cam Gordon about me changing the life of Almswai? No, it's definitely kinder, gentle gentler. Again, one of these people that just keeps on creating.

I actually thought the stuff about his new documentary is just, it's actually like a topic that I feel like as I age, I think a lot of in terms of not suicide. But more like just like self-determination, whatnot. And you know, there's, there's somebody in the news right now. I think it's a Canadian actress

who's those decide to like end of their own life. Claire Brassau? Yeah. And I actually feel really, really strongly. So I know a little bit of her because in the early days of the Humble and Fred podcast, we absolutely, she was a friend of Amanda Barker, who is a local actress improv person who was producing the show before. Actually, she was a producer before I became the producer officially in 2018 or whatever. But she was a friend of Claire Brasso and would put Claire Brasso on the show, Humble and Fred. So I do know, I'm familiar with this person who has a mental health challenges. And at the 47 or something, she's in her 40s and she is looking at.

into a maid, medical assistance and dying, to end her suffering for mental health issues, which is something that will be much discussed on talk radio. Yeah, I think it'll just be interesting in the coming years, sort of topics around, let's just call it, like, self-determination. For whatever reason you want to go, should you have that choice? And I strongly feel like people should, for whatever reason, as long as they can do it sort of safely and ethically and whatnot. So, like, I'm not saying this was the same thing.

thing because the people that he had the clips and whatnot and his talking. It's a different category, but it's certainly within a larger conversation. And I echoed those sentiments. I would also like to know the people that know they are thinking of hurting themselves or self-harm of any way. They can talk to somebody at 9-88. Of course. Are you familiar of this new number?

Yes. Yes. 9-88. Because sometimes it is darkest before the dawn and sometimes you just need some help. Yeah. And so we're not talking about those people. We're talking. But it is an interesting conversation.

conversation to have for sure for sure it is totally agree yeah that's why you come to the FOTM cast I uh do we need to put a trigger warning on this seasonal affected oh that is worth noting though it is the I think I've done two trigger warnings in the history of Toronto Mike and that episode got one yeah yeah um oh in another episode this quarter they're both this quarter so we'll talk about the other episode soon um I have not seen Allen's new film yet but I would like to you know if it's uh it's oh national film board is that where it's yeah I think so yeah okay I I know I got a magic link that I'm not allowed to share.

Of course. This will be discussed with the final episode of 2020. I was going to say we're going to be talking, making documentaries in Canada, but... It is worth noting. It is standard practice that when I am talking, because I do have people, I do the Ontario Place documentary, you might remember. Like, I do have filmmakers on, like Alan's Wyke. And they do want you to watch the film because I don't want to talk about it.

Because I don't want to talk about a movie I haven't seen. Although I have done the odd chat with somebody who did a book I haven't read. This has happened. But I don't really. I don't dive. into the book deeply. I scan it quickly sometimes. A little bit behind the scenes. But that's like 5% of the episodes about you've got a new book. Tell us about it. Let's go back to the 90s. I do feel like that was a bit of a reoccurring theme about you don't want people's

opinion unless they've heard the song, read the book, listen to the podcast, watch the documents. Yeah. Yeah. Which is totally true. You shouldn't criticize a movie. I would never criticize a movie I haven't seen. Yeah. Yeah. Like I wouldn't criticize a podcast episode that I haven't listened to. Like, I can't be alone in this. Yeah, you're not. Isn't this standard practice, right? I find this a lot with musicians, like, especially bands that have been doing this for a long time. Like, people, like, shitting on their new album.

It's like, have you even listened to it? Right, right. It's not as good as the old stuff. It's like, how do you know? I can't comment on a video that I have not seen or may not exist. Rob Ford. Yeah, I think you could say, I'm just not interested. I'm not going to make the effort.

It's not my cup of tea. I say that a lot. Or you just don't care. But I'm not going to criticize. Like, I'm not going to criticize a C. and Y documentary that I have not seen. Exactly. And my bottom line is, it is standard practice for, oh, my daughter's calling.

It is standard practice to get a secret link to view something to discuss with the filmmaker or somebody in the film, even though it's not publicly available yet. Like, this is standard practice, so Allen's Y got me a link so I could watch his documentary before we talked about it and we had a great chat about it. Indeed. And the next episode was also an episode you have a clip for. And it was somebody who was also delightful at TMLX21. It was Resh Me Nair.

She was great at TMLX21 and she was great on Toronto Mike. So let's listen to Rush Me. It was a really hard time for both of us. Let's see. A couple of big headlines that happened right when we launched was Roe v. Wade was overturned. Right. And we have a four-hour talk. radio show and we were told in our story meeting and maybe a couple hours before we went on air

don't talk about roe v wade but why is that why why is that we took it personally we definitely took it personally scott looked at me a woman i looked at him a progressive man and we looked at each other and thought is it is it because you're you and i'm me that we can't talk about roe v wade being overturned i don't know when the queen died we were also notified in our tutorial meeting. There won't be anything negative said about the queen. Wow. Or colonialism. Wow. Right. And again, we looked at each other's. Is it because of you? Is it because of me? Is it because you're who you are? And I don't know what the final answer is on that, but when you go to work and you wonder if decisions are made, really bad decisions are made because of you, you kind of walk around

wearing that, going, well, must be because of me. Is that one specific workplace? that is run by a great company, toxic, discriminatory, completely against the grain of where all of humanity is going, which is just tolerant and understanding and welcoming. It's a tough place. Wow. Wow.

That's my new catchphrase. Wow. Move over, Owen Wilson. Yeah, that's a tough place. I find that refreshing. Like, she's telling it like it is about this CFRB. 10, the mighty 1010. News talk 10.

News talk 1010 without a news department. But yeah, well, I'm curious for a former PR man or maybe current. I have no idea what he fucking does. Still working over here, but thank you. What, like, what do you think of this whole idea of these talk shows on a Bell media own station being told, okay, the queen died. Don't talk about colonial. or they, you know, talk about Roe v. Wade, et cetera.

I'll just say, like, with, you know, especially the big corporately owned ones. I mean, I think that's just how it works right now. It's like, I'm never surprised to hear these things. They may have, they may have. I did, like I did in the real time, I didn't mention it. But they may have a blanket statement like, okay, we're an AM talk radio station in Toronto. We don't talk about abortion. Right.

Right. Yeah. And certainly 1010 is a long history of, you know, leaning more conservative and whatnot. So I do give them credit for putting Rush Me and, and, Gotti Mack on the air because I mean they're a bit atypical in terms of the people you often hear on that like no stray white guys. Yeah like we heard sort of our former mayor John Torrey filling in again over the holidays and whatnot like that that's more sort of derricker for it. Um, so yeah, I mean I hear she sort of had friction and some pushback and sort

of advice and notes and whatnot. It's like yeah, it's yeah, seems about right. I don't know. Not surprising like rightly wrongly. But a great FOTM. Yeah. And that was her second appearance. And And she is, I mean, I'm going to save this announcement for another episode that's coming up that we're going to talk about of the 15. But, you know, maybe I can just say that she will be back in this basement in the first quarter of 2026. This is an awesome. Like if you care how media works, I thought this is just fascinating. Like all these. Yeah.

Yeah, great quarter for just like real talk about Canadian media. You got to ask the right questions. Yeah. Of course. Tyler, what do you think, Reschmiar? Yeah, no, she, like, I was not familiar with her work. not being a talk radio listener. Although she was on CBC.

Yeah, I missed her there as well. And CP 24. Also missed her there. And you were a big quebey head, weren't you? Oh, I was huge on quebeby. Yeah, yeah. No,

but Quibi wasn't. Oh, yeah, well, quick bites, right? Quick bites. Quick, quibby. Quick, quib bite. Yeah, no, I, I just really like her the way she is. She's very outspoken.

She's very opinionated, which I guess you want in a talk show host. But she's also just, just very engaged with the TMU. Like she showed up at TMLX and she was on the mic and had a great chat and hung around. Like she didn't just leave. I got a selfie with

her after? Yeah, yeah. No, she stayed for the whole thing. And I know when she was on, she remarked that she was not talked about in the previous FOTM cast. So if you're listening, Rush me. So yeah, she said she listened to the last FOTM cast and she heard Scotty

Mac discuss. That's right. But she wasn't discussed and I had to tell her in real time. She was ineligible. That's right. Because her episode is from the next quarter and I hope she's listening now and it was A, we love her appearances and she did make, and this was a harder cut to make. We're only talking 15 episodes.

She made the cut. And not even all 15 have clips. Right. Not all 15 have clips. So Rushmeenere and she did make the cut. And Ed, retro Ontario Conroy came on twice this quarter. So we'll dive deeper into him the next

one. But this episode that happened after Reschmi was him diving into his book on the golden age of kids TV in the city, Toronto. It's called Imagination. And as always, retro Ontario delivered.

So we'll talk more about him in a second. For sure. Speaking of delivering, I thought, okay, so I went from thinking the Jays were going to miss the playoffs to, I'm going to put it at 99.999%.

Fucking World Series. Going into game six. Crazy. So we had two games at home. we were up three to two in the series. I'm just reminding everybody. I was so sure. I was aligning everything.

Like, I need Dave Perkins and Bob Elliott to be together. This is clinch day. This is the day of game six, okay? Friday. Was it Halloween? Yes. Yeah. Halloween was game six.

I need these two together because last two times, the only two times, the Toronto Blue Jays have won the World Series. These two were sitting together in the press box. The one guy covered the team for the Toronto Star. The other guy covered the team for the Toronto Star. the other guy covered the team for the Toronto Sun. I need to play God here.

I need to make this happen. And I invited these two gentlemen over. And it was amazing to have Bob Elliott and Dave Perkins in the basement for what I thought was the day we were going to win our third world series. We'll move on from that because apparently that didn't happen. Oh, man. Enough of that. Okay.

Yeah. Sorry, I can't just make a comment on Game 7. And that was a great episode. I think I've said before, like their initial appearance, those two, guys is maybe one of my top five Toronto Mike up. So it's all the stories from the 80s. Yeah. That game 7 was so poetic,

especially with the pitchers where you got the Dodgers emptying their entire starting rotation. I remember I was in a bar in Singapore watching game seven and I saw the guy warming up. I'm like, oh, they're putting in a Roki Sasaki and then I saw a scrim.

I'm like, oh, fuck, it's like it's Yamamoto. Yeah. So that's on that side and the J's you've got, you know, the grizzled veteran, you know, we say this will be a fucking idiot, this will be his only appearance. So that guy's pitching game seven of the World Series. We've got the hot young,

Trey Savage comes in, but then that's like, fuck, gives up a home run. They've got Jeff Hoffman come in, was life out in the playoffs, but gave up so many home runs during the regular season, long ago, to the number nine hitter. And then who's the losing pitcher? Like our big deadline acquisition.

Yeah. It's just unbelievable like theater. Moments that stick out, because game six was the wedged ball, right? Game six. So there are moments, though, like the force at home, of course, of the IKF, forced at home. I don't even want to go down this road. But we were two out.

So I was, because I had a couple of kids who had never experienced anything like that. Like Jarvis has no memory of the Raptors run. That was really where me and my oldest son, we bonded over the Raptors run in 2019. But I had Jarvis all into this. And we were counting down the outs. Like, and I guess two outs to go, I'm running around saying, it's happening, it's happening. Like I was

on the floor. It's happening. It's happening. Two hours to go. Can we move on? I'm getting upset. All I would say is, I'm actually not even upset.

I was upset in the moment, obviously, but like they went as far as you could possibly go in a baseball season and they lost on a coin. You're glad it happened. Yeah. What an optimist.

It was just, it was a coin flip. woke up an optimist. Anyway. So then Dwayne Morgan came over, making his Toronto mic debut and spoken word artist and I enjoyed my conversation with Dwayne Morgan. I enjoyed Dwayne as well.

We're going to stop down and talk a moment about an episode where Karen Bliss dropped by, maybe we'll have opening comments from Tyler Campbell, the VP of Sales. Yeah, Karen, you know, again, very much in the mold of Rudy Blair, like very kind of self-made, you know, has worked in conventional media. And Rudy Blair witnessed me tear her a new one at the Royal York Hotel like a month or two earlier. There you go.

The David Kine's breakfast I attended. Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. I literally, and my tongue was in my cheek, but if you sell it right, people aren't sure if they don't know you well.

Yeah. So I, because she told me she broke her leg or sprained her ankle or something and couldn't visit my basement. Right. And she said she was immobile due to this injury,

which you've probably all seen on social media. Yeah. Send it brutal. She fucked up her ankle or something. And then she said, she was, I saw her in person at the Royal York Hotel and I basically went into one of my, how dare you?

You told me, like I went into her, but I sold it. Like, I'm Stu Stone wrestling managers. I sold this thing. Like, I was royally pissed off that she was able to get to Royal York but she said she could make it. And I didn't give him, I was like whatever, but I was pretending I was really mad.

And Rudy Blair witnessed the whole thing. And I don't think Rudy knew I was kidding. I just tore Karen a new one. Now, was this attempt two or attempt three at Karen? She blew me off for a Zoom interview of an artist because she was writing something. And then she blew me off because she said

she didn't think her car would start because it was really cold. And then she blew me off because her ankle injury said she couldn't travel. So this was number four. Yeah, but I don't think that third one ever got in the calendar. So two calendars were deleted. And I was done with her, actually. I moved on.

She might have sent me an email and said, hey, let's try again. I'm like, she started driving the bus and then I said, of course I'll have Karen Bliss over. But absolutely, it's like after the second time she blew me up, I was done with Karen Bliss. Yeah. But she came over and I'm glad she did because it was quite an episode.

You had some feisty moments with her. She kind of came at you for asking her questions that were in her CV. I have to ask, I'm always interested in your opinion, but Kim, you're an expert in this field. Like, when I have a guest over, the whole notion that you don't ask me any questions you read in my CV, to me, that's ludicrous. Yeah, it's a little, it's a little weird. I mean, and she has such a long resume because she's written for everyone, too. So, yeah, I don't know.

Like, like, should I just send a PDF to all listeners and say, read this? Yeah, like, I'm trying to remember. Are we recording an audio presentation where we get to no care and bliss? Yeah, I mean, and I feel like that's most episode. So you're going through their resume in some areas. Sure. Like, how did you, why did you leave the dope boys for Rusty? Yeah, right.

What happened there? I might have this in a CV. I don't understand. She was very quick to jump on me. Like, almost like, I interview people. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know how to interview. What are you doing?

And I was, like, offended. I was going to rip her a new one again. You can't assume that the listeners know things, right? Like, you have to. No, you make no assumption. I assume the listener has no idea who Karen Bliss is. Yeah, but certainly he's listened for like five minutes and, you know, you can very much like place her in different parts of like, you know,

Canadian media like music history because he's written for Billboard and... Yeah, yeah, you and Tyler, but you'll be surprised how many listeners, like, I don't think Hey Ref has a fucking clue about who's writing about music in this city. And nor should he. Yeah, but I feel like she, like, rolled with it in Camer. And I'd actually say, like, she's sort of a different story to someone like Rudy where like she's always been a freelancer. Right.

I don't know if she was on, I'm trying to remember, was she on staff at Canoe and like Toronto Sunday? I feel like she was always just like a... I feel like she's always been a freelancer. Yeah. And it's worth noting, though,

she did, I think she was driving a Porsche. Like she parked a Porsche. Was it a boxer or was it like a real Porsche? I don't know the difference there. I'm not a gear head, okay? I'll see if maybe James Edgar can answer that one.

I don't know. But I can just tell you, I think she inherited it when her dad died, but she still, she's driving a porch. But anyway, so Karen Bliss, I did enjoy the episode, even though she jumped on me early. I didn't know the story with that guy, Adrian. Oh, right.

Yeah, I did not know that story at all. So that was very close. Yeah, I remember. That's not a famous person. No. Adrian Strong. I remember reading about it at the time, but not like going like a full depth of, uh, yeah. And just like, again, similar to like I say with Rudy, sort of typical media story when she was sort of playing that out.

It's like, this just seems like sort of standard, you know, what's that word? Standard casting like for music industry, just grossness of like stuff like that. And that resulted in the other trigger warning on Toronto Mike. Yes. Because she was going to, yeah, so I had her post record something I dropped as a cold open to just say, like, we're going to talk about this. Actually, I, let me just collect my thoughts here. Sorry, in your moment. I was going to say.

We ride the silences. Yeah. It's for dramatic. No, but kidding aside, the fact that it was in Billboard were like a lot of this reporting, that they gave her that much runway to not just like spend that much time on this, but also the legal risk of putting this out. Right. A lot of lawyers have to, a lot of Lauren Honigman.

Yeah, like full credit. Like, I feel like that does not happen much in media anymore. You know, on the one hand, you have sort of the blue company. So I mean, to either talent, like, I don't talk about this and this and this. On the flip side, you have, you know, bill, it's literally billboard, like an institution, almost from yesterday year because it's such like a legacy media brand giving her like all this runway and assuming some level of like risk to be able to do this so credit to her credit to them i mean that's that's an important story this stuff gets out so would you say tyler a grout episode

that's your terminology i that's right well that that is a term that that lives in the lexicon uh you know an episode that kind of fills in some of the the cracks of uh of the whole tapestry of Toronto. Like Sunny Greenwich Jr. Exactly. Exactly. Little details that you wouldn't get anywhere else. Yeah. Good grout. Got to get Karen Bliss back in the basement. I hope her foot is healed up. Get her back in the basement. You know,

you got to get Bliss back. Bliss up. I thought she was going to, I thought there was a plan I was told about where Jane Harbury and Karen Bliss were going to drive to TMLX 21 together. I was told this. And I think Jane got the flu or something. And the plans fell apart.

But, okay, we'll get them to next one. Hey, I'm going to shout out these, all these episodes I thoroughly enjoyed, okay? So no bullshit here. This will anger one of our listeners. But Finger 11, the two guys from Finger 11 were sweethearts. Very sweet guys. And I got to say, like Scott Anderson particularly

like just could chat him up, wonderful artist. And they got some big fucking jams. And that did not go to their head. They're just regular people. Good dudes. Good Burlington. Very humble, appreciative. Sort of no, you know, Burlington overthink their success. Burlington proud. Good dudes.

Burlington pride. Speaking of sweethearts, Ralph Ben Murugie came over and he's always great. The rabbi. Not that kind of rabbi. Not that kind of rabbi. And it's good to be working with Ralph again. Yeah, I'm glad you are. You know, because, you know, he was stolen from me and then he came back. So I look forward in 2026 to Mary Jo Eustis crawling back, especially because I hear

through my social media that Jan Arden is engaged to an Icelandic woman. I saw that. Have you heard of it? Yeah. No. Yeah. So Jan Arden is engaged to an Icelandic woman. So maybe there's a scenario where Jan moves to Recovic or something.

and Mary Jo needs a new home. Yeah. Hey, you never know. Stranger things have happened. Stranger things have happened. Totally missed this. Well, just fresh news. Yeah, just like yesterday I saw that.

I saw it on Instagram. Somebody, somebody referenced it somewhere and linked to it or something. Because I don't actually follow Jan because she's not an FOTM. Come on, Jan. All right, it's not too late. Speaking of Stu Stone. Okay, I want to say the Hawksley Workman episode was a remote,

but then this ties into one of the many times I spent with Tyler. We've spent a lot of time together. Because we should shout him out quickly. And also, I want to shout out something I did with Cam Gordon, too. But we, remind me, we went to the Biff Naked documentary. That's right. Yeah, that was fun. Your wife and my wife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We definitely went to Gwelfth to hang with Ian's service and to see Hawksley Workman. We did. Yeah, I know that happened. And I know there was an intermission, which I'm not used to at these kind of shows. What makes an

intermission happen in a concert? I don't know. I've been to very few shows and it was not a long show. So you, but I don't know if I've ever been to a rock show of an intermission. I can't think of one. Like, I just saw Robin Hood at the Wintergarden Theater with, I just went there like a few days ago. And Robin Hood has a, it's like one of those, um, pantomime, yeah, Ross Petty. Right. And very good, very funny. And the kids loved it and I loved it and it's all good.

But that has an intermission. Like, you expect an intermission at those things, but I don't know how we got an issue. But during the intermission, I knocked on the backstage door. and Hawk answers it and invites us in and we just hang for a while. So I think this is built in to sell beer. Like I think the venue says, okay,

we need an intermission to sell beer because Hawk didn't need the intermission. He was like shooting the shit with us. Yeah. Was this, this was at that new venue, like the Sonic Hall. Yeah.

Is it nice? It's a good little room. They had all the chairs set up, which kind of sucked. In one episode, I went off on this, but I can't remember which episode it was. But I don't understand.

Maybe it was with, I can't remember a Festivist. I can't remember. Where do I go off on shit? But it is weird to go to a rock show where all the good... Like literally every episode of John Mike, but let's move on. But every... More on that, the final episode of the quarter.

Yes, yes. I find it strange to go to a rock... I still consider Hawksley Workman like a... He's a rock star, right? Like, why am I all the good seats hogged by like foldable chairs for people to sit? Yeah, it was kind of a weird setup. Because we also went to the Trues. We did.

And that was the next episode of Toronto Mike. The Trues, the brothers from Cape Reddy. and they were sweethearts. Yeah, sweet guys. And I liked talking to them shortly after talking to Finger 11 because Finger 11 comes like earlier, like 10 or 15 years earlier, but they kind of have similar origin stories where 977 hits FM champions them, and then they break.

Yes. Like similar stories in that regard. And I did love seeing the truths. And we got tickets to see the truths because they came over, and I took the VP of Sales to see the truth. You did. And I met you guys for a beer before. Yes.

We had a little... Oh, my kid had a game at... Where did the plane crash? Oh, Monarch Park. Yeah. I think of it now as where the plane crashed. I was going to say the Pentagon. I told Monica with a plane crash.

She didn't know anything about it. I'm like, no, like it happened. And I had to show her pictures and stuff. Okay. Honestly, that was unbelievable. Like, just walking down there. I shouldn't dock again. Docs myself.

No, you can walk to the Monarch Park. Now, no one's showing up at your fucking door. Unreal. Unreal. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Yeah. So...

Nobody hurt. My kid had a game at Monarch Park. And then I biked to that, but then went straight to the Danforth. Where did we have that drink? Well, we were going to go to Noonans, but we end up at Factory Girl. It was too busy at Noonan. But we had a nice beer, and then we went to Stiches, and I loved seeing the truth. I had a good time at that show.

I was not really a truce guy. I knew like two songs, but I had a great time. Yeah, two or three big radio jams. They were great. And I want to shout out Cam Gordon, because on the winter solstice, we met. That's right. in Kensington Market for this rad winter solstice parade. And then we all made it to a, it was a very cold night.

I also biked to this. And we were in a park where there was a effigy burning, what do you call this thing? Yeah, it was, I'm trying to think it was, it was just like a circle. Yeah. But it was cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Again, it's very photogenic. Yeah. And the type of event just feels like a throwback to the type of event. We used to see just more like civic, unstructured. Right. I didn't notice the police were a lot more present, not in a disruptive way. but it was a lot more I'll just say on time

because I've been to versions of this where like it starts like 45 minutes late and it was like minus 10 and we ran to Milan in his family yeah which is very fun who listens and I know when I had the David Kynes box

of stuff I was giving away Milan definitely came over to pick up some rush DVDs. Yeah yeah anyway it's always a great night because it's also the longest night of the year most darkness and then you know

we start gaining a bit of light after that it's right before the holidays how symbolic yeah good chance to You know, not sound to all like woo-woo between this and like the self-determination, suicide talk, but I don't know. It says you get older, you start thinking more about these things. You're almost 50, right? When do you turn 50?

A couple of years. Okay. 48. Oh, wow. Didn't you think it was happening this year? I did. Well, Elvis is this year. Elvis and Bingo Bob.

Yes, right. Bingo Bob and Elvis and I just assume Cam as well. So it's Sto Sto and you the same calendar year? Well, I mean, check I MDB. He's got a couple more years. Yes, he's... D.B says he's born in the 80s. I will say, as far as I know, I'm older than him.

Wow. Slightly. Slightly. By few weeks. Well, we'll stay tuned to everybody. Okay, so after the wonderful brothers of the trues came over, we did another toast with Rob and Bob. And then an episode we're going to talk about for a moment,

Mike Stafford returned with Supria de Vetti. They have such great chemistry. Like, it was just like hearing them doing their show, you know? Like, you kind of... You were there, but you kind of got out of the way a little bit and let them just kind of reconnect. Because they hadn't been on the air together or maybe even seen each other since they were separated by employment reasons. And yeah, no, it's just they have such good chemistry. You know, they could certainly do their own show if they, if they wanted to.

I know Supriya has other things going on and staff. Other real talk to attend to. Yeah, yeah. And we all know sort of the Mike Stafford story. But hopefully he will do something because he's always so great and so candid and just enjoyable to listen to. You can lead a horse to water, though, but more on that later when we get to the Ben Rainer episode. I'll say that episode, and this is something, an analogy, Bill Simmons used a lot on his podcast. It's just like he likes hanging in, like what he's talking mainly with movies.

Like, I like rewatching movies because it's like hanging out with those guys, like Ocean 11 or swingers or whatever. I feel like this is a good up. It's like hanging at a bar with these two. just shooting the shit, you know, just just sitting back, you know, listening in. Yeah, I was great. I was thinking about clips to pull and I was going back through this episode and I was like, there's not really a clip to pull.

Well, the cold open might not even be, would have been okay. Like, I feel like, because I didn't know what I, that's a thing I started doing last quarter. Like a lot of guests will be sitting there and I'm like, okay, I'm going to count you in. You're going to say whatever you want to introduce the episode and then I'm going to hit the theme, like all real time, whatever. Yeah.

And I didn't know, Mike went on about, he did a really, it was a really funny back and forth, like off the top. and I'm like, oh, he's in like fine form and he looked better to me than he had in previous visits and he sounded better to me. Like Mike Stafford, to me, sounds like he's making a little bit of a comeback. Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah. Well, we're all rooting for staff. I mean, almost all of us. And I did, but more on that horse to water thing because I keep offering to produce that damn podcast for free, yet it does not exist. Yeah, you can't make him do it. But I will say that Supria is going to return to Toronto Mike

with the aforementioned and rush me near. But I think that'll be a good duo. Yeah, I agree. Good duo. And they don't know each other, right? No, they actually have never met. Okay.

They've never met because I was going, I had a plan for TMLX-21 to introduce them to each other on the mic. But Supriya did not show up to TMLX. Yeah, more about that. We'll talk about that. We'll find out what happened to Supriya. But it is interesting, the Mike Stafford, Supriya DeVetti, not only were they co-hosts, and then we all know what happened, but they also have lost spouses.

to cancer over the last few years and both partners dying well before their time so it is interesting to talk to Supria whose husband was I believe in his 40s and he died of cancer and Mike Stafford's wife Jody

was like 55 maybe like this is just terrible and that they share this as just an added layer to the whole thing. Like two very different like stories of grief certainly but like Mike with his really because it remind me with his ex-wife. Yeah, well, it's strange.

Like, they weren't together. But he was still very much going to see her. Right, absolutely. Yeah. Like, he was there to visit her. I think he took a cab from, like, Young and Eglinton to somewhere in the Coworthes, I believe. Wow. That's right.

Yeah. Fuck. So, we'll get Mike on again in 2026, that's for sure. But Supriah will beat him through the door when she comes on with Rush Me Nair. Again, don't take anything for granted. Enjoy every sandwich. Exactly. Absolutely.

Now, this was a gentleman who came on to talk about Fast and Furious, and he's a listener, and I love it when listeners come on because they get the show. And I love my chat with Barry Hertz. I feel like you haven't had that many active Globe and Mail reporters and journalists on over the years. Am I wrong? Well, you're not wrong in that I grew up in a Toronto Star household. So these are the people I would think, I need to talk to this guy, that guy. But I, you know, as we'll talk about one in a minute, I've had a few globe guys. lately, I think.

Including Barry Hertz and then another guy who was in the globe for many years who will talk about in a moment. Right, right. Yeah. So I'm catching up here. No, this is a great. Yeah, and he's had an awesome run. Barry Hertz. Yeah, he's last man standing. There's not a lot of people. That's fine, I got a postcard this Christmas from Peter Howell. Oh, wow. Send me a postcard. And his postcard

has his 10 favorite movies of 2025 on the postcard. So it's like happy holidays from Peter Howell and his family or whatever. And you get to see like, oh, here's the 10 movies he liked best. in 2025. It's a pretty cool. It's a nice functional postcard. Yeah, you just take a photo of it and share it. But, you know, just speaking of people, but Peter Howell is like freelancer now.

The star, as we'll hear from the Ben Rayner episodes, the star has done away with their full-time entertainment. Well, I was going to say, can I just have a small side? So Barry writes about movies, has had a great run at the globe. And he was with post media before, was he not? You know, sometimes there's like a trade in sports. Like, that's just a great solid baseball trade. Like there's one this fall, uh, Taylor Ward for the picture. from Baltimore, Rodriguez.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It sort of just like one for one, you know, both teams do well. I thought there was sort of a good classic media move that we almost never see. And this was when David Friend, and this was in the quarter, went from Canadian Press to the Star, which you almost never see. I assume, I guess I check. Like, I just assume he's writing about entertainment again. Well, I can ask Ed Keenan if he has any insight who's here next week. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I might just Google this from my own. You Google that. Well, I shout out an episode that does have a clip. Les Klein came over to talk about transforming 299 Queen Street West, not the documentary, but the actual city-much building. Yeah, Les and architect, and thank you for throwing in my question about maybe him getting a co-op position for my daughter, who was studying architecture.

Didn't happen, but she got a job in Hamilton anyway, so she's even better. Taking care of. Yeah, Les was great, listening to, the stories behind that iconic building, you know, what a, what a center of culture it was and it's sad to see that it is no longer, but, you know, remains an iconic building in downtown Toronto. So let's hear less talking about finding that location. How did that site get chosen as the future home of the Chum Media Empire?

Well, let me roll the tape back a little bit, sorry. So we were in the midst of doing a number of different things. We were starting to work on that site on River Street. There was a proposal by the owners of 99 Queen Street to renovate the building and turn that into the headquarters. There was a little design competition. There were all kinds of other things going on. And I was really, you know, I was anxious because all these other players were coming into play. And I said, oh, you know, all this work.

And I might end up out on the street. Anyway, one day, Moses called me up and said, I want you to go to this. Can you do an impression or no? No. Called him and said, I need you to go and see this building that's being sold by Royal Lepage. Me to meet the agent there and walk through it. Jerry McMaster was his name, actually, as I remember. And I went there, of course, rode my bicycle, as I did in those days, and still do.

But arrived at this building, I walked through the building, and I literally rode back to my office as fast as I could, sat down at the typewriter and wrote Moses a one-line letter saying, Dear Moses, you have found your new home. Wouldn't it call them? And it was an amazing building. So 299 was built in the early 1900s, 1914, I think it was completed. It was built as the home of the Methodist book publishing company, or the Wesley building, and it was a publishing house.

And therefore, it had a number of really interesting elements. One was printing presses are really heavy, and they make a lot of noise, and they shake the floors. So it was built unbelievably solidly. It had gigantically tall ceilings, perfect for equipment, hanging lights and hanging equipment and getting air conditioning where it needed to go. It had gigantic windows. It had personality. Both Moses and I fell in love with the gargoyles, and as you know, there is a gargoyle up there.

Yes. And we really realized that the location was. was fantastic because Queen Street, West. I mean, it was so uncool as to be painful. It was full of used furniture stores, used appliances, little bits and pieces of things you could buy to build something called computers. It was really, it was really, really rundown,

but it was an amazing location because it was just down the street from City Hall. It was on a streetcar line. It was up the street, as we found out, not too much later, up the street from the new rising, unbelievably expensive CBC headquarters. So we really loved this building, but we thought immediately that it could do all of the things that it needed to do. Hey, shout out to Nick Aini's, who is sponsoring this program in January 2026.

So much love to Nick and Fusion Corp. I added a Fusion Corp logo to the back. wall in the studio here, but it's only because Nick got Les Klein on his podcast, Building Toronto Skyline, that I said to myself, I have more questions about 299 Queen Street West and I got less to visit me. And yeah, that was a great clip you pulled. Thank you. And again, you've never stepped foot in that building, right? I've never stepped foot in that building. Incredible. Unbelievable. But I have been in the Speaker's Corner booth. Okay. I've done a couple sort of counts.

Yeah. Florida counts. Okay. And I also found it interesting that that, he talks about 1914 is when that building was built.

Because a lot of these buildings, I think they're older than they are. Okay, 1914. Maybe because this building you're in right now was built in 1916.

Oh, so I think, like, okay, how can be earlier. So 1914, but it's interesting that the next episode of Toronto Mike,

oh, are we moving on from Les? We can move on. But I did, less was great. Yeah. I think it's an important conversation

for 2019 in Queen Street West. And he was great. I was going to say, squint at like the upcoming episodes were about, and now we're going to the fine arts. You know, sort of the broader arts corner. Well, we'll get to that. Jeremy Hopkins,

who you referenced because of the gargoyle. Yes. Every quarter in 2025, Jay Ho, as I call him, visited me for an episode about whatever, old city hall, sunny side, whatever. But for, we said, let's go on location somewhere and

record. It would be fun if we did it somewhere else. And we actually recorded episode 18 of Toronto Mike, live from Casilloma. He made that happen. Man, I enjoyed that because not only did we record from the billiard room, but then with a giant moose, shout out to Moose Grumpy, who I believe we named, sweetheart, I think we named this moose. But I did get to do a thorough, I would say, this was a thorough tour.

Jay Ho and I went everywhere, you know, the tunnels to the stable. We went, we were just everywhere, just like Mark. daily. Your pop quiz. What FOTM worked at Castelloma? Midtown Gord. And I got to crack a few jokes about the ghost of Midtown Gord. That's right.

That's right. Maybe too many jokes, right, Tyler. That's right. Because coming out of that, I think it might have been, I don't know if it was that or the joke about Y, Y, Y, Z, Gord affording many Tom's. Oh, yes. That was good, too. Y, Y, Y, Z, Gord, who I think is like in Singapore right now, maybe.

I think so, yeah. Where is the, where hasn't he done this year? We should add a segment. Where in the world is Tom and Gord? Yeah. Yeah. Well-traveled. Indeed. So I could have been the Willie Nelson, but it could have been the wine. I don't know. But a woman, I know where you're going with this. I think I mentioned this in the festivist episode. But I haven't actually gone really public with this yet because I still don't believe it's happening, but it is happening apparently. Melissa Stein listened to episode 1800 from Casilloma and decided in her opinion that I was very funny. And then she, on her own, rented out the Elma combo for a night in May 2026 for me to headline. And she's going to sell tickets. Any questions from the media? I still don't really understand, like, you're funny, therefore, I'm going to take my own money. Well, I was hoping she show up at TMLX21. I was going to put her on the mic and get these answers.

But I should point out, it's her money. I haven't put a penny into this. Sure. Good. It's her dream, actually. I never had a dream to do this. Like, I never had a moment where I, oh, I want to do this. I think she should aim higher with her dreams.

I had other dreams, okay, Tyler, I had other dreams. They involved boots sauce. Sure, yeah. Important things here. But so there's a, and I, do you know the day? No, I don't. It's like May 25th or something? It's in May.

Yeah. I have to get that day. And tickets are going to be sold by Melissa Stein. They're already available. Already, like, there's like $63 on, event, right. Okay, well, you've got more info. Yeah, go nuts.

So all I know is at some point over the next few months, I need to craft an entertaining piece of performance. Yeah. And it's not what I do, but I have an idea for this, what I'm calling Toronto Mike's social experiment. I could say this could be like a spalding gray like. Swimming to Cambodia. Yeah.

It's going to be an original. piece of art because we're going to get the art stuff coming up but it's I'm going to make it and it's going to be designed so that it could play well whether there is two people in the crowd

or 200 people in the crowd 65 dollars and 23 cents this on event bright also says it's an online event oh I don't even know what this is see that I don't know what that is I don't know what this being an online event but this is an in as far as I know it's an in-person event I can't remember the name of that room

in the alma combo but I do have an FOTM who's going to join me on the stage because as I tell this tale, which I'm still crafting, I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few months crafting this, there are musical cues that will be performed live on a keyboard by a prodigy named Rob Bruce. The Paul Schaefer to your. So maybe he's worth the 60 bucks. I was going to see the James B to Rob Ben-Murgy. Right. Absolutely here. Very famous James B. So this is not the official announcement, but that's happening. And I don't, because

I didn't put the money in, I hope Melissa doesn't take a shower on this, but I think she can handle a shower. Or is it a bath? I think it's a bath. Yeah, yeah. Well, she could use a bath. Like, I'm not worried about her kid going a bit hungry or anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But this is happening. It's bizarre to me how out of my comfort zone it is and how, like, it's, it's, the origin story is interesting to me, but I do plan to bike over to the Elmo that night and perform something. I am. So we've got. the Rolling Stones. We got Elvis Costello. We got what you two played there. It's in the one man

production. It's all in there. Toronto Mike. Right. So that's happening. More on this. I guess we do have another FOTM cast before. Yeah. Where we can talk about. Yeah, we'll be like six weeks out. So you better have. That'll be my big. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I have to at some point at the, you know, I'm still getting, still holiday mode. But so that was episode 1800 at Casaloma, which has sort of kicked off my comedy career. Indeed.

Okay. Then Mark Hebscher, visited. And every time Hebsy visits, it's pretty fucking great. And I thought he was really on for this episode. Always enjoy hearing Hebsy. His book seems to be getting a lot of mainstream coverage. Like there was an article in the globe the other day by Simon. Hooft. Who I've met at a Twitter event when we used to have those at Twitter Canada's office. Yeah, I was at partnership. I used to have a hook up there. I was at Indigo doing some Christmas shopping. And Hebsy's book is prominently displayed on the... Did you sign some copy?

Yeah, just a few. VP of sales. Okay. Yeah, I think he sold a bunch of books at TMLX-21. Yeah, yeah, I bought one from him. Okay, yeah. Love to hear it. So, we love Hepsey.

Andy Petrillo made her Toronto mic debut, and it's amazing that Andy Petrillo will make her Toronto mic debut. It'll be a great conversation, and she won't be one of the 15 we talk about. That's right. But that happened, everybody. Yeah, I enjoyed Andy. She's delightful.

Yeah. Absolutely. Although, with Italy plays Canada in the World Cup, which I guess I saw coming. in my crystal ball there. She says she's not sure who she'd root for. I suspect she'd cheer for Italy, to be quite honest. Even though she's born here in Ontario.

Okay. The next episode does have a clip, and it is number five, rants. Oh, my God. Mullinix. That's right. The lefty half of the third base platoon. The Bobby Cox platoon.

Yeah. Remind me, how did this come together? Somebody said he had created a new website. Oh, I think I might have mentioned it. So, Rance Mullinix.com was launched, okay? And there was a contact form, okay? Like a contact form, contact Rants. Even though, yeah, so I, the form didn't work.

I don't know if some WordPress script didn't work. I'm a bit of a web developer myself. Right. So I think I complained about it on the last FOTM casters on that. Ransomelanus.com, I wanted to get Rance on the show and it didn't work. This is all during the heyday of the World Series, by the way. This is all going down the World Series. And there was a rumor on.

on the app formerly known as Twitter, which was that Rance was going to be a part of the Sportsnet broadcast team for the Olympics. Did you guys catch any wind of this? Oh, I did not know that. And that was tied to the fact that Rance had, with his new website, had a new X account. And Jamie Campbell said, welcome, welcome to my old, back, my old friend, Rance or something, and tagged them. And some people might have blogged about that being a clue that Rance was joining the broadcast team at Sportsnet for the World Series run. But this, but I, meanwhile, behind the scenes, I'm chatting with Rance who's talking to me about

the vacation he's going on. Like, I know Rance is not a part of the broadcast team. But Rance does schedule an episode of Toronto Miked and it was via Zoom. He's in California. And he did not show for this episode. So I was on the Zoom to talk to Rance and he did not show up. He gave you the John Castner. Right. And I'm like, geez, I'm sitting here for Rance. He's not showing up. Damn, and I was looking forward to it. But he was very apologetic. He got carried away of some planning for some coaching he was doing or something. And he rescheduled, and Rance made his Toronto mic debut. Rance was very solid.

It was very fun. And here's some real talk from Rance. Okay. Do you think Dave Steeb is worthy of being in baseball's Hall of Fame? In Cooperstown, New York? Yes. Yeah. No, I don't.

And the reason I say that is his overall numbers across the board, I don't think, warrant it. He didn't win enough game. et cetera, et cetera. So I would say, no, Dave had a great run during the 80s decade. And, you know, probably first two years, three years that he pitched in the big leagues with the Blue Jays. The teams weren't very good. So you can make an argument that he would have definitely won more games if he had played with the same type of team that he did from 83 till he retired, I think, at the end of 92, I believe. but no, I don't think so.

But for 10 years, for a decade, he was about as good as it gets, that's for sure. So, that is me talking in real time, not to Rance. But if you're as good as it gets for 10 years, that doesn't get you to Cooperstown? Yeah, I don't know if I can agree with Rance's police work there. No, serious question, because I know it's tough to get into Cooperstown. I'm not, I know that. Cooperstown, New York? Maybe he thought I meant St. Mary.

Yeah, I don't know. okay shout out to Mike Wilner but it is an interesting conversation to have like if you are as good as it gets as a starting pitcher for 10 years fuck you you don't get to Cooperstown well I got not to get to like

Sabre metrics too the fact you know he mentioned wins because I feel like a lot of the more sort of more contemporary writers were like you know they don't look at wins wins are meaningless and whatnot wins don't mean what we certainly is ERA and his whip and whatnot he was unimpeachable that decade and like the classic compares is Steve

and Morris and everyone's like, Steve was a far better pitcher because of X, Y, and Z. But, yeah, Rance would like a hard know. Yeah. Steve in the whole theme. Yeah, very interesting. A lot of real talk from Rantz was such a delight to talk to that I will absolutely get Rance on again. Maybe like to set up the 2026 Blue J season or something.

Yeah, no, he seemed like a great guy. Yeah, but yeah, very surprising, like, just an absolute no on. Yeah, I didn't expect that. Yeah. You know? I'm just now thinking when I had somebody was at the Joe Carter Classic saying Joe belonged in the

World in the Hall of Fame and most people don't think Was it Joe? Wasn't it Joe? Or was it Cito? It must have Joe. Here, Andy saw Hebsy and Andy's books at Indigo when she was there before Christmas. Andy, I hope you bought multiple copies here.

So this guest, I cannot believe we're going to talk about 15 episodes in this quarter but this gentleman did make the cut. What more did you guys want from the great Alan Doyle who visited the basement studio? What did Alan have to do? give me a back rub? That would have been nice.

He could have if I asked him. He was a sweeter. He was great. He gave out. He gave all. Yeah. No, he seemed great. But not one of the 15.

No. And we had, you had two Doyles this quarter. Only one could make it. Well, and he didn't even make it. You know, that's a surprise too. That's the other Globe of Mail guy.

We're anti- Doyle here. He seems like he's found a good niche where it's just like omnipresent on the touring circuit. Like in just sort of in media. He's just sort of in media, and I think to some degree. Just probably there's almost the media fabric as much as the music fabric and just, you know, a real storyteller. I very much enjoyed

that. Yeah, and much like Jan, you know, Alan didn't leave home, really. Like, he never did have a moment where it's like, I got to move to Toronto. Like, forget moving to L.A., but maybe Alan's got to base himself in Toronto. No, he stayed in Newfoundland. I feel like in the culture, there's always sort of a East Coast storyteller, whether it's like

Stan Rogers before, and, you know, this is one more contemporary version. Shout out the Keegan Mathis. Yeah, exactly. So, Alan Doyle did not make the cut. But also, this is an episode in that Cousin Janow was, so I had one episode, my son co-hosted, and then there was an episode Cousin Jano

co-hosted, Michael Sadler from Saga, I thought Cousin Jano hit it out of the park and Sallor couldn't have been nicer. Yeah, she did a really, really good job. She was so prepared and obviously so deeply immersed in the saga story, the saga

saga, and he was great and generous with her. Yeah, Saga Saga Saga. Yeah, no, but shout out to Cousin Janow, because she really, she really killed it. And I understand, because we had her on TMLX21 to going to talk about it. And Ed Sousa was there. And he was bringing Michael Sadler to the bowling alley. I believe, I believe Cousin Jano did, in fact, go to the Sadler event at the bowling alley

and did have a one-on-one encounter with Michael Sutherland. We need that follow-up story. Yeah, well, Cousin Jano, give me a photo or something, because I think that's a big part of this story here. So the next episode was about the 10 greatest Canadian basketball players of all time with a gentleman named Oren Weisfeld. And we talked about the fact that Steve Nash, shockingly to me in my 51-year-old brain that may or may not be in its best condition, I couldn't believe that Steve Nash is not number one anymore.

According to Oren. You didn't listen, did you? I did not hear. Okay, well, maybe he would have been the top 15. Dean, if you listen. I assume SGA is number one. Yeah. That's good.

Yeah, it's a bit of recency bias there, I would assume. But, you know, interesting. Yeah. Okay.

So Dave Hodge is always interesting. And once a year he comes over and delivers his 100 favorite songs of the year. And that happened again. And it was good to get him in the basement and talk about it. He's turning 80. Wow. In 2026.

And we all love the fact that Tyler maintains Hodge 100.com. Labor of Love always happy. And he loves it too. Yeah. Always happy to update. the Hodge 100 website and yeah like just so great

that he's so engaged with with current music and he's certainly got his niche certainly a lot of familiar names on his top 100 but he always brings it so good and interesting to me

is the complete absence in his top 100 of geese that's right no geese on the Hodge 100 no geese no geese or goose I do like here's this guy about to turn 80

just clearly still has this pulse on what's out there and a small but I thought an LOL moment of the Rainer episode is when Rainer at the end Toronto Mike asked you, what was your favorite album last year? You're seldom speechless. It's like I didn't listen to Jack shit, anything new.

Based on the bestseller by Sloan. There you go. That came out in 20. Because it's like right in front of you on your little fucking shelf here. Blowing up by Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone. There you go. Shout out to Mark Wise. Okay. Speaking of Stu Stone, he was the next episode of Toronto Mike. Stu Stone came over, and that's when he gave me hell for not believing in his buddies' baseball.

Cut you down to size. And I just laid back and let him go because, like, A, I deserve it. And B, it was bringing him great joy. Yeah. Okay, we might hear from Stu later in this episode. So let's talk a bit about TMLX21. Did you pull a clip or no? I don't have a clip, but lots to talk about.

So a number of people who showed up, like, you know, you'd say the bold face type folks, like your Mike Epples, your... Oh, can I play a clip of Mike Epple? Oh, yeah, please. So I, you know, you did do it in the show, but I didn't know you were going to do it in the show. So this was an interesting 12 seconds from Mike Epple. Before I leave, just happy holidays and Merry Christmas to everybody and love the Toronto Mike universe and all of the content. By the way, you always go on about FOTM cast. That's probably my new favorite thing.

God love him. So he's one of those six real heads we allowed to listen to the show. I saw Apple at a holiday party shortly after this. He said the exact same thing there. I think I shared a photo. So we lean into the fact that we don't want people listening to this show unless you're, like we feel the download numbers. I look at these download numbers for FOTM cast way too big.

It pisses me off. Like I know these can all be real heads. I really would be happier if I saw the FOTM cast download number like single digits. Yeah, they're probably bots. I hope so. They do all come from Russia.

I'm big in Russia, okay? But we lean on this fun little thing, just like when you did your schick about how crappy the quarter was, even though we all know it was an award-winning quarter of course it was. Of course it was.

Everyone knows that. But I think Mike Eppel might think we're being like sincere. Like, so, uh, Apple's always, like, why, why don't, why do you say FOTM cast shouldn't be listened to? It's his favorite episode of Toronto mic. Well, you know, therein lies the rub. We love Mike Epple. There was a guest that we'll talk about at the very end of this rapt, if it ever ends, that I believe sounded like Mike Epple, the cadence of his delivery.

We might, uh, we might hear about. Oh my God, that's exciting. What a teaser. Okay. So more now that I played the mic, Apple clip. Yeah. Uh, so yeah. Rushmi, who we talked about was there.

Hebsy, of course, was selling books. Mike Richards was there. And you asked him if he had listened to his mickeymentary. And he was very cagey about it. Right. How come? Yeah, I don't know. He sounded like he didn't listen.

Either he didn't listen or he didn't like it. He didn't like it, I think, might be. But he didn't hate it enough to not come to TMLX. Yeah, I believe his quote was, I made the announcement. So why do I need to listen to the announcement? which, fair enough. What do you think of that, Cam? Do you think Richards didn't love the Mikey Mentry

about his major announcements, which we made with love? Yeah, and I know you did bring up sort of, you know, sort of the big announcement, like sort of poked fun at it, and he seemed fine with it. I don't know, I'm just actually... I mean, he made several major announcements.

Yeah. Enough to fill up a mickey Mentry. If he was a bigger deal, Saturday Night Live would have parodied it. I don't know, like I'm just checking, like I do see the clip. of his show in Calgary. I'm looking here.

Yeah, but he's paying for this. He's a really nice banner here. Yeah, no, he has a, I heard the episode of Hebsy. I listen to it. He has, well, it's on hiatus right now, but I think it's coming back. He paid for time on a Rogers own station in Calgary to air his show, which he bakes a year in Toronto, and then he bakes it on like a Thursday, and then it airs on like a Sunday or something.

But that's, like, we could have FOTM cast on News Talk 1010 if we go by five, five, five hours on a Sunday morning. Sure, let's do that. Anyway, that's a great, you know, Melissa Stein should be doing that. Not this Elmo thing, come on. Yeah. Anyway, I'm just looking at it's Twitter. Okay, so I also want to shout out a couple of people who traveled a great distance

to be at TMLX. One gentleman named Steve, who yesterday, I watched the Bruce Springsteen biopic yesterday. Oh, yeah, I watched that the other day as well. And I was thinking about my experience of Bruce and how a gentleman, a listener named Steve gifted me four tickets to see Bruce Springsteen. And I took my wife, my brother, and his wife. Just out of the blue. Here's some tickets. Just out of the blue.

Unreal. It was unreal. And remember, that show was postponed a year. That's right. Right. Because he had the ulcers? What did he have? Something.

He had something. He had something. He had something. For health reasons. Yeah. So, and then it was the day after Trump was reelected. That's a fun fact here. And he was a little late, which was abnormal.

But anyway, it was a wonderful show. And I made an episode about it. But this guy, Steve, drove like three hours. from New York State, and he gave me some wonderful gifts, including very expensive shears that he makes and his job. I held them. They were very substantial. Monica, Google the price.

You ready? Like scissors or garden shears? Yeah, like scissors. Oh, nice. So it's a hefty pair of scissors. Like, I'm so stupid. I'm dumb. I'm thinking, this might be $40 scissors.

Like, this is a, this is pretty good. $40 scissors if I go to kitchen stuff or something, kitchen stuff plus or whatever at Cloverdale. Monica says they're $350 and I got two pairs Holy shit So if anybody wants to make me an offer Just kidding So Steve said then I'm fine

But then Gabriel Layden Once again at a TMLX event And he came for that from Montana That yeah That I don't understand And I want Gabriel to know Because he might be one of the real heads listening

His gifts that he gave me These beautiful custom-made notepad things I don't know what to call them Are proudly displayed in the TMDS studio So, yeah, love it. Can I see those? Yeah. I thought this was your passport.

So Gabriel had a lady friend with him, right? Yeah. I don't recall her name. But she was an attractive woman. Yeah, yeah. But they were clearly, like, not actively dating, but they're traveling together. And they were canoodling. They were definitely canoodling.

So it sounds, and I think I asked her straight out, like, what does it take for Gabriel to get you? And he's like, it's the ball's in Gabriel's court. So it sounds like he's slowed things down there, but not so slow that he won't bring her to tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, that's a big, big deal. Yeah, I had that was exciting. I had a good long chat with Gabriel. He's a fascinating character, for sure. And Hepsey sold a lot of books.

Yeah. Great crowd, great room, great event. Yeah, it was a full, full house. Like, you know, we've been doing, you've been doing this for how many at Palma now? Is that five? Four maybe, I don't know. There was number five. a couple of year break for COVID in there.

But definitely the most people. And we couldn't even hear the show in the room. So that was a discussion I had with some valued FOTMs. Like, do we, and you guys might be in this group, but like do I make it more of a live show? But it sounds like the diehard members of the TMU that come out to a TMLX event, like the fact, they can catch the show later, but they can talk to their friends.

They haven't seen like that whole network. working, catching up component is important to them. So I feel like we might be, maybe we have the balance. Like maybe we have, you know, come up front if you really want to hear the content. Otherwise, like this might be just what it is. Yeah. It was the most fun I've had at a TML. Wow.

I feel like the format works. I wasn't there. I don't. Why weren't you there? This one's always a bit tricky timing-wise. I do come out to May the other ones, as you know. But late November in Mississauga is just, it's challenging. I'm just a challenging type spot.

The Collins was there, and we'll talk about her more in a moment. But we mentioned Reshmi and Mike Eppel and Hebsy and Professor Pricklethorne. We have, of course, Jerry Levittan. Yes, Sir Jerry. Ed Sousa showed up, a lot of cool cats. But there were a few people who told me they'd be there 100% be there, and they didn't show up. So I'm going to just call them out, like, just as an opportunity to be really petty about

this, okay? Shout out to Ross Petty. Of course. Not to know what song was like Gathering Crowds was playing on the live stream when you guys arrived, and you said, Tyler called it Face in the crowd. And I said, yeah, that's a Tom Petty jam, not the gathering crowds. Okay. I'll send an Andori a jam.

I like that one. Yeah, well, that's a great album, right? Yeah. That's a... A bit of a moody track. Totally. Free Fallons on that one, right? Yeah.

It's a big one. Full moon fever. Yeah, huge. Okay. Rob Butler said he'd be there 100% with his wife, Sherry, and Rob Butler did not... Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer from... Right. In St. Mary's, Ontario, I believe.

Love that guy, manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs Base Base Base Base Base Base Base. Rudy Blair said he'd be there. The aforementioned did not show up. Supriya DeVetti said she'd be there. Wasn't there? Was not there. Pete Fowler texted me to say, I'm going to be there.

Was not there. No, apparently he said he had to take his mom shopping or something like that. We all have to take her mom shopping. But a lot of big heads were there and I love everybody who came out and I love Palma Pasta for hosting. I love Great Lakes for what they did. And I love Ty the Christmas guy from retrofestive.ca who gifted a leg lamp to I think the first 75.

people who showed up. And I made jokes about the fact like we won't have 75 people, but those went fucking fast. So next year we do the live recording at Palma's Kitchen. Get there early. That's my tip for everybody.

Okay, so another toast. There's always three toasts every quarter. See how that works? We did festive jams. I look forward to the toast guys coming back. Then, what was it? Cam said I did an arts. The fine arts section.

Philippa Cranston. came over to talk about her brother, Taller Cranston. And this was a suggestion by FOTM, Mary Ormsby. And I enjoyed my chat with Philippa Cranston and talking about taller. Good, good times. And I was gifted a print of a taller Cranston, which I got to find room for. Yeah, I'll show it to you after. I feel like with you with the Sons of Freedom, like Tallacrances is someone I'm aware of,

but I feel like a bit before my time. But interesting story, too. Also, there were school yard rumors about Tolar Kranston. that I remember being told. Oh, yeah, I remember that as well, sure. And it involved a certain captain who's behind me right here. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So, Annette Mangard was suggested by a guy named Alan Zweig. And Annette is a local filmmaker artist, very interesting person to chat with, who did a documentary about Nobuo Kubota, who was like a sound artist, like a soundscape artist. And I knew nothing about Nobuo or Annette, so I learned a great deal. and that was my art run. I actually saw that he was in CCMC, right? Am I wrong? Like, sorry, the noise collected.

Yeah, 100%. I've actually seen them perform twice, including once opening for Sonic Youth. Oh. Where like Thurston Moore actually introduced them and said, this is my favorite Canadian band. That's amazing. Yeah, and I don't know if this was...

Where was that heat when I was asking for questions? Yeah. Come on. That's amazing. But I think that was like in the 90s. And I don't know if. Michael, this was the Michael Snow era of the band, but yeah, this was

like the warehouse, wild. And I saw them, they played at the art gallery. This is right before Michael Snow died, but he was there like banging away at the piano and it's, I think when they used to do like a monthly residence, you could just go like watch at like an art center too. I don't know if it's still happening, but I would check the man again.

Again, very abstract, but I don't know. Well, we're only... Fine arts. We're only a few episodes away from somebody who works at the Gallery of Ontario. But the very next episode after Annette was a rewinder with Blair Packin. Still a great theme song. And Blair's always great. And we got to catch up. He fell in love of a woman and went to Berlin and then enemy territory. Apparently some people said I wasn't rough enough on Blair for crossing into enemy territory. But you know, I feel like there's an exception.

Love slash you know what. Like maybe we give up a beautiful image of like Blair and this woman on was it like scooters going through like Berlin too? It's like that's just romantic. It's great. Yeah. This is David Bowie era. Good,

good for him and Iggy Popple coked up in Berlin. Okay. And let's take a moment to shout out an episode of one of the 15 we're going to talk about that I think will win me a Pulitzer. So forget the Canadian podcast award. I'm going to win a Pulitzer for the Consumers Distributing an episode.

Talk to me about that episode, gentlemen. Say something. Where to start? I don't know. Well, let's start by, saying Lorraine Somerfeld was a great guest and she's just a rando on blue sky who said she worked there and I said I have questions will you zoom with me boom it happened she was great go ahead camp no I was just to say everything she said when I think back to whether it was

going in store like the the the CD close to us was right by finch station and a newdenbrook where there's also bowling alley but whether it's going in the store I used to call asked about the wrestling figures all the time or the catalog Everything she said, it's like how it really worked. It's like, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. You know, nothing's in stock.

Did you ever buy a personal massager? Not there. But yeah, it's just like all these, you know, cut rate electronics and whatnot. I thought it was actually sort of an interesting just being like a tech nerd of like a certain timing consumer electronics where like cheap shit was fine. Because I feel like that doesn't exist as much these days. But yeah, I loved it. It's great. Yeah, I actually lived near the Burlington store that Lorraine worked at,

which is now, I think, a value village in Burlington. But yeah, no, and I knew of Lorraine because I knew her work as an auto journalist. Not that I'm a big gear head, but I've certainly seen her. But you asked me what Porsche, Karen Briss was driving. I'm like, I don't know, the Porsche kind. But she just had kind of no fucks to give. Right. Good way to put it. Yeah, she really exposed the consumers distributing management

for not cracking down on some of the fraud and theft that was happening. And yeah, to your point, Cam, like the kind of cut rate Kirkland brand. Yeah, like Candle. Candle and Yorks? Yeah, Yorks. Sanio. I had a York's boombox back in the day that had a cassette player that popped out that you could use as a Walkman.

I remember these. That was magic. And we haven't mentioned the big one, Citizen. Yes. And I think it's something our children will never know, but like remember I like premium like Sony was in the 80s? Like it was, I don't think it was quite like Apple is today,

but sort of it was sort of, you know, oh, this is like cutting edge. It's what like yuppie scum would have. Like the pinnacle of electronic. Absolutely. That forehead high five VCR that Elvis Stoiko was returning. Was that a Sony? That was that future.

shop. You know, I think of that story as being towers. Like, I think the story's better. You might want to workshop the story before you give it at the Elmo with me, because I think it's a better story if that's a towers, and that's the way I tell that story. One other small, like, callback, I know this episode came up

a bit when Ed came for the second time Christmas, I'd like, he said, he had like a clip from consumer history, and was it like there was mysterious cars starting appearing outside his house, or he had sort of, he mentioned something about running a foul with the consumers discerputing people.

Ed Conroy? Yeah, was, am I matching that? Do you remember this? I don't remember this. Well, we are going to talk, maybe jog the memory. We will talk about the Edwinner.

So we had to move on because that Pulitzer Award is going right here. And I'm going to spot in the studio. I actually, I really, I'm not joking. I think I'm going to win a Pulitzer for the consumer. I think that's, that's why Toronto Mike exists. I was going to say,

I made a rare blue sky post replying to say, said, this is, this is, this is, this is going to be the Enron of Canada or whatever I said. Smartest guy in the room or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. we all concur.

So no fucks to give. This developing story. Lorraine Summerfeld. This is why you get the news in current affairs. This investigative journalism. The most current of affairs consumers are contributing.

Jim Shedden came back, speaking of our gallery of Ontario, because he worked at some architectural firm. Oh yeah, Bruce, Bruce Mao design. Right. And worked very closely with Frank Geary.

Or at least worked with Frank. I don't know how close they were. But he worked with Frank Geary and had words to say about Frank Gary, and we put together a very quick memorial episode for Frank Gary, the only architect I know of who had a cameo on the Simpsons.

There you go, and certainly someone helped shape the skyline of many, many, many, many places. Many places. Many places. And did work on that art gallery of Ontario as well. And Jim Shetton was at TMLX21, so much love to him. Jason Schneider came back to talk about

one song, and I thoroughly enjoyed my 90 minutes talking about hey Joe, where are you going to go of that gun in your hand. So love to Jason Schneider. Yes. This is one of those episodes. I always pause.

Just say something and then I'll move on. This is such a random thing for like a music journalist slash publicist and Canada to write a book about. But what a great topic. And I love this sort of topic. Like the origins of like all these songs we've been hearing like I feel like ram jams like another one that came out of like, you know, sort of slavery. Yeah, I was going to say like.

Like, and you hear all the different versions and this one, like, Hey, Joe, I mean. Or, uh, house of the rising sun. Yeah, house of rising sun. Like the animals, Dylan and the animals, and there's these versions that kind of popularize it, but these songs have been around forever. Yeah, yeah. And they just sort of morph and mutate over time. And like Mr. Bojangles and, uh, what's that Nirvana did, the lead belly song?

Where did you sleep last thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, in the pines. Yeah. Yeah. And I think on toast I've done a deep dive into in the pines. I really like Jason. Schneider too. Yeah.

Well, him and Barclay wrote one of the great books of covering what we're talking about all the time. Just to close the loop on the Ed Conroy, uh, consumer's distributing thing. Just looking back at the transcript. Oh, wow. There's a transcript. There's a little Robert Lawson. All right. Let's hear it.

Um, yeah. No, there was, uh, there's some conversation here about, uh, wise guys. And, uh, Ed saying, you know, I've heard stuff, uh, you know, can't confirm a lot of the things I've heard. it was a scary group of people, no doubt. The founder went to jail for fraud. That's what I said, yeah. Yeah. It's just true.

So I think he was just kind of... It's not a slander if it's true. It's not a full hallucination. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. All right, well, we'll talk more about it. We're going to burn through these non-fif, I feel like we're spending too much time

and the ones that we're not talking about. But Nick Aini's little-known fact that if you do sponsor Toronto Mike, you get an episode of Toronto Mikeed. So step up. If you want an episode of Toronto Mike, sponsor the fucking show and you get an episode. This is available to all sponsors and Nick took me up in the offer and I always

like chatting with Nick. Thalia Assuris, we didn't pick this as one of the 15, but we did get some confirmation about how she is related to, it's in the book, Nick Kiprio. That's right. Because I do recall from back in the day on Sportsline, Hebsy and Tattie would always make reference to the fact that Kiprios would. was Thalia Isheras his cousin. Right.

So the fact is, we learned from Thalia that Thalia's godparents are Nick's parents. Right. So Nick is the son of her godparents. So they would be like close family friends. Yeah. They'd grow up together, but they're not actually technically cousins. But you'd call them cousins because, you know, your parents. Oh, if you're on a, was it the, if you're on the bear.

Yes. Isn't everybody a cousin? Yes. cousin and I just saw the Bruce Springsteen biopic. That's right. Do you want a review? Yeah, what was your review?

I was prepared to not like it because the reviews were so mixed. Unlike the Dylan one with Shalamee, which everybody fucking loved. And I was prepared to like that very much. I was prepared to dislike the Bruce Springsteen biopic, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed myself. And my wife thought it was too slow. And I thought it was,

I liked it being a bit slow. Yeah. I found it very affecting, actually. I, too, was prepared to not like it. Right. But, uh, no, that's the secret to liking something. Maybe, yeah.

Low expectation. His performance was great. That's the name of the Cam Gorton podcast. Low expectation. And trail off. Yes. Yeah, so we have two thumbs up to me. I enjoyed it.

Okay. Yeah. Is your shocker. I did not see it. No interest. My brother, Steve, uh, won't watch biopics. He says they're all terrible. Same.

Yeah. Yeah. I get that. But I actually like myself a good biopic. Yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of bad ones. Well, walk hard, the Dewey Cox story. Some of them are ripe for parody.

Does he know they're terrible, or he's like me? He has just no interest in them. A little column A, a little column B, maybe. But he saw my mom, because I invited my mom to watch the Bruce Springsteen biopic when Stella finally got it. Shout out to Canada Kev. But my brother, Steve, she's telling him, oh, I'm going to see the Bruce Springsteen thing. And Steve's like, like, no interest or whatever.

I don't do biopics or whatever. So that's where they're at. Way to take a stand. Good, man. Yeah. Melanie Done came over. Yeah.

I enjoyed that. Yeah. Melanie's a sweetheart. Yeah. I had totally memory hold that, that Adam's Rib song. It's a good little, yeah.

It's a mixed 99.9. Yeah, for sure. It had, FM maybe. It felt a little crash test dummies-ish, you know. Yeah.

What's that radio format? It's like a. A-O-R, adult-oriented radio. Yeah, yeah. Middle of the road. M-O-R, A-O-R. I feel like F-O-T-M-A-R, sort of in that category.

Whose song is being covered for like a bank ad, I hear all the time. Maybe during these world. I'm watching a lot of these juniors. Like tonight I'm watching Canada, Slovakia. So I'm into that. And I hear like a cover of her. Oh, yeah, it's very kind of schlocky. Yeah.

I will say Melny did, I know she teaches ukulele. She actually did that at my daughter's elementary school. Yeah, so he's very familiar with her. Yeah, she's doing good work. Yeah. And now she's an FOTM. And Drew Marshall drove here from, I think, I just got like a ranch in Caledon or something. He says he rides a horse to his local bar or something like that.

But Drew Marshall was here. And now, I don't, it's not one of our 15 we're talking about, but it was interesting. I don't know if either of you heard Drew Marshall. I heard, I heard Drew Marshall. I listen to, yeah. This is one, I'm not sure. You know, you have some people. Well, you can shit on it.

I don't care. No, it's not. I enjoyed it. It just, was he working? Was this, you know, worker shoot? I feel like he was working, but he's there radio guys. Someone comes to that world. It was clearly, you know, doing, I think, a radio personality, too.

Friends of Candace Cameron, Burey. That's right. Yeah. James Brown. That's right. He reminded me a little of Stafford just in his kind of presentation, a little jockey, shlocky kind of radio guy. I felt, and I think I told him this on the episode, that he was trying too hard.

Yeah. Like right off the time, like do the cold open. don't know what he's going to say and he does a whole thing about restoring foreskin or something for circumcised males or whatever like it just felt like okay so this is what we're getting here like he was trying very hard and his show was like an internet only no i think it was on a station called sea joy see joy okay i'm not making this up right like it was on a yeah yeah like i don't think we get it in toronto but it was on a radio station and then he he gave big numbers like uh live stream numbers so i don't know you know take of a grain of salt but

I'm glad Drew dropped by. He had a lady friend with him, and he looked like he was a, what's the fucking conservative show of the cowboys that people are into? Oh, what Don I miss? No, is it Landman?

Landman? Landman. So, I mean, a few comments about he looked like a character out of Landman. What's the other one with Costner? Oh, Yellowstone. Yellowstone, right? So these are not shows I've seen,

but people seem to dig them or whatever. And same producer as the Hugh Dillon show, mayor of Kingston. That's a fun fact right there. Okay, shout out to Hugh Dillon, who comes up in an episode soon. Okay, so quickly, we are going to spend a moment with a clip.

Carla Collins was on the show. Yeah, Carla. Do you think any of the real heads are still with us? Or are they long? Of course they are. Of course they are. They're real heads. Besides Apple. All right.

Still logged in, at least. Let's listen to this fucking train wreck. Okay, I'm ready. So I'm just going to ask you about something I read about you, Mr. Webb, on Facebook. Okay, this will be painless, and there will be no judgments from yours. Truly.

This is what you wrote. I'm burning. Do you need a beer for this? I did tell you that there was one thing that we wouldn't discuss. Yeah, but Michael Webb is not you. Like, this is just Michael Webb. But it's about Michael Webb wrote about going to...

I read a lot of things. You met Pierre Pahliav. I did. Is that the first time you met him? And this is recent, right? Yeah, it was just last week. But what blew me away? And again, zero judgments from me.

We're not getting political, Carla. We're going to get him. I expressly said I will not be present for any political discussions. Oh, I thought you said that you weren't going to talk about politics. No, I meant both of us. I actually do. So are you okay to tell us like, um, you have to talk to my handler.

Okay, okay. I can't take it anymore. I don't have to talk to him except I was going to ask. You will sit and you'll listen to this. Peter Pollyf because I thought you were talking about Carla. I didn't know you were talking about Michael Webb. And I was going to ask you about your love for Pierre Paulyle of. I do want to talk about this.

But we absolutely can just move on if you want. Touch your nose if you want me to move on. Oh, he touched his nose. everybody okay so karlah can i can i change the channel then since uh since michael web doesn't want to talk about pierpoliath and again we did send an email saying oh so straight up i honestly thought it was from you and you said you didn't want to talk i actually didn't know it was from michael but i'm right here yeah but you're not yeah anyway and you said i never talk about and i'm like yeah then this then yes i will come i actually thought you meant somebody uh with a different

initials i didn't think you meant p p i thought you meant american stuff but okay all the politics. I'm politics free. I know. But I wasn't going to ask you about politics. I was going to ask Michael Webb about politics. Okay. So we moved on now from the house long as a awkward change. Well, you can have Michael Webb on a separate episode. I'm happy to come on down. I have an entire episode dedicated to my political beliefs. Okay, you two hit me first and then I'll tell you my thoughts revisiting that terrible moment in Toronto Mike to history. About this episode in general? Like, no, that part of that episode. Well, I think we have it. We talked about.

at this at the Kensington Solstice. I actually, I see both sides, but I do see Carla's point here. Sure, she wasn't specific any political conversation because technically you weren't asking her about it, but

I'd just say if I was a Canadian living in the U.S. right now, I probably wouldn't want any piece of content out there, anything to do with like third rail, not even third rail, just political topics, just given what the climate's like. Obviously, as you know, like I'm extremely cautious about like saying anything short of coming on here like a hundred plus

episodes remarkable yeah now on youtube which is awesome um but i i i get where she's coming from and i'm not saying i i don't think it's sort of a real gotcha moment that you did but i i totally see where she's coming from it's like do we have to like be that precise let's just not have any politics on the show so this is one i'll push back on you i need to be pushed back on now it's tyler's turn to push back on yeah i agree um that probably you should have steered clear of that whole thing. And then I think you, I think you got stuck in the moment and you just kept going back to it and making it

worse. Oh, that's for sure. Yeah. But how could I not? Like, I don't have this ability to not self-reference, the awkward moment. Yeah, yeah.

That's the thing that, you know, makes you who you are. The Nathan Fielder of that. Like, I'm not, I think most podcasts would just edit that shit out. They did it out. I know I'm not going to edit it out. So, therefore, it's sitting there, and I'm not good at pretending it didn't happen and moving on, because it actually pissed me off.

Yeah. That was, it pissed me off. That's the problem because I, she was too vague in the email where she didn't want to talk politics, and I did tell her, I don't intend to ask you anything about politics. That's what I said. And that was the truth.

Yeah. So I can see the cluster fuck happening. I don't understand. I still don't. don't understand, and I get what Cam's saying, but I put her on Humble and Fred periodically, like every couple of months. I put her on for a 15 to 20 minute chat with Humble and Fred. And that episode will drop, and it will be, let's say it's 90 minutes long. It'll be 25 minutes of Carla in an hour of shitting on Donald J. Trump like it's their fucking job. But she's not on

the show. She leaves the Zoom. So before she gets on the Zoom, it's all anti-Trump stuff. And then she leaves the Zoom and it's anti-Trump stuff. But it's the same episode. Sure. I still, I just am stupid because I gave heads up to Michael Webb when I saw him at Carla Standup that I was going to ask him about Pahliav. And he didn't say anything like, oh, we can't talk about it with Carla there. He didn't say anything like that. Right.

Wouldn't have fucking done it. So I thought my rule, my rule was don't ask. Like, I had a mental note. Do not ask Carla her opinion on Pierre Pollyev. Yeah. Because she doesn't want to talk politics. But I absolutely had on the mic, Michael Webb, who had released a love letter to Pierre Pollyev. And I needed to ask him about that.

Right. And I didn't like the idea that I can't ask Michael Webb a fucking question because Carla is in the fucking room. Sure. Yeah. And it's, you know, your show and you're going to ask the questions you want to ask. And I think everyone knows and respects that. I would say as a, is a PR person and you're going to like, you would like one of these.

With my stick here. Yeah, with one of those are. Junie and drumstick. I'd say the thing to you just perhaps want to be conscious of rightly or wrongly, you just don't want to get a reputation of somebody who catches people off guard, you know. But I was talking to Michael fucking Webb. That's fine. But I say this when I worked in the agency world.

I said all the time my clients would have ideas about stuff. We want to put this. It's like there's sort of what your intention is. And then there's what people are going to perceive in the world we live in. The perception is all that matters. So you just, I, you know, in my career at least, and I know we're not talking about. But that does make for a boring thing. Of course.

Like all these, all these interesting topics is off out of bounds. And again, that's your decision. decision and, you know. Yeah, you live with it. Go forth accordingly. This is like Sting agreeing to come on if I don't ask him about the police. Hey, he said like, don't like,

anyway, I'm not going to use that term, but it's like, anyway, that that's one. I see where she's coming from. I'll just say that. So is that the end of my brief love affair with Carla Collins? Probably. Well, but you've also.

Tip your gray lakes to the Mike Carly romance of December 2020. Oh, another great excite zone. So I have. many people I respect told me I fucked up the Carla there and I can see that but I also can't see me doing anything differently. If you do that episode 100 times I do the same thing. Sure. Well I'd say and I feel like we're going to come to this sort of thing. I'll say if people are going to come on the Toronto Mike podcast it's a bit of like know what Toronto Mike does like we all do and it's you know and again you're it's not like you're an asshole but it's not gotcha because I agreed I did tell

Carla I wouldn't ask her about politics the problem happened that my brain didn't think I couldn't ask a web about it. So that's the problem. I wasn't going to ask Carla what she thinks of Pierpoliath. I was never going to put her on the spot. And I also had decided in my head, which is my own fault.

I had decided this was a border concern with a Canadian living in the United States who didn't want Trump discussed. So I know it's politics to talk about Pierapalia, but I wasn't bringing Trump into it and it wasn't going to be Carla. And I may have fucked it up, but again, I would fuck that up 100 out of 100 times.

And if you, if, you know, if it's that important that nothing political is discussed in your presence on any show you're on, that's not really a guest I want to hang with. Sure. Totally. Yeah. We're moving on. You got to be you. Yeah. And you were. And I can't believe

John Doyle didn't make the list because what a delightful chap with a great accent and a great combo and very interesting to me. Yeah. No, I enjoyed John Doyle. He was certainly a... It's wrong of you people. He's not top 15. Yeah, well, it's a tough quarter. Okay, well, move on for the great end. That's a global male guy came on. So a couple of

globe people. Former globe of mail guy doesn't write there anymore. But Retro Ontario came back for Christmas Crackers, Volume 7. This was only a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, no clip, but he did, I see in the notes from Tyler that Ed Conroy teased a new project of Sean

Menard, who's often discussed on Toronto Mike. What could it be? Yeah. Any guesses? Yeah, I couldn't hazard a guess. I'm trying to think. It's got to be big enough to get financing. Yeah, Menard's done much music, Terry Fox.

Yeah. So I feel like it's some big piece of... Did he do the Carter effect? Yes. Oh, right. Yeah. So these are like real signature, you know, Canadian, uh, cultural infrastructure. Although one has only been seen by a few of us.

But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the Christmas crackers. Like, I actually need to go through the transcript because I think there's a lot of Wikipedia updates that needs to be made there. The one about the lost, uh, Muppets, like, Henson universe. Oh, yeah.

Avengers all come together that's lost to history is really interesting. And I've seen that, it's great. They're driving in a car singing a song on their way to Fossey's mom's house. Yeah.

And she's, she's a surprise visit, but Fossey's mom is actually going to a warm, like, beach for Christmas. And she's kind of pissed off. Like,

she's got her shades on and her fucking shorts. And she's like, I'm going to a fucking beach, Fossey. And they're all there. And you're right. It is Avengers style

because you get sprockets and you get like a fraggle raw contingent, you got a bunch of muppets, of course, but you also get the Sesame Street. This is like a real 80s thing where you'd see, you know, one sitcom showing up on another sitcom sometime or like two NBC shows.

Oh, yeah, the Mercy Carson Universe or whatever. I don't know, you'd get like a little full house action and then I don't know, Urkel might show up or something like that. Exactly. Yeah, and the door would always open and people would be like, clob, clap, clap, clap, like the fake clap. In Mad About You, Kramer shows up. Yeah.

Is that true? As like a neighbor of right, a former neighbor, maybe he lived in the building. Right. Paul Ryder. There was the whole Lisa Kudrow. Oh, yeah, they were twins. Yeah. So Matt About You, the waitress is Ursula.

I think her name is Ursula. That's right. And that's Lisa Kudrow's whatever, what's her character, Phoebe? Phoebe. Phoebe's twin sister is on Matt about you. This is like Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt. Okay. You got it.

Okay. And Paul Reiser was engaged. I think maybe married. I don't know, with Hank Azaria from the Simpsons. What? Yeah, like, Helen Hunt, not Poe. Did I say Paul, I said Paul Reiser? We'll fix that one.

We will fix in Poe. Helen Hunt was engaged, maybe married to Hank's agent. Okay, yes. Okay, I remember that now. He was in like alien. Aliens, I think. Yes, Paul Reiser. Yeah.

Not Hank Azar. No, who no longer voices Apu. Right. Good call. There go. So Retro-Ochari always delivers and we love, I love chatting them up, but it's hard to get him in the basement now. Like these are all...

Yeah, because he lives very, very far east. Port Perry? Yeah. Yeah, wherever that is. Okay. Retro Ontario compound. Speaking of annual traditions, so you got the Christmas crackers. That was the seventh one.

And we had, I think, the ninth or something, Festivus with Elvis. So he comes over on Festivis, which is, of course, December 23rd. And we air grievances. And, man, he hits it out of the park. He was aces again, even though he's not one year 15.

He's very, very good at being, being Elvis, but being sort of a foil to you. He's very authentic and speaks his mind, which of course you want in a guest. But you did a great job co-hosting TMLX. Yeah. He, you know, he sits there and kind of helps you keep it moving and laughs. His big Ed McMahon laugh.

He's got a great laugh. He does, he does. But yeah, no, I always love hearing Elvis. And, you know, I understand he doesn't really listen to Toronto mic, which is fun. It's kind of, you know, his shtick at this point, but... Yeah, he might be secretly listening. He might be.

He might be. So hello to Elvis. He's listening, right? Yeah. It's the real head. No, I always enjoy the festival of his episodes. And he's on a few of his appearances or even the live shows where he's got that infectious laugh.

That's so funny. Such a great vibe and energy. But then has these like really kind of poignant, God, this is so pretential, but almost the poignant thoughts on almost a human. experience. This one about just people's relationship with their family members. Really complicated. Oh, yeah.

He opened up about his relationship with his mom who passed away in 2026. And it's really like heart wrenching, authentic stuff. That's what I'm craving. Yeah, not like sugar-coded at all. Like it's, it fucking sucks sometimes. You know, stuff we go through in our lives, too. And he's not afraid to talk about it. So I'm craving that, not to be confused of craving.

Oh, boy. Wait for these segues. Nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. a real rainer of flight. That's coming up.

So we only have three episodes left. Graven's not one of the 15, but that was a chat for his podcast. So I do a little quick... In fact, I do tease. I got an email, like a whistleblower email, about the Matt Schichter episode, which we're going to talk about in a moment. So on our way to... So thank you to Graven for that chat.

I dropped it in as like to tied us over. And then Ben Rayner returned to Toronto Mike. So let's talk for a moment about Ben. And I'll just read some emails I got. about the Ben Rainer episode, he always gets people commenting. Like, has to be,

has to be the, the guest that creates the most engagement. I think so. Yes. I think I get more engagement from a Ben, you know, Stafford's like second, I guess.

Yeah. But Stafford and Rainer, these are the guys who generate the, the feedback. Ben Rayner, I just, we just checked,

I just checked in with him and chatted with him for about an hour or so. And so many responses. Yeah. So what did you guys think? And then I'll read some of

I love the check-ins with him I just I've said it before I've got a lot of time for Ben he's just he's just has like a unique charisma's not the right word not saying he's not charismatic but he's just

loves his music he's just he's so singular as a personality it's really hard to put a finger on why I think he's such a compelling character because he's very like roaming the earth unbridled

but also like worked at the Canada's largest newspaper for 25 years and did some incredible talk to everyone similar to Karen Bliss. And he's not an old guy. No. Like Stafford and Stafford, I'm not saying he's done his life or anything like that, but he's an older guy and you're like, okay, he's a grizzled vet or whatever. Ben's, like he's our age. Like a peer, very much like a peer. He's my age. Yeah. He's your age. Yeah. Yeah. And again, somebody who's, you know, had some family stuff and continues to work through it and trying to figure out what works. And it's just, I don't know. And I feel like

these are a lot of the emails you get about commentary. Maybe I read them and you tell me if you agree or not. Like so, and again, I'm going to leave, I think some of these are kind of negative. So I'm going to leave the person's name out of it. But one note I got, I'm going to read it. You guys can see it on my screen. Listening to Ben Raynor and becoming a bit infuriated, at the heart of it, he's lazy. Everything you suggest, dot, dot, dot, dot.

He's like, well, that seems like a lot of work. Ugh. Some people just can't be helped. Like Mike Stafford, you can lead a horse to water. dot, dot, dot. So there's a trusted FOTM chiming in after the Ben Raynor chat. Yeah, I mean, strong words.

Well, let me do the best quick. Ben, subject line, Ben Raynor. This is a trusted FOTM. Wow, that was uncomfortable listening to. He has some difficult decisions in the coming year. So I get that. Yeah, not wrong. Yeah, like you can, like I always love hearing Ben

because he's just such a compelling guy. He's just good to listen to. There's lots to say, and he says it in a really compelling way. He's a guy that you could see yourself just hanging out with for an afternoon. But, yeah, like there is an element to Ben that is a little frustrating because he's such a talented guy. And he's so beloved by so many people that you would think he could kind of get himself organized. But on that note, a social worker wrote in. Yeah.

listening to this Ben episode, two things. He's 100% bipolar slash BPD as fuck. It's so, so sad. You're a wonderful social worker in the making. This buddy boy would benefit from an assessment, diagnosis, and meds. I'm not sure I can finish this one. He's so fucking manic. So I'm not a social worker and I'm not a therapist and I'm not a, so I'm not diagnosing

anybody. I just thought I was talking to Ben. yeah i yeah go ahead cam oh it's just because i'm not sure people should be diagnosing people based on a couple of podcasts i'm not saying it's a private note from a listener yeah yeah of course and i keeping their name out of it and i i think all these people even if they're you know harsh words it's coming from place of like concern and care and i i think also for a different category i feel like all three of us is you know guys have been divorced with kids too it's so fucking complicated even when it's like smooth as smooth sailing.

Even like the easy divorces are like fucking awful. You're right. Everyone in this room knows what that's like. Now I'm going to read one more on the heel of that one because it kind of ties into that. But this person wrote, and this is a long time listener who chimes in now and then, and I value this person's opinion, wrote,

Ben Rayner was a subject line. Great episode. But the more I listen to his interviews, it seems like his cheerful, easygoing persona is masking some deeper issues other than depression. A guy this talented shouldn't be single and barely scraping by. In my humble opinion, he gave a tiny glimpse of it when he said he'll always quote unquote push back.

So a lot of reaction is what I'm saying to these conversations with Ben Rayner. And I really appreciate that Ben comes on and he doesn't hold back. He just says, this is me and he just chats me up for now. And I think that's a big part of his charm. He's just very open and willing to talk about. all the shit he's gone through. And, you know, to, to, I think, you know, both of your points, like, you can't understand fully what he's been going through.

And even, you know, I say, like, you know, he seems like he should be in a position to get himself moving. And, like, that shit just takes time to work through. And, and he's still working through a lot of shit. It was April 2025 when he had that moment of, like, I can't afford, I'm being renovated. I lost my job. and my wife wants a divorce and I'm going to move home sort of the Maritimes. Yeah, that shit just unmoors you and it takes many years often to get yourself back on solid ground.

Yeah. I think he's unique too because he's such like a chill laid back guy. Like everyone's like best buddies. Like I've probably met him maybe like two or three times. He's just so like friendly. Like he's classic like I seem like, you know, I'm already friends with this guy. And he's just like a little chap. like sensitive surfer poet

he puts it Eddie better but at the same time so unbelievably uncompromising about what he wants to do in terms of pursuing his passions and whatnot to this day where now he's doing

you know it sounds like he's perhaps something cooking with like UFOs and all these things all the music he's really into um so horror yeah so like a real dichotomy of like

almost like personality um characteristics too and I applaud anybody who's just so strong you know really sticks to the convictions of what they're passionate about, too. But, you know, also on the flip side, you need to compromise a lot of lives and a lot of different areas, too.

And he's consistent in that his world revolves around his daughter, Polly, who we do hear from in this episode. Yeah. She was just hanging out there at his mom's house, I believe. Barbara. Yeah. He was a journalist. Good to hear from Polly, named after P.J. Harvey.

That's correct. That is a fun fact here. Okay, so one episode to go. Any more on the Ben? I feel like... We talked about that. I think he'll be in the basement next. Good.

I can't keep, I don't want him, but he's not just some experiment or whatever in a petri dish. We've got to check in and see how has our bend. Like, he's got to come over and kick out some jams or something. I'll probably walk here. Like he's literally roaming the earth, which I think is super cool.

I like it. Maybe he'll start up that dog walking business that we're all encouraging him to do. Okay, so the last episode dropped in 2025 was with a filmmaker named Matt Schichter. And Matt directed a documentary that's literally debuting on TVO on Tuesday. We're talking on a Friday. So we're only days away from CFNY, the Spirit of Radio documentary. A 60-minute cut is going to air on TVO.

There's a lot to unpack here. Do you want to start the clip? Let's do it. And I'm going to speculate here. You tell me if this might be right. Was there a version? And you're going to say, of course there was, because this is how filmmaking works. But you probably delivered a version before this version,

that was probably passionately disliked by these stakeholders? I don't think so, or at least not publicly. Like there's enough, there was a Vimeo link where everyone got to make notes on and say, I don't like this at like 3427 or 59, 60, well, 60 doesn't make any sense. 5943 or whatever. Like with timestamps up, I don't like this or I don't like that and change this, change that, which happy to do. But again, end of the day, someone has to be in charge.

And if someone's not in charge, nothing gets done. So someone has to make decisions because there's deadlines and there's money on the line and it's a bonded film. So if it's not delivered the day it says it's delivered, people start losing money and decisions just have to be made sometimes. So I think there's a world where this could have been a very different movie from different interviews or from different points of view or if people wanted to give more dirt on stuff that happened. There's none of that in this film, but no one wants to talk about any of that kind of stuff. I'm sure there was some, I mean, it's the 80s, right? I'm sure there was some sort of like other shit going on, but, but I, but no one wants to talk about any of that and which is fine and that's not what this movie is, but it's, uh, what's my point

here? Well, no, I'm going to help you because I keep referring to it as a love letter to CFN Y. And I think everybody with like the nostalgic vibes, the love for CF and Y will be, we'll feel good watching this film because they're going to see all their old friends. They're going to have old, you're going to see the old yellow house and then you're going to see the strip mall in Brampton and you're going to, you know, you know, No, it'll be, I think it's a good hit of nostalgia for anybody who's, who misses the old CF and Y. Like, it's a love letter.

But when you write a love letter to somebody, and I've rooted a love letter or two in my time, Matt, I'll tell you right now, there's no warts in there. This isn't a warts at all experience. No. And your boss is, am I right? So those five executive producers are like, well, I guess you work for that company, hi, what's the name again? Highball. High ball.

High ball. High ball. Your boss is Highball, and I guess Highball's bosses, are those five executive producers? Am I right at all this? No. No, tell me. So in this case, the executive producer is basically just a vanity credit. Usually an executive producer, someone who puts money into the

film. We wanted to give them a credit that that had some gravitas too, because it was their idea. They did create the pitch. This is their thing. An executive producer felt right. But technically, in the hierarchy of a film, it would be the producer, which is Highball,

director and then the EPs are somewhere in there too but like this one this this is a little different because they didn't actually put money and highball is putting up the money right highball is putting up the money yeah where do we start with this one we should do three hours on the schichter episode which i actually made a point to not only was there in real time but it did sit on the shelf a little bit i had to re-listen to it before i dropped it and then i decided i'm going to listen to it again because of an email I got, which I'll read in a minute. But I'm curious for your two thoughts

on the Matt Schichter episode, and then I may extrapolate more on why I think there's something rotten in the state of Brampton. So obviously pure speculation on my part, but to me, having worked in the agency world for a long time and working on projects with clients

who, you know, you work, to scope out what this project's going to be. There's a brief that you write and then everyone agrees that, yes, this brief is correct. And then you proceed with the work based on that brief. And then some clients are really good about it and they're very experienced and they're like, yep, okay, that's great. There's actually some stuff that I wish we could have included, but given our timeline and

our budget, we can't include them now. So we'll put them in later in a future phase. You can't do that with a documentary. Obviously, you're done. I mean, you could make a second version of the documentary, but nobody's going to pay for that. So it seems to me that you had a brief, I don't know how it works in documentary land,

but there's some kind of agreement that this is the direction or the narrative that we're going to tell. Yeah, episode 102.1 of Toronto Mike. Yeah, exactly. Do this in 90 minutes. Yeah. And get Get Get-Gedy Lee for fuck's sake. And as the people who are most invested in it,

the, the, EPs, viewed it. They realized that, oh, you know, this is not necessarily the story we wanted to tell or the way that we wanted to tell. And three of those EPs worked at the station in our FOTMs. So, you know, they're very invested.

They care a lot as they should. And so they want to tell the best story they can. It sounds like they got down to a point where they ran out of time. They ran out of money. They still wanted to make changes. They couldn't make those changes. And so Matt S, the director, Matt Schichter, kind of caught the brunt of that. And, you know, because he was beholden to his schedule and his budget.

The buck stops there. Yeah. He's the director of this film. At a certain point, to it, as he said, you know, we're done. We can't make any more changes. We're, you know, this is, this picture has to go out. Cam, I value your opinion on all of this. I'll just say, and God, do you, again,

again, you're going to throw something on me because they feel like I'm going to, like, laps into, like, calm speak here. But I actually did flinch. I look forward to seeing this documentary. I think one thing Tyler mentioned, I can't stop thinking of this documentary in the much music one in tandem, two very different situations. No, but there's parallels.

I think there's parallels in terms of there's IP, whether it's much music or CFNY spirit of radio, things, people certainly of our generation and a bit older, a bit younger, care, saving deeply would be an understatement.

I think, you know, I speak for everyone in this room where like, these are like formative entities, like it, not just like in our education as like musicians, in our lives in terms of like personalities,

entertainment. And it's, I don't know, it's, I think I suggested this to you, Mike, I feel like once this all goes over in the documentaries out and whatnot,

doing almost like a, is it a recon or a recon? What's like the recap? Is it right? Not a retcon. A recon. A recon is when you you change the origin story or something and you recon in like a new origin. Or what's like a recap? A recap.

Like a post-mortem? Post-mortem. Sure. Like I did with Gino the Gino-Vinnelli episode. I did it with Elements. Using the much music doc and this one, why is it so fucking hard to make documentaries in this country? Can I say two things about those two docs? Because I might be the, I think

I might be the only human on the planet who saw both. Yeah. I think that's a fair statement. On the planet Earth, one person saw both the 299 and the, uh, whatever, at least the version, Matt Schichter delivered more on that in a minute. Yeah. But there, so Bell Media had to sign off on the 299 Queen Street West dog and chorus signed off on the CF and Y dog. Yeah, yeah.

Which is, though, that's one parallel. But the other one is both dogs strike me as love letters. There's no wards. Like this is, uh, the, you know, this is a happy go lucky, nostalgic romp, both of them. I've seen them both. There is, no, we're not going to talk about, you know, lines of coke at two and 99 Queen Street West or, you know, all that stuff, we're not touching it with a 10-foot pole. It's all glowing, positive, happy-go-lucky memories of these wonderful institutions.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I must think, look, God, this is sort of morbid, but similar to like, you know, you see on the Oscars and whatnot, you're in review sort of in memorandum, just, you know, celebrating a life that was, I think both of those, but in both cases had these, like, issues with it, whether it's rights or just personalities involved or agencies. I know with Much Music, there was a lot of, because you spoke to some of these people, people who weren't in the

much music documentary. Oh, Catherine McClainahan. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I just think as a pruck is people care so immensely deeply and have such a deep personal relationships with these things specifically that it's almost like no end product would ever meet, you know, whatever satisfy everyone. Yeah, like Erica M. was

an executive producer of that 299 Queen Street West, right? Yeah. And these are also big topics too. Like much music isn't any one thing. CFNY is not any one thing. Right. So it's tough. I just hope everyone involved because it just sucks because I think there's no ill intent here. It's just

classic, perhaps a bit of creative differences. I don't know. And Tyler, I want to hear from you in a moment, but there as I dive into this hole. So there is a 60 minute version of the CF&Y documentary airing on TVO on Tuesday. I think on Monday they air it at Chorus Key,

which I was not invited to, by the way. The viewing party. I'm surprised. I'm actually, I'm surprised I wasn't invited. Yeah. Yeah.

Because Scott Turner, Iver Hamilton, and Alan Kraz are... Award winning podcast. Our friend day. But they're great friends of the podcast. And probably no one has spent more time talking about CFNY publicly than you. And yes, thank you.

And also as outlined with Matt Schichter, like the timing is interesting in that episode 1021 drops and then that summer they say, we got to make a doc. And Matt Schichter gets the gig. And then he's filming by the end of that. year like it all at all times and Matt Schichter didn't hide the fact that I was like his greatest research point like if he's going to go take a train to talk to Geets Romo he's going to listen to Geets Romo in the basement talking to Toronto Mike for 90 minutes and it was like you know

God's gift to a filmmaker like it's all right there you just have to prune it or whatever because he doesn't get four hours for his documentary didn't make the credits though didn't make no I didn't make the credits but you when you see the 60 minute version that I saw you couldn't read those credits to save your life you I slowed it down to point 25 I could not read the credits. It's unbelievable if that's how it goes. But I'm here. There's a three-headed monster.

You have the EPs, one of whom is Barbara Hall, not the mayor. I had to point that out. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you, yeah, because I'm like, maybe he's, you know, you got to clarify these things. But the three people, and I can't remember, there's another woman, but the three people I know is Alan Cross, Scott Turner and Iver Hamilton. Again, and I made a point to tell the listenership, they're nice guys, I like. Yes. They've all been on the show many times.

Yeah. And I like all three. They've all been over multiple times, and I like all three very much. Yeah. But so you got the EPs, and even though it's a, what do you call that?

Vanity title, executive producer. So you got the EPs, but they care the most because they were there, and this is like their story and their love letter to David Mars. And so they care the most

about getting this right. They hired a guy younger than us to make this doc, which means he didn't listen to the Spirit Radio. Yes. Because he didn't listen. he's like in his early 40s

so Matt Schichter is hired to direct this thing so you got the director Matt Schichter you've got the EPs and then you have highball.tv the people who own the dock they paid for it they own it and although I thought Matt was very diplomatic

in the chat whenever high ball came up his tone would change in that episode yes I did notice that yes he couldn't miss it so if you're reading between the lines okay is now a good time for me to get into this email like I think it's a great time

okay and Lauren wants me to redact the name of the sender. Okay, Lauren. So this, I got this email maybe two days ago. I got this email. So I dropped this Matt Schichter episode.

I think I technically dropped it before going to bed on the 30th. I saw it show from my feed on the 30th. So I drop it on the 30th because it's going to be like the New Year's Eve special or whatever. But it was New Year's Eve in Greenwich meantime, okay? Okay. So this email drops in my inbox and its subject line is unauthorized interview colon CFNY documentary.

So he's got my attention. Red flags. Because it says unauthorized interview. And already my backs up a bit because it's like, I'm the boss around here. I authorize the interviews around here. I authorize this episode of Matt Schittier. Yeah, yeah.

Cam's, well, Cam's a green. I don't know. Okay, I'll read on now. It don't make more sense. Okay, so my name is name redacted. That's a weird name, right? Yeah, yeah. Who put that on a birth certificate?

Okay, my name is name redacted. I am one of the principles at Highball TV and the producer of CFNY, the spirit of radio. It has come to my attention that one of the creatives we hired for the film has a 91-minute interview on your podcast, but one which was unauthorized by the production and distribution partners.

We'll come back to this in a minute. The film has been licensed to TVO for a broadcast premiere next week, and all press for the film must go through Highball TV, so that we can get TVO sign-off, and as a result, we need to ask to have this interview taken down. I'm sorry about this complication,

but your interview subject was not granted authority to share the film and to boot. He shared a work-in-progress edit of the film instead of the final cut. TVO and Highball TV would be delighted to hook you up with Alan Cross and the CFNY team, if you're interested in talking with subjects, about the completed version of the film. Thanks so much for your attention. And again, I apologize for the confusion this caused, name redacted.

So, I got that email, and I honestly didn't know how to reply. I'll tell you how I replied in a minute. But so many things jumped out. One is that the director of the film Matt Schichter, who is my guest for that episode we're talking about the on New Year's Eve, is referred to in this email as, ready, one of the creatives we hired for the film, which makes it sound like he's the lighting guy or something. Okay, one of the creatives we hired for the film, he's the director. Right.

It's interesting that it doesn't say the director of the film. It says, one of the creatives we hired for the film. Very curious. Has a 91-minute interview on your podcast. But which was unauthorized, I kind of feel like I wish I'd heard from TVO, but I am suspecting TVO does not care about the fact I talk to the director of this documentary. But that's a speculation on my part. But I never heard from TVO.

But this whole idea that highball TV has to approve, like I talk to the director of the film. Right. So this idea that somehow I can't talk to, on my independent, my fiercely independent podcast, I can't speak to the director of this film for 91 minutes because he was not authorized to talk about the movie that will say at the end, when we watch it on Tuesday, it's going to say directed by Matt Schichter. What are your thoughts on this, Cam Gordon? I don't, I'll just say, like, I don't think I have enough information to really have an opinion that, like, I, I don't know anything about, you know, contract statuses, ownership, da, da, da, so to offer, so in terms of offering a judgment on this, I, I don't know. I mean, I'm not, I'm not privy to at this right. It's not my problem. Like, there might, if there's a problem between the director and highball TV. Right. That's not involving fiercely independent award winning podcaster Toronto Mike. Yeah, which I, I think this, this individual is referring to in terms of an author.

rise in terms of perhaps like a contract access. Again, I don't know. I don't know what that looks like. It's sort of extremely inside baseball, if not entirely private. Um, so I don't know. Again, like, I just hope this all results itself. I just think I would just think. But what happened here? Like, I mean,

yeah, I don't know. Matt Schichter not only, uh, he shared, he's excited to be an FOTM, Matt Schichter. Like, he was a great combo. Yeah. And he's been sharing it on a social. He shared it on LinkedIn. He shared it on Instagram. Like he's very, he wants people to hear his debut on Toronto Mike. And I, I was careful. I know it's going to be heard by people I respect and care about. I know it's going to be heard by, you know, Scott Turner, for example, who I think is an absolute sweetheart. He was episode 102 of Toronto Mike, by the way. And Iver Hamilton, who I spent some time with recently, and he's a great guy. And Alan Cross, who always answers my emails, and he's a great guy. So a few quick fun facts on this. And then we'll obviously get your final thoughts and move on because it's been a very long episode. But, I asked the EPs if I could see the version that will air on TVO.

I knew it would be a 60-minute edit, and I was told it was not done yet. But I did receive the 60-minute version delivered to Highball by Matt Schichter, and I think he timestamped it as February 2025. So that's what I watched, but I was very clear in the episode that I don't know what's going to air on TVO because I didn't get a copy of it, and I do look forward to watching this episode. But I will reiterate that I'm glad this doc exists,

and that David Mars didn't get his flowers while he's still with us. I love that man, and he's a great guest, and he's an important figure in all this. And it's just something stinky. The interesting thing Match said is that when Tiff rejected it in 2024, he did get this documentary, his 90-minute version, into film festivals that are rather, they're not Tiff or Kahn, but they're big ones, right? And he was told, this can't air publicly. So I caught wind from a few sources that it was,

unwatchable and needed external editors to fix it. So the next domino to fall in all this is when I watch the TVO version and I can say what is different between that version and the 60-minute version that was delivered to Highball TV by Matt Schichter in February 2025. Feels like we've been talking about the existence of this documentary for like four years. Yeah, that sounds about right.

very long time. And yeah, and yeah, like, obviously the story will continue because we'll see what, what gets aired. Have you consulted legal counsel? For what? Well, just like, obviously, the removal request? Yeah, like, you can't tell me to remove an episode. No, no, I know that. I know that.

I'm not suggesting you, you should. I just wonder, like, and I agree with you, it's not your problem. It's between Matt Schichter and. highball TV. Right. And you play no part of that. I think I'm collateral damage in this battle. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah. No, I guess, you know, no reason for you to talk to Lauren.

I haven't. I mean, I, okay, I'll also tell you how I replied to that. I replied and said, happy New Year. Yeah, because I don't know. Happy New Year. I might love that guy. I don't know him at all. This redacted name. Please. Happy New Year. Are you able to jump on a quick call? So I wanted a voice to voice right away to find out, like to talk it out because I explain where I'm coming from and why I'm not removing it and see if he wants to come on Toronto Mike to tell his side or whatever. And he said, oh, I'm traveling right now and I'm Wi-Fi only so I don't have data. And then I replied to that and I said, how about WhatsApp or Zoom? No reply.

Interesting. And that's over, that's over 24 hours ago. So I tried to chat him up and he disappeared on me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just like looking at Cam because he's got this smirk in the space or whatever.

I don't have a, again, I, yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens with this. I don't, I don't know. Most people have no idea there's behind the scenes drama here because no one really gives a fuck. This is the most drama that is surrounding TVO documentary. Well, Matt thinks it's pretty good marketing, like giving people's attention.

So, A, it's a lot of promotion. And I was thinking about the fact that, you know, promo for this film needs to go through whatever. and then I surveyed the world for promo for this film. There's no promo for this film. There's no, I mean, chorus stations are doing a whole win tickets to see it at Chorus Key on Monday, which is cool. I wish I was invited.

I would happily be there. It was interesting to learn that the director was not invited either. But I wanted to go to that thing. But that would be, that'd be rad if I could get invited to that, but I'm not invited yet. But there's no, I don't see promotion for the film outside of chorus. No. Okay.

Remarkable. What a way to end the quarter. What a way to end the quarter. And one last thing, and then we're going to burn through a forgotten cancone here. But I did have on this show, not this last quarter,

but Katie Lour, do you know the name Katie Lour? Yes, of course. So she came on the show, and I had a delightful conversation with her, and I asked her about this name Katie, because, and I know there are people in the room

who have Katie's in their life that are very important for them. With one T. With one T. So this Katie Lour is spelled with two T's. It's K. A-T-T-I-E.

It looks like Katty if you were to read it. So, of course, I mean, I don't know how you ask anything. You have to start

with that, but let me just play a clip of Katie's father. Okay. So Katie Lorra's dad recorded this. You ready?

Eric. Well, at the time, Katie's mom and I knew that Katie was the perfect name. But we also knew wanted Katie to be something special

and talk about and maybe listen to. And so we added an extra tea in Katie so that people would ask about it. And man, it's taken like close to 33 years for somebody to actually ask about it. Interesting. Don't even ask about the legend of her middle name. So if you heard that, okay? So you're on a walk with Ben Raynor?

I know. 33 years of life and apparently the dad this is the first time the dad was asked why there's an extra tea in that

and it was yours truly so I just want to throw it in there asking the hard questions didn't know where else to stick it okay gentlemen that was amazing wow

you ready for next here we go there's more yes yes This is for God and CanCon. And this is always you, right, Cam? Yeah, yeah.

As always, this will be a question for Tyler and anyone who's hung in for the three plus hours. Is there any green balls over there? We saw a lot of hands up when we asked a little while ago. Oh, somebody asked, okay? I haven't been in there in a while. The classic question, do you remember this jam? I'll just set this one up by just saying,

we've talked about tears are not enough a lot. A couple times. remarkably this is there's a member of this act that was in the Tears are Not Enough chorus and yet this song I'm like I've not thought about this song

in 30, 40 years however long it's been and I didn't realize it was the same person so let's hear it Tyler do you remember this people listening before I press play I have a big announcement to make afterwards okay here we go

It's like a T.M. It's like a Tia. One, three, one, keep. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Sounds like Atlanta Miles.

I definitely know this. all that's around me It's like a cool song You name that tune yet Not yet I know it Yeah 100%. And I don't know why

I've always been this way In the heart of the city You know that's a staple of that song Staple of CCOC The name of the band is the Aeros Featuring Dean Mit Tigers The Arrows On vocals, also a member

the tain choir name of the song heart of the city definitely a top 40 can con classic um two things this reminds me of one is eddie money yep having eddy money sound um the second i feel like there might be a wrestling fan or two a lot of the music you would hear on wbf tv like the second saturday night's main event theme after they stopped uh obsession They're like the same as fashion television. Right. Like this sort of saxophone or even stuff on the second wrestling album, pile drivers sort of sounded like this.

A really fun jam, like great energy. So unbelievably 80s on the production here. The arrows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we'll just like run through a few arrows, fun facts here. Their first album was a four-song EP called Misunderstood, recorded with Daniel Lanwaw. Okay.

I guess Grand Avenue Yeah and released on Elma Combo Records Hey now

see Toronto Mike performing that venue Get your tickets now before they sell out so this jam

is from their second album 1985's the lines are open speak of like that's a feel like

that's a real radio jam get your request in right this album in the song produced by

David Tyson who'd go on to co-write black velvet whoa it does have it does have In Atlanta Biles vibe, this song.

Totally. Absolutely. Yeah, I think Jeremy Hopkins in the comments that he thought it was still got this thing for you. Yeah, that's the one I was here in my head, Jeremy. And we're going to talk about Jayho in this song, and that song shortly. Okay, and I got a big announcement to me. Oh, my God. Everything is happening. We need another three hours.

You can definitely hear it. Fun fact about Dean Mottaggart. He'd go on to work with another Midtown Gord favorite Amanda Marshall. Yes, okay. So, like, he produced the old-weight alumnus. Yeah, that first. Amanda Marshall album and he co-wrote which is huge. Yeah, he co-wrote Dark Horse and

Birmingham. Oh my God. Christopher Ward is connected to this story, I think. Holy shit. Yeah. And David Tyson who produced this album. He also worked with the Gessu, Ann Murray, and Winona Judd, too. No, sorry, that's Dean McTaggart. Work with those artists. Dean McTaggart's a big deal here.

Okay. David Tyson did some Peter Satera as well. Holy shit. And then a final fun fact, and this is perhaps Stu Stone encountered this person during the 80s. This song had some backing vocals from someone named Charity Brown, who during the 1980s, she performed as a voiceover artist on various Atkinson film and arts TV specials, including hold on to your seats, The Velveteen Rabbit, oh boy.

Rumpel Stillskin, Dennis the Menace, and I think this individual came up during the consumer suser being the adventures of Teddy Ruxnet. He did come up as a big Christmas. Wow. So big voice actor. Anyway, hard of this. city, the arrows. I love this segment so much. It's fun. Yeah. What a pallet cleanse from. Yeah. Well, you know, that last part. Major announcement? Major announcement.

Okay. We are speaking on January 2nd, 2020. Yes. On January 21st, 19 days. Now, it's a Wednesday at 11 a.m. Yeah. Making his Toronto-like debut. Oh, my God. You sitting down, gentlemen. Dean McTaggart. Oh, my God. Wow. Wow. Wow. A direct result of your jam. Really? Yeah. So you just did some like digging? Well, you sent me the name and I'm like, oh, that name is familiar.

I'm like, oh, I'm thinking of like, Jeremy Taggart? Like, what am I thinking of here? Dean McDermott? Yeah, Dean McDermott. And I'm looking into this guy and I'm like, yeah, I kind of miss him. Like he's not top of mind or whatever. But you mentioned tears are not enough. And I'm like, I got to track this guy down while I can and get his start.

D. McTaggart is going to be listed in this thing I'm holding up. Is he in the chorus? Or is he, uh, production? He's in the, no, he's like in the, I think he's in the chorus, I believe. Well, I'm going to talk to him about all of this on the 21st of January. Oh my God. So, uh, stay tuned. We're going to need a attain redo. Yeah, there's, um, Mike, I'll send you.

There's, there's a really detailed, um, billboard article from like 995 by Larry LeBlanc about Dean's just behind the scene successes. I think prompted by the Amanda Marshall album, but it goes into great detail about a lot of stuff you've done. Oh, my God. Okay, there's a lot going on here. But let's get, oh, no, it's, okay, we do have another corner here.

You ready? Yeah, let's do it. Lexicon Corner, welcome to it. And we have a very special thing here. Lexicon Redue. Lexicon. What's happening? What is happening?

Lexicon Redo. Lexicon Redo. It's a Lexicon Redo. Did you make rebu? Yeah, that's just pipes, man. That's fun. Get a little echo, a little reverb. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's big time, man. So the Lexicon Corner, typically we, you know, we look at some phrases, some key uttering. that happen repeatedly on the Toronto mic podcast. Fuck boot sauce. Fuck boot sauce would be a great one to put in the lexicon if it's not there already. I need to go back and actually like create a natural lexicon so we can keep track of

this stuff. Absolutely. Last April, so this would have been the Q1 recap, we inducted or added to the lexicon, a phrase that refers to a phenomenon that happens when someone very innocent, recently, with all the best intentions, will suggest to you, Toronto Mike, that you should have a specific guest on, even though that guest has probably already been on multiple times.

So, example of this, Hannah Sung, suggesting that you should have someone named Ed Conroy on the Toronto Mike. She cornered me at David Kine's breakfast and said, you should talk to this guy, Ed Conroy. He's got Retro Ontario and, yes. Exactly. You should talk to him.

Not knowing that he's already been on several times. He's a Hall of Famer. Like when this guy, said from high, high ball TV, this unnamed person, I don't know the gender, said, case in point. I can hook you up with Alan Cross. Yes. And I'm thinking, I can hook myself up with Alan Cross.

Yes. So, of course. We gave that a name back then. And we called it a level one convo. Yeah, I never stuck. Yeah. Just too wordy. I just forget that.

Two, two, abstract. Yeah. It's a pretentious. Little pretentious. Two level one. So we need, we need to, we need a redo. which is what prompted that little stinger. Right.

So let's let's talk about it. You know, I have a couple of potential alts. I haven't landed on anything. Well, we, I do like naming it out. But let's get the whiteboard out.

I like naming it after the origin, like naming it after Hannah. Yeah. I like that. Is that a Hannah? It could be a Hannah. That works. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's a palindrome. Yeah. Maybe this is a loss. It's a loss in a Hannah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so this is something to be workshopped. Something to be workshops and would be reconsidered. I had a couple of alts. I had archive blindness. I have... Elvis blind. That feels like an Elvis thing, not to know who's been on the show or whatever.

You know, perhaps it's the Boundella effect. Play on the Mandela effect, you know, misremembering. Sorry, again. Boondella? Boondella. Oh, Bambon. Okay, I was going to say who's... After...

Right, right, right. Bob Boone. Anyway. After Debbie Boone. Those are not the winners either. Papoon is Bat Boone still alive? Yeah, I believe so. He's in a metal mood.

Shut out the mid-term word. Forever. Anyway, I just wanted to put that. If anyone has a suggestion, by all means, hit us up at FOTM. Okay, let's take a deep breath. At gmail.com. Okay. Let's take a deep breath.

Yes. So we have now been, remember we said, let's only do 15 episodes to get this. I was thinking this should be two and a half hours top. Two hours. We're going to hit three and a half. I got Rewinder down to two hours because I put an effort into it. I said, let's get this down to two and a half hours. Yeah.

We're at 3.18. Yeah, we're going to go longer than three and a half. So glad we started to. How do we fix this for next time? I don't think we can. Yes, we can. I think we talked too much about shows that weren't in the 15. Yeah, we did.

Because we would do, maybe we do two or three minutes on a show that's not in the 15. Well, I'll be honest. I thought we were just talking about 15. I don't know why we started running to. It was fun. involvement with the production of the show. You're just a talking head, a handsome guy. I think maybe we just keep it to the 15, and we don't even mention the others.

Okay, I do want to mention the live streamers. You kind of got us an update, but Andrew Ward has joined us and says, Ben Rayner can disarm anyone when he wants to. It's true. He says, was there a, okay, so he's asking about the CF and Y dock, because famously on Toronto Mike, Danny Elwell came over, lovely woman. And Danny Elwell, she talked about resigning on the air at CF and Y. She quit on the air.

Right. It was kind of exciting. And I had the audio and I played it and she talked about it. I'm here to, Andrew's asking if that's in the dock. And I'm here to say, because I've now seen the 90 minute and the 60 minute, and that's in neither version. That was simply too late. Like that happens post-Marsden and there's not much post-Marsden in this documentary.

So it's really focused on the Spear Radio. So you will not just answer your question. You will not hear about Danny quitting on the air, although that would be a great story. It would. There's some interesting stuff left out. Like, bookie is not mentioned once. And he, because I guess he comes too late. Yeah.

You know, no bookie there. Okay. No bookie. And I found it jarring. I said this to Matt Schichter, but I found it jarring how they handle the Martin Streak stuff because there's a bunch of like, oh, Martin was great. He was the music. He loved it.

What a fantastic broadcaster. People really gravitated towards him. And then a screen, there's a black screen. And it says, and I actually reread it because I used to think it said something else. But it actually just says, in 2009, the station parted way with Martin Streak. And two months later, he passed away. we miss him or something too bad. Again, not to sound incest,

that was like well after the time in the film. Yeah, no, I know, I know. It's just interesting to bring him up, to bring him up, like, what a likable charismatic guy doing this, that, the road shows, whatever. And then the screen to say, oh, he died in 2009. It doesn't say it took his own life.

It just says he passed away. But I feel like we had, even like 30 seconds of Brother Bill tearing up talking about his friend passing away. Just something like a human that's already on the pod, like Brother Bill, because I know he did do some wonderful things, said some wonderful things

about streak. I just found it jarring to have the screen come on and say, oh, by the way, in 2000, it's like poochie returning to his planet. I just found a jarring, but maybe I'm too close to the subject matter. Hey, so Moose Grumpy's still with us, not just alive, but on the live stream, and Jeremy Hopkins still here, and, of course, you mentioned that, and Leslie's still here.

She says, she walked the dog, she's complaining about buffering on the live stream. That's an Ian service thing. And she'll have to go back and listen to Ben Rayner onwards. So that's like three hours, I'll at least braces up here.

So are you ready for the next corner? Any more lexicon? So before we move on, there's a couple things. So you alluded to it earlier, sound alike. So you mentioned that

the last guest, Matt Schichter, sounds like Mike Epple. So I pulled a couple of back-to-back clips. Let's hear that. That's exciting. Long story.

So essentially, but I'll try and do it quickly. So mid-pandemics, I was making movies, and I realized that because everything was over Zoom, unless you're on set, everything, all the prep was done over Zoom.

So it was like, oh, I could live anywhere. And Toronto's getting expensive. And there was a bunch of other stuff and whatever, a bunch of things happened. When you, when you play, as I expect you would, the initial sound of the initial sign-on of 680 news. So there you go. I don't know if I hear it. Yeah. So I heard it because I had a 90 minute.

I had 91, apparently 91 minutes. That's right in the email. It doesn't say longer than the CFNY doc. Right. Absolutely. So I chatted with Matt Shicketer for 91 minutes. And I just found his cadence and tone reminded me of chats I've had with Mike. Yeah, there's a similarity there.

And that's tough there because you have Mike on my mics. Yeah. And then you have Matt via Zoom talking into a laptop in Scotland. So there was one other sound alike that I found this from this quarter. I like this. Yeah. So, and again, I've pulled back to back. This can replace WikiLeaks.

So to me, Scott Anderson from Finger 11. Yeah. Sounds a lot like Damien Cox. Oh. Oh. When I left the stars of full-time employee in 2014, I left with a handshake agreement that I would continue to write columns for that. Well, yeah, at that point, there were so many, we would play these afternoon gigs. And there was maybe seven or eight bands on the bill. And one would be a folk band. One would be a thrash band. Totally. And then us. Interesting. I like the sound alike.

Who did you say sounded like Cam Gordon? Oh, that was Devon, Devin from Altered by Mom. They also said they were going to be a TMLX 21. Not there. But now, though, now I'm wondering maybe these people were there, and I didn't see them there. Like, so many people I've... I did not see The Altered by Mom crew. But to their credit, they were at TMOX at Grey Lakes. They came for the snowman. Anyway, sound of likes, that's...

I like it. Yeah. I can replace WikiLeaks, because there's no WikiLeaks today, but you ready for us? I did make several updates, but we just... We don't have time. We don't have time. We don't talk about it off. On the law, breaking the law. Breaking the law.

Breaking the law. Breaking the law. The floor is yours, Tyler. Oh, my God. We had so much to talk about from this quarter. I am going to need it. I have a hard drive issue already. Uh-oh.

This is going to kill it. Go ahead. Okay. We'll be quick. Uh, once again, as always, if you hear anything that sounds awry off, if you will, please email us at FOTMcast. Is that a real address? It is. Has it ever in the history of its existence received an email?

Uh, yes. Whoa! Yeah. Is that from Cam? Uh, it's received, testing if it exists. It's received a couple of, uh, Google security alerts. Right. Okay.

CAPTCHAs. Yeah, yeah. But it is active. Please email it if you hear anything. I didn't even know that. Yeah. There could be a very high value price coming your way if we use one of your fact checks. All right, let's get into it.

Gary Topps a book? Yeah, we could give that away. Apparently it's sold out everywhere. Really? And I have an unopened copy and I'm wondering what that could get me on the open market. Several dollars. All right. In the episode with the truths, Mike,

uh-oh. Referred to the AI music creation app, Suno as Sonos. What is Sonos? That's like a speaker. Oh, man speakers is that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, honest mistake.

Sunos. Mike, no doubt regrets the error. In the Christmas Crackers episode, Ed Conroy referred to the actor Roy Shider as Roy Schneider. Right, right. Ed Conroy, no doubt. Let's split the hairs.

This is where we split the hairs, folks. Okay, but we got to get it right around here. Yeah, that's what we do. In episode 1800. Yes, live from Casaloma. Live from Castlelo, song still got that thing. Oh, yeah.

Which of course is the singer for Forgotten CanCon, which we heard earlier, to Metal Queen Lee Aaron. Shout out to the Midtown Gord. That's fair. And I'm disappointed. I didn't catch that one. You didn't catch it. I know those songs.

I caught it, though. I'm busy. Because there's the Atlanta Miles song and then there's, what's a Robert Palmer song? Doctor, bad case of loving you. I always got those two songs, which is also covered by the way. Jayho, no doubt regrets that error. Very good. Rance Mullinix.

Okay. said that Dave Steeb retired at the end of 1992. Of course, he did not. He played in 1993 with the White Sox a little bit. And then 1998, of course, came back for the full season. He catches the ball. Catches the ball. Don't tell me, Bobby Higginson.

I was at the game. Two outs in the ninth and it breaks up Roy Halliday. And Roy Halliday, his first major league start, who relieved him, Dave Steep. I love this. That's poetic. Yeah, it is poetic. I think so. Beautiful.

And then finally, you did address this already on a previous episode. I believe when you talk to Stu, but have to, it is remarkable. So in the Hodge 100 countdown, Dave noted that the song Crazy Mary was written by David Page of Toto, which is clearly wrong. I believe. He had me going, though. Yeah, it must have been some sort of AI.

He's a convincing guy. He knows a shit. He's a slop thing. Dave Hodge, no doubt regrets this error. Sorry, Dave Hodge said that? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he blew my mind and then I brought it up a stone to talk about it.

Did Victoria Williams? Victoria Williams? Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's a, with a tribute, her, she had MS. She still does, I suppose. And there's no cure for MS, I don't believe. And that was sweet relief. That's right.

I owned that CD, and there were other jams. I liked a summer of drugs by Soul Asylum. Crunch band. It, guys, we made it. We did it. You ready? Yeah. Yes.

Take for a ride on the Lone, Boston, Boston, where in the world is? Stu Stone. Toronto Michael and the TM Universe. It's Stu Stone. I want to wish you a happy stew year, a happy new year, a happy 2026. Where am I? I am in Los Angeles.

Where are you? You are in the basement. You are continuing the mission into 2026 to spread joy, love, positivity and, you know, tell the stories that need to be heard. So Toronto, Mike, happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to the gang over there. guys know I love you and I just hope that your new year is filled with joy and laughter togetherness that's all I'm after call my name and I'll be there I'm looking forward to

actually doing that Mike but yeah I'm in Los Angeles I'm going to cut it short now happy new year I love all of you guys hopefully everybody makes New Year's resolutions sticks to them. I know Mike's resolution was to be less of an asshole when it comes to the Toronto Blue Jays next year. So hopefully he's going to stick to that and we'll hold him accountable. Don't you worry. I'll be seeing everybody soon. And yeah, again, happy new year. Sounds like he's driving. No idea where he was that. I just know he was in L.A. and it's always good to hear from Stu Stone who seems to be dropping by every quarter or so. Yeah, that's good. So he'll be back. But I want to make sure I am clear for the two people left listening that this episode was only possible

because of you two fine gentlemen, can't believe you just spent three and a half hours with me. And Tyler, the amount of work you put into this episode, not only do you have to listen almost every episode except poor Oren Weisfeld. Is that the only episode you missed? I missed probably half a dozen. Half a dozen too many as far as I'm concerned. I can't disagree.

You were amazing. This is why you're in the Hall of Fame. And I've got to say, I'm tickled pink, man. Tickle, tickle me Elmo. You made it happen, brother. Love you, brother. Oh, love you, too. And this handsome devil to your right.

I can't imagine anyone else I'd want to spend the winter solstice with. Is this Brian Ferry over here? It's a great way to start the, I've got, yeah. Yeah, because he's got the style. Yeah. See, you and I, I mean, you better than me. Made like a white tuxedo or something. You could dress me in the same clothes, and I can't look like this.

Yeah. Oh, come on. Yeah, they're too kind. I think it's because he's long and thin. Right. We worked you in to look like that. There you go. Handsome fuck there.

So thank you for being here. Of course. You're where the airplane crashed. I'm on the whole other part of the city, but it's always worth the dry attack. This fucker came from Mimico, man. All the way. So thank you too for doing this. Of course.

Great hangs of you for three and a half hours. My God. Who would have thought? Are we going to do it again in three months' time? We're going to four hours. I think we already have a date. But I want to make. sure this is on the record that people can call us on

this. We have to make changes. We can't do three and a half hours. Yeah. Can't live this way. Oakville Mike is here. I don't think we've said hi to him. Oh, Oakville Mike. Who is Oakville Mike? All right, just close to the Oakville Mike. The Oakville Mike. I love it when Carlos Delgado shows up. Oh, my God. That's a big deal to me. He should have been in the Hall of Fame.

That's that. I got to ask. Rance. Although Rance doesn't overlap with him at all. Rance is out after 92. But he was on the broadcast when I think he'll get in. He'll get like a veterans committee. Yeah, I think so too.

And that brings us to the end of our 1,828th show. 1828, first episode of the new quarter. Much love to all who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery. Palma Pasta,

Nikainis. Recycle my Electronics.ca and Ridley Funeral Home. See you all Monday when my special guest is making his Toronto mic debut. Joey C. See you all then. That's my favorite part, by the way. You know,

I'm going to be able to know Thank you.