Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - FOTMCast: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1928

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

In this 1928th episode of Toronto Mike'd and 10th FOTMCast, Mike chats with Cam Gordon and Tyler Campbell about everything that's happened in the TMU (Toronto Mike'd Universe) over the past quarter. This episode is for realheads only!A version of this podcast without programmatic ads is available to all Toronto Mike'd Patrons at patreon.com/torontomike.Toronto Mike'd, an award-winning podcast, is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, 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]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Lauren Honickman, lawyer and former City TV's legal specialist. The following episode of F-O-T-M cast is intended for real heads only. If you're not deeply immersed in the TMU, a devout F-O-T-M, 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 or... That's my sound, man. Midtown Gord, can we talk about my scrotum? And my scrotum exploded. My scrotum was enormous. If you ever take penicill and your scrotum will balloon. No photo exists of my scrotum.

Coming 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. Welcome to episode 1,928 of Toronto Mike, an award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great LakesBear.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian.

and pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more. Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball. Catch a game at Christy Pits this summer. No ticket required. Fusion Corp's own Nick Aeini's. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Mike and Nick. Two podcasts that you ought to listen to.

Recyclemyelectronics.c.c.a.com.ca. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. I think I'll just play the next 10 minutes of this great hip song. What is this song called? The Depression Suite. Oh, is that? Okay.

This is your favorite hip song, right, Tyler? It's certainly probably top three, I would say. And I know why we're playing it, but let's, uh, let people know that this is the 10th FOTM cast. So happy anniversary, boys. Happy 10th. And joining me. Two and a half years.

Good math. That's why you're the director of communications at TMDS. But joining me today for this 10th FOTM cast, it is indeed Cam Gordon and Tyler Campbell, the VP of Sales. Hello, guys. Good to see you guys. Happy Canada Day. Canada days.

I have in my hand a copy of track changes. Placement copy. They gave one to Cadence Weapon, fellow author. How come Cadence Weapon is in the book? He did an interview for the book, but you didn't give him a copy. I haven't seen him since the book came out.

I mean, he lives in Hamilton, and you know, I'm a self-published author. I can't give these the way. What about a PDF? You can't email him a PDF in the book and say, hey, you're in this. He knows. I mean, he doesn't. He doesn't. He's very gracious with his time already. I don't want to bother him.

Well, thank you for the replacement copy that you gave me at TMLX22. And thank you VP for putting together that introduction. And every quarter you pick a song that's relevant to the quarter. And I'm very happy you chose the Depression Suite because it was a key part of my Elmo gig. Indeed. You know, I always agonize over the song choice, but really there was there was no other choice this quarter. No other choice here. So let's check in how you're doing.

Let's start with UVP. How is life? Life is good, very busy as it has been for the last several months. But, you know, things are, I think some balance is being restored, which is nice. And I'm just very happy to be here. You know, the summer is in full swing. And it's a wonderful time to be alive. Summer is killing us.

We're just going to sing hip songs. Is this a balance also your favorite band? Oh my God, I love balance. Is humans being on that one? I think so. Is this with like the Siamese twins on the cover or something? Yeah. Yeah.

I do have a question, Cam, for you. Can you please fill us in? Fill in the TMU because of course this episode is for real heads only. So please fill in Mike Eppel and let them know what's this walk and how is, I feel like Christopher Walk, this walk. Tell me about the walk and how it involves a beloved FOTM, Jeremy Hopkins, who is, is joining us on the live stream right now. Hello,

hello, hello, Jayho on the live stream and we'll see you in 48 hours. So, yeah, so Jeremy and I are going to be hosting a walk. We're calling it a historical walk on Wednesday night.

And what this is, is this is going to be a deep dive and tons of fun facts about three major retailers at the pass of young Dundas. We're going to be talking about Sam the Record Man, 347 Young Street. We're going to be talking about, HMV. 333. 33, Youngstreet.

and we're going to be talking about the world's biggest bookstore on Edward Street. I can't think of the address. It was probably multiple. Well, no A&A records discussion here. Maybe we'll do that next summer. Music world. Music world, right, right.

Yeah, so this is going to be sort of modeled after, you know, doors open and, you know, you see FOTM, Johnny Dovercourts, and a few of these are great, like an L. Okay, but be specific here. I'm dumb. I'm dumb. So what time should I be and where should I go? Like where exactly should I be outside the cock door or whatever, 333? Close, very close.

So we're going to be meeting, go to 10 Edward Street. So the location there is BMW books. And sorry, this is the 8th of July? Yeah, the 8th. So this is this Wednesday. Okay, what time? 7 p.m. Hold on.

Go to my calendar right now, okay? Okay. 7 p.m. Meet J. Ho N. Cam. Do we need to register for this? No, this is a free event. To show up. All my events are free. All my events.

All eight listeners. It's like TMLX. Like it's pretty much modeled. Everything but the Elmo gig. All eight listeners of FOTM cast are taking a note here. Leslie Taylor, take this down. Say that address again that we go to. Okay, so it's going to be 10 Edward Street. So that's

BNV Books. That's right beside where the world's biggest bookstore used to be. We're actually going to be across the street. So you'll see the little crowd there. you'll see the gathering crowds gathering crowds we'll be playing

you know twib notes and all the things how about Jeremy's going to be all suited up in his typical garb that he gets up to

so of course what will you be wearing yeah I'll probably be wearing something similar to what I'm wearing but not just not the baseball you get chills

when you hear this song in the headphones and then you look over Cam's got a bat in his hand a wooden bat I get chills I'm ready for

slugger yeah I'm ready for Vince Scully in the game of the week put me in coach yeah Mel Allen. Met's Astros on a Saturday afternoon.

How about that? Howard Johnson. It's like Ozzy Smith is doing like a backflip right now. San Diego chicken. Absolutely. Yeah. Morris Schott is saying something racist. Yeah.

Of course. What a time would be alive. Dog took a shit on the Astro turf. It's awesome. Shotsie. It was Shotsie. Yeah. Very good.

Anyway, this walks could be about an hour. Back to your event. Yeah. And it's really for music lovers. It's for people who love history. I've been promoting it on different like Facebook accounts where there's actually like an alumni account for people who worked at Sam the Record Man

and also for HMV. I hope he can make it. Robbie J might be there. He actually worked at H&B. East York Zone. Yeah, absolutely. So I think it'll be a good mix of people used to work there, just fans, curious onlookers. It's actually getting quite a bit of media.

I'm going to be doing a bit of a media tour the next couple days. I actually did an interview today was CTV News. I'm going to be on the news tomorrow at 6 p.m. Who conducted the interview? I know. I know this guy. Yeah. I know this guy. Very nice guy. Very nice guy. So we shot it down a Young Dynasty Square with the two records in the background. How, because it's just years of building your Rolodex where you can just say, I want to be on CTV, City TV, I want to be on CP24. I want to be on CBC. Well, I mean, it's very

impressive. I mean, it's helpful like this is what I do professionally, like PR. So I know. some of these people. You know the ropes. Yeah, but like people honestly just love this topic. They love, you know, you see these Facebook accounts with all the boomers, like you put a fake photo of like Sam the Rackardman. It's like, I went down there every boxing day and I bought all the CD. Oh, speaking of the AI Slop you're referring to. I know exactly what you're referring to.

It's going to be a slop pre-event. Jeremy Hopkins is in my calendar to go off on AI Slop for like 90 minutes. Well, I did mention this today when I spoke to Rahim at CTV. I'm, you know, why are you doing this? I'm, you know, celebrating the loss of these places that were, you know, get places, people, there were community outposts, you know, they were, they were for-profit institutions, but they acted very much like, you know, community centers. You could just go there, you didn't have to spend anything, you'd just hang out,

want to be a musical lovers, book lovers. And I was saying, as these go into the past, like, we're almost at the 20-year mark of Sam of the Record Made being gone because it wrapped up in 2007. Right. And then you factor in all. all this AI shit and all these like all this slop and people just want to react to the stuff the actual history is going to go away really quickly we're going to stayho and i are going to stop this that's why that's why we do what we do like you resemble this mark this what this what's what you do this is

why we exist this is it that that's why this fucking okay what's why i took an hour to get here i'm so fucking fired up right now i got to shed out rob proofs break stuff Fred Durst over here. Okay. Oh, it was feist. I'm like, what did I say that cracked us up earlier? Okay, it was feist. Okay, so Jeremy Hopkins is on the live stream,

live dot Toronto Mike.com. He says he can't wait to go off on AI slop. That's on Toronto Mike. That episode might be Monday. I got to check, Mike. It might be a week today. But he also can't wait to do the walk with Cam. So it's in my calendar.

Yeah. Maybe the presence of me will attract people. people like, who the fuck would it attract? Midtown Gord. Yeah, but he said, because it's not during the day. Yeah, he can't. Hey, Midtown, what do you got going on the evening of Wednesday that you can't? That's okay.

It's busy. Don't pry. He was at the Elmo gig. I know that's on the agenda. I should pass the baton back to VP. I always take over these effort Tamcast. But all means. Okay, so all I want to say is Rob Pruss is currently in Italy.

Mm-hmm. Oh. Have you guys ever been to Italy? Just once. But that's enough. Going this fall. Are you early? I am.

You're making your Italy. I've been to Italy just once as well, Cam Gordon. But we've all got, well, soon VP will join the club or whatever. But Rob Proust is making his, he's right now in Italy for the first time. And he's interested in a soccer match, which is, it's very late in Italy, but he's going to stay up and do FOTM cast. And then he's going to do this Belgium versus USA World Cup knockout game. And my son, my 12-year-old, how old is he now? Okay, he's going, we're going to do FOTM cast,

but it will overlap with this match. And he'll come down the stairs. Like, if you hear footsteps coming down that stairs, you know a goal was scored, and he's going to just take that mic from the VP. And he's going to announce the goal. He might even describe the goal. So we'll learn what's going on in Belgium versus USA.

It's like, little Scott Ferguson, pitter-patter down the stairs. You know, FOTM Scott, I hope he's okay. I haven't heard from him in a long, long time. Let's call him right now. I'm pretty sure it was. was his voice the first time I found out about the Roberto Alamar trade, like the first one. Oh, wow. Because I remember he like broke in.

He said, oh, we do have a trade. And there was like a, there was like a 20 seconds delayed. And he was like, oh, oh. That's going to tie into this past quarter because a person who's involved in that trade has been on the Toronto mic microphones. And we'll get to that later. But that's a teaser. Not Roberto Alamard. No.

The crime dog. I will say, I was at a Jay's game last week. and they showed a Roberto Alamar home run on the Jumbotron. I'm actually surprised. So was I. But it wasn't the Eckersliss Lee. You know what? Sometimes moments are too big to cancel.

It's really hard to do that one. That's a huge moment. Yeah. Like if Kurt Gibson goes out of murders 20 people tonight. Okay. You know what I mean? Sure. I mean, they can't delete that moment from the montage.

Speaking of Twib. Yeah. Aren't people are. arguing he should win a world series MVP for that? That's ridiculous. Come on. I was his only at bad of the series. Like oral hers. Hello, Oral Hirshizer.

Yeah. Like, give me a break. What was it? Rod Black. This will come later. We'll talk about our favorite episodes of the quarter. We're going to get right to it. But he made a comment on my microphones

that there should be a statue of Roberto Alamar outside the dome. And I almost said it on the, I think I said that's not going to happen or something. But my thought was, there's a better chance that we erect a status. statue of Stu fucking Stone outside the Skydome, right?

There's a better chance they got a statue of Leslie Taylor baking cookies for TMLX. That'd be a great statue. I will say, and also an early candidate for the biggest Lawson of Q3 is Ed Keenan saying Rod Black is going to run for the material.

I was like, what? Stoville maybe. Who did you like to talk about Rod Phillip? Yeah. But he said Rod Black. Okay. We all do it. We all do.

How do you want to structure this? I know you sent notes. Let me check the notes here. Yeah. We got to get into this. It's very loose. It's very loose. I think we should talk about the Elmo gig off the top because that was a very significant moment.

And that was May 21st. And I actually, other than like a couple of minutes with Blair Packham, there hasn't been anyone on the microphones who was at that event. So it has not been discussed. Yeah. So let's discuss it. I think it's important. Can I just sit back and listen and then I'll chime in as required.

So yeah, I mean, let's just sort of set the scene for those who weren't there. You know, how you're going to unpack it. You know, and what was, did you have a count on the number of people who were there? I was told 85 people. It was a very full. Healthy crowd. Healthy crowd. Gathering crowds.

Yeah. You know, I saw a lot of, I did, I will say I knew probably 90% of the faces in the room. But there were some, some unfamiliar faces. But there were regulars that we've come to. Yes. Yes. Including you both. Face in the crowd, Tom Petty.

Just like, we'll just name us on. Full Moon fever was a great album. Oh my God. Love that album. So much. Tom Petty solo. Yeah. Not,

yeah. Although most of the heartbreakers are on that album. It's confusing. Including Mike Campbell? Mike Campbell's on that album. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But not the FOTM.

No. Not the FOTM. There's a baseball player. Yeah. I'm sure. How many Will Smiths are there in the world that are famous? Too many. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't, there's two Max Muncie's playing in MLB right now. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Well, who's the hockey player? There's two of him. They're both good.

Oh, Sebastian. Right. Right. Okay. Anyway, back to the Elmo. I like tangents. You know, and, you know, you get there, Toronto Mike is on the marquee at the Elmo. You walk in, there's a big Toronto Mike. I'm going to close my eyes and relive that night. There's a big Toronto Mike logo as you walk into the sort of the foyer of the theater. That was cool. That was cool. You know, the staircase, the vaunted staircase with all the stenciled band names, artists who've performed there. Duran, Duran, Toronto Mike. Yeah, Toronto Mike.

I was between, I think I was between chaos and step and wolf. Does that sound right? Which is about where I would put you on the cultural pantheon. Quick tangent, we're coming right back to the Elmo gig. I can't wait to talk about it. But the Toronto Star put out their 25 biggest Toronto jams, right? The number one jam was chaos as crab bucket. I did not know that was a Toronto jam.

Am I the only one he didn't know that was a Toronto jam? Like it's a great fucking song. Sure. I love that song. I would not have thought of that. What's the Toronto? I don't know what's, I'm not sure. I didn't read in.

I just saw the list and then I copied it. Because Ed Keenan brought this up last week, which is not a, that's from the next quarter. You can't talk about that next quarter. But he said, oh, he wanted to ask me what's missing because there's a couple of the spadina bus by the shuffle demons was missing. But number one, being chaos is crab bucket. I need more intel as to what makes out of Toronto jam.

I think we're going to need a separate episode. It's not obvious. Back to you. But I was between chaos and. Steppenwolf. And Steppenwolf, coincidentally, was in my one-man show. That's right. Yeah. The family ties stuff. That's right. I literally wrote this thing for myself. So if you appreciate it, that means you're... There was a point when Cam and I were sitting near the back and I looked at my watch and I was like,

he has another 30 minutes to go. Like, how is he going to do it? Really? Yeah. Did I see me, did it appear I was running out of steam? You weren't running out of steam. It was just like, we had been there for an hour. hour and it felt like I've gotten my money's worth. I've certainly gotten my $65. There was a grand finale in store. There was a grand finale. But like how is he going to fill 30 more minutes of material? Like he did it. He did it. Like most, you know, you watch a stand-up special on Netflix or whatever and they're 60 minutes long. Right. Comics do 60 minutes. Yeah, the new Louis CK thing I saw was like 50 minutes. Yeah, yeah. You did 90 minutes like on the dot.

Can I ask you dumb? I'm going to interrupt quite a bit I realize, but I didn't have a template or a a blueprint or whatever. So I just thought 90 was like when you see a movie, it's like the perfect length for a movie was 90 minutes. So I just thought, hey, I should do 90 minutes. Like it never occurred to me. I could do 45 fucking minutes. But you also thought like Rob would be like vamping.

Oh, that's, you know, Proust. So I mentioned he was in Italy for a reason because on the live stream. He's getting a catalytic converter. I knew. Oh, Andy says everybody who's listening to this episode was at the Elmo, but that's not true because Mike Eppel couldn't make it. He had a conflict. So Mike Apple is listening to this episode

and he was not at the Elmo. Leslie says no statues of me. But I just want to read something Rob Pruse wrote and then we'll get right back to the Elmo here. He wrote that, oh, could we were playing the Depression Suite? Yes. And he said, it's pausing for dramatic effect here.

What did he say, my name? I know how to play this song. And he knows how to play a song because I told him to learn this fucking song because it was supposed to be part of the one man's show. And Jeho just says he remembers at the Elmo when I pointed at him. and I said, you're going through something.

Yes, I did this thing where I pointed at people. Like real people in the crowd. And I said, I knew Jayho was going through something. You could just see it in his hat. That's right. Back to you. I looked them straight in the hat. Yeah.

And this has been covered on toast. This has been covered elsewhere. But Rob Pruse, you know, the venerable, lovable Rob Pruse, former member of the Spoon. Says you. Honeymoon sweet. Was unable to make it.

You would plan this show for months with Rob, with music cues, and he had a drummer that was going to come. Yeah, from platinum blonde. Right. Right.

We're not fucking around, Cam. Yeah. Not the original platform. No, no. No, no. That's okay. Good to afford that guy. Yeah.

So yeah, MF wasn't there. She was not there. Why not? You have to ask her. I think that's bullshit. Please continue. Okay. So, like,

it was what, like 24 hours before the show? Yeah, like about, yeah, about 26 hours. And so you had to completely change everything. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't really, like I had a lot going on. Yeah. So the main thing I did right away was get a new opening act. Right.

So Blair Packham came through with flying colors and we talked about that recently for ReWinder. Yeah, he was great. And he did a 45 minute set. So I basically said, okay, I said, Blair, I think, I'm trying to get my time right. Yeah, I said, Blair, 715, you're going to play for 45 minutes. and at exactly 8 o'clock, I'm going to take that mic,

and I'm going to hold that mic till 9.30, and then there's a top secret grand finale. Yes. The corporate said he did. It was good. Oh, yeah, you heard the Rewinder. He says he held back. That's right.

I didn't even know he was holding. I didn't know he had more. Well, to, I mean, to his point, you know, there's a lot of chatter in the room. Like a TMLX event, people are catching up. They're saying hello. They're chit-chatting. Yeah.

So, you know, not all the focus was on Blair. But his songs were great. He performed beautifully, as he always does. And a great recording exists. It's pristine recording because all that audio tech is brand new. Like it broke the Weckerly Bank. I was going to say it, bankrupt, former owner. It's like 30 million.

This studio you're in now is like, you know, everything combined is like $3,000. The court case around it, like if you read deep it, like it's really, really interesting. It's just so much money. And we benefited because the engineer, Doug McClement, did it for free. He recorded it for free because he's a BFF of Blair Packham. Like legendary recording engineer, Doug McCleman. The tragically hip at Edgefest, okay? And Toronto Mike at the Elmo.

Exactly. So you can hear, so on my YouTube channel, all 45 minutes of Blair Packham, I urge you to check it out. He was fantastic. He was. Excellent. And then, and you were, you know, you weren't backstage in the green room, big timing, everyone. I was told to go back there and I refused. No, you were out there with the crowd.

You were saying hello, shaking hands. All my friends were there. Yeah, you were hanging out with your friends. And then you just very seamlessly stepped up on the stage at 8 o'clock and started your house. It was 8 o'clock. It was time for me to do my thing. That's right. I'm too dumb to know better.

So, yeah, at 8 o'clock, I literally grabbed the mic. It was exactly 8 o'clock. I'm like, oh, that's impressive. I'm like the World Cup. It starts on time. As Lauren Michael says, we don't go on because we're ready. Right. We go on because it's 8 o'clock.

And I also, we both saw Lauren. We did. And I got to say, I find Lauren, not Lauren Honicman, he's great too. We've already heard him today. But Lorne Michaels, I find him to be inspiring as fuck. Like a lot of his thoughts on things I try to apply here, just a smaller audience. Yeah, compelling personality. Eight people instead of, you know, whatever's going on over there.

Okay, back to the alma. We're going to hear a little bit more about Lorne Michael a little later on. show. Is he going to make it a, is he going to zoom in? He is going to run in. Yeah. So yeah, so you had to switch gears. You know, at one point, I think maybe for a small group of friends or, you know, maybe at a future TMLX, maybe you'd do the show with Rob and see what that. Anything is possible. Anything is possible. I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. I couldn't even get robbed at TMLX 22. We'll see what I can do. Yeah. Anyway, you know, there were, there were moments. I didn't know what to expect. I don't think anyone really did. No, because I didn't tell anyone anything. Monica didn't know what to expect. Yeah.

And I will say, they were, it really, you took us on a journey. There were moments that were funny. There were moments that reminded me of your delivery, reminded me of Norm MacDonald. Oh, that's a high compliment. Yeah. That's how my brain works.

Yeah. There were, there were poignant moments. Wow. And it was just, I felt very inspired by the whole thing because you said you were going to do it and you did it. And, you know, you got to, you were, there are a lot of people chirping, oh, you know, you got to go to comedy clubs and work out your act. Not even chirping, but Humble Howard had the best of intentions when he told me how I had to work this in comedy clubs. Yeah, tight five. But you did it.

And even the Gere Joyce's, I mean, Gere, it was a, you know, tongue and cheek, I think, but he talked about. about, you know, 90 minutes, like on stage, you're going to die up there. Yeah. And you didn't. You didn't die. I did not die. No. Shout out to really feel.

I mean, it seemed to me almost more, like there were almost like a spoken word element. Yeah. This is not even. Like a swimming to Cambodia. I was going to say a spalding gray. See, I, because this is, this is what, to be honest, this is what came to me on a bike ride in pieces. Yeah. And then it formulated.

It just crystallized. And then I literally would go. on bike rides, which I was going to do anyways, and I would kind of map, basically I would memorize it. Yeah. Like I would. And you were,

you were totally off book for this thing. What does that mean? Like, like you weren't looking at notes. Oh, no, so no, no,

Stu Stone, who may or may not be discussed later, Stu Stone, I think the day before he came on and he said, I should put on the floor. Oh, yes. The sequencing. Yes.

And I did. Like, I literally, I said, oh, Stu, I said, Stu, that's a good idea. Yeah. Like, so I had on the floor,

a piece of paper printed out a sequence scene, But everything was memorized. Yeah. But the order of things. Right. I mean, that's impressive because, again, everything seemed to be a non-sequitur. Like, there wasn't any flow to it from what I saw. Like, I don't think of it.

I was just saying it wasn't like, there was it like sequential? I recorded it. Let's play it together. Peace by piece. Yeah. No, but even flow. You jumped around. There were different topics and different through lines to the act.

Different experience. answers? Yeah. Yeah. You referred earlier to the, the top secret grand finale. At one point, I thought it was going to be snow because I saw Snow's guy there. His, yeah, his right-hand man, Frankie was there. And I was like, oh, here we go. It's going to be snow. But it was not snow because later on... That's a good guess, though, because that did cross my mind. Later on, I went to the bathroom and I came back and there were Ron Hawkins and Lawrence Nichols standing at the back of the room.

room. Ron was watching the Habs game with his family and paused it to head over to the Elmo because Lawrence did the sound check and it was like under the covert darkness like trying to do this sound check so nobody saw him do the sound check. It was very cool. I mean those guys I'm sure played the alma combo a million times, not desideration, but the previous, a lot of history there. So my, I don't know if this played well. I've never, you know, I've never talked to anyone about this actually. So I'm going to spend three. hours where I asked questions about how it was he? But I did in my mind, again, I don't know, this is all just a bike ride, and then I memorize it. And I never said to a human until I did it in,

that 90 minutes in front of the crowd, which Peter Gross fell me up to tell me was delivered impeccably. And it felt like praise from Caesar. I'm like, Peter Gross just told me, he couldn't believe I didn't make more mistakes, but it was in there and I just had to come out. Okay, but there it is. I was trying to, you know, because I have a small camera on me. No one will know what I'm holding up here. Okay, but I wanted to sell the cherry blossom as the grand finale. Like, my idea was, you got to sell the grand finale as the cherry finale, which was going to work 100 times better when Rob Pruse was on stage with me.

Like this was one of the things tied to Rob being on, hey, Rob, you're still awake? Yeah, he's got a green ball on live dot tronemite.com. So I was trying to sell the cherry blossom, which, by the way, if I open it up, this is the only cherry blossom I've ever had. But you'll see here. There are teeth marks. There's a chunk missing because I ate a big bite of this on stage at the Elmo. So you see this?

So I took a big bite of it. Yeah. Is there like coke? Like what's in the middle? Like beyond cherry. Like is there like coconut or? You wouldn't you like no? It's just that gooey cherry bullshit.

It was. So I took a big bite of it. And the, I told the boys from lowest of the low, when I bite into the cherry blossom, that's their cue. Okay. So when I bite into that cherry blossom, they were supposed to like, it's supposed to be a hostile takeover. Like,

they're going to cause some ruckus, and they're going to storm the stage, and they're going to tell me, that's not how you close your Elmo debut. This is how you close it. And they were going to play Rosie and Gray. They kind of did that. Like they were sort of like blustery.

Like hey, yeah. And then so when I'm biting into the, first of all, I was like, part of me was thinking, oh, we're 90 minutes deep and I'm done. Like I was like, oh, that was like relief. Like, oh, I finished this 90 minutes. But I heard this voice.

I can't remember what the voice said. But I did record it. Oh, you know what I have it. Do you have a clip of this or not? I don't have a clip. I'll play something that I have here. So let's listen together to this. Okay, this is the grand finale, everybody.

I'm unwrapping my cherry blossom. I've never had one. This is happening. Oh, my goodness. I hope I don't get like, I don't know what to expect. But this is for Rob Pruss. Thank you for the cherry blossom.

Good callback. Good old a callback. That's right. Who's that? Lawrence. is it? Who's here? I'm sticking the landing by eating my first and last cherry blossom. Who the hell are...

What the hell? There you go. Ron Hawkins and Lawrence Nichols from lowest of the low. And that delivery was like Simpson style where you act surprised these grandfilling guys. That recording is like it's very good. Christine like a Europe. Doug McClemmet, man.

He doesn't fuck around. Very nice. He doesn't back around. So there you go. And then they play Rosie and Gray, which is also in this file. But I don't know if I'll get to it. But we can hear the beginning of it.

I don't think there's any definitive way to end a show, but I mean, soft chewing noises. It's probably not on the list. Yeah, that's certainly not the way to go out. Well, that's Ron Hawkins, everybody. But, you know, Mike and his show, I think, has given us a really decent template on how you do end a show. Well, he gave us the first $15. We're going to give you the next 50. Hey, go.

Hey, no. I'm just kidding. So there you go. Amazing. Incredible. So I want to say thank you to you both for being. in there. I noticed the other... Wouldn't have missed it. Who is it? No, Stu?

Stu was there. Stu was there. Bob was working. Bob Willett. I'm just thinking the regulars. And Rob Pruse had a catalytic converter stolen from underneath his car, so it couldn't make it there. But it was great to have you guys there. Yeah, so congratulations, Mike. Like, you really pulled it off. It was quite a beautiful night, and I was very, very happy and fortunate to be there. And you say you'll never do it again. Will you never be on a stage again?

I don't know that, but this whole idea of performing something like that was never a dream of mine. Like I never intended to do it. It was never something I wanted to do. It's kind of amazing it happened because the way it happened. And I'm glad I did it. But at this point, as I speak to you over a month later, I've never even considered doing it again. Who was your, the benefactor? Melissa Stein.

Melissa Stein. What was Melissa Stein's feedback at the end of the night? Melissa Stein. Did she leave early? Oh, I don't know. because I only see, that's one thing when you're on stage. I think she stayed.

She was in the VIP area. No, she was there after the show. Champagne lounge. I saw her, I saw her after the show. So Melissa and I never ever once discussed what I was going to do. Like she just booked it.

So we never had a single combo of what I was going to do. But I am all but, well, she basically told me. Like she, she didn't know what to expect. No, what she saw during this 90 minutes I delivered was not what she expected.

But when I, I asked her to... It would be weird if this... Like, that's totally what I expected. But I asked her to articulate what she expected and she was unable to do so. So that's where that's at. But the impetus was just, you're funny. I'm going to book the Elmica.

The Casilloma. I think it was the Casaloma episode with Jeremy Hopkins. Yeah. So the Elmo gig is done and that was the past quarter and I'm glad we could finally talk about it. Because Blair was the only person who's been on this microphone who was there. And he said positive things. But then... So Peter Gross said very positive.

things. And then he said a question he had allowed was, I wonder how that would play in front of people who don't listen. And I thought that sounded like the worst idea I've ever heard because I wrote it and it was designed as for me and what I do, which is this. And I feel like if you didn't listen, that might not be your cup of tea. Prior knowledge. I don't know if you like that. You might not like that. You might not. You might not appreciate it. I wouldn't recommend paying 65 bucks for the ticket if you've never heard of me. High ticket price. High ticket price.

But it is done. Worth every dollar. It's never going to happen again. So if people did want to hear it, it was recorded. And I did drop it as an episode of Toronto mic to this past court. I can't remember the number, but you'll find it. Yeah, it's out there. I don't know if you've addressed this.

You're approaching 2000. Right? I am, yes. This is episode 1928. Yeah. I guess that'll be by the end of the year, 2000. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

You'll hit. Oh, yeah. I haven't done the math on it. What do you have planned? Is there any exclusive? As we speak, I don't have a plan. I was joking that I, uh, where did I, uh, I, I thought I should do it with the guys from Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie.

Yeah. That's true. Right. But I don't know. I actually have no plans. So, well, you know, next time you're on, it won't be 2000 yet. And maybe we can talk more about that. I think that'll be Q4 that you'll hit 2000.

Okay. That's good. Yeah. Good way to end the year. Okay. Because I don't know what I'm going to do for 2000. I might like, it might be fun to do. nothing, like just to have a normal episode.

Yeah. Muffy Mouse or something like that. I don't know. So the Elmo gig happened this past quarter. Yes. But I also want to thank everybody because that event was $65 and it's amazing that anyone would buy that ticket. Like I knew that. That was a different vibe knowing, but it also felt like, oh, I've got to deliver some value here because people bought a ticket.

But it was a different vibes. You know, they coughed up some like hold hard cash for this. But TMLX22 happened this past quarter not too long ago. it was at the Great Lakes Brewery, and I got to say, thank you to Palma Posta for feeding us. Thank you to Great Lakes for hosting and for giving everybody a free beer. And I got to say thank you to everybody who came out.

It was just amazing. The vibes were good. It was amazing to see you guys. The rain held off. TMLX-22, and thank you to Leslie Taylor for the cookies. She baked us all cookies, and I love the cookies. My mom is buying cookies from Leslie Taylor for my brother's birthday, and I have to pick them up in Leslieville,

because if you're named Leslie, you have to live in Leslieville. Correct. So I'm going to bike to Leslieville and pick up the cookies for my brother's birthday. What the cookies break? I don't know. I haven't thought that part of head.

Maybe there'd be like a bubble wrap or something, but I have to get it before I go camping. That's the deal. That's happening. Oh, right. You're getting your little freebie car, Mr. Fon. Our guys, except when it's like, you know,

driving season in the summer. How did you know about the car? How did you know about the car? Actually, you know, I discovered something very disturbing with Trotomike.com. I was looking. It was something, I think it was something to do

with the... Hold on. I'm gonna mute you now. But you actually have all these tags of all these names of cars on your blog. Are you in bed with big auto? I never denied this.

I know. Just say, I do. I was a little surprised. I do review cars on the side. It's a little surprise. I borrow the car. Yeah.

And I review it. Okay. I've been doing this since 2008. Fucking Eric Thomas. Race line radio. I do that, but I don't like, I don't hide it.

I just want to know what car I'm picking up. Do you want to hear? What are you got? I'm going to tell you in a second here. I got a camping trip. What am I picking up here? Give me a moment here.

I want to get this right. What am I picking up? This is a compelling audio. It is. Like searching through his email. I'm going to, like, Autobahn.

Oh, here it is. I am going to be picking up in later this month for the camping. Oh, it is a Santa Fe. Oh, the Hyundai. Hyundai, right? Hyundai, Santa Fe. Hyundai, right?

What does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know. Okay, so it's a Santa Fe, H-E-V. I don't know. E-B is probably environment. Yes. Do you ever go through the agency,

or is this always right through the car companies? No, I'm curious. I don't know. I don't understand the question fully, but since 2008, I've been doing this. I don't know if that means agency versus whatever. It just,

they want me to try their cars. I need a big car to go camping, and it all works out. Yeah, win-win. Win-win. Everybody wins. It's a hybrid electric. Okay, thank you for that.

Hybrid electric. Okay, thank you. When's your camping trip? It's like the 23rd maybe of July. Let me get that. Sorry, where are you going? Oh, the Pinerary. Oh, very nice.

What campsite are you? I have that information here. It's all here my Google calendar, which is loading very slowly for some reason. But yeah, this is all happening. It happens. Pinerary is cool. Okay. So it's 190.

Oh, that's actually the address of Pinery. Oh, it's 195. Okay. That's my campsite. Okay. Yeah. Enjoy. So come, come see me.

Enjoy the Pinery. Bring food. I will have my 10 year old and my 12 year old, and they need to be fed. So, yeah, it turns out I'm leaving on the 20, I'm getting the car on the 20th of July, and I will be departing on the 21st, the morning of the 21st. I'm getting depressed, like, already like late July. I know. Summer is just flying.

You know. It's only the 6th of July. Okay, please continue to... So, TMLX22 was awesome. Yeah, great time. And the Elmo gig was awesome. Indeed. What else was awesome, VP? Well, I mean, do we want to say anything about the World Cup? It's happening. The Toronto games are over. Well, I don't know if that's an FOTM cast thing. That seems too... I just, I think...

Accessible. Sure, it is. But I think, you know, it had an impact on our city. We live in this city. And, you know, I think, you know, when we look back on the World Cup and say it was worth it for us to have these games. Oh, yeah. Are you concerned that the R.O.I was in submission? I'm not concerned about that. I think it was great. Did you guys do any of the act?

I know you had your sort of faux pot. Oh, I'm going. No, but I have fan fest tickets for the final. Oh. It's like a viewing party. It's, uh, whatever's the Bentway one. There's a Bentley for York, I guess. Like, Benway beers, you know, we spent a lot of time under the bridge.

The Tio Waterfront, Waterfront Tio was a sponsor. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like part of the deal here. Yeah, yeah. So I've been watching everything. Yeah. Like I hook it to my, even the group stage stuff. I just fucking love this tournament.

But I've always, before we hosted it and before Canada had a decent team, I fucking love the World Cup. I love it. Yeah. I've been really enjoying this, this World Cup, some very exciting football. I'm hoping with all my heart and soul that by the time we wrap this recording, Belgium's up 3-0 because my team

my team now is whoever's playing the United States. I was Japan. There you got that jersey. I was playing Brazil and I was rooting like I was Japanese and I was rooting hard for Japan

in my Japanese, my Japan jersey and Brazil did win that match. Sure. But yeah, I got two nice jerseys from the good people at Adida. Thank you.

Was that event fun? Like you spoke quite highly a bit. That activation down at a stacked market? I never said it was fun. I met some interesting people like Gerdip and Gareth Wheeler and Gabby. Gabby, right? These are some of the people I met there. All Richards. I met someone else there, but it wasn't a fun interaction.

He lives in Alberta. Is it you said that? Someone said it. Yeah, he told me. He says he married an Alberta. Okay. Because I also married in Alberta. But he said, oh, you're lucky.

Your Alberta lets you live in Toronto. Like he seemed like, oh, ticked off. He has to live in like Calgary or something. Calgary. Okay. And he takes trips, many trips. to Toronto for work. Stampede time.

Have you guys been to Calgary Stampede? No, but I actually just yesterday said to myself, maybe I should go to this thing. Do they let lefties like me? Can I bike there? Dusting. Sure you can. Back there.

Yeah, so this installation by Adidas, who didn't pay for any advertising, but they gave me two lovely jerseys, so I'll say it. Was, like Jesse Reyes did a intimate performance. I don't know if you know this singer. I don't know if Cam knows Jesse Reyes. And I was invited,

I was also invited to a Big Sean. Big Sean. Do we know Big Sean? I'm familiar. By name. Yes. So there was a top secret Big Sean performance I invited to but I politely declined that

invitation but it was a cool space I thought it was a cool place to watch a match you know but I didn't watch it. I actually, the match was coming up and it was a Mexico match and I wanted to be home for it. So I left the viewing party to watch it in my living room.

of your own. Comfort of your own. There you go. Okay. So there's your World Cup. So I'm enjoying the World Cup. I love the vibes. And I'll be rooting for Belgium tonight.

I don't know if you guys can tell. Like I haven't watched anything. Like I'm not following this at all. Like even can. Who are you? Blair Packham? Listen. You know what I?

You like events? You like sports. You know what I think it is? I think I'm so turned off by the Js. Oh, yeah. They're just so bad that I'm just sort of like. You're blaming FIFA? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm just taking a breather from sports right now. So I'm turned off by the, we talked about this. Remember? We were so wrong about the vibes being off in 2025. But now the vibes are off, right? We were just ahead of the curve.

So I'm not following, I'm not watching a minute of the Blue Jays. I happen to be aware of everything, but mainly just because people will be like, oh, you know, Blue Sky, Wilner will post something, I'll read it, whatever. But I've opted out of the regular season of the Jays. I don't miss it at all. This is my second regular season I've been out. And I'm like, oh, I cracked, like I hacked. It's a life hack.

this team is particularly frustrating because they'll sort of get to 500 then they'll lose five in a row or they're just right when you think they're about and then someone gets hurt every time I turn on a game

they're down like 5-0 in the third inning and then they come back and it's 5-4 in the ninth and then nothing happens I've had that experience a few times where like

you know I'm doing the dishes I had to do a chore and then you get back oh it's seconding and turn on but I'm not even can do this but there are so many wild card spots

They'll probably still make the playoffs. We could sneak into a wild card. Sure. And then it's becoming like the NHL where half the teams make it or whatever. And once you're in, if you have the arms or whatever, you never know. You never know. They could potentially. Okay. Well, stay tuned.

Because I am back for the playoffs. Sure. We need play of baseball here. Anyway, that's enough. That's your integrity. I like how VP brought in some World Cup talk. Yeah. It's happening now.

It's topical. International flag. Yeah. And Jarvis will be down later to give us updates. If there's a goal. If there's a goal. If there's a goal that everyone remembers. We're going to get back in a 70.

Oh, I fuck something up. We'll get into that later. This is, this is the, I almost canceled this. I will say the fact check segment of this show is going to be the longest. I say a lot of words, VP. I know you do. And some of them are going to be erroneous. Some of them are wrong.

And it's our job to call them out. I've pulled a few boners in my time. Hey, oh. Let's remind the folks what FOTM cast is. Mike, what do you think about that? that. You got a limb biscuit there. Do you just have to tighten it? I can see it. Yeah. It's kind of bugging me. You just got, it's the black one. It's the black one. Yeah, you just got to be like, as it can go. I think you can tighten it. It's just a little floppy. It's a little floppy.

Yeah. All right. I think we're good. Okay. All right. Anyway, FOTMcast, for those who have not heard one before, uh, you're in the wrong place, first of all. Go back and listen to episode one of the Toronto Mike podcast. There's like three people left listening. Yeah. So FOTM cast, we do this every quarter. We do a recap. We do a recap. of the last three months of the Toronto-Miked podcast. That's miced with an apostrophe D at the end. And we go through everything. We go through the facts and figures.

We go through the personalities. We go through the notable episodes. The quotes, the quotables, you name it. We cover it. And there's no other place where you can go to get this depth of coverage of the Toronto Mike podcast. What about Toronto Legends? What about Bob's basement? Can you find this info there?

Yeah, we can, you can get a Loretta Switt update from Bob's basement. Shout out to Ridley Field. I saw Don Pyle. Oh, he was on, oh, he's on Legends. He's also, okay, because we're going to talk maybe. I think he's one of our episodes we're going to talk about, because he was fantastic on Toronto Mike. He was also at the Tortoise concert I was at.

I saw he posted some photos. Okay. Well, he's a man about town. I like Don Pyle. I enjoy, I enjoy your chats with Don Pyle. I like Don't. Okay. I don't have anything else.

Okay, so now we've established what is F. TM past, right? It's for the real heads. Lauren Honnickman did this off the top. Lauren covers it every episode. And I'm going to reiterate something and then we're going to get right into it. I can't believe it takes us 45 minutes to get into it. But if you're not fully immersed in the TMU,

like if you're not listening to every episode and speaking the language, we did the lexicona episode, if I wear a T-shirt that says can we get off black cars already and you're not 100% sure what that is. Or how about the shirt I'm wearing today? It's making its debut. I think it's podcast debut.

I will say the contrast on that shirt's a little off. Kind of on purpose, because I felt like maybe it should be really subtle because it's like turd in the basement. I was to say that the color scheme is gross. Sort of like brown on the contrast is poor. The designers upstairs, I'm going to tell you wear that in public. I'm going to chew her out. Like respectfully, it's a beautiful shirt like in terms of the composition.

It's making its debut here. It is brand new. I've got a number of custom made t-shirts. Yes. that I've been rolling out. I wore one at the Elmo. It said, can we get off black cars already?

I have a T-shirt that says, and that. Yeah, I've seen now. You wore the award-winning podcast. Yeah, I like my award-winning podcast. You were that as a Joe Carter Classic.

You were like a member of Wham. And at the TMLX event. Yes. A member of Wham? Well, they have all like their slogans. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Frankie,

Frankie goes to Hollywood. Yeah, Frankie goes to holly. Yeah. , Frankie says. Frankie say relax. Right. Franky says it. I had a Frankie say relax t-shirt.

Right. Did you really? And the Wham one was Choose Life. How old are you? Like 10? Wow. Okay. 11 maybe.

They were huge. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that was a huge jam. Choose Life, I think, was the one. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And it wasn't anything to do with like pro-life.

It just said, choose life. Yeah. Right. Right. Good message. Great message. I liked George Michael. He made that.

When he died, Elvis cried on Toronto Mike. That's right. I remember that. Don't forget that. Okay. Is now a good time. I can't remember we're at. before we get into the episodes of the quarter

we wanted to talk about, perhaps can I do a very quick, where did this come up? Joel Greenberg was on the show. And he was confused about like, oh, was there video? Was it live streamed? Where do you get the video?

He actually had some interesting questions and I realize that if you're not fully, I mean, we're only speaking to the fully immersed now, so it's kind of like I need to do this on a real episode. But if you're not, if you don't speak the language of the TMU, the Toronto Mike universe, and you're not fully immersed in this world,

you might not have an idea of the TMU ecosystem. I can very succinctly kind of explain all this, okay? Please. Almost every episode of Toronto Mike is in-person. Okay, typically somebody visits the basement. So an in-person episode, which is almost every episode, but not every episode, I live-stream it.

So I have a camera here. This one's on me. There's a camera on you guys. And I, thanks to the great Ian service, who I loved seeing at Elmo and at TMLX22. Best cabs in the TMU. He's got great calves. He's a great guy.

He was heckling me during the Elmo gig. And I was like, oh, this is what comics mean when, like, heckler. I'm like, oh, yeah, he's talking to me. And I'm trying to do a 90-minute thing I memorized. I'm like, oh, I can see that being annoying. That was my thought there. But then I gave it back to him and he was great.

Okay, so we are live streaming every in-person episode of Toronto Mike at live. DotTronomik.com. So as it happens, you can watch the cake being baked at live.tronomike.com. That's why we're getting these real-time comments for people like Rob Pruss and Leslie Taylor and Hopkins and everybody

else over there. And Midtown Gord's there. Can I ask a boring technical question? Yeah. Have your storage fees gone up? I keep on hearing about how the price of storage is really spiking because of AI and stuff. Are you seeing this on a macro on a micro level? Your

little operation down here in the basement. I'm curious. Yep. So mostly it's the Toronto mic.com. that I pay the hosting for Google and they have been bumping up the cost. This is sort of freaking me out even like the price of like compute like Apple

just announce all their products are going up and it's just like to say ice. I know. I don't know. It's all very concerned. Where does it end? What do you do in the door? Is that the end?

I was going to say. The end, my friend. I think he said where does it end? Do, da, da. Anyway, we'll call David Rider. So. We live stream on live. tronomike.com every episode in person.

But I also, while I live stream it, I use a piece of software called OBS to record it. So I live stream and I record it. So it creates a nice MP4 file, right? So you're with me? And then what I typically do is right after the episode, I do two things. And this is a new process.

So I want everyone to pay attention. Because this is a new thing that I've never really shared properly. But, of course, I drop that piece of audio in the Toronto mic feed. That's the episode of Toronto Mike. I put it in the feed so we can go to Apple and it can go to Spotify and all those places, you know. But the new change since the last episode of FOTM cast is that feed for the general public that I'm referring to right now,

now has something I resisted for a long time. It now has, I whisper this part. I'm ashamed of it. Dynamically inserted ads. Yeah. That's happening right now. Daya. But.

Mike sells out. But. But. This is a big butt. I got a big butt for you right here. Right here. Get your hands off my big butt. I also take that same audio file.

Grab that drop. I take that same audio file. Yeah. And I share it on a podcast feed that's for Toronto Mic patrons only. If you go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike and you sign up, you can get this feed where every episode exists with zero dynamically inserted ads. So there's two feeds now, one with the ads. ads inserted and one without.

Yeah. But to get the one without, you need to become a Toronto-miked patron. This is something new. Which costs money to be a patron. Let's not bury the lead on that. From your mouth to my ears? Whose ears are those? God's ears.

Have you got any feedback about these ads and stuff? Like I find them pretty innocuous. Like, it's fine. Like every podcast has ads. So it's like whatever. Moving on over here. You got houses or mouse to feed. Yeah.

I resisted this fucking move for a long. time, Cam Gordon. And yeah, there's multiple reasons I made this switch, okay? There's technical reasons. There's there's maintenance reasons. There is the fact that now I don't pay for the space, but I do get money. Yeah. The old system was I was paying money for the storage space, but not getting any back.

And now I don't pay for this storage storage space and I get money back. Like if I wrote down these numbers for you, you'd be like, you should have done it two years ago. Yeah. It is interesting. Like, we've talked about this a lot. And as you guys know, like, I've been living on the internet of like the 1990s and really, like... Oh, you wrote a book about it. Yeah.

Ultimately, it could just be a collection of MP3s and all this shit is just like the UX on top of it. Like, it's you really just need the basics. It's like sort of what a USB or sorry, sorry, an MP3 player was. It could be just like a like a thumb drive with like a thing you could plug in your... Right. And this is actually, you're actually touching on something significant. A big change. I just want to appoint.

out here, which is that what's these these blobs, these MP3 files you're talking about, what stitches them together in a syndicated fashion is an XML file. Right, right, right, right. And for 1,900 episodes or whatever it was, until June 1st. David Bearwold.

Yeah, the first episode of June. Until that episode, David Bearwold, which may come up very soon. Yes. I hand-coded that XML file since episode one. Bizarre. Is that, and nobody's Nobody's doing it. Did you vibe code it?

No, vibing. That's a slur. Yeah, I find that that's, no, I don't want to hear about this vibe coding. I fucking use these fucking fingers right here. Yeah. Artisanal XM. And I, I typed the, like a young Oscar Peterson. Who's a Lakeshore legend, by the way.

I typed it into a file. Yes. A dot XML file. And then I, via, well, it was, file transfer protocol. changed the way I put it on the server, but for a long time it was FTP, and then I changed the way I put on the server. But I put that on the server, and that told Google, well, actually, yeah, I guess it's YouTube's Google, it told Spotify, it told Amazon, it told Apple, that's a big boy in the game, it told podcast addict, it told pod bean, let's keep, I'm going to name them all,

okay, everybody, keep going, keep going, keep going, pass forward, all those places were told, there's a new episode of Toronto Mike, because of my fingers hammering out, that XML. I did that for whatever. I like how worked up you're getting here about doing some like basic coding. When I move servers for June July, dude, like you're about to go camping

like July. When I move servers, I move to a server owned by ACAST. In ACAST, they don't want you touching your fucking XML. They're like, no, you don't get to touch your XML file. That's not what we do here. You literally get a field and it says,

what's the title this episode? And there's a field. It's like, what's the subtitle? And there's a field. What's the description? It's like, I don't have to, I could be stupid, you know? Like, it's like, oh, I can't fuck this XML up. I'm upset.

Oh, wow. It's trashing the studio. All those empties. Wow. Anyway, that's a significant change. So, back to the joke. So, yeah, there's a live stream. Oh, yeah.

I'm almost done. This is, I'm going to wrap up. I'm boring myself now. But I mentioned I record the video, because if you go to the live street, Live.Tronomike.com. You can watch us bake the cake, but there is no archive. There's no recording happening there.

But I happen to be recording on my end. And what I typically do is about 24 hours after I published the episode, I published the MP4 on the official Toronto Mike YouTube channel. So to reiterate, okay, there is a live stream, and there is a public feed, which has dynamically inserted ads.

There's a Patreon feed, which does not have dynamically, inserted ads. And then there's a YouTube video that might show up a day later. Any questions? Not right. No, I just see Tyler's on the ACAST. Living on the edge.

It's a Swedish founded company. I don't know if you knew that. Why do I think they were Canadian? I think you have. I think there's a job for Rosie Gray T.O. here is there's a list on the ACAST Wiki page. There's a list of notable podcasts hosted by ACAS and Toronto Mike does not on there. Yeah. Can you update that? Do you even want, we've talked

about this, do you want a Wikipedia page? I've never had a moment where I desired one. I feel like, I feel like you should have them. I know we don't do Wiki Corner anymore. There's like all my updates recently. My big project for the quarter was actually helping some of the CFNY guys. I won't name any names because some of them are EOTMs. Matt at Mike.

But cleaning up the locations of all the CFNY studio, someone was mad that they were all off. So a few of them I was emailing with a few of group thread. And they helped them with a little Wikipedia stuff. Well, get your focus back on the TMU. I know, I know. They don't need your help. Are you guys ready?

Yeah, let's get into it. Thank you, as always, to Jimmy Vaughn and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Wrapped for Q2 of 26. My sheet says to Q1, but it's actually Q2. These are the facts and figures. this is our tour through the quarter, the 56th quarter of the Toronto Mic to podcast. Wow. There were 53 episodes in the quarter, which was up from 45 in Q1.

So this was more of an average typical quarter after a bit of a slower start to the year. You're on pace for under 200 episodes this year, which would be the first time since 2021. So just a little... Stop shaming me. A little flashing light there for you, if that's something to care about. Because I was going to take it easy this next quarter. Well, you still can. I mean, it's optional.

Like kayak today. I was going to say you ride on the kayak. Yeah. I can enjoy it. It was amazing. Adaboy. Good for you. It was a beautiful day.

It was a beautiful day. Shout out to you too. Sure. You had 60 individual guests in Q2 up from 44 in Q1. Yeah, I was embarrassed. Q1, I was embarrassed. And when you shone a light on my futility during the last FOTM cast, I said, let me make the next question.

Redoubled. Held up a mirror and you didn't like what you saw. I think, and we'll get to it. But I think there are many bangers this past quarter. This was a very strong quarter. This was a very strong quarter. Thank you. 32 first time guests.

Oh, that's a good number. Yeah. Yeah, very solid number up from 23. So I have so many bug bites if you're wondering why I'm scratching. I'm not. Skaibis. It's not that. And then one notable milestone.

Do you consume vitamin C? That's scurvy though. Yeah, that is different than scabies. That is definitely different. Are they related? Let's get back to the number. Notable milestone, Bob Willett became the fifth member of the 50 timer club. That's a big number for Bobby.

That is a big right now. I'm excited to hear that. Okay. Yes. So exciting. Exciting stuff. Great quarter. Let's get into the episodes.

We have a lot of clips. And a lot of my clips are long. So just buckle up. It's going to be. Do you want beer? You know, I never got a beer. I know. I can't believe I didn't know beer.

But I want to hear the clips. Yeah. Well. How long is this first clip? Five minutes and 37 seconds. Start it and I'll come back. Okay. All right.

Let's just dive in. We'll chat about it on the other side. I was married to the mob. Really? Oh, I have stories. New Jersey. Wait a minute. Walking cultural stereotype from New Jersey.

I watch the Sopranos. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You got to tell him this party story. The guy with the jacket. Oh, that was a wedding. The wedding. Oh, yeah.

This is a good married to the mob story. Okay. we were splitting up, right? And I moved into the beach. This was after I got back, right? After the greasy-haired guy and whatever. So we were going to the wedding, and he said, my parents don't know we're split up, right?

So he said, just be cool. So I said, yeah, okay. And he was, I think he was in the States and he was coming back. So, you know, I've got my suit in your place. And I said, yeah, pinstripe. What a cliche So he said I'll meet you and I said

Well what are you going to be wearing I said I will be having a violin case with the guns in it And there's a carnation on my lapel And I said what are you going to have a white suit Smoking a cigar and he's that's not funny And I said well actually it is But so we get there And they have

They're getting married in New Jersey And it's his cousin who Last time I We're in New York, and he said, oh, it was the Picasso thing. He said, would you get me a poster? I said, sure, here. So he has this role of hundreds. Like you see it.

And he, what's the elastic band? And I said, is that real? He said, yeah, so he pulls off a couple of hundreds. And he said, have lunch on me. And I said, hell no, I'm going to socks, you know. Okay, so the wedding. Okay, the wedding. So this guy, you know.

This is why I'm here. So. Although I do like the journey. It's not always the destination. Remember that, Rob. So he's marrying this girl that looks like she's a hooker from Vegas, right? She's a pre-Cardassian, okay? That's how it can, you know, before we knew they were there.

Anyhow, so she's going down, and she's like waving at people and blowing kisses in the church. And I'm going, oh, my God. Now, scrolling back a bit, his brother, who I loved, said he was, he was a, a forest ranger and he said i've got the suit but he said i've got my forest ranger shoes on my boots on they said it's okay michael nobody's gone it's fine it's fine it's fine right so we're sitting with me i liked him and his brother was we're breaking up so they're going down and it's a big it's like a vagus wedding but she thinks it is she's the only one that thinks it is and everybody's like slack-jawed and then we kneel down and there's these women sitting in front of it's

like kneeling down and they've got like monoloblotics and all these expensive things with slingbacks and I said to Michael look at their feet their feet are all dirty don't feel it bad about your shoes so I'm thinking oh this is an amazing wedding so on the outside they're posing for the pictures right and there's this

insidious woman who was probably she was from Bergdorce or something and she was like the wardrobe person you know pulling the dress and she's insisting on being with the wedding party, but the picture, she infiltrates yourself, right?

And I'm saying to Michael, oh, by the way, we smoked a joint before we bought it. So Michael and I are like, oh my God, this is a travesty. Get this woman. Get the hook. None of this is the point.

Okay, but I'm leading up to it. It's a journey. Okay, okay. So this woman, the picture, the shutter, as they're taking the shutter, there's a wind that's blowing, and she's wearing a wrap dress,

and it opens up, she's not wearing any underwear. So we see her bush. Michael and I are now peeing ourselves. Okay, so the reception is at the Plaza Hotel, right? So I'm sitting there and I'm sitting with this guy in a white dinner jacket. And he looks like the concierge, right? And it was surf and turf.

So I said, I'll trade you my turf for your surf. And he said, fine. And I'm drinking champagne and stuff and everything. And I'm cold. So he gives me his jacket, like a gentleman, right? So I'm like, thank you so much. And he goes off. So John and my ex comes and sits down.

I said, oh my God. I said, there's a whole bunch of dope here. Like blow, right? Okay. A bag. So blow, not cannabis. No, blow. Well, we're talking to mob here.

Yeah. So I put it in my clutch bag as a joke. as a joke right I forget about it I'm wandering off and he's and that funny this guy comes

and hunts me down and said you have something of mine wow and I said I don't know what you're talking about and he pulls a gun on me wow

and I said I was only kidding here but there's a gun on you right now yeah you're shitting bricks right no I was peeing my pants the bricks come later

so there are go, so John comes back, what was that about? And I told him, he said, are you kidding me? Do you know who this guy is? He could have you oft. And I said, well, he got his bag back. So then John goes back to New Jersey or wherever. And he calls him up and he said, well, we don't have to worry about Mr. X.

And I said, why, I said, he was gunned down the other day. Wow. Married to the mob. Wow. Okay, you know what? After that, I got to pop my Great Lakes. Okay, on the mic here. Three, two.

Okay, thank you. Great Lakes. After that, Rita Zee. The Zika story. Barn burner. Okay, so Rita Zika. So did we tell people we only talk about 12 episodes? So there's a lot of episodes that last quarter,

but we're only going to talk about our significant 12. Okay, top 12. Rita Zika is a worthwhile mention. She was fantastic in her Toronto make debut. I would say I love that episode in the same way I love Bob Elliott and Dave Perkins. These fucking stories of like Toronto working journalism in like the 80s. Yeah. Just fucking insanity.

All of them. It's so different than how journalism operates. I just love seeing how, like, casual it was. Oh, God, yeah. And just like, respectfully, who talks like that? Like, it's why, like, her old columns, too, because I've been seeing a lot of what I've been doing. Stargazing? They're incredible, just incredible stuff and just so, like, off the cuff.

And I don't know. It just, it wouldn't fly. They don't make them like that anymore. No, not at all. And Rob Salon's awesome, too. And her style is wild. Like, it's the way she dresses. Like, it's like, it's like, it's like,

It's kind of Annie Hallish, but like, just like, yeah, it's, it is wild. Out of this time. Yeah. Not of this time, rather. Oh, okay. Someone coming down. Okay, there's footsteps. Footsteps.

Okay, hold on. Take that, go in that mic and speak to us. No, no, speak in front of that mic, clearly. Don't even say it loudly. Belgium scored is one nothing. It's one nothing. Do you want to describe the goal or? No.

Okay, no description. He's out. I knew from the grinning year to year. It was the USA goal. That's exciting. We got an update. This is exciting. I know.

It's happening now. I love it. Okay. Yeah. Rita, Rita reminds me of certain friends of my parents when I was a kid. They would come over and, you know, they'd be like half drunk and these sort of weird characters, interesting people.

You're always excited to be around. He was at big glasses. Huge glasses. And yeah, just completely inappropriate. Off-kilter energy. She's done but her bush. She reminded me of like a, we had an English teacher at Thornley, Mrs. Lake. And just like there was always rumors she had like a Mickey in her purse.

Like no, she wasn't an alcoholic, but it was just, yeah, it would just sort of go out in just different times. Who was the CNN anchor who had the gun strapped to her? Who was? And she did a stint at, uh... Had a gut. Yeah, did a stint on, I don't know, CBC or CTV newsnet or something. Oh, yeah. You know who's wrong about David Horowitz recently.

Or he had a gun pulled on. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, that was a whole... Also did fight back. Fight back. I remember that. I remember that.

Yeah. Anyway, you guys don't remember the CNN anchor. I think I vaguely know who you're talking about. She was strapped with like a gun. Yeah, she... Oh, Lynn Russell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lynn Russell had a pistol or something strapped to her like...

She was, yeah, but of... Her tights or whatever under her dress. But she did a stint in Canada. She was on... I can't remember off the top if it was CBC or CTV. Oh, CBC. Okay. So she did anchor at CBC for a short period of time.

Lynn Russell was on CNN. Right. Yeah. Okay. She was a private investigator too. Wow. She knew, she,

wow. Black belt and Chowong do. She was something else. They don't make them like that anymore either. They don't make them like that anymore. Okay, Rita Zika. Yeah. Great to have her.

And we had that episode scheduled previously, but it snowed or something. That was going to be a Q1. Yeah. And then Rob came over solo, Rob Salem. Right. He was the wingman for Rita Zika. Always enjoy the Rob Salem conversations.

Just, yeah, like, as Cam said, like, just tons of great stories from the old days and, like, you know, being the drug deal. Rita, before that, she was talking about it. Rob used to sell Rita drugs and would, like, rip her off. These are, but these are the characters of the city I'm attracted to. Oh, yeah. I like a good character.

But just imagine that going on in, like, a modern news. Oh, God. Oh, yeah, I know. You go to some youngster who's straight out of whatever TMU, the other TMU, and they're working in some news. room and just tell them this is how it used to be. They wouldn't believe you. All the fun's been stripped out of that job.

By the way, you know what I learned today? Today I learned. Yeah. Sorry, this is going to sound like a humble bright, but I was talking to Jane Stevenson. Oh, I didn't know she's... FOTM. She's married. She's married.

Yeah, to the soccer guy. Yeah, Neil Davidson. I had no idea. Yeah. You know what that tells me? You didn't listen to her episode of Toronto Mike. I'm, no, I'm pretty sure I did. She mentioned, we talked about that.

She's like friends with like Rainer and like the whole crew. Yeah, well, she mentioned that for sure. And she was tight with that Toronto Sun Trio Liz Braun. I like her, too. That was another one of those episodes. She had some great stories. I'll never forget her saying just like Joni Mitchell.

Have a shitty person. I've long thought that. Jeez, okay, this is why we listen. This is why we listen. We're doing something here. Who's the third? I'm embarrassed. Is there Rita DeMontas?

I like her too. God. Okay, but Liz is still at the sun. Yeah. Just pointing that out. Okay. I have a lot of time. All right.

Hit me with a second clip. All right. Tyler. I'm just going to play it. Yeah. And then we'll talk about it. Warren, what are we listening to here?

You are listening to a song that my best friend and I wrote when we were teenagers called I am a confused teenager. It's about acne and girls and hormones. And we were the first punk band on the Canadian Prairies. And that was our first record. And that's a long time. time ago. Yeah, we're going back. I'm guessing we're going back to like 76, maybe, 77. So maybe

do you mind off the top? So the band is the Hot Nasty's, right? Yep. Can you give us, I'm very interested in this, okay, sort of the origin story of the Hot Nasty's, and maybe we talk a little bit about these, the early Canadian punk, if you will. You're one of the first punk bands in the Canadian West. I got to cover this.

Yeah, we were, well, the precursor to the nasties was a band called the Social Blemish more hits than zits and so that was kind of like a collective of idiots and none of us could get girls so we formed the punk band and out of that came the hot nasties and the hot nasties was a bit more serious

and so we put together a record we put on shows and this is pre-internet days and we could get 500, 600 kids out just by word of mouth and it was fun And I quit when it got too violent. We had people coming to shows, mainly skinheads,

who were there to pick fights and that caused trouble. And that kind of actually is the beginning of how I got involved in anti-racism and led to this book. I've always wondered, I get, sometimes I have these older punkers on the show. And I'm always curious, how did punk rock have any alignment with, Like you're pointing out, I will see old footage and there'll be a skinhead with a swastika on their jean jacket.

Where did that come from? It changed. You know, I knew a lot of skinheads. So skinheads were friends. And they were into Bluebeat and ska and reggae. Like these guys believed in what we believed in in a multiracial, diverse society. And around the summer of 79, the British movement, the National Front became very, very, reactive and very successful in Britain in recruiting these young skinhead guys, overwhelmingly guys.

And then it jumped across the pond and started happening Canada and the United States too. And the violence I referred to that was, you know, coming from those guys. They were coming to shows to kick in heads. And the punks I knew my friends, we had gay kids, we had overweight kids, we had trans kids. it was a really diverse scene. It was a very tolerant scene. It was a progressive scene. And so I just said to my best friend, I'm not going to do this anymore.

I'm going to a journalism school to hell with this. And he said, well, I'm glad you said it because I was going to quit too. So that was that. And, you know, I stayed in bands. I played in bands over the years. But the nasties, I guess it's typical, you know, the highest point I reached in the music business is when I was 17 years old. That was a great clip from Warren Kinsella.

Warren Kinsella. Yeah, it was good. So did you pitch him or did his publicist reach out to you? He had a book. I know he had his book. Yeah. As is often the case when somebody puts out a book, suddenly I get an email that I don't completely ignore.

I see. Yeah, in fact, the chap who is working for the publisher bought a ticket to the Elmo gig but got sick and couldn't be there. Scott. Scott. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So this is a... Getwell Scott. Yeah, get well Scott, who I've seen subsequently because he brought David Bearwald over here.

Right. Perfect. Okay. Yeah, so we got to keep books coming out of this factory. That's how Carol Off came on. Adam, you ever met Warren Concella? Before that? No. That was the first time I met him. Met him at the door. I was keen to talk to Warren Concella about a whack of stuff, but top of mind was his punk days. And that was great,

because I always, you know, I'm a curious cat, I never understood, we're all a similar vintage, so we don't quite remember the late 70s punk movement, but it went from like this punk ideology,

which to me is very anti-Nazi. Like it's very, he mentioned, you know, gay friends and black friends, and it just seems like the ideals I can get behind. And I don't know, I never understood,

like how did the, the scene suddenly morph so you had swastikas and Nazis. Like I never really quite got that. But I thought Warren did a good job explaining. I think it's just like more like in California where you get like sort of football players coming. I think it just became known as like this is a place to go to like get rough. Yeah. Fuck shit up.

Yeah. Right. Fred Durst. Yeah. Yeah. All the sort of like racist element. Yeah. It's sort of. It's come completely the opposite.

You know, like the punk the punkers today. I just, I didn't ever understood where did that Nazi shit come from? I'm trying to think what were they like listening to before? Like, I don't know. Like Leonard Skinner. I don't really know. Pink Floyd? Yeah.

Maybe, maybe a bit. Black Sabbath? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Warren was great. Like just so smart and well spoken and, you know, obviously the punk stuff was great. His stories about working with Jean-Cretchen were really interesting.

thing. Working with Brad Bradford now, which is fascinating. Yeah. You know, Brad's, Brad's paying him. I mean, he's, he's like a very polarizing figure, I feel like, especially in my world where it's, you know, coms and like public affairs and stuff. But I've always given credit. Like, he's, sure, he takes on clients, you know, there's new things they folk, but he's, his sort of like tone and stuff seems pretty consistent through the years, too. And I've always liked, he's just, like, plows ahead.

Like, he's, again, he's been doing this. forever. And he answered all my questions. Yeah. And I enjoy the chat. Yeah. And the talk about anti-Semitism was really interesting. You know, it came up again with Joel.

Joel Greenberg. Joel at the end of the quarter. And then because it came up of Joel, it came up with Ed Keenan. Right. Which is Q3, which we cannot talk about. Yeah. No, we cannot talk about it. Like Ed, Ed's answers to, you know, was Olivia Chow.

About her comments is so interesting. He went far from, he talked. more than I was like, just say, you know, you don't have to answer the question. You sounded like me on that. Like, like just giving like a total, he's like, I don't have the expertise about, uh, in this and that. And like, just tap out, man. Yeah. I really. I was like, I could, he kept going. I'm like, you can tap out. Yeah. But I, I don't believe him. Like, I'm the exact same way. Like, these are third rail topics and you're on a hot mic here and you're a big number. And I'm not going to edit it no matter what you say, although I did once edit it. Yeah, we live in the eclipse economy.

Like literally where could I end up? Can I go off on that? I'm sick of the clips economy, okay? Yeah. I'm so sick of the fact that it's almost like now people are recording a podcast just for the, the TikTok and the Instagram 30 second clip. Like it lacks all the context. It's a complete opposite of what I'm trying to do here.

But now the everything, oh, the clip, the video clip is everything. Fuck that. The 90 minute, two hour deep dive is everything. And if you don't like it, get the fuck out. Like one of the big U.S. tech report, like Casey Nudy or something just did a podcast about this, about the clips economy where now it's like, it's this little bit from a podcast and this little bit from a TikTok

and this little bit from like NBA finals and this like, it's just these bits and pieces of like 20 seconds. No attention span, but no depth and no context. You know it's stupid? I actually fucking hate it. The thing that bothers me, like Twitter bought Vine. Yeah. Right around the time that I started there.

If they figured that shit out, well, one, I might still be working there. But, like, it could have all been different. Like, it was such a sliding doors moment. They just did not know what to do with it. Like, Vine didn't make sense, whereas, like, six seconds. My daughter loved Vine. Vine was incredible. And then Twitter bought it and shuddered it, right?

Yeah, they just, they never fully integrated. It seemed like Periscope. I don't remember. They were all set out of ass to do. This very podcast used to stream before live. That's right. Before Live.Toramac.com, we did it on Periscope. Yeah.

Because Periscope didn't police your songs. Right. But then, so when if I moved to Facebook or YouTube, I couldn't play, I couldn't play, the Depression Suite off the top of it. I'll, I'll, follow comment on this. The thing that worries me is, I don't know if you guys have seen, there's articles about, I think, like, the zero-click crisis where, like, you search something and then you get sort of the AI search results.

Nobody clicks anything. They just read that. Dude, I live this. I live this world. But I'm worried. I've been on your fucking show. like over a hundred times and like stuff I've said is like crawled, served up into like Google search results attributed to me or like I'm swearing and stuff.

Like I'm a reputable PR person in my career. Well, you did quit toast. I did for those reasons. Yeah. You're over exposed. You believe what campgrounds. At a midlife crisis. Overexposed commercialized.

Handle me. Handle me with care. Please. I'm so tired of being lonely. I'm so tired. I saw some love to get. Roy Orbison. How old?

It was like 54 or something. Early. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy. He was the oldest. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Very ghostly. I was not his style and then like Michael Jackson and him like sort of had a Roy Orbison style there with it sort of. I don't think anyone's compared those two artists. Ghostly right. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Michael Jackson is doing a Roy Orbison thing. Yeah. I wouldn't have put that together. But I sort of see what you're saying. It's more of a Bob Fossy Fossy Fossy. Fossy, you know, that's the Michael Jackson. A bit of that.

Yeah, I don't think those two artists go together. But I will say Roy Orbison, I was listening to Q107 around the time Roy Orbison made his comeback album. So I'm just going to hold up my Q107. Where did you get this? I got it at the, but the Q107 Canada Day picnic where I did see Ryan Parker and the other guy, Darren, this guy. John Garbet. John Garbit. We'll save this for the Marine Hall.

But I will say, if you ever get a chance to go, we had a great time. We saw a Neil Young cover band. We saw a tragically hip cover band. It's in Woodbine Park. It's free. There's people on lawn chairs and kids and dogs. What's pearl jamming there? No, the next band was like...

I saw it at the Taste of the Kingsway. Yeah, it was the Springsteen and then like Ozzy. We only stayed for the first two, but Ozzy Osbourne and in ACDC. It was great. We're the royal pains in there. No royal pains. That's a miss. That's a miss.

That's a miss in my books here. Okay. Where are we at? Warren Cancela. Sorry, just going back to the Roy Orbis. Are you talking about mystery girl? Yeah.

You got it. You got it. You got it. But these songs were played on Q107 all the time. And I would listen to the top 10 of 10 with Shirley McQueen. Like this was like a nightly ritual for young Mike. That's a haunting song. So yeah.

And then this guy who I knew him as the pretty woman guy because I knew pretty woman from the Zakeguise. And then there was an infomercial on television. Greatest hits of Roy Orb's where you would get like Speaking of a nuts You don't know about Yes Yes yes

Only the lonely Boom boom And there was just You just know that So I'm going back someday Gonna stay It's over

You know what you're doing there Blue Bio So I knew 10 seconds BIO Yeah I knew The fucking Bayou

Motherfucker Bio Bio Bio Byeo. Sweep steaks. Okay. But yeah, you know where I'm going.

I knew 10 seconds of a lot of songs. And they all had to go in the right sequence. Yeah. And I knew them in order. Like it's almost like it was like a mashup. I like. So anyway, the comeback album was huge on Q&S.

You got it. It was on like a brick commercial. Oh, I remember that. You got it. Was it? Yeah, it was the brick, I think. One final comment.

I liked electric line orchestra as much as the next guy. The bird one? The bluebird went. Tragically, or Travelling Walbury's volume one. Yeah. Full moon fever. Roy Eberson Mystery Girl.

Cloud nine. All sound the same. Yeah, Cloud Nine. And Mike Campbell are all over those. And do, do, do. Yeah. And now there are two left. Jeff Lynn and Bob Dylan.

He was 52 when he died. Okay. I'm 52. You're 55. Well, this is like Gord Downey died at 53. Yeah. What's that about? Like, we're going to be older than Gord's.

Yeah. That's the goal. That's the goal. Okay, you got to get to the next clip, man. Okay, next clip. Here we go. I'm not even, I'm not setting any of these up. We're just going to listen and we're going to talk to them.

So how do you end up as Billy Idol? Like, you become Billy Idol, right? Really? The Idol's an FOTM was, for modeling gigs, I had to cut my hair. And it was really pissing. me out that everywhere I went or people say they were like thinking I was Billy Idol

and you know I had a little bit of an ego I'd say at the time maybe a little bit where I thought I'd done a lot of things myself don't think I'm Billy Idol and then Kenny McLean said just do a couple Billy Idol song in your set and the first time I did it was at the Indian Motorcycle Club

in his 80s indulgent indulgence shows that he's putting on and the place went crazy so then I fully embraced it and started getting booked around the world. And because I could do the impersonations of him talking as well, and the resemblance was quite startling, and I could sing just like him.

So that went really well. Then what got me out of it was I was playing, doing him for the, I guess, the Las Vegas Knights hockey game with the Los Angeles team. Kings, kings, yeah. So this was December 17th, 2000. 2007, I think, or 2005. I don't think there was a Vegas team back.

Well, they did it. They were like a double age. Oh, they weren't in NHLTX. The golden, yeah. They would play them at the, they would play them at the Orleans Coliseum one week before Christmas every year. Okay. So this year they wanted to book Billy Idol, but he was playing down the street,

to say in the midnight hour, you know, because it was when it was the late game. She wants more, more, more. Right. So he was busy in Vegas at Mandalay Bay. And so they booked me to play there. And that was great. So I was walking to my gig dressed like Billy Idol. And he drives by me and starts laughing at me.

He thought it was really funny. And I don't know to this day what he was thinking about it. But then I thought, you know what, I'm going to do my own stuff. So that was pretty much my last Billy Idol gig. And then I started working, no, there was more, there was more. But I started working hard, like, around that point of, you know, resurging my own thing. But I learned a lot from doing Billy Idol. I learned, you know, that rock and roll was a lot more fun than pop and roll.

So. Absolutely. Yeah. So then I just sort of embraced my sort of inner beast rather than being really goody, two shoes all the time. That was from this past quarter. That was an epic episode, but it feels like a long time ago.

Paris Black. Paris Black. Yeah, Paris Black, who was lovely. Lovely man. Seemed like a lovely man. That episode was a tough fucking listen for me, man. It took me like four sittings

to get through that episode. He was driving me insane. Such a, like his hacky sort of Borsch Belt impressions. I was making me, I had to stop listening like three times. because it was making me so much. Yet it made the top 12. It made the top 12 because it's notable.

It's very unique. Very unique for sure. I think we need to... You didn't like his impression. I didn't like the impressions. I think we should have Robert Lawson fact check his story. Billy Idol drove past him. He's walking along some street and the strip in Las Vegas, I guess, and dressed as Billy Idol and Billy Idol drove past him and laughed at him. I need...

Oh, if Robert Lawson were to fact check the Paris Black episode, I would need a bigger hard drive. That would be enormous. I think you need to commission that. Like I started playing one of his songs and he started singing along. You remember this moment. I enjoyed every minute with Paris Black. Why wouldn't you?

But maybe in person the impressions, like it is like cheesy. So sticky. It's so sticky. It's fromage. I thought it was just such an interesting snapshot of just, you know, a life in entertainment. Yeah. And all that that might entail.

He's made a career for himself. You got to hand it to it. Do you know how that episode came to be? No. I sort of remember. David Bronstein. Oh, yes. Yes, yes.

The bagel mentioned the competitor for the dial a date was done by Paris Black. So Paris Black, I haven't thought of that name in a long time. So I was not at all familiar with him. No, I mean, neither. The Paris Black one? No, just Paris Black. That existed. Oh.

Until he got sick, I didn't know who the name was. Good points here. I'm not sure how familiar I was of Paris. Blackmaggin. Hold on! There's somebody coming down the stairs. Hold on. On the mic, please. This is an announcement. Next smile.

USA scored a free kick from outside of the box. Oh. Like way outside. It was a good goal. He's smiling for that one too. So you can't, he's like a poker player. You know what? We thought we could read you.

You got the bad news. One one. Speaking of Vegas. You can, don't take this. One one. Okay. Keep his post. Yeah.

Thank you, Jarvis. We don't go to enemy territory. Come on. But Paris Black. Okay. That was a memorabil. episode. He's larger than life. Remarkable. And he's got great abs.

Because he started like a go-futney when he, we got ill. And I just noticed everyone on social media. Like, everyone loves this guy. He just seemed like across Toronto. But he's not as famous as he presents, right? Like, he presents as a famous guy. Yeah. But we're all like, before he got sick, we weren't sure who the fuck he was. I'd never heard of him before he was on your microphone. I'm trying to remember if I knew who he was. Maybe I retroactively remembered him. Like, is that, is that a thing? thing. Like,

maybe I never knew Paris Black in the 90s. But David Bronstein mentioned him. Yeah. And I already, ahead of my mind, he was dying.

Like in my mind, it's like, well, Paris Black is dying. Is he also in the, the Kiree Pappets film? So, that's, so, no.

He's not in the film. Okay. But Kiri, David Bronstein is. And Kri Papet, Puppets, I said, I said Papputz for so long

and then Liz Worth was here. Yeah. Literally his wife. Literally his wife and said, it's Pappets. I'm like, sure.

Papoots. It should be Papoots, right? Pappets. What's that? That's ridiculous. It should be papoots. Regardless, this nice man, Kiri, he helped, like, broke, he was really,

he wanted to hear Paris Black on Toronto Mike. He was important to Kiri, and I can't remember if he got me an email address, whatever he did. I got a hold of Paris and he was really, really gung-ho to do it. And it was great. Yeah.

Even though it took the VP's several, I got there. That's like me in Shits Creek. I can't tell you how many runs I took at fucking Schitt's Creek. What am I missing? Yeah. I see and I, not my cup of tea. You haven't seen a movie since look who's talking.

That is true. It took me like five tries to get into the Zeprono. Whoa, Joe, this is fucking back. Get on that mic, big guy. Hold on. Belgium scored two one. Yeah. There we go.

That's what we want to do. Keep that coming, Cole Palmer. He's got a shirt for this guy on, he didn't even make England's team, Cole Palmer, but he's pretty fucking good. Jarvis loves the guy. Okay. All right.

So next clip, I guess, unless you have more to say about the wonderful Paris Black. I think we've covered Paris Black. Okay. You know, I wish him all the best in his,

uh, in his cancer treatment. Oh, yeah. He seems like a lovely person. And he's a worthy FOTM. Indeed. He's part of the family. Part of the rich tapestry of this city.

I love it. Great character. But I want to ask you about Calgary for a moment here. So obviously we're not going to read the book here. There's all the meat's on the bone in the book. But you talk about how you end up in Calgary for a spell as a young man. Would you mind describing to be the difference between the Calgary punk scene you experienced in Toronto's punk scene? Well, Calgary.

It's funny, I had coffee with Steve Koch, who I write about in the book. Yeah, he's all over this Calgary. He's the reason you went to Calgary, right? No, my brother lives there. So that was the reason I was going. But he was a pen pal? Yeah. I have to prove I read the book.

Steve was a pen pal. And really the first person that I met other than my family in Calgary. Because, you know, when I'd go out there, it was like just to see them and spend time with them. So, you know, you'd meet people that they knew and whatnot. But, yeah, this one trip I went out, I was going to be going out. And Freddie from the Vialtones, Freddie Pompeii, told me that they had this fan letter. And it was from a guy in Calgary. He's like, you write to the guy.

and see if there's, you know, any Calgary, you know, if there's a punk band's happening there. So I did. And Steve wrote back and told me that his brother had a band called Bjouke McCain. And he said that they're not really a punk band, but they're the closest thing to a punk band. Like, you know, they do a bunch of originals, but they do, like, you know, kind of some kind of bar band sort of standard rocker sort of things. and, uh, but then, you know, they'd slip in the occasional punk cover and, and claim that it was like by, you know, lover boy or whatever. I don't know. Um, so, um, I went, uh, they weren't going to be playing. So Steve and I started writing to each other. And then his brother saw these letters and was,

you know, excited because they were all getting into punk. And so his brother, Alex Koch, started writing to me as well. Um, and so they, um, and so they, they invited me, Alex invited me to see his band, Bjouk McCain, rehearsing in the basement of Brian Connolly, of his parents' basement. So I went out to Calgary and my brother drove me out to their place again, like, you know, on the complete opposite end of town. And Calgary public transit was non-existent at that point.

So I went and saw them in the basement and, you know, they were fantastic. and they ended up moving to Ontario, moving to Toronto, staying for a very short spell in my mother's basement. And, you know, I was hanging out with them. And then it was Reed Diamond, Brian Connolly, Alex Koch. And then so they were looking for a singer. And I was kind of like filling in singing,

even though I'd never sung at a band. I'd tried to start a couple things in school that never quite happened. And I had briefly had a band with Steve. Steve Koch called Crash Kills 9, but, you know, we only play. Oh, my God. So this is you on vocal. Yeah. It was a little trigger happy.

You were talking about Crash Kills 9, and I thought you were going to say Crash Kills 5. So I know, so I'm a little, I jumped the gun, so I speak. But please continue. When I hear that, I'm so impressed with Alex Kotch, the drummer. he's so good. All of them were great. You know, it was, so anyway, we had this, Steve and I briefly had this band called Crash Kills 9. The Vialtone saw him and asked him to join the band,

and then our band fell apart when he joined the band. So, you know, we did Crash Kills 5 for a couple of years, and then split up, as most bands who are not the Rolling Stones do. And then a few years later, kind of accidentally reconnected. Brian Reed and I reconnected. I was still friends with both of them, but the two of them were kind of nervous around each other.

And a Bruce McCuller connection, because Reed and Bruce had a duo called Orion's belt that Reed was, or that Brian was recording. And I happened to go over to Brian's place on the day that they were wrapping up their session. And the two of them were talking about, you know, we should play music together.

You know, who should we get to play drums? And I said, I'll do it, even though I'd never ever played drums before. And so they were, you know, okay with that. And so we started playing and then that became Shadowy Man. You know what? What a great episode of Don Pyle. Yeah. His second visit, but it was as good, if not better than the first.

So much history there. Hearing those stories, to quote Sue, to quote Sue, so remarkable that that sound like so much effort to make music. Oh God. You know, just getting in the same room and then eventually they get

together in the combination. They do. That's instrumental surf inspired music and it's fucking great. And like half of them can't even play their instrument. It's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. It's funny here, the Warren Cancela one

and then that, like talking about these early punk days. But I love hearing like, oh, oh, so oh, so that's how you met a kid in the hall Yeah. And then like fast forward and you're playing the theme song for kids in the hall. Like it's like all the pieces matter. Yeah. You got to drill in and you see it.

Yeah. He's nodding and approved. This guy knows. Honestly, that's why I'm saying you know, you know, you're nodding and you know your shit. I'm complimenting.

So do you. We all do. He's brandishing a baseball bat though. I'm a little worried here. This is the thing where we're making the effort. And what we don't know, you know, you're doing the work here.

You're speaking to these people. Well, You wrote the book, brother. That's okay. What's VP done for us? Nothing. You know what, though? You're curating this.

Yeah. And also these clips, and I don't know what you're going to play. I don't know if I've pointed that out yet. I have no idea what I'm going to hear until I hear it. You took the time and effort to go through all those tremendous episodes of Toronto Mike to curate this list of the 12th episode. That's, it really is.

It sort of like it's, you know, quarter by quarter. Exactly. I didn't even know you had chapters beyond chapter 11. I'm just seeing now you had a, Chapter 5? Sure.

I thought you just had a chapter 11 of track. How are the book sales going? It's good. It's a few here, a few there. Like, hopefully all sells on this week. Yeah. So I'm going to do like another push after September because I feel like. Push just a little too late.

That'll be part of it. David Usher will be. Yeah. Oh, good. You can announce that. You're announcing that now. It's what you want. Yeah.

I love that song. Absolutely. I thought it was a great song. You clearly understand. Thank you for asking. Silver has Biff Naked and the stuff. That's not the song of Biff in the...

Biff Naked is sitting at a table like nodding her head or something during the Silver video. We are Silver. Anyway, yes, book sales are going fine. That's great. Thank you for us. That's wonderful news.

A couple of notes on the Don Pyle episode in that... I love it, yeah. So Steve Koch, who he mentioned, joined the Demix. I was in the... the Demics. I'm tired of waking up tired.

Yeah, he was not on. They were in New York City. Yeah. Oh, no. Okay. Wait, then, oh,

no. Diodes. So what was their big song that I used to hear on CF and Y all the time? The Demics. That was New York City. New York City.

Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah. That's a great song. So he did not play on that song. He's a band after. I want to go to New York. Martin Street passed away on this day.

Yeah, I saw that post. That's crazy. I remember reading your article. I was sitting on the airport express bus. I was coming back from visiting my then-girlfriend in Salt Lake City, and I was on the airport express bus.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait back up. What happened with this girl? Did you marry her? Was she a Mormon? No. She was a lapsed Mormon. Okay. Yeah.

But she had family who were still. Okay. Was she a jazz fan? Not the music, of course. No. The New Orleans jazz who moved to. Right. John Stockton.

That's right. Carl Malone. Oh, in the mailman. I've always delivered. It's great. I love, it's beautiful city, and yeah, it is kind of cool. We won gold there. That's right.

The men Canadian team, yeah. I've been to that arena. I saw a Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes preseason game there. What is their team? Like, I know they're the mammoth. The Mammoth, yeah. But they were. The Coyotes.

Coyotes, right, yeah, yeah. And before that, the Winnipeg Jets. Right. What the fuck. So weird. Anyway. Okay, you were seeing a girlfriend. And you were reading my article on a bus?

This is long before I knew you. Of course, because you just fell into my life. I'm so blessed to have you like an angel from heaven. You just fell into my lap here, okay. But you were reading Martin Streak dead. Yes. The article I wrote because I got that news and it was nowhere. Like that's one of the stories I broke.

I was reading back through the comments on that article today. On the first, actually, there's a lot, right? On the article that you wrote in after Marty was fired from CFNY, and somebody in that comment thread said that Martin had died. Was it a Steve? Yes. Yes, Steve's my source for this.

And then you said... And Steve, I had to call him. Like, I didn't... Yeah, you were... You did not believe him. I didn't believe him. Sorry, Steve is just... Steve, I don't want to...

I'm actually purposely not using his last name, but he worked at CFNY. Yeah. He was instrumental in the... There was a big CFNY reunion. I don't know when that was mid-2000s. So it was like at the warehouse, right? I don't know because I wasn't invited.

No one invited me to that. Okay. And I'll never. ever get invited to a safe on my event again. What's going on here? I was in my one-man show too. But Steve told me what happened and explained who he was and then I verified, oh, he would be somebody who would know. He knew Martin's personally. And that's when I decided to go and publish this article because I believed he was not lying. And yeah, that's it all started as a comment. Because when you Googled Martin Streak, I was number one because I wrote about his firing. Right.

You should write about this in the sequel to track changes. I feel like that might be in there. That is in the book. Okay, it's in the book. It's in the book. You're like, like, Nick Caprio is over here. Well, like, I told, in the book. I told you today that was the,

I was going to lead with the Martin Streak story. I do feel like that. Yeah, it was too sad. But I do think that's really what helped put you on the map. Is it not? I'm on a map. Sure. Well, are you not on a map?

Are you not entertained? Look, look. Look at this over here. Like, would this have happened if you didn't? Look, over here. It's over here. Like, seriously. Would I have bought a Fuji feather?

Probably. Okay, yeah, you're right. I did cover the start. It was all thanks to Martin Street. Thank you, Martin. Okay, but kidding aside, like, although we're friends, you know, that was, you know, a real sea change moment where all of a sudden a blogger is a source of truth for something that hundreds of not thousands of people across Toronto and Southern Ontario really care about.

You just didn't see that that much. You had like the Globe and Mail calling you, like the paper of record. That's right. I don't think they were calling many bloggers about, you know. They called me and Ramey the Minks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what you had back then. I know. It was a wild night. And today was the, it was on this day, which was July 6th, 2009 that I got that awful news. I couldn't believe it. Lifetime. And then I found it and it verified it. It was true.

And then I published that. And all night long, people were coming to that page to talk about this. Because we were all so shocked. Like this, this almost sounds like, God, this is a bad analogy, but like Twitter won their big origin stories was Sully. Captain Sully on the Hudson River. And now I'm thinking of bring me back.

Bring me back to life. Yes, from the rehearsal. Anyway, he has no idea. You know what? That's the guy thing, though. That reference, the fact that you get it and I can see you get it. It means a lot to me. That's why I don't like Cam that much.

Anyway, point being. He doesn't get most of my references. I get like half. That was Sully's favorite song, and he listened to it. What's the guy named for the hers? What's the guy's name? What's the guy's name? Nathan Fielder.

He's amazing. Have I sung his show? Nathan Fielder is amazing. Okay. The man flies Jumbo Jets, okay? Yeah. But he does this. You know what?

I'll pay you to see it, okay? You have to watch this season of the rehearsal and come back and talk about it. I did listen to a podcast of Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons talking about this show. Okay. And Chuck Klossman said he couldn't even describe what this show was. No, you can't describe it. It's not like anything else. It's not like anything else.

And it's right up our alley. Yes. All this is better than you thought it would, you can imagine it. Chester Sully Sullenberg in his autobiography says that, what is it? Bring me back to life. Bring me to life. Is that a word or shoot? No, it's, it's for real.

By Evan essence is his favorite song. Amy Lee wrote that. But then they, the company, the record label wanted to add the dude. That's right. Yeah, to make it like a new, because the new metal was so big. Yeah. But she,

she wrote it to be, as a teenager, I think, right, without this whole new metal aspect. And it was a big hit. Wake me up. And it had a resurgence thanks to the rehearsal.

That's right. Anyway, Don Pyle was a great episode. Don Pyle was, you know what, and I know, I joked off the top. So I produced,

I used to produce Toronto Legends. And Andrew Applebaum has been too many at TMLX event. And I didn't see it at the last one. It wasn't there this year. No, he wasn't there this year. But I'm always happy to see Andrew Applebaum. And I'm, you know, I have nothing but nice things to say about Andrew Applebaum. But I have not yet, I have not heard.

I have not yet heard Don Pyle on Toronto Legends. But I feel like I should listen just to compare because I have such fond memories of Don Pyle's visit. The only one thing I will say is that I made poor Don Pyle get us ass to sell to Tobacco and sit there. Just like the Warren, all these clips so far. Warren Kinsella, Rita Zika. Part of the trouble in booking these people is, hey, you've got to come to set with the Tobico. Like, if I just said, hey, fucking Zoom me or whatever,

it would be easier to book, and maybe I'm the idiot. I can't decide if I'm the idiot or not. Yeah, I think of all the clips I have, only one is a Zoom clip. And I know which one that was, because that was booked to be in person. Yes, exactly. And we'll get to that because you play a key role in that one.

Yes. Okay. All right. Let's, uh, let's keep. What are we doing? What the fuck? Do people know he's brandishing a bat? Oh, it's fun.

Yeah. This week in baseball. All because you didn't see the rehearsal season two of Nathan Fielder. It's season one. I don't watch TV. I don't watch a lot of TV either. I don't think I watch a lot. But I am, I've decided I am going to watch the last season of the bear.

Even though I love season two. Yeah. I like season one a lot. Yeah. Season two is amazing. I have a season two. Yeah. I hated season three.

Yeah. And I've decided I'm not going to go back and catch up. I fuck it. Yeah. I'm just going to watch season five. I just finished season five yesterday and it's... Say no more. You said too much.

It's worth the watch. I'm already going to do it. Worth the watch. I'm already doing it. All right. Okay. Okay. Ouch.

Why do you say, Ouch? That was really hard. I didn't hear all the sign-offs. They played that that day. But let me tell you what happened. Okay. So I, we do this close at the end of the program.

There, I'm doing it again. We did this. close at the end of the program. And often it was light because, you know, the news is not light. It's heavy. And I didn't write it most times. Someone else did. But for my goodbye, I decided I was going to write it. So I wrote it a month before I left in my kitchen, in the dark, with a glass of wine, at my computer. And I just thought, all the, think about all the happy, memories that you've had in this place. And I wrote it in about 20 minutes.

And I didn't look at it for a month. And then when we were, I said to my team, we do it live, of course. And I said, I can't do this live. So we were going to record it in the afternoon. And the whole team came into the, so they were on the other side of the glass as I was doing that. And there was actually a television crew recording it as well. And what I will tell you and what. most people would never know is that because I am kind of an emotional person that wouldn't show up

in my broadcasting all these years, but I have a pin that I keep in the studio and I press it in between my thumb and my finger when something makes me emotional or something is funny like that ridiculous pigeon story. Right. To, to, so that I don't lose control. And the pin wasn't working. It just wasn't working. Nothing was working.

I was so emotional. I just could barely hold it together. But Susan, I think hearing your voice break there, it humanizes you. I think that's important that you are a human being. And yes, you've been a trusting voice delivering news in this country for, well, for 41 years. But you're a human being with emotions. And I think the reason that clip is so popular is because of that voice breaking and you showing that emotion.

Well, it was, it was, talk about being out of your comfort zone. I was really uncomfortable about it. And, and then I got so many letters from people saying, thank you for saying that, and thank you for sharing it. And, you know, repeating some of the things you've just said. So I think I'm okay. But, you know, I do sometimes feel like I broke a big rule, which is there's no crying in news, no crying in baseball, no crying in news.

Who wrote these rules, okay? I feel like the farewell broadcast you hosted, you were anchor of the world at 6th in September 2014. Here we are. It was March 2026. Your final broadcast, you took a couple of minutes at the end. Remember, that's a five-minute clip, but a lot of that is the clips of you in your career that they did, right?

So I don't know, your speech is like two minutes or something like that. But my goodness gracious, if you can't have two minutes to be a human being and say goodbye, then what's the point of any of this? No, you know, the thing is when you're talking about yourself, it's a lot different than when you're telling people. You know, you're in your news personality, right? And you try to be authentic all the time, but you're doing your job. It's different than when you're saying goodbye to something. Didn't Cam say, what's the point of any of this?

Didn't you say that earlier? Yeah, I take it back. After listening to that, I take it back. it all back. Like that's some real emotion there. Yeah. And did MF listen to that? Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But the Susan Bonner episode of Toronto Mike? Yes. Okay. She did. Okay. Call her. I want to quiz her.

Okay. One thing I'll be hearing that back is she said, you know, she couldn't do it live. She did it pre-recorded. I'm like, fuck it, do it live. Wow. Come on. It was great. She was great.

She was wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. And it was. I'm all fired up in that clip. You were. It was interesting when Blair was here for ReWinder, you played that as well as Marilyn Dennis's farewell. Right.

And, you know, tonally quite different, obviously different audiences, but certainly no less emotional. Yeah, they both cried. Yeah. Those just seem very genuine. Like upset. Sad. Yeah. I would be too.

For sure. Yeah. Both had great friends. It's rare. Maybe episode 2000 is my first. finale. And maybe I, you cry?

I'm going to get a pin. I'm going to take this raccoons pin. And I'm going to pierce my finger until I cry. Produce some tears for everybody. Episode 2000, my finale. Mike,

I feel like I should know this. You've invited Marilyn Dennis on. Oh, yes. So her people got back to me to say she's too busy. Too busy. Well, she's not busy anymore. Or people? Like publicists?

I don't know. I wrote the Maryland. dot Dennis at this won't work anymore, but Maryland. dot Dennis at bellmedia. dot CA. And I got a response about how busy she is.

She's very busy. She's got nothing but time now. I'm not even sure how to reach her now. Is she on social media? Maybe I can slide into her DMs. I don't know. I don't know.

But of course, if Marilyn's listening, because she's a real head. She is. She's a real head. She's got this deep into the FOTM cast. Yeah,

get your ass on Toronto Mike. Let's talk about it. Susan Bonner came over. No regrets. She was great. She was good. I really enjoyed that episode. Yeah.

Hit the next. because these episodes go fucking long, man. They sure do. Hello, there we go. And we're right on the Italian Mediterranean, you know, there's all these like sailboats bobbing. I can see them out of my hotel window and I'm just like trapped in this place. And, you know, thousands of teenagers would surround the hotel

knowing that all these people are in there and they're pounding on the walls of this place. And, you know, and the tension inside, it was like, you know, it was just awful. And so I went to the tour manager, and I said, listen, I've just got to get out of here for a while. And he said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, very dangerous. And I said, literally, seriously, what kind of, you know, nobody knows who I am. You know, this was our first thing. It was, oh, no, no, very dangerous. And I said, listen, you know, I'll sign whatever you want me to sign.

But I'm getting out of here, and I'm going to go down to that dock side. And I'm going to find a rowboat, and I'm going to row around in the little harbor because I'm just dying, you know. and he says okay fine i signed this all this stuff and he gets me out the the trash exit of the of the hotel and i i'm like a free man you know for the first i feel like oh my god i feel like i've just been let out of attica you know and uh so i'm like oh i'm walking down the thing i can feel the breeze on my arms you know i'm walking towards this dock you know and i'm i've learned a phrase uh you You're the most beautiful woman in the world in Italian. You're the most beautiful woman in the world.

Will you ride with me in a rowboat? So I learned how to say that in Italian. I was planning on finding somebody to say it to. But the streets were empty, and everything was closed up. Like the whole town was just like all these teenagers are coming. We better close up everything. Right. The vandals are coming, and the Vikings.

And so I'm walking down, and I'm walking down towards this dock. And, you know, some people spot me. I'm clearly not an Italian teenager, you know. They don't know who I am, but I'm not one of them, you know. So they start following me and I start walking a little faster. And, you know, ultimately it ends up in this kind of beetle mania thing. Even though they had no idea who I was, I was just, you know, I was running and they were chasing. And the more people, the more I ran, the more people were chasing me, the more people chased them.

So it became this like terrifying, you know, sprint down, down this kind of boring. This is going in the biopic, by the way. Going down this boardwalk and all the stores are shut. You know, they're with storm doors, you know, they're like, they're shut against like a, like a hurricane. And I'm like, I'm running out of breath, you know, I'm not a, you know, I don't have the wind of these 15-year-olds, you know. And, and there's, so I find a phone booth. And I'm like, okay, I'll get in the phone booth. I'll call the thing.

I can't figure out how to open the door. So I'm like shaking this and rattling this door. And these kids come at me and, and they start clawing at me. And one of the kids, I had an earring and he, and he grabbed, and he grabbed it my face. And he pulled the earring out, you know, through my earlobe. So blood starts spewing all over the place. Terrible pain suddenly. And I didn't, and without even thinking, I just batted him across the face.

He went flying. and then I became, you know, this enemy, you know, and so now there's like 2,000 Italian teenagers that want to kill me. And so I finally figure out the way of getting myself into the phone booth. By this time my shirts are ripped to shreds, and I'm, you know, my face is all clawed up. And I'm in this phone booth, and they start shaking it.

And they just push it over. So I'm lying on my back, and I'm trying to talk into this phone. and I knew how to say Cantante Americano, American singer. So I dialed zero and I said, SOS, American Contante American Contante American, SOS, you know, and then the phone goes dead.

And I'm just like, oh, fuck, they're getting to kill me. And, and, and so. This is an amazing, can I just step in and say, what an amazing story. So this armored car pulls up. And, you know, the kids clear out and these these Italian soldiers who just kind of grab me out of this thing

and we're sitting in the back of this car and I'm just, you know, I've got, I mean, I'm not severely injured. No, but your earlobe was ripped. I'm bleeding, you know, I've got all kinds of scratches on my face. My shirt is completely torn off. And I'm just sitting there

and you know, everybody in Italy has to serve it a little time in the military. And so these were basically just kids themselves, you know. And they're just sitting there and finally, starts laughing. And then the whole armored car starts laughing. And I'm laughing. They just dump me off in front of the hotel.

And I, and I, you know, I go in and all the people who had been saying, oh, you really shouldn't go out there. You know, I go into the thing and I look like I've been dumped out of a truck. And they show you the waiver you signed or whatever. You cannot sue us, Mr. Bearwold. Good end up there, VP. Come on. Yeah.

Wow. that you're making me think about the David Bearwald episode. That was a wild ride that episode. You said you were very familiar with that song, the Boomtown. I was, yeah, yeah. The Hamilton station. Is it 1150? CCOC-O-C-O-C-E 1150. Yeah.

Did you know it? No, I don't think I knew it. I didn't know it. But the guy who worked for the label, the book publishing company, Scott, who brought him over, loved David and David. Really? loved him. Love them.

I mean, I couldn't name another song. What would you consider them like just rock music? Yeah. Yeah. Like top 40 rock. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they made it to 680s CFTR. I have to ask Sharon Taylor.

I don't know, but that was a weird one in the room. So I talked, you know, I mentioned earlier. I like to get their asses to South Atobico, sit down in this basement studio. No zoom in here. But that was a weird one in the room. And then I listened back to it on a bike ride after the recording. and I liked it. Like I was surprised.

Oh, I actually liked this. But in the room, I thought it was really, like, maybe bad, or maybe he just, he didn't seem to answer. He didn't seem to want to talk about anything. But that's a big, long story. He had carved out there. I just heard. I don't know what to think of that episode.

At the end of listening to him, just like, why did you decide to be a musician? It just seemed like, you know, most people, they, the stuff he's describing is what people aspire to. Yeah, he seemed to not enjoy any of it. Yeah, it's sort of the adulation and sort of the attention and stuff. Like, you probably should have been more just straight up

behind the scenes guy. Yeah. Right. And, I mean, he's got a co-write on like 75% of... Cheryl Crowe's Tuesday Night Music Club, which, you know, that's paying for his... Including leaving Las Vegas. Yeah.

Which is paying for his career as a novel, novelist, I'm sure. Yeah, well, geez. Now, that's also the book publishers sent me a copy of the book and then sent me another one. Like, multiple... Wow. One was in all. Okay.

So, hey. but I enjoyed listening back. I liked it very much and I liked him. But in the room, I felt like I was a dentist, like I was pulling teeth. Yeah, it took him a while to warm up. He was pretty reticent at first. But then when I turned the channel to talk about his book,

because I kind of grilled him on David and David, and his other David apparently hated his guts and he was revealing some interesting shit. And then I'm like, okay, I'll better let this guy talk about his book. I know that's why he's here. The book guy's right there. And I said, hey, let's talk about this book. And it was really hard to get him to kind of talk about the book.

Yeah. But it was a good episode. It was a notable episode. I recall him at one point. You were going to ask him about the book and he said something like, okay, I guess if you're interested in that. I was like, yeah,

like I'm fucking asking you, dude. But that's, see, there's a social contract. I don't know. Explain to you guys. I'm going to mansplain how this works. But like if you're,

you're going to come in, I'm going to talk about a bunch of shit I want to talk about. And at some point, I'm going to put the spotlight on your new book. Yeah. I did this with a guy named Cam Gordon. He had this book called. track changes.

Sure. And I'm like, I held it up. And I read it and I talked to him about the book. You flick through it. I said, oh, Cadence weapon was in this. You read one chapter. There's go. I read chapter 11.

Yeah. And then I filed chapter 11. Apparently an American thing. Not at all right. So it's 2.1 Belgium. Yes. I'm kind of excited. We're going longer than anticipated.

Half time. It's half time. Okay. But I kind of love this thing where I see little feet coming down that stairs. It's exciting. It's very exciting. This camera picks up. the stairs.

Well, they're worried he's going to fall down the stairs. Yeah, a lot of chatter on the live stream that they're concerned with. Respectfully. That sounds like somebody without children. Like, Tyler, you have a daughter. You both have a daughter. Yeah, yeah, sure. Have you ever worried about your kid falling down the stairs?

Not for a long time. Yeah. When they were 12, was this even in your head? No. To me, it's like, if you fall down the stairs, you weren't meant to live. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is that switch foot?

We were meant to live for so much more. Do you remember a band called Switch? Were they a Christian rock band? I don't know if they were Christian, but they had an Edge 102, 102.1 in The Edge, would play a song called Ment to Live. And I remember, like, it was on a lot. I didn't hate it.

I don't remember, like, loving it, but I didn't hate it. They were meant to live for so much more. Stained, I liked better, believe it or not. Shine Down? Shine Down, I was like a black hole to me. I don't think CFNY played Shine Down. I'm thinking of jars of clay.

Yeah, that is Christian, because that's jars of clay. but somebody in the live stream, if anyone's still there, can you maybe give us a little fun fact about switchfoot? I'll hear some switchfoot facts. And the song I remember hearing a lot was called Meant to Live.

You were meant to live for so much more. Was this guy David on a press junket? He was really, really high. I will say this. So one thing about in-person guests is he reeked of cannabis. Like I mean, less is like, so he, I've never, I don't think I've ever had a guest.

Maybe by divine rights, Jose Contreras. Like maybe, I'm trying to think of who has smelled more Weedy. Fragrant? Like a skunky weedy. Oh, that's a good question. What about Bases, Bases, Roger Mooking?

Roger Mooking was definitely high. But I remember this odor, I don't think it's ever been stronger than David Bearwell. Is that Ben Raynor? Ben Raynor. He smoked joints, but then he's like, he's just walked for like four hours. Yeah. By the way, if you heard from Ben Rainer.

No. Remember, we did the last catch-up We said the next one, I felt like I can't do another, let's check in a Ben Zoom. Like the next one has to be an in-person. So I got to find out when he's here and get him over here.

We deserve that. You go to him. Well, who do I expense that to? Because when I used to go to Amsterdam, this was a, I had this, I never talked about this. You have car people. This German software company,

you know, kayaking is a solo sport. My son James loved my debt-liff story about kayaking is a solo sport. This is from the one-man show at the Elma Combo. Anyway. Anyway.

They used to have an event in Amsterdam, and I would, like, make sure, like, I'd somehow get myself involved with this event just so I could spend a week in Amsterdam and expense the whole fucking thing. Do you go to coffee shop, believe? Not too much. I was not a big coffee shop guy in Amsterdam. Believe it or not. But I don't know who to expense my trip to Ben Rayner in New Brunswick, whatever.

I don't know who to expense it to them. Surely there's a business expense. Is this a Seinfeld bit where Kramer's like, you just write it off? And then Jerry says something like, he says, where do you write it off to? You don't even know what that means. You just write it off. It's like, I want to go visit Ben Raynor in the maritime. I'm just going to write it off.

Just write that off. All right, moving on. Anyway. One more little thing for you off the top. Ready? Go. Come on. Bimbo please.

Well done. And out comes Bimbo. And here's Bimbo. Introducing Bimbo the Birthday Clown and the son of Happy. Here we go. Bimbo, Bimbo, Bimbo, I'm the birthday show. Bimbo. Bimbo Bimbo Bambu Bucie show.

Oh, I just got it. Happy birthday to you, Kevin Newman. I know your birthday is tomorrow. Yeah, I am 67, and I was on the Uncle Bobby show. Okay, I need detail. Aging court, right? I need to hear about this. When I was four years old, I was Kevin the safety guy.

So my grandmother had booked me on the Uncle Bobby show. And for those of you, too young to remember this. I don't think anyone listening is too young. All right, okay. That's your demo. I got it. Anyway. Just in case.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you would go out to agent court, and my job for one week was to get in a motorized little car where I would drive around the back lot of CTV, where I ended up, like, finishing my career a couple of years ago, in a weird sort of cyclical thing. Anyways, driving around four years old, best job ever.

And my job was to stop where the stop sign was, and Uncle Bobby would be there saying, hey, kids, this says stop. And I didn't know what it was about. All I knew is that I got to drive a little motorized car and drink hunting. So you're only four? I was four, which, you know,

it was probably illegal, except it was a private parking lot. So I would park in that lot later in life in my real car. Yeah, so this is a mind blow off the top, Kevin. And I was excited to get in your news guy, news junkie. We're going to get into your news career, journalism. But hearing that you were on the Uncle Bobby show as a four-year-old, complete mind blow to me because I don't know if you've heard Toronto mic before,

but like that's a recurring touch point is Uncle Bobby. Because I grew up of Uncle Bobby. I just played for you just because I knew it was your birthday tomorrow. I played Bimbo the Birthday Clown from the Uncle Bobby show. Yeah, of course. So you didn't know this? No, I had no idea. I had no idea.

my research, my crack research into your life and times, did not reveal that you were driving that car in aging court. Uncle Bobby, you know, there's so many Uncle Bobby's stories that we share on this show, but one is that he drove a school bus. Yeah. Did other people find him odd? Oh, yeah.

Well, no, he was, but the legend is. So I think this is a preferred legend to other countries have children's entertainers with terrible. With different histories, yes, yes, yes. Uncle Bobby was very into the mothers of the children that would come on the show. I hate to say this, but did Uncle Bobby and your mom ever? Well, I went with my grandmother. He doesn't care.

Maybe not. But I've heard about the Uncle Bobby like shaggin wagon. Like if it's rock and don't come and knocking. Well, he wasn't, you know, I was accustomed to seeing him on television because I watched him on television. And then when you actually got in studio with him, he didn't talk to you. And I thought he was like mean. But he, okay, there's. so many legends I've been told, but as a school bus driver, you think he'd be good at talking to kids?

You'd think he'd have a good rapport of kids. And also, there's a legend he had a about, and again, a shout out to Retro Ontario, Ed Conroy, who does deliver most of these great stories. But on Halloween, he was in an apartment and he had some door that could open, you know, the middle of the door, so the top part would open and he would kind of do this special treats for the kids. We'll move on to Uncle Bobby, but four-year-old. Kevin Newman, you get your media start on the Uncle Bobby show. At CTV, which is where I had my media end when I was the host and correspondent for W5.

We're going to get to that. So I was actually, like at several times, I was actually in the same studio in age in court that I had been in with the Uncle Bobby show. Mind blow. And there was one cameraman. I remember I did a couple appearances on Canada AM. And I was telling this story to Bev Thompson at the time. And the cameraman from behind sort of peeks out from behind.

says, I did that show. Okay, question for you, too. Yeah. If it's not Kevin Newman's baseball, if it's not Kevin Newman's birthday the next day, and I do not play Bimbo the Birthday Clown from the Uncle Bobby show, do I get that story? No.

No. I rest my case. Always play the Uncle Bobby birthday song. You are correct, VP, that the band known as Switchfoot was a Christian. and rock band that migrated to the mainstream. So Switchfoot had, of course, their big hit is meant to live. And a bunch of people in the live stream have, well, they link me to a wiky. Would we know this song?

I know it. You were meant to live for so much more. Doesn't help. Okay. So meant to live is a hit single from 2003. Okay. So were you listening to Alt Rock Radio in 2003? Yeah.

Okay, well, then you wouldn't have missed Ment to Live. It was a big new rock hit. Check it out, maybe I'll find... I'm here and looking at it actually... As I listen to it. You'll recognize it when you hear it. But... 140,000.

It was number 18 on the US... Wow. It was a big rock... Like, it's a post-grungey thing, right? So, you're post-grungee thing, right? So you're post-grunge. It's a... It's an alt-rock staple. It's meant to live.

But they were a... They were a... Kevin Newman was great. Yeah, and actually, sort of on a related note, tied into Kevin Newman is one thing we discovered on that episode is that Kevin Newman really loves Slipknot. Oh, yeah.

Wait and Bleed was my favorite slip-knot song. Is Slip-Nod tied at all to wake me up? What's the song called again? Went to wake me to life. They should call it Wake Me Up. They've got the wrong title with that fucking song. But Evan essence's big hit,

is that tied to switch? Who's doing the mail? switch foot or slip not slip not no it's some dude he's nothing to a slip not this guy from Corey Taylor oh brother brother does brother mean anything okay brother brother brother there is a band called brother brother bill there's a there's a slip knot that's light like it's folky and it's more uh that's Corey Taylor yeah Corey Taylor okay Corey Taylor okay there is a there was an outfit I can't remember the song was called Brother or if the band was called Stone Sour. Thank you. Okay. Here you.

There was a, one of the radio hits was called Brother. It didn't have the monkey mask. Right. They took off the mask and they, they stripped it down. And it was good. Like stone, I actually liked Stone Sour and I actually liked a lot of slipnot. But I needed, unlike my barber from Phantom Lung, I needed a little like melody in my hard rock. Yeah. Okay. You know, and I could get, some Slipknot had it and some didn't. So it depended. Do you ever listen to Slayer? Not a big Slayer guy. Too thrashy?

Do I look like Midtown Gord over here? No, I don't have a Slayer, like, a legacy here. Corey Taylor, born in 1973, so he's older than all of us. Paul McQuay from 12 Stones was the... It's not Stone Sour, it's 12 Stones. The guy on the, Bring Me to Life. Wake me up! Yeah.

It's only had to do. Big hit. Four squirrels. Okay, they were Christian, too, I think. Kevin Newman. Kevin Newman was great. Kevin Newman was great. So remember some guys.

guys. Some new metal guys. Kevin Newman was great. You have more to say? That's all I got. I enjoyed that. Before you play the next clip. What's this card?

Is it like the holiday season? So, no, not the holiday season. I got a like a piece of mail. Very nice. From Manatech, Ontario. Oh. Manatech.

Manate. I think I've been there. Hi, Mike. And it's a handwritten. So I might, I'm having, okay. Just a quick note to thank you for having me

on your show, exclamation mark. It was a great, it was great fun. and I was completely impressed by how you managed to get me a near beer a tasty one at that

while you were hosting a show live, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. I guess miracles do exist. Take care and best of luck with your show. It should be required listening. It's very nice stewstone. Leave a Fumpke. No, just kidding.

Warm wishes, Kevin Gilles. Wow. A handwritten note. Isn't that lovely? And a beautiful card here. Sorry for who? Kevin Gillis. Oh, Kevin Gillis.

Does that name mean anything to you? Yeah. It should. It should. Yeah. Okay, hit it. I like that. Kevin, the song has no business being this good.

You know, I found out something, first of all, thank you. Thank you. There were three of us that wrote it. My longtime music writing partner, John Stroll, and Stephen Lunt, who was with a band called City Boy, but he ended up writing a lot of songs for Cindy Lopper. And we got together in New York and wrote, I think we wrote over three days a lot of the songs for Raccoons.

And that was in fact, Stephen Lunt sang the original version on season one. And I have to tell you, there's a guitar player here in Toronto, very well known by the name of Neil Chapman, and Neil is the guitar player on that. And he just does an incredible job. And of course, Lisa Lougheed, who was singing it.

How did you get Lisa? I think my other writing partner, Jack Lenz, was actually managing her at the time. And he knew I was looking for somebody. I needed a, I wanted a female singer for the second season. And I also wanted somebody who could, you know, and Stephen obviously wasn't available. He was living in New York and he wasn't female. And so decided to see if we auditioned some people.

And I wanted whoever sang the songs to also play the role of a new character that we were, Lisa Raccoon that we were developing. That's like Bentley's sister. It is Benley's sister. That's Stu Stone sister. Oh my God. Whoa. So for the final season.

Okay, yes. Okay, so Lisa, and Logheed. Lisa Laaheed. Laugheed. The G is silent. I should know these things. Okay.

All right. So she's playing a character that is Bentley Raccoon. And fans fall in love with her. I mean, I get a lot of letters. I mean, you know, people really identify with the characters.

I mean, they've become they've crushes on the characters. What are your questions, Cam Gordon? Sorry, this is Carrie or this is Dina? I don't think I knew this. I didn't. What are you trying to miss this episode?

So he talks about Stu's sister, but Stu was a voice on the raccoons. And the character Lisa Lohe played was Stu's characters. Stu played Bentley raccoon. Oh, the raccoon sister. The raccoon sister. Keep up, Cam. Well, just like both his sisters also dabbled in.

Right. I see the confusion and modeling and stuff. But no, this is, yeah, the Bentley raccoon sister. Like, comedically referred to as two stilis. Yes. So I have some interesting things to say about the Kevin Gillis episode. First of all, my dad claims that Kevin Gillis owes him a large sum of money.

And for the record, I'm not saying that he does. My dad is... But this is huge. Roger Campbell, who we sang happy birthday to at a TMLX in the last year. Yeah. Last year. He worked with Kevin Gillis for... And the man who introduced me to Larry Klopje.

Yes. That's right. Huge. What did your dad do? Your dad comes up, he's come up a few. Yeah, Roger Sterling. He's a, he's a, a raconteur, if you will. Oh, I sang steady as she goes.

Isn't that a raconteur song? That's a raconteur song. That's amazing. Yeah, my dad has... Like a deal maker? Yeah, sort of a serial entrepreneur. Bon vivant. Man about town kind of character.

Like in Hamilton or just that? Well, Toronto. Is your dad a hustler? Wherever the wind blows. Wherever the wind blows. No, he's not a hustler. He's a big dreamer and things maybe didn't go the way that he wanted them to. But he did work with Kevin Gillis for a couple of years.

And yeah, when I told him that you were going to have Kevin Gillis on the show, he said he owes me X amount of dollars. So you won't say X. I know X, but I don't say it. It's a large amount of money. And again, I'm not saying that he does. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on.

Somebody's coming down the stairs. No poker face. Get on that mic and talk to us. Get down there. 3-1 Belgium. Yeah! What was the goal? You want to tell us or no?

The goal you rushed up to hit the ball away and it was an empty net. Oh. Oh. Amit Tower. Wow. Very exciting. Jarvis, keep this coming. That's a great update.

That is a great update. Looking good for Belgium. Oh, wow. 3 to 1. 58th minute. Wow. My dream is coming true. The USA is losing.

Nick Borshevsky. I would, I'd say that these episodes where you get little of like Canadian TV in the 70s, 80s. They always deliver. So, so interesting. Yeah. The raccoons are poised for a huge comeback. Indeed.

Who's paying for this shit? That's very nice to send a card. It's only the second guest ever who wrote a handwritten note and mailed it to me. Where does he live again? Manatech, Ontario. Manateek. Yeah. Up near Ottawa, I believe.

I do believe that is correct. It's a nice one three. It looks like the old. Mill. It does look like you old. Shout out to the tea party. I have a couple of sort of toast-style mind blows. I'm listening.

I love it. So he mentioned... Did you guys want to be the new host of toast? Don't tell them, but I'm firing Bob and Rock. Oh, wow. This is big news. Is Robsill awake? Is he out there?

He's going to hear that. So, yeah, he mentioned Stephen Lunt, the co-writer of Run with Us. Yeah. Who was in a British pop band in the 70s called City Boy. And they had one hit. which I will play just a little bit of for you right now. 5705. Sort of an ELO derivative.

Get me Jesus on the line. So, yeah. This is 9-675309. This charted in North America, their only charting song. It reached 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. 78. I bet you Proust is a big fan of this. Probably.

This is in his wheelhouse. This song and all of their albums were produced by, can you guess, who was produced? Who produced, produced, Citiboy. Oh, the guy from ELO, of course. That's a good guess, but no. Like, who did the Queen albums? Like, I feel like it's our, like, dollorama queen.

Yeah, I can see that. Bob Ezrin. Mutt Lang. Mut-Lang. Okay, we're getting in there. We're getting there. Yes. Mutt Lang.

It seems like it's a bit of Roxy music, a bit of Nick Lowe. I hear my laying in there. Yeah. Like that deaf leopard thing or whatever. That tracks. I totally hear that. So wait. How this,

these digits are four characters? Am I hearing that? 5705 is the name of the song. Okay. It's missing some, you need seven digits for a phone number, right? Well, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, so that's, that's City Boy. And he mentioned, Kevin Gillis mentioned that Stephen Lunt. It is. Wrote some songs for Cindy Lopper.

The songs he co-wrote were, uh, Shebop. That's a big one. It's about masturbation. That's right. And Goonies are good enough. That's huge. Yeah. Get me Stu Stone in line two. We're going to talk about the video, man.

Classy Freddie Blassie. Nikolai Volkov is in there. Of course, Captain Lou Albanon. It's classy Freddie Blassie? Yeah. Really? Yeah. He's in that video. She bob. I think so. No, no. You're talking about girls just want to have fun, right?

No, I'm talking about Goonies. Are they in the Goonies video? Yeah. I remember all those WWF superstars in the Goonies video. the bad guys. Yeah, well, Nikolai Volkov, I think the Iron Sheets in there, too. I'm telling you, this was big to me because I remember, I only watched WWF, as you, if you can't remember, from like 85 to 87. Those are my, like that's it.

You know where Nikolai is actually from? Baltimore. Yugoslavia. Oh. Which doesn't exist anymore. Oh, right. Ready, baby. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, guys. Come on. That's the only wrestling thing I can get right. Sheaky baby. Yeah. Amazing. I like that. song. Goonies are good enough. Yeah, that's a good song. So then Stephen Lunt later

became VP of A&R at Jive Records, where he was responsible for some big boy bands. Shout out to Andy. She's on the live stream. In sync, Backstreet Boys. Never heard of them. And Aaron Carter, who I believe once played softball. No. It was Nick Carter.

Was it Nick Carter? Aaron's dead. Aaron is dead. Shout out to Ridley. Aaron's older brother, who is a member of New Kids on the block. No. No, he was a backstreet boys. Back to but Nick Carter played softball. Well, he was involved with Nick as well. So everything... He dropped an easy fly ball and I lost all respect for the line.

Come on, Carter. Yeah. Everything comes full circle here. Dick Carter, okay. Yeah, Nick Carter. Aaron Carter's dead. I think he had some substance abuse issues. Yes, indeed.

Shout out. Shout out to Ridley Funeral home. Yeah. Do you think, I heard Brad Jones put a bet on America to win this match. I heard that. I heard that. So two things. One is, I'm going to need receipts because I feel like he's backpedaling.

It was such an unpopular desire to see America win this game. If you're not American, you're basically you've got a citizenship for Belgium. Like, I think the world is passionately rooting for Belgium tonight unless you are American. Is Belgium traditionally good? Well, they were in our group last time, I remember, and they were, they didn't advance, actually, because they were a little over the hill, but I think they're pretty good, too. They're winning tonight, 3-1. Yeah.

I keep checking those stairs if I see little feet coming down because I don't want to support. The only time I was in Belgium, it was in Brussels, and there was just like 10 years ago, there's a Chi-Chi's right downtown. Really? I don't know when I was still there. See, I just mentioned Amsterdam, right? So that's the Benelix countries. Yeah. A great movie related to Belgium is in Bruges. Bruges.

Bruges. I misspronged everything. I've heard that's a great fucking movie. Colin Farrell, it's a great movie. Ray Fines is excellent in that. You're an inanimate object. He's always great. He's always great.

I think Congo is staying neutral. Oh, I said the whole world was rooting for Belgium. Congo's staying neutral. Okay. So Jeremy Hopkin on the live stream says that he always pictured your dad VP to be like a Pete Campbell from Mad Men. But I actually think of you as Pete Campbell. So that makes sense. Yeah.

Because you talk about your building your madman thing, Draper and Sterling or whatever the fuck it is. Draper and Friends. I picture you as the accounts guy. Like you're the Pete Campbell. Yeah. Yeah. You're the Pete Campbell. I am now the VP of accounts.

Really? Well, there's only four of you. So everybody's a VP. That's right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's keep this thing rolling. Okay. Hit us. So those words, you people. Right.

You people, you come here for a milk and honey. I don't know how to interpret that any other way than new Canadians. We'll call them. New Canadians. and he doesn't explicitly, you know, new Canadians don't have to be people of color. Right, no, I'm an immigrant. So where, well, where were you born?

Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yeah, like your sister, of course. Yeah, yeah. And my wife, she's from, well, she's from Shanghai, and, you know, we wear poppies. It, again, dad, I think that, dad was kind of excited, and you could see that he wasn't,

he was stumbling over his words. Well, that fires him up. This subject, I'm looking at a poppy, right now. This subject fires your father up. He's very proud of the military. He's proud of his country. And it angers him when people don't wear a poppy. I think the great error in that, that rant there, if you will, was blaming it on new Canadians because you people is new Canadians. And then, of course, the majority of our new Canadians are people of color. Right. Yeah. And as you say, there's a lot of ways to interpret it. And I could see that one

dad said that and slip of the tongue or whatever that it was that was it because he wasn't going to apologize for that no no so now i need to ask you do you think rogers was just waiting for your father to give them a reason to get out from this uh no i don't controversial show the guy that the the the person i won't name the person i talked to because he asked me not to but you could hear the angst in his voice like he was really like this this really heard him like he was he didn't know what to do. And he asked me, he says, from what dad told me, because I was in New York, the executives met with Rogers, met with dad at his house and wanted him to read an apology that they had written for him. And he just go, like, did, so when they, when they did that,

they go, I say to myself, did they know that dad wouldn't do that and that's what they wanted him to, so that's what they wanted him to do? Or was that what they felt, the lawyers felt that they needed him to do? You know what I mean? And, And then they want, and then dad said they wanted him to let people know he was taking sensitivity courses. So I think on one hand, I think they were maybe putting roadblocks up for him so that he wouldn't come back. But on the other hand, when I'm talking to this executive, like he, you could tell he was very, like, hurt and upset and he didn't want to be in that situation. By any chance, I know we kind of covered this when we talked about Gere's story about Wolf Island and Ron's call with Gare that made it to print. there, but is this the exit strategy maybe that Ron alluded to?

Well, you know, Ron did, more than a few people did. You got fired on Remembrance Day for people not wearing poppies, right? You know, like you couldn't write that any better. I said to dad, I said, dad, I said, dad's not that. He goes, people are saying that. I go, yeah, I think dad's, I'm not that smarter. I'm not that dumb egos to do that. Except we both know he is that smart.

Yeah, but of, if he wanted to get, I think. I think he would have said something a lot more outrageous if he wanted to get fired. You know what I mean? Because he was, like you're kind of semi-straddling the line there. I think he would have been. But he's a bit of a martyr. I can tell you there's a contingent of Don Cherry fanatics who are, A, they're still pissed off at Rogers in hockey night in Canada. But they're also pissed off at Ron McLean, who they see Ron as throwing your father under the bus.

Yeah. I think the Rogers threw Ron under the bus as much as. Okay. Tell me about that. Well, I think that if you had old-time executive producers, such as Ralph Mellonby or John Shannon, or Scott Moore, he's not so much old school, but he's around here a couple of times. Yeah, Scott Moore. Ronnie Harrison would be another guy. If this situation came up, those guys would have held a press conference, and they would have said, you know, we're firing or I'm firing Don Cherry, and they would have taken the questions, and they would have taken the slings in Arrow.

to protect Ron and to protect Hockey Night in Canada. And I just don't think that Rogers thought that out enough and let Ron take the fury. And I don't know if they did that on purpose or if they just weren't thinking about it. And, you know, I don't hold any animosity towards Ron. I think it was a bad situation. When Ron said, that's why we love you.

There's no doubt they were talking in his years, screaming at him to get off. off because they were heavy time-wise. And, and, like, I'm, I look like my dad, but I act like my mom. And I know my mom would have said, get over it, you know, with Ron, what's the thing with Ron. It's not, you know, I, I don't hold, and same as Sydney in the book, we don't hold any animal city towards Ron.

Very thoughtful answers from Tim Cherry about his father. Very measured. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But if, if his dad, though. Don Cherry does take those sensitivity chains, whatever. I hope they

film it. I want to fucking see that. I would watch that. Don Cherry and sensitivity. There's still time. Yeah. No, it's interesting to hear him talk about Ron, because there has been so much sort of vitriol in the press and from fans just on social media

who continue to blame Ron McLean for the things that happened to Don and that Ron wasn't, didn't support his friend. You know, I find Ron to be a pretty frustrating broadcaster to watch. But he certainly took way too much of the heat for something that Don Cherry did. I feel like it's a lot of things in just sports and media.

Like, you don't fucking know. It's just you're not there. It's like, you know, stuff with like morning show drama. Oh, yeah. Like, who the hell knows? Like, I don't know. It's all. You refrained Darren B. Lamb?

With the exception of, uh, it's more. Marine gave the real talk. What do you got? Okay. teaser. That's a teaser. More on that to come. Yeah. Yeah.

No, but I thought it was a great shot. The thing that struck me is for, you know, because Don Cherry's been around forever. And he would talk about his kids. And I always just assumed his kids were like 20. You know, they've just been forever 20. Right. Yeah. But like his daughter who just passed away was in her late 60s.

And I think Tim's in his early 60s. Cindy, you know what? I called her Sydney and I hated myself for doing it. for some reason, I don't, it's not, I don't think I have dyslexia, but my Cindy and my Sydney, they get mixed up in my,

my mouth when I'm saying these words. Tim, her name is Cindy. I mean, I apologize, I didn't listen to this episode. You know, it's a great fucking episode,

Cam Gordon. Like, what are you here for? I'll put in my cue. It's top 12. Was he involved in all like the Rockham soccer? Yes. Yeah.

He's like, it's all just managing. Do you know what I played for him? What? The Don Cherry rap. Yeah, yeah. He can shoot. He can score.

number four. Yeah, I played that for him. Yeah, let's go. Yeah. And the, yeah, the Rockham Sox. It's like too unlimited. And the grape line show, he was producer.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, his kids were very, very involved in his career. Also, like, really kind of had the curve with, like, merchandising. Like, there wasn't a lot of that sort of product in the restaurants. Oh, yeah, the grapevine restaurants.

Yeah, slap his name in the blue. It was one year my high school. I don't think ever, I don't think ever, did you guys ever eat at one? I think it was one of the last ones in the chain in downtown Waterloo near the university. Oh, right. The only time I ever ate was actually also the first night. This is a big night.

The first time I ever saw WWF wrestling at Cops Coliseum. Oh, yes. That's huge. There was one right by. Yeah, there was one. It was Rowdy, Roddy Piper on the bill. No, but there was a battle royal. And guess who wanted?

Bruno San Martino. Because this guy, I thought, sucked. I since learned he's a real bad. Oh, SD Jones. Barry O. No, close. King Tonga. Oh.

Later became Hakku. Right. I do remember this. So you're in my era here. It was apparently like a legit badass. Okay. Gee. Sue Stones met Hakku.

I'll bet. Dark side of the ring. Brida. Won a Canadian Screen Award, by the way, Dark Side of the Ring. Okay. Burn. You got three more to go.

We're going to whip through these. We? We? We go ahead. Okay. Go ahead. All right. Can you just tell me a little bit about the influence of your father?

Yeah, okay, so Teddy, my father, Teddy Pemberton. He was a radio DJ in Edmonton on CGSR for over 20 years. He had a show called The Black Experience and Sound, and he was the first person to play hip-hop over the airwaves in Edmonton. So he's kind of like the DJ Ron Nelson of Edmonton, Alberta. Exactly, exactly. I get it, okay. Totally.

Yeah, so that was my dad. And when I first came on the scene, when people figured out that I was Teddy's son, It was kind of like, well, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Like everyone I talked to in the scene, they'd be like, oh, yeah, you know what? I used to listen to Teddy Show, and that was how I found out about rap. Or, you know, it was like appointment listening every Saturday night. Okay, so you're born into the scene here, right? So no wonder you're rapping at such a young age.

Yeah, I just grew up in a library of music. My mom played piano. My uncle was a funk musician, Brett Miles. He had a group called McGillofunk Conduit. And that was who I would first perform with. I would just jump up as, I was like a teenager at the sidetrack cafe in Edmonton, the Sugar Bowl. And I'd just be rapping with this funk band.

Okay. So you're, apparently you're rapping at age 13. Does that sound right to you? Yeah, totally. Okay. And this, Breaking K-Fave, does that come out when you're still a teenager? Breaking K-Vabbe came out in 2005. Okay.

I would have been 19. Okay, that's teenager. Yeah. Okay, that's teenager. I'm probably the last guy standing who cares about these dumb details, but how do you go from a guy just rapping as a teenager, probably, I don't know,

guessing you're doing like talent shows in high school or something? I'm just guessing that. I wrapped it my high school grad. See, I was almost there, almost there. Like, how do you go from that to an actual full-length debut,

breaking K-fabe? I was just possessed and obsessed with music and hip hop and wanting to release music. I was determined to do it. And we didn't really have the infrastructure in Edmonton. It wasn't like Toronto. Like there wasn't a ton of rap labels or anything. There wasn't any connections to the wider Canadian music industry. There was no Farley Flex.

No, no. So it was, for me, it was just the internet. I really reached a lot of success, being early adopter of the internet, having my own blog, That's how you get into track changes. Exactly. And it was like through some of those blog connections I had, Oliver Square got on this blog called Flux Blog. Okay.

And then I started getting all these label offers. And like it was really, you could really make, break an artist, just putting them on a blog. We got to talk about these edits, these edits out. Come on. Oliver Square, by way, great fucking jam. Yeah. That allow them is such a, a, most.

moment in time. And we just talked about wrestling numerous times and breaking K-Fabe, that's a wrestling term. Love it. Shadow to Hakku. I feel like Cam's falling asleep. But that gentleman Cadence weapon, not his real name, well-spoken,

intelligent young man. I say young man, and he's probably not that much younger than me. But he's younger than me. But he was a great, great conversation, and he is in the book, Track Changes. And how can people buy a copy of Track Changes, Camperon? All major booksellers, or even better, you can just send me a DM or send me an email.

Toronto Mike can connect you. I'd be happy to... So you're saying, right, Mike and Tronomac.com is they, connect me to cam. I'll give Mike 5%. And I get my referral fee. Cadence weapon was a great episode. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Yeah.

I said this you might. Like, I feel like he's done a really good job at just managing his career where he's got his, you know, he's got his music, he's writing. He's got, you know, he's getting into like activism now, all this stuff. with the data centers in Hamilton. Yeah, she did a great job on that. And just sort of a voice in like a lot of different areas. Like I almost wonder, is this guy going to like run for some sort of like city council or something?

You think he might replace Tom Wilson as mayor of Hamilton? You might. God willing. Yeah. In that Toronto Star, was that on this? I can't remember. Did we talk about, oh yeah, we did. Caden.

We talked about chaos crab bucket being number one on the Toronto Star. 25 Toronto song. Also on that list is that song I played for Caden's Weapon in that episode where he talks about Ford Nation and he talks about the affordable housing and his friend just moved to Hamilton.

It's more like a pandemic or something. And well, he, shortly thereafter, he moves to Hamilton. Caden's weapon. Yeah. And you know who's from Hamilton, Cam? Tyler. This mofo right here.

That's right. You know who went to university in Hamilton? Brad Jones. Oh, I did. Cam. Cam, that was me. I know.

He's the master of McMaster. I know he's the master of his own domain here. Okay, Cadence Weapon, people, check it out. Yeah, definitely listen to it. Very, very strong episode. And every clip you played so far, Tyler Campbell, has been somebody who sat right there. Correct.

That's important to me. Yeah. But you're going to break the streak. I am going to break that streak. It sounds like Ken Finkelman, as brilliant as he was, as a writer, director, creator that he could be very difficult to work with.

Like maybe, dare I say, some people's experience with the, oh, what an asshole. Yes, asshole is probably the first word a lot of us would use. But in a really affectionate way, he, yeah, he could be, on my, one of my first days on married life. We were shooting in an apartment and he was down at the end of a long hallway and around the corner. And he was at the monitor. And I think I talked about this than you were there, but he yelled down the hall, not so fake Ivy. So he didn't use my real name. He used my character's name because he couldn't remember my name. And he yelled, not. And he yelled, not so fake, Ivy. And he had been doing that on a fairly regular basis, like yelling my directions.

And, you know, typically unflattering directions, directions, things you typically don't want people to hear when you're the actor. But I walked down the hall and I turned around the corner and he looked terrified. And I just said, Ken, if you have a direction to give me, could you please come and give it to me in person or, you know, up close or something like that? And he didn't, I don't think he were, his eyes were wide. And again, that was like a building block for our relationship. Like that became, he enjoyed that. He enjoyed me calling him out.

He enjoyed that aspect of his male-female relationship with me. And I was, I felt quite free with him that I could. to do that. And that didn't mean that he was never an asshole again. He certainly was. But the fact that I could call him on it was great. And you get that a lot with not so much anymore. I think directors have to be more pristine in their behavior.

But that was not atypical. In that episode, you played a big role in the origin of that episode with Karen. and Hines. Yeah. That's, we went to that West End Phoenix event at the Paradise Theater where Ken Finkelman,

there was a panel of people who had been involved with the show, actors and Ken Finkelman himself who is, I think, in his early 80s. Oh, time for Mike to take his meds. I don't have it with me,

remind me to take it after this recording. He's kind of reclusive. Yeah, like, he's reclusive. Yeah, I hadn't seen him. The deanie dug him up. Yeah, I hadn't seen him anywhere. in ages.

And he was, he seemed a little disoriented, I would say at first, like just not really sure where he was at or he couldn't really hear what people were saying on the stage. Right. So he seemed very confused. Uh,

he eventually kind of warmed up and I think kind of got his bearings and, and it was an interesting conversation. Uh, but, but Karen Heinz was really quite illuminating in, in, in that whole panel because she sort of, uh,

she talked about that same dynamic where she, she, she had no problem calling him out on his behavior because he was clearly very, you know, he didn't really understand how to write women, which I think he would have acknowledged. And Karen Heinz said that the best stuff that he ever wrote for her, he had actually written for Jeremy Hots, and then she took over that character. So it was just a really fascinating panel discussion, and then I'm glad that you were able to get Karen on the show. So I'm sitting beside you, and who's sitting beside you?

Don McCuller was sitting beside me. Cam, did you hear that? Don McKellar. That's huge. And Mark McKinney was right beside me in line. Absolutely. Star-studded. It was amazing.

So I couldn't believe it because I think our goal was to get Ken Finkelman on Toronto Mike. But we quickly pivoted. We're like, oh, he can't do Toronto Mike. Yeah, I don't think that would go well. He's kind of falling apart here. Next best thing. But the star of the panel, and there was some heavyweights in the panel, but the star of the panel in both VP, in my opinion, was Karen.

Heinz who was telling it like it is. It was so refreshing. And I'm like, we both looked at each other. Like, we don't want Ken Finkelman. We want Karen Heinz. And I booked her because she lives in Calgary. Right. There's a lot of Alberta activity in these kids.

But she was coming to Toronto for something. And we booked it where she would drop by the South Atobico TMDS headquarters here. And it was going to be an in-person thing. But that trip got canceled somehow. And I didn't really feel like waiting another year or whatever. I'm like, let's just do this on. Zoom and I'm glad I did and it always makes me wonder, maybe I should do more Zooms. Yeah, I don't know.

I think it makes sense in a case like Karen Hines where you probably wouldn't be able to get her for several months. It was a good chat and, you know, maybe it would have been better in person, but I think you got lots out of it. What about this show that has made it so durable in the culture where they could still do this sort of event? Well, it's just guys like for Canadian television. Like this is a real outlier.

Yeah, because it was good. Yeah. It was just a good show. Yeah, it was very much in the vein of like Larry Sanders. Yeah. Sort of behind the scenes. 100%. You know, real television.

It portrayed the characters in a newsroom as... Well-ridden and well-well-acted. It sounds like a smart. Yeah, it was smart. It was a point in viewing for me. Absolutely. Same. Same. Like, I didn't watch it because it was Canadian.

I watched it because it was fucking great. It was very, very funny. Same reason I watched kids in the hall. Yeah. I was I'm just trying to look up I feel like a Simon Hout wrote a really good feature

about like showcase or like Barry Hertz one of those guys a few years ago and I find this time in like Canadian TV really The station showcase?

Yeah, yeah but I feel like this it's obviously a CBC show The Drambuie showcase review because we did have a host of that show but I feel like you would see

a lot of shows sort of like the newsroom that didn't quite work that would end up on Alliance at Atlanta's. Yeah. Like that timing can entail.

Oh, if like Paul Gross or something. I almost called him Peter Gross. There was something? What was his show? Slings and Arrows or something? Yeah, he did slings and arrows. There's something called like, show me yours? Show me was a Roger's streaming service?

Show me. Was that a show? I think so. I think so. You were meant to live for so much more. Listen, after we record, if you show me yours, I'll show you mine. But like these sort of smart comedies. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the newsroom, which I, which we now need to refer to as CBC's The Newsroom because somebody else took it, Aaron Sorkin took it. But I really liked that too, how fishyy was that they named another show the newsroom. And that got all the hype because it was Aaron Sorkin and all this. And it sounds like they, they did consult with Ken Finkelman. Yeah, he didn't really care. Yeah. Jeez, come on.

Yeah, I think the first question that somebody asked Ken Fickleman on that panel, I don't remember what the question was, but he said, I don't know, that was a long time ago. Yeah, that's what you want from a panel. Yeah, it's good stuff. And it's a journal mic'd guest. Okay, Karen Hines, if you're listening in Calgary, you were amazing.

Great job, Karen Hines. And we'll get a beer one day. Okay, one more to go. One more, here we go. One of the most common, frequent questions I get as a radio insider. Whatever happened to Darren. What the fuck happened to Darren B. Lamb? Oh, I wish I knew.

I do know. I do know what he left. He left in a disgraceful manner, highly unprofessional and whiny and cowardly and kind of that defines him. It was during COVID and we were working from home, both of us, because, but everybody else in the morning show was in the studio in MacArthur, Gordrenny, Christine Cardoso, we're all in there. And they'd put up all sorts of barriers as we did.

We had all sorts of plastic and all that. And this is kind of, gets a little nepotism. here. So they, Rogers put in all these protocols to deal with COVID. And actually my husband, who was working for Rogers at the time in real estate and human resources, he was also part of implementing all the, the safety constraints. And I said to my, to say to him, John, I want to go back, if, if you think it's safe, and he's like, you know, babe, it's my job to make it safe. But I said, if you think it's safe, I want to go back in the studio because I think we're really missing something. There's a bit of a delay. And, um, I want to.

want to be back with the team. And, uh, and, and, but Darren didn't want to go. I'll haul in. And so we were all like, okay. He wasn't the easiest person to work with, to begin with. Right. And, um, anyway, I, I was in the midst of making plans to go back after Christmas and he was going off, uh, to BC with his husband to, uh, they were building a house out there.

And he never came back. He never came back from vacation. And the company refused to tell us what was going to. on but they kept saying he's coming back he had written us an email saying he wishes us well but and i was saying to management he's he's gonzo what are you talking about he's gone and they were like no no no no he's coming back we're just working some things out and uh and then we had we had a new program director um wendy deaf had left and there's just a whole lot of stuff going on we had a new guy who came in who had no idea what he was doing no idea how to deal with people who had a lot

I mean he came from a smaller market he had no idea how to deal with talent you can tell right now I'm already getting exasperated thinking about it so they said to me well he said between us uh I don't think Darren's coming back who would you like to work with and I you know it's funny because I actually suggested Gritip al-a-wellie right Gertif and I were playing golf at that time and or were and but then a couple of weeks go by and they stopped talking to me. And I'm like, well, what are we doing about the show? And they brought Mike Cooper in as an interim host. And Mike and I got on like a house on fire because he's a consummate professional.

He's like, okay, his opinions are a little dated. But the five of us, Mike and Gord and Ian who had all worked together before. And Christine, Mike and Christina worked together. We were like an island of misfit toys, but man, did we? get on and without any guidance we did some really great radio and we're all together in the studio in the middle of COVID with no support in fact they insisted when we were doing um we were identifying the station we'd say I'd have to say oh it's Darren and Moe with Maureen Holloway and Mike Cooper like that was insulting to the listener and the listeners were all like where's Darren where's Darren right

and we weren't allowed to say a word and this went on my contract was coming up and I was thought, well, what's the writing on the wall here? And I'm not stupid. Right. I was told that they had, it's not that they weren't going to renew my option. They just hadn't picked it up. And Julie Adam, who was running everything at the time, said, of course they, of course we're renewing.

And then, and they're not. I got screwed. I got screwed. But you know what? It was money. It was money. They were paying me a lot of money and my contract was up and they decided why throw, you I'm not a spring chicken, although I don't know what difference that would make.

Joy Behar is 82. And they did not renew my contract and I left. Boom. I just said the mind ball. You left the kicker out. And what the fuck happened to Darren B. Lam? I mean, who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares? I had no idea Joe Joy Behar was 82.

That was like a bonus mind blow. Yeah. no notes on the Maureen Holloway episode and that clip you pulled, which I also pulled for my Instagram and people have been enjoying. Brought the smoke. It's perfect.

It's pitch perfect. It's my third time. I wouldn't change the thing. Yeah. I would leave in that last kicker though. Yeah. Who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares. I'm professional.

Yeah. Disgraceful. Disgraceful. And it's funny thing. So she's coming over and it's been in my books for a bit. And I'm kind of thinking like, oh, she was kind of like afraid of,

fucking up the human rights tribunal. Sure. Jennifer Valentine is brought forward against chorus. So she's kind of worried about how she can speak

about Derringer. And I know this. So I'd say, I'll just change my target. Like, we won't go at Derringer. Let's talk about Darren B. Lamb. And there you go.

One of the great 12 episodes of this past quarter. A coward. Daring B. Well done. And way to go, you pulled some longer clips than,

there were a lot of longer clips this time around. because a lot of people just had a lot to say, you know, and I didn't want to... And where else are you going to say long things? Exactly. This is the place to do it. They don't give you that kind of time. His LinkedIn still says, Darren and Moe, mornings five to nine.

He's going to see you look to them. He seemingly disappeared from public life. There is no, I don't think there's any public... It's funny because I think when I hear about the Darren B. Lambs story, it's a different story completely, but it kind of reminds me of the Scotty Mac story, which is just this moment of like, I'm done. I'm going somewhere. else now. But I feel like he's

sort of done it with a lot of, maybe just because he came on your show. So I don't know this story. But one guy went to one coast, the other guy went to the other coast. Right. But we haven't heard from Darren B. Lamb in the public. I'm going to say, in other circumstances, he said, fuck it, I'm going to move to B.C. into my dream home.

Yeah. We should all be so lucky. Absolutely. That sounds like that's not the case. If Darren B. Lamb is listening, if maybe somebody who knows him is listening, they can carve this out or link him to this. Go to the four hour and 26 minute mark of this FOTM cast that nobody will listen to. But I would love to chat with Darren Bland.

Go on Toronto mic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Maureen fired shots. Let's go. Okay. So we went long as always. And we still have a couple of segments. But did you have anything you wanted to say about the Maureen Holloway episode, V. No, I loved it. Like, she's just so honest and open about everything that has happened to her in her career. And I always appreciate those conversations.

I did have a couple of quick, uh, quick hit. honorable mentions. Actually, just one, really. Barry Flatman. Yeah. Great voice. I love that episode. I love the fact that he dated both Margot Kidder and Jeannie Becker.

Yeah, it's amazing. What a stud. Honestly, I'm glad you point out, but there's another episode I want to shed out. Sure. Yeah, yeah, please. Patrick McKenna. Oh, yeah, yeah. Worthy, I mean, the fact that that great episode of Patrick McKenna didn't make the top 12,

that tells you what an amazing quarter it was. It's just a packed, packed quarter. Shout out to Blair Packum. Okay. I actually have two pieces of breaking news. I don't know why Jarvis hasn't come down here, but it's 4-1. You know what that means? It's the time.

His mom probably sent him to bed. Our corresponding got sent to bed, I think. What's his bedtime these days? 9.30. He's supposed to wind down. I don't know what time he goes to sleep, but it's 10 o'clock now. Jesus. So good night, US.

You know what? That's beautiful news. Yeah. One other piece of news is that. Trump is dead. No, Renata Ford is dead. Oh! Yeah.

She was not. knew she had some issues. I can't believe she was not that old. She's got to be 50. Maybe she's our age or something. I think probably a little bit older. Maybe a bit older. But that's sad news.

I'm sorry. Wait, hold on. Okay, give the mic. Let me, pretend we don't know. Mike's here. Well, you're still awake. You're brushing your teeth. Belgium scored 4-1.

You're literally brushing your teeth. That's amazing. When you see the dinosaur pajamas, you know, the games of... Okay. Thank you to our course. And that Renata Ford story is very sad. It is sad.

I'm sadden by it. Yeah. Yeah. Their kids are, you know. I used to bike by that old, the Ford home. Oh, on the Eden Bridge. Yeah, on Eden Bridge. I think it's been demolished now.

Yeah, I think it was so old and somebody. A lot of ghosts. Somebody demolished it. Yeah, that's where the famous Daniel Dale, that's right. What property do you want to steal from your city thing was happening there? I remember Freddie P. going off on Daniel Dale and I'm like,

I remember this, bringing me back. This is like a Rob Ford Mayor, core stuff that you're bringing back here. But I'm sorry to hear, but we're not a Ford. But I'm not sorry to hear that USA is out of this World Cup. Indeed. Glad to hear it. Okay, you ready? Let's do it.

So hot. All right, I'm just going to play it, it, Cam? Is that how this works? Do I just play it? Yeah. I want to say anything before I play it. That's Learron, right? No, that's Atlanta Biles. We have this conversation. We have this conversation every time. Okay. It's so clear. It's a line of us, yeah. It's definitely Atlanta Biles. Okay. You ready?

Yes. Okay. And actually, Oh, I can bring it down. I didn't know. That's okay. Just Tyler, let's go when you know what this song is. Maybe you already know it. Okay. Since you don't know this.

The wheels are turning in both our heads. I feel like the name has M in the time. The name starts of M. Do you remember this song? It's sort of familiar, but I don't, like, I couldn't sing along. It just sound like other songs? Like, is it, are we talking like late 90s? Like mid-90s?

Mid-90s. More early 90s, actually. Yeah. It does sort of sound late 90s. Does her first. name start with M. It's a dude. That's a guy?

Yeah. Oh, wow. That's way up. I thought it was a chick. Interesting. I thought it was a chick. I was going to guess like Mame Moore or something like that. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Like Sarah Craig. Yeah, yeah. No, so this is Ginger, who are formerly the guys from the grapes. Oh, yeah. So Jeremy Hopkins on the live stream guest. Grape's of Wrath.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is a good guess because that's basically who it is. So well done, Jayho. Yeah. So basically Ginger is when Kevin Kane left Grapes of Wrath. And then they retooled, chose a new moniker, which is Ginger. But it's got radio airplay?

Yeah, I mean, this was on CFNY. So this song's called Solid Ground. They had another hit called... This wasn't on CFNY. Yeah, this was totally unsyced. What year are we in here? 93-94. I was such a listener in 93-94.

So this came to mind because, again, not to come back to the book, but I found an ad for Sam, the Interactive Man. Oh, yeah, yeah. The Interactive Vision, where you find the CD runs it at Sam the Record Man at 347 Young. Come hear stories about it with Jeremy Hopkins and myself Wednesday night. But will Jason Snyderman be there? We'll see. He might show up. But one of their first CD or enhanced CDs was the first CD for me.

Ginger. Network Records, grapes or rat, pie, and blah, blah, blah. The name of the album is far out, and this was like the big single from it. Solid ground. I do like it. It's familiar to me. What's a bit of like tragically hip red hot chili peppers on this guitar, but also are very specific, like, not like Duran Duran Come Undone, but a bit of like spaghetti

Western feel. The band that it kind of reminded me of was, wild strawberries. Yeah, that's a good parallel. Wow. So they did have one other album. It's called Suddenly I Came to My Senses. They had a song Fuck, I wrote it down, now I forget

what their other song. I was just to say everything you're missing. That was more like a trip hop feel. It almost sounded like rationale, rational by King Cobb Steely. Right. FMTM band. That sort of sound. So anyway,

so Ginger kind of came and went and Kevin Kane came back in the fold. He put out an album with one of the Hooper Boys from the Grape's of Wrath called The High Road. No, I'm fucking this up. I think that's Sass Jordan. That's the agency I worked for. Anyway, the first proper

Grape or Rath email was since they reared at the road. Yeah, it was not until 2013 when they came back. And they've been playing shows ever since. And you can catch them as, all there. One of the headlining acts at a super crawl. Oh, there you go.

Okay, but I saw Kane and who from the Northern Pikes. Brian, Brian Potvin. Potvin, right. I saw them open for maybe the Watchman recently. Yeah. Maybe at Danforth Musical. And I think Kevin Kane is like basically in the Northern Pikes now. Possibly.

I feel like you replace Merle. And they play songs. Remember Merle? Both bands. Yeah, Merle Haggard. High Road. High Road was produced by Daryl Newdorf, who he had that lawsuit with Sarah McLaughlin.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, everything is connected here. And I love we're connecting dots here. No one's listening. Yeah, so you guys don't know that one. That one.

It sounds familiar to me. I'm sure I've heard it. So, okay. Perfect lost can come then. Yeah. Yeah, no, you're doing, you do well at this. Thank you. Kudos to you.

You got to contribute something because Tyler does all the fucking work. This is true. Like we're three hours deep. He did all the heavy lifting. We're just reacting. I don't even know what clips I'm playing for God's sake. Well, he plays him off his damn laptop. And then you contribute this one forgotten can't con.

And you get like, I'm on Wikipedia. I'm on LinkedIn. He's our, he's our sort of live, live man on the internet. We didn't even, we didn't even speak about AMJ Pierre

who made his Toronto debut. That's right. Have you closed that deal yet? AMJ. It's just sitting there. Things are cooking. I've got time with Pierre. in two weeks.

Oh, God, that's very exciting. Yeah. All right. Do we do the lexicon corner? Okay, here we go. I wasn't sure. Yeah, yeah. Lexicon Corner.

So Lexicon Corner, it's really kind of a bit of a catch-all. We talk about, you know, certain terms, terminology or sayings that that come up often on the show that get entered into the lexicon. Sometimes it's more of a, you know, little quirks or ticks. that kind of come up in the way that Mike presents the show. This one, I've noticed recently, you've been doing this thing. Do I need to brace myself? No, I don't think so.

I think it's quite charming. I'm doing something. I've noticed recently that you are, anytime a guest says something that's even kind of remotely like a tragically hip lyric, you will break into song. So I've put together a few examples. I did it a lot in this episode.

episode. You did. Yes, you did. I'm unwell, everybody. I'll be pulling more clips from this episode for next. That's super medal. It's kind of like when the Emmy Award or the Oscars win an Emmy Award for the best TV show. I thought you were going to say like when Mel Brooks is, they go to the VHS for space balls to see where they are in the movie. Exactly. Anyway, let's listen to this little super cut I put together. You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey. I never

saw someone say that before. Just a quote that jumped into. my mind. You know what that quote is from? If there's a goal that everyone remembers, it was back in old 72. Randomly, I'm going to break into tragically hip songs. And it's amazing what you can accomplish because you think about the tragically hip, you're dropping songs today.

Pretty much. That night in Toronto and then the checkerboard floors right up there with those checkerboard floors. Oh, baby. I love it too. Those checkerboard floors. Yeah, the famous checkerboard floors. Yeah, it's not so bad.

Like, what the fuck? If you hate that, don't listen to the fucking program. You do a lot of, uh, couldn't come at a worst time. I feel like you've dropped that. Yeah. So it's a little tragically hip lyrics. It's a good life if you don't weaken is really the, my bio story. Like, this is the story of Toronto Mike.

That's right. That's right. I probably, it's not just tragically hip, but it seems to be a lot of tragically hip. There's a lot of songs in my head. Yeah. things trigger. Sure. There'll be a trigger.

You know, this trigger thing. Yeah. And it comes out because I don't think I give a fuck. Like, maybe I didn't always do it because it's like, who's, what,

the CBC wouldn't do that. Right. Okay. This ain't the CBC. I think the CBC. I like, especially if you'd like listen to a lot of like, like,

like Chum FM, sorry. Sorry, did you listen to Chum? FM? Only for the Sunday night funnies. Okay. But you were a chum listener. I listened to this.

Or maybe your mom was chum linds. Is your mom in chumbo? You should trigger me to say like chumbug? Yes. I'll show you like I was texting with like Tyler. The best over. It's like let's get him to say chumbo.

You were a chumbug. I couldn't get out. You know what? You fucked it up because he said chum fm. Well, I started like smirking too. You knew I was up to something. I was trying to play it cool.

But I fucked it up. Chumbug. Why do I keep fucking up? Those checkerboard floors. Okay, so that's fine. It's not only a lexicon. Yeah, yeah. But it's like a quirk.

I have quirks. Yeah, there's nothing like that. We celebrate those quirks. All right, we do skip WikiLeaks, right? So we have this one. I'm nervous about this. Yeah, you should be. Breaking the law.

Breaking the law. Breaking the law. The law. Should I mute them now? Should I mute them? I can do that. It's right here. Should I do it?

Just a reminder. as always, if you hear anything that sounds awry off, anything at all, please email us at FOTMcast at gmail.com. Oh, I forgot about that. Fact checkers gets on it. If we use it, there could be a very, very high value prize, perhaps some golf shoes. Could you CCM mike at Trottomike.com? So I'm not blindsided.

Definitely don't do that. I don't have the password for this FOTM at, was it FOTM cast. OTH at gmail.com. There was one email that I did want to read that came in before I get into the, the depths of this quarter. Hi, Tyler. In the David Ryder episode, Mike said this, the 30-minute special episode

regarding the John Torrey episode was, quote, the most popular episode of the year, maybe, end quote, at the 17-minute and 31-second mark. Please fact-check. Now, I don't have the capacity to fact-check that. You know, we're going to have to, Mike has the receipts, and he holds them very... It sounds true.

Very close to the vest. Sure. But anyway, that was just something that came in from the listeners. I need to know. Well, we can, I'll tell you off here. I don't want to. Is that Stephanie Wilkinson? What's going on here?

These, my, my, Well, I know the name. You'll know the name. From attending TMLX events. Possibly. It's Robert Lost. So, Mike, this is our 10th FOTM cast. Okay.

We've done one of these segments every time. And, you know, we have a little fun with it. I know it makes you cringe, but it's all really in good fun. and if you weren't so good at this, I wouldn't feel right about pointing these little things out. But because you're so good, it gives us license to kind of razz you a little bit. Right.

But, Mike. It's a big one coming because you warn me. This quarter, I heard something that frankly stopped me in my tracks. I was in the parking lot at the stockyards. I was going to Nations. Oh, yeah. That's where Target was. Yeah, yeah.

Nations is there. I go there. I like that, sir. Yeah, yeah. The only custom-built target in the country. That's right. and I was there for like eight months. I was listening to the remix episode of Toast.

Okay. Okay. And I was just about to get out of the car. Just about to get out of the car. Yeah. When I heard this. Oh, God. The thorough recap of the Elmo gig is going to be on FOTM cast.

Of course. That makes sense. Because they were there. Yeah. Cam and stew. Oh, yeah. Oh. So.

That is embarrassing. So. Oh, that's okay. So. So. Hmm. Cam and Stu. Cam and stew. So I'm Cam.

So where's Stu? The thing about it. Usually, usually, you know, sometimes you'll, you'll say something and you'll, you'll misspeak or whatever. But then you go back and correct yourself. And whatever, like, I'll start to take it. I'll repeat it numerous times. I'll start to take a note and I'll like, no, you know what, Mike's corrected himself. He caught it. We can leave this one. Let it go. Right. Cam and Stu. Listen. The thorough recap.

of the Elmo gig is going to be on FOTM cast. Of course. That makes sense. Because they were there. Yeah. Cam and Stu. So you had a moment where you were going to, I thought, okay, he's going to save it. He's going to correct himself.

But he doubled down. He said it again. 76 weeks, Tyler. We spend 76 weeks during the band. That's what they do in Nirvana of the band the show. I love that effect on Nirvana of the band the show. You've still never seen any Nirvana. Probably won't be tracking it.

What do you, what do you, an MF do? of your time. You just make love all day? Like, what do you do? Sometimes. Do you consume any visual media? Jeopardy, sports. That's all there is to consume.

I lost on Jeopardy. Okay, so I apologize to you. What's your name again? Tyler. Yeah. I don't know why I reverted, like regression or whatever, because we spent 76 weeks together.

It's in the book. It's muscle memory. It's in the bad. That's the new lead. Yeah. You got rid of the old lead. It was too sad. And you replaced it with 76 weeks

of a pen. pandemic. Yeah. The pandemic was happier. Of course. It was a great time. It was a warmer thought, a happier thought than, oh, this guy hanged himself. So, beloved T.

Jesus. Okay. I'm sorry to you that I called the FOTM cast duo Cam and Stu. Mike, I'm sorry. I forgive you. I was braced for such a terrible mistake. I'm relieved. Like, I'm relieved.

It was just a slip of the tongue. Like, I'm like, what did I say? Did I say that was a Shep Pettybone remix when it was clear. not? Just a little oopsie. Okay. So we got to wrap this up. Now that we've cleared the air, we're going to rapid fire this. Well, I have more. There's more. How could I made more than one mistake?

So we're going to go through it. Very quickly. Okay. In the Jayho and Starlot Satin episode, which is a great episode. Oh, I like that very much. Mike said that Lorne Michaels created both S&L and SCTV. I didn't say that. You said that. I think I meant kids in the hall. Maybe. I think I said kids in the hall.

Maybe. Maybe. Okay. In the Paris Black, episode. I do not think Lauren Michaels had anything to do with that TV actually, but he did bring over hard and short. Fair enough. In the Paris Black episode, Mike referred to the 1984 film, the Pope of Greenwich Village as the king of Greenwich

film. In the David Barewall episode, Mike referred to Rosie Grey Tio as Rosie and Gray Tio. In the Karen Heinz episode, you said that Andrew Stokely worked on Airplane 2, which came out in 1982.

And I'm not sure how old Andrew Stokely is, but I think he meant to say that he worked on the newsroom. Okay, you know what? Why do I... Okay, you're right, that math doesn't because he's my age. You're right. Ken Fickleman wrote airplane too. Yeah, okay.

He told a story about it. Yeah, he clearly Stokely couldn't have worked. You're right. Thank you for... Thank you, Robert Lawson. In the Barry Flatman episode, you referred to the late CFTO Nightbeat News anchor Tom Gibney as Ted Gibney. And to Dawson's Creek star Joshua Jackson.

Oh, I'm thinking of Ten Ginley. Oh, Ted McGinley. Ted McGinley. Doss's Creek star Joshua Jackson as Jeremy Jackson. Oh, he's got a brother, though, right? Perhaps. Like there is a Jeremy Jackson. Andy, I need your help.

Perhaps. Jeremy Jackson. No doubt. Mike regrets these errors. A couple of non-mic errors this quarter. Oh, thank God. Don Pyle referred to much music, Steve Anthony as Michael Anthony, confusing him, of course, with the longtime bassist of Van Halels.

Barry Hertz in the Nirvana of the band, the show. The movie episode said that Sister Christian was by Motorhead when it was by Night Rainer. Oh, wow. Oh, right. Bogey Nights is great, but we should see it. That I have seen. You have. I do enjoy it.

Okay. And then finally, finally, in the cold open, this is my favorite one, I think, of the month. In the cold open of the Tim Cherry episode, he referred to this podcast as open mic. Yeah. But I called him out on that. You did. Of all the people to confuse me with, my moral enemy. Of these people, no doubt.

Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. We're going to. Where in the world is Stu Stone Hello, hello, hello Hi Toronto, Mike, it's Stu Stone and where in the world is

Stu Stone? The answer is actual retail price survey says Toronto or Toronto or Toronto, depending on who you ask. Just got back here from many travels that I can't wait to share with you because I will be joining Mike in the basement

soon and hopefully those guys will have the courage to cover it next time we get together for one of these TML casts. I'm a fan. TMLCats. Good show. Fact check that. Love to the boys. We'll get that one next time.

And love to you, Mike, and love to everyone. I hope everyone's having a great summer, a safe summer. I hope you're celebrating all the various holidays responsibly. And that way nobody ends up getting a Ridley funeral shout out. So let's be safe out there. and have a great summer, guys. And I'll be in the basement

talking soon about my summer. So looking forward to sharing that. And plus, I owe Mike a critique, a full critique on his live, live, live, live performance at the Elmo. So that's another thing that needs to happen. All right, I've taken up enough time. Much love.

What up, Cam? Where have you been hiding, man? Yeah, where have you been hiding? I've been busy. I saw you at Christy Pitts. He's around. been around. Yeah.

Stu got a, do you guys know Jeff Jarrett, the wrestler? I know this name. Yeah, like he gave Stu a shout out on a shoot interview he did.

They were talking about Dark Side of the Ring. And Jeff Jarrett said, and Mitch he enjoyed the experience and they did a really nice job. It is shout out to Stu. Right there in the interview. Wonderful.

And Stu was at the Elmo. He was. And he was not at TMLX. I'm trying to track where Stu was. He was not at TMLS 22. But you were both, both of you were at both. That means a

lot to me. Of course. And here you are now in this marathon episode for like eight people. It's a long one. It's worth it. It's like three hours. But I thank you for, yeah. Thank you for your efforts. Of course. In your contribution and whatever the fuck we're doing here.

And thank you Stu Stone for telling us where he is in the world and it is right here in Toronto. How do you say this name of our city, Cam? I say Toronto. Say it again? Yeah, like Toronto. Like I feel like I pronounce it, TR. Oh, and I know, like not Trana, but like Toronto.

How do you say it, BP? Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. Like, Ron said Bono, almost.

Toronto Mike. Toronto, Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. Oh, Toronto. Toronto. Dear Toronto. So I'm here how long you guys would go.

I'll keep going all that. Well, thank you both for your efforts. And thank you to Belgium. We're all Belgium today. Belgium? If you were from Belgium, are you Belgium? Belgian? Belgian. Belgian. He's right.

Belgian waffles. I'm a little loopie at this point. Okay. But thank you to everybody for listening. All three of you, I appreciate it. I wanted to shout out people on the live stream before they disappear. You're still there? A bunch of there. Okay, so Rob Delmundo is there. Leslie Taylor is there. Jeremy Hopkins is there.

Rob Pruss is there. Andrew Ward. Did you get your book from Rocco Rossi? It's for your dad. So I gave it to Canada Kev. Andy is here. These are a bunch of good people here. That's a long episode late into the night. Toronto, Toronto.

I'm seeing how Jeremy Hopkins says it. Toronto. Toronto. What the fuck? You're ending the episode already. Heck, if we go longer, you'll be up. Like, it'll be time for Jeremy Hopkins back on Toronto. He's going to be on like twice in a row because we missed him last quarter, I think. So he's coming up right after your camping trip?

Is that when he's on? Before, I think. Oh, is it before? I think before. I think he's on twice before my camping trip. I think he's on Monday to do the AI slop one. And then we're doing a remote at Scatting Cabin.

Like I'm going to bike my gear to scatting cabin. I believe that's the oldest building in Toronto. You got it, brother. You got it. And I believe that's where I worked my Papa Ball game for Ardo Godaro. There's a lot going on here. No idea what that means. And that

brings us to the end of our 1,928th show. Go to Torontomike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. And much love to all who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball, Nick Aini's. He's going to be my guest on Friday, by the way.

But Susie McNeil is up before that, and Muffy Mouse is on before that. Recycle My Electronics.C.A. And Ridley Funeral Home. See you all. Yes, my next guest is Muffy Mawley. Mouse, Nina Keo on Wednesday

and then Susie McNeil on Thursday and then Nick Aini's on Friday and then Jeremy Hopkins on Monday thank you to Tyler the VP and Cam Gordon for another great FOTM cast.

Bye bye. See ya.