Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Fun Fax - 40 Years of NOW Magazine: Toronto Mike'd #919

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Mike and Cam Gordon dive deep into NOW Magazine as the free alternative weekly newspaper turns 40.

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Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Ridley Funeral Home. Pillars of the community since 1921. And Mike Majeski of Remax specialists majeski group who's ripping up the gta real estate scene learn more at realestatelove.ca i'm mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week for fun facts 40 years of now magazine is cam gordon is Cam Gordon. Cam, how you doing, buddy? Good, good to be back. I guess this is my first time back on the Toronto Mic'd experience since the electrifying conclusion of Pandemic Fridays.

Am I wrong? No, no, no. In fact, when I saw this on my schedule, you know, fun facts, 40 years of Now Magazine of Cam Gordon, I was thinking the last time I saw this on my schedule, you know, fun facts, 40 years of Now Magazine of Cam Gordon, I was thinking the last time I saw you in person was TMLX8. And that was our, of course,

that was our Pandemic Friday finale. What did you think of the final episode of Pandemic Friday? I mean, it's interesting because I don't know about you, like live podcasts, if you're not there, they can be kind of tricky.'t know about you like live live podcasts if you're not there or a bit of there they can be kind of tricky I know you know as you know Mike you the Toronto

Mike podcast is not the only podcast I listen to and quite often I'll skip over the live versions of other podcasts because they just find you know kind of ambient crowd noise and whatnot a little distracting I I also say this i say this with complete sincerity i fucking love that event i i had a great time i think i hopefully everyone did with the exception of baby liz um yeah i thought it was like a perfect it was great just to have so many other uh you know all the fotms were there and then so many past guests and, and, you know, Peter Gross and Hebsey and Humble and, and Jay Brody and Bill dialing in from BC and then Rod Black doing like incredible Rod Black things. And then the after party was a real,

was a real hoot. So yeah, I loved it. It was a great night, great night. And otherwise pretty fucked up year. I agree with everything you said. I thought it was like the perfect conclusion. That was 76 weeks of Pandemic Fridays and we gave it this beautiful farewell and we were all kind of together, this community of FOTMs

together. Let's just let the listenership know that when this ended, I think we had to exit Great Lakes Brewery's fine patio by 9pm. just let the listenership know that when this ended i think we had to uh exit great lakes breweries fine patio by 9 p.m we all just made our way north to a public park and kept going like this is a party we didn't want it to end it was just and the weather was perfect and i gotta say it was as if i scripted it that way it was unbelievable yeah like that after party had real like high school vibes like a bunch of us but it's like a bunch of folks in their 40s

and in some cases their 50s drinking in a public park, well, drinking water in a public park. But yeah, what a great, the weather was perfect. Yeah, it was quite the night. Again, I loved it. Great memories. Glad there's so many photos and tweets and uh instagram stories and other memories from it so it's funny because following that great event

which again we say we both uh agree it was ideal uh the most you know the biggest topic following that event for people who weren't there and listened to it was uh liz you referenced her but it's like it's funny how this you know two and a half hour spectacular can all come together and so much love and so much awesome and everybody wanted to talk to me about liz it's like that's it well mike there there's a reason we it's three or four years later we're still talking about the molly johnson episode so i mean you know that that you know, that was definitely a shoot. Liz brought her shooting gear that night.

And her pal, Stu Stone, the Hollywood actor, really took it on the chin. He took it like a champ, though. And yeah, talk about real talk, though. And I don't think we've ever shared publicly, but you did snap a photo of Liz and uh Stu kind of continuing the conversation at the park afterwards like I know that it hasn't been shared publicly but it really it's it could win a Pulitzer like it's that kind of a totally yeah I mean it's yeah it's one

of those iconic uh photos you know we need like a black and white version one day we should share it like just just put it out there. It's just too good to be true. I actually know some people at the Toronto Archives. In the media wing where they have all the old Toronto Star photos and stuff. Maybe we can submit it there. Or maybe it'll be a cover of Now Magazine at some point. That would be one of their iconic covers.

What a segue. It's almost a premature segue because i promised uh michael lang who was at tmlx8 and witnessed all of this that i would ask him your question he wants me to ask you uh what have you been doing cam with your thursday nights post pandemic friday because uh you know we did 76 weeks in a row and now i look at the calendar it's been exactly a month since we did it. Like, what have you done of all that time? Yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, honestly, I've just been kind of busy with work with the election and also been doing that.

I have a couple of other projects on the go, one of which you're familiar with because you and I have talked about it. Yeah, so a bit of that on aussie i i don't know about you i find once um once like labor day comes i kind of get a bit more serious of course some of my more extracurricular stuff to do with like my career so i mean you may have seen me tweet about i i lead um a group called the communicators collective that's about diversity and inclusion in that the comms field of which i'm a member although not the most diverse member which is part of the reason this organization exists but we do like meetups and i organize events for it and actually i'm starting a newsletter for it that's you know just sharing

content trying to advance conversations we actually have a a linkedin group with over a thousand members in this group so i've been spending a bit of time getting that going and we're gonna drop our first newsletter uh next week and then uh yeah i was also on another podcast as you as you may know been two-timing a bit this one's uh this one i was invited on by uh someone named brie rody who used to be the editor at Media in Canada magazine, so part of the Brunico family. She has a podcast that's about pop culture. And I think it's a bit of, this is not the name, but it's like when did a pop culture entity kind of,

not jump the shark, but just peak. I think it's called Peaks. And she sent me a DM one day saying, hey, you do podcasts. You're a 40-year-old white guy. You must love Radiohead. You want to come out and talk about Radiohead? I'm like, I do like Radiohead. I do have many opinions.

So yeah, that just dropped this week. So I need to give that a signal boost from my Twitter account. So yeah, I've been keeping busy, but Thursday nights, they'll never be the same without Pandemic Fridays. Well, it's funny listening to you talk about all this productive, important work that you're getting done now that you don't have Pandemic Fridays on your calendar.

It almost makes me feel better about it because I don't know if you caught wind of this, but I've been getting a lot of flack from people, particularly from somebody named Stu Stone, for ending Pandemic Fridays after 76 weeks. But you probably caught this news this last week that Stu has announced he's off to Winnipeg for six weeks to direct a new movie.

So, yeah, fine. Blame me for the fact Pandemic Fridays eventually had to end, but it would have ended anyways Because he's disappearing For six weeks I think you made a very prescient Call to end it that I was very much on board I also feel like

In the last week I've read so many articles From like scientists Or also the guy who runs Moderna Saying there's clear signs we're shifting into the endemic stage of this whole COVID party that we've all been living with the last 18 months. So I think like, and it's also

like, again, end of summer. It was a great just like end of summer batch. Like, I think it was like a no-brainer. School's out. School's out. Exactly. Yeah. You fuck Tessa. You fuck Tessa. Did fuck Tessa, Mike. Did you hear when I had Rick Campanelli on the program, that was my first question.

Like, are you related to Tessa Campanelli? Of course, Tessa's a fictional character. And I'm still like 40-something-year-old Mike is still curious of Rick. Is he related to Tessa Campanelli? But okay. Also, like, one is a fictitious character and this is he's like a real person right rick's real apparently uh this is the first time we're using the branding fun facts and that's with an x fun fact sure shout out to lance children right like like rapid facts

totally uh but it's not our first such episode so i just want to let people know we previously dove deep into the recording of tears are not enough and speaking of schools out we uh we covered degrassi's uh tv movie and also the series finale uh schools out so this is not our first fun facts but now we finally have like a like a branding uh title for these uh episodes we do yeah absolutely and i i think i feel like we said this in uh our preamble for the schools out episode this is more than any other episode of toronto mike either you're really gonna be into this or you're not gonna care at all this is also a zoom exclusive right um and i i feel like these episodes always come out of just conversations we either have on other podcasts

or sometimes just by DM or something of like you know we'll get like a brief fixation on stuff it's like you know what we gotta blow this out into a few episodes or sorry a full episode and I know there's other topics that you and I have kicked around to do fun facts in future

so stay tuned for those. But tonight we're talking about a publication that's near and dear to my heart and very formative, I'm guessing, for many, many folks in the FOTM universe. Now Magazine. which just recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, which is, you know, independent media, sure, now it looks very different than it once did, but that is a real milestone that should be celebrated in this, like, wild media climate we live in,

that there's still something called now kicking around the streets of Toronto, albeit in a far more perhaps virtual sense than ever before yeah well we're gonna get into this because of course this is a deep dive but it's it'll be also interesting to discuss how how independent is now today like uh you know we'll cover the history of now magazine but it has you know recently had a an ownership change and isn't quite the indie it was for the first, I don't know, 38 or nine years or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, it's certainly different corporately. It looks very different. We'll get to that in a second. So why don't we just jump right into the deep end of the pool here. Mike, are you ready? I was born ready. Awesome. end of the pool here mike are you ready i was born ready awesome uh so i feel like for most of these fun facts episodes i'll probably start with the same question for you what you know

growing up and and you know into your 30s and whatnot what what was your relationship with now magazine were you like a regular reader i.e you read it every single week like what what you know where did you first see it like what are your memories there okay my memories of now magazine and i also want to shout out i know you're going to shout out other independent weekly newspapers but i weekly too because i used to kind of grab them together, but it was basically what I took home with me to, uh, you know, Western Toronto whenever I went downtown. So basically as a teenager, I would make my trips downtown every weekend. You have to check out, uh, Sam, the record man and their, you know, the head shops and, and different, you know,

spots that, you know, the arcades and all these different places, you'd hit up downtown. So you'd jump on the subway, make your way to Dundas Station or something like that, and then you would kind of hit all your spots, usually along Yonge Street. And you would always, at least I would always, return home with a copy of Now and iWeekly and devour them.

The price was perfect, and it felt like very cool Toronto content and I was a big fan but I always associate it with my trips downtown what about you buddy yeah that's a very similar experience certainly when I was growing up in Thornhill. And again, when I'd make the pilgrimage down to Sam the Record Man in HMV and Music World and all those, I'm trying to think what that R key that was right there, A and A. Was it called like Circus World or something? Oh, something like, I can see.

Now that I can almost visualize the typography. Like, yeah, maybe it's something like that, but I also remember in Big Fawn or whatever, it was like video and arcade. I can just see it. It was on the other side of Yonge Street, right? It was on the west side. Yeah, shout out to Nicholas Pickless for video. But it had a real

Las Vegas, like Fremont Street, like old-timey Las Vegas sleaze. Childhood sleaze. Yeah, I actually but growing up in thornhill again because there i think there was like a sam the record man in hillcrest mall so sometimes you see it up there it was it was very it was pretty hard to find north of steeles avenue i'll say that although i believe they had copies of now at the coffee time across from Thornley high school on Bayview Avenue where Stu and I went.

Cause I do have specific memories of being in there and reading it. I think about like looking at like concert listings or like friends and the coffee time when like, well, people, this is where you could still like smoke in the donut shop. Similarly, I feel like, cause my home station was, at this time in my life, was Jane Station. So I would get on a bus, get to

Jane Station, and I definitely know there's a period of time where I could grab these at Jane Station. Maybe I was heading west to high school or wherever I was off to, but, and there was also a coffee time at Jane Station, and I'm not 100% sure if it's gone. Like, it might still be there

i'm yeah i'm trying to it's been a while since i've been on at jane station but jane station yeah jane there was a coffee time on bluer street that you could access through jane station and i remember that i think it might have been a burger king when i was in like primary school and then it became a coffee time and i so somewhere in that like that gateway from like and i think it was called gateway maybe what was the name of the uh gateway uh cigar store right like i feel like there was a gateway between jane station and this coffee time there was a gateway where you had to buy things like magazines but get pick up some gum but the but the you know now magazine and i weeklyekly were always, of course, free of

charge while quantities lasted. Like you said, price is right. And again, you and I both talk about picking this up downtown. I mean, the age before you could just flip around your cell phone in perpetuity to entertain yourself.

I just read that ride from like Dundas up to finch and then you know the 53 steals bus home and then 10 minute walk oh yeah it's my parents house that that now and i would both be like and i'll also throw an explain magazine which maybe we should talk about at some point but especially like now and i there were like these wide pulse of like Toronto. From a sheer entertainment perspective, because that's like an hour and a half in transit. I don't think your daughter or my teenagers would understand what it's like when you don't have a smartphone in your pocket. Like just how vital it was to have that newspaper where you could kill time basically and distract yourself from

people watching. The fact that I was like you, I'd read it cover to cover with the exception of the classified. I read those for sure. When I was a teenager, I'm not going to, let's not kid ourselves.

You would get this ephemeral secondhand knowledge of like the art world or like book readings. And I just thought this was like the coolest fucking thing in the world when I was 15 or 16. Because I was kind of thinking about where it'd sit in kind of the media pathion where, you know know downtown cool to me was i feel like city tv and like much much music was like a good entry point and then cfny and then now magazine but those three were really the trifecta of to me what defined like oh cool urban living in toronto and arts

and music and politics and politics and protests and folks from different lifestyles and different sexual preferences and books and all this stuff. And where to get the best pizza in Toronto. Oh my god, they have so many lists. Like top ten lists. I made a

list here also of a couple of other places. I definitely picked it up. I used to spend quite a bit of time at Young and Eglinton specifically at Vortex Records, the second hand place and also Edwards Record World. Did you ever go to either of these establishments, pick up

some used CDs? Honestly, I never got like I don't think I got north of Bloor Street. Okay. One more place I'd pick it up. I bet you did spend some time at this place because it did have a few locations. Futures Bakery.

Oh, yeah. You know what? For sure. There's a Bathurst and Bloor location, but there was one closer to, I mentioned Jane Station, but right by Runnymede Station, for the longest time,

there was a Futures Bakery. I actually had, I think it's, I think i can say that my first date with my first wife was at futures bakery yeah it was like a real go-to and you'd like you looked at what charles and uh yeah charles and young for a couple years yeah so i bet you've probably been to the the futures that i think it's still there in the annex like across from the brunzer cows or is it i there? I'm not as confident as you.

I think it might be long gone. Is it gone? Okay. I feel like there might be one now in Etobicoke, like not far from like Sherwood Gardens, believe it or not. Like there's this place called North Queen. Futures Bakery. Yeah, I think on North Queen.

And I do believe so. I'll have to do some checking on this. But I think I've biked by it a few times. Yeah. Anyway, again, like this, when I started going to Future Bake, so i'll have to do some checking on this but i think i might buy it a few times yeah anyway again like this when i started going to future big this is mainly my friend paul judson uh who i met we might stew and i might have mentioned he's complementing our other pals from high school like we would get our parents car go to vortex edward record world like buy buy a cd grab now

magazine go to futures bakery and have like you know a latte or something oh wow just this was like you know that was cool the height of urban sophistication early to mid 90s that was like the epitome of cool i would say yeah absolutely um i i was i was sort of reflecting to why why now is so invaluable we'll touch on a lot of things but it would you may recall this it was one of the few places you could actually get concert listings yeah true that like there were phone numbers i think like you know cf and y would have a concert listing phone number or something yeah like star phone to find out right and it's like okay these are at bass outlets or whatever you guys right yeah shout out to bass outlets but you're absolutely right uh for concert listings, that was where you went.

You went to Now Magazine. Yeah, I remember for me, certainly in grade 12 and then OEC, like the cadence was Monday, 6 p.m., live in Toronto, because they would announce all the concerts on the Monday. Right. And then Thursday, you'd fill in the gaps with Now or probably I where you just see like kind of full monty and like you know all those great like display ads for lee's palace and the horseshoe and the ultrasound like this it was all there it was all there mike between the two and i love like looking back like

you know be it uh what you'll see maybe on twitter instagram somebody will share like uh oh scott turner might do this like here's the lee's palace listing for like 1990 or whatever and you can see all these bands that would end up being like big fucking arena bands or stadium bands and here they are like playing to like a few hundred people at lee's palace amazing it's like unbelievable and i one thing i love and you know who else does that that guy raven drool guy oh sure yes for sure yeah and I feel like our pal Gilles LeBlanc might do that on occasion too. But I like seeing those too, because people will then like tag their friends into the replies

if they were at that show. And then sometimes you get these like random concert memories. But a cool thing about i is you may know like their entire archive is online for free that you can download any any issue of now as a pdf um and i i really hope that never goes away because it's an incredible resource or someone uploads it to the uh the wayback machine or something oh yeah the internet archive needs to grab that because uh there used to be a time i think shortly after bell media acquired uh 1050 chum they were hosting all the

chum charts online and then one day i guess i think it might be when tsn radio launched or something they didn't like they just literally wiped it like they just deleted this great resource so i've learned to like never trust something just unless you're hosting it yourself nowadays when there's something i really care about i literally will like host it myself so i can trust it'll be there for the rest of my life but uh yeah well as you know mike i mean your website's become a real like a real archive of like a lot of stuff and i mean you know we talk about the big the big ones like most famously perhaps the death of martin streak where you know it's right up there in the seo and

stuff but again if it wasn't for guys like you and and you know a few others just you know newer media companies that comes in as like a new owner like they don't they don't really care about the history or whoever's making these decisions doesn't really have a relationship right to this stuff and sure like you know kind of the interest of it does fade year by year but this is this is part of the fabric of just like you you know, arts in this country. A lot of this stuff, even, you know, the really commercial stuff like chum charts. It's still relevant, I think. And, you know, just put it on a fucking website and just leave it there.

Right, right. It's not that big a deal. I know. Webspace is really cheap. So quick aside here is that I was on Facebook and I saw a conversation broke out in some group about like a promo that ran on CFNY in like the, I don't know, mid 80s. And it was about how the frequency,

CFNY's frequency would repel mosquitoes. So you'd play CFNY and the mosquitoes would stay away because they did some encoding, right? So this was the promo. And so I hit the Google machine and I seek out CFNY mosquito ad or something like that. What do you think pops up first?

I say Retro Ontario. Very good guess. Shout out to Ed Conroy. TorontoMike.com. And not only did I write in great detail about this ad, this promotion, but I also had the mp3

of the ad there to play on my own damn site. And I did have kind of vague memories of having done that, but it was faster for me to Google it than it was for me to Google it. Yeah, it's like Google your own website. And that happens often where I'm Googling something, I don't know, Commander Tom, whatever.

And my site is the best resource available because I had written about it 15 years ago or whatnot. But not to get us off track, because we're talking today about Now Magazine as it turns 40. Did you want to share with the FOTMs what the structure of this episode will be? Or do you just want to... You know, I'm just going to go through this. I'll sort of when there's like a a break to like a new quote-unquote chapter uh sorry i just noticed georgie animal steel again on your well you know stew stone gave that to me at the end of tmlx8 so i like basically uh it sleeps i sleep with it under my pillow i was gonna say it's a bit of an aside but

i was never a big he-man guy. But do you remember Snarf? Of course. Don't tell me. Thundercats. Oh, Thundercats, right. Yeah, Snarf. Of course I do. Snarf, Snarf.

But I feel like it was also a thing where at the end of the show, he's like, hi, I'm Snarf. Did you spot me in today's episode? Yes. Here I was. I sort of get those vibes with Georgie Animal Steel because he's always somewhere slightly different. It's like, where's Waldo?

Where's the animal? I went through a period of my buddy Chris where every day after school we watched Thundercats. We went through this Thundercats phase. What was the conceit of Thunder? Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats, ho! Thundercats are on the loose. I honestly couldn't... I don't remember anything

except that we enjoyed it every afternoon. It was one of those things alongside Transformers. We were big Transformers fans. And it was on TV. It was on WUTV. And, you know, Benny Hill wasn't going to start until 6 o'clock. Great, great children's program.

Absolutely. Okay, so let's get into these chapters so this is going to be a quickie chapter this is just going to be a recap other alt weeklies in Canada of course the alt weekly now very famously inspired by

the village voice the long time New York alternative weekly like roots go back to the 50s. So that's way back and through the hippie era and stuff. But here are some other alt weeklies in Canada. Some of these you'll have heard of, Mike. Some of these maybe not. We've talked about iWeekly.

That was around here in Toronto from 1991 to 2011. Later became The Grid, which lasted from 2011 to 2014. And we should shout out FOTM Mark Weisblatt, who wrote quite a bit for both publications, I think. He definitely appeared in both. He was definitely more an iFella. And yeah, I mean, there's a few other FOTMs that passed through the iWe the weekly realm.

Most famously, Edward Keenan, their longtime city columnist. I feel like you wrote about him. Sure. So Torstar owned the grid and Torstar shuttered the grid, but did take Ed Keenan. I guess this is the Rob Ford era because they figured, Hey, this guy was writing quite a bit about like, you know, Rob Ford in different city issues. And Ed was offered a job to,

uh, to work for Toronto stars. So he was, yeah, no, and now he's, now he's, uh,

based in Washington, DC is, uh, they're, they're, they're Capitol Hill correspondent for the Toronto stars. So, uh,

great, great journey. And, uh, he always struck me as a good dude. I've never, I don't think i've ever crossed paths with him but just he's a good guy over a few times and he really is uh a likable

chap yeah but smart good writer just you know good taste in music yeah yeah all the things um so now we got the georgia straight okay out of vancouver so i i gotta tell you maybe i'm this speaks to my toronto centric here but i only learned about the georgia straight when the company that bought now magazine bought it like that's when i learned it existed is that really i know isn't that ridiculous like i don't know if i just heard it and disregarded it because i couldn't find it you know at young and bluer station like it was one of those things where like i couldn't grab it. So I didn't care to like retain this. Not at the Gateway Cigar stand. But I take it you were always aware of the Georgia Street.

Yeah. And I'm not sure. Honestly, I don't know that much of the history, but I was always very aware of it from like a young age of getting really into just kind of like music and the zine, as you know, like I was pretty deep in like the zine world I used to write for like broken pencil and stuff and chart magazine music but yeah Georgia Street was always like really well known in those circles uh maybe because like you know I feel like folks

like David Suzuki and whatnot uh were involved but uh of course now the Georgia Street and now have the same owner, which we'll, we'll get to that. And also listeners of pandemic Friday know that you always were, and currently are like far cooler than I am. So this doesn't surprise me at all. I, I don't know about that.

I just, I just got involved in a lot of things over the years. This is media journey. So yeah, here's, here's just a bunch of other names. These are just other all weeklies in Kano. So we've got the Montreal Mirror, established in 1985. I should have also written, are these still around? Because I don't think every one of these is.

I'm going to go through these rapid fire, though. So we've got the Montreal Mirror, that debuted in 1985. Uptown, which is Winnipeg. That was 1986. Something called Voir. Where do you think that was based? That's also in Quebec. Right.

Also Montreal. That was the French language all weekly. I believe that one's still around. We have the Ottawa Express. An X is with an X press. This is shocking. That debuted in 1993. Can you think of a more 90s name

than like, let's just drop the E. It's edgy. Express. And then there was also here in Toronto. And it's still around although I don't know if they have the print issue. I believe Express is like one of the LGBTQ publications here in Toronto. That's still around, at least in an online format.

I think it's like Rachel Geis is now the editor. She used to be with Chatelaine and other places. A couple more we have. I assume this is pronounced fast forward. FFWD, that's out of Calgary. That debuted in 1995. And this is kind of a fun fact, just kind of a fun word play. You see at VIEW Weekly, V-W-E, that was out of Edmonton.

And then you had a magazine I was actually a regular reader for a few years, VIEW Magazine out of Hamilton so that's V-I-E-W all uppercase that debuted in 1995 and when I was at Master 96 through 2000 I remember I discovered View Magazine and I'd react like it's the old weekly of Hamilton this is going to be awesome and it was pretty thin but kind of did the job.

Hamilton's a smaller city than Toronto. But anyway, laundry list there of some other Canadian weeklies. I was going to ask you a quiz. Do you know when Now Magazine started? 40 years ago. 1981.

Good guess. You nailed it. Their first issue, this is now the history section so new chapter here first issue came out September 10th 1981 the first cover story was something called the other side of Queen Street which was a look at the

gay scene in Toronto at that time and there was also I saw on the cover, there was something that said the Gang of Four, which I'm going to assume is the band, the Gang of Four, and not the actual Gang of Four, which I think was like an insurgence,

like in some, like the Spanish Civil War or something. The original Gang of Four, like that's who the band was named after. Like it was something to do with like politics. And I should know this. Like if it said Franz Ferdinand, you know this. If it said Franz Ferdinand, you wouldn't think it was actually Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke.

The guy who got murdered in World War I. But Cam, it's not murder when you're a political figure. It's assassination. Assassination, right. You sound like a carriage in something, right? Yeah, well, he was Sarajevo. Bottom line is, he was like the catalyst of Bottom line is, we always know he was like the

catalyst of World War I, was like the assassination of France. Totally. But the band, there would probably be the Scottish band. Yeah, totally. In more recent days. By the way, World War I, very complex. Like the whole backstory,

I've tried to understand. I generally get it. The Astro-Hungarian, yeah. But I find it lacks the sex appeal like the whole backstory i i've tried to understand i i generally get astro hungarian yeah it's all uh but i find it's not it doesn't it lacks the sex appeal of world war ii because world war ii has like an like a what i would call like a an evil super villain a hundred percent well i i think also they had like you know the the allied powers and the Axis. What was Japan and Italy? Yeah, the Axis. The Axis.

Yeah. Axis of evil. It sounds bad. I think it's more relatable to people because on the one hand, you had the UK and the US and Russia, and then on the other side, you had Germany and Japan and Italy. So that's like... and also like it's one thing to say oh world war one oh yeah america entered world war one because they sank the

lusitania but then you can right but it's way sexier to be like yeah the japanese actually bombed pearl harbor pearl harbor yeah and now that i mean speak of like wrestling and other places you know the pearl harbor has become shorthand for just, you know, a sneak attack on somebody. Torator. Look at this tangent. I love it. There you go. The history of now, World War I chat. Maybe that's a new podcast.

Maybe we should dive deep, like fun facts, World War I. We dive deep. It'll be like a series. I don't know, like two-hour episodes. We'll make like 30 of them. We'll explain. There'd be so many factual errors it would just be great us trying to remember stuff about it um anyway let's get back to now magazine so it was uh famously founded by two folks uh you had michael hollett and alice klein now i know you asked me this by DM, no relation to Much Music and Twitter Canada fame,

Jen Hollett now with The Walrus. That said, I was once somewhere with Jen. I don't think it was a work event. It might have been like an NDP event or something. And Michael Hollett was there and they had a little joke like, oh, a long-standing joke like people do ask Jen Hollett quite often, is she related to Michael Hollett?

I can imagine. But she's not. That's another fun fact here, is that no relation. No relation. You know, let's just smash cut right to 2016. This is just our corporate talk, but that was the year. Now it was privately owned by Michael and Alice until 2016

when Hollett sold his shares of the company to Klein and left the newspaper to focus on North by Northeast as festivals present and founder. So Michael Hollett, I mean, just, you know, a very really a really important figure in not just publishing, but Toronto and the Canadian music scene. And of course, now he has his new publication, Next.

Have you seen Next yet? I've heard about it. I've heard about his new venture, yes. Yeah, I actually, we were talking before you hit play, I was in Kensington Market yesterday with my daughter, hanging out in Exile and the Blue Banana and other places, but I actually saw hard copies of Next Magazine in Kensington.

I wanted to pick it up to check it out, but I didn't have a bag with me. We were going to the art gallery, so I didn't want to carry it around. But it's out on the street, and give him credit. Guy's been in the game a long time, his new project. But yeah, he basically left now five years ago. That being said, and I'm going to reference this a few times,

a couple weeks ago, Now has their own podcast. I think it's called And Now. Have you heard this ever? I believe FOTM Norm Wilner is involved with this. Absolutely. He certainly is. And he recently hosted an episode that was a 40-year retrospective Now, but really it was also the state of the nation of Alt Weeklys

where they had three guests. One was Michael Hollett. So obviously, you know, he's not Burn Day Bridges with the now camp. So he's still on that. Guest on that podcast, he had Susan G. Cole, who was her longtime entertainment and books editor. We'll talk more about Ms. Cole shortly.

And then there was a third gentleman and I totally can't remember his name. He was the editor, perhaps also the founder of a big Alt Weekly in San Francisco. But anyway, hosted by FOTM, Norm Willner. They did like a whole state of the nation on where Alt Weekly is heading and Michael Hollett talked a little bit about Next

and how the rollout on that's going. And yeah, we'll see where this all heads because, and we touched on this off the top in 2019 uh now communications sold now magazine to a company called media central corporation for two million dollars what a name media central corporation like that that that talk about like something that sounds kind of evil like that sounds like an Ontario Corporation 562. It's like a tax number. For the listeners, I'd suggest you check some of the 1236 episodes

from about three years ago to hear more about this sale because I know you guys talked about it, I feel like, in depth. Absolutely. So after the sale Klein remained with the newspaper as chief editorial strategist. A few weeks later MCC also announced a deal to acquire the similar Vancouver publication the Georgia Strait and you know the Georgia Strait and NOW magazine they still you know in some ways look and feel the same as they did their online presence.

But there's also this company has a lot of dealings in the cannabis space. And also I feel like video games are like e-sports or something. So there are these like emerging categories, but, you know, it's a bit of one foot in the old school, one foot in the new school. And we'll see where this heads. and we'll see where this heads. And yeah, I'm sure like 1236 could give you a more fulsome deep dive on the status update on this whole media central corporation. Now, Cam, I realize you're not a business expert per se, but does that price tag, because I find myself a little surprised

at the $2 million price tag. Yeah, I'd be curious to know what that actually entailed. Because I mean, as you may recall to know what that actually entailed, because I mean, as you may recall, like now headquarters was on it's not like church, like I want to say like church in Dundas, like real prime

real estate across from I was very close to where the Simpsons corporate headquarters used to be in a kind of old like brutalist style building that my grandmother actually worked on or worked out of when she first came to Canada from the UK. Oh, I thought she was like a bricklayer and she was

like... She wasn't in Rusty, so like... Shout out to Ken in Rusty. Well done. You follow the money with all this stuff. I'm just excited you listened to the program. Of course. I'm avid... I'm not just a stuff. I'm just excited you listened to the program. Of course. I'm avid.

I'm not just a guest. I'm also a listener. Yeah, so I believe the building they sold off prior to the sale. So, yeah, I'd be curious. What do you get for that $2 million? Because, okay, so I'm thinking, okay, when they first went online, like when Now Magazine first goes online, I think 1993, it's now.com is the domain, okay? That's right, yeah.

They pounced, the good old days, the early to mid-90s. The squatting on URLs. They had now.com. At some point, I believe the year was 2000, they decide to move the online magazine to nowtoronto.com because they sell the domain name now.com.

And my brain thinks in 2000, a domain name like now.com could be worth north of $2 million. Am I nuts? Oh, tons. Well, I don't know if you remember, we talk a lot about big shiny tunes here on pandemic fridays now pun pun very much intended um i don't know if you recall there was another very popular cd compilation but now now that's what i call music of course yeah which i feel like the logo on those cds was just now

uh so i have no doubt now.com in 2000. Big money. Big money. Big money. Big money. I'm thinking now, speaking of like bands you might hear on Big Shiny Tunes,

I'm thinking of a band that I always liked, never loved, but always respected and enjoyed their jams. I'm thinking of the Tea Party. Okay. I find also on a quick aside

is that my favorite Tea Party song remains the very first Tea Party. I find also, on a quick aside, is that my favorite Tea Party song remains the very first Tea Party song I ever heard, which is a song called The River. So I find some bands that I don't go really crazy about, but I always kind of like hearing on the radio, often I find it's their first song I end up liking the best. Okay, that's a quick aside. But the teaparty.com,

they had the domain name teaparty.com. Oh, yes. I know where you're going here. Yeah, I guess. So I think there's a tremendous, I don't think, I do not think they've sold it actually, but tremendous value in this domain name,

teaparty.com. Similarly, I think Now Toronto, Now Magazine, because they had that Now.com might have been the most valuable asset that they ever collected. It's huge and sorry not to get back to the tea party but

I believe there are articles about when the sort of insurgent movement in the US and sort of you know Michelle Bachman and characters like this were on the ascent there was some

articles I believe written about confusion with the band and the Tea Party movement which Jeff Martin of the band the Tea Party did comment on I feel like this is also like on their Wikipedia page I feel like this is also on their Wikipedia page. I feel like I read about that at some point.

Without a doubt. I think I'm certain they were made a big offer for the domain. And I think the last update I had was that they were holding out, like they were keeping it. But maybe because they don't agree with the politics of the purchaser. Yeah. don't agree with the politics of the purchaser. Yeah, and you know, again, I feel like I'm just embodying 1236 here, because I feel like you did mention this on past episode, but famously, much to the dismay of

hipsters everywhere, it came out in about 2013, 2014, that none other than Mo Tucker, the drummer for the Velvet Underground was a big supporter of the Tea Party. She appeared on a local news class in Florida where I guess she now lives just saying

she was at a rally or something and people were just crushed. It's like the fucking Velvet Underground the coolest band arguably ever and their their drummers, big Michelle Bachman fan apparently. It's like when you find out Eric Clapton's an anti-vaxxer. It's like, well, you know, Layla is still a great jam.

Yeah. Not that the unplugged version is kind of sucks. Oh yeah, that sucks. And then you realize actually, oh, I do like Layla, but what I really love is that piano coda at the end. Oh, the coda. Doon, doon, doon. Oh, and then I'm thinking of Goodfellas,

but again, this is another tangent for another day. Absolutely. Let's talk about a few more names who passed through Now Magazine. So we talked about Michael Hollad, Alice Klein, Susan G. Cole. We'll get back to her later. Some famous folks who wrote for Now Magazine. So you had John Sewell, former

Toronto mayor, right? Was he mayor? I don't think so. But like very well known in Toronto political circles and elected official. Long time Urban Affairs columnist for now.

I don't know if I quite knew this, Cameron Bailey. Oh, he was mayor before we get too far from that. Cameron Bailey was mayor? No. John Sewell, before we get too far from this. He was mayor from 1978 to 1980. So, you know, the first mayor I remember is Art Eggleton. So everything before that is a little hazy for me.

Absolutely. So it went Art Eggleton to... Barbara... Oh, Barbara Hall. Barbara Hall, for sure. We can remember now. And eventually, I think, 98, it becomes the megacity. So it all changes then.

Yeah, then Mayor Mel came in. Yeah. Anyway, let's look at that. Actually, fun facts about Mel Lastman might be... Nobody's Actually, fun facts about Mel Lastman might be interesting. Nobody's got more fun facts than you. Yeah. Anyway, let's get back to Cameron Bailey, the president

or was it the head of TIFF? President of TIFF. Used to be the film and theater writer for now, which is pretty cool. Cameron Bailey also spent some time in Alliance Atlantis, if you recall. I feel like he hosted a documentary

program on CBC or something. Yeah. Crossing my hair. I don't know if we talked about this on camera or off camera, but Simon Haupt for The Globe recently wrote a really good article.

I don't even know what the occasion, but it was about TV Without Borders, whatever that station was. It was the Alliance Atlantis channel. Showcase? Showcase, yeah. It's all coming back to me, yes, Showcase. Yeah, and just how late 90s, early 2000s, that was a real, you know, great place to see, like,

craft repertoire cinema. Right. And I feel like Cameron Bailey was in the mix at that time. It was more than just Red Shoes Diaries. That's right. Shout out to David Duchovny. And I watched all my Oz on Showcase on Friday nights. Oh, right.

Love dogs. Yeah, yeah. By the way, are you excited for the Sopranos movie? Do you care about this? I care about it. I'm not going to go to a theater and see it or whatever, but I will definitely see it for sure. Yeah.

I love the Sopranos. This weekend I was served a YouTube pre-roll ad, and it was the trailer for the Sopranos movie. And I have no interest in seeing this. I just, yeah. I'm curious to see it. I hope it's good. If I read it's not good I might take a pass. But I did see this actor, James Gandolfini's

son. I saw him in The Deuce. And The Deuce is a David Simon show and of course David Simon made The Wire and actually Oz was like a gateway drug to The Wire for me. I loved Oz, and then there's Homicide in the Street, and then there's The Wire. And I think Munch shows up

in all these shows. But I digress. To tell you that I personally would be interested in a Sopranos prequel, yes. Okay, very good. A lot of characters in Oz later ended up on The Wire and stuff. And that's the first time Schillinger was the white supremacist on the show,

played by, I'll tell you right now, the name of the actor is, of course, J.K. Simmons. I can't believe how long I could pull that out of my head. Whiplash. Yes, Whiplash. And, of course, he was in the Spider-Man movies as the publisher speaking of newspapers

speaking of newspapers he was the publisher for a newspaper I'm bringing you back to the now one more famous name that wrote for now she was on the news recently because her husband was in the news because he

was running for office and did not win. Naomi Klein of course married to Avi Lewis who recently ran for an MP spot and finished third. I guess he was running for

NDP party. Very big deal in the 90s. Absolutely. No Logo was one of those books you'd see on bookshelves to prove someone was smart. I feel like issues of ad busters would be on the coffee table. And for us kids raised on Street Sense, this was very important.

Totally, yeah. And then This Changes everything she wrote about. One of the many people I've seen do a talk at the Toronto Reference Library, which is one of the many things I miss about the pandemic. We don't get to see all those authors come in and do those great free events on like a Tuesday night. Right, right. Complete aside, I once went to see one with Conrad Black,

just out of curiosity, because they used to live like at Church and Bloor, so it was like five minutes away. And I don't think I quite realized how many books about American history Conrad Black, like this 12th book, this one was about like some like really small detail about the civil war or

something but anyway um i digress because we have to go to a new chapter mike so this section this chapter is gonna be called timeline okay okay pretty self-explanatory uh 1982 jim carrey a very young jim Carrey on the cover of NOW Magazine. 82. I was just thinking about my conversation with Mark Breslin, founder of Yuck Yucks, in which literally earlier today I was thinking about how Breslin told me that he'd have Carrey on the stage, Yuck Yucks, and Carrey wasn't going to make it. He wasn't good enough.

Totally, yeah. I mean, it seems like nothing kind of within his... Time in Toronto, really, that seemed like a very similar sentiment, despite the fact he ended up on the cover of Now magazine. Which is amazing that Now could see that coming. Ralph Ben-Murgy

knew Jim Carrey at this time, if you want to bring it back to FOTMs. Where is he from? Not Ralph Ben-Murgy, but Jim Carrey, like grew up in Newmarket or he's from Newmarket? I think he's from Toronto. And I think there's a period of time he lived in Newmarket for sure. But he was definitely in the early eighties bouncing around Toronto comedy

clubs, trying to, he had that, he impersonated, like he did impersonations. That's right. Yeah. And I feel like there's like a bit of footage you can see from those days,

but anyway, this cover has definitely been a mainstay. Wow. Because for this, for this episode, I went back and looked at, you know, the now 25th anniversary edition and their 30th, that cover is definitely a mainstay of all their like anniversary. And I've seen it, I think it like surfaced in some of their 40th anniversary. And I mean, certainly probably the first big coverage Jim Carrey ever got. And putting him on the cover like, you know, 10 years before Ace Ventura is pretty wild.

Yeah, because it's In Living Color is when us normies discover Jim Carrey. So if you're basically celebrating the man before In Living Color, then you're on the ball. Well done. Yeah, yeah. Within their first year of existence, too.

So kudos to Michael Allen, Alice Klein, or whoever made that call. So let's go to 1985. You know, first year, Blue Jays are in the playoffs. You know, by the way, do you think they're going to make it? I'm so on the fence about this. I was looking at the, you know at after we won this afternoon against the Twins. I looked at it and it's like we have a one in three chance of making

it right now. I hate to say, I feel like if we don't sweep the Yankees, it's not going to happen. I don't know. I hope I'm wrong because the Red Sox, they have a really weak schedule too. They're playing like the Nationals. We also have the Mariners now, right?

Like who jumped up? Do I have the right team who jumped into the straight? Yeah, Mariners were up. They were tied today. I'm not sure what the outcome, but they lost last night. So six games to go. Let's win them all. How does that sound?

Okay. That's, yeah. What's that like in Major League, the movie, like the coach, let's win the whole fucking thing. Yes, guy. Anyway, let's win the whole fucking thing. Yes, guys. Anyway, 1985, something else, another major happening in Toronto, not just the drive of 85, but also that was the debut in Now magazine of a comic strip called Life in Hell.

Oh, yes, Matt Groening. Absolutely, Matt Groening. So that was obviously the precursor to the stuff he did for the tracy allman show that later of course turned into the simpsons and and we don't have to touch on the simpsons count that although i would touch on it just to say i think and i believe matt has admitted to this but the original concept for marge simpson was that underneath her her very tall blue hair were the rabbit ears from life and hell like that was the original concept i don't know at one point at some point they gave up this idea but that was going to be like a big reveal at some point

yeah yeah wow that's that's cool where did you hear that um i listened to a simpsons podcast and they kind of dove into that uh oh wow and yeah, and I think there's like a video game that came out in like 1991 in which there's a scene where Marge gets electrocuted momentarily and you can see the rabbit ears. Like at that moment with the electrocution, you can see the rabbit ears, uh, in her hair. Oh, cause at that point in 1991, that was still the idea. I think it was like season three or something when Matt realized this was a bad idea. Wow. As you know, like I'm not really a Simpsons guy,

but that's very interesting. Anyway, Life and L became like a syndicated comic and now is one of the first places you could see it. On this podcast, I mentioned with the FOTM, Norm Wildner and Michael Hollett and friends. Hollett mentions Matt Groening, actually. on this podcast I mentioned the, with the FOTM, Norm Wildner and Michael Holland and friends, Holland mentions, uh, Matt groaning.

Actually, I think he said like he came up to Toronto around that time to do like a gallery show of his artwork because it just debuted. And now, right. And Holland and him went out for like a drink. I think it's at the black Swan, uh,

bar and asked him what he was working on. He's like, Oh yeah, I'm, you know, this new, this new comic or this new thing. It's sort of about family and the dad works for a nuclear

reactor. So it was like the way Hall had told it was he was telling them all about what eventually became The Simpsons. So that's very cool. And of course the names in the family were named straight out of Matt's family. I think Matt's father was Homer and his mom was Marge. I think the only

name in that family that's not directly pulled from Matt Groening's real life I think is the name Bart. And Bart was an anagram for brat. Perfect. It's funny because again, not really being a Simpsons guy, whenever I think of Matt Groening,

my mind goes to Mike Judge because I was more beavis and butthead and also just knowing like office space yeah um anyway um so 1990 there's there's a couple of things here um moses neimer hey now yeah apparently there was there was a lot of back and forth with moses Moses and the Now crew. Michael Hall, I've detailed this in some of the past anniversary episodes, but this is just a random provocative quote

that was in one of the anniversaries of Now. Moses Snymer said this to Now magazine in 1990 about Public Enemy being banned from much music. I know, Public Enemy, if not your favorite, one of your favorite bands of all time.

Moses Snymer said this about Public Enemy being banned from MuchMusic to Now Magazine. He said, it's important to send a message to these groups that they are not going to make money advocating disgusting behavior. Wow. It's like, that's, I mean, you know, like different tips, sorry.

I was going to say, well, Fight the Power is 89. Yeah. Like that was 1989, right? Because that was in Do the Right Thing, 1989. Yeah, I mean, the first line of the song, 1989, y'all. That's true. Yeah, right. Yeah.

But yeah, I was a little surprised to see that. But I do remember Public Emmy being banned from Much Music. And they probably had a Too Much for Much episode or something. Well, they would do the spot. I know because I recorded at the VHS, which I might still have in some crate somewhere. But you would have the spotlight. Remember Spotlight? Spotlight, of course.

So I've recorded the Public Enemy spotlight, which would have Black Steel and the Hour of Chaos in the hour of chaos and a night of the living base heads. And some of these early fantastic public enemy videos. Wow. Wow. Yeah. It's quite, it's again, it doesn't really map to anything in this episode,

but it was a little surprised to see Moses shocking. You know, really is his, he seemed like we'd be into public. You think he would get it. Like he would get the, you know, politically outspoken using your,

uh, your voice for, uh, change. Apparently not outspoken using your, your voice for change. Apparently not, at least not in 1990. Okay. One more thing from 1990. Do you know the name Wayne Stokes? Yeah.

How do I know that name? Tell me, cause I do know that name. Wayne Stokes. I don't know if he still is, but the original drummer for the Sky Diggers. Now, if you, I know you've had Andy Mays over in the basement. Has Peter Cash been there?

I forget. No. Okay. Anyway, Andy Mays is a great, great, also seems like a great dude. Yeah. Everyone loves the Sky Diggers. For probably like their breakout hit, I Will Give You Everything, would you say that was their first big hit?

Yeah, I would agree that was their first big hit, yes. If you're watching close enough in the video for that, the drummer Wayne Stokes was wearing a Now Magazine t-shirt in the video for I Will Give You Everything. I love that song. That song is a real fall song to me too. I love that song too, one of my favorite songs of all time. And then the next big hit or whatever, a penny more like those, I think they're both such beautiful compositions.

Like you wonder like, why weren't the sky diggers like a big deal in the States with this kind of musicianship? Yeah. I, I, yeah, I don't have an answer for you. I, and also, you know, could there be a scenario where you take the career of Blue Rodeo and the career of the Sky Diggers and just flop them? Because, I mean, you know, gun to my head, you can only listen to one of these bands the rest of your life. I'd probably, and Blue Rodeo is fine, and I like some of the songs. I'd probably go to the Sky Diggers, for sure. I don't think you'd get an argument from me, and I think they're both fantastic bands, for the record. But I'm with you buddy

and it is strange that one of those bands, Blue Rodeo can sell out the Budweiser stage and Massey Hall they get to that several times a year I would say but the Skydiggers will play the Horseshoe Tavern yeah, like three nights at the Horseshoe

anyway, it's ironic in some ways that maybe this was a bit of an homage to the forming of the band. There's a quote, Josh Finlayson, who was him and Andy Mays who started the band. Of course. They actually, to fill out the band, they were previously just a duo. They actually put an ad in Now Magazine to fill out the band. So I don't know, maybe Wayne Stokes wearing that now t-shirt was a little tip of the hat.

Who knows? Okay, so Josh Finlayson does come up in one of the stories told by Tim Thompson when he returned to kick out the jams last week. So check it out. There's a story of, you know, Josh and Tim on the 401 making an interesting stop as they made their way from like Kingston to Toronto. And I urge all fans of great Canadian music to listen to the Tim Thompson episode of Toronto Mic'd where he kicks out the jams a second time.

That was last week. Okay, I'll definitely give that. Whatever that anecdote is definitely sounds like something I would be interested in. Oh, for sure. 1991. I couldn't actually pinpoint when this debuted and now, but I'll just say 1991 is next up on the timeline. That's when we saw our first, I'm shocked this has not come up yet,

mention of this fella, the first ever edition of Savage Love, the sex advice column, of course, famously penned by Dan Savage, who's living in Madison, Wisconsin at the time. He was actually from Chicago, but Savage Love originally appeared in another all-weekly, The Stranger, up in Seattle, where Dan and his husband live and have lived for many years. I'm sorry for interrupting. You continue and then I'll... Yeah, no, no no no no go ahead i was gonna say like as a like you know as a fellow gen xer who kind of came of age with stew joe stew i'm always thinking of stew i'm always thinking of stew stone sue johansson speaking of uh degrassi sue johansson uh you know sex talk on uh on the radio and just just being

like i would consider that like great real talk like was you know telling it like it is you know uh i feel and then the dan savage reading essential in in now magazine as well like it's just yeah absolutely and i i still listen to his podcast savage love uh with some level of regularity and i mean you may recall like in the 90s the tone of savage love was very very different it was um i won't i'll just say like it was a bit more graphic with the language for sure um and it was a playful but i mean i mean both those people dan savage and sue joanne said i think also like immensely important cultural figures and Dan Savage later, you know, he did like the campaign to like, it gets better for LGBTQ youth and whatnot, written several books and, you know,

it's kind of like some of his advocacy against people like Rick Santorum and sort of a real kind of mischief maker, but like a really smart guy. And yeah, I mean, like i've always liked his podcast because he's in some ways he's also like oddly conservative which is kind of weird with some of his views like i don't agree with all his his advice but um yeah i mean just like a really guy who's been doing a long time anyway roots go back to 1991 if you're like me too like you thought he was a canadian and based in toronto 100 like for years i i remember he showed up uh as a guest on the mike bullard show

once and watching that i still probably thought oh this is just some guy in toronto that oh it's a sex guy from now this is cool um anyway so let's get into the 2000s here. 2001. And these are still online. This is very exciting. I don't know if we want this revealed. As far as I know, these were the only two articles in Now from our pal 1236. I found there's these two. He's in Now Magazine.

Wow. Yeah, so there's two articles you can find from him. One is actually a concert review of a Britney Spears concert at the Air Canada Center. And the other is something called Bring Back the Bubble Gum. Hockey cards aren't for kids anymore. Wow. Which is a bit of a precursor to Jack of all trades.

Jack of all trades, absolutely. The NFT craze. And then one more now shout out for our pal 1236. In 2004, his blog made the top 10 blog list. and then one more now shout out for our pal 1236 in 2004 his blog made the top 10 blog list I've never even heard of this blog from 1236 better living center I actually have written about it

at torontomike.com I was I subscribed to that RSS feed and read every word he wrote there absolutely okay I'm gonna have to like go back on the way back I don't think it's any secret because I again I wrote about it well before every word he wrote there. Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to have to like go back on the way back. I actually, well, I think, I don't think it's any secret. Cause I,

I, again, I wrote about it well before I met wise blot and had him on Toronto Mike. And of course I have him on every month now. That's how much I enjoy talking to him. But way before, uh,

I've been following him from blog to blog to blog. I think the better living center might've been like a tour star thing. Like a, it might've been a Toronto star thing. And he He definitely had a blog of Toronto Star, but he had one called Paved. Every time he'd show up somewhere,

I would find him and subscribe. Some of them I remember because I definitely remember Canada.com days and obviously the iWeekly stuff. Isn't that the convention center at the C&E? Better Living Center? Yeah, that's what it's named after, of course, at the exhibition.

Oh my God, I'm so confused. Of course, of course. This is a bit of a side. One of the other top 10 blogs that year was something called Infiltration. Do you know what this is? It doesn't ring a bell. Infiltration was a zine that ran about urban exploration. It was the zine about going

places you shouldn't go. Right. I think like the Malting building, right? You would explore these closed down buildings and stuff, right? Is that the deal? I do remember. I do remember. Exactly, yeah. So this was written by a guy named Jeff Chapman who

his pen name was Ninjalicious. It's all come back to me now. I absolutely was all over this. This is easily my favorite zine of all time, but he had a great website where he put a lot of his adventures. There's a really good copy of this zine, but this is also online,

about going into hotel pools and raiding them around Toronto. That was just awesome. Raiding how fluffy the towels were and how easy it was to get in. I used the malting company, as I recall. I use that as the example because the reason I found all this very interesting was because as a teenager, me and my buddy Ed would do exactly that.

We would break into abandoned buildings like the malting company, and we would explore every nook and cranny of the thing uh that's like what we would do for shits and giggles for sure yeah absolutely i think this is definitely carried on into the social media age there's some uh some facebook groups and some instagram profiles i i don't i feel like this is less of a twitter thing because it's just sort of in the shadows right but there's a lot of you know you're not supposed to be in these places. But we actually lost Jeff Chapman a couple of years later. I want to say he had like leukemia or something,

but he's also for me personally, a bit of a significant figure in my fledgling freelance music writing career, because it was a obituary for Jeff Chapman. Was the only article I ever had published in this magazine. Which you may be familiar with this. Like famous sort of social issues and left-leaning. A real sort of political force in its time. I did an interview with his widow, Liz Clayton. Who was also in the magazine scene.

And I feel like she also wrote for Now at some point. But anyway, they eventually, there was actually, and I have a copy, I could bring it over sometime. There was actually an infiltration book that came out that was kind of a greatest hits. That's well worth picking up. You can still get it on Amazon, because I actually lost a copy once I moved and i was all like distraught but i was i was happy

i could find it again um okay let's let's let's pick up the pace here 2007 this is just getting dark because now we're just talking about people dying that's the year we lost john harkness who was their their founding film editor and a big figure in the film scene. I feel like Norm Wilner has talked a lot about John Harkness probably over the years. There was an anecdote somewhere. This was one Michael Hollett gave where Garth Rubinsky threatened to pull all the advertising for Cineplex if now did not fire John Harkness because he didn't

like some things you'd said about Cineplex's programming choices. The Now team refused and allegedly Cineplex followed through their threat. They pulled all their advertising from Now, which is significant because the movie listings was

a really big part in that. But yeah, we lost John Harkness back in 2007. 2009, this is kind of just a little anecdote here. This is their year-end issue. They said five fearless predictions for 2010. One of them was about Adam Jimbrone or Jimbroney. There was an E at the end. But Jimbrone. Br Jim Broney? There was an E at the end. But Jim Brone.

Broney, I think. Okay. Him. They said, you know, keep an eye on this guy for 2010. He's a real go-getter. He could be our mayor within before too long. And they actually misidentified him in this article as being gay. Oh.

To which Adam Jim Brone later went on Facebook and said, this is a great article. Thanks for the shout out. Just so you know, although I have been a longtime supporter of LGBTQ, I am not myself gay. And now I don't know if they did a retraction or this sort of came out later. Interesting. Yeah.

2011. And this is interesting because i think this is the first time toronto mike factors into this story because i feel like there's something on your blog about this um now magazine banned from toronto city hall because rob ford was mad at them sure sounds about right yeah and there was some article i found. Oh no, okay. Strike that. 2011 Banff from City Hall. Rob Ford's mad at them because there was like a cover with like Rob Ford and like a diaper.

Yeah, well yeah. It was like a fake body and they put his head on like a big fat body. Yeah, kind of like a New Year's Eve baby. And they like photoshopped Rob's head on this body that was not rob's okay now this this is where toronto mike comes in this is two years later also to do with rob ford so

this has um this is when a lot of the stuff with the uh crack house was coming out and drug and ben spur was writing an article about this for now Here's a line from this article he wrote about the whole Rob Ford drug affair. What's this writing about here? Okay, I don't know if this is like a line from a NOW magazine article. This is from a blog. The newspaper descriptions of the Windsor Road house and its residents bear notable similarities

to a comment posted anonymously to the site of local blogger in March. The comments on the Toronto Mike site, which predates the crack cocaine allegations that were made public by Gawker three weeks ago, claims that the mayors frequently smoked

the drug. Was this a big thing for you? Yeah, it was huge for a while. This commenter's name was Rinse. R-I-N-S-E, Rinse. And it's, you know, before the infamous

video was viewed by, was it Kevin Donovan and Robin Doolittle, I guess. That's right. Yeah, they were in the back of the car and someone showed it to them. So well before that, or, you know, before that at least, this commenter Rince left very detailed information

as to like whose house, they were friends of this person whose name matched up with the owner of that house and Rob Ford would smoke crack there with the grandmother as well and like all these details. And we, this comment comes in from Rince

and then most of us, myself just discard it like no way is rob ford like smoking crack at this you know we discard it and then as certain details emerge especially after that uh that day you're talking about where gawker gets it and then star goes live with it uh all these pieces completely align where it's very clear rinse knew exactly what he or she was talking yeah now who is rinse do we have any sense of uh who no i and i've had many a mainstream journalist ask me at the time anyways ask me that question wow like do i know who rinse is because they wanted to talk to rinse and i don't know anything about rinse except rinse left this comment on torontoMic.com regarding

Rob Ford and crack well before it became public knowledge that Rob Ford actually did smoke. Wow. I love finding more about the ascent of Toronto Mic. Cam, I've written in such detail about all of this so just search TorontoMic.com for the word Rince and you'll get your

fill. I considered it my duty to archive every little stitch of this story so absolutely this this is the well it's definitely in the pile there with the buck martinez vaccine and the death of martin streak and all those other things that uh you know really bump your uh your view counts i do what i can cam i do what i can okay so let's go to a new chapter tor Toronto Mike. You're going to like this one. This chapter is called FOTMs and Now. Okay. This is going to be a two-parter.

Okay. We're going to talk about some names. Do part one, and then let me give you something I was never able to give you when you would meet me every week for Pandemic Friday for 76 weeks. So there's something wonderful coming your way. But we'll do it between part one and part two here. Okay, it's some malware. It's Rinse.

You're going to get Rinse. Just click this link here and you'll get a wonderful prize. Okay, fantastic. Very quickly, some famous staff from now that are also FOTMs. Go through these quickly. Norm Willner, mention him. Kim Hughes has been over to The Basement.

Also famously the host of The Affirmation Live in Toronto. Also formerly the Now Music Editor. Matt Galloway. Yes. Big name. Big fucking name has been over in The Basement. Now hosting The Current. One-time music journalist for NOW.

Sammy Cohn. Wow, I did not know this. Yes, before he went over to Toronto Life to sell some ads, he did spend some time with NOW in their ad departments from 2003 to 2006. This is obviously well before his time at Twitter Canada

and elsewhere. This person is not, in the final name, this person is not an FOTM, but I've always assumed it's the same person because it's a very unusual name. Because I would always notice this in their masses, like, that's got to be the same guy. Tim Vesely

from the Rea Statics, like, the guy who's saying Claire. He was always, like, delivery and, like, circulation supervisor for saying Claire. Sure. He was always like delivery and like circulation supervisor for now. I don't know for a fact if it's the same It's gotta be, right? It's gotta be. I would think so, but I don't know. I feel like 1236 will know this. He can send

us a DM after. By the way, shout out to Dave Bedini because his West End Phoenix is celebrating 10 years, is it? 10 years? No. 5 years. 5 years. That's a milestone. Maybe it's 5 years. Okay. Oh, right. In the outdoor concert, they're doing a show, right?

Right. Okay. So, 5 or 10. One of those round numbers. Interesting that's happening, you know, as we celebrate 40 years of now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Shout out to Bedini, for sure. I've gotten to spend a little time with him over the years. And yeah, the dude knows his shit

and is like a legit dude in this music business. And great writer. Totally, yeah. And very prolific too. Like he's a sneaky man of books. Okay, that's part one. Part two is actually gonna be a little game, but why don't you send me this malware right now?

Much better than malware. And I was not able to do this for you for all those weeks we got together for pandemic friday because pandemic friday ended on i think it was august 27th and this wonderful sponsorship with chef drop started september 1st so i'm glad we're doing this now, this fun facts about 40 years of Now Magazine, because I can send you a $75 gift card that you can use at chefdrop.ca. Wow. So that's it, 75 bucks. And I saw some pictures from other FOTMs who have taken advantage of the 20% off you get

if you use the promo code FOTM20. So any listener can do that. You can go to chefdrop.ca right now, make an order, and you save 20%. Use the promo code FOTM20. I saw a photo from Levi Fumka who ordered from Carbon Bar. Delicious looking food. As long as you're a carnivore, you're going who ordered from Carbon Bar. Delicious looking food. I hope as long as you're a carnivore, you're going to enjoy the Carbon Bar. I also want to shout out some great restaurants that are available there like

Mamafuku, for example. There's just, you name it, there's these fantastic restaurants and chefs that have made available these meal kits. I was actually looking at their website because I did want to order something. I saw a really cool cannoli,

make your own cannoli kit. I thought me and my daughter would have a lot of fun with that. Speaking of the Sopranos. I think the VP of sales picked that up actually with the promo code FOTM20. And I, yeah, it's not Sopranos,

but it's, it's the Godfather because you leave the gun and you take the cannoli. Take the cannoli. That's right. Well, now you can take it from home because of Chef Drop. Right. Chefdrop.ca. Promo code is FOTM20.

But Cam, you get the $75. Remax Majeski Group. They serve the GTA. He's been posting. This is Mike Majeski. He's been posting these amazing is Mike Majeski. He's been posting these amazing videos at his Instagram page which is Majeski Group

Homes. Like just really cool videos. So I urge you to at least subscribe there. And if you reach out to him at realestatelove.ca just tell Mike that Toronto Mike sent you. He was the number 14 Remax sales representative in Canada last year. So this guy knows what he's doing. Top 20. And he also bought us around at uh my god tmlx what a what a mensch i still remember and i

couldn't get any better when that van rolls into the great lakes brewery parking lot and then he comes out buys 40 beers and then he was just gonna leave and i said jump on that mike we get a thank you but thank you mike bajeski and thank you great lakes for hosting us that day because they did buy us our first beer and they hosted it it was the first thing to happen on their patio in like i don't know almost two years or something so uh much love to great lakes brewery much love to palma pasta they fed us that day at tmlx8 did you actually get some i always wonder because you're on the mic the whole time did you get i i scarfed some down uh in advance for sure. And that was great.

And yes, I think I sent you a photo of this too. Myself and MF enjoyed some GLB at the Long Winter concert Friday night across from the Garrison, a big outdoor show with Fiverr and LAL and some other bands. We enjoyed a couple of GLBs in the parking lot there at this show. Oh, good for you, buddy. Yeah, we had the... I think we had the Burst.

They were serving Burst. Oh, yeah, the IPA. One of the good ones. I love the Burst. We enjoyed that. Had a great night. A great podcast, if you're looking for a new podcast,

is the CEO Edge podcast from McKay CEO Forums. It's Nancy McKay at McKay CEO forums. She hosts these fireside chats with inspiring CEOs and thought leaders. I post the most recent episode on torontomike.com. I urge you guys, you FOTMs to check it out and much love to Ridley Funeral Home. They're here in New Toronto at 14th and Lakeshore and Brad Jones has been an amazing FOTM for years now. Pay tribute without paying a fortune. Go to RidleyFuneralHome.com.

And last but not least, much love to Liberty Village's own StickerU. Go to StickerU.com. Get your stickers, your decals, and temporary tattoos, etc. Great people, great product. Absolutely. All right, great product. Absolutely. All right, part two, buddy. Go ahead. What a great list of sponsors you have.

Like a lot of range there. All good people. For sure. Okay, so this is part two of the FOTMs. And Mike, you're going to love this. We're going to play a little game here, okay? I'm ready. This will go quick.

So this is called Name That FOTM, okay? Okay. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you three things. I'm going to give you a year, a quote, and a context. You're going to tell me which FOTM said this in the pages of Now within an interview. These are not like writers for Now. These are people who were interviewed for Now.

Oh, I love this game. Okay, let's go. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay, so let's go to 1983. These were some comments about a potential dome stadium in Toronto, okay?

It's a crock of shit. They're trying to force it down people's throat. What if OTM said this about a potential dome stadium circa 1983 in the pages of Now Magazine? Oh, wow. i first of all i love this game uh who the hell would talk that like i have wow so you gotta think it's gotta be someone of a certain

generation you know that was a long time ago sure it's gotta be someone who would now interview about a potential dome stadium who's also been on your podcast because you don't have politicians over i mean i don't think it's rob steven de la duca del duca del duca him neither him future premier of this province right yeah that's right maybe uh you know kathleen wind would show up at your house right yes she had an interaction with monica that's right and monica was in a robe as i remember okay so uh, so to keep things moving, I'm going, I actually think this is a great one. I'm trying to think of who would speak that way.

Croc of shit, Mike. Yeah, like, because originally I was thinking somebody like a Dave Perkins, but he's not going to say that. He's a journalist. He's not going to talk that way, which means I'm kind of puzzled. That would be funny if he did. I'm kind of puzzled as to who that could be uh dying to know okay can you tell me i actually don't know who that is yeah it's uh jim mckinney wow yeah i always forget his nickname wilbur no no no no howie howie who's wil? I don't know. Wilbur is Bill Waters.

Yeah, that's right. Who, by the way, is not an FOTM for some reason. He's a friend of Frank D'Angelo. Oh, well, so is John Gallagher and he practically moved in. Okay, so I've had a lot of friends of Frank D'Angelo on the show.

I love this game and I really struck out there. I thought you were going to guess Peter Gross, because I could see Peter Gross. I thought of Peter Gross, but I don't even think he'd speak that way on that topic at that time. Yeah, I'm curious why they interviewed Jim McKinney about his state.

Well, I guess he was like sport. He's a Toronto Maple Leaf defenseman who was one of the highest-scoring defensemen in franchise history, especially at that time. Okay. So let's go to 1989. So these are just comments about the music industry. Okay.

Everybody's trying to F you at the same time. Exclamation mark. Some strong words. Art Bergman. Art Bergman. Great guess. No, I'm going to give you one guess for each in the interest of time. Art Bergman. Great guest. No, I'm going to give you one guest for each at the interest of time.

That was actually a SAS Jordan. Oh, wow. Fast. Love my chat with SAS. And of course, SAS, a one-time backup singer for the box who played a concert today,

uh, to say in Toronto, but it was in Mississauga. I was told that the, uh, they could only have like 50 people or something at it. So they had a 7 p.m. gig, but they added a 3 p.m. because they had such capacity limits.

And I know in FOTM, Michael Lang was at, he asked that first question of you, I think. He was at that 3 p.m. box show. Yeah, I'm kind of jealous. That would have been a good show. And, of course, their song Temptation famously played in Schools Out, one of the

early episodes of these fun facts. As well, Temptation, one of the biggest singles from the Tea Party. I was going to make... We're on the same wavelength. I was totally going to connect all those dots, but you beat me to it. And also, very popular name for a song because there's also the new order

song temptation that was on the train spotting soundtrack and i just watched i just watched train spotting with my teenage daughter three weekends ago i i just watched the last temptation of christ with my daughter i'm just just kidding just kidding shout out to... Yeah, good fellas. Speaking of good fellas. 1990. This is somebody who turned down an invitation to perform for

Brian Mulroney. Now, context, like an event celebrated or a Brian Mulroney conservative event. This wasn't like a private performance for Brian Mulroney in his bedroom or anything. But this was, this individual turned down that opportunity and here's what they had to say

in the pages of now magazine. When I said no, there was absolute silence. I could hear my name being transferred from one list to another. I'm going to guess that is the great FOTM Carol Pope. Fantastic guess.

I could see why you'd say that. Sounds like something she would say. It was not. It was actually FOTM Molly Johnson. Shout out to Molly. There you go. I love this game. Did I mention that? A couple more. A couple more here. 1995.

This is just a general comment about how people are perceived. Stardom, I suppose. The biggest compliment I received from a fan is they said we were sleazy. The biggest compliment I received from a fan is they said we were sleazy. The biggest compliment I've received from a fan

is they said we were sleazy. I'm going to guess that is the great Ron Hawkins of Lois and Lois. Awesome. You got one. It sounds like a Ron quote. He is returning to the backyard studio next week

with Lawrence Nichols of Lois and Lois. Awesome. There's some batting practice. Just lobbed one for you for next week's episode. I'm glad I didn't get shut out here. Okay, one more to go? Yeah. Last but not least, these comments are about at the time, Premier

of Ontario, Mike Harris. He's a cutter, that guy. Mother's allowance taxes now trees he should be an editor or something who said that do I have a year I guess 1995

I'm going to guess Stephen Page good guess certainly shared a stage with Stephen Page at times this is one of our famous FOTMs, James B. I love it. I love this game and I love that answer and I'm okay

with the fact I only got one right, but it was fun to play. It's okay. Well, I mean, you've had, what, 900 episodes of FOTMs? This is 919, yeah. By the way, did Diego Fuentes, did he pronounce James B wrong? Am I imagining that? Like Like he called him Jamie B.? I can't. I honestly

even though that was the most recent episode of Toronto Mic'd, I cannot recall. Okay. Okay, so this is kind of just the, let's just call this chapter etc. This is like the footnotes. Okay. I'm ready. Michael Hollett was on a podcast called The Creationists

that's hosted by Steve Waxman. Do you know Steve Waxman? Any relation to Al? His son, no. Steve Waxman used to work for Attic Records in Warner. Oh, yes, I do know this. Long-time music industry guy now. I might still get an email newsletter from the man.

Yeah, I think he's got a little newsletter. Kind of in that FYI music news scene. Five fun facts from that episode about the formation of NOW and a few things. I'll just go through these rapid fire. Michael Hollett's grandfather was an editor at the Toronto Telegram. And his, oh, sorry, his grandfather was,

Michael Hollett's father was a writer, photographer, and cartoonist at the Toronto Star, while his mom freelanced at all those papers and Maclean's. Wow. So very deep media roots in the Hollett family. Wow. Some other potential names for now included City Beat and just The Beat. Now, if you think 1981 and obviously the English Beat, like Dave Wakeling was a very popular band at that time.

That could have got very confusing. This I thought was very interesting. I don't know if this is true or not, or maybe this was just hypothetical, but I think this was the case. The first ever issue of Now was for sale for 50 cents. I find that hard to believe. I'm surprised to learn that. Yeah, I feel like it was on the Steve Waxman.

This was actually like a transcript of this website or of the podcast. I sort of mentioned this early days. Toronto Life and Moses Snymer were folks that spoke to Hollett and Klein as potential investors early on. That's not surprising. That sounds about right

um and last but not least michael holland says that moses neimer you're gonna like this got the idea for speakers corner from a now party like maybe it's like a christmas party or something because they had a tv setup in the corner um i do like this yeah so that i mean if that's true that certainly seems about right could be a thing um sounds about right sure sure well why not why not um a few more sort of etc fun facts here uh the first ever issue of now had an advertisement for a beta video recorder. Let's play a little Price is Right, Mike. How much do you think that beta video recorder in 1981 cost in this ad? $550.

Would you believe? $995. Wow. In 1981 funds. That's like... A few thousand bucks. Sure. And that's not even the winning format.

I know. They were the losers. Right. They're the losers. I still remember my video store carried both for many years. And then I think it was like the late 80s when they finally said, we're only doing VHS now. No more video.

Yeah. Sometime I'll have to tell you. I was doing PR for lg electronics during the very short-lived uh blu-ray versus hd dvd praise which they were definitely trying to like get very combative with those two and i guess like neither really won out because they mean just streaming became the thing i will say though that that gentleman who ran my local video store and i still remember him telling me i needed to rent this movie called Reservoir Dogs. I would love it.

I didn't know Tarantino if he walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. Anyway, I still thank him for that. But he did get arrested for dealing cocaine. This was very exciting in my neighborhood when our beloved local video store guy made the perp walk in the chains. It was quite exciting. With the bracelets on. The bracelets, yes.

Probably change your life too at the same time. Yeah. Really, at the end of the day, we're still talking about Reservoir Dogs, I feel like, every third episode. As part of the articles that came out with their 40 years of now, they actually did a top 10 list of regrettable covers.

Everyone, I feel like all these sort of go in the same category. You got Moxie Fruvis, Woody Allen, CK, Kevin Spacey, Ron Jeremy. Right, right. Now, we mentioned Susan G. Cole earlier. She was quite well-known in feminist circles and an author and an anarchist, not an anarchist, like an activist, but was very staunchly anti-porn.

And she was the entertainment editor for now for, I believe, about 30 years but on the side she would do these speaking engagements in the u.s where her and ron jeremy would tour places like university campus and have these like little debates about porn and stuff like this so it's kind of just interesting you know now you know where they had pages and pages of adult classified ads in the back like their entertainment editor was like strictly anti-porn which i'm not saying it's not the same thing like no but on that network and porn but there were protests uh over some of those uh ads right like

i do remember there being some great controversies about some of the ads at the back of now magazine yeah that's right and then um i don't know if they can't run them anymore because I know Dan Savage on his podcast talked about this when, was it like, I forget, there was like a new laws in the US where like Craigslist had to remove all their adult stuff where like a lot of sex worker advocacy groups were actually saying,

this is actually be really dangerous for sex workers because they force it even further underground and that's where even more bad stuff so yeah I mean tricky topics to be sure but anyway Susan G. Cole she was on this podcast I listened to

with Norm Wilner and Michael Hollett she didn't touch on these topics but certainly a big figure in the now annals. And she was also, in the late 70s, she also dabbled in music. She was in an all-woman band called Mama Kila 2, alongside musicians including Laurie Conger

and Lorraine Segato. Wow. You can see where this is going. So that band kind of morphed into the Parachute Club, although there was one EP from Mama Killa 2 that was actually engineered by none other

than Daniel Lanois. Shout out to the Hammer, absolutely. There you go. So Susan G. Cole was no longer in that unit at the time, but this was the band that eventually became Parachute Club. And FOTM, of course, in that unit at the time but this was the band that eventually um became parachute club and fotm of course uh gene volaitis married lorraine's sister there there there you go there you go yeah lorraine sagato like a big figure and sort of that she lived on the island i think she lives

on the island but if she doesn't that sounds right i could totally i could totally see that um anyway one more fun fact about this. I'm on Akilah too. They also played the first ever Gay Pride March in Toronto, which is kind of cool. It is cool. Few other fun facts here. Toronto Star used to print Now Magazine.

Like Now was just like a client up there. It's because they have like big printing presses where they do like flyers and whatnot. Is that on the 400? Like is that just off the 400 maybe near Maple or something like that? I have vague memories of the big Toronto Star printing. Yeah.

So in a 2016 article from Michael Hall, this was on the 35th anniversary, I guess, said, excuse me. Wake up, Cam. No, no. I'm having a bit of indigestion over here. I'm too worked up. He had a meeting at some point. This is when Torstar, whatever the version of Torstar was, was the printing Now magazine, and Now was just a client for them uh michael

hall had said he had a dinner a very bizarre dinner as he put it with a tour star president john hondenreich who told klein this is a okay it wasn't dinner it's a lunch meeting nevertheless uh he told klein he would no longer print now unless we sold him the paper and what year was this uh i this was probably like in the 80s maybe or in the 90s well because i because i weekly launches in 91 yeah yeah so maybe it was like in the lead up to that and then eventually that sort of begat what uh i weekly so hondenreich allegedly said you know it doesn't have to be 50% right away. He also hissed, you are the competition, because at the time the Star published faux alt-weekly I, which folded last week.

We said no and took our multi-million dollar printing job to a less carnivorous supplier. This is kind of from this article Michael Hall had wrote in 2016. And they sort of touched on it on this podcast with Norm Wilner and friends. And I sort of forgot about this because they touched on the fact that the Toronto Star on Thursdays tried to like really bump up their entertainment

coverage to try to meet now. This is like pre-iWeekly. Now if you remember this, they made a big hoopla at the Star when the What's On section. Of course. They always had that full broadsheet like photograph or whatever. Yeah, like color photos. Of course I remember. at the start when the what's on section of course you always had that full broad sheet like photograph or whatever like color photos of course i remember of course i remember so it's like thursdays that's right that's right yeah i have not thought about like what's what's what's on

in years but that really was i could totally see that that's like a little now magazine within the pages and there's a bit of like okay so to bring it back to moses for a moment like you might have heard the stories about how moses had the deal with mtv to sort of launch mtv canada here in canada and i think at the last minute after negotiations mtv asked for like an extra million bucks or something in this deal and moses walked away from the deal and decided he'll just create his own mtv and then the next thing you know what there's much music so this sounds like tour star when they failed to you know get now they uh in 1991 just said you know fuck it we'll launch our own now well you know what there's there's a version of this sort of story also with um the folks who started degrassi junior high and aaron spelling i feel like there

was something like they want like i i'll totally botch the details but there's there's a story that's sort of in this this general kind of narrative where like aaron spell i don't know if it was quite like aaron spelling wanted to buy the degrassi franchise. Right. But there was some connective tissue for why the concept of Beverly Hills now, do you want to even started and the fact that Degrassi Junior High existed, which seems a little far-fetched because they were quite different programs

short of being set in high schools. But you never know. Everything's just like a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of everything else in show business and media. And you know what 90210 had that Degrassi did not have? Brandon.

Good guess, but I was thinking more of Stu Stone. That's right, yeah. Well, I was going to say it's still shocking Stu never showed up on Degrassi, but again, it was not a union show so that's actually like a very he couldn't do it

because it wasn't a union show by the way RIP again to Neil Hope who what was his birthday recently or was the anniversary of his death it was his birthday I think he would have been I can't remember what it would have been 50 or something it somehow gets sadder every time I think of it well been, I can't remember what it would have been 50 or something, but it's somehow gets sadder every,

every time I think of it. Well, it's sad because the character had such a sad arc when you look back, especially, we just talked about schools out. And if anybody wants a deep dive into schools out, you'll find one in the Toronto Mike feed with Cam and I, but that's the character wheels.

Uh, was it Derek Wheeler? Is that the character? So he used to be Griff on Kids of Degrassi Street. Wheels had such a tragic arc, a sad, sad character on that program when you look at the whole entity.

And to think that the sad life of the actor, Neil Hope, was actually sadder, like far sadder. It's just a one-two punch there and it's tragic. It's awful too, but I also you you know think of where we left off at the end of schools out like you know wheels drunk driving was in prison the end of neil hope's life could almost be if you

extrapolate how wheels's life would have ended up the path he was on possibly which I mean you know God this all ties together Lois Lowe had the song Life Imitating Art that's about Art Bergman like talk about life imitating art like certainly one could argue the same case with the the late great Neil Hope and yeah it sucks I mean

Wheels like iconic like character like for you me and a generation of several generations of Canadians. So fucking sad, Cam. I'm bummed. We're supposed to be celebrating 40 years of Now magazine. But that's all I got tonight, Mike. But I think we tried to be a bit of a balanced look.

But I will say, even though Now is a very different thing, I really cannot be overstated how important it was just to guys like you and me and a lot of FOTMs, just a lot of like fans of music, the art, just left-leaning things in the city, politics, all of it. And just, you know, I really admire sort of what they did over the years and a happy 40th, I guess now it's, it's younger than you and I, but not much. They've had a great run, for sure. And hopefully we'll still have some now in our life in the years to come. Well, I was going to ask you, I mean, I don't remember a time before Now Magazine.

That's the truth. For me, it's always been there. So my question for you, Cam, as you look into your crystal ball, before we say goodbye here does now magazine celebrate a uh let's give them will will there be a 50th anniversary of now magazine um i don't know like we'll we'll see how that uh mmc or whatever they're i don't know i mean it's nothing's guaranteed of this media game i mean mike you know this but uh i mean there's they still have some good people over there, so if not now

in and of itself, I mean, we'll certainly have a lot of talent that's passed through there. So time will tell. I'm not going to answer that question because if I knew, I'd be sort of a media consultant and not just a PR schmuck for twitter.com. Well, you did it again,

Cam. You kicked ass. Honestly, thanks for doing this this won't be the last fun facts uh episode of toronto mic we do together no we got many more uh coming up i haven't even told you i want to do one about the rochester fastberry but we'll talk about that at a later date and that and that brings us to the end of our 919th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Cam is at Cam underscore Gordon.

Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Chef Drop is at Get Chef Drop. Again, FOTM20 saves you 20% right now. Do it. McKay's CEO Forums are at McKay's's ceo forums palma pasta is at palma pasta sticker you is that sticker you ridley funeral home they're at ridley fh and mike majeski of remax specialists majeski group is at majeski group homes on instagram see you tomorrow and my special guests are Humble and Fred.

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