Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Retrontario Christmas Crackers: Toronto Mike'd #293

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

Mike and Ed Conroy present Retrontario Christmas Crackers Vol. 1 featuring Mark Dailey, Elwy Yost, Heather Conkie, Peter Silverman, TODAY’S SPECIAL, Uncle Bobby, Lynn Griffin, Harry Forbes, Harvey Atkin, The Racoons, Billy Van, Olivia Hussey, Tommy Ambrose, Ivor Raymonde, Scrooge, The Beach Boys and a MOOG!

Twelve o'clock and all is well. I am the spirit of Christmas past. I am here to show you the things that have been. Look back beyond the gulf of vanished years. Welcome to episode 293 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent brewery celebrating 30 years in the craft beer business. Visit GLB at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard for $5 beers. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. And Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot.

Download the app today from paytm.ca. I'm Mike from torontomm.ca. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me for Retro Ontario Christmas Crackers Volume 1 is Ed Conroy. Good day, sire. Merry Christmas to you.

Merry Christmas. And happy holidays to everyone out there listening. Thank you for coming back. How many times have you been here now? I think this is number four. They say fourth time's a charm. Absolutely. So I'm looking forward to this.

You sent me the lineup, and I just got giddy. I was like, Apu, and you thought he was a hummingbird working all night at the Quickie Mart. But this is a fantastic... I mean, some of the names we're going to hear from in this episode. Mark Daly, The Voice. Christmas. Elwie Yost.

Heather Conkey. Peter Silverman. Today's Special. Big ones, man. I mean, growing up, the Christmas Specials were always the most fun, right? So let's do a killer Christmas special. Absolutely, absolutely.

I want to let everybody know that while we record this episode, we are drinking. We've already opened the bottle and poured it out into the pint glass. We're drinking winter ale from Great Lakes Brewery.

How does it taste? Lovely. This is a December thing from Great Lakes. Let me just have a little bit. Yeah, it's got that spicy, festive warmth to it. I'm digging it. Lovely. Very good. I want to it. Lovely. Very good.

I want to start. It's going to be a very happy holiday special, but on a somber note, I got some news. Let me make sure. Did I load this in yet? Bear with me. Maybe tell us how you're doing while I load this in,

because this was breaking news I got from 1236, Mark Wiseblood, who's coming in next week for his quarterly round up. He shared this news and I'm going to share it with you because you might not even know, but tell me how things are going. I'm going to need a few seconds here to prepare. Yeah, man, get on the controls. Couldn't be better. It's been an amazing 2017 for me personally, but also for Retro Ontario. And I can't wait to share with you some of the highs and the super highs that Retro Ontario has experienced in 2017. And I can only

imagine that 2018 will be even better. I love super highs. Here, let's listen to this. This is from some guy named Retro Ontario, believe it or not. So it's all going to come full circle, but let me play the clip and we'll just chat about it briefly. Come on and roll, roll, roll. Come out to where the fun times roll. Roll, roll, roll. Anytime is a great time to go. It feels so good when the strikes are rolling.

Don't know anyone who doesn't love bowling. There's a 24-hour Bullolarama fun center near you. Automatic scoring available at some locations. Dial U-Bow for reservations and information. Do you know why I played that retro Bolarama ad? I can only fear that Bolarama is gone or going. My Bolarama is going because, of course, we need some more condos, Ed. Of course.

So mine is on Dundas near Kipling. They called it Bola Rama West. In fact, I don't even know where the next nearest bowling alley is to me, to be honest. That's where I've been going my whole life. And that's where I just took my kids bowling there like pretty recently, at least this last summer. That's where we go. The Bowlerama West on Dundas. Today, news is broken. They're shutting it down. Condos will be built on that property. I don't know where I'm going to go bowling. It's terrible, man. I mean, all these activities that we used to enjoy as kids and we enjoy with our children are disappearing.

And that's one of those activities that takes a lot of space, right? Because the bowling alleys are, I don't know how long they are, how many feet or whatever, but it takes up a lot of real estate. And the value of the real estate, it's so high that you can't really justify it being a bowling alley anymore. You know what I mean? It's like we have condos to build. Yeah. No, you're going to have to go to Chuck E. Cheese now, I guess, to scratch that itch. Can you bowl there?

Yeah, well, those goofy... Come on. I need proper regulation. Come on. Ali's here. I do know that area, they're trying to build it up big time. They're calling it the Kip District. I think that's the term. They want it to be the new Liberty Village. Wow. So we'll see near the...

You know, it is all kicking off at Liberty Village, let me tell you. They're happy there now because their TFC won the one. Did you watch the MLS Cup? You know, I'm a bit of a fair weather fan, but of course I jump on that wagon. I heard about this thing called the Argos supposedly won something at some point. Well, I'm a fair weather fan for them, too. Those are my two guys. But I did enjoy both championships,

I'll be quite honest with you. Okay, we got lots to get to here. Lots of clips, lots of good memories, Christmas cheer. So let me tell people listening about how to become a patron, how to become a Toronto Mike patron. Go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike.

If that's all too much to remember, maybe you're driving right now, maybe you're on a run or something, go to my site, torontomike.com. I have big orange buttons. You can't miss them. So you can just link over to the Patreon page and give what you can,

a dollar or two a month would be appreciated. We're already into the winter ale anyways, but you do have a six pack of beer in front of you. Ed? Yes. Courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. The best. 30 years old.

It's not going to be as fun in 2018 when they can no longer use their 30th anniversary logo. I don't know how the 31st anniversary logo is going to look. But yeah, this winter ale, I mean, it's not too late. Everybody listening should go to, this is this winter ale. I mean, it's not too late. Everybody listening should go to what is the address again? 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard to buy the winter ale. When you go to these Christmas parties or these holiday parties, you bring the winter ale. You'll be the most popular guy there. So bring the cheer. Bring the cheer. Absolutely. I have a message for you from Brian Gerstein from propertyinthesix.com.

He heard Ed Conroy was coming on and he recorded a special message. So listen up because Brian only started to do this recently where he's got like a special question for each guest. And Jill Deacon got like this really tough question about like the environment. What what's the what did uh is it the paris accord what did uh trump pull out of was it oh yeah the paris right so it was a really heavy environment question for jill right off the bat and i realized okay it's too early in our like review i've had you over here a hundred times you're a buddy but when you have a guest on for the first time like jill deacon you can't hit her too hard too early. You got to warm her up first, right? So I told Brian, I said, maybe we, maybe lighter questions off the top. So hopefully yours isn't too hard hitting. Let's hear from

Brian. Hi, Ed. Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mike. If you or any of Mike's listeners have any real estate questions about the 2018 market, feel free to give me a call at 416-873-0292. Quick tip, that January is the best time to list as you are first out in the spring market with motivated buyers. Ed, Mike and I saw Great Lake Brewery's 30th anniversary documentary at the Kingsway Feeder where we chatted it up with Jerry Agar,

who Mike informed me you are a guest on his show. How often are you on? And is it weird to have Jerry stand up the entire time while you are sitting down? Oh, that's not a hard question at all. No, he lightened it up as per my request. So, well, Brian's right. So Brian was there. I went to this Kingsway Theatre documentary I was talking about in earlier episodes.

30th anniversary doc and Brian Gerstein was there. You know, the owner, Peter Bullitt, paid for everybody's popcorn, like all-you-can-eat popcorn. Nice. That's the best thing ever. Like you get the biggest tub and it costs you nothing. Amazing. Amazing.

But Jerry Agar was there from 1010, News Talk 1010. And I never had a conversation with the man before, but I introduced myself and we had a pretty good chat. You're on his show. I am. So how often do you get on his show? I'm on his panel every Wednesday from 9 to 10. Do you physically go to the station?

I do. And he doesn't sit, right? He stands. I sit. The other panelists sit. He stands. The man is incredible to watch. To watch him work. He has the mind of an encyclopedia at the drop of a hat. That's what makes good radio, right?

He can pull these super obscure references out of thin air. I think that's probably why he likes to have me on there. Yeah, because that's what you do. I get some. You know, the Dennis Miller, what do they call it on The Simpsons, the Dennis Miller quote, but I can keep up with it. And yeah, he's a little bit conservative. And there is elements

certainly on the panel of sort of hard right stuff, which I don't necessarily agree with. But we have fun. I mean, we sort of flip all over current events and weird things that are happening in Toronto, and it's awesome, yeah. I invite your listeners to check it out.

See, whether you're a left-winger or a right-winger, we all come together for today's special. You know what I mean? That's exactly right. No, what I really appreciate about Jerry is that even though he has these conservative views, he's all about the discussion, like you are, much like you are.

And it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're from. You know, show up and have a debate and have a discussion. Be civil about it. I think what we all don't like is that it seems like it's going in this very dark place where people are just saying, I'm not even going to listen to you. Don't even try and talk to me. And that's no good.

In my opinion, it's become very much like you are with your sports, the sports teams you love, sort of like where there's the Leaf fans and the Habs fans and they hate each other because they cheer for different teams or whatever. I've noticed that there's like your left side or your right side, and it's like you won't hear the other out. You just, they're the enemy. It's sort of like almost like a religion or something it's evangelical it's horrible and i think social

media is a lot to blame for that because we sort of curate our own little echo chamber yeah and that's all we see is stuff from whatever spectrum and whatever side of the spectrum you're on and man you know bring back nolten nash that that was those were the days Nolten Nash. There's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time. I grew up with Nolten Nash. Yeah, absolutely. That question, thank you for answering it. That's Brian again. If you have any questions about real estate, not only is Brian a trustworthy, interesting guy to talk to,

but you'd be doing Toronto Mike a favor if you had a conversation with the man about your real estate needs, 416-873-0292. Ed, I have to ask you before I forget, what was the clip we heard off the top of this episode? So that was the Alistair Sim Scrooge, the classic black and white version of Scrooge, which, you know, it gets played a gazillion times in December, and we've probably all seen it too many times. But I just love that sample of the ghost of Christmas past, the spirit of Christmas past. And I feel I'm kind of repping that today,

bringing in all this old gold to relive with you. Awesome. And let me tell you about paytm paytm is a free online bill service payment service that helps manage all of your bills in one place you can pay utility bills mobile phone internet gas property taxes education credit cards insurance and rent all your bills you can use your credit card get the points on that by the way this is the double dip I've been doing because you get pay TM points cash back from pay TM and you get your if you have a credit card you get points there so all these bills you have some bills you can't use credit card with you pay everything everything

going through the credit card on the paytm app and you're double dipping. There's points everywhere, free money everywhere. It's ridiculous. Oh my goodness. So Paytm will even send you bill reminders if you, so you don't forget, you don't have to pay late fees and heck, you can even send money to your friends and family for free. So download the Paytm app at paytm.ca. Use the promo code Toronto Mike when you make your first transaction and you get $10 off. That's $10 free money from Paytm. You can thank me later. When it's swinging time, ring-a-ding-a-time, you're going to know just what I mean. We'll be running around, maybe homeward bound,

hanging out with the team. Don't tell me no more. What's the score? Everything's going to work our way. When it's baseball time on the CBC 89 to NAD Grab your hat and your glove The one that you love And make life a triple play

When it's baseball time on the CBC 89 to NAD What is this wonderful song I've never heard before? Yeah, isn't that amazing? That was the opening theme music to when CBC used to show the Jays in the late 70s. And that's Mr. Tommy Ambrose on the vocals there. This is when Brian Williams would call the game, right? That's exactly right.

And I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Ambrose on a documentary earlier in the year. And he sort of opened up his archive to me. And he had all these just absolutely amazing quarter-inch audio tapes of work that he had done. A lot of jingles, but theme songs as well. And, of course, he was sort of the Labatt go-to guy for music and Labatt's sponsored obviously the Jays and CBC would show the Jays and so they hired him to do this amazing song and it was sort of lost to history and I can't believe how good it is. I want to congratulate you on that doc because you when you shared it it, like I, I dove right in.

I don't know if you checked your analytics, but like 0.6 milliseconds after you posted the link, uh, Vimeo link, right? It was, yeah, I'm on that thing.

It was, I don't know how long is it? 25 minutes. How long is it? 22. Yep. And I'm, uh,

all into this. And I, my first thought is like, where will you put your Oscar for best documentary? Sure. It'll be between you and the great lakes beer guys but honestly great amazing job like thank you so well done and that's your first like that's your first longer form uh original content video yeah i mean i always envisioned retro ontario not just being you know collecting all of this old material but actually creating new content new documentaries

about these amazing Toronto stories and People City which was the first one Toronto's lost anthem was something I've come on your show and played that song and we all sort of loved it and it was like let's get into the

guts of what that was all about. And it was amazing because I knew, obviously, quite a bit about it going in, but the process of making the film, of course, uncovered all of this extraordinary stuff that had happened in Toronto in the early 70s. And it became apparent quite quickly that this song was not only sort of the origin

year zero story for City TV, but it was also kind of a year zero story for the Toronto that we know now and that we take for granted because you had a guy, David Crombie, who was the mayor of Toronto in the 70s, and he ushered in this age of the CN Tower, the Toronto Film Festival, the Eaton Centre, the Toronto Blue Jays,

all these things that are huge, iconic pieces of Toronto now. That all happened in that decade. And first and foremost, that song was about the changing makeup of the city in terms of the people, in terms of this extraordinary groups of people that were emigrating here from other countries and making the city better. So it was kind of a no-brainer to make a little film about it. But then, yeah, like I said, you get into the guts,

and it's like, wow, just incredible stuff. When John Gallagher was on this show recently... Yeah, he doesn't like this song. Yeah, I did bring up your dog. He's not very fair. He shit all over it. People, city, he said it was awful, this,'t like the song. Yeah, I did bring up your dog. He's not very fair. He shit all over it. People, city. He said it was awful, this, that, the other.

Come on. Come on, John. You know, the thing is, because it was kind of done in that, you know, I think Mark Weisblatt called it lounge lizard. You know, that's the genre. You know, that's a sound from the 70s. It's a very distinctive, unique sound from the 70s. I think Tommy Ambrose talks about this a lot from the 70s it's a very distinctive unique sound from the 70s i think

tommy ambrose talks about this a lot in the documentary that when he composed it the idea was that it would be like uh you know a theme song that other artists would cover and bring their own sound and you know it's like new york new york everybody associates that with frank sinatra but that song was written for eliza minnelli for Scorsese's New York, New York And if People City had had that I think everybody would think of it a bit differently So some people love it It really is one of those tracks that kind of gets under your skin because there's something yes It's lounge lizard, but there's something extra kind of special about it

And I think we uncovered in the doc, because Tommy Ambrose came out of the gospel tradition, you know, when he was five years old, he was at Massey Hall performing, you know, to thousands of people. And so it's kind of imbued with a certain spiritual element, which I love. So yeah, you know, anybody out there listening that...

So tell them where to go. Should they go to retroontario.com? It's at retroontario.com. It's at retroontario.com. It's the first thing you'll see. It's only 22 minutes. It's well worth your time because, you know, we're talking to Moses Neimer about the origins of City TV. Another amazing thing that came up that I never knew was that before he started City TV and after he had left CBC, Moses worked in this recording studio in Toronto

called Thunder Sound. And Thunder Sound was kind of like the year zero for the entire Canadian music industry because that's where Bernie Finkelstein was. That's where Anne Murray was when they were like nobodies. And the main thing that kept the Canadian music industry alive at the time was commercial jingles. You know, these guys going in there with orchestras

and doing songs for like Campbell's Soup and Smarties and, you know, just random things. But that was where all of it came together. And it's, you know, goosebump time, man. It's crazy stuff. Do you remember Richard Cheese? Of course. Because you mentioned the Lounge Lizards.

You know, as dated a sound as it is i went through a phase where i thoroughly enjoyed like he would cover like system of a downs toxicity uh or no what's the one uh how my makeup uh is it no it's on the album toxicity but anyway he would cover system of a down and he would cover like pearl jam and he would do all these like these cool tunes i like he'd cover them lounge style and it was a lot of fun. Richard Cheese. That genre kind of came back in the 90s, if you remember that movie called Swingers. Of course, yeah.

There was that whole sort of resurgence of the lounge lizard. And James B. Obviously huge. I mean, he's kind of never changed, right? He just comes in and out of fashion. Exactly. And there was the Mike Flowers Pops. I don't remember that. They did the cover.

Wonderwall. Wonderwall, which is sometimes better than the original, maybe. Well, yeah, they're both great jams. I remember this is when Brian Setzer Orchestra makes a Jump, Jive, and Wail. And then they got the Gap ads everywhere, the Jump, Jive, and Wail. You're right. That was a big comeback for a while. Amazing stuff.

And I think Tommy is is you know he he's obviously getting on but he could have a comeback like tony bennett if you remember tony bennett was kind of out in the wilderness for a long time and then when he was in his 80s he came back and he's you know he's doing tracks with all these young artists and people are like oh my god this this guy's amazing they're like oh my god he's still alive. Well, not only is he still alive, but he's dope. Oh, don't jinx it. We have to post this in an hour. And I truly believe, you know, Tommy is kind of, you know, we've talked about this a lot, Mike,

the sort of casualties of Canadian pop culture where these people don't get their due. If they were in America, if they were in the United Kingdom, there would be statues of them. But for whatever reason in Canada, they don't get the props they deserve. And Tommy absolutely deserves so many props for so many reasons. I'm so glad you played

that CBC baseball song. I'm glad you rescued it from wherever it was hiding. It was just hiding in Tommy's closet. You saved it. Oh, man. That's gold. I love that stuff. So when you you're a father, you need to pay your mortgage and everything. So like when you put together this documentary, which great production values, a lot of heart and soul into it.

Like, is this commissioned by Moses? No, no. How do you get paid for this? Okay, so it was an interesting origin. It was this outfit called the Myseum of Toronto. They're kind of new. And their whole ethos is that in lieu of an actual museum, a brick-and-mortar museum, they do these kind of pop-up events all over the city

that focus on a certain theme. So they called me in sort of earlier this year, January, and said, we want to do this music theme about the history of music in Toronto from sort of the 70s, 80s, 90s. And they loved People City, but like, you know, they didn't know Tommy was still around and they didn't know if Moses was going to be up for even talking about it. And so I jumped on that and said, oh my goodness, let's do this. And let's make a documentary because these people are all still with us. They all have these amazing stories.

So yeah, they paid for it and props to them for seeing the value in that. But yeah, it's been a great experience. It's certainly opened up a lot of doors for Retro Ontario. I think going into next year, hopefully we can talk about this in a bit, but there's a lot of different projects that are sort of on the boil now and I'm looking to what will be the next one.

Hammy Hamster. Come on. I'll tell you, Hammy is in a kind of a bad situation because there's a lot of people fighting right now for the rights. That makes even a better documentary. I know, but you see, this was the thing with People City. A lot of that footage is in the gray. So it was like we can use it. I hear you. But with Hammy, the British BBC owns part of it.

And the guy, Paul Sutherland, the Canadian Connection, the Etobicoke guy, he's passed on. And it's all in his estate. And this is the thing, too. People, I don't know how much people know about making these things. Well, if they listen to your episodes on Toronto Mic, they know all about it.

It kind of gets depressing when you sort of put your heart and soul into something and then you can't use the footage that you want to use. Then it becomes a whole issue of the clearance and all that jazz. Clearing the music or the footage. But, you know, there's a lot of cool opportunities out there and I'm certainly hoping to take advantage of them.

Well, this is episode 293, and the one moment in the 293 episodes that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat, and I wake up, and I jolt away because me pressing play on a Hammy Hamster clip, and silence coming out. I'm still dealing with that.

Yeah, that was horrible, wasn't it? But we redeemed it. I think we played it the last time I came on. Every episode since is my attempt to redeem myself. Awesome. People City, Toronto's lost anthem. Everybody, your orders after you listen to this fine episode is to watch that documentary from Ed Conroy.

Absolutely. Here, let's listen to something else. ¶¶ Is this just instrumental? Yes. Oh, it's funky. I just kept waiting for somebody to sing. This is a funky jam. You brought in the recent, your last episode, I think, you brought in the, what was it called?

The Sesame Street funky... Oh, Funky Chimes. Yeah, that was a great group. But this is a great group. Tell us what this is. So, yeah, I mean, like I was saying, back in the day, these jingle guys would go into the studio and cut these songs that were used in advertising.

And this is a fellow named Ivor Raymond doing a Coca-Colacola christmas song it's the real thing that was the coke slogan this is a coca-cola christmas coca-cola christmas song wow and it's way doper than it should be you know um but yeah i think it was saying about talking to tommy ambrose and these, you realize this world doesn't exist anymore. But back then, the advertising world would get these amazing orchestras to go into studios and cut these songs. And it was just a day's work for these session musicians.

Like, they just did it, and then they moved on to the next thing. And this guy's more famous for doing a lot of work with Bessie Springfield, you know, a lot in the rock and roll world. But yeah, I mean, I found this 45 RPM in a thrift store and I couldn't believe it, you know, with the Coca-Cola logo on it. Wow.

All that Mad Men money that was flying around. Oh, totally. And this was actually sampled by a fellow named DJ Shadow, a great turntablist who put out a compilation called Product Placement, where he basically took a lot of these amazing session songs and chopped them up.

And I think on his one, he takes the vocal of It's the Real Thing and puts it over top of this. It sounds amazing, but it's all good. Yeah, this song is begging to be sampled,

I'm telling you. Oh, my God. Look out, James Brown. Nice. So that's Ivor Raymond. It's the real thing. Nice. Oh, man, it's funny.

You tweeted a GIF of Uncle Bobby today. So I retweeted it. Let's go there. Man, that guy, man. I think it was your first appearance on Toronto Mic where you told the story of Uncle Bobby's trailer at the old aging court, wherever CFTO records their stuff. Yeah, the aging court studios.

Right. And we should point out in this day and age, we have to be clear, it was the moms that were in that trailer. That's right. This is the thing about Uncle Bobby. Everybody of a certain age has memories and weird theories of Uncle Bobby. I think it's safe to say

he was not a kitty fiddler. No, it was mom. I have to always point it out because people are... That's the first impulse because of Fergie Oliver. And they were consenting moms, we believe, as far as we know.

We presume. We hope. We hope. We certainly hope. But yeah, I mean, Uncle Bobby, the more I trust me, I have researched him a lot, and the stories that

seem to come out are that his whole persona as an entertainer for children was not because he had any great love for children. No. In fact, he seemed to not like children, which makes it weird. Miriam, who just last episode with Meredith Shaw, I gave her a shout out because she became

a patron, but didn't want to use Patreon. So she wanted to send the money directly. So I spoke about Miriam Dijon in that episode. Today, she tweets at me about how when she was like six or seven or eight or something, she meets Uncle Bobby, and Uncle Bobby's like a dick to her, like not nice at all.

This is the reoccurring thing that I've heard from so many people that they saw him in a store or wherever and they were starstruck and he was nasty to them. Can I pause you so we can hear the theme and then come back to Uncle Bobby? Here's Uncle Bobby's theme song.

This is CFTO-TV in stereo. Channel 9 in Toronto. Cable 8. welcome to the show it's show, and on your show, we have your friends. Ruth Winkler is here. Oh, man. I was an Uncle Bobby fan. I watched it, and I remember

Bimbo the Birthday Clown. See, I don't remember that theme song, though. When I hear that theme song, it's not taking me back. I don't remember that. But I remember, if the Bimbo the Birthday Clown comes out, like... Yeah, and we played that

one i think oh for sure here before you should play it every time it should be a rule please tell me about uncle bobby so i have some new old uncle bobby stories that i think you'll appreciate um i mean let's start with kind of the tragedy of the uncle bobby situation is that um all of the Uncle Bobby situation is that all of the tapes of his show, which started in the late 60s and went until the early 80s, they're all gone. They're 100% gone. And it's kind of a weird story about what happened to them. There's a fellow in Buffalo, New York, by the name of Steve Sitchin, and he's kind of like the retro Ontario of Buffalo. He has a cool website. He loves going into sort of Buffalo pop culture. And anyways, he grew up with Uncle Bobby

because people in Buffalo, kids in Buffalo, got CFTO over the air. And he made a website about Uncle Bobby like in the early, early days of the web, like a GeoCities kind of deal. Yeah, yeah, late, late 90s. Late 90s. And, you know, people getting on the internet, like a GeoCities kind of deal. Yeah, yeah, late, late 90s, whatever, mid-late 90s. And, you know, people getting on the internet, oh my God, look at all this stuff, were finding this website, and it was kind of the first time that I'm sure people were experiencing

these bizarre, like, repressed memories of Uncle Bobby. And anyways, he got a call one day from the United Kingdom, from somebody who was in Uncle Bobby's family, a cousin or something, who said, we saw that you have this website. We just wanted you to know, and this was after Uncle Bobby died, that we have gotten all of the tapes from CFDO. So they had gotten in touch with CFDO and said, we're Uncle Bobby's family. We want everything, CFDO and said, we're Uncle Bobby's family. We want everything, every last reel that is on the shelf. So CFDO complied. They shipped everything over to the United Kingdom. And apparently this guy had a very strange concept of the value of this material. He seemed to think that a company would put all of it on DVD, which at the time was, you know, going gamebusters. And people would buy

it. And Steve Sitchin sort of put water on that and said, well, I think maybe you could do like a best of, you know, or something. Because I don't know if people are going to throw down a hundred bucks for like the complete Uncle Bobby season five, you know. It's not the wire

we're talking about here. That's exactly right. And apparently this guy was so dejected that he sort of said okay well i'll get back to you and steve sitchin didn't hear anything for about a year and then he followed up with the guy and said well look what are you doing like you can send them to me and i'll put them online and the guy said oh no we just decided it wasn't worth the hassle and so so we've destroyed all of them. Wow. So in one fell swoop. Like, if I can't have it, you can't either. Well, they were just silly people that didn't know what they were doing,

and it's a horrible story and just a reminder of this stuff has to be looked after. I'm surprised that the CFTO people, when they hand over, they don't make a copy and hand over the copy. No, because, you know, look, these guys, I keep running into this. It's kind of understandable they've got warehouses of this of these old tapes and these are not vhs tapes these are like one inch or two inch there's no more players for these tapes and so they look at it as okay well can we monetize it no we're spending x amount of dollars to store it in a warehouse

and so the bean counters are like this is a line item that we don't need anymore. So they destroy them. Damn bean counters. And so it's really, you know, I've been able to save a lot in the last 10 years that I've been doing Retro Ontario. Hopefully I can do some more. But, I mean, time is running out, right? These things are not going to be around much longer. Uncle Bobby, unfortunately, can stick a flag in it and say it's done.

All that exists is people's home recordings. And I've found this amazingly. A lot of people would record films that came on late at night because they were in bed. And so they would stick the VHS in the machine, and they'd just leave it recording. And so CFDO would show Uncle Bobby at like 5 in the morning. I didn't know that. So once in a while, I will find somebody that was taping Gone with the Wind at 3 a.m.

It would run, and it would just start. Uncle Bobby would just start. You'd hear that goofy theme song, and then the tape would run out. And there's me in 2017 yelling at the thing why didn't you use a T-180 why didn't you use the 8 hour tape

because then we would have had half an hour of Uncle Bobby and that's not a show people would record no no it's totally accidental it's just the fact that the movie ended and that VCR was still accidentally recording this stuff that's amazing but the story I think you'll like that I heard from a retired engineer from Agent Court about Uncle Bobby was, you know, we've just said his M.O. was that he was a G and he's looking for the moms and he's sort of using this children's entertainer front.

sort of using this children's entertainer front. And so in his later days, he lived in an apartment building in a part of Scarborough called Guildwood. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But anyways, it was Halloween, and apparently Uncle Bobby was super excited about Halloween because this children would be coming up to his apartment. So he went out,

and he bought boxes and boxes and boxes of candy. And, you know, this is probably the early 80s, not like now where it's very mainstream. You go and buy these Nestle boxes or whatever. Right. He put a lot of money into his candy collection. And then, even crazier, he cut his door in half. And I believe they call it like a Dutch door,

like where you have sort of cut in the center. I've seen these. Yeah. I've seen like a TV show or something. A cartoon. The top of the door would open and he had all this candy and he was going to serve the candy to all these children. Right.

And, you know, he's probably went out and got a box of Glenlivet as well. So anyways, Halloween night, he's sitting there crushing the Glenlivet, and there's no kids showing up. And he's getting progressively more hammered and more vexed. And then finally, at like 10 o'clock, he's like, the fuck is going on? And he goes down to the main lobby, and the security guard's like, oh, no, no, we locked the doors on Halloween.

and the security guard's like, oh, no, no, we locked the doors on Halloween. He had ruined his front door and spent all this money and he got no satisfaction. That's a great story. I pray that that is true. I just hope that is true. You know what? It's such a weird story.

And the guy, credit to the guy, he was not a fellow I sensed that would make something like that up. But yeah, I mean, look, I would love if there was footage enough to make a doc about Uncle Bobby. Because, you know, it's a bizarre thing. Well, guys our age, we have these memories of young boy watching Uncle Bobby. Like we all watched Uncle Bobby. Totally.

But then it's gone. And it's like all I have are the memories. Maybe there's a rare clip on YouTube or whatever of Bimbo. You couldn't name your clown Bimbo today, right? Like this is a product of his time. But the whole birthday thing, like that's what I remember is the birthday thing. And it's just...

Well, and like you said, it comes up on Twitter and you get people that, you know, he was a school bus driver as well, right? In the afternoon, he did Uncle Bobby in the morning. Did it all. Drove school buses in the afternoon. Did the moms, did the bus driving. Another great story is the kids Left a message

These people Well they were kids In the 70s That said they Saw Uncle Bobby Driving a school bus And they were Throwing rocks at him

And you know He hightailed it Out of there But like what a Bizarre existence I think you might Need a film director Like a Paul Thomas Anderson

Or something To do a fictional film About a kind of Tragic character Like Uncle Bobby Oh for sure First of a kind of tragic character like Uncle Bobby. Oh, for sure. First of all, I'm surprised. Like, his Uncle Bobby money wasn't enough.

Like, he needed to supplement the income of the bus driving. Like, that's a Canadian thing, eh? Exactly. And I think back then these guys were literally paid nothing. There was no merchandising. You know, it was just show up and, you know, goodness knows enough times he showed up with bloodshot eyes and stinking a Glenlivet you know but that was that was the world that it was back then and I mean sorry did digress but Fergie Oliver was also all very now don't put the eye in there it's all over or as our friend a Canadian

Canadianity calls him what's their tag? Taggart and Torrens? Taggart and Torrens refer to Fergie as, oh, goodness, no, I won't say it on air. You can say it. He was operating out of the agent court base as well. But his honeypot was a bit different. He did like the children. Allegedly. Allegedly. We'll throw that in there.

Of course. You've seen that super cut. You've seen that super cut. I've seen the super cut. I always felt it was a little unfair to Fergie. Like, I don't know. It comes off super creepy, but they slow-mo it, and they got that music or whatever. To me, the super cut, I hope that's not the real Fergie.

Like, I hope that's just an interesting edit. I'll tell you something funny. You know, Retro Ontario gets a lot of requests from people out there that are looking for things. Either they acted in a commercial or their parents acted in a commercial and they're saying,

can you help us find this? It's something I pride myself in. I'm able to help, I'd say about 50% of the people that get in touch because it's important to me. I think these people should be reunited with these things.

But I get more requests for Just Like Mom than anything else because people are like, I was on it with my mom and she passed away and it'd be great for us to see it again. Right. But it's almost like 201. They all talk about how it was kind of a creepy vibe there. And he had, I remember because his wife was on Just Like Mom and she was like a Miss, either Miss Canada or was she Miss Canada? She was Miss Canada.

But she was a smoke show, you know. And I was a Blue Jay fan. I always was a Blue Jay fan. So Fergie was the how about them Blue Jays? How about your Blue Jays? He was like from that era that we just heard that song from, right?

I mean, he was a big part of that. And he's still with us, unlike Uncle Bobby who's long Yeah. I mean, he was a big part of that. Now, I hope... And he's still with us, unlike Uncle Bobby, who's long gone. I mean, Friggy is still amongst the living here. But he's pretty DL. Is he? He's on the downline. Oh, well, yeah, since that supercut came out.

Yeah, I think when Wiseblood is back here, you really got to take him to task because he was on Just Like Mom. And I've heard him reference it very fleetingly, but nobody's really sort of said, tell us the whole story from beginning to end. I promise to do that. My buddy Bob Ouellette, too, he's on The Rock and Oshawa. People sometimes know him as Bingo Bob. He was on Just Like Mom, and he recently posted a little clip of that. So, yeah, everybody, you're only a couple of degrees separated from somebody who was on Just Like Mom in the 1980s.

I don't know why I wasn't on now. Were you on? No. So we're the only two guys born in the 70s. I watched it, though. I remember it was on at lunchtime. I watched it all the time. And I always thought, you know, if I ever had to make something, I'll just tell my mom or dad.

I'll tell them, mine's the one with lots of ketchup in it. Yeah, you had some predetermined plan. But, you know, it's being rebooted by Marble Media as Just Like Mom and Dad. So it will be back at some point, and hopefully maybe they'll show some vintage episodes or something. Yeah, hopefully. But maybe the supercut ruined it. What makes more sense, Ed? Do I play the clip and then we talk about it, or do we talk about it and play the clip?

It depends which one it is. Okay, what about my friend Billy Van from the hilarious House of Fright and Stun? So this is good. This is a good segue. On the note of requests that I get, there had been something that I had been hearing about for years and years and years, but I personally had no memory of it. And I would say, no joke, maybe once or twice a month for the last 10 years, I would get people saying, hey, we know that you know about this stuff. We remember a program with Billy Van, and he was a robot, either a robot or an alien. Nobody could ever quite remember which it was. And he was walking around Toronto and going on the TTC and asking people how to speak English.

And then this is insane. Like, how do I not know about this? There was nothing online about this. And then this very nice lady wrote to me and said she filled in a bit of the blanks. She said, no, it was a program that was made by TV Ontario, and it was meant for ESL students so English a second language and it was Billy van playing a robot and and the whole crux of the show was was learning English and learning how to come to Canada and to be able to speak English properly so this sort of jumped up the top of my most

wanted list because are you kidding me Billy van Van is a robot on the TTC. I mean, just that alone was huge, but it seemed as if it was the same fate as Uncle Bobby, like TV Ontario didn't have it. It was long gone. The only hope that I held was because TVO had quite a robust videotape program where they would send out videotapes to ESL schools and places around the world, I thought, well, somebody must have this somewhere. Like it won't be a person. It'll be like an institute or something. So lo and behold, this year I get a message from this cat in Ottawa who had also been looking for it forever and and he had found it in Iran, okay? Wow.

Yeah, like a CCAM, which is a very weird format. It's not PAL. It's not NTSC. It's the format they use for videotape in the Middle East. He had CCAM tapes of this show called How Do You Do, and he transferred them and sent them to this guy, and this guy sent them to me, and I just bowled over it. Like I've been surprised many times on the Retro Ontario Adventure. But this one was like it took the cake because this program is bonkers. Like it's

just insane. And the fact that it was used to teach people how to speak English is even more insane. And then not only did it have Billy Man in it, but it also had a lovely lady by the name of Lynn Griffin. And you might remember Lynn Griffin from the movie Strange Brew. She's the girl in Strange Brew. Okay, yeah, yeah, of course. And she also acted in a lot of Canadian films

and TV shows. And basically she's this scientist who builds the robot that Billy Van plays. And that's the clip that we're about to hear. Well, let's hear how. That's an amazing story. Let's hear how do you do. Well, now I know who I am and what I am.

But where am I? You're in my workshop. Where is your workshop? It's on Spadina. The address is 1533 Spadina Avenue. Oh, you see? Here. Oh.

Where is Spadina? It's in Toronto, which is in Ontario, which is part of Canada. So, I'm in Canada. Yes. Welcome to Canada. Thank you. It's nice here in Canada with all those robots together. Wow.

That's quite the find, Ed. Holy smokes. It was a huge one, man, because I had been on the trail of that forever, and I kind of thought it would never show up. So the fact that it did, the fact that it was the full seven episodes, too, was amazing. You know, a long time ago, I was on the hunt for the Alfagetti Gobbler commercial. I had such memories of it. And a kid who was in the video had it and sent me that clip at some point. One of the little boys at the table.

I know. I remember well. Yeah, this is like going way back now, like over 10 years ago. What's so wonderful when these things happen is that then it went back on YouTube and it got disseminated all over the place. Just like when I was able to upload these How Do You Do episodes, the response from

people is just tremendous of saying, thank you. This has never left my thought train for the last 30 years. But yeah, definitely. It's on the Restaurant Terry YouTube channel. When you were describing this, instantly I knew this was going to be a TVO thing.

Oh, yeah. You know, that time like... And I actually... I've got some contacts at TVO now. But this is going to tie in nicely with the next clip because I really wanted Heather Conkey on my show, Toronto Mike, to be heard of it. It's a great podcast.

People should listen to it. And I had, eventually I got steered towards CBC PR for this. Because of Heartland. Right. And this is where it dies on the vine in this CBC PR land, trying to get Heather Conkey to come on because of course, Heather is dear Aunt Agnes. Yeah.

But tell me what we're going to listen to now from uh heather conkey yeah so you know to continue this this thread of how great this year was for retro ontario not only was the number one holy grail found the number two holy grail was found which was uh this amazing program that heather conkey did in addition to Darren Agnes that was called Report Canada and it was shown every day and it was each episode was only five minutes so it technically wasn't a show it was what they would call an interstitial it would run between other shows and it was Heather Conkey sitting behind a desk and talking about Canada and you know there were they would invite children to draw pictures of Canada and

send them in and they would show them and they would just talk about sort of obscure, goofy Canadian things. And I think a lot of people remembered it because TVO was so much tied into curriculum back then. So you would watch programs like Read Along or Read All About It as part of your, you know your learning English, learning how to write and how to spell and how to do math. And so Report Canada would sort of be part of that block. And it just had this really killer theme song. That's what I remember.

It was Heather Conkey at the piano just giving her. And I think everybody remembered it. And again, I was overwhelmed with requests for this. And it just got so frustrating. And even I reached out to Heather Conkey years ago when I was writing a column in the Toronto Star because I wanted to speak to her about all of this incredible work she had done. And she was super gracious with her time. And she just sort of said, look, Ed, I wish I had some episodes of that, but I don't. I wish I had some episodes of that, but I don't because these weren't things that anybody ever thought that anybody would care about, you know, five minutes after they finished making it. Right. So it was one of those things where, again, I was amazed at how difficult it was to find.

And then out of the blue, this guy emailed me and he said, I used to send Report Canada all my drawings and I got on the show like about six times. And my dad taped them all. And do you want to tape? And I said, brother, thank you. I can't thank you enough. Do I want to tape? It was an incredible moment. And then to digitize

that and to put that up on YouTube and see the fireworks of people reliving this song that had been buried in their heads for 30 years. So cue tape. Have you ever wondered what came before you? Made you who you are. If you look all around, lots of clues can be found. You won't have to look too far.

Mounties and Eskimos, beavers and totem poles, mountains and prairies, forests to grow. Artists and pioneers, miners and engineers, oceans and highways, up a country to grow. On Report Canada, we'll find out who we are. On Report Canada. Hi, I'm Heather Cronkite we are on Report Canada. Hi, I'm Heather Conkey, and this is Report Canada. And today we're going to have a bookworm.

But first of all, let's find out where our Frisbee landed on one of its flights. On Report Canada. Yeah, in the neighbor's backyard is the answer to that question. Yeah. On Report Canada. Like, that's, oh, my God, that takes me back. I know. See, TVO was, that takes me back. I literally, see I was, TVO was my go-to place.

Like that's where, that's where we talked many times about Polka Dot, was it Polka Dot Door, who headed, head into Doctor Who. And that, and honest to God, it's that,

that and when I played Hammy Hamster and heard Silence, those are the two moments that I still wake up in the cold sweat. Well, you know, this is one of the projects that I'm sort of circling around as a follow-up to the People City documentary is a documentary about the session musicians

at TV Ontario. Because it was actually, because of one of the times I was on your program, that one of your viewers or one of your listeners pointed out that the fellow who wrote the and composed the theme song for Magic Shadows, which was the other sort of intense, scary song, was a fellow by the name of Harry Forbes. And I was able to get in touch with Harry Forbes, absolutely amazing guy. And he just started telling me about working at TVO in the 70s

and these other musicians that were there and how they would, you know, compose songs for educational programs, so like math programs and English programs, in the morning, and then they would, you know, go down to the pub and have a pub lunch, a couple of pints, and then they would come back

and then they would do, like, Today's Special or they would do, you would do Polka Dot Door and that whole concept of these session musicians that were amazing and you know they're going home at night and listening to Kraftwerk and Lee Perry and you know that is kind of seeping into this

educational music that they're doing I think it's an amazing story I would love to do a short documentary about that You're guaranteed one viewer I'll watch it twice. I would love to do a short documentary about that. You're guaranteed one viewer right here. I'll watch it twice. I even have a great title for it, which is also the title of a Beastie Boys song, The Sounds of Science.

Yeah, absolutely. Great title. Damn, I like how you think. Ed, if I told you, I'm going to give you a hug after this episode. I think we're on a hugging basis now. Now, what's best? You mentioned Harry Forbes.

Do you want to jump into Harry Forbes stuff, or do you want to talk about what everybody's anxiously waiting for, the Today's Special Christmas chat? Well, I mean, you know what? Either one we could go with because it all ties in. Well, let me stick with the original order then. Who am I to defer from that? You spent many hours on the logistics of this episode,

so who am I to divert? But yesterday, this is just yesterday, I'm sitting down with Meredith Shaw, who's a great conversation like this one. She's just better looking than you are. That's all. Fair enough. But, you know, what can I say?

But Meredith's here. Her nickname is Muffy. Oh, wow. And she owns a company called Muffy Made. And once I saw that her company's name was Muffy Made, I didn't have to ask. Okay, I knew what the origin of that was, but it turns out I was right. Of course, she loved Muffy on today's special. So tell us before we play this clip, which astute listeners will recognize because I did tease this episode by playing it on the Meredith Shaw episode. And it blew her mind when Muffy pops in at the end.

But tell us all about the Today's Special Christmas. Yeah, you know, it's funny, because we had spoken about doing this episode, and I was thinking, you know, what seasonal material do I have? And I, you know, had the Today's Special Christmas episode, and I hadn't looked at it in a long time and one of the things, Mike, that frustrates me I'm sure frustrates everybody is that we don't have easy access to a lot of these things

like in a perfect world, today's special the entire thing would be on YouTube or it would be on DVD Can I ask you, you remind me, what is the new YouTube thing that launched that has the Degrassi episodes I've been watching? Yeah. What is that? Well, that's...

Is that a CBC thing? I've mixed emotions about that. No. Okay. That is, that's part of a government situation where you have money that is given to producers to create Canadian content. Has been for a long time.

And, you know, in this new... Because beachcombers are there, right? There's some interesting things there, but it doesn't have Today's Special. No, it doesn't have Today's Special. It has Mr. Dress Up, and it has Littlest Hobo, and it has a lot of the greats, and it's long overdue.

Don't get me wrong. Okay. That's amazing. But my frustration with it is that it's kind of being done for the wrong reason. The whole thing is, in 2017, people are mad about money that is spent by the government that we don't know where it's going.

So the idea was that billions of dollars had gone into the Canadian entertainment industry for these obscure movies and shows that nobody ever hears about again. So it was kind of a preemptive move so that you could say, whoa, we have this YouTube channel and we're showing Little Lesobo. So, you know, that's great.

But unfortunately, today's special is not on there and probably won't be on there because of this weird copyright situation with the music of today's special and the way that the things were written. It's always the lawyer's fault. Of course. You know, the lawyers and the bean counters would get out of the damn way. You know what I mean? Well, and my experience, too, has been if you find people that are willing to look into it, you can usually resolve it.

But the feeling is, why would anybody want to look at some old shit from 30 years ago? And it's not until they realize, oh, my goodness, there's actually a sizable number of people out there that are interested in this that would be excited about it that they see, oh, maybe we were wrong. But anyways, back to today's special. It's actually criminal that the Christmas special is not available to watch because it is an absolute gem

of just weird, fucked up Canadiana, man. I watched it the other night in preparation for this show, and even I had forgotten how bananas it actually is. The storyline of that particular episode is that two of Santa's elves, for whatever reason, show up at the Simpsons department store and decide to mess with the Today's Special gang so they hide the presents that they had all created for each other. And so the gang all splits up to go on this sort of journey.

Okay, pause. The bank gang, though. You know, I make this mistake all the time. I assume everybody knows all the TVO guys, but this is, well, you talked about Muffy. Muffy's the little mouse who talks in rhyme. Right. Nina Kogue was the voice of Muffy.

Good. Great actress. Sam Crenshaw. Sam Crenshaw. He's the security guard. The night watchman. The all night security, night watchman. Great voice.

We're going to hear him on this clip. The two humans, if we will, that I remember. Jeff, of course, he's the guy, when he removes his hat, he freezes. So he's a mannequin. Okay. And when he puts the magic hat on, he comes to life, and when the hat comes off, he reverts to mannequin form.

And then the wonderful Noreen Virgin. Noreen Virgin plays Jodie, who is the girl that works at the Simpsons department store and who discovers this cool gang. And when the store closes at night, they have adventures of self-discovery, and they learn about what it means to be human. And the Noreen Virgin, if that name is familiar to you, it's because she's had a lengthy career as a newsreader, right?

She's, was it CBC or CTV? CTV. She had a morning, before they were cool, she had sort of a breakfast morning show called Eye on Toronto, which is kind of Simpsons-esque because it's brutal. Yeah, it's Eye on Springfield. If you look at it now, it's totally brutal. And she also ran as a liberal politician

for a while, she was. So amazing, amazing career. All of these people. Bob Dermer was the voice of Sam Crenshaw. Great. Another just classic dude who did all this stuff. So yeah, I mean, today's special, 82 to 87, so many great memories. And that one, I would almost say transcends the usual suspects.

Like today's special touched a lot of lives. And I think it was because it went places that like American shows wouldn't go. There's an episode about death where a butterfly dies and Muffy, it's all about her and she's distraught at the death of this butterfly. And I mean a lot of people write to me about that and say, and that they still think about that and they still tear up just

thinking about it. Even hearing you tell about that, the only thing I can think of that compares is when Mr. Hooper dies. Well, and that's the granddaddy for sure. sure that would never happen now right but you're right the mr hooper death and i remember big bird was in a bit of uh didn't quite understand like okay he's gone he's dead when's he coming back and if you watch that clip now as an adult you'll tear up it's like when they're trying to tell big bird that he's not coming back yeah no it's i mean it's hardcore you know maybe this makes me maybe this is why jerry Agar likes to have me on.

I'm a little bit of a libertarian in that. I feel that this is the kind of stuff that we should still be talking to kids about because kids are, they are mature. They are a lot more advanced than we were, but you talk to your kids. Like, I don't know about you,

but like I have, uh, I have, I have lots of kids. And when, uh, when uncle Bruce dropped out of a heart attack at 58, my little boy and girl,

we just talked openly and honestly about what happened and where Bruce is. And we were a very frank discussion. No matter how young they were. That's super important. And I feel like that's been lost in this whole thing of let's protect our kids from sort of the realities of life. But at the same time,

they're exposed to much more challenging material because of smartphones and iPads. So it's this weird dynamic of like seeing really disturbing stuff but being held back from a discussion about death. So yeah, today's special, untouchable. The Christmas special is just nuts. I put a clip on Instagram of Jeff dancing around in front of some Christmas trees because it's funny.

He's an amazing dancer, and it's just blowing up spots, man. I don't think I've ever had anything on Instagram get shared as much as that. And it just, again, says to me that needs to be out there. I wish I could put it on YouTube, but I would get a cease and desist from TVO and it wouldn't be worth the aggro. But yeah, this episode, anybody that remembers it

or anybody that has a copy, you lucky person, it's amazing. It should be celebrated. And yeah, here's the Aberration theme song because they didn't really do this much. They always had the main theme, but this one is a little bit of a variant. Well, it looks like everything's all packed and ready to go.

I'll be on my way soon. Oh, I wonder how my two little elves are doing. Every Christmas Eve, I let them go and see whoever they want. I hope they're not getting into any mischief, and I hope they're having a very merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho! Today's special. It's forever new one.

Today's special. Come join in the fun With magic everywhere A world for us to share And friendly faces Hoping that you will want to meet us there For today's special It's about to appear it's about to appear, it's about to appear.

Today's special, shout it loud and clear. Today's special. Today's special is Christmas, part two. Oh, that's what this mouse likes to see. Presents right beside the tree. Oh, I can hardly wait till tomorrow. Yeah, neither can I. Oh, and Muffy giggles there. That's the money shot right there.

Oh, my goodness. And Nina Kogue, who was the voice of Muffy, and she operated the puppet, a lovely, lovely person that has been a big supporter of Retro Ontario since day one. And you start talking to her, and it's like she worked on everything. I mean, she worked on the CBC Kids

show that John Candy and Dan Aykroyd starred in that, again, nobody remembers. What's that? I don't remember that. Yeah, I mean, it's the wormhole that we go into with these things. And I think these performers now, they're getting older

and they're sort of really touched that people care enough about it to talk about it and have podcasts about it. Well, send them my way. At least we can have a convo to record, archive. Mike, I guarantee you, you can have the real Muffy on your show. You just

have to say the word. Would she do the show as Muffy, though? I'm sure she would. She is super dedicated. I would do that in a heartbeat you kidding me oh man that's great uh and I'm thinking like like similar Christmas specials the one it's not on your list but the one I remember is uh the raccoons Christmas yeah do you have any uh and you're right there's no good clip of this but I did like I did rip like I'll play a little bit here and it's not great for podcasts we can talk over some of it but i did like i did rip like i'll play a little bit here and it's not great for podcasts we can talk over some of it but let me i feel like he's gonna it's like david lee roth this must be just like living in paradise it's a bit noodling, isn't it? Man, I'm ready to go here.

But of course, the raccoons were the faucet-nosed cartoons. I think it was a CBC show, right? The raccoons? Yep. And I remember watching Cyril Sneer was the bad guy. There's like an environmental message. Huge green, yeah. Huge green message. It weighs northward and a short distance past the horizon lies the evergreen forest.

There are trees so big that the forest animals make their homes in them. There's also the people who look after the forest, like the chief ranger and his two kids, Julie and Tom. Oh, and Schaefer, of course. Yes, life here is pretty good. That is, it was.

But one day, the day before the day before Christmas, when a strange mystery began to unfold. Hello? Yes? What? You're sure? That's awful.

I'll be right there. Bye. Hmm. What's wrong, Dad? Seems the forest is disappearing. Over half the trees are gone. Oh, man. Just noticed.

What am I going to do, Dad? Right now, I'm off to start looking for clues. Someone on Reddit said, oh, the Ted Rogers statue is missing from outside the dome. Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw that. And I tweeted about it, like, just credit to Reddit or whatever. Like, hey, it's gone. And then Siobhan Morris from 1010 wrote me to say, like, that's been gone for months.

I'm like, nobody told me. Half my forest is missing. It's news to me. Well, it's funny because you mentioned him Cyril Sneer He was kind of like a prototype Mr. Burns He was this money-grubbing capitalist guy Like a Scrooge meets Burns

What a crazy show that was I don't know Have you heard of a program on Vice Called Nirvana the Band band, the show? I've heard that it's excellent, but nothing beyond that. I haven't seen this. It is truly next level comedy, surreal comedy. And the only reason I bring it up is they had an amazing raccoons shout out recently. out recently.

And that's sort of the MO of that program is every episode has got like, you know, 30, 40, 50 obscure references to Canadian pop culture. Those are the best. Yes, that's what I like. What I find funny, yeah, exactly. But what I find funny is like, not to generalize, but I imagine the viewership of

Viceland is like, it's like pearls for swine, right? It's like people that want to watch the smoking up shows and they're watching this going, oh, I guess this is funny. They don't know the raccoons. They don't know what these things are. Hold on, let's listen to this for a second. That's why my

bull around is gone. After I gather my strength. It's an outrage. What? Thousands of the forest trees have disappeared. Well, maybe they've gone on a Christmas vacation. I can't believe it. They've been cut down.

Well, at least we live in a safe neighborhood. I wonder. Look. Oh, no. I just want some Cyril Sneer before I fade this down. Ralph Raccoon was indeed right. No tree in the Evergreen Forest was safe anymore. At that very moment, the forest menace, Cyril Sneer, accompanied by his college graduate son, Cedric Sneer,

was actually eyeing the raccoon's tree with greedy glee. Ah, Cedric, my boy! Look at this fine specimen, ripe and waiting for me to cut it down! But, Pop, don't you think we've got enough trees? Enough? Enough? There's never enough! But, Pop, you're already the biggest lumber baron around. Why not ease off? Not welders! Power in my chainsaw.

I'm Cyril Sneer, a lumber profiteer. Whenever I'm near, trees disappear. Got that, Cedric? Sure, Pop, but I've been calculating. You're over your lumber quota by 17.3 times. You're breaking the forest rules. Cedric, you take all that accounting stuff you learned at that high school in Eastern College and use it to juggle the books?

Wouldn't it be easier to be honest? Honest? Who makes big bucks being honest? Now get back to work. Time is money. Time is running out. I will not be run out of money. So there's a little raccoon splashback.

Cedric is like the Don Jr. of the raccoons. Yeah, you're right. Man, okay, let's talk about Christmas commercials. Yeah. This will tie, because we'll get to Harry Forbes in this segment here. Do you want me to play the commercial and we talk about it? Yeah, I think there's a few Christmas commercials. What about the John Baker one?

Oh, yeah, I love that. That's a great one. Should I play it? Yeah. Okay. I just love, you know, it's so subversive, right? I mean, it's like, let's do Christmas songs with cash cash registers opening and closing and everybody sort of thought that was fine. Again, I don't think you would get away with that kind of stuff. The crass commercialism.

Which, you know, what was it an ad for? It was, you know, I can't remember. But what I love is, you know, these commercials at the time were just sort of a jape, right? It was like, okay, it's Christmas time. It's obviously retailers are all over it. And now everything is so, like, clean and committee-driven. And you would never get these kind of weird aberrations that used to happen. But that one, yeah.

I mean, it doesn't get more on the nose. See, that one I don't remember, but yeah, that one's, yeah, on the nose is a good way to say it. And by the way, the Harry Forbes is actually not part of the Christmas. I made a mistake here. The Harry Forbes will come after we go through these Christmas ads, but we'll get to the Harry Forbes stuff. But this gentleman here, I'm going to play a Christmas ad. I do remember Harvey Atkin, and he recently passed away. He passed away this year, and bless him,

because he was another, I think, unsung hero of Canadian pop culture. Of course, everybody remembers him from the film Meatballs, but he was the voice of Leons, and he was, I believe, a major character in the Super Mario TV show, King Kooba, I believe. And just an absolutely classic, classic guy. And let's celebrate his life with this great Christmas commercial. This time of year, you never know who might be dropping by. So you may want to consider replacing your old furniture with something new

from Leon's. During Leon's Ho, Ho, Hold the Payment, get the furniture you need for the holidays with no interest and no payment until June. Leon's Ho, Ho, Hold the Payment. It's just a better way to buy furniture. And, you know, I'll tell you something really classy. I'm so glad that 1236 retweeted it.

When Harvey passed, Leon's actually did a nice tweet and said, respect, this guy was amazing and he was the voice of our product. That doesn't happen really anymore. You know, even people that worked for these companies for years, they die and there's no recognition at all. There's no homage to what they did. But Leon's went out on a limb and said, this guy was amazing. And that was great.

Nice, nice. I have memories of like a young man, a Leon's commercial, and I can see a dorky looking dude dancing. Don't pay a sentiment. Leon's, don't pay a sentiment.. Leon's Don't Pay a Cent Event. The sale that you've been waiting for. Tell me more. Tell me more.

Choose whichever, whatever you want. Oh, yeah. And take it home from the store. Only $19, whatever. Wow. You remember this? Of course. You got that in your collection?

That's on YouTube, yeah. I got to dig that up. I just had like a PTSD or whatever. Oh, no. Leon's, I mean. Again, it's this alien world when they would spend huge amounts of money on their television commercials. There's another one

that doesn't have a catchy jingle, but it was made, I think, in response to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's these kids and it's like a UFO comes and shines light. It's really well produced. It would have cost them a fortune in the early 80s,

but that was sort of the MO back then. It was like, let's do it. Let's make a great commercial. Yeah, I remember a lot of the Leons, they were fun ads. You're absolutely right. Absolutely right. Now, you know, every once in a while,

somebody will get in my face a little bit and I always give them the old, watch it, buddy, because I'm always channeling my inner Peter Silverman. Absolutely. From Silverman Helps. And we have a City TV Christmas ad from him. So let me play that one.

As a business specialist for City Television, I know a good deal when I see one. So this holiday season, I'm betting my money on City sweatshirts. Cut to the graph, will you? We spent a few bucks on research, and as you can see, the city sweatshirt defies inflation. Blows it right out of the window. Believe me, it's a gift that won't cost you an arm and a leg. So remember that when you're clawing your way through the bustling crowds in the mall. When it's hot.

City TV sweats. Only $12 at Stitches. And another thing. What a classic guy. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know if you've reached out and stitches. And another thing. What a classic guy. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've reached out to him. Okay, here. He is still around. He is still around.

And I'll have to make an exception to my people have to come in my basement rule for Peter. Because I do want to do the episode, but he is not geographically able to visit. Oh, yeah. So this might be a phoner. I think it's worth it. Because, you know because that kind of consumer reporting man on the street, he was a hero of the

people. Silverman Helps would go out there and it wouldn't matter the scale. It could be you got ripped off for $5 at some store. He would bring the film crew out and they would get to the bottom of it. And again, this kind of thing doesn't exist. I guess the modern equivalent is

Twitter shaming or whatever. But you don't have a hero of the people like Silverman. And I just love those City TV sweaters and t-shirts. Well, I had Ziggy on and she used to be like, she would spot you in your Toronto tee and

give you an award. That clothing, And I think we even talked about it with wise blot about that sort of started from the radio station chum with the chum tees. And if you were seen out and about wearing them, you won tickets or whatever, but, uh, what a cool tradition. And obviously city was all over, you know, the Christmas vibes and, and given out rewards for wearing the Christmas tea. I vividly remember the whole Toronto tea thing.

In this day and age, I can't think of anything closely equivalent to that. Where you'd want to be seen in a station swag. It's like, no, don't look at me. I'm wearing the free shirt I got from Z103 or whatever. Z103. Anyway,

that's great to hear from. And I like that we have the bonus Mark Daly. We've had a few bonuses. We had him earlier on Bola Ramo as well. That's right. That's right. So cool. More of the voice is always best. Well, just the way he says Christmas. Depth charge. Oh,

an accidental genius segue here because the next ad is Mark Daly. Ready? Drop it. For the voice. Please support the Chum City Christmas Wish. Make your donation at any branch of the Royal Bank. Remember, you can help give a kid a Christmas.

Just the voice of God right there. You know, I love, obviously, I have tons of his intros to movies that were on City TV. Obviously, I have tons of his intros to movies that were on City TV. And the way that he enunciates certain words, Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo, whenever they show that on City, I can't do it any justice, but the way that Mark Daly said, Vertigo, is just amazing. If you just gave me all, you came in and we just played Mark Daly intros or extras or whatever, like I would do that for 60 minutes.

Well, I got to tell you a little bit of a segue. But when I was younger, when I first got out of university, I was hired to make a film for the Ontario Provincial Police. And it was this film that was only going to be shown to police officers. So it was what they call an industrial film. And it was about addiction to gambling. And, you know, it was pretty boring. But what was amazing was that they connected me to Mark Daly and he did the voiceover for it. And so, you know, I had this script that I wrote about people that were addicted to gambling. And I kind of put these inside references in it because I just wanted to hear Mark Daly read those words.

And I never knew, this was long before Retro Ontario, that his whole oeuvre would become a big part of what I did. But maybe sometime I'll release that back into the wild. Absolutely. This Canadian Tire Christmas ad must have ran a very long time because I remember it every December for years. Let's play it, and then you can tell us a little bit about it. Canadian Tire, that you give like Santa and save like Scrooge.

So tell me, the Give Like Santa and Save Like Scrooge campaign from Canadian Tire, at least, I guess, over a decade? I don't know. Tell me. Forever, right? From 1984 until 2006. That's way more than a decade. Yeah.

And it was, you know, one of those things where when they got rid of it, I think they got more heat from people saying, what are you doing? I know they have this whole campaign now with this fellow that's... I know the guy, yeah. You know who I'm talking about. They got rid of the Canadian Tire guy, the bearded

guy who was on for a long time. Now they have this guy. He's kind of an inoffensive chubby white guy. He's like the A&W burgers. He just shows up and it's all this shtick. But I don't think it has the same

value of the give like Santa save like Scrooge because here we are 20 years after talking about it and laughing about it and clearly it was an effective campaign. It's so perfect because you want to give like Santa and save like Scrooge genius it's a genius that's fantastic and i'm guessing scrooge is one of those like uh in the uh public domain type uh characters probably oh

totally anybody can do like sherlock holmes yeah and that's why you have so many like uh christmas carol uh like you know i mean versions i'm thinking of the great one with Al Kinison on Married of Children. You know what I mean? But everything has to have like its own Christmas Carol episode or whatever. But let's do one more. And you on the last episode,

you were here for, which I got to apologize to you. We called it Retro Ontario Kicks Out the Jams. And shortly thereafter, I co-opted the term for a different series I've been doing. You must have felt cheesed off at me because I started calling

something else Kicks Out the Jams. I thought it was a sound concept. My only disappointment was being a big fan of British radio. When they do their version of Kicks Out the Jams, the people that go on actually do a mix.

It's like a 30-minute set, and each song is mixed into the next. There isn't this waffling around. That sounds like work. I first heard this when I... But no, I'm just joking. I love that you do that. I hope in 2018,

I would love to do a proper Kick Out the Jams. This right now could have been you kicking out the jams, but I didn't want to cannibalize this possibility to do the Christmas crackers. No, this is way cooler, I think. We can make a new tradition, the Christmas crackers. Oh, I'm in. Late December, you know? I'm in.

Start working on it right away for that season. Let's listen to Terry Bush. That's what I was saying. Your last appearance when you kicked out the jams, I believe you brought some Terry Bush. Terry Bush is here. That's what I was saying. Your last appearance when you kicked out the jams, I believe you brought some Terry Bush. Terry Bush is here. Let's listen. It's a time for best friends and best wishes.

A time for best thoughts and best feelings. Here's to the laughter and level these out. Here's to the best at Christmas. This season, here's to the best at Christmas. This season, give your gang our best.

Serve Canada Dry Mixers, the important four-fifths of drinks for over 75 Christmases. Here's to the best at Christmas. Canada Dry, Ginger Ale. And yeah, Mr. Terry Bush, another dude, absolutely amazing, most famous for the theme song of The Little Asobo. But he did the song that opened up the Eaton Center, and he did I Love My Commodore 64. I Adore My Commodore 64.

I Adore My Commodore 64. I remember I had a 64, and I had a button. That's right. I Adore My 64. I remember I had a 64 and I had a button I adore my 64 and then he did that unbelievably dope song called Ontario is there any place that you would rather be and the answer to that is no

but you know just a jobbing session guy who did songs and then oh come do a Canada Dry Christmas commercial okay and just did it and I think it's just a beautiful little piece of music. Oh, beautiful. That's the name of the new Bare Naked Ladies song.

That's right. Which supposedly is about Steven. Is it? I heard that. Because the first song, I just saw him at the Massey Hall. Yeah, you were at that show. The very first song. And they do an acoustic set before they do their

rock and roll set or whatever and uh electric set and the first jam they uh played acoustically was canada dry and there's a lot of references in there like i think you you there's a lot of stuff where you and i would really get off on like a tune like that from bare naked ladies where they're dropping lots of references some more obscure than others, and just picking them out, knowing an inside joke, so to speak. Inside baseball. Love it. That's what we're all about. Let's leave the ads,

because we've got to save some for next year's Volume 2 of the Christmas Crackers. But let's talk about Black Christmas. Do you want to talk about it, then play it? Yeah, that's probably a good idea. We talked earlier about Lynn Griffin, who is in Strange Brew and was in that insane TV Ontario

English second language show. So she starred in this film called Black Christmas, which was directed by Bob Clark, who most famously made another Christmas movie called A Christmas Story. And everybody knows that one.

But he made a horror film in the early 70s. He's a Porky's guy, too. In Porky's. He did this before Porky's, Black Christmas. Before Porky's, before Christmas Story. It's called Black Christmas, a horror film that was all shot in Toronto, all around U of T. And again, it's one of those things.

It was remade, I don't know, 10 years ago or something. People know about it, but not a lot of people have seen it. That's me. I know all about Black Christmas. I've never seen Black Christmas. You know, it depends. I don't know what your persuasion is on horror movies, but it's actually one of the few horror movies that's terribly disturbing and frightening. And it's all to do with crank phone calls. And, you know, I guess if you look at it now, you would think, oh, you know, what did it do that I haven't seen a million times before?

It came out before John Carpenter's Halloween. Which I just watched again this past October. No front on that. That is an incredible film. That gets credited for a lot of things. Black Christmas actually did all of that before Halloween.

It's just terrifying and it's absolutely amazing and if you're a toronto nerd it's great to watch and spot all the locations um but yeah this little clip is just it's really freaky but here we go Hello? Hello? Hello? Who is this? Help me. Please stop me. Oh, God, please. Help me. creepy as all F my friend you gotta watch the movie

it's really terrifying it has a really vague open ending which never made a sequel to it but good stuff in your opinion that's the greatest and most important horror film ever shot in Toronto. I don't know. Videodrome by David Cronenberg

has got to be up there too. But in terms of just meat and potatoes horror movie, yeah, Black Christmas for sure. Here we are. Finally, back to Harry Forbes. Okay. So we're going to play, maybe I'll just play the Harry Forbes audio first. So we're going to play. Maybe I'll just play the Harry Forbes audio first,

and then we'll talk about it. Let's do it. Thank you. trippy as all hell here. This is craftwork inspired. Totally, totally. And this was for a TV Ontario science program, looking at machinery and looking at technology. And I just love it, man. And this British company actually released a compilation of Harry's songs.

Because, yeah, these young kids that are into electronic music listen to this. And to them, this is like on the level of Kraftwerk. Do you remember the I am the computer man? Of course. VidKids. Right. That's a bit goofier. I only bring it up because I never forgot it.

Like, I never forgot it. And I don't remember watching VidKids. I have no memory of watching VidKids, but that song is etched in my brain. Absolutely. I don't know how that gets in my head unless i stumbled on an episode i don't know if you know this but the the guy the computer man yeah the break dancer tell me he's now the silver elvis that you sometimes see in front of the skydome it's the same guy this sound you hear now is my brain exploding like that gif you see.

This would work better if I took the advice and put a video camera in here. Holy shit, Ed. That's amazing. And Harry Forbes, every time you're on, it's like tradition now, okay? We need to play Harry Forbes. I'll say it. His greatest composition. I think so, yeah. Let's play it, and then we can play a song that

potentially, you can tell me, but potentially inspired this song we're going to listen to now. So here is Harry Forbes' greatest hit. So. so yeah i mean that was the instrumental uh version of magic shadows that played at the end obviously the vocal was the the early one but yeah thanks to one of your listeners i was able to put a name to the because i didn't know they didn't credit who did the song and i was able to reach out to the man and speak with him at great length and of course everybody used to always say it sounded like the beatles across the universe

right and it does of course but he said no no no there's actually a song that it was really based on by the Beach Boys. And so I think we got that queued up. Let's listen to a little bit of Feel Flows. Unfolding, enveloping, missiles of soul. Great call, senses sadly. Rush like, softer like lanterns below. To light the way gladly. Where the whistling heavens quite disappear. Where the wind withers memory

Where the whiteness whispers our shadows away White fingers missing each shadow we throw Black fingers missing each shadow we throw He says shadows. I know. It's spooky. And it sounds great in the headphones. It's got that wonderful mix. It's that wall of sound, yeah.

Right. Feel Flows. Was this a hit of any sort? No. This is on an album called Surf Stop, Is this a hit of any sort? No. This is on an album called Surf Stop,

which sounds like a greatest hits kind of thing, but it was one of the more sort of esoteric records. But an absolute beauty. My goodness. And this is the kind of thing, I know a lot of people that come on your show for Kick Out the Jams play Beach Boys. Lots of people. Lots of people.

But usually Pet Sounds obviously gets a lot of cred. I'm always obsessed with these sort of rare Beach Boys songs on the albums that people generally don't know about because they didn't play these on the radio. Unless you were like a head and you didn't get it. Man, and you know, speaking of kick out the jams because you got number one right now is the beatles but then you got like a springsteen and then there's tragically hips up there too but you got a springsteen beach boys contingent like the

guys if you remember the 70s that's why like if you remember the 70s you're gonna have a springsteen song you're gonna if you know if you remember the late 60s and 70s, you're going to have a Beach Boys song. You're going to have a Beatles song. These are like your bankable artists for people, guys of a certain age. Well, it's funny. I don't know if it was on Twitter or on the Western New York, Southern Ontario yellow board,

but I saw somewhere somebody was breaking balls about these people that come on your show kick out the jams and they play like you said these kind of classic rock staples right do you know what i'm talking about i saw i didn't know i actually uh yeah i gotta miss this i gotta find it and send it to you because somebody was was not taking you to task but sort of saying look these guys have got to be a little bit more eclectic because it could just be like a Q107 playlist. Which is not fair.

I always defend these guys because your jams are your jams. No, you can't front on people's jams. If I'm going to have, for example, I'm going to have Pearl Jams alive, it's because as a teenager I played the shit out of that song. 100%. And I hear it now and I'm a fucking teenager again. And you can't touch that teenager again and you can't, that's...

No, you can't touch it. It's why Retro Ontario exists, okay? The potent drug of nostalgia. What would you be doing with your spare time if nobody gave a shit about nostalgia?

Well, that's right. And you and I are the nostalgia merchants, so... That's right. That's a great term. This is our business and business is booming.

You know, my buddy Elvis, he's going to come on and do a Festivus episode like he does every year. He claims he's not into nostalgia. This is what he tells me. But at the same time, he's like, hey, Mike, Guns N' Roses are coming to fucking town. Let's spend $150 and sit in the last row and watch Guns N' Roses.

And I'm like, okay, let's do that because I'm all into it. Let's Guns N' fucking Roses. But Elvis, I'm sorry, I'm going to actually call him out on this, but I'm like, what do you think? You're a lure to spend 150 bucks on guns and roses has nothing to do with the fact you loved Chinese democracy. You know what I mean?

This is nostalgia, buddy. You know what though? I mean, I do think there, and it's totally fine. There are people that just don't have, I don't know if it's a gene or if it's something, but they don't really think about it like you and I do. And that's fine.

I mean, I'm not all about let's live in the past. Right. You have a smartphone, right? I'm all about how can we take the lessons from the past to make the future cooler. And if that is just, you know, rolling in some of these songs or listening to these tv show theme songs that's great but no man i'm all about pushing it forward and i'm all about what's next and i just love this stuff and i i hate that to bring it full circle that for whatever reason maybe it's because we do live in the shadow of America that we don't have the same kind of celebration

of our heroes that they do. Now, that song we just enjoyed by the Beach Boys was Feel Flows, and that inspired the song from Magic Shadows that Harry Forbes put together. I can't forget to play. I have a message from the late, great Elwy Yost. Let's listen to Elwy.

I'm Elwy Yost. On behalf of all of the people who put together Saturday Night at the Movies, I'd like to wish you a most joyous holiday season. Lovely. I feel like I would close with that, but there's even a better way to close here. Before that, on the subject of Elwy Yost yeah that is another project i'm very seriously considering i think uh the world needs a documentary about lb host because you know toronto as a movie town uh it's always been in our dna okay going back to the film festival um to all of these great directors and films that come to film here,

to shoot here. And Elwios is a little bit of the connective tissue, because whether you talk to Adam McGowan or David Cronenberg or these young guys, they all remember Elwios and they remember his happiness. And he was always positive. You know, movie criticism in the Twitter age is really negative, right? It's all like snark and or rotten tomatoes gave it 80%. It's all this meaningless nonsense. Guys like Norm Wilner, who I know is a friend of the show, you know, they talk about Elwios watching him as a kid and thinking, wow, this is great. Like you get to watch movies, but you also get to talk about life and what does movies do and how do they inform your life? And I think a little piece about him, but more so about how he anchored Toronto Film, I think

that would make a cool movie, no? Again, you had me at hello. What's that expression? You're preaching to the choir, Ed? I'm the choir, Ed? Ed, you couldn't... I'm the choir, I'm the congregation, and you're just preaching at me. I'm already here. Well, hopefully next Christmas Crackers Volume 2 we can talk about how cool the L.B. Oost movie was.

Ed, you've got children. Do you have children? How many children? I have two. I have a boy and a girl. What ages you have children? How many children? I have two. I have a boy and a girl. What ages are your children? My son is seven months and my daughter is three. Okay, well, the seven-month-old doesn't know anything.

No offense to your seven-month-old. But the three-year-old, I have a three-year-old as well. And my three-year-old is super jazzed about this time of year. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. Even just like we walk because it gets dark it's dark by like 4 30 and uh we'll be walking home from daycare at like 5 p.m and it's pitch dark outside but people have the christmas lights and there'll be like big snowmen and santas and stuff and it's like a he's just so happy right now like he knows the big guys come in so it's pretty good eh eh? Oh, it's the best.

I mean, three years old, I'm sure you are watching a lot of Paw Patrol these days. I know I am. I know that series. My kid met Chase,

and I swear to you, it was like he met Clint Eastwood or something. I don't know. Chase is some guy in a costume, but oh my God,

he met Chase, and that was a big freaking deal. It's the biggest thing, man. And it's funny he'll be on a podcast 30 years from now and he'll talk about meeting chase right for him the rest of his life that's right so to you your family uh last time i mentioned your wife a nice gift appeared so i'm just gonna mention your wife just in case in case something shows up uh perlator

knocks on the door something like the de. Yeah, like The Deuce, season one, perhaps. Are you kidding me? See that? The Wire? Oh, my gosh. And what's his name? The guy who plays... Oh, my God. You know what?

Slim Charles. Oh, yeah. He's like a bartender. Not a bartender. He works behind the counter in some kind of a diner where the pimps and their hoes, is that a good word? Ho, ho, ho. It all ties together. Hang out or whatever.

And just like there's a lot of people from The Wire in that show, of course. So David Simon reunion, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. D'Angelo's in there as a cop. Yeah. No, it's great. It's a great show. And it's totally trading in nostalgia, right?

About 42nd Street. I said this in another episode. You'll like this. I actually have a great affinity to shows that take place in the 70s or 80s. Even when I watch Stranger Things, I actually don't love Stranger Things, but I enjoy being in 1984 or whatever.

And when they get the look, I don't know if you've checked out Mindhunter on Netflix. I have, and this is a good example. Exactly. The 70s have never looked better than in Mindhunter. And somewhere on YouTube or somewhere, Vimeo, YouTube,

somewhere I saw where they show, okay, here's the footage in Mindhunter and here's what happens after the, whoever these digital scrubbers are. The treatment, yeah. Get rid of the modern touches

and then bring it back to 19, whatever that is, 1977 actually because Son of Sam is happening. That's how I remember it because of the Son of Berkowitz, the movie by Spike Lee. And I remember Reggie Jackson's hitting the home runs. And anyway, I digress. But that show, The Deuce, same thing.

That's a great like early 70s Times Square thing going on. It's beautiful. Oh, yeah, man. I mean, 42nd Street, to tie it back to our show is Yonge Street. And people lament the loss of that Yonge Street when it was dangerous and there was neon lights and there was adult

movie theaters. And yes, it's safer now to walk down Yonge Street, but it doesn't quite have the soul that it used to have. I played this and I talked over it and then tell us what this is. This is from a great album called Moog Christmas. And this is the kind of thing we were just talking about

with Harry Forbes. You know, these cats in the 70s were doing songs like this. And they sound like they're from outer space, really, don't they? They're a little bit weird, but I kind of like the sound of a machine trying to get the human emotion out, you know? Like with those cash registers.

Exactly. So Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas, my man. Your family. Happy Christmas to Toronto Mic'd. I know you've had a dynamite year. You've had unbelievable people come on here and I don't know who your sort of big wish list is for next year,

but it's going to be hard, man. I mean, 2017 has been remarkable for you. I keep outdoing myself. No, this was a great year, and I met some fantastic people. I still can't believe Stephen Brunt came over here and talked. There's some great episodes, I have to admit. But my favorite episode might just be the, when I'm lucky enough to have Ed Conroy come on.

And just this trip, I feel like we were in a time machine for the last 90 minutes. You can't put a price on that. The DeLorean is parked out back. Beautiful. Thank you for that. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of our 293rd show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Ed is at Retro Ontario. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery who supplied us with the winter ale, which we consumed a couple of bottles, not bad. They're at Great Lakes Beer.

Propertyinthe6.com is at Brian Gerstein and PayTM is at PayTM Canada. See you all next week