Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Rita Zekas and Rob Salem: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1883

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this 1883rd episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Rita Zekas about her time at TV Guide before a lengthy career at the Toronto Star where she originated the paparazzi page/gossip column Star Gazing. Rob Salem returns to co-host and keep us on the rails. Find out What's On! Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Hello and welcome to Toronto Mike. I am Rob Salem and F-O-T-M. And here, for the first time, under duress, is the fabulous Rita Zika. What the hell is F-O-T-M? Friend of Toronto Mike. Oh, okay. Oh, my God. It sounded like a foam that I cleaned my floor with.

And now you're one too. All you have to do is be on the show. Yo, I'm here with lasagna. I don't care or anything else. Welcome to episode 1,883 of Toronto Mikeed, an award-winning podcast proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at greatlakesbeer.com for free. Local home delivery in the GTA.

Palm of pasta. This is why Rita is here. Yes. Order online at Great Lakes. Sorry, order. You can go to palmopasta.com. They make homemade Italian pasta and entrees in Mississauga and Oakville.

And for today, I guess, South Atobico. Fusion Corp's own, Nick Aienes. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.C.A. committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home,

Pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making her Toronto mic debut. It's Rita Zikas. And of course, co-hosting this episode with me. It's FOTM Rob Salem. Nice to meet you, Rita. Well, you know what? With our sponsors, you've got it covered, right?

If you're OD on the carbs, they just kind of stab them, we slab them, right? You know, I'm hoping there is a connection there for sure. It's a make work project for Ridley funeral home. But Rob, always good to see you. It's great to be back, and we've owed you this appearance for a while. The problem is twofold. First of all, we don't like to get wet in the last few times. It is a major schlep.

It's a major schlep. I can walk to Hamilton. But it's been raining and snowing, and you had like a pet sitting emergency. Okay, okay, here's the deal. We have to get on a street car, and it's a bus, and it's a subway. and it's another bus, right? So if it's raining, it's a deal breaker. And also the Queen Street street car is just the worst in the city

because they detour the detours. You never know where you're going. Yeah. You know, it sounds painful. Yeah. But we're here. Plus, she hates doing this stuff because she doesn't think she's remotely interesting. So that's why I have to be here to facilitate because I'm her press agent.

Okay, so several things striking me at once. But one is, and the most important thing here is how honored I am, I got Rita Zika's to visit my home studio. Rita, I really appreciate this. Like, that is a schlep. It's a total ship. But then I was raised in the West End. I went to Royal York Collegiate.

I lived on Stephen Drive, which is right where Ontario Food Terminal is. Park Lawn, Queensway kind of area, maybe a bit south of there. I was on Stephen Drive. Okay, yeah, I know well, because I bike down to the Humber Trail using Stephen Drive. And, yeah, the Berry Road bus took

me to the Humberloop or I would walk from what I, depending on where I was and how late it was. Not far from like Tom's Dairy Freeze. Like not far. Did you ever go there, Summers, Tobico? Okay, maybe far enough. No, no, no. It was on Queensway. Yeah, but it was on Woodford Park.

It used to be the dairy, the-thole's, I think it's been there forever. Yeah. But like, it's right beside Mama Martinos, if you know that name. It's like Queensway between like Royal York and Park Lawn. In that hood. Yeah, yeah, sure. It's a dairy queen. It's always been there.

Yeah, Tom's Dairy Freeze, though. I used to play tennis at Woodford Park Tennis Club, and afterwards we would have one of those dairy queens with a chocolate on top. Oh, my God, this is the best, yeah. Yeah, and it was like all the calories that you shot playing tennis. You immediately got them back. But she also worked at Christie's. Yeah.

Right, which is gone now, but the sign's still there. Yeah, it's still there. Yeah. That smells gone. Like, I used to love the first. fact you could smell like cookies something baking yeah well try working there and you come home yeah well tell him your work history oh my god i was the worst they made you wear this outfit that you know one size fits none we used to call it our christie d'or and then a hairnet like gladys used to wear on

uh what's it laughing you know remember gladys yeah yeah yeah ruff fuzzy character so we we all looked absolutely lovely. And I was inept in everything, right? They put me in the icing department. And it was like Lucy and Ethel. Oh, yeah, with the chonclim. Yeah, it was like you had to pick up three lines or something, and you had to do that and put them in the corrugated paper stuff.

Well, I was so bad. I just was eating as much as I could because, you know, the supervisor would come and give you when you had the break, right? So then, you know, and your row and stuff, I'd have it on, I'd eat it, and then I'd get up, and it'd be my pockets and all over the floor, and she'd look at me and think, okay, we'll put you on, do these two easy rows. Okay, so I got the kindergarten rolls, right, the middle ones and the middle ones.

Only there was corrugated paper, so it cuts you when you put it in. So I had all these bleeding cuticles, and then I would put band-aids on them, and the band-aids, I would lose the band-aids in the corrugated paper. And then I'd get busted, so they took me off that. And then the best line was when they had those, you know, those chocolate things with marshmallow. Yeah, Viva puffs or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're a cookie on the bottom.

Yes, of course I know these. Yeah, great. And then on the top, there was so, but it was in the cooler because, you know, it's hot. It's a bakery. You know, they used to give you salt pills because we would be fainting because we were dehydrated. So I got on there one night, right? And I thought, oh, this is wonderful. But they had, you had to wear these plastic, you know, little gloves, like just that plastic, real cheap plastic thing.

Only I would touch them and mine gollies got caught on the cookie. So there would be the gloves going down and thing in it. Like the Vernon Shirley. It is? Yeah, like in the brewery, yeah. Yeah, so I was taken off that. And finally they made me go up to cones where all the university kids were. And the ovens are right there and it's hot as blazes, right?

Ice cream cones. Ice cream cones. Of course. Yeah, with all the ice cream, obviously. Only I was a little too exuberant putting them in. So the bottoms would get crushed. You know, the little ends? Yeah, of course.

Of course the ice cream would go through. Right. So I felt so bad I would put the mix, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, Peanuts and stuff. Party mix. I would put some in each one so that you, you know. To make up for the broken. It's a make up for the broken stuff. And we used to have to stamp our numbers on it. Yeah. I would change my numbers every day. So they wouldn't bust me. I got busted.

I feel like I could do 90 minutes on Mr. Christie. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying. The worst Christy employee in. Okay. But I found my niche. I was making boxes. They made me the big, huge boxes that you'd put all the other stuff in. I was really good in that. That. There you go. So I'm guessing you're a young woman when you're working at Mr. Christie. Oh, yeah.

I was going to go to university. Okay, okay, okay, because at some point I'm going to do a little housekeeping here. Excited to have you here making your Toronto mic debut. And then at some point, we've got to find out how do you go from making boxes to stargazing? But not yet. Okay. Hold on. Okay, so I do have a palm pasta lasagna in the freezer for you because I know that's why you're here.

Yeah. The reason she's here. So what did you think of the, Rob, you've been here a couple of times. Actually, before you would tell me what you thought of the lasagna, I'm going to tell the listeners, Rob Salem made his Toronto mic debut in May 2024. So it's been almost two years. And that was episode 1489.

And here's what I wrote at the time. Mike chats with Rob Salem, who spent 40 years writing about entertainment in the Toronto Star. He also played the minister who married Snake and Spike on DeGrassey. That was the mind blow. I love that. And did I mention he, ready for this? and Rita, you know this, but I'm going to find out who you snorted Coke with.

But Rob snorted Coke with Mel Gibson. That old story, yeah. That old nugget, new to me, and it was fantastic. And we talked, but then you came back a month later, episode 1504. Like, I had to get more Salem. And I wrote Mike chats with Rob Salem on what was supposed to. Oh, right. It was supposed to be with Rita.

That was the Rita Zika's debut, June 2024, but she bailed on us. Why did Rita bail on us in June 2024? Wasn't it a cat sitting emergency? Or my mother died. No, no, that was, no, your mother died. On your birthday. On my 60th birthday. Yeah.

During my birthday party. Yeah. That was, it was. Was she at the party? No. No. Okay. She was near here, though, but she was in the Lithuanian nursing home at Islington.

Okay. I used to go there three times a week. I went from one end of the subway to the other. And I would fall asleep because, but, because you get on it at Maine. And by the time you get to Islington, there's no oxygen left. in the car. And everybody's asleep. So I thought,

this would be really great. You could mug everybody and they wouldn't know it while they were asleep. You made that triple I. You had a lot of time to think. But that first time that you didn't make it,

I think you were cat sitting and the cat had like a stroke or something. Yeah. So in lieu of Rita, because I figured, well, I'll wait for Rita Zika to make her Toronto MacDadee.

But you shared 10 of your best stories that you didn't share in the first episode. So I got a lot more Rob Salem stories. And then like we, mentioned off the top. You guys were in the calendar, and then I think we had a snowstorm. And then you were in the calendar

and it was like, raining hard. Yes. We don't like to get wet. No. But here you are. It's happening. And I know now is the time

for you to tell me what you thought of the Palma pasta lasagna I sent you home with those times. Oh, God. It's so good. She was like, I mean, seriously, it is because she hates doing this stuff. This is the only reason she's here.

That's my ace in the hole, you know? I'm telling you. The other podcast don't give you a lasagna. But also, I'm going to be on a cat sit for 10 days, and I'm taking that with me. Okay. Does Rob know that? Yeah. No, we're going to cut off a hunk for tonight.

Wow. And then she gets the rest of it. Yeah. We've done this before. We've done this twice before now. We are experts with the box. I can see you get like a chisel out and you're hammering the chisel. It's a really big butcher knife and, you know, we hammer it.

Well, my goodness gracious. So glad you're here. Rita, you just got your hair done. I did. I told her that I wanted to scumery. sunk streaks. I wanted to be Kurella, right? I got dark.

Kurela Deville? Yeah. I got dark streaks put in. Can I just, I look at that hair. Looks fantastic. There's only one man in the city who could make that happen. FOTM Gary Chowen. Absolutely.

I was just going to say Gary. Cher's former hairdresser. Yeah. You know, good enough for Cher, good enough for Rita Zika's here. So how do you know Gary? Like, do you just...

Wow. I've known him forever. I, oh, obviously, I have naturally curly hair. And, and, you know, And I always wanted to have straight hair. So I had straight hair all the time. And at one point, I went to Vidal Sassoon, or Vidal-Sassoon, or Vidal, as I used to call them. And, of course, as women know, you should not screw with the texture of your hair of the nature.

Everybody with curly hair was straight hair, everybody with straight hair was curly hair, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I went in there, and because I was straightening my hair all the time, it was breaking. So I just had a hot iron like a comb And I used to put it on the package The cardboard package You know and sat on until I started a fire And my father came into the bedroom and said Choice words in Lithuanian

Which I won't repeat Actually a shade just to make a switch Which nobody Except for the Lithuanian people He has a large Lithuanian contingent You know I'm huge But drop me some Okay anyway

So, yeah, so he made a little thing for it. So my hair was so fried, I went in, and Gary was working in New Yorkville. I can't remember. Michael Cluthay, yeah, and Michael Cluthays. And he looked at my hair and he said, this is the wrong cut for you. And I said, no shit. So, oh, wow, God, I've known it for 40 years. Yeah, but as a friend, you know, you just should do it.

Oh, yeah, we used to do. He's got great stories. Oh, God, does he have good stories? Oh, yeah. Well, that's how he got on this program. I said, give me those stories. Well, it's half the fun of having him cut your hair. I've also been going to him for like 50 years.

There was one night that we, it was at St. Clair and the restaurant is now deceased. And a friend of his owned it. So we sat there and drank after hours and there might have been some blow involved. And I was cat sitting. I'm always cat sitting. Yeah, what's that about it? For my friend. And Gary and I stayed up all night.

in the backyard drinking. And he said, I got to go. I got an 8 o'clock appointment. And it was like 7 o'clock. And I said, remind me never to have an 8 o'clock appointment. He was still drunk. Wow. Wow. Okay. The real talk here. By the way, I just remember Rob, we bumped into each other at the Ron James stand-up.

I know Rita was in the house, but I didn't see her. I saw you, though. We know, with a lot of people we knew there. Oh, we've known Ron James for a... He lived in the beach. Yeah. And way back in the day, he was in the Second City Touring Company, which did shows at Deerhurst Inn,

and we hung out with them there and with a waitress at the time who was singing in the lounge whose name was Shania Twain. No, Rhonda Silver, and she introduced us to Shania. She brought her back to our... We all went in the hot tub, and we broke the hot tub. Yeah. We broke a hot tub with Shania Twain. Okay, well, okay.

Keep dropping the names, please. I absolutely love how these connections happen. Do you know who Rhonda Silver was, right? Say the name, Ron. Rhonda, Silver. No. They wrote, Help me, Rhonda, for her. See, I don't know the name.

She was in a group called The Girlfriends. Girlfriends. In Toronto. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, because I'm always learning here. Yeah. Got to fill in these missing links here.

So can we, again, Rob, you're but the co-host. You can chime in any time and help keep us on trying. If you raise your arm. Yeah. Put up your hand and we'll see if I call you. I have a question. Yeah. Isn't this like a serial killer's mask?

Yeah. It's Jason. Well, you know, that mask predates Friday the 13th. So that's real. That's not a replica. They stole it from me. Yeah, they stole it from me. Do you wear this?

On Halloween, I've been known to throw it on when I take the kids around or something like that. Kinky nights. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's the after hours real talk program here. But read, okay. So we have you as a young woman living in a Tobica and you're at Mr. Christie.

Mr. Christie, you make good cookies. Just don't mail them, you asshole. That was a Jeremy Hots bit. I just saw a panel discussion of Ken Finkelman. Yeah. Oh, that's right. From the newsroom. From the newsroom, right?

No Jeremy Hots at this panel thing. But Bedeen, I've been trying to get Ken Finkelman on Toronto Mike for years because I have people like Jeremy Hots on and Colin Brunton, and they tell me that this guy was a complete asshole, so difficult to work with. So I got to meet this guy and talk to him, right? But I can't get him on. But Beni managed to dig him up and put him at the paradise.

And I went there last week. But how did I get on Hots? Oh, yeah, he had the Mr. Christie joke in his stand-up here. But Rita, walk me through it. Like, how do you end up stargazing? I need the A to Z of the Rita Zika's career here. Okay, so when I graduated from U.S. with a perfectly useless degree in English.

I have one of those. Yeah, well, there you go. But mine's a double major, English in history. But here we are in a basement. That's my point Right Anyway So I decided

Well I didn't want to teach That was always a fallback Because remember when you write your You write your final exams, right? And you think, oh I screwed this I totally screwed this one But I can go to teachers college Because they'll take anybody

And my mother would say Always wanted me to be a teacher She said think of the holidays And I said think of the kids Ew! No! Shoot me now So I went through the yellow pages, okay, for those of you that are young. I don't think anyone that young is listening to you.

Okay. They had those yellow pages. I went through publishing, right? So because I know English, I know how to read. So I could probably proofread, you know, I could do all that, right? And you could write, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah, same here.

So I went through and I finally got down to racing form. I got to the R's because I'd gone to, like a lot of the publishing places were based in New York or Montreal. And I went to a couple of interviews and they'd ask me stuff like, what religion are you? And I said, it's none of your goddamn business, what religion I am. I was very offended. So, no. And then I got to racing form. And I said, do you need any proofreaders or whatever?

You know, the hell. So they said, no, but TV Guide is looking for something. I thought, okay, so I went to my interview TV guide. They gave me a French test. It also took French and, you know, university and all this stuff. So, and my proofreading skills apparently were great, and they hired me on the spot. And we should interject at this point. TV guide was the most read magazine in the world at the time.

Yes. Yes. Was Bill Brewero there, or does he come later? Oh, no, that's way later. Yeah, I got to get my Brio time. I was, I was at. The star by the time he got there. Right, right, right.

So it's funny, when you said racing form, I was thinking of my dear friend Peter Gross. So it was racing form, is that like a horse racing thing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I could see. He was probably reading racing form. So you just got a gig at TV Guide.

Okay, so. That was owned by Triangle Publication. That was owned by Walter Annenberg, who was the ambassador, the, was it the UK ambassador? I'm not sure. He was an ambassador. Anyway, we called him on to Uncle Walter,

because he used to come in and the head of office was in Radner, and he'd come in and turn off everybody's lights as soon as you got up to go to the bathroom. He'd turn the light off in your desk. But she was doing, it's interesting, because she was doing really the prototype of Stargazing, which TV teletype. Yeah, yeah, tell us what you were doing at TV.

No byline on it. But I was an avid, avid reader of this. This was like decades before another. Like you said, back in the day, TV Guide was massive. Yeah. Yeah, I did T.V. Teletype, and I did the thing front and the back. And it was kind of a gossipy thing.

It was just kind of me being snarky because, you know, I didn't have my byline on it, and I figured nobody read it. And I remember lining up with Dominion in my roommate who was like, oh, there's one of your fans, and this guy was picking his nose and reading it. And I said, oh, this is my readership. Oh, God. I'm doomed. This is not contingent.

Just not demographic. So the snark, was it always in you this snark? Because I detect this, I like a little snark, but you know, you've got a little. Yeah, we like snark. Yeah, I'm pro-snark. Yeah. You're in the right place. But were you always this way?

Like in high school, we're in this way? And which high school did you go to? Royal York Collegiate. Yeah, right. You told me that already. It's Royal York. But what did the name, that high school doesn't exist today. No, it's the center for performing arts.

Wait, is that a topical school of the arts? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, ESA. Okay, okay, okay, of course, of course. My kid plays soccer behind it now. But atobical school, and one of my kids is interested in going there possibly, but atopical school of the arts,

and it's kind of, they put a Catholic school down the street there, Bishop Allen Academy, which is like right, almost right next door here. Okay. So were you always a little snarky? I would say, yeah, yeah. As a defense mechanism, because you were not a popular girl in school. Oh, God, I was a total nerd. I used to do, like,

I put makeup on in the drama club, and I also joined the drama club because they would let you work the coat room during the proms, right? The dances. So myself and my friend, we'd go through everybody's pockets while they were,

and try on the coats and pull out a cigarette. We wouldn't take money. We would take a cigarette and we'd try on all the cool coats. No money was taken by Rita Zika. I want to make sure we're clear on that one. They never had any money any. Why would you take money to the school dance?

Right. Now, you're at TV Guide. Just walk me through next. I guess we've got to get you to the Toronto Star. Okay, so I was the assistant editor for the Montreal St. Lawrence edition, right? So we had to program in French and in English, which was really interesting when we went on strike and we went down to land in Georgia and we put the proofs to the editors down there and they were like, what?

But anyway, the good old boys. So I worked my way up to regional editor, so I ran the joint. Yeah. And then where do you go from there? I went to Europe. I quit, and I went to Europe for a year, and then I came back, and that's when I became the regional editor. After I killed everybody on my way.

And then I quit TV Guide, and I went to the South Pacific. for six months. You see a pattern here, right? And when I went back, I was in a relationship at the time that was going nowhere, so we were splitting up. So I went, oh, we had, oh, this is how I got to the start. We, in my ex at the time,

decided that we were living there with another couple and her mother, she was a nurse, and one of her patients died and left her mother, it's fabulous. his house. So her mother gave her her house on Lawrence which is fine. So Miriam and Alex moved out so we had to get somebody at help with the rent. So my

ex brought in this guy who I disliked immensely he was real alcoholic and he would sit with his greasy hair on my wing back chair and I would be like spraying all around him. But he was responsible for me inadvertently working

at the star because we course we had to go to the boozeria. And while I was there ran into Ron Base and what's his name? Ray Bennett who worked at Rod Bass was had a column at

I knew him from TV Guide so it became the star movie critic Yeah so they were like so what are you doing and I said I just got back from the South Pacific and I needed a job because John and I

are splitting up so they said oh you know what they're looking for somebody for Star Week magazine they're looking for an editor. And he said, why don't you call blah, blah, blah. So I called blah, blah, went for an interview, and I was the most capable person

that they could ever have, because I already knew everything. I ran the bloody office. Right. Right. Yeah. Your TV guide pedigree makes you the ideal candidate for Scarwee. Yeah. And who's the blah, blah, blah, blah.

You just don't remember, or you don't want to name blah, blah, blah, blah? Dini, who is the... Tina Patterson. Because in 100 years, they're going to be listening to this episode to learn more of Arena Zecas's life in time. But, but it was, Sheena was looking for it because it was Denny somebody else who was actually, I can't remember his last name.

Oh, No, uh, No, it doesn't matter. See, that's why Rob's here. You're supposed to have these. Yeah, but see, what good is he? You're dead way. Between the two of us, we share a brain. Yeah.

Well, we're discovering. Don't quote us on that. You quoted yourself. So Star Week, tell, tell the list that, I mean, I loved Star Week. I get, I love Star Week. I love Star Week. Tell me what year about are we in here? Like where are we when Star Week? 1979.

That's also a smashing pumpkin song. Really? Yes, 1970. Wow. So I'm very young as 7.9. I'm probably not reading Star Week, but at some point thereafter, I discover the joy that is Star Week. So can you maybe tell us of some of the people that you worked with on Star Week? There was Mary Mary, who is,

I can't remember her last name. We always called her Mary Mary. She was quite the character. She was the assistant art director. And she would come in all year wearing flip-flops. Okay. With the raddiest fur coat you'd ever see, in the winter, the radiest fur coat you'd ever seen

because she was into thrifting. And it was just like, Mary, your feet, like, are going to chunks of ice here. Oh, no, I don't feel the cold. Oh, yeah. We're all looking at her, like, thinking, oh, we've got 9-1-1 here. Well, that's why she doesn't feel the cold.

The nerves are dead from being frozen. And then there was David Perry, who is also a great cart. He's now in the States, and he was a great cartoonist. I think he's doing that. And then there was Steve Jarrett, who I have no idea. He went to become politician. Oh, did he? Yeah.

Oh. And then Colleen. Nike and then she kept marrying people and changing her last name. I lost track of whatever it last name. It was Denike and Castrinas. She was fabulous. A lot of crazy people in Star Week. I was there for a while.

A lot of crazy people at the star. Yes, that's true. We, see, we were there the golden era. It was just sort of post all the president's men and newspaper journalism. Not only was it cool, it was fun. Yeah. Well, yeah, Rom, so when do you meet Rita? She was at Star Week.

And there are three versions of this meeting. The first one is she does not remember, but I was doing a story on a guy who was licensing T-shirts, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and stuff. Harry the Bear Geisler. And we needed somebody to model one of the T-shirts for the story. And she was like the hottest babe in the newsroom. So we got her to do it.

She does not remember me from this photo session. But I have the picture. We have the photo. So I have proof that it did happen. remember him at all in a minute. Yeah. Second time was I was doing stand-up at Yuck Yuck's. And she was there and does not remember seeing me at all. Then there was the Christmas party where you decided to kind of like me.

But at this point, do you have, you're obviously interested in Rita. Yeah, but I was married, so. Okay. I had to be very surreptitious. I understand. Not happily married at all, too. Total psychotic. Real talk.

So she kind of was interested at the Christmas party. and then, well, I used to sell her weed and tell him. Gave me bad counts. I used to rip her off. Like the thumb on the scale, right? It was like, I know the counts because I was married to a total, you know. A mob. I was married to the mob.

Really? Oh, I have stories. New Jersey. Wait a minute. Walking cultural stereotype from New Jersey. I watch the Sopranos. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It's just like that. You got to tell him this party story, the guy with the jacket. Oh, that was a wedding. The wedding. Oh, yeah. This is a good, married to the mob story. Okay. We were splitting up, right?

And I'd moved into the beach. This was after I got back, right? After the greasy-haired guy and whatever. So we're going to the wedding, and he said, my parents don't know we're split up, right? So he said, just be cool. So I said, yeah, okay. and he was, I think he was in the States and he was coming back.

So, you know, he said, I've got my suit in your place. And I said, yeah, pinstripe. What a cliche. So he said, I'll meet you. And I said, well, what are you going to be wearing? I said, I will be having a violin case with the guns in it. And there's a carnation on my lapel. And I said, well, you're going to have a white suit smoking a cigar?

And he said, that's not funny. And I said, well, actually, it is. But so we get there. and they have, they're getting married in New Jersey. And it's his cousin who, last time I, we were in New York, and he said, oh, it was a Picasso thing. He said, would you get me a poster? I said, sure, here. So he has this roll of hundreds like you see it.

And he, what's the elastic band? And I said, is that real? He said, yeah. So he pulls off a couple of hundreds. And he said, have lunch on me. And I said, hell no, I'm going to socks. know. Okay, so the wedding. Okay, the wedding. So this guy, you know, this is why I'm here. So, although I do like the journey. It's not always the destination. Remember that, Rob. So he's

marrying this girl that looks like she's a hooker from Vegas, right? She's a pre-Cardassian. Okay, that's how can, you know, before we knew they were there. Anyhow, so she's going down and she's like waving at people and blowing kisses in the church. And I'm going, oh my God. God. Now, scrolling back a bit, his brother, who I loved, said he was a forest ranger. And he said, I've got the suit, but he said, I've got my forest ranger shoes on, the boots on. They said, it's okay, Michael, nobody's going, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, right? So we're, he's sitting with me. I liked him, and his brother was, we're breaking up. So they're going down and it's a big, it's like a Vegas wedding, but she thinks it is. She's the only one that

thinks it is and everybody's like slack-jawed. And then we kneel down and there's these women sitting in front of it's like kneeling down and they've got like monoloblotics and all these expensive things with slingbacks. And I said to Michael, look at their feet. Their feet are all dirty. Don't feel it bad about your shoes. So I'm thinking, oh, this is an amazing wedding. So on the outside they're posing for the pictures, right?

And there's this insidious woman who was probably, she was from Bergdorff or something. and she was like the wardrobe person, you know, pulling the dress. And she's insisting on being with the wedding party, but the picture, she infiltrates herself, right? And I'm saying to Michael, oh, by the way, we smoked a joint before we bought it. So Michael and I are like, oh, my God, this is a travesty. Get this woman. Get the hook.

None of this is the point. Okay, but I'm leading up to it. It's a journey. Okay, okay. So this woman, the picture, the shutter, the, As they're taking the shutter, there's a wind that's blowing, and she's wearing a wrap dress, and it opens up, she's not wearing any underwear. So we see her bush. Michael and I are now peeing ourselves.

Okay, so the reception is at the Plaza Hotel, right? So I'm sitting there, and I'm sitting with this guy in a white dinner jacket, and he looks like the concierie, right? And it was surf and turf. so I said I'll trade you my turf for your surf and he said fine and I'm drinking champagne and stuff and everything and I'm cold

so he gives me his jacket like a gentleman right so I'm like thank you so much and he goes off so John my ex comes and sits down and I said oh my God I said there's a there's a whole bunch of dope here

like blow right okay a bag A bag. So blow, not cannabis. No, blow. Well, we're talking to mob. So I put it in my clutch bag as a joke. As a joke.

Okay. Right? I forget about it. I'm wandering off and then and he's, and that's funny. This guy comes and hunts me down and said, you have something of mine. Wow. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. And he pulls a gun on me.

Wow. And I said, I was only kidding. Here. But there's a gun on you right now. Yeah. You're shitting bricks, right? No, I was peeing my pants. The bricks come later.

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

And I said, why he said, he was gunned down the other day. Wow. Married to the mob. Wow, wow. Okay, but you got out. Like, I don't, can you even leave a guy who's connected? Sounds dangerous. Oh, it was because he stalked me for a year.

Yeah, and shot up your apartment. You're lucky that's all he did. You shot at my apartment. She never told me any of this. I was like right after this. Oh, yeah. You need to give him a warning. You're following a mobster.

Yeah, and when I went to New York with my girlfriend, we changed hotels because we were at some fleabag hotel that David Perry recommended. Thanks, David. Like, we sit down and, open the the bedding and there's pubic hair all over it and I was like okay we're out of here so we change hotels meanwhile I'm getting messages from my ex like little pre cell phones yeah guys are showing up at all the different and then one then he shows up to sitting down beside me in my flight on the way home a year after we've broken up but I've been stalked for a year yeah that's

horrible no not really because I couldn't eat or drink I was so skinny I've done a positive spin Silver lining Silver lining But that's awful that that happened to you But then you met this I guess you remembered him for the weed Right like the first few times you meet Rob Salem

You don't remember him But then he's selling you He's putting his thumb on the scale And he's screwing you over And you know because you were married to the mom Yeah But also too at the Christmas party He wrote a song

And I liked it It was I'm a copy boy And that's okay I was a coffee boy. Yeah. Actually, I had been a copy boy. I drank all night and asleep all day. So he did all that.

And I said, well, that's pretty clever. And he had a guitar. And, you know, I thought, yeah, well, maybe he's not really that much of a doofus. And he was on the stage at Yuck Yuck Yucks. So he must have been funny. No, he's terrible. That's stand up. Well, that explains.

I was mediocre. Before I forget, I had coffee today with a care bear. Her name is Eva Almost. And then I just mentioned that you guys were coming over. Oh, I love Eva. So I left her to get here in time for your visit. And she said, please say hi for me. Oh, absolutely.

You love Eva. So how do you know Eva? Oh, God. Well, we traveled in the same circles. It was from the 80s, Queen Street West. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It was everybody. That's, you know, Catherine O'Hara, Michael, Mary Margaret, Michael at the Squeeze Club. Marcus. Marcus at the Squeeze Club, yeah. Well, we've lost. Catherine, would you maybe share a little more about Catherine O'Hara the late great? You know, it was interesting.

When the star ran sort of a compilation page of all the stuff that they had written about her over the years, it was all stuff that the two of us wrote. There were like six pieces, and if she didn't write it, I did, and vice versa. She was, well, I was an extra on a CTV back when I thought I was funny. And in fact, I was taking Second City workshops with, John Kennedy. And John Kennedy was the one who said, get him to stand-up.

So because of the Second City Workshop, which I think was his way of saying, you don't work well with others. But so as an opportunity of Second City workshops, I was in special business extra, which just means you do everything but talk. Because then they had to pay you more. You just sake up space.

So I had to work. I had to. I got to work with all these incredibly brilliant, talented people. And watching that show get shot, I mean, because they're all improvisational actors. And watching them do take after take, and each take was just a little bit different. And they were also all writers. It was just, it was the most incredible experience. Quite a moment, right?

And quite a moment in time, that collective. I was madly in love with her. Absolutely. And she knew it. And she only twisted the knife on occasion. But yeah, I had a huge crush. and I got to see those magnificent people in that sort of nascent SCTV period. I don't think there's anybody in her orbit that didn't love Catherine.

Oh, she's just the kindest, smartest, funniest, just an absolutely lovely, brilliant person. As, you know, I mean, her performances spoke to all of that, the humanity that even if she was playing like Delia Dietz or Moira Rose. Nobody has a bad word to say about Catherine O'Hare. No. She was, the whole family is absolutely lovely.

I mean, I can't imagine what it was like growing up. There are Tobico people. They're like eight kids or something. Yeah, I mean, I get calls from Michael once in a while, but yeah,

that's a big family. And I think that's near Cloverdale Mall, like is where they're, I worked as a Dominion in Cloverdale Mall when I was in grade 12. It's mainly because of the meat, right? Manally because that's still there, that dominion in Cloverdale Mall. It's still there.

It's called Metro now. Oh, yeah. Sorry, you know why that's true. It is Dominion now called Metro, but the actual grocery store is still there. There is a home hardware in that mall that is, like, unique and that you get, like, discounted chocolates and weird knickknacks that they kind of, they pick up, I guess it, maybe it was slightly damaged,

or the label was, like, missed, there was a typo or something, and they sell it cheap. Like, so people make, like, pilgrimages to the home hardware in Cloverdale Mall. Good to know. And they were going to tear it down for condos, but it turns out nobody. he's buying condos. I read about that in the Star.

Okay, you worked at the Star? Read the Star. They pay our pension. That's right. Well, we're going to get to the Star in a moment here, but I got to shout out Robert Lawson, who's working at the music shop in Music World, right? That's the name.

No, Sunrise. I got to get the right store. Sunrise in Cloverdale is managed by FOTM Robert Lawson, so I'm just saying hello to Robert here. Okay, we got to talk more about the Star, but I did recently have David Bronstein on this show. And at the time you were scheduled to come in, like the next week, but then you, of course, postponed.

But he said that you guys would write nice things about him. Do you have any memory of writing nice things about dial a date? I don't know. I don't even know who he is. He did that horrific commercial, dial a date. Infomercials more than anything. It's personal. Right.

You call this number right now, talk to attractive single women. I'm kind of doing a David Bronstein right now. Oh, God, yeah. Oh, they were everywhere. We never wrote anything nice about him. No. Okay. Why does he think he wrote nice things about him?

I mean, he was doing those things and he was proud of them. It's probably ate his brain. I mean, it's paid programming. I'm surprised you wrote about him at all. Although he was a part of the fabric. Exactly. He was such an iconic character. Take on the phone.

What are you doing? Call right now! Yeah. Oh, he was so annoying. And we wrote that on... On more than one occasion. The earlier, again, the earlier version of Stargazing, she turned it into this whole other thing, but... We did rob and read it.

For a couple of years, we did rob and read it. So we just started living together and we're writing together. Okay, so we're going to, because we've got to revisit the star thing, but there's one more name. Because you've been in the calendar so many times. That's been so many different people that I would just basically say, my next guest is, you know, Rob, Sam, Lee, Zegas. One of my guests, this is how long ago you were in the calendar, Carla Collins was here in the basement. And she said, they did not write nice things about me. No.

We were friends. Carla and I were good friends. and um i didn't write nasty you no i did you i did this was later when i was the poison this is when i was tv critic and she i would again we were friends and i would give her occasional career advice and she would ignore it and um uh and so she did she moved to l.A where there are of course no tall blondes uh yeah and they all go to die there married Tyrone Power's son and did a reality show

called Carla Wood, I think. Yeah, Carla Wood, yeah, that sounds right. So they sent me a screener. I was TV critic at the time. I sent me a screener, and it was horrific. It was absolutely embarrassing, horrific, humiliating for her, and I said, I'm not going to review it.

And that's a problem, because I had a lot of friends in the business, and I would have to review their work, and sometimes it was terrible. and I would usually try to avoid that conflict. And again, probably wrongly would not... Because it don't ruin the friendship. Well, is that... And if you write glowing reviews, it looks like you're biased.

Oh, yeah. So you can never do that. You always have to give your absolute opinion. You have to declare a conflict of interest, which I did several times. As did I. As did I. But you can't, no, you can't fudge it and you can't say something's better than it is. So I just didn't want to write about it.

And I didn't have to. and it went from being on the main network, CTV to CTV 2, or one of their smaller networks. They moved it. So I said, and again, I refused to write about it, and their publicist was on me and on me and on me to write about it. And I just said, I didn't say why, I just said, no. So eventually I said, well, you have to write about it

because they've just moved it to this secondary network. To which I wrote, Carla Wood, blah, blah, blah, Carla Collins, show, reality, they have moved it from the main network to the secondary network, apparently someone actually watched the pilot. That's what I wrote. And she never forgot. She has never forgotten.

That's the thing about sometimes you just get that one thing, they never forget, you know, one comment, one line. No, and again, she got off, she never appreciate this, but she got off easy because it was, it was fucking horrible. See, I never saw it. Nobody saw it. Oh, my God. It's probably on YouTube. It was that bad.

It's like Corey Feldman level bad. Which Rob can't stop watching. I can't stop watching Corey Feldman on YouTube. Okay. I don't need, I'm not even in that loop. Go there. Go there?

I prefer to remember his, movies with Corey Haim, as I recall. There's a whole world of Corey Feldman online. I think the wrong. Corey died. It's a stout. They were both.

Well, Hame was ours. He was a GTAG. And he was annoxious little shit. I interviewed him when he was like 12. Oh, yeah. It was horrible then. So was that pre. Was it, no, stand by me was Feldman.

Yeah, no, this, yeah, this was Lucas. Yeah, Lucas. This was way back when he was a kid. But Lost Boys was before Lucas, wasn't it? No, no, no. Lost Boys was well after. Well after. Okay, this is with Charlie Sheen, maybe?

Yes, no, Charlie. Who's in Lucas with, is it, Emilio? Charlie Shee was in Lucas. Okay, with a very young Corey Haim. Right. And then Corey Feldman accused him of raping Corey Ham, which he denies. And it's, oh, I'm, as one does. This is a very deep cesspool.

of weirdness. And I'm telling you, there is a podcast called Jim and Them that does nothing but talk about Corey Feldman. And they've been doing it for like a decade. And he was buddies with Michael Jackson, of course. Oh, which is its own level of weird.

I'm telling you, anyone who is watching or listening. So, okay, have you ever met Corey Feldman? No. No. Have you ever met Michael Jackson? I was in the proximity to Michael Jackson. But we did see them in concert when they did the Jackson 5. The victory tour.

I did the walk-up. Yep. She did a walk-up. This is like 84 maybe, like around then. Yeah. My mom went to the show. Yeah. I did.

Michael didn't play Toronto much. That was a big deal because Michael, I don't think he came back. He was still with the Jackson 5 when he played a job. Well, he came back to the Jackson 5. Like he did them a favor. Yeah. Because none of them were working. He had already thriller, I'd already draw.

Yeah. No, this was a reunion. And yet they had that Pepsi deal. at the time. Right, and his hair got on fire. His hair caught on fire. And I can't remember. I think his nose melted.

Something happened to that nose. Yeah, well, because it was so built up, right? It was all built up, so it melted. Yeah. Anyway, I was in a function that he was at, but he was just sequestered in the corner. Gotcha. Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Because I'm only curious because his nephew is playing Michael in some biopic. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is like borderline, to me, borderline propaganda piece. Yeah. Like this is all in the family. Well, his daughter has disowned it. And at the same time admitting that she thought her father was a pedophile, it's Jackson's daughter. Really?

Paris. This is Harris? Yeah. She has said that, come out and said that. And she's also come out and said that she saw a version of the movie and, uh, or a version of the script and thought it was totally inaccurate. It was apparently very laudatory of Michael. White, white, oh, yes.

So, so to speak. I think they bail out after he, uh, does a Super Bowl halftime show. Like, it's like, we can't go any further. because it gets messy. Yeah. But anyway, she finally just ultimately said, hey,

not my monkeys, not my circus. It's just, you know, good, good for them. Interesting here. So we're going to,

so we have Rita Zekis, now in FOTM. You're now at, you're at, sorry, I'm going to ask you a question about somebody

from I Weekly shortly, but you're at Star Week. So walk me through like your Toronto Star career, because at some point we got just star gazing and when are you writing

with Rob and just keep going. I want to hear more Rita Zika. So you're at Star Week. I was not even sequestered. I was told, oh, what was it told, yeah, whatever. Page 2 editor, I became page 2 editor. Page 2 was a page that was supposed to be lighter than, you know.

This is a Sunday. No, A section. Oh, this is A section. Remember? Right, right, right, right. With Mike. Anyway, we had Slinger. Yeah.

Joey Slinger was one. Right. And we had Frank Jones. Gamester was George Gamester And then there was The Boris Sprimo

Big big Big and you had a big Three four column picture Of Boris's every day Right It was whatever Seagull or I don't know Whatever

But it was Sankra Sank So I was the editor And I also wrote like A little humor thing once You know We had We cooked up Little contests

Or be a kid again or whatever, whatever. So that's when they told me that, well, the editor was going off somewhere and I was going to do that, which was fun because then, you know, then I was allowed to write headlines, which is what I love to do it. She writes the best headlines. She gives good head. I remember when, what's his name?

Oh, the really, really good writer. I can't remember his name now. He went to the globe. And I remember writing one of his favorite. I was hockey's just another word for nothing left to lose because it was all about, oh, who was it? Roy McGregor. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It's been on the show. Loved him. Her best headline was a cutline for a picture. It was a review. They had a show at the Imperial Room back when that was the Premier Room. And they would put like this huge water tank on the stage. Of topless women. Of topless mermaids.

And it was a topless dance mermaid, whatever. And so her cutline for the picture was tanks for the mammaries. I got into so much trouble. That's good. From the feminists. Yeah. And there were a few of them at the paper.

Yeah. Yeah, but. Anyway, so page two four. You gotta name those feminists, no? Well, Michelle Lansberg, hated me. Oh, right. No, it wasn't Michelle. It was Robin Harvey.

Robin Harvey. Okay. That led the vigilantes. But anyway, you got shit canned off page two. They canceled it. Yeah. And I had to go into the, uh,

Doug Marshall, kicking and screaming, was like, I don't want you. He was the entertainment editor. Yeah. One of the best editors we've ever had. Yeah. He was wonderful. But he hated her. Yeah, he said, I was going to dumb it down.

Duh. But why did he hate you? Because she was being foisted on him. Yeah, he didn't want me, just whatever. Then he realized, he had me writing obituaries in advance, like old people, they're going to cloak. So I'd pick up the phone and talk to them, and I got to be kiss-a-death. wanted to talk to me because what do you know I'm like the dogs that sniff, no,

the cats in the old homes old people's homes that can smell death so they jump on your thing and you're pitching daisies the next day. Well let me give you something right now, Rita, since you talked about obituaries. This is a measuring tape from Ridley

Funeral Home. So they're pillars of this community and Ridley Funeral Home have a great podcast called Life's Undertaking. We're going to record a new episode next. We have a new theme song, thanks to Rob Pruss. And now you have a measuring tape. Now we have a measured.

I love it. Rob, there's one for you, too. It's beside the Palma Pasta box. Oh, so we can use it next time we wallpaper. Oh, geez. Well, you know what? If you need any more, you know where to come. You'll get lasagna, you get a measuring tape.

And, of course, you have fresh craft beer from Great Lakes brewery, brewed right here in southern Etobico. I know you're not big beer fanatics, but you have friends who drop by. You love fresh craft beer. They love it. And now you got some delicious beer. Now we can have people over. Now you can finally socialize.

Yeah. Because it was getting well. We got Melania. We caught everything, right? You got everything here. Just want to quickly say that tomorrow morning I'm recording a new episode of Building Toronto Skyline with Nick Iienes. We're also going to do a new episode of Nick and Mike.

Or is it Mike and Nick? I think it's called Mike and Nick. And Nick Ieemis is a proud sponsor of this show. And one last tip for you, Rita, and for you, Rob, if you have old electronics, old devices, old cables, don't throw it in the garbage. Go to recycle myelectronics.ca, put in your postal code, and find it where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. Thank you, Recyclemyelectronics.com.

Yeah, I'm really bad at that. I throw this stuff out, and I know I shouldn't. And I promise not to now. Stop doing it, because it's free. They just say, drop it off here, and they'll... Can't they come and pick it up? You'll have to go to Recycle My Electronics. And see if they'll...

For you, Rita Zika, they might make that exception. Although printers, they might make that exception. Although printers and stuff, and we go through a lot of printers, if we just put it out in front of the house, it's gone within an hour. Oh, somebody's going to see if they can fix it. Just scrap metal. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, that works too.

And maybe they'll take it to recycle my electronics. What would what piece of junk that we put out in the printer? Yeah, within minutes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We have a person that comes and takes our wine bottles. We put them out the night before. They come by fairly frequently.

You're having a good time over there. Okay, so Rita, you're, uh, some, this editor. editor, this great editor is not a big Rita Zika's fan, so pick it up from there. Well, he became a fan because I, you know, I was like the self-cleaning editor. I could write and I could edit. So then he secunded me as editor. I was editing more than I was writing. I became the Sunday editor, Spotlight editor.

And then I became assistant entertainment editor. Okay. And how closely, like at what point, Rob, do you join the fray here writing? I was already there. I started in 77. I was a copy boy and then listings clerk. And so by the time she arrived, I was already writing for the entertainment department. And so what happened was she was floating around as editor, writer, doing all sorts of stuff.

And one over this editor, who basically operated the department out of the bar downstairs. The print room. But an amazing editor, an amazing guy. Best. drunk. He was great. Well, as many talented people are. Exactly.

I mean, and that way, it was journalism back there in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, it was almost like everybody on the news desk had a bottle of scotch

in the desk. Yeah, yeah. So, um... I don't drink scotch, by the way, that's not me. They started up a, a tabloid,

um, Thursday, uh, publication that was like, uh, sort of broadsheet, um, or not broadsheet,

but tabloid style, uh, called what's on. of course. And it had all the listings. May I interject to ask, is this a Toronto Star response to now? No. And actually, now started up stealing our listings.

I used to be the listings clerk, so I recognized it. And when now started up, they were just taking our listings out of the star and reprinting them. And we caught them. Oh, interesting. Because I always thought what's on was like the Star's tour star kind of capitalizing on now. No, no. Now, the timing may have been that, but we always ran listings. Always on Thursday.

But we're listening. Again, that was my first job there after Copyboy was listings clerk. So the listings got compiled into what's on Thursday, but the listings were there first. And they admitted to it. They stole them. So in starting What's On, and I was the assistant editor of What's On, and I think at that time, movie critic, too. And they decided they wanted like a party column, like a gossipy party column. because at the time,

Toronto was really becoming Hollywood North. It was the 80s. So Sutton Place in Bister in 990 and all these people were in town shooting. It was a big celebrity. And this was like before the paparazzi thing really became big. Of course.

And so we started doing this party call on Robin Rita. I remember we shot the logo and it was me holding a camera and you with a pad and paper. I never took a photo of my life at that point. But yeah, we started to do, this gossip column. Yeah, and go to openings and

there's one basic picture of you and I somewhere. And I mean, it got to the point where at one point I said, I don't want to see my face anymore, so I put a little balloon in front of my face. I would try to get a prop in front of my face. I just did not want to see myself. This is ridiculous. And we did that. A couple years. Yeah. Until we got bored

with it. And then she transitioned into Stargazing. It's stargazing started. with Peter Goddard. Yeah. Who said, at one point he was editing or whatever, blah, blah, blah. It was kind of a compilation because we had those, that big thing that all, you know, irregularly.

It was listings about what was going on and all that stuff too. That kind of extrapolated from that, right? So Peter Goddard said, well, someone so lost his shirt somewhere, I think it's a good item. So I did that. And he said, I want another column. We'll call it Stargazing. I said, no, I don't want to. It's too much work.

So that gradually became one column and then two columns, and then I took over the whole page. Because what happened at the same time was this paparazzi thing was starting, and there were people to shoot. And there was this guy who has since totally ripped her off. Louis out of focus, we called him at the time. Louis de Philippus was the paparazzi and had other guys working for him. In fact, they did all the work.

Yeah. But they were getting, usually out of focused shots of whoever was in town, going shopping or whatever. Because it was so new that the star was like, well, what's her name is, is Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan's not looking at the camera. I said, well, because she's shopping. Yeah, they didn't get it. And it's not a posed picture.

Wow. It's people out and about in their next. natural habitat. Yeah, the editors did not get it. Well, I'll tell you about... But it was hugely popular. Well, it was hugely popular. I'll tell you both.

So I had over here yesterday two members of a band called Loest of the Low. And one guy's name is Lawrence Nichols. So at the end of the episode, I say, tomorrow it's Rob Salem and Rita Zicas. And then we were chatting Lawrence and I after about how much Rob Salem and Rita Zika's we consumed in the entertainment section of the Toronto Star. We worked a lot. Yeah. Like, honestly, like, what a big deal it was.

Rob finally got you over and this is your third visit. But Rita Zicus is now in the TMDS basement. Rita Zikis, this is happening. I have to pinch myself. I've been known to, I lived in a basement apartment. I'm no, you're a basement dweller. I absolutely.

I'm not a stranger to, you know. But she doesn't think she's the most interesting person I have ever met in my life. You have an interesting style. I mean, I'm hearing in the headphones the jewelry. I don't know if you could explain it to the podcast listeners, but you have like these yeah like I don't know how to even describe it there are these very chunky large bracelets and there's big rings and one of them is a skull at least one of them I feel like there might be a no there's one here yeah

this stuff spreads oh you got it too Rob okay you got the bracelets too yeah well my but you have a bit of an Annie Hall thing going on I don't know if you had it first did Annie Hall steal it from you well she used to because we used to be out every night so there were high heels and stockings and but you're wearing a tie But you started out as a bohemian, and you have now returned to that. Yeah, when I had to be civil, like where civilites closed. I mean, you go to a function, so I'm in the bathroom at the star, washing my face with those nasty paper towels and putting on panty hose and whatever

and makeup, and then coming back three hours later, taking it all off, sitting down, putting my T-shirt on, and filing the copy. Yeah. When's the last time you wore high heels? Well, before my chiropractor died. They're not good for you. No. But we were out like every night.

Yeah. Going the stuff and drinking. Which is why we don't go out now. We do sometimes. Yeah, last time you got beat up. Who's beating you up? You got headbutted. This is, talking of the O'Hara clan,

Marcus and Michael and Mary Margaret, would have for 48 years run this Martian Awareness Ball, fabulous event, all these great old friends. getting together and listening to music and just hugging and just love and peace and wonderfulness. And there's such lovely people. And I go to the bar and we were there with our friend Gail Harvey. Come back and there's this guy who is just like all over Gail, this big drunk guy. Or on something.

Right. On something. On some substance. So I keep yelling at him to get up and he won't get up. So finally I just grabbed him by the lapels. I'm a very non-firal prison, but I grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him off her. and thought, okay, that's that. And then I turn around and he headbutts

across the room. The guy was huge. Because Rob's a big guy. Yeah. And he wasn't a young guy. He had naturally white hair. Yeah. And his girlfriend was in Gail's face and swearing at her,

leave my man alone. She's just trying to get away from him. And we were saying, excuse me, this is take a, you can't. He said, I just want to sit here for a while. You can't. I'm sorry. And then our friend Joanne said, I'm going to for security. and then he gets head butted and propelled six feet and lands on his butt.

Well, I don't like to hear about the head shots because... No. The head was fine, but I landed on a vodka cooler can and tore a muscle or something. I was like, I'm still in pain. This was a month ago. Jeez. Okay, the headshots bother me as a survivor of a blood clot on the brain. Oh, geez. Yeah.

And I'm, I mean, the doctor, the neurologist can't tell me like what caused it, except a few years earlier, I had a bad bike crash and I saw, split my helmet in two. Like I was wearing a helmet. Oh, that was probably why. Yeah. So the helmet took the brunt of it, but I always tied these two events together.

Maybe incorrectly, but maybe there is no reason why. No, head bites. But I'm here to tell the tail here. Okay. But there's a gentleman I want to ask you about, I talked to Ed Keenan about this the other day. Do you know Ed Keenan? No. Not too well. Because maybe after your time. Okay. So Ed Keenan worked at Eye Weekly.

So would the Toronto Star people have, like, know the Eye Week people. It was a Toronto Star publication. That's the response to now. Yes. Yes, it was. It was.

And in fact. Toronto Star wanted to buy now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, yeah, they did. And I was actually down to the last two to edit that I magazine. And Bill Burrill, who said, that's who I'm asking you about right now.

I talked to Ed Keen about it. Would you say a few words? Yes. Yes. Yes. He is a nephew posted on Reddit of all plays. I read it. And then I did a piece about it.

And I talked to his sister, William's sister. Yeah. I read so much William Burrell in my day and I weekly. I read so much. And he just seemingly kind of disappeared from the... He had some issues. He was a very eccentric guy.

Yeah. He was a reformed alcoholic. But he used to bring a six pack of non-alcoholic beer to his desk. And he would take a... They made him an editor. After I folded, they brought him... Part of the deal, I remember, because I was negotiating for the same deal,

was that if the thing folded, they would bring you back to the entertainment department. So, because it changes into the grid, but you're talking, so. It wasn't so much a change. They were two separate. It was two separate. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. They shelved it. Yeah. They shelved it completely. And then William went back to the entertainment department. Came back to the entertainment department as like a junior editor, really. But he would take a page proof and go down to the cafeteria. With his beer.

With his beers. And you wouldn't see him for two hours with that one page. Yeah, he was, again, a very eccentric guy. Lovely man, I mean, he was really sweet, but very hard to work with. I find a lot of these interesting characters are like that eccentric. Yeah. Like, it's sort of part and parcel. Yeah.

But I know he wrote, what, the Hemingway book. Yeah, about Hemingway's time and trial. Oh, I love Hemingway. He and I would discuss Hemingway because I'm a big Hemingway fan. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, we had a lovely relationship with him. Yeah. But it was an interesting guy.

It was an interesting guy. And it was very sorry to get that he's gone. Yeah. He was a sweet soul. Yeah. Yes, he definitely was. That's what he was. He was here.

Now, I'm going to throw a name at you because I think I had this prepped for when you were coming by last time. I believe it would have been the 100th birthday of Jerry Lewis. Do either of you have a Jerry Lewis story? Oh, God. Yeah, I got a couple. I interviewed him on three occasions. the first one was it was a movie called

Slapstick of Another Kind with Madeline Kahn I've never heard of that I don't know the name of the movie based on the Kurt Ronnegut book Slapstick but so not It's not related to the hockey movie No it's a horrible horrible movie And he came through town

He was brought through town And I was so intimidated Because I Nuddy Professor is one of my favorite movies ever Not nuts about the rest of the Jerry Lewis Oove, but that movie is a piece of genius. So I was very intimidated. And on my way up to the hotel room to interview,

I'm reading hurriedly notes, and he's got an IQ of like 190-something. I mean, some ridiculous number. I don't even know if that was true. Well, so says he. Yeah. Scared the crap out of me. So I get up there and the fact that it's Jerry Lewis

and I'm still quite young at this point. And I basically just turned in. to Jerry Lewis. I couldn't, it was terrible. But he was lovely. Sakatabe I interview him as much later on.

He's touring in Dam Yankees, played the devil. And they fly me to Detroit. They used to fly us places. God, it was a great job. Fly me to Detroit where he's stopped before Toronto and I sit in his dressing room

and we talk and then he still wants to talk. Again, he's in this beneficent mood. And we, in his limo on the way to his hotel, which is an hour out of town in Detroit, or just outside of Detroit. So it's like, if this doesn't go well, it's going to be an awkward hour.

He's walking home. Yeah. But I just kissed his butt and I had done a lot of research and it was a wonderful, wonderful interview. Great, Jerry Luce. I got a great picture of the two of us. I posted at least once a year. And then the third time,

it was like I was something he scraped off his shirt. You. Interesting. Because I was lucky those first few times because he was an absolute prick. Oh, I interviewed him. Total asshole. I hated women. Total massages.

I've heard this. It's no shock to. He threw a basketball at me and at my face. Luckily, I was a great basketball player and I intercepted. I couldn't believe it. He hated his own kids. Hated his own kids. It was just a horrible, horrible, horrible man and acted like it the last time I interviewed him.

But I kind of got my favorite. because the Toronto Jewish Film Festival ran. There's a great documentary on the famous The Day the Clown cried. You can ask if you would ever had a chance to see any part of that. Yes, this documentary, Light in the Darkness or Darkness, and whatever it is. It's Jerry Lewis. You can find it online, I'm sure. It's a documentary about the making of The Day the Clown cried.

And it's got as much of the film as you would ever have to see. And it's pretty horrible. It's really horrible. No, I know that's been like a punchline forever And I've, you know, I've listened to a podcast And read about this film that was never released But it does sound a little bit like life is beautiful I was, and in fact, I talked about it

Because I won an Academy Award. Yeah, I introduced this film at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which is how I know about it. And I talked about that, that, you know, clearly, it wasn't the idea. Like he was on to something. Yeah, the idea was valid. But his, again, Jerry Lewis is so Jerry Lewis-centric that he can't see outside of it.

Interesting. He shares that with Coy Feldman, actually. Okay, well, so Corey Feldman, Jerry Lewis, who else is on this list? I'm totally deluded self-involved people. And have you ever interviewed Ken Finkelman? No, but he doesn't like doing interviews. I'm not surprised he couldn't get him in here.

I couldn't get him. I tried very hard. And he did do this panel thing, and I was there live. I'm going to talk about this on the next FOTM cast. But he was there, but he was kind of as advertised, like just kind of, like I expected him to be but he did take a moment and say the actors were great which I thought was okay

well he's giving some credit to the actors but there was a woman there Karen Hines an actress who was in that series and she Tunk sort of referred to this misogyny and that he didn't know how to write Ken Finkelman did not know how to write for women

and kind of touched on some stuff got very interesting for a moment so I reached out to Karen and booked her on Toronto Mike because we got to dive into this Oh yeah Karen's gonna come in Leah has something to say. Yeah, actually, I ran into their husband is Peter Callahan. I ran into the two of them a couple days ago.

They met on the newsroom. On the newsroom. Right. And did Made in Canada as well. They are a lovely couple. They are. But I ran into them just a couple of days ago and they talked about this event. Yeah, yeah.

He was on the panel, of course. They wanted to do something similar at Fox Theater for, I guess, Made in Canada. I don't know which series, but asked me to. But the newsroom, which they always had to be careful, because if you say to somebody the newsroom, they think Aaron Sorkin. Yeah. And there's some story I was reading where I think when they were going to, Aaron Sorkin,

newsroom was coming out, they called Ken and asked for his permission or something. Like possibly Ken Finkelman blessed the fact that they were going to use this name, the newsroom. But here in this country, the newsroom was such a big deal. Yeah. First of all, it was good. And Finkelman wrote every word of that damn show. It was great.

And it was unusual at the time for a Canadian show to be good. Yeah. Like, it felt other than sketch shows, like SCTV or kids in the hall. But it was, it was smart, and it was dark. Yep. And it was very current. And, you know, it was a very smart show. Very smart show.

And when I think, because I, I didn't miss it, I loved it. And that's why I'm still talking about it today. But it really was heavily inspired by Larry Sanders show. Yeah. Because Larry Sanders comes first, and they are cut from the same. Very much the same sensibility. That was brilliant. Yes.

That was also a brilliant show. Absolutely. But, yeah, and again, made in Canada, talking about Peter and Leah, another terrific, and Rick Mercer in that. That was a wonderful show. Yeah, we're capable of doing that in this country.

I mean, slings and arrows, another amazing, smart thing. And, of course, Schitt's Creek. And the Lawyers series was... Oh, yeah, going back even further, yeah. Street legal? Yeah. Okay, that was good.

What did you think of heavenly bodies with Cynthia Dale? I gave that. It's only good review. Talking about review? Is that right? Well, yeah. Because you're talking about reviewing friends.

Right. You were our neighbor then. Yeah. And again, I was very young. I sat, I was his like B critic. So I was sat right next to him. And he wrote it. And, you know, it was very much of its time.

It was like flash dance and aerobics. Anyway, I. Very flash dancing. Very flash dancey. So I don't remember what I wrote, but I really hedged. and and because sometimes you can be selectively positive.

Right. And I think I did, I, you danced around it. I did. I totally danced around it. Exactly. And so,

so I noticed there was another there was a review in variety and it said something about it had that peculiar Canadian ambiance and show at the base and he goes, yeah, bad lighting. Like the dentist movies. Oh, that's funny.

That's funny. Now, I mentioned I had coffee today with Eva Almos, and we were talking about all the Nelvana work she did because she's a freaking care bear. Yeah. And we were talking about Nelvana, and I mentioned, you know, Clive Smith came out.

We're having a long chat. And then I mentioned my dear friend, Stu Stone, who did a hundred Nelvana projects over the year as a voiceover guy, what not. And this is Stu, I know you can't see, but this is Stu Stone in his MTV show blowing up with Jamie Kennedy. But I'm bringing up Stu Stone only because he played Cynthia Dale's son. in heavenly bodies because Cindy Dale had a little kid and we bust his chops all the time. There's this terrible line of dialogue where he's reading, I don't know if it was Huckleberry Finn

or something. And he goes, mommy, what's an orgy? Like, but this line delivery, and apparently, you know, you only got one take on that movie. If you didn't get it in one take, you were S.O.L. Well, this was the era, as Rita says, of the dentist movies. So the Canadian investments and tax write-offs and. Is that like cannibal girls or something? That was sort of pre-dentist.

But that was also like a tax thing, right? Yeah. I don't actually, I don't know. I feel like, okay, maybe back to SCTV here. But who is the guy that the producer that did all those dentist movies? Oh, Lantos? No, no, before that, he was always running around. David Prometter.

No. There were a lot of them. Yeah. There were a lot of them. But every once in a while, one of those would strike a chord, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, you would get like a good filmmaker. Was Black Christmas like that?

Yes. Black Christmas broke out. So there's an example. Cronenberg came out of that. Right. Yeah. Because he was doing these very cheap, low-budget horror movies that were brilliant. Yeah.

But, yeah. So we had, I mean, we had the early days of the Canadian film industry. We're very much like sort of the Roger Corman School in the States where, you know, Koppola came up and James Cameron and all these guys made their chops doing these cheap, cheesy movies. And, you know, what happened in Canada was all these American productions came up because it was cheaper. Yeah. And we suddenly got these crews who became, like, really, really good at what they do. Because they used to bring up all their own crews.

Yeah, but gradually, because to get the tax break, they'd have to employ local people. And the local people became, like, preferable to the American crews because the American crews were very sort of teamstery, working to rule. And, you know, we obviously have union rules here, but the crews were just generally. generally more cooperative and more... And thankful. Collaborative. And thankful for the work. And really good.

I mean, Guillermo de Toro makes all of his films now with Toronto Cruz. Yeah. And he's like a genius. Yeah, he like lives here. Yeah. So we, our film industry came out of all of that chaos. All the Dennis movies. All the Dennis movies and all the American imported productions.

And we have this, this is not so great now, but we have a thriving film industry. Certainly filmmakers. At one point in the Slutton, and it was like, I said something about if they dropped a bomb in the Slutton Hotel, there'll be parking spaces in Beverly Hills because they were all three men and a baby and everything. They all stayed there. Yeah.

That was really the beginning of Hollywood North, was three men and a baby. In a Leonard Nimoy direction, as I recall. And everybody was like thrilled to see Tom Selleck and everybody. It was like, ooh! There was a great moment where that was shooting and Bert Reynolds was they were doing. switching channels also in Toronto

right about the same time with the man in the baby was shooting and it was originally supposed to be Michael Kane and he got tied up on Jaws 3D so Bert Reynolds was taking Which bought him a house I believe

yeah as one does you cast Bert Reynolds in the Michael Kane role yeah so I had was a movie critic then and two Bert Reynolds movies had just come out like fairly close together

and the the toupees were really really bad on both of them, like really obvious. And so I wrote a review of both of them as an open letter to Bert because he's never going to read it. Right. Saying, oh, man, it looks like something crawled up there

and died. I mean... Was the name of the movie Heat? That was one of them. Okay. That my headline was, it wasn't the heat. It was the stupidity. That was my head off.

That's good. Oh, she is. I'm telling her. She gives a good head. So I crapped all over it. Then we find out Bert Rattle is coming to town and in fact apparently read this on the plane on the way in. So he arrives in Toronto just spitting blood, wants to kill me.

Apparently, he is, we're at Bistro because that's where we used to hang out. And he's on his way over to Bistro with a couple of goons to beat me up. Somebody comes and tells me, oh, you know who told me this? Steve Gutenberg. So Steve Gudenberg from Three Men and a Baby, but also was here filming Police Academy. Yeah. Down the street from here is where the commandant Lassard and his police academy is down the street. He had been at police committee before in Toronto and he was doing three men and a baby.

Anyway, and so I knew him and he's saying, listen, I just talked to somebody who's just talking to Berks Reynolds. He's on his way over here to beat the crap on you. So I am famously non-confrontational. Except for the other day. Yeah. I've got the fuck out of the dog. Yeah. Oh, geez.

So yeah, it never happened. But it could have. Oh, my God. Actually, I could have gotten a bar fight with David Caradine and Dan Haggerty in Las Vegas. They were both wired to the tents. I feel like I need the list of people you could have gotten in a fight with. Yeah, that was another one. Rob knows all the exits in every hotel and every bar.

Security stepped in before that one got interesting. Okay, before I forget it, you know, you guys have been amazing. I'm actually like wondering if this lasagna is so good and I know it is amazing. Like maybe at some point in the future, I get you both back here. Like how, maybe we'll get the review. Now that she's crossed. Well, do we get two lasagnas? I would give you two lasagna if it guaranteed me a sequel

because then I'll just drop names on you and we'll do like react to them. But I want to make sure I know why does stargazing come to an end? Kardashians. Yeah. It started with, well, actually that night when we were watching, I said, you know what, Marky Mark is getting to be. a pretty good actor. And it was Matt Damon.

It was Matt Damon. I said, you know what? I can't tell these guys apart. They were kind of similar. Yeah. But then I did this thing about how this guy, young actor morphed into this guy. That was a great illustration because I said,

I can't tell these guys apart. And I said, I think I've been doing this too long. And then it got to the, I was pre-Cardashians, but it was like. Paris Hilton. It was the Paris Hilton stuff. And I can't type that name anymore. You know, I'm sorry.

I'm done. So, yeah. So you made the call on that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. And they kept it going. Never was as good.

But they tried to keep it going in her absence. Two other editors went through it. No, I think that's got to be Rita Zekis or get the fuck out is what I would say for that one here. But she did morph it into some really interesting things. She went to the life section and did artists in residence, which was because she's a design and fashion person too. So she did that. She did storegazing where she took celebrity. shopping.

And then I did the stealth shopper. Yeah. I would go into, I love doing that. I'd go into stores and rate them on their service and I got sued only once. And that was fun. But did they fret into sue or did they actually sue? Yeah. But they were advertisers.

Who the hell was that? It was that China place. Yeah. Yeah, it was in the colony. It was in the Mani Life Center. Yeah. It's still there. But it's not.

Aslan Crippin. Ashley's. Ashley? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. Anyway, she wrote about what absolute total snotts and horrible and just condescending they were.

I preface it with, I was telling a friend of mine that was in the business. She said, you're going in there. She said, do you want to borrow my fur coat? And I said, no, I'm going to wear my overpriced trench coat. Thank you very much. I said, I just want to, you know, oh, I said they didn't even treat me with polite contempt. It was impolite contempt. It was like, you stand over there, right?

And I wrote about it. And you wrote about some prices. Yeah. And they said they were wrong. And so you went online and they were on the website. Those were the prices. So they had, and again, they had a standing ad on the back of Star Week. Yeah, I was, yeah.

And so they were threatening to pull that. Jeez. All the time. That's the world of today though. That was a, you were letting you know where we're headed. Yeah. She also did, back when we were writing for what's on, she did a thing on Honest Ed's,

how you could get religious kits. We did like a tacky issue. Yeah. And so how you could buy all this, kitschy religious stuff. Sure. And they wrote in claiming that you couldn't get that stuff. So.

So I went back. And bought a bunch of it. We did a photo. A whole full page. Oh, geez. Honest, Ed. You do have. Shlock.

I remember that schlop. Now, why do you eventually, like when do you eventually leave the Toronto Star, Rita? When did you leave? When did you leave, Rob? I left about 13 years ago. So I lasted about five or six years

longer than you did. I think I left about 2011. Yeah. Okay, so why do you leave? Because it was a good buyout. And the writing was on the wall. Yeah. Well, you saw it coming and it came.

Yeah. The internet was... Just asked Ben Rayner. Like, I talked to Ben on the reg, and he's... Yeah, he's having some struggles. He's couch surfing in Nova Scotia, I believe, yeah. Yeah, I called him up there a couple of times. But he had the same thing.

It's just newspapers, suddenly the slats got kicked out from under them. And, you know, Ben, it's just such a good writer. Such a good writer. And, you know, and her too. I mean, it's... Well, it seems like the entertainment. He had the messiest desk. in the newsroom.

Oh, man, he prided himself on it. You couldn't, you couldn't put, like, a post-it, you couldn't find a place to put this tape on it. A posted stamp couldn't live there. It was just, but he knew, he's a Virgil like me. He, you know, the clutter, you know where everything is. And it's like, I would put down a tape or something, and he got, have you been messing around with my desk again?

I said, I just put it on your, I had that pile down. It was a mound of stuff like Jabba the Hut. Yeah. It was just, it threatened to consume him. I, speaking of consumption, I consumed a lot of Ben Rayner, too, in the Toronto Star, but even like Peter Howell, who's been over here, like I'm thinking of these, these stalwarts of the entertainment thing. So Peter Howell, yeah, because he was doing music, right?

He was doing TTC. TTC. And then maybe music, I don't know. Okay, then maybe music, then maybe movies. Yeah. And I know he still does freelance work. Yeah. You'll still read some Peter Howell on the Toronto Starb.

Yeah. He goes to Cannes. I think on his own time. Yeah. Yeah. I could probably still. be writing TV criticism if I hadn't pissed off so many people. Because now they just use wire copy anyway.

But you know what? It's a shame, right? Because you lose the local. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. And I don't know that I could cover TV now. There's just too much stuff. I can barely watch TV now. Okay, so I produced The Humble and Fred show.

And about once a month I put Bill Brewer on the show just to talk about what he's watching. But without a doubt, I'll listen to Bill's appearance. And Bill's still blogging away and he's working hard. covering the TV. But the big shows, oh, I haven't got to that. I haven't heard that.

It's almost like there's too much. There is too much. There's too much. And I know tonight is the finale of season two of the pit. And that's a big deal. But back in the day with something like that,

it would be like, oh, I don't know, like 25 million people are going to tune in. But now it's like, you know, I don't know, 800,000 people are going to tune in maybe. And when are they going to tune in? They'll watch it whenever they want.

But it was always an event thing. I remember Rhoda's wedding way back when. That was a big event. You're right. The end of math. We had a party. I thought it was a chicken. Yeah, right?

So that was an event. You got together, right? And that's on. That episode, that episode, and I was very young, but. On mash. The mash finale. Kind of, so I can't, I butcher the line there. I think Alan Alda says, it was a baby.

Yes. It was a baby. That kind of haunts me to this day. This, this, when he, when he tells the psychiatrist that it was a baby. Yeah. And that's so, not a chicken. I used to show that. I used to teach TV history at Humber.

I would show them that first half hour of that finale, which is that story. Yeah. It's chilling. It's so chilling. It's so chilling. The show was brilliant. Although that episode I found it too long.

Okay, it drags on. Like it's a long, you know, yeah, the priest is going blind. Death, you're right,

he's going deaf, right? Right. But it really drags, but that first half hour with the, I thought it was a, I know,

it was a baby. It was a baby. That's haunting stuff, man. Oh, yeah, it was terrifying. But you're right. What an event.

I don't, I don't know, 83 million people tune in or something. I remember it. Yeah, that was, and I think it still holds a record, certainly for the time. I think so. We were wearing mashed t-shirts and some, I don't know. Yeah, 4-077. Yeah, and I have a picture of an ice bucket on my head.

And we just lost Major Hulahan. She just passed away. Actually, she and Rita had a really good... Yeah, it was on the set of beer. And she was... And I was buying my house, right? and I was on no cell phones I walked back and I was pissed off she said what's the matter and I said oh I'm having difficulty getting a mortgage and they want my father to co-sign and I said I'm 30 years old

I'm not going to get my dad to co-sign she said yeah I know I said what do you mean she said she was buying property in Beverly Hills or something she said and they wanted my father to co-sign and she said, I make more in a week than he has had done in his whole life. And he was a tradesman, like a carpenter or something. And I said, are you kidding me? Loretta Swit? Women couldn't have credit cards in their own name until like, what, the 80s? Yeah.

It was ridiculous. Yes, bizarre. It was like mid-80s, right? And I was working at the star and I was making a decent salary. You know, not whoop you do, but. We never made a decent. Well, how are things going, like you got the package and how that's a while ago now. That's all gone.

It's all gone. Well, I mean, we got, I mean, as pensions go, they're good pensions, but this is not a good time to be retired. No. It sounds like the real statics line. It's a bad time to be poor. It is. And everybody. The only thing is misery loves company and everybody's poor.

But, yeah, it's really tough. It's really tough. Yeah. Don't be an ink-stained wretch because it's, you know, be something else. Be a stripper or something. No, no, but my great frustration with her was, I mean, she's got such a sense of style and fashion. And she should have been a stylist because we would be made of money. Because those people make a lot of cash.

Yeah, I could work for the Kardashians. Yeah. We both pride ourselves on the fact that even though our careers crossed over a bit with them, we have never seen an episode of the Kardashians. Yeah, that's a claim to fame. Because I would make the same claim. It would be a lie only because my wife actually, when we first started dating, seemed to enjoy that show.

And it was definitely on when I was in the room. Well, a lot of people like to hate watch it. Yeah. I can't even hate watch it. And I've had to watch a lot of crap television. I mean, it used to be my job. I mean, if the Cardinal sin that she did was to take Marilyn Monroe's iconic dress and rip it, she sat down.

And, of course, it was all pinned together because a giant ass and my comment was I said her ego is as big as her ass to have you know to wear that and they shouldn't have this was the famous Maryland dress

from Happy Day Mr. President and she wore it to the what what is that gala the Met Gala with Pete Davidson well that's right she was dating Pete Davidson yeah for a spell there

yeah what's that about Pete David he must be hung like a horse it's the only explanation well right with the he's had to tattoos removed because he's going to be a serious actor. He wasn't something that was taking place in Long Island. It was really good. He wrote that. He might have the chops. Yeah, he wrote that.

He was a terrific performance. Yeah, I agree. So there might be something there. I think he's got a future. He's just had a kid apparently. He just has to get out of his own way. That's all. It was smart getting off SNL, I think. So earlier you talked about Bert Reynolds and then there was a little discussion about Marky Mark. I remember it came up in the comic because you got him confused of Leonardo DiCaprio and I'm here to tell you. Matt Damon. Matt Damon. Okay. Leo too a bit.

But Leah, exactly. I was just going to say. Same thing. Okay. More Matt Damon, right? That's right. Okay. And they're all, they're in the departed together, right? Have I, do I have the right guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that made me, I just, this came up in a recent episode of Toronto Mike. I did with Bob Willett and Rob Proust. But Boogie Nights features both actors. Marky Mark and Burr Reynolds and they're both great in it.

Yes. It's the best I've seen Marky Mark. I've never seen this good since. He was absolutely brilliant in it. It's a brilliant. I love that movie. I've seen it like a dozen times. Me too, buddy. It's so good.

And Philip Seymour Hoffman is so good. Oh, he's a great actor. Everybody's a great actor. And Julianne Moore is great. Bert Reynolds, as fabulous as he is in that movie, hates it or hated. No, I do. Yeah, he doesn't get it. No, not at all.

He hated doing it. He argued constantly. He was in a pissy mood, although that certainly informed the character. But it was an incredible performance. We stayed in the Burton Loney Suite all the time. That's right. At the Sutton Place they gave us the Burton Lonnie Sweet.

We were too drunk to go home. It was a nice sweet. Yeah. Either of you ever meet Elizabeth Taylor? I did. I need that story. And the reason I'm asking about Elizabeth Taylor is because my 10-year-old just discovered this person existed. And the reason my 10-year-old discovered Elizabeth Taylor exists is because Taylor

wrote a song about her and just put out a video, which the video is essentially clips from Elizabeth Taylor movies. So the video that Taylor Swift has put out is just basically a retrospective on the career of Elizabeth Taylor. And I did blow my 10-year-old's mind by telling her she's actually heard Elizabeth Taylor before because this is my youngest kid.

She loves the Simpsons. And the voice of Maggie Simpson, when she says her first word, which is Dada, is voiced by Elizabeth Taylor. Tell me about meeting Elizabeth Taylor. It was in New York and it was a Turner Network thing. And I think it was, was honoring, what's her name, I just blank,

breakfast at Tiffany Star. Andre Hepha. Thank you. Welcome. Elizabeth Taylor was already there. I haven't had any caffeine today. That's a problem. Yeah, and she was, of course.

And you're in the home stretch here, by the way. Don't worry. All right. Yeah, get a caffeine sponsor, will you? I would love one. That would be great. Anyway, so I was scoping out the bar. and Elizabeth Taylor was having a beer at the bar.

Don't picture her as a beer girl. No, she had, yeah, she was like really, like, she's very down to earth, right? And I would just blah, blah, blah, blah. And Alder Hepburn was coming in. And all the, there wasn't really paparazzi in those days, but photographers, now they were swarming her. And Elizabeth Taylor said to me,

I think she needs some assistance. So I went over, and I, and she was literally, in headlights with Audrey. I feel terrified. So I just said, do you want to grab my arm? I was, she's just a waif.

She's, yes. Very slim. And she grabbed my arm and I walked her in. These are some heavyweight names you're dropping here. Yeah. We got to meet every,

I mean, we were so lucky. We got to meet so many amazing people. I love assholes, but I mean, just incredible. And monster, especially in the monolithic culture we,

we come from back in the day where you could, the movie, and they were larger than life because there was no internet and now everything's so fragmented. Yeah, because in those days, like, people like Michael Cain was lovely. Oh, was he? Couldn't have been. That was the, uh, the, uh, thingy.

They've been to the drying out place. Betty Ford? Betty Ford. That was a great story. I was wearing Betty Ford ball cap. There was a bar named Betty Ford. Okay. And I got, that's ironic.

I got it busted. by the way. That's another story. We need it for the sequel. Yeah. I was wearing my Betty Ford because from the bar. From the bar. It's at the Betty Ford.

So he just dried out. Michael Kane had just dried out. And I was interviewing him for, he was in some cartoon movie, whatever, and I said, you've done so much. So many co-stars, now you're done, you know, whatever. And I read his book. And he was lovely.

He couldn't have been more solicitous to the people. the book people, because it was his book, right? Right. So he looked at my hat and he said, you know, I've been there. And I didn't want to tell him, it was in the name of a bar. I didn't want to blow his whole story

because he got clean because he used to drink a whole bottle of vodka and his wife, who's gorgeous, wouldn't marry him until he got off the bottle. Shakira. She was in... They met... The man would be king.

Interesting. So two things. One is when you say his name of a British accent, it does sound like you're saying my cocaine, right? Which I always thought was amusing. But secondly, that's a man who did some great movies and some real shitty movies. We talked about what was it, Jaws. Like, he's done some movies where he'll just say, yeah, I did it for the paycheck and

it bought me this house, you know. Yeah, and he's always been very upfront about it. Yes. And I kind of appreciate it. Like sometimes you work as a great piece of art and sometimes you need money in the bank account. But very intentional actor. He did a book, and that may have been the book.

that was a book. Acting on film and there was a video that went with it and it was a workshop he did with some theater students where he explained his process. He also did this workshop in acting for the screen and he should have been a director.

I think he should have gone on. But the point is that he got in really early right. It was a crappy day and the PR went with the books, the publishers and they were ordering coffee. and he said to the woman, he said, I'll make sure that these women,

they've been, we went, did Canada Am, and well, they've been run off their feet, and they couldn't have been nice. And who does that? Really? He was so concerned about them. And I thought, oh, hello, Ivana. I have the Evana, best Ivana Trump story ever.

She does. Okay, we're going to close with that. The Yvana, okay. Okay, tell the other. Two more names, and then I'll set you free. We got to get her photo by Toronto Tree. And I got your lasagna, of course. So two more names.

One is, can you tell me a little bit, know if you can see this, but there's a picture of Brian Linehan in this studio because the Watchman, which is a great band out of Winnipeg, felt I had a little Brian Linehan in my style or whatever, which I took as the greatest compliment, even though it's not true. But can you just tell me about Brian Linehan, who I met once in Runnymede Park across from Runnymede TTC Station? Well, he was known to, you know, be very well informed, but he had somebody do all the footwork. He had a lot of research.

Oh, a lot of researchers. So he gets like a dossier. He just has to like read it. But no one else was doing that kind of interview. I mean, credit it where it's due. The deep dives. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, no. He had a big staff. Yeah. But he was mercurial. Because I have no staff. I just want the world to know that. But I also have the internet. Yeah.

But I mean, he knew all this minutiaecious because somebody dug, you know, dug it up. Yeah. Like microfeesh or something in the reference library. There's a wonderful clip of him doing the interviews, I guess, for Cadyshack and Chevy Chase. I saw it because it's in the dog. Yeah. Which I like that. that doc very much because I like these complicated characters that, you know, he's an

asshole, but sometimes it's interesting to dive in and see, okay, what made Chevy Chase an asshole? And he's kind of pathetic asshole. Yes, yes. But there's that wonderful one. Yeah, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not. And yeah, he completely rips Brian a new one in that dog. Yeah. My thing was Brian, because for a while, after he had the falling out with Moses and the

rights on the city lights and all that, and he was basically not, didn't have a job. and I was movie at a time and I had him write for me but he was a terrible writer so I'd have to rewrite everything but he was still on the junket circuit because everybody had him in favor of us but we're on a plane

heading to some Warner Brothers Juncker or something and I'm sitting next to him and Marty Short was doing Brock Lineahan at the time which is brilliant of course and Brian it's like do people really see me that way

and he was crying and I'm like assuring him, no, you don't understand. This is like the ultimate compliment. It's like Barbara Wawa. Yeah, this is the ultimate compliment. I think he was okay with it eventually. Marty Short is one of the funniest men. Oh, God.

Don't ever sit beside him at luncheon. There used to be a luncheon at the festival that Marty would be at every year. He was sitting beside me and he always did that stupid pot pie. Chicken pot pie. And Marty's sitting beside me and he said, oh, I see a cat. That looks like time day. That's right. It looks, I see the face of Time Daily.

And of course, I'm spitting out my soup. And, of course, I couldn't eat my, I couldn't eat Tyne Daly's face after that, obviously. Cagney and Lacey. Yeah. So funny. Now, any truth to that rumor is, are they dating? Merrill Street.

We hear it's true. We hear it's true. Okay, that's kind of happy to hear that. But they're very low key on it. And of course, Marty just had a tragedy in his life. Yes, of course. A daughter committed suicide. So everybody's kind of happy.

And they're both such lovely, warm, wonderful people. And coming out of what were both very happy marriages, Marty's wife died years ago and Streep recently divorced, but they were married forever. Yeah, they haven't been together for a couple of years. Yeah, but they're both, we met them both, and they're both the loveliest people. Autographed a picture for our cat.

Yeah, we watched the Oscars one year, and she was, of course, nominated. Yeah. And our cat walked by the screen, and she was just, they announced her name. He walked by the screen, looked up at the TV, and went, meow! So I told her the story.

She grabbed an 8 by 10, drew whiskers on it, and wrote to Jake, the cat's name, Meow Love, Merrill. And now the devil wears Prada too is like about to come out. We're so excited. Yeah, I bet you. Okay, so on our way out here,

because I've, you know, you've been great. It's been long, and I can't wait for the sequel, actually. I'm going to start counting down. Honestly, this was great. So, Rob, I got to thank you for delivering the goods, Rita Zikis.

I am so happy that she finally made it. I was worried because you postponed many times. Like I wasn't going to count these chickens till they hatch. But she's right here. I can reach out and grab her. She hates doing the stuff, but you had fun. I could tell. Yeah, I did have fun. She's here for the lasagna. She is here for the lasagna.

But she stayed for you. Yeah, I did. And we're going to close with a banger here because Rita Zikis is going to tell me about her interview with Ivana Trump. I love this story. This is so you. I'm going to sit back and listen. Now, Ivana,

Not Ivanka. People get confused here. This is Ivana Trump. This is the late mother of Ivanka Trump. Yes. Well, she wrote this book. I say loosely wrote this book. It was just about her, I don't know, life is a skier.

And it just, I can't even tell you the storyline. I read it because that's what I do. Also, I reviewed books for The Star. I'm a prodigious reader. I read a book a day. if I can. Anyway, so I go to the hotel room

and I take notes and, you know, except the kids on the tape. So I get, and she's on the phone excori, she's yelling at somebody, right? Screaming at them. This is post-Donald. Yeah.

And I'm like, I have no idea with it. And then she has this assistant. Sit down, blah, blah, blah. So I ask her you know, all the questions and whatever. And, you know, is it true that Donald paid you a dollar and all dresses you could buy and blah, blah, blah.

And then I brought her the facelift thing. What do you mean? I said, well, we know that you've had facelifts. It's on the cover of spy magazine and whatever, whatever, whatever. So it kind of went downhill. So I go, I could get outside. And I said, thank God. And I realized I've left my notebooks in.

there. So I knock on, oh, yeah, she's ordering, she's ordering tea and coffee, right? So I said, could I have tea? She said, no, it's too much trouble. This is before the interview. And I said, well, it's not like you're making it yourself. You know, I think. They got off on the right foot. I mean, really? It's too much trouble to order tea. So I thought, okay, this is going to be fun. So the door opens and I said, I left my notebook. So her assistant comes over and she throws it at me. and I'm thinking, okay. So then we go, there's a cocktail party in Rosedale at the home of the publisher, right?

And she's dating this no-count count. He's obviously, you know, some sleaze ball. He was count somebody, but it's a no-count count. So in the kitchen, my friend Rosie Levine, that was right for now, was standing there with her arm around the assistant. Right? And I'm thinking, I must have a really bad,

judge a character because she's she's touched she's such a you next Tuesday this assisted so Rosie's there and I think okay so I go back and um and I you I said we didn't get on Larry what I mean in Ivana

so there's a friend of mine who is working for a designer and her name was Julie and she's gorgeous she was doing the PR for this designer and she said she said I'm so pissed off at Ivana I said what and she said well, we gave her a whole bunch of clothes and she's supposed to wear a dress and she kept them on

and she didn't wearing them. And I said, do you want to have some fun, Julie? And she said, sure. I said, why don't you go over and make a big play for the no-count count? Now, Julie was a statue-esque, blonde, wonderful red lips, not in the least bit slutty. She was classy, a great suit. She was like everything that Ivana wasn't. Anyway, so I said, go ahead, go for it. She said, this will be fun. well, three seconds later, like, he's all over her. He's all over her, right? And then I hear a crash in the kitchen, and the assistance on the floor, face down.

And I said, what happened? I said, this is your new best friend, Rosie. She said, no, I was propping her up. She's really drunk. She passed out, face down. So, me, no, by this time, Yvonne is watching the no-count count all over, draped all over Julie. and I said to her, you better pour your assistant into a cab

because she just passed out. So then she goes over to Rosario or whatever his name was. You are coming with me. So they go off, okay? Into the night. Julie and I are killing ourselves laughing. I get a call from the hotel the next day saying, huge fight, huge fight in the dining room.

And the publisher said, yeah, we had to give another room because she kicked him out of her. Wow. She kicked him out of her hotel room. Wow. And I said, I'm sure I was the only person in the room that had read that book. And I'm sure Yvonne I hadn't read it either. Doris Giller, who was the book editor, Rita worked under.

Rita would like read the whole book and Doris finally said to you. You got two books. Where's my review? And I'm trying to finish her. She said, Rita, she's called me Rita face. Read a face, you don't have to read them. This is the woman after whom to gill her prize is saved. That's a mind blow.

Yeah. I said, Doris, really? I think I owe it to them. Well, just skim it. I'm on a deadline, Rita, face. Do you think Ivana Trump really fell down those stairs? No. No.

Does anyone believe that? I don't think so. And I think there's Files, Epstein Files, buried with her in the golf courts. Yeah. Well, the other one, at what point are people, going to realize, oh, Trump lied about this assassination attempt. I'm, I'm, that just did not happen. No, that's accidentally hopeful that it's actually the dams breaking.

No, I think that guy that died was collateral damage because they don't care. Well, that's it. Someone died. So what? They don't care. No, I know. They don't care. I know they don't care. Oh, I know they don't care.

But I'd like to think the wheels are coming off that particular horse. We'll see. Because, I mean, he never should have been reelected in the first place. But you don't take on the Pope. I mean, really. He thinks he can. You don't fuck with the Pope, is what I'm telling me here. Rita Zika, how was this for you?

Did you have a good Toronto mic debut? I did. Good, see? And Rob, are you surprised she had a good time? No, because I know once you get her going, she's fabulous. But she's just, she doesn't want to be on the internet. She doesn't think she's interesting. So there's no Instagram account for Rita Zika.

No, I post on her behalf. Oh yeah, because I follow you on Facebook. Yeah, yeah, I'll post on her behalf. But no, she's the most modest human being and for no reason because she's absolutely incredible. Well, Rob, you're pretty damn great too. And this is your third visit, but you'll be back. I love chatting you out, man. Yeah, this is fun.

I love doing this. And that brings us to the end of our 1,880 second show. Go to TorontoMike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. And while you're there, click Elmo gig at the top of Toronto Mike.com. Because if you click Elmo gig, you can buy tickets to see me headline at the Elma combo on May 21st. That's happening. Oh, that sounds like fun. It's something.

Historic venue. It's something there. Yeah. We love the Elmo. I'm going to be there. First Rolling Stones and then me. That's the way to look at the Elma combo. I actually could have gone to that show.

Goddard. Because it was April Wine Show, right? Is this, so, is this the one where they're the cockroaches and they're, in April, it's an April wine show, but they, the Stones pretend they're a band called the Cockroaches? Yeah,

something like that. Anyway, Goddard went. I was a copy boy at the time and Goddard was there and he called me from there to file his copy and said, come down. I'll get you in. And I was too young and intimidated. That was the one with Margaret Trudeau, not wearing any underwear.

That's the one. That's the one. She must be related to that what Bergdor's woman. Yeah. What goes around, comes around. Much love to all who made this possible. Again, that's Great Lakes Brewery. Rita and Rob have their Great Lakes.

Beer, Palmer Pasta. I'm going to get the lasagna. Nick Ianis. I'll see you tomorrow, Nick. Recycle Myelectronics.ca. And of course, Ridley Funeral Home. Degrassi, the Zit Remedy. It all comes back to Rob Salem and DeGrassey.

See you all. Tomorrow.