Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Steve Simmons KOTJ: Toronto Mike'd #288

Episode Date: November 30, 2017

Mike and Steve discuss several topics from The Reporters to The Athletic before they play and discuss his ten favourite songs.

And right now, right now, right now it's time to... Take out the jams, motherfuckers! I'm in Toronto where you wanna get the city love I'm from Toronto where you wanna get the city love I'm a Toronto mic, wanna get the city love My city love me back for my city love Welcome to episode 288 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent brewery celebrating 30 years

in the craft beer business. Visit GLB at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard for $5 beers. And PropertyInTheSix.com, Toronto real estate done right. And PayTM, an app designed to manage

all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week to kick out the jams is the Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons. Welcome back, Steve. Nice to be here. I like the beard. I don't think you had the beard last time. No, it's a new one. It works for you. Yeah, be here. I like the beard. I don't think you had the beard last time. No, it's a new one.

It works for you. Yeah, thank you. I wish I could do that. Everybody in the world is now wearing a beard, so I thought, why not try it? First time. You know who it works for? Chris Johnston. You ever see Chris Johnston?

Oh, from Sportsnet? Yeah. Man, what a difference. I told him that. I said, yeah, you've never looked more handsome. That beard works for you. So it works for you, too. And I. I told him that. I said, yeah, you've never looked more handsome. That beard works for you. So it works for you too. And I wish I could do it.

I try every, I try all the time. And it's so, mine's so thin and it just looks like neglect. It doesn't come in looking cool like yours. So thanks for showing me up. There's not many times in my life anybody's told me I look cool. So I'm going to take that as a compliment. On that note, make sure we take a photo after this episode. Last time you were here, which was episode 170,

we forgot to take a picture together, and we've got to correct that today. So don't escape. No matter how badly this goes, don't try to escape. Sounds good. And if anybody wants to go back and listen to episode 170 with Steve, I'll read the description. You can go back and listen to episode 170 with Steve, I'll read the description. You can go back and hear all this.

Mike chats with Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons about his years at the Sun, his relationships with Damien Cox, David Schultz, and James Myrtle, his thoughts on analytics and hockey, his Phil Kessel story about hot dogs. So we're not touching that one this time. You can go back and listen to that in episode one 70, how he got Howard Berger fired. That's a great story from Calgary and what it was like being a day one or at the fan five 90, the team 10 50 and the score. That was quite the episode.

So go back and listen to one 70, uh, catch up on the ongoing history of Steve Simmons. Steve, you were in Ottawa for the Grey Cup, right? Correct. Great game. I got a question for you from Twitter. Somebody wants me to ask you how the Grey Cup press conferences have changed

since Jim Shakey Hunt passed away. That's a question from the Voice of Reason. Jim Shaky Hunt passed away? That's a question from the voice of reason. Well, Jim Hunt was known for asking a question at the coach's press conference every year. It became sort of a tradition. And he would ask the two coaches, what were they planning to do about their players

having sex the week of the game? And it became sort of a funny thing, and he turned it into a funny thing because he was a funny guy. And the coaches all sort of enjoyed participating, and usually they would prepare some kind of answer and uh it's since passed on terry jones from the edmonton sun has since picked up on um he now calls it the shaky hunt memorial question and he asks it's always the last question of the press conference but what's happened is it's now become sort of, it's the last question. Everyone knows it's coming.

There's no, you know, sort of, I don't know. It seems to have lost something in translation over the years. It's too contrived now. Yeah, it's not fun. And in fact, this year it was kind of the most boring I've ever seen it. And so that would be my answer to the question. Not having shaky around, period, means every day is less fun. Because he was,

you know, he was one of the fabulous people you'll ever meet. Right. Another question on the great cup topic, Sandy Bailey. He says, for those of us who were not around in 1971, he goes on to say,

I wasn't, but my dad has never let it go. How far does this year's great cup win go toward erasing the ghosts of that loss? And he goes, the script was essentially flipped. Well, it's funny because I heard Mark Trestman talking about this a little bit, and I heard Dave Dickinson talking about this a little bit. Coaches live with losses.

They take losses horribly, and they carry them around for years and years and years, just I think as fans do. If you walk around Toronto, for example, you know, the 93 Leafs thing, you know, has taken on a life of its own, so to speak. That loss, you know, really sticks with people. And I think when you suffer one of those absolutely pain kind of losses, like that Argo fumble, like the last two Calgary losses in the Grey Cup. I think a championship win never takes away the pain of the loss.

I won two high school championships in football. What I remember is the one I lost and how I lost it and why we lost it and that kind of thing. And I think it's the same thing in pro sports. The game you almost had or should have had, that's a hard one to get over. And I think anyone who lived through the Leon McQuay thing, and I certainly did, I was in grade nine at the time and we had just got a color TV and that day and that game was so important.

And it was a time in Toronto where there were only two teams. There were the Leafs and the Argos. You know, you cheered for the Leafs in the winter and you cheered for the Argos in the summer. And there was no, you know, one wasn't better or more important than the other. You know, it was the same. And so when that team lost, and they hadn't been there in so long, and they had all those characters and all those kids and all those,

you know, Joe Theismann was a rookie, and Leon McQuay was a rookie, and Leo Kea was such a colorful coach. Everything about that team was fascinating. And then they lost, and it was like, I don't think you get it back just because you win this weekend, and this is a team that you don't identify with the same

way or care about the same way. Well, you can ask Bill Buckner about this, I bet, when Red Sox finally won it all. There was some talk, like, does this sort of take the weight off of Bill Buckner's shoulders? But I bet you if you ask Bill about it, he'd tell you

that that's still haunts him in some regard. Well, at least he's had a sense of humor about things over the years. He's doing Seinfelds and Curb. Curb, yeah, yeah. He's doing some of that. He did the. Curb, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's doing some of that. He did the Curb episode. That was great. And good for him for doing that.

Yeah, if you can't laugh at it, you'll cry. Did you watch the TFC match last night? I was there. You were there. Good. So can we make comparisons? Josie Altidore, can we call him the new Bobby Bond? Well, my column today actually references Bobby Bond,

Willis Reed, and the Dodgers outfielder who hit the home run, and now my name escapes me. Oh, yeah. I mean, the mustache. What's going on? Gibson. Kirk Gibson. So I'm looking at those kind of moments when a guy wasn't well enough to play

and somehow did something miraculous. And last night, you know, never mind the faking in soccer, never mind all the other stuff that goes on. All you do is look at his face. You can often read how hurt is a guy by reading his face. And he was lying on the turf there at BMO while the clock was going on, while the game was going on. He didn't want to come out.

Right. You know, sort of, can I continue? Can I go on? And you could see, here is one of the important franchise players for this great conglomeration of very well-paid soccer players.

By the way, Altidore, I think, and, no, Jovinko and Michael Bradley make more than the entire Columbus payroll, which makes it kind of funny. But they're moving to Texas, aren't they? That's another story. That said, so here he is, and he can't move, and he can't get up, and he can't trust himself, and his face has got that awful look,

and he gets up and he scores the winning goal, and then he can't play anymore. This is a Toronto moment. This is a Toronto... You don't have to care about soccer. You don't have to like soccer. You don't have to be interested in it. This is a guy doing something special at a special moment.

How many of those do we ever have in our lifetime? When was the last Maple Leaf moment like that? When was the last Raptor moment? Where are they? So many of the moments in this city are about the loss. Vince Carter almost hit the jump shot. Doug Gilmore shouldn't have been the whole thing with him being cut, and Gretzky should have been suspended

and all that, and Leafs should have won the Cup that year. There's a lot of almost, except for the two Blue Jay world titles. To see what happened last night, it was inspiring. It made it an easy column to write, I thought. You're not,

I read you, so I think this is true, you're not a natural soccer fan or whatnot. You're not a soccer guy. I'm almost embarrassed to be at the soccer games because my knowledge of the game and my interest in the game is so limited. But I'm a Toronto columnist, so when the Toronto team is in the playoffs, I find it's incumbent upon me to be there. And I will. I'll be there for the championship game

on the 9th of February. And I was there last week for their other playoff game. And that's what I'll do. And I won't do very much of it. And I won't put myself in a position where I'm actually going to write about soccer. Right. You don't do the X's and O's.

You're talking about Josie Altidore in that moment. I don't even know the A, B's and C's. Honestly, I couldn't tell you all the positions. I don't know how many players are on the field. I mean, honestly, I have no connection to this game at all. I didn't grow up with it. I never played it. I never watched it.

I never cared about it. Maybe I'm just so North American and so Canadian. I grew up, I loved hockey. Yes. I love Canadian. I grew up, I loved hockey. Yes. I love baseball. I love football. I love basketball. And I've always loved all of those games.

And so... Let me ask you this. If you weren't being paid to cover, would you have watched yesterday's match? No. Okay, that's interesting. I suspect probably yes, because it gets to the point where it is your team

and it is your city and it is... And it's it's a high stakes game. It's an event. We did something last year. I was in Florida for the second game of that Montreal series in the second round of the playoffs, I think it was, last year. And I said to the guys I was with, because we went down on a golf trip, let's go to a bar tonight and watch the soccer game. And they all looked at me like I was from the moon. And we went to a bar, a sports bar, and we said, can you put the soccer game on?

And they, of course, gave us that quizzical look. And we put the soccer game on. And four of us sat and watched Toronto FC win their soccer game. And we were kind of getting into it as we were watching it. It's a high stakes, big event. And it was funny because there were people in the bar looking at us like,

what are you doing? And then all of a sudden, instead of having four people, there's eight people watching. Now there's 12 people watching and they're kind of joining in and joining our conversation. It became like a fun night.

I had a great, I mean, I watched it from home last night, but I was really into it. And the longer it went 0-0, we missed, you know, we missed that penalty shot. Vasquez missed the penalty shot,

which in soccer, you rarely see that, right? Like it's, I told my wife when I said, you better watch this. I said, in my experience,

90% of these go in the net, you know, in my experience. But of course, Vasquez didn't score. But the longer it was 0-0, the more anxious I got. And the more I could,

I felt like I saw this movie before. I felt like I know how this ends. But Josie was a hero. It was fantastic. Well, it's funny because I got more anxious after the goal. Because if Columbus then scores to make it one-all, TFC loses. That's right.

Based on the rules. At 0-0, they go to overtime. Right. You know, soccer is a fascinating sport. Road goals count more. I don't understand how it all works. zero, they go to overtime. Soccer's a fascinating sport. Road goals count more. I don't understand how it all works. I don't understand how you play two games for the first round of the playoffs

and two games for the second round of the playoffs and one game for the final. That last year, I learned that, and I was surprised by that as well, but I guess they want to make it like a Super Bowl or whatever, like the winner take all one match. I'm told they do this in the Premier League as well, which again, I'm not a

Premier League person, so you're asking the wrong guy. Well, I'm excited. A couple of Saturdays from now, I'll be watching the MLS Cup. I know you'll be there, and it would be fantastic if following the Grey Cup win, we could actually win the MLS Cup, and that'll be great as we line up to win the Stanley Cup later in June, so that's

fantastic. What a change in mentality in the city. I know. I'm 31 years in now writing for the Sun. And you went through that really nice part in 92 and 93 with the World Series wins by the Blue Jays.

At the same time, the Argos won a great Cup in 91, and the Leafs went to the semifinals two years in a row in 93 and 94, and everything seemed to be good. And then we just went through, what, 25 years of nothing? Yeah, it's pretty awful.

It seemed like that. And then all of a sudden, here is the Argos win the Grey Cup with a 9-9 team, and if TFC wins on Saturday, they have a championship. That's two championships for Larry Tanabama, who's had none in his life before this.

The Leafs are a Stanley Cup contender in a league where there's no great teams. And so they're a contender. The Raptors, with all the changing they're doing, have a very good record for the schedule that they've had so far. We almost have to readjust the fact that these teams are all winning.

Except we don't know what the Blue Jays are yet, I guess. It's two sides of that coin. Yes, I'm with you. Suddenly, although the Jays are going the wrong direction, it seems, but everybody else seems to be competitive, but at the same time, we've yet to win anything beyond a Grey Cup, so we've got to slow our roll.

But by next week, that could be changing. Hopefully, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully. Let me ask you about this, your industry briefly here. So you work for Post Media. Toronto Sun is owned by Post Media. So Post Media and Torstar did this big newspaper swap and then each side shut down most of the papers

that they acquired. And I know you can't speak for Post Media. You can only speak for yourself. I just had a guy from the Toronto Star in here, and he gave his opinion. But, of course, he's not representing Torstar. He was just representing himself, Ed Keenan. But I was wondering, there's 290 people out of work. Do you weep for your industry?

This seems like a very sad time for the newspapers in this country. I've been weeping for our industry for a very long time and on so many different levels. To see people out of work, of course, bothers you. But more than even that, what bothers me is to see areas of the country without newspapers. Now, I'm a newspaper person. I work in the industry.

I've lived in the industry. Every morning, I like to have a paper in my hands. I'm a newspaper person. I work in the industry. I've lived in the industry. Every morning, I like to have a paper in my hands. I'm not under 40. I'm not naive enough to understand that the people under that age don't really consume their news through a newspaper. So you have to sort of balance out. But I look at Simcoe County right now. 500,000 people in Barrie, in Aurelia, in Innisfil,

in all those areas surrounding there. The papers are all gone. I think if somebody was young and ambitious and could get some investors, I think you can go there and you can, you could probably, you know, start a newspaper and be very successful, keep your costs down and do it wisely. And I think, I think you, you make that work quite well. You know, the world's changing. What's happened in the newspaper business is we tripped over ourselves. We started when the internet came and we gave our product away for free.

And before we realized what a mistake that was, we tried to charge people. And by the time we tried to charge people, it was too late because they'd already gotten it all for free and knew how to get it for free. You're trying to close Pandora's box. And so for the New York Times, that might work and for the wall street journal it might work but for most

of us it doesn't and so we're not making money on the internet and we're not making money in the traditional way which was retail advertising and we're not selling as many papers as we used to sell and so um bit by bit, the world is changing and the industry is shutting down. There will always be a place for information. There will always be a place for news. There will always be a place for opinion. It's a question of where is it going to come from? Who's going to pay for it? And I just think the people who have owned the papers, I blame the competition committee in this country for allowing the conglomerates to own them.

I work for the Toronto Sun. We own both papers in Vancouver. We own both papers in Edmonton. We own both papers in Calgary. We own one paper in Winnipeg. We own the English paper in Montreal. We own both papers in Ottawa. How is that good for Canadians? How is that possibly good for Canadians?

And how can you make that work? And they allowed the sales from one conglomerate to another to another so that basically it's like the broadcast industry. You see Bell and Rogers control everything in the country. And now Torstar and PostMedia basically control everything in the newspaper sense. And frankly, I'm just going to give you a quick— Sure. I hope nobody ever hears this that works for my company, but I work for the Toronto Sun, and we have been enormously successful over the years. We are one of the great success stories in journalism history, financially and every other way. one of the great success stories in journalism history,

financially and every other way. The National Post is a nice-looking newspaper and it's a well-written newspaper and it hasn't made a cent, basically, historically. I mean, it's just lost money and lost money and lost money and lost money. Our company is run, is Post Media, which means it comes out of the management of the National Post because they bought the Sun.

All of the Post people run, basically, the newspaper end of the chain. They've never had success. All of the Sun people have basically been drifted aside. They've only had success. So it's frustrating sometimes to sit here and work at a place where we have to listen to people who, frankly, don't understand us, don't know what they're doing, and have never been successful. And we've been always successful. And if any of this gets out, I'll deny every word of it.

It's going to be tough to do, man. They're going to queue up the MP3. They're going to say, oh, that's impersonating my voice. You know what? It was somebody, yeah. But honestly, if you think about it, we had a thing where we had people laid off recently, one of the many times it's happened.

And I was told to not ask any questions because sometimes I have a way of saying things I shouldn't say. And I think it's part of what sort of made me successful over the years. And they said, my boss turned to me before the meeting and says, please don't ask anything. And so I kept quiet and kept quiet. At the end, we were told, well, so many people

are going to lose jobs and there's nothing we can do about it. And I put up my hand and said, I think in every single quarter since 1971, the Toronto Sun has turned a profit since it's been alive. And I don't have the numbers for me in front of me, but I think the National Post has basically lost money. Not every single quarter, but most of the time in its history. Why are we losing jobs to support them? That was the question I asked. Which is a great question.

And the answer came back to me, ask the board of directors, which of course means that you can't ask it. Right. You know, I find, by the way, I find you speaking out on these things, which, you know, people are too scared, I guess, to say in public. I find it rather refreshing for what it's worth. And I think that might be why we enjoy your column. You once said a statement, something like most red sports column in the country. What is the statement that you've made? Is that what it was? Am I close? Paul Godfrey called it the most red page in Canadian journalism. That was a number of

years. He was at the Sun at the time. He's now the head of post media. Right. Yeah. You know, the numbers that we get for online and the numbers on a regular basis, it's, and now because of distribution also, it's so widely distributed, my column, much more so than ever before because we own so many papers and we just got bought for our services by a New Brunswick chain. So now I'm like the lead columnist in these New Brunswick papers and I'm the lead columnist in a bunch of other Canadian papers and I'm lead columnist in the Sun. So the column is going a lot of places and, you know, and as well as in social media and on Twitter and Facebook and wherever else. And so, you know, if you look at today, the general sports columnist is becoming less and less and less. The specialty columnist has become bigger than the general sports columnist.

I'm still the general guy. I still believe in being the general guy. And I don't think, frankly, and I'm not saying this to be egotistical, there aren't many people in the country doing what I do, and there aren't many people in the country who can do what I do. And so it's nice to be in this position at this advanced age and still loving it and still enjoying it, but at the same time, there's this cloud for all of us.

What do we talk about when we're on the road now? How long are you going to work for? How long is your paper going to last? What's the over-under on all this? And none of us know the answer to that, but we're all walking around. I feel sorry for the 40-year-olds and the 35-year-olds and the guys who have to, you know,

get in 20 more years or 25 more years because there may not be 25 more years. Well, no, absolutely. And now this leads to a whole bunch of questions. I got, so Bob Elliott, I read your farewell column to Bob, but Bob's been on the show after he retired and he retired from The Sun, but he hasn't retired.

I mean, Bob's covering baseball with the best of them still for the Canadian baseball... I can't remember the name of that. Network. Network, there you go. So did Bob just feel it was time to get out before he was pushed out? Do you have any... Why is Bob no longer writing for The Sun? I think the direction in which Bob wanted to go

and the direction in which the Sun viewed the way it would go weren't necessarily the same. And I just think he... I'm going to add another factor into that. Grandchildren. Grandchildren played a big part in Bob Elliott wanting to... They're in Moncton, he tells me. So he goes and sees

his grandchildren and he's very, very involved in that. And I think he wanted to slow down and he wanted to do things a certain way. And I'm not sure that either from his own perspective, our own perspective, or my boss's own perspective, or the HR people,

whoever it was, there was a communication gap somewhere there that should, shouldn't have ever happened because he's Bob Elliot. And I think you do everything and you can to keep Bob Elliot because he's Bob Elliot. And there's only one of him. What a joy to have worked with him and beside him and, and along with him, you know,

he's the best, he's the best baseball writer and the most connected baseball writer Canada has and will ever have. And I believe the only Canadian who will ever be so honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame the way he was. But something happened there and I wasn't in the meetings. I don't know what was said. I don't know what he was feeling.

I do know that he was not happy with how things were going for him. And he decided it was time to spend more time with family and with his grandchildren. When we lost Roy Halladay far, far too soon, tragically, when Bob wrote the piece about Halladay's passing, he wrote that Halladay wanted to work with the Blue Jay minor leaguers and two things happened. One is they told him to apply like any other candidate

and they decided not to hire him. And I guess I read you tweeted, I think you just tweeted it, that it was because Roy wanted to work from Florida and the Jays wanted him to rove like Henkin does and go to all the minor league spots. Do you have any more insight into that? Because it was quite the bomb from Elliott. Yeah, it was a bomb, but it wasn't a bomb.

I think it was one of those times you say something and you leave some context out and you don't do it intentionally. It just sort of happens that way. Roy Halladay wanted to work for the Blue Jays. He retired as a Blue Jay. He wanted to work for them. He wanted to be a minor league pitching instructor, and he wanted to be primarily based out of Florida.

He'd work with whoever was pitching in Dunedin and whatever minor league teams they could get to, but he didn't want to be like the roving instructor, which is normally what you hire when you hire those guys. They'll spend some time with your single A team. They'll spend some time with the double A team, triple A, whatever. You got to go to Lansing, Buffalo, all these different places. He was coaching his kids in the local leagues.

They're teenagers. And he wanted to be able to be there for games. And he wanted to be able to help. But it was kind of, I'd love to work for you, but it's going to be on my terms. And they said, well, we'd like you to work for us too, but we need you to do the other stuff. And so it wasn't, I don't think there was a whole lot of animosity there or anything like that. It was just, you know what? I have an idea. You have an idea. And the two ideas don't meld. And I've been, frankly, not very impressed

with how the current management of the Blue Jays have handled almost anything, this is not one of the areas where I would be critical of them at all. So let me be critical then, because it seems to me like when Roy Halladay says that he'd like to work, and I know he wanted to focus, I believe, on the mental side of the game, and perhaps executives wanted him to more work

on the mechanics and stuff. But it just seems to me like he ended up doing this for the Phillies, and they seemed, what I read from the Philadelphia Inquirer, whatever the paper is called, philly.com is where I read it. It seems like if he says that to you, that you create a position. It's almost like this is Roy Halladay. This isn't just some guy with a degree. It just seems to me like you find a way to have him work with your minor leaguers.

Well, you still need within the framework of what you're attempting to do. Okay, fair enough. If you want a guy to just stay in one place and only work with the single A pitchers, then you do that. But I think, you know, you've seen people like Robbie Alomar being roving instructors and Devon Wade and a few others from years gone by. And I still, you know, you still need them to do the job that they're hired to do. And if you don't want to, if you don't want a guy that's going to go city to city and

team to team and level to level, then, you know, that didn't work. And I don't find, I don't find any issue with this at all. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. The reporters. Fantastic show, TSN. Dave Hodge has been here.

Of course, you've been here in the past, and it's gone. So the question I have from Twitter is to ask you for your favorite memory from your work on TSN as a reporter. So that question's out there, and then I just want to know why The Reporters is no longer on TSN.

That's a long story. We've got time, Steve. If someone had told me 15 or so years ago that you're going to be asked to be on a television show, and for the most part, you're going to have Dave Hodge sitting on one side of you and Michael Farber or Stephen Brunt sitting on the other side of you, and it's going to last 15 years, it's like, where do I sign up and how? And then you got involved, and the 15 years went by so fast

that when it ended, I'm still in a little bit of shock, and my Sundays are still weird to me, and my weekends where I don't have to prepare a thumbs up or a thumbs down and have a conference call with everybody, and the closeness we all sort of came to develop amongst ourselves. have a conference call with everybody and the closeness we all sort of came to develop,

you know, amongst ourselves. I think the show essentially lost its way when it got moved from Sunday to Monday. And that was in a cost cutting mode. TSN decided that they needed to cut costs somewhere and they didn't want to pay a crew to come in strictly to do the show on Sunday morning so they were going to move it to Monday and I think at that point we lost a significant portion of our regular viewers and to me the Monday show never felt right and then we went from I think we did two seasons on Monday if I believe and then they decided they were going to move it back to Sunday mornings at 9, give us a constant spot, and it was going to be a radio simulcast. I was okay with the radio simulcast. You know, we see it with Bob McCowan, and we see it with, you know, Overdrive and other, you know, Mike and Mike in the United States, and so it's pretty common to see that kind of thing.

I thought it would be fine. I know Dave didn't like the idea at all. And the idea became about a thousand times worse when they decided to cut Michael Farber. And that, again, was a cost cut. We're flying him in every week. We're putting him in a hotel. You know, how much is this costing? How much is the show making? How does this all work? And so industry being what it is today, everybody has to balance budgets and do what makes sense. And it didn't seem to work. And then we had a bunch of technical problems doing the radio show. I think we did seven of them.

And each one of them had some kind of technical problems. And I think at the end of seven shows, Dave just basically decided, I don't want to do this anymore. And then when he decided he didn't want to do it anymore, I think TSN decided we don't want to do it anymore. And thus, that was the end of the show. I still think there's a place for the show. I think there's a place to bring it back if it ever, someone decided to do that. And I really think that on, between TSN and Sportsnet and whoever else is producing, you know producing television in this country,

there is not an intelligent half-an-hour panel show of people of different minds and various opinions who will tackle all the issues without, how do I say this, without involvement in the subject in which they're talking about. We'll see a lot of hockey talk from people in the game, from people connected to the game, from people who were general managers or were coaches or were players or are reporters only on that sport. The beauty of our show was the four of us came from such different places in terms of how we think and how we looked at things, places in terms of how we think and how we looked at things. Different ages, different experiences.

Bruce primarily was a basketball writer before he became a columnist. And Michael's from the States and Montreal, and he viewed things differently. And he's about the brightest person you can ever be around. And my background is sort of deep-rooted Canadian sports and Canadian stories. And we all know who Dave Hodge is and what he is and what he represents and and what a remarkable broadcaster he has been and and so I thought that chemistry it was just such a nice feel and such a nice I've you know frankly I thought the show would go forever you know that that's ridiculous thinking obviously but I just thought that it had something.

It fit in. Like, I'll give you an example. Like, when July 1st came around or trade deadline came around, we were always part of that day-long sort of exercise of nuttiness at TSN. And one of the reasons I always thought we brought sober second thought to whatever was going on that day. You know, what did this signing mean? What did that trade mean? You're going to get the hardcore version from the hockey guys. And then you're going to get a wider perspective and a different view from us. And I think that's what I really liked about it is that it didn't matter if it was Tiger

Woods or if it was tennis or if it was basketball. It didn't matter what the sport was. If the story of the week was Oscar Pistorius, we talked about Oscar Pistorius and just went, you know, all the way through that way. And, and really, you know, working with Dave Hodge is, was one of the real honors of my life in the, in the business. Um, Dave Naylor said this years ago that, you know, he wanted to have on his gravestone, never disappointed Dave Hodge and that's the way I think a lot of us

sort of approach the show, he put such high standards on what we did and how we did it and one of the things he said to me because I can get emotional sometimes I don't want you raising your voice because I get excited and my hands get flailing and I said why?

he said it's Sunday morning. People don't want to hear that. And those are just the kind of little things he would say. Or he'd give you one of those looks, like, you can stop now. Let me ask this quick question from Mike Cohen. He says, with the demise of the reporters with Dave Hodge, is Steve Simmons strictly a TSN radio contributor now?

So he's curious. So you're on the radio, but not to television now at TSN land. Well, I'm not on anything on a full-time basis right now. I'm kind of on, you know, you call me, and we can arrange something, and it works fine. My network relationship is with them, because it has been with them for the better part of 16 years now. So I do a couple of fill-in radio things, whether it's the Breakfast Club with Michael

Landsberg's show or something on Leaf's Lunch or something on Overdrive with Brian Hayes. So I'll get called and I do something with Scotty MacArthur, I think, on a weekly basis. But the TV is kind of when do they need you. So when the Roy Halladay thing, when Roy died, you know, I got a call from one of the producers who said, where are you? And I said, well, I'm in my car. He said, I need you here now. Went home, got a suit, drove straight to TSN, walked right on the air. And they, you know, they did two and a half hours of SportsCenter on one subject, Roy Halladay dying. And so I was on, I think, four times in the two-hour period.

At the same time, I'm providing them with phone numbers. Here's how you get Cetogas, and here's how you get Bob Elliott. Here's how you get... So they're going, their chase producers are trying to find the people that they're getting. I was sort of right in the middle of it all.

The week after, they did the memorial service. So I got called, can you come in and co-host on the memorial service? So I'm still doing things for them. It's just a question of when and what the circumstances are. And I think, you know, from the Olympics in South Korea, I'll probably, you know, have a little bit more significant a role, uh, and just comes and goes, you know, I, I, as, as recently as two years ago, I had two regular television shows. I was on, uh, the reporters and on that's hockey tonight, both shows regular television shows. I was on The Reporters and on That's Hockey Tonight. Both shows are gone.

And I was co-hosting Dave Naylor's afternoon radio show twice a week. So, you know, I've taken a nice financial hit in the last year or two. Well, I hear Landsberg's looking for a co-host. Have you applied? Not a chance. Too early? Too early. It's the absolute wrong time for me

as an insomniac. It's the worst possible time because it's almost the only time I sleep. I mean, I know people who are insomniacs. It sounds horrible. I'm blessed that I don't have this issue. I have a question. It ties in. nice segue here

by accident, but Bob McElwitz Jr. came on the show and he had very serious insomnia and some sleep apnea and he talked about these issues and how it spilt his life. He started to have anxiety

and different issues tied to the fact he wasn't sleeping. Well, I have a similar story, actually, and I've done a million different things to try and fix the insomnia. It's been a long time now. And I went to a sleep disorder clinic at Toronto Western Hospital. It's one of those, you go in on like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday kind of deal. and three days and they do all kinds of tests on you and they try and figure out why it is you're not sleeping and what your patterns are and the first night i'm they wire you up with a million it's one of the most illogical things that can ever happen you can't sleep at home in your own

bed how are you going to sleep one of those little hospital beds with 92 wires sticking out of you in in all kinds of directions i fall asleep i don't know if it's one minute i don't know if it's two minutes i don't know how long it is I wake up, sweat is pouring off me and my heart is beating a million miles a minute I'm having some kind of panic attack I've never had one before, I didn't know what it felt like it's an incredibly powerful, horrible feeling so I buzz the nurse, she comes, she disconnects me from

the machine and I walk around. She says, take a walk. Come back in 15 minutes. We'll settle you down. We'll get you hooked up again. Go back. Sack, same thing happens. I fall asleep.

One minute, maybe two. Wake up. Heart's pounding, pounding. Sweat's pouring off of me. You just want to run. So this happens three times in I don't know how long, two hours maybe. I got at that point without saying anything to the nurses, I pulled all the wires off me, got in my car and I drove home.

Wow. Got home, I think it was around four, three or four in the morning. My wife thought our house was being robbed. And from that day on, stuff started happening. i started getting claustrophobia which maybe i had before but really didn't know it and i started having flying troubles and i started having anxiety attacks and panic attacks and it all came out of whatever came from that night in the hospital. And I had to go and see people. I had to get help.

I had to learn to fly again. I walked off planes. I had terrible, terrible time. For someone who flew all the time, it was such a strange thing. It was such a strange thing. And to try and understand mental illness when you've always been a logical sort of person and you try and come to grips with all of that and you're trying to figure it all out.

And to this day, like now it's to me, it's just you just can't get to sleep. When you do, you can't stay asleep. And normally the time I do sleep is when you sort of just drop from exhaustion. So a lot of my sleep comes between you do, you can't stay asleep. And normally the time I do sleep is when you sort of just drop from exhaustion. So a lot of my sleep comes between, say, 4 and 7 or 4 and 8 in the morning. Would you be open

to a private discussion with Mackiewicz Jr.? Well, I love Bob. Yeah. Absolutely. Only because, honestly, we had a heart, me and him, I don't have, I'm lucky enough not to suffer from this, but after the recording, Bob and I had an amazing discussion about this. And I would think if I knew anybody who had these struggles or these issues, I would recommend they, and Bob would be willing to do it.

You and Bob, because I have a question from Bob about his dad in a minute here. But Macko Jr. and you having a chat can only help you, I think. He's been through so much with this. Yeah, and again, everybody's different in what they go through and how they deal with it. And, you know, it's just become... I went to Sochi for the Olympics in... And I'm a diabetic also,

so add that sort of into the mix of all this. I go to Sochi for the Olympics a few years back, and I get there. My sugars from traveling are all messed up. So my sugars are completely messed up, and I get there. My sugars from traveling are all messed up. So my sugars are completely messed up. And I get to my room. And it's an enormous room with the smallest bed I've ever seen and no other piece of furniture in it.

I mean, you could have played ball hockey in this room. It was that big. But it was freezing cold. And I went to lie down. All of a sudden, panic attack. And the same thing started happening. So I'm having panic attacks. And I'm to lie down. All of a sudden, panic attack. The same thing started happening. So I'm having panic attacks, and I'm trying to sleep, and I'm freezing, and my sugars are all messed up.

So I got up to walk around. Turns out I didn't get to sleep for, I think, 72 hours, my first 72 hours in Russia. And I phoned our editor-in-chief at the time, a woman named Wendy Metcalf, and I said, if I have one more day like this, I'm coming home. I can't deal with this anymore. And fortunately, it started to settle a little bit in the next day, and my friend Rosie D'Amano from the Toronto Star,

who's like a walking drugstore, supplied me with a sleeping pill that helped and got me through a couple of really tough days. But when you have that kind of thing and you're on the road and you're away and you have to work really hard and all this is going on at the same time, it's a pretty tough thing to go through. That was about the worst I think I've ever had it. You mentioned diabetic.

Mike D had a question. If you see yourself as a role model for other diabetics, could you share or lead more or less? That's from Mike D on Twitter. I will say this. I'm a type 2 diabetic who now has to take insulin because eventually I think everybody's insulin runs out when you're diabetic. Role model, no. But I can tell you one thing. I've never felt healthier. I've never felt better physically. All these things that, you know, are supposed to go wrong with you. You know, I was 40 or 50 pounds overweight or 40 pounds overweight, 45 pounds heavier than I am now. And so I've understood how to accept the

lifestyle and live with it and be on the road and not drink with everybody else going out and drinking and certain things. And so I won't say role model, but I think the one thing, and I've spoken about this for the diabetes people at a time, you know, I've never been less healthy, but when you check off the boxes, do you have this? Do you have that? Do you have this? Yeah, I have a lot of those things. I've also never felt better or looked younger in my life. So there's sort of this weird dichotomy going on. Interesting. Interesting. So I mentioned Macko Jr. So let me ask quick. Macko Jr., he tweeted this at me yesterday, and then right away, George Strombolopoulos liked it on Twitter. So I got asked this question. He says, he's talking about you. Ask him to tell the story

of how Bob Sr. canceled his show at the fan. So Bob wants to hear you tell the story of his dad canceling your show. You know, I've been fired so many times at the fan that I don't always remember which story it is. But I was doing a show. I think it's the Jim Taddy version. And I'm doing a show with Jim Taddy.

We were originally 10 to 12 with Mary Ormsby. Myself and Mary Ormsby, now still with the Toronto Star. And I loved, loved, loved working with Mary. She was wonderful. And then they asked me, can you find a co-host? And so I looked around

and I tried to find a co-host. Actually, my number one choice was Rod Smith. Now with TSN, was with TSN then. TSN wouldn't let him do the show. And so we're looking around and trying to find who can match up

and then one day somebody said, you know, you're working with Jim Taddy who I didn't really know and he, him and I just didn't work for whatever reason.

You know, sometimes you put two people together. I got some theories. And, you know, just didn't work. And at the end of the year, Jim Taddy walked in and said,

basically, either he goes or I go. And I think what Bob Makowitz said is, you both go. And so I always blamed Jim Taddy for losing that show, and we wound up both out. And I think that's the story Bob's talking about. And I hope it is.

Well, when you talk to him about the sleep disorder, he'll let you know if you got it right. Bob's a great guy. And I'm sorry, but I know you're kicking out the jams. I have a few more. While I have Steve Simmons in my basement, I just have a few more questions I've been dying to ask you since your last visit.

We won't talk about the hot dog story. You talked a great deal about the hot dog story. You talked a great deal about the hot dog story with Phil Kessel in the last episode. So if people are looking for that, go back to the last episode. But when Phil Kessel won his second Stanley Cup, he posed for a photo of the Stanley Cup and a bunch of hot dogs in the cup.

Now, as I saw the photo, I laughed out loud to myself, like, that's a nod to Steve Simmons. How did you interpret the photo Phil tweeted? It's remarkable how three sentences have just blown up to being this big thing. I get tweets from people saying, your articles on Phil and hot dogs. Well, A, I never wrote an article on Phil and hot dogs. It was three sentences in a 950 word explanation

on why he was being traded by the Leafs. I still maintain to this day that that piece is, if you want to find out why the Leafs traded Phil Kessel, read that piece. It tells you from their perspective why they traded him. But the hot dog thing has just taken on a life of its own. There's barely a day goes by where I don't get a hot dog little visual or a tweet about somebody asking about hot dogs.

It's kind of annoying, actually, after all this time, because it's two and a half years now ago. It's two and a half years ago. I've never written another word about Phil Kessel, basically, other than the odd reference to him during Stanley Cup playoffs. I've never done a piece on him. I just decided, you know what, I'm going to stay away from all this. And so this thing just, it became,

I think this is social media at its best and worst all at once. It just became a cause celeb of sorts. You know, Kessel obviously was amused by it to the point of participating in it. You know, to me, if you are celebrating the Stanley Cup and you've got to pull out the hot dog gag, I think that's kind of small on his part, frankly. But did any part of you smile?

Like maybe, okay, that's kind of funny. I can see 100% I can see you being annoyed by the constant hot dog stuff because I tweet that Steve Simmons coming on the podcast and I'm going to get a reply with somebody saying hot dog. That be the reply and then it's like you know i'm gonna get that i can't imagine what you deal with every day but uh on any level

did you find some humor in the kessel photo yeah i did i think one of the things that's fine what you're noticing is that phil in pittsburgh has taken on this sort of comic role on the pittsburgh penguins where he's the butt of the joke and sometimes he is the one who starts the joke. And because he doesn't have to be the leader and he doesn't have to be the best player and he doesn't have to be the center of attention, they've got Crosby and they've got Malkin

and they've got Letang and they've got Murray and they've got all these other, and Sullivan is the coach and really strong character. So he's just a guy on that team. He doesn't have to be like he was in Toronto. And so he can now do the Darth Vader commercials or get called out by the president when they get to the White House, you know, the way Barack Obama did. I think now Phil sort of found his sort of comic superstar kind of role, whether I played any part in that by, you know, the three sentences I wrote about hot

dogs or not, you know, who knows? But, you know, good for him for having a sense of humor. You know, to me, I want to celebrate the Stanley Cup. I don't really want to bring attention to something that's silly. But that's my view and his view are obviously different. So RJ Twee or Tweety on Twitter wants to know how you deal with all the haters. So you're getting this constant like hot dog thing. These are obviously people who I would say love to hate you.

Is that fair to say? Well, there's three. I sort of have three ways of looking at it. One, there's just there is an element of hate or dislike in social media. It comes from the anonymous. Usually it comes from people who don't have names, don't have faces. And one thing interesting I found, there's a correlation between vitriol and number of followers. The fewer number of followers, the more vitriol. And so anytime somebody says something really horrendous to me, my first thought is, well, that's really mean.

And then I'll look at their Twitter account and they'll have four followers. And so, you know, on the one hand, so I can't take it completely seriously. And if I was, you know, really thin-skinned, it would drive me nuts. My wife always says it would drive her nuts. So, you know, you look at it different ways for different people. But what I find is when I go out, and I'm out and around the city a lot, you know, say take an event like the Pan Am Games where every single day you're at a different venue and you're seeing different people and it's outside, everybody's seeing each other. All you get is, I love your work, what a nice guy you are, boy, you know, it was nice meeting you.

with the hatred that you get from the anonymous. And then you look to, you know, the people in your industry and the people who I care the most about and the guys who are the most professional. And, you know, I'm happy to deal with them and get feedback from them and not just the friendships, but, you know, praise for, you know, I'll use Bob Elliott as an example. If I write a column like some of the things

I wrote from Grey Cup last week, and I get a note from Bob saying, you know, I'll use Bob Elliott as an example. If I write a column like some of the things I wrote from Grey Cup last week and I get a note from Bob saying, you know, that was really well done, you know, that means something to me. If, you know, Frank Orr, I don't know if you know the name Frank Orr. Yeah, absolutely, of course. Frank still follows the industry very closely. You know, he's in his 80s now. And, you know, if I write something and I get an email from Frank Orr saying, boy, you nailed it today. You can get a thousand hot dog references and one Frank Orr will eliminate all of those immediately. Because you respect Frank Orr's opinion. Yeah. And you know what?

What I love to do, and this is why social media for me, where social media has failed, I love to discuss and debate. I may not be right. You may not be right. Let's get our ideas out. What I find in that venue is you try and get an idea out. What you get back is something moronic,

more often than not. And now I have friends who say, don't engage with the trolls. Sometimes I can't identify who the trolls are. Right, right. Someone might ask me a question, I'll try and answer it. I have a friend in Pittsburgh, Ron Cook,

who writes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. If I start like going back and forth, I'll get a text message saying, stop it. Like, don't do that. Don't feed the trolls. Elliot Friedman, stop it. You know, I'll get the same thing., stop it. Like, don't do that. Don't feed the trolls. Elliot Friedman, stop it. You know, I'll get the same thing. Your friends look out for you.

Sometimes I don't even know I'm doing it. I just think I'm trying to, if you send me a question is, why do you think this should happen? And you give a decent answer back. Or sometimes I'll get a thing, I'll ask a question. What do you mean? You'll never get an answer back on what do you mean? Like, and so I've kind of given up on the

give and take of twitter for example i'll use it to post you know my thoughts and i'll use it to post my work and other people's work but i'm not going to exchange much on with people there because the exchanges frankly have just been so unsatisfactory historically uh stephen brunt recently told me uh he won't go on Twitter for that reason, basically. And you mentioned the people who, if they see you in public, let's say somebody bumps into you at BMO Field

and they tell you they love your work or great to see you, Steve, great job. Sometimes that's the same person who behind their anonymous keyboard is tweeting at you like, have another hot dog, Steve, or some nonsense like that. It's often the same person.

Absolutely. And I respect for, I respect Brunt for as he's approached it. If I could start Twitter over again, I would love to sort of start again and not, and not be responsive and not, and not get into the little fights I've gotten into and the little arguments I've gotten into.

And, and what I, what I find is there are people who only follow you from Twitter. They don't read your column. They don't read your column. They don't read your work. They don't really understand what you do. And so you'll get something like, why are you always saying this? And when you've just written seven things in the opposite direction.

And so it's hard to take that seriously when you realize it. You're kind of caught in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position. The reason I like the power of Twitter is I can take a piece that I've written that I'm proud of, and I can send it out to a bunch of people who won't see the Toronto Sun. And so they'll get the opportunity, if they choose to, to read the piece. I wrote a piece last week on Jermaine Gabriel, who's one of the players with Toronto Argonauts. He was a North York kid, or he is a North York kid, who was homeless growing up and then was penniless and then went to university and couldn't afford to buy a textbook.

And it was just one of those great human interest stories of how does a guy like this find his way to professional football? And I got amazing response to the piece and so much. So I got a book publisher actually asked if he's interested in turning it into a book, which frankly I'm not interested in, but that's neither here nor there. Hold out for the movie. Yeah, good luck. But I'm saying like, if you don't have social media to send these kinds of things out, people are going to miss these things. And so there is some power in it and there is some good in it.

It's just a question of the bad is loud and the good is quiet. Let's talk about the athletic just for a moment here. So this is, you know, I don't have to tell you what the athletic is, but what are your thoughts

on this new model where people subscribe and they made a lot of noise fairly recently about new acquisitions at The Athletic as they expand across Canada. What are your thoughts on this new venture? Well, I look at it from really a couple of different perspectives. One, everyone in the industry is cheering for it to succeed because it's one more venue for people who do what we do for a living and one more opportunity. So you want it to work. I am not entirely certain it will.

And by that I'm not talking this year. I'm talking longer term. I think to get the first time subscriber is not that hard. Especially considering the state of newspapers right now. If you read three of the four Toronto newspapers, I don't think you're going to be satisfied with your sports coverage. So you may want to look somewhere else. If you're in some American cities where you're really interested in your hockey team and the best hockey writer is working for the athletic, like in Minneapolis, for example, then you may want to spend the $4 a month to read Mike Russo rather than pick up your newspaper. And so I understand that.

The question I have is, are they going to subscribe second time? Are you going to give them enough to keep them interested that way? My worry about it, and I was around when there was a paper called The National in the United States. It was a sports daily. And Frank DeFord was one of the people who was involved with the creation of it. And they went and they got really high-end, quality, quality sports writers. And they overpaid everybody. And in doing so, they created this amazing staff, but they couldn't afford to pay for it over time. And I worry a little bit that in bringing

Ken Rosenthal in and in bringing in Jeff Perlman and bringing in Pierre Lebrun and bringing in Eric DeHatchik, you know, how many high-end guys can you afford and can it pay for it? Like the model of Minnesota to me is interesting because there's Mike Russo and I think only one other hired person. And I think they have 16,000 subscribers already. So they're bringing in $900 and some thousand dollars a year for two guys. So it's working there.

Toronto, they've got a lot of freelance guys and a lot of extra people and they're using six or seven people to write hockey. The quality for the most part, I mean, I'm against some of the things I see there. I'm not interested in some of the things I see there.

But on the other hand, there's a lot to choose from. I'll give you an example. I'd pay $4 right now to read John Lott, who, you know, to me is the best baseball writer in Toronto now that Bob Elliott's not doing it on a regular basis. Or I'd pay $4 to read Eric Carine covering the Raptors. I'm not sure that

there's anybody else there. But again, you find 10 people, you're going to get 10 different viewpoints in who they like to read and why. And so I hope they succeed. I worry that they've hired too many people. Well, David Schultz echoed the same concerns when he was here a couple of weeks ago

that they've grown, like they didn't learn from the dot-com bubble, if you will, that they maybe have expanded too quickly and can't sustain this. Well, what you don't know, I don't know what anyone's getting paid. I don't know what the salaries are. What you do know, there's no office.

You don't have to pay for an office. You don't have to pay for secretaries. You don't have to pay for other people. Printing press. Basically, everything's being done out of people, out of their own homes. It's all going directly to online. Now, you also know that how this was set up by venture capitalists, and this is set up to get it to a point and sell it to a Google or to an Amazon or to one of the big companies. And then these guys make X amount of dollars by selling it. So I don't know if this is set up to be the greatest editorial thing that ever lived, although I suspect I have a lot of friends.

Pierre Lebrun's a good friend. Eric DeHatchik's a good friend. Mike Russo's a good friend. I have a lot of good friends at this place that I hope it does wonderfully well. Scott M. on Twitter wants to know if you would ever join The Athletic. It's funny. I highly doubt it for a couple of different reasons. But yeah, let me just start from another point. I'm exactly what the Athletic needs because my Sunday column has a built-in

huge following. And people who don't otherwise read the papers or don't otherwise read or buy the Sun, read the Sunday column. And the Sunday notes, it's now, you know, we're into, you know, coming up to 30 years of doing it and people, you know, it's a pain in the ass to write. People love it. Like however you want to say it. I love it.

I don't know why it happened or how it happened, but people love it. So something like that would attract an audience. So on the one hand, I'll say, I don't know why it happened or how it happened, but people love it. So something like that would attract an audience. So on the one hand, I'll say that if you hired me strictly to write that for The Athletic, I would be shocked if I didn't pay for itself, pay for my own salary and more. On the other hand, there are people there that, frankly, I wouldn't want to work for or with. And so, you know, if I was left to myself to just do the one thing and not anything else down the road, it might be something that I consider.

I think I have the best job right now in Canadian sports journalism, in terms of sports writing, I can go where I want to go, I can do almost what I want to do. I don't have anyone else who's basically writing a call about our paper anymore. So it's not like you're fighting with people to get on this trip or to get on that trip. I have the world's greatest boss in Bill Pierce, a sports editor of your dreams. And so why would you ever leave that unless they were going under? But on the other hand, if I'm them, bringing me in makes sense from a dollar's point of view.

Interesting. Cool. And yeah, I won't name the guy I think you're referring to there, but we talked about in the last episode, there's a gentleman that you don't get along with. All bets are off. Mr. Myrtle the Turtle, I think, is the gent who had some issues there. But we talked about that in the last episode. In the Toronto Star, there was a very interesting article.

It's funny, it was in the Star and not the Sun, but the Star had an article about Cash Palmer. And you show up in this article. Can you share briefly here, for those who haven't seen the article and they should seek it out, but your relationship with Cash and what's happening there. Well, Mike Palmer, that's his first name, and I go back to grade one.

We were at grade one Hebrew school together, and then we wound up, I moved to the area right by where he lived, and it turns out my house sort of backed onto the street where he lived. And so from grade eight to grade 12,

he was in my inner circle of closest friends and has been for the last, you know, 40 years, or maybe more than that, one of my two or three or four closest friends. And he has gone through some really terrible times. He has lost, you know, a lot of money to drugs and a lot of money to gambling, I believe, and a lot of money to not really paying attention to what was happening to his life. And he hit rock bottom, like a lot of people do. But you don't expect someone who grew up with a silver spoon,

living in the Bayview, York Mills area, a house with a swimming pool and a cottage in Parry Sound and a place in Florida and a golf club, country club membership. I always thought they were the wealthiest people I knew. And so what happened was, as life took him, he had a very serious drug problem, and he couldn't control it, and in doing so, he basically bankrupted himself

to a point where there was, I'm talking, not a cent in the bank, not a cent in the wallet, about to be homeless, about to be evicted, about to be homeless, about to be evicted. And so he wanted to, we talked to, him and I talked about doing a PayPal. Not PayPal, one of the things they do online where you, GoFundMe.

Yes. Doing a GoFundMe and let's see if we could do that. And I thought to myself, well, how do you get a GoFundMe or how do you get somebody interested? And I thought, well, he wanted to go to a TV network, maybe to tell his story to a TV network. And I thought, I don't know if you can do that. I don't know if you're going to be interested in that. And Mary Ormsby and Paul Hunter, Mary and Paul are married,

are friends of mine. And I thought, well, maybe somehow in a different venue, it's possible that someone could tell the story. And so I pitched the story to both of them. And at the beginning, neither were really interested. And then Paul went out and met with Mike. And he was curious. And he spent months, by the way, working up to this.

He spent months interviewing him and interviewing other people, tracking through it and seeing where he went. And then he wrote what I thought was a frankly brilliant piece on a very sad story about a guy, you know, and a close friend. We got a guy hitting rock bottom and the amount of sympathy and whatever that came out of the piece was significant. But more important than all of that is that Mike went into rehab and he went through the months of rehab and then he's gone through the post-rehab where you're living in shelters and halfway houses.

And there's a guy, understand, that's growing up with a silver spoon and nothing but money. He's living with the rabbis in a place on Queen and Parliament where you check in every night to get your dinner. And so it's a whole new world for him. And so far he's succeeding in that he's back working. He's apparently clean. He's got some money in the bank for the first time in a very long time.

It's a slow process. It's one day at a time. I'm cheering for him. A lot of other people are cheering for him. We never did do the GoFundMe. I don't know exactly. I guess nobody had, you know, someone has to take the bull by the horns and go and do it.

He's lived in my house a couple times over the years, by the way, just in between being evicted or things that have happened. And it came to a point where that didn't seem like, it didn't seem like we were helping him in any way. And we had a group of friends at one time that were putting in money to support him. And that didn't seem like we were doing anything but sort of, you know, enabling him. And so he really needed to hit rock bottom before he could come back to, I mean, it's tough. Think about it. You're 60 years old. Mike's 60.

You know, he's working, you know, for the first time in years, and he's trying to make a living, and he's trying to get things done and trying to make his life make sense. It's a very, very difficult thing to do. Well, addiction does not discriminate between the rich and the poor. This is a reminder. I lost a brother to addiction. I'm very familiar with addiction and how it all works,

and it's a terrible, terrible thing. And I'm sorry, by the way. I'm sorry that that happened, and that would probably create some additional empathy inside you when you see somebody struggling with a disease. Oh, sure. And what else you do is you know all the games. You know the con jobs. You know the BS. You know what people will try. Now, the one thing I'll say for Mike, he doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He's not a person, as he's gone down, like he hasn't taken people with him. He hasn't robbed people. He hasn't stolen. He hasn't

committed crimes. He hasn't done all those other things. My brother, six years older than I am, he went through a lot of bad periods where he did do lots of things like that, where he went to prison a number of times. And, you know, he's your brother and you still love him and all that. But, like, you're looking at him and saying, like, where does this come from? And where did this happen? And how did this happen? And you realize that in his case it was heroin, so it was a different kind of drug. But the power of that drug is it takes over your life

and it changes your personality and it makes you a completely different person than you were. That's tough. Once again, I can only imagine that's terrible. The thing that gets me, and I'm now, he would be 66 if he was still alive. He's been gone since he was 41. Is that my parents, who are really good people and very good parents, they had like 20 years of him being an addict, being in prison, being somewhere around the world, not sure where he was, not sure if he was living on the streets.

I mean, as a parent parent I can't even imagine what that would be like I worry when my kid doesn't come home in time my parents are both gone now but I would love to have this conversation now about how did you do this and how did you stay sane

speaking of your son recently there was a grade 9 go to work day your son, so recently there was a grade nine go to work day or whatever. Okay. So your son, Jeff Simmons, tweeted this. I'm going to read his tweet. My only memory from grade nine go to work day, Darcy Tucker and Shane Corson telling my dad to go fuck himself the second I walked in. Well, you have to understand the context. Lakeshore Lions Arena, which is pretty close to where we're sitting right now. Yeah. Practice home of the Leafs.

And at that time, Pat Quinn was the coach of the Leafs. And this was take your kids to work day. And so we cleared it through the Leafs PR department that at that time, I think I took my son, Jeffrey, and I think at least one or two of his friends to practice, as did a bunch of other people. And normally the way the Leafs worked on a daily basis was Pat Quinn would do his post practice interview outside the dressing room. The minute he finished his interview, the room was open. So you had to wait for Quinn to finish before you went in. On that day, I think it was Pat Park, the PR

guy, who said, we're going to do it differently today. The kids are here. We're just going to open the room and let you guys in. So I didn't stay with Pat Quinn. I thought, I'm going to take the kids in. I don't think anyone told the players. So the first two guys I see are Tucker and Corson. It's like, frickin' frack.

And I wasn't real friendly with with those two so to speak the leafs were a really divided team at that time and uh and and so i walk in and they see you know they don't see the two kids they just see me and you know what the f are you doing here or f off and get out of here or something and the kids of, of course, thought this was hysterical. Right. And it's funny because over time, you know, Darcy Tucker's much long gone from the NHL and Shane Corson's long gone from the NHL. And one of the best pieces I've written this year, if not the best piece, was about Shane Corson and mental illness and the struggles he was having.

And I get along really well with Darcy, you know, at this time. You know, sometimes when guys are playing, you know, you get along a little less depending on what you're saying about them. I can imagine. On that note, and now this is the last thing, and then we're going to kick out the jams, which I'm psyched about. But somebody had a question. Future Blue Jays is his handle on Twitter.

And he asks, were you invited to Jose Bautista's wedding? That's the question. That's funny. I don't think anyone in our business would have been invited to Jose Bautista's wedding? That's the question. That's funny. I don't think anyone in our business would have been invited to Jose Bautista's wedding. Jose Bautista didn't care very much for people in the media. Here's another social media story. This is, again, what drives me nuts about social media.

I tweeted something to Jose Bautista on the trade deadline. I can't remember the exact circumstances other than, oh, Kansas City won the pennant without making trades at the deadline. See that, Jose Batista? That was the year he wanted the Jays to make trades at the deadline. And I got a response

back from him, basically, who are you? And, you know, kind of thing. And everybody had a great chuckle because he talked me down. Well, the next morning my phone rings alex anthopolis and paul beaston are on the phone they are laughing their whatever off they thought this twitter this tweet thing was the funniest thing they'd ever seen and then one of them said on the phone to me he doesn't do his own tweets by the way he's got

some company in new york who does them and of course, I tweet that out, which I probably shouldn't have. And then one second later, there's a Batista tweet that says, yes, I do do my own Twitter, which was BS, by the way. Because he did an interview with Cabby about a year or so later. Cabby from TSN.

And one of the things Cabby said was, well, who are your people? Like, who does what? And he says, well, I have someone who does this and someone who does that and someone who does my social media and someone who does my Twitter. It could be a combo, though. Some guys, they have the login and they can tweet, but they also have a company that will tweet. So the original response that got everybody all crazy and funny

did not come from him, number one. But then at spring training that year, I decided the first day of spring training I was there for, I'm going to go up to Batista. We're going to try and talk this thing out and figure out, you know, let's have a relationship. And we did. We shook hands. That was over four years ago, I think. I still get that thing retweeted all the time.

I still get that thing retweeted all the time. Like, people don't realize that from whatever it was, March of 2013 to now, you know, Jose Bautista gets as mad at me as he gets at Rich Griffin, as he gets at, you know, Rob Longley, as he gets at Robbie McLeod, as he gets at Shai Davidi. You know, he's just a guy who doesn't love the press much.

Right. But him and I haven't had a word or a bad word between us since then. I think he inspired your beard. That's what I think. This is an homage to Joey Batts. Actually, somebody thought I looked like Mandy Patinkin. I could see that.

Can you sing? I was going to say. If I could sing like Mandy Patinkin or even act like it, I might be pretty happy. There's an Andre the Giant mug here and of course Mandy Patinkin or even act like it, I might be pretty happy. I think of, yeah. See, there's an Andre the Giant mug here. And, of course, Mandy Patinkin and Andre the Giant were both in, what's the movie called again? Princess Bride. Princess Bride. I love Andre.

I love the giant Jean Furet. Yeah. Oh, I love the photos of the beer can in his hand. The beer can looks so tiny. On that note, I'm going to play a very custom message from a gentleman named Brian Gerstein. Brian Gerstein is with propertyinthesix.com. And this is for you, Steve. So you need to listen up. You're the only one who's getting this message. Let's hear Brian.

PropertyInTheesix.com. Steve, you may remember me as we met in person for Jonah Carey's book launch for Up, Up and Away, the go-to book on the illustrious Montreal Expos. I was busting your chops for you not voting for Tim Raines for the Hall of Fame, and I would like to think that since you did change your vote after, it was all due to my incredible salesmanship. Jonah may be helped a bit too. Let's hope that Larry Walker, one of the best five-tool players to ever play the game, stages a miraculous comeback to get in as well. Larry Walker should be in the Hall of Fame, right?

Absolutely. I voted for him every year that I've had a vote that he's been eligible. I don't understand it. And in fact, I'm going to write something probably for Sunday. Edgar Martinez may get in the Hall of Fame. Maybe not this year, but the way his vote is trending, it looks like he'll get in. Edgar Martinez was primarily a designated hitter. His offensive stats are very close to identical

to Larry Walker's offensive stats. Larry Walker's a great outfielder, six-time gold glove winner. He used to throw guys out at first all the time. How do you equate a guy, and yet half of baseball is playing in the field, how do you equate a guy who doesn't play in the field to a guy who was an all-time great outfielder? Like, to me, for one reason or another, the Baseball Hall of Fame does not respect defense nearly as much as it should. Yeah, it would be great to see

Larry Walker in the Hall of Fame. By the way, there's a pint glass in front of you from Brian. So that message is from Brian. So that's a gift from Brian to you. Propertyinthesix.com pint glass. But you're going to need something to pour into the pint glass. Look,

I feel like Monty Hall here. I'm giving out some gifts for you. There's a six pack of beer for you courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. By the way, tomorrow, this is no, this is Thursday, right? Not Friday. OK, so on Saturday, there's a Santa Claus parade that goes along Lakeshore and I'll be at it. And Great Lakes beer has a float. In fact, I was invited to march with the gang with this float, but I'm not going to because my three-year-old is too excited to see Santa, so I'm going to stick with him so we can see the

big guy with the white beard. So your six-pack includes a few bottles. So it actually might be the most, like if you measure milliliters, this might be the most beer that's gone to any guest in the history of this podcast. So please take that home and enjoy. I feel very special. It's a new record for quantity. Anyway, enjoy that. There's one more thing I want to tell everybody about before Steve and I kick out the jams. This is Paytm, which is an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot.

So you create an account with PayTM. You download PayTM from paytm.ca. It's an app for your smartphone. You set it up and you can pay all your bills there and they pay you to do it. So you get cash back on everyday goods. And if you use, this is the important part, if you use the promo code Toronto Mike, they'll give you $10

towards your first bill payment. So that's free money. So visit paytm.ca, download the app, use the promo code Toronto Mike, all one word, and you get $10

and you can thank me later. So as a guy who really is disorganized about that kind of stuff, I'm going to have to download this. And I'm not doing this as a promo because it sounds like something that actually will work. I've done it so I'm not one of those guys who's going to, you know,

read an ad about an app that he's never downloaded. And I find it super convenient. You link it to your account and you can pay. You can pay credit card. I just paid my hydro bill the other day. All the bills are there. And it'll even remind you when things are due like it's so it's all like it's one stop shopping for paying everything and i quite and like i said you get they'll pay you for doing it because you can use my promo code when you do it and you can uh if you buy like let's say you buy like a 50 amazon gift card they give you three percent of that goes

back to you so it's pays to use Paytm and I highly recommend it. You do that. But Stephen, I have one very important question for you. We're only an hour and 16 minutes in and now we're going to start the episode. Should I have been... That first part, I should have recorded it? No. You don't care. You didn't record it? No, of course I did.

Of course I did. Stephen, are you ready to kick out the jams? As best as possible. Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, the handmade blade, the child's balloon, eclipses both the sun and moon, to understand you know too soon, there's no sense in trying. Pointed threats they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn that he not busy Being born is busy dying

Temptations page flies out the door You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar You feel the moan, but unlike before You discover that you'd just be one more person crying So don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear. It's all right, Ma. I'm only sighing. Bob Dylan.

It's alright ma. And then in parentheses, I'm only bleeding. Tell us why you love this jam. I don't know at what age I fell in love with the written word. And sitting here now, I feel so unqualified to be talking about Bob Dylan, who to me is the greatest songwriter I have ever come across. It's such a personal thing.

But I think at around 10 or 12, I started listening to his songs and I became enraptured by them. And it wasn't how he sang them and it wasn't his guitar. And I've seen him in concert many, many times. It was the use of words and the phraseology. And in this song alone, there are just so many, as a writer,

there's so many turns of phrase that just pop out at me. And I didn't know I was going to be a writer, and I didn't know that the written word meant so much to me. But what I discovered in trying to come up with the songs for today was I kept changing them because I didn't want to leave one out and I didn't want to leave this out and I didn't want to leave that out. But the one thing that sort of brought them all together was lyrics were really important.

And lyrics still are really important to me. And I think, you know, of all of the great Dylan songs, and there are so many, what gets me about this is you can turn the music off and you can read this as a poem, and it's just as powerful, and it's just as electric. And I think that's what made... There's so many things that made Dylan what he was,

but for me, when there's something here, when he does something like you know obscenity who really cares propaganda all is phony you know you don't hear that in a lot of songs you know there's just so many turn of phrases and one-liners and things and when i read uh his book everyone was looking for meaning in everything he said and sometimes he said there was no meaning. He was just writing it. And he would let people interpret it the way they wanted to interpret it.

And it's not like sort of Springsteen, for example, another great songwriter who would think, oh, I have to write a song about this, and therefore I will do it. I don't know where Bob Dylan's songs came from. I just know they talk to me. And when someone's talking to you, it's very personal. How close was Jeff to becoming Dylan Simmons? Was that ever a possibility?

I don't think so. It's funny, his brother almost became Michael Jordan Simmons. My wife wanted the name Michael Jordan, but I said, a sports writer can't name a became Michael Jordan My wife wanted the name Michael Jordan But I said A sports writer can't name a kid Michael Jordan Everybody will laugh at me So it became Michael something else He's been mad about that ever since

Could have been Michael Dillon Definitely a poet Absolutely In fact didn't he win a Nobel Prize for poetry Yeah he won the Nobel Prize Like 50 years after, or 40 years after the majority of his best work was done. I thought it was a wonderful honor, horribly timed.

It's like giving somebody an Oscar for a movie they made 25 years later. I would say better late than never. Fantastic. Money doesn't talk talk it swears who writes that But I mean no harm, nor put fault On anyone that lives in a vault But it's all right, Ma If I can't please him

Was it difficult to pick a Dylan song to be in your 10 list? How did you choose which Dylan track? Well, the obvious one is like a Rolling Stone, which is like Rolling Stone magazine's best song of all time. It's just such a great, standard, beautiful, perfect song. But I wanted to sort of, what's the one that talked to me? And he just said it. Obscenity who really cares, money doesn't talk, it it swears there's so many turns of phrase in this song that I think maybe it's not

Dylan's best song but it's his best poetry and so from that point of view it just stayed with me and it always has stayed with me and and I'm blown away to this day even reading it and hearing it and seeing it again listening to the brilliance of it some people listen to music and they just hear the melody and the beat

and the words are almost like doesn't matter you could be saying blah blah blah and then other people the lyrics are primary importance it sounds like that's yourself. The lyrics have more weight even than the song. But the best songs, of course, are great lyrics with great melodies. Well, it's funny.

You look at the Beatles. The Beatles are everyone's favorite band and probably should be everyone's favorite band. But when John Lennon wrote songs by himself the lyrics were tremendous and the songs were so so when paul mccartney wrote songs by himself the songs were fantastic and the lyrics were so so and so you realize the combination of them you know the brilliance came together and of course you know that's my own theory on that more than anything else but you know look at look at look at the Paul McCartney songs post-Beatles. Jet.

Ooh. It's not exactly complicated lyrics. Right. That was a great opening jam. Are you ready for number two? Sure. I come from down in the valley Where mister when you're young They bring you up to June Like your daddy, John

Me and Mary, we met in high school When she was just 17 We'd drive out of this valley Down to where the fields were green We'd go down to the river And into the river we'd dive Oh, down to the river we'd rise the river we'd rise.

Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wore. And for my 19th birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat. We went down to the courthouse And the judge put it all to rest No wedding day

smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers no wedding dress That night we went down to the river Then into the river we then into the river we'd die. Oh, down to the river we'd die.

Through Springsteen, the river. How do you pick one Springsteen song? It's like trying to decide which of your kids you like best. It's like a row of chocolate there, and this piece is better than that piece is better than this piece. You could do a top 100 songs of your life and have 100 Springsteen songs. But for whatever reason,

when we're just sitting around and someone says what do you want to hear I always want to hear the river and again the story you know he's a masterful storyteller you know the part I got married pregnant

man that was all she wrote before my 19th birthday got a union card and a wedding coat. We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisles, no flowers, no wedding dress.

Like, tell me, how visual is that? It's telling me a story, and I think this is his sister he's actually writing about here I found that out when I read his book I didn't know it before that and I loved the song long before knowing that but it's just

it was a piece of American life at a point in time in history that will put you right in the middle of the story by the time you hear the end of the song, you know the couple. You know what they were trying to do with their lives. You know that girl should never have gotten pregnant. You know that he didn't want to work in the mill. All those things.

And just like Johnstown Company, you're thinking small town Pennsylvania. Just think Johnstown Company, you're thinking small town Pennsylvania. It's just so many little parts here. Again, you can look at 50 Springsteen songs or 100, however you want to choose. If you're going to go see one concert in your life, this is the one you go to. There's no one else who puts on a concert comparable than I've ever seen and you know again I'm not I'm not the age where I should be speaking for the majority anymore I'm in that you know I'm in that group where the advertisers don't care much about and then I think the people selling records don't care much about but this song talked to me from the first time I heard it and I'm sitting

here today and I'm enjoying it as much as I always have. Have you ever bumped into Brad Fay in your travels? Yep, sure. 96 times he's seen Springsteen. There is a, and I don't know why this is, but there is an enormous correlation between sports writers and Bruce Springsteen. From Sherry Ross, who used to do the Devil's Color, first woman, I think, to do color on NHL games. She calls herself Sherry Darling.

To Mike Hogan, who's the play-by-play guy of the Argos. He was just here. He's his favorite artist of all time, Bruce Springsteen. So many people in my business. I don't know what the correlation has been. Maybe it's the fact that you get into this business because you love to write, and then you look and you see a preeminent writer

like Bruce and a preeminent entertainer and everything else. A lot of it, of course, is your age. I won't date you or whatever, but if you're a teenager in the 70s, if the 70s is your decade. Like if you, I won't date you or whatever, but if you're a teenager in the 70s, like if the 70s is your decade for music, then Bruce is probably, there's a good chance he's one of your guys. Yeah, it's, you know,

if you're my age and white, that's a... That's fair, yeah. And you know, guys, you mean Damien Cox had it, Hebsey had it, like a lot of you, right, a lot of these sports guys

who are around your age are big Bruce guys, absolutely. And again, if you ever, guys like, you mean Damien Cox had it? Hebsey had it? Like a lot of you, right. A lot of these sports guys who are around your age are big Bruce guys. Absolutely. And again, if you ever see him live, it's a whole other experience. It's, you know, I have only four photos that were taken by someone

in my office on the wall. One of them is a Dylan picture. One of them is a Springsteen picture. One of them is a Joe Namath picture. And one's Muhammad Ali. That's my Mount Rushmore. No, that's awesome. That's great. Another great jam. Let's kick out another one, shall we? I don't want to listen to my telephone ring Or sing ding-a-ling or talk about a thing.

Not this morning. I don't want to think about the night before or maybe it's a bore behind an open door. Got no time for that this morning If I had the mind or I had the time Maybe I could throw together a new kind of rhyme And tell about my warning But it's too late now It's too late now It's too late now It's too late now

I don't wanna think about a runaway dad That took away the only thing that I never had Don't even miss him this morning This is the Guess Who Sour Sweets. You're a high school buddy, got a little too high I can't help him out this morning I grew up really Canadian. I've always sort of thought of myself as like,

I was always interested in everything that was Canadian, whether it was Canadian music or Canadian art or Canadian authors or anything and so at a certain point in time the Guess Who became one of my go-to bands and as just as now then you know radio was forced to play a percentage of Canadian songs and so the Guess Who and Burton Cummings and the band and Gordon Lightfoot and all of those people became significant to me. And I would follow their careers and buy their albums and see them live

and all that kind of thing. And you always were, in those days, it was who could make it in the States? Like who could actually break through? And the Guess Who did break through and kind of in the opposite of the trag who could actually break through? And the guests who did break through, kind of in the opposite of the tragically hip kind of way, they seemed to

hit it big. And American Woman was the big hit, which could have been the easy one to pick here today. Right, right. But this song, again, people talking to you, like, turn a phrase, a story. Here they are. There's a part, it turn a phrase, a story.

Here they are. There's a part, it's just like 46201. That's the area code for Indianapolis. I think they were in Indianapolis on tour, and stuff wasn't going well, and he wasn't happy, and didn't want to answer his phone, don't want to listen to my telephone ring, not today, leave me alone. Reminded me of the time when maybe I had too much to drink that night.

And your parents were mad at you because you came home too late. And the phone's ringing. And you're pulling your sheets back over your head as your dad's saying, get out of bed, you bum. That kind of thing. And this song has always talked to me. Years ago, I got asked by a guy who was doing a book. And I think he asked about a thousand people to pick a top 10 of Canadian songs of all time.

Okay. And, and then he put together his top hundred, I think, Canadian songs ever for the book. And I was happy to, that whatever influence, you know,

my Sour Street, Sour Sweet pick had, it, it made the list. And I was happy to, whatever influence, you know, my Sour Street pick had, it made the list. I have no idea who else chose it or how many people chose it. You know, I was a bit young for the heyday of the Guess Who. I missed their heyday. But I will, when I was a very young man,

I got a hold of a Guess Who Greatest Hits, and I played the mess out of that. I just loved it. Loved it. There was a time when Exhibition Stadium was still going at the CNE. Every summer during the X, they brought in major acts for concerts at CNE Stadium.

And almost every year, Chicago came, and almost every year, the Beach Boys came, and almost every year, the Beach Boys came, and almost every year, the Guess Who came. And I'm trying to remember who else over time. I think Super Tramp played there. But I must have seen the Guess Who at least three times at the X. And I remember seeing Bachman, Turner, Overdrive, of course, Randy Bachman being part of the original Guess Who. So that sort of part of the Toronto concert scene disappeared or moved around over time. Molson Amphitheater, I think,

took over for a lot of that business. They had the forum, the rotating stage at the forum before the amphitheater. I know Bernie Cummings would play there, for example. They used to have free concerts at Ontario Place where you could go see Marie McLaughlin. I think even guys like Gordon Lightfoot

would go do a free show there. I know Burden Cummings would do it. I remember I went to Chuck Mangione once because the girl I was trying to date wanted to see Chuck Mangione.

So sometimes you go to things just because, you know, you're in high school and that really good-looking girl likes Chuck Mangione. For sure. Guys my age know him

from his many appearances on King of the Hill. That's where guys we know Chuck Mangione. For sure. Guys my age know him from his many appearances on King of the Hill. That's where guys we know Chuck from. That's great. That's great. The Guess Who, which was Canada's biggest band for a long time. They were massive. Massive band. Speaking of massive bands, we've got to hear your fourth jam. I hear they're a pretty big popular band

as well. Let's do it. Hey Jude Don't make it bad Take a sad song and make it better Remember

to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better Hey Jude, don't be afraid You were made to go out and get her The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better And anytime you feel the pain Hey Jude, refrain Don't carry the world upon your shoulder For well you know that it's a fool who plays

it cool by making his world a little colder Na na na na na, na, na Na, na, na, na Hey Jude Of course, this is the Beatles, Hey Jude.

I grew up in a house of four kids and one record player. And my dad was a music nut. And so there was sort of a five-way battle for use of the record player. Which, of course, as the youngest of everyone, meant you had no say whatsoever in anything that went on. So if my dad wasn't home, it was Beatles and Rolling Stones all the time. And so I grew up on so much music

that it was just constant in my house. Everybody was into it. My brother actually promoted concerts while in high school. He was the first person to bring Alice Cooper to Toronto. This was back in the late 60s. Love Alice Cooper. Yeah. That was New Year's Eve at what was then called the Rock Pile,

later the Masonic Temple. Of course. Yeah, yeah. And it was, you know, he was an unknown at the time. And it isn't often an 18-year-old can promote a rock concert, but he was an ambitious guy before his life went astray. So you've got to pick one Beatles. If you're going to do this,

has anybody been in here without a Beatles song? Of course, yeah, because you're the 26th jam kicker, but the Beatles are the most played band so far. I bet you Schultz didn't have the Beatles, because Schultz is really into different kinds of music. I got a check, but I don't think he did have the Beatles. Yeah, I could see that. He's got an interesting taste. Well, I got a check, but I don't think he did have the Beatles. Yeah, that would be, I could see that.

He's got an interesting taste. Well, he's a blues guy. He's dragged me out to many nightclubs to see things on the road. We've got to see this guy. He's amazing. And of course, you've never heard of him. And it turned out he was amazing.

But the Beatles to me is the band of all bands and the band of my life, maybe the band of most of our lives. So I had to pick one song. And I'm thinking back to the days where you're fighting for the record player. And nobody ever had a complaint if A.J. would have sung. It's just like, it's the one that stops you. And if there's such a thing as a perfect song, it's the perfect song.

And sometimes it makes me smile, and sometimes for some reason it makes me almost want to cry. Like, I just love the song so much. Wow. I'm going to be turning it up in a second. At the end when they did that, then hold on, I've got to jack that. That's a good part.

This is a great, great song. And it's later, of course, at the end of the Beatles. Oh, man. I'm sure there was a radio edit that was much shorter than this, but this is the studio version on the album and it's a good seven minutes long.

And at a time when songs are, what, two minutes and 30 seconds, two minutes and 40 seconds? You're right, yeah. I love the scream. I love the scream. We had just the other day, Ed Keenan from The Star came in and he had Revolution on his list. Okay. And it's got that great like scream at the beginning.

It's a very rocky song. Yeah. It's a great rock song. The grungiest of the Beatles songs, maybe, if you will. But you're right about when you said, you know, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, they dominated the 60s. There's so, and today,

they hold up, like, these classics. Like, when somebody kicks out a jam and it's Gimme Shelter or something like that by the Stones, it's like, that still sounds so fantastic. I was at a Grey Cup party on Friday night and Satisfaction came on. The DJ was playing. And all of these 30-something and 20-something girls from Ottawa got up dancing and screaming. And I'm thinking to myself, you weren't even born when this, you know, I was like six years old when Satisfaction or seven years old when Satisfaction came out. And it,

to me, still one of the great, great, I mean, I don't know how I missed on it today, but one of the great, great songs ever. Yeah. It's got that great riff too, you know, that identifiable riff. I don't know if you're familiar with Laura Dyken. She's at TSA. Oh, sure, yeah. Laura, who's quite young, right? Her favorite song of all time because she came in. Her dad happens to live

across the street just for a small world story, but she came in and we had a long chat and I just played her. I didn't do kick up the jams. I just did, what's your favorite song

of all time? And we talked about it. Let's Spend the Night Together by the Rolling Stones is Laura Dyken's favorite song of all time. I'll know that next time I see her. And it's right. You don't have to be alive for this stuff like i know i wasn't alive when the beatles were together but uh this stuff is just classic classic rock and it holds up and

that was a great jam i remember having this conversation with some of my friends when the year 2000 was coming because everybody was doing the end of century shows and programming and what were the greatest movies of the century and what were the greatest songs of the century and who were the greatest artists and remember when they broke down the lists at the end you know it was the Beatles and it was the Stones and it was Elvis and it was you know Frank Sinatra and I'm thinking what a lucky time we lived through because we lived through the best of all of those years and we got to see virtually all of them, if we chose to, live. I mean, I never saw the Beatles. My sister had tickets to see the Beatles.

At the Gardens? At the Gardens. And one of her friends had invited her and she turned it down. Wow. And she's 63 years old now and has been kicking herself for about 55 years, I think, on this. I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, that's a classic.

Here's another classic. Let's listen to your fifth jam. Hey, where did we go? Days when the rains came Down in the hollow Playing a new game Laughing and running, hey, hey running skipping and jumping in the misty morning fall with our hearts that felt better than you And you, my brown-eyed girl Van Morrison, Brown-Eyed Girl.

This is first love music. You meet the girl you think is going to be the one who's going to change your life. I think I was 24 or 25. I'm living in Calgary away from home for the first time outside of university. And I fall head over heels in love with a girl. And her favorite song was Brown Eyed Girl. And she loved Van Morrison.

She loved Moondance. And every time we were at her place, Brown Eyed Girl played. And so this is my homage to a great song and a great lady who went on and married and did whatever else she did in other places. And I went on and did the same. But that feeling of, I could listen to your music all day long because I love you, I don't know if that ever leaves you.

I'm a pretty emotional person when it comes to those kind of things. I didn't have a lot of girlfriends over the years. I didn't have a lot of relationships to speak of. who I haven't seen now in really 30 plus years. She just grabbed my heart like almost no one had before. And so that's what this song is for me. And every time I hear it, I think of Claudia. This song is a time machine for you.

Yeah. Takes you right back. But aren't all songs? Yep. And that's the funny thing. When I'm putting this list together, what hit me was a couple things. One, boy, am I nostalgic.

I'm so nostalgic about life. And also, so much of what happened to you between the ages of 10 and 20 mattered for your whole life. Like, a song that you heard then, for whatever reason, what the circumstances were, what it did for you, what it said to you, it stays with you. And it stays with you a long time. And isn't that the power of music more than really anything else in our lives? Like, I don't know anything

else that stays with you the same way a song does. It takes you back. What was I doing that summer? Why did I like there? You know, who was the girl I was trying to date? Who were the friends I was hanging out with? You know, what was the sound you wanted to hear? It's so different. And that's why I love these episodes, because the stories that come with the songs, where you transport in time, and this song reminds me of this girl who I was in love with my first time away from home. That is what I love about.

So the songs are great, but the stories about why you love the jams, that's why I love these episodes. Let's kick out another one. Pretty women at walking with gorillas down my street From my window I'm staring while my coffee goes cold

Look over there There There's a lady that I used to know She's married now or engaged or something so I'm told

Is she really going out with him? Is she really gonna take him home tonight? Is she really going out with him? Because if my eyes don't deceive me There's something going wrong around here. Joe Jackson. Is she really going out with him? Can I tell you a quick Joe Jackson story?

Of course. Which is kind of unusual. It's a sports writer story. I'm covering the Calgary Flames. And Eric DeHatchick, who works for the Athletic Dow, is the other writer on the beat at the time. the athletic Dow is the other writer on the, on the beat at the time. And they, one of the players on the flames had just come up with a box of Sony Walkman when they first came out and they gave us the Sony Walkman and we had to buy

them from him, but he had like 40 of them in the lobby. And he's selling them to all the players and the coaches and the management and us. So we get on the plane and Eric had made a tape of Joe Jackson stuff, which I believe included this song, but I'm not entirely sure of that. So him and I are sitting on the plane opposite aisles

with our headsets on listening to Joe Jackson and who walks right down the aisle? Joe Jackson. Oh my God. And it's like, is that Joe Jackson? And then we weren't sure. Then he sat down and it turns out the guys in his band were right behind us so

we found out that that was Joe Jackson. What are the odds of you listening to Joe Jackson and he walks through and... Amazing. That's an amazing coincidence. This to me is one of those songs that hit you on a number of levels like so many of the songs I hits you on a number of levels. Like so many of the songs I've picked, you know, it's tremendously written and it tells a great story. But I think every guy, this is a guy's song. Every guy has seen that either great looking woman or the woman that he thought was great looking with the guy that just didn't seem to fit and you're thinking what the hell is he doing what the hell is she doing with him because if my eyes don't deceive me there's something going wrong around here and you know i think i remember in high school one of the girls i really sort of was smitten by was going out with one of these guys

that my eyes don't deceive me and I wrote in her yearbook roses are red violets are blue when you break up with Doug I'll be waiting for you. She married Doug by the way.

I should point out. And I know this song well from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yeah, there's no bad things in Fast Times at Ridgemont High by the way. I love bad things in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, by the way. I love that. I love it, too.

That movie stands up very well. Sometimes I quote the guy who was selling the tickets. I can't remember his name anymore. The scalper guy. And he was like, there's no better place to be right now than right here. Like in that whole sentiment. And that was Marv Levy's all famous line. Where would you rather be than right here, right now?

That was what he used to tell the Buffalo Bills. Awesome. See, it all comes back to sports. And of course, Joe Jackson, I don't believe when he was on the airplane, was he shoeless? That's what I want to know. No, but he's enormously tall. And I got to say this. Can I say this? He's really kind of ugly looking. You can say that.

Sure. I don't think he listens. He's not an attractive man, and he's got to be six foot five or something. He's a big guy. Crazy. All right, let's kick out your seventh jam. We come on this loop, John B. My grandfather and me.

Around Nassau Town we did roam Drinking all night Got into a fight Well, I feel so broken I want to go home So hoist up the John B. said See how the

name sail sets Call for the captain ashore Let me go home Let me go home I wanna go home I want to go home Yeah, yeah Well, I feel so broke up

I want to go home I almost feel bad speaking over them, but... I know. The Beach Boys, Luke John Dean. And it's weird. The Beach Boys did not write this song. It's one of the few songs that they have been successful with that they didn't write.

This is a song from the 1920s that they altered and upgraded. I think someone else recorded it in the 50s and then they recorded it again. But Summer to me was, as most canadians i guess was such a big thing in my life and it still is like i'm a summer is everything to me we had a cottage at lake simcoe and from the day that school ended to labor day we went to the cottage we never came

back to Toronto. That's where we spent every summer. So I spent every summer with the same kids that you never saw throughout the year, the same families. Of course, being outside and being around fires and you're always listening to music. And inevitably, the soundtrack of summer was the Beach Boys.

And so for this, I could have picked you know California Girls or Wendy or you know Good Vibrations or there's so many songs but this is the one that always got again I think it's the story there's always like I'm always attracted to a story whether it was in in the river or is she really going out with him and this i just love the story and i always found if i was in my car and i was just thinking of a song to sing by myself this with a horrible voice by the way this would be one of the songs man this this song tells a story in a good two and a half minutes, I think, is that Beach Boys track.

Because your next jam, which we're about to play, another great story, takes a little longer. So I hope it's okay with you. I took the full version. I just felt sacrilegious if I take the radio edit. But let's start it now. Let's hear your story about this tremendous jam. Let's start it now. Let's hear your story about this tremendous jam. A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.

And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while but February made me shiver with every paper I deliver bad news on the doorstep I couldn't take one more step I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride but something touched me deep inside the day the music died. So bye-bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. And them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye. Singing, this'll be the day that I die. This'll be the day that I die. Did you write the book of love and do you have faith in God above?

If the Bible tells you so. Don McLean, American Pie. There are university courses in the United States strictly about this song. You could take an American Pie course at serious universities where you talk about what those words mean and how it's all broken out. I grew up in a really musical family. My dad did some acting and some singing. My dad did some acting and some singing. My sister did some acting and some singing. My brother was involved in promotion of music

and later in selling drugs to musicians. And my cousin Stephen was the lead singer in the Barenaked Ladies. And there's a lot of... So you're just... Maybe I should have known this. Maybe I did know it, and maybe I forgot. So your cousin is Stephen Page. Correct.

His mother is Simmons. Wow, I don't think I knew that. Okay. That's tremendous, because my Bare Naked Ladies include Stephen Page. I don't listen to the post pages. And we're named... In the Jewish religion, you're named for someone who's passed away. Him and I are named for the same person.

We're both Stephen and we're both named for his grandfather, which was my which is my father's brother. Wow. And I'm very close with his parents to this day. And so, you know, I'm a huge fan of the band. I'm a huge fan of him. I'm a huge fan of the band. I'm a huge fan of him. I'm a huge fan of their songs. But there's a lot of little musical connections within the family. And I have a niece who is a singer.

And when we get the whole family together at holidays or things, inevitably guitars come out. And inevitably someone's going to say American Pie. And my brother-in-law will get out, who's playing like Toronto bars and things like that still to this day will do that. And I go back to grade 9 with this song. This song came out in grade 9. And it's not often that a song becomes a status thing, but if you knew all the words

to American Pie and Grade 9, you were cool. And I think that's, you know, for me, that's why the song always stayed with me from the time when you had to know all the words and whether you could go through all the things without cheating. Because in those days,

you didn't get lyrics on albums. There was no internet you could download things from. So, you know, you'd have to listen and listen and listen to get all the words and then, you know, hopefully that would impress you enough

that someone might dance with you at next up to dance. Oh, but we never got the chance. As the players tried to take the field, the marching band refused to yield. Do you recall what was revealed today? The music died. We started singing live. That's why I like the, I don't know what this is, eight minutes maybe?

But this is the version I like because you get more stories. I don't think there are any short versions of the song. Maybe they fade out, you know what I do? It's like long and longer. Yeah, I think what they do in the four and a half minute mark is I think on some stations they fade it out like after four and a half minutes. I don't know what radio station it is, but I was hearing one recently where they weren't ending any of the songs.

They were just getting to two-thirds or three-quarters, and then bing, and on to the next one. It's a different kind of motif. Just give us the chorus. Maybe that's it. Just quickly on Stephen Page, just for a moment, since you're a big Beach Boys fan

I'm surprised I don't see Brian Wilson on your list it was on I love the song and I had it on the list and I thought

nepotism and whatever else that's okay because I saw Steven in concert last I think it was March at the Danforth

Music Theatre was that when he was with the trans Canadian he's with two guys that night and a choir. Okay. And he was about two-thirds maybe through a really good concert. And someone was seemingly walking out.

And he took the microphone and he said, Don't leave. I haven't done Brian Wilson yet. I think it's a fabulous song, and I love it. I love the way they changed it over the years and made it better. To me, that's their best song. But out of nepotism or whatever you want to call it, I left it off the list. It is my favorite Barenaked Lady song is Brian Wilson.

But somebody, I think Freddie P from the Humble and Fred show, he kicked out the jams and he went with the cover of Lovers in a Dangerous Time that the Barenaked Ladies used. The Bruce Coburn song.

Right. And just for, even just for like the lyric, kick out the darkness till it bleeds daylight, like one of the greatest lyrics in can rock history.

I mean, I have a, to me, there's about 10 songs from the album Gordon. Gordon, by the way, is my cousin's middle name.

That would have been Stephen's father. Okay, there you go. So he's Victor Gordon Page. So the album was named for him because he was their first manager and the guy who got the original indie tape going and the whole story behind it. Oh, the yellow tape.

Yeah. Famous yellow tape. Yeah. I remember playing that in the car with kids in car seats and there was a rap song. Okay, it's Fight the Power. Fight the Power.

Because I'm looking at the Public Enemy t-shirt right now. Okay, so it's Fight the Power and there's this line about something buggy drummers or something. Oh, are you talking about Buddy? Buddy Epson? Buddy Epson. And so in that,

the kids in the car seats would be banging on their, on the car seats, drumming along. Yes, Elvis was a hero to most. Buddy Elvis was a hero. Buddy Epson was a hero. Yeah, they do a fun thing on that.

I had that yellow tape. I had two of them, actually, and I played the mess out of that. Yeah, even that, what's the rain? You can blame it on, blame it on, blame it.

Yoko? No, Yoko Ono was their big one they did at Speaker's Corner. That was like the first thing I ever heard from those guys. But the blame it on the rain, I thinko no was their big one they did at speakers corner that was like the first thing I ever heard from those guys but the blame it on the

rain I think or something there I can't remember one of the big anyway one of the big Barenaked Lady songs on that was blame it on the rain or

boy my memory's terrible yeah I'm trying to go back I know here we'll close with these guys here. What a jam. Are you ready for your ninth jam?

Sure. Every breath you take And every move you make Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. Every single day, and every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you. Oh, can't you see? You belong to me. I'm a poor hoax. Every step you take. Every move you make. The police.

Every breath you take. Everybody has a list of go-to bands. The ones they listen to, the ones you want to hear more often. You have more songs on your iPod or whatever, your phone or whatever you're getting music. The Police have always been one of those bands for me from the time they first came out. And again, this was probably, I could have probably picked six or seven different songs for this one but again I love the turn of phrases here you know seems to always come back that that's the one sort of thing that connects song to song here is that I love the turn of phrase and probably because I I know how hard writing is and I imagine writing songs are is way harder than writing

because I can't even visualize or think about the idea of writing songs but when you get something like every move you make every vow you break every smile you fake how many of us have faked a smile like everyone always every claim you stake I'll watching you. I actually used this song in a column once. When I was covering the Calgary Flames, Mike Vernon was the goalie. And Mike Vernon was a local Calgary kid. And Calgary is basically still, it's kind of a small town, big city. There's only so many places you can go and there's nowhere to hide and if you're a mike vernon who grew up in calgary and then played junior hockey

in calgary and then played nhl hockey in calgary every time you were anywhere everyone knew where you were and so i did a piece of what's it like when everyone knows where you are and who you are and i use you know every breath you take every move you make they'll be I'll be watching you and that was kind of what his life was like and and then you could change this to mean whatever it means to you or ever you want it to mean but you know I I love I love the lyrics I love the song I love the music I love the singing you know again this is one that just brings a smile to my face. The Bare Naked Ladies album you love is called Gordon. And this guy's name is Gordon.

Sting? Yeah, it's Gordon Sumner. Okay. There you go. So it's a Gordon thing. No surprises. I always get Sting and the other Sting mixed up. Remind me, who's the other Sting?

The wrestling Sting. Oh, I don't know that one. I only know mid to late 80s WWF wrestlers. That's my sweet spot. He was a huge wrestler, mostly not for the WW. He was in the other group. WCW? WCW. Oh, with Ric Flair.

Yeah, he was one of the Big big stars Of Of wrestling Which was a passion of mine For As a kid In fact I wrote I had We had our own

Wrestling magazine When I was in high school Get out of here It was called Toronto Wrestling Results And it was one of those things You made it on a Xerox machine And

We sold it by mail To like people In other cities. Oh, wow. It didn't last very long. I think it lasted maybe three issues or four issues.

Still, that's some cool initiative there. That's the Tunney years, right? Was it... Yeah, the Tunney years and Maple Leaf Wrestling and The Sheik was the big star

in those days. Johnny Valentine, people like that. When I used to watch Maple Leaf Wrestling on CHCH, I never forgot the catchphrase that Red, I think.

Billy Red Lions. Billy Red Lions would say, and don't you dare miss it. Every once in a while, I'll stick that in a column, just sort of out of fun or out of respect to Billy Red. You know what's funny? I use it all the time in a tweet, and whenever I type it out, I'm thinking of, when I used to see it on Maple Leaf Wrestling on Channel 11.

Well, one of the elements of the Sunday column that I do every week is I do birthdays. And so it takes a while to find the right birthdays and who you're going to use each week. And each week I'll check the wrestling list because there's a website where you can get

wrestling birthdays to see if there's anybody that sort of hits home for me that I want to stick in there. Yeah, you've got to be careful there because the life expectancy of a wrestler seems to be... Well, you got to be careful. I've had at least three dead happy birthdays. Not a good thing. Yeah, people won't let you

forget that, will they? No. Especially in this age of Twitter, you got to be extra careful. One of the nice things now is you put the column out on Twitter, say Saturday afternoon or saturday evening and you accidentally have a dead guy in the whatever became ofs and within five minutes someone is going to be telling you that so by the time the newspaper comes out it's already been corrected

and or removed and same with being online they can just go online and fix whatever they have to fix so that's a good point so when So when you stick a guy in there, and what I've learned also over time is I can't trust my memory. I can't trust that I think he's alive, therefore he is. Because every once in a while, there's someone that you just didn't remember passing. Sure, sure. Like I know a junkyard dog.

I can't believe he's gone. He's been gone decades now. Well, one of the things, I actually had this backwards. A reference to, remember Ted DiBiase, the Million Dollar Man? Of course. I made a reference to Ted DiBiase being the late Ted DiBiase, which he wasn't. And I got a bunch of phone calls and letters. And I tell you, if you ever make a wrestling mistake, you hear about it from everyone.

And so I get a pile of, and I want to correct it. And so I correct it in the next Sunday saying, you know, Ted DiBiase is not dead, only his career is. Let's kick out your final jam. I may cry here.

When you're down and troubled And you need a helping hand And nothing, oh nothing is going right Close your eyes and think of me And soon I will be there To brighten up even your darkest night You just call up my name And you know wherever I am

I'll come running Oh yeah baby To see you again Winter, spring, summer or fall All you got to do is call And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah You've got a friend James Taylor, You've Got a Friend I went to see that Carole King musical, Beautiful.

It was in Toronto recently. And she wrote the song. And it was just a wonderful experience to sort of see where these songs came from and where this song in particular came from. But for me it was... When you're a kid, especially when you're a teenager, those moments when you're by yourself and you're left to your own thoughts and maybe your life isn't going the way you want it to

or maybe you did badly in that exam or that test last week or maybe your girlfriend just dumped you or maybe your parents were fighting or maybe whatever whatever was going on in your life that that wasn't working if i sat in my room by myself and i put this song on i felt better and it was like and i've always cared deeply about my relationships with my friends and with people and with the people who really matter to me. And I am really emotional about that. And so this song, it was like it was talking to me.

You know, in all that, you know, close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there. You're by yourself. It's dark. You're feeling awful. Your life is not going the way you want it to. But you have that friend. And in your mind, he can be with you to brighten up even your darkest day. When I hear this, I smile and sort of laugh and cry

all at the same time because it's such a beautiful song. And for me, it's such a beautiful song and for me, it's such a deep meaning song. You know, I'm still, you know, we talked about, about Cash Palmer earlier.

You know, I value that relationship so much even though, you know, his life has gone astray, so to speak. You know, he's my friend

and those people matter and those people, when you need someone to help, you know, the old times, we need someone to help you move you know whether it's to help you move or because something's going on in your life that you need something or something's happening with your kid or something's happening with your parents or you know at the age I'm at now we go to a lot of

funerals a lot of you know parents going and it's amazing to me that you still have the same you cannot see someone for 10 years or 20 years but if you had that relationship you still have it and that that means something to me which is why i always loved movies like diner which you know a guy's movie about just being guys together what became happened to their lives. And I feel the same way about the guys, especially in my newspaper fraternity, who I've been around since I was basically coming out of school and have been around most of them, you know,

like David Schultz or like Eric DeHatchek or those kind of guys forever. And, you know, I've got a friend, and I've got, you know, luckily to have lots of them. And, you know, I've got a friend. And I've got, you know, luckily to have lots of them. You know, Steve, just listening to your jams and as you tell us why you love the jams, I feel like we're friends now.

I would agree. I mean, I don't share this stuff with very many people. And so this is an interesting process to go through because you like songs, but you don't always think and say, why do I like them? Or what is it about them I like? And the one thing I've discovered about so many things over the last few years is I collected newspapers as a kid, not knowing I was going into the newspaper business. I delivered newspapers as a kid. There was all these signs along the way that this was what I was going to do for a living. I didn't know it. But, you know, I think destiny has a way of finding itself. I've often said I learn more about somebody

by having them kick out the jams than I do just sitting here for 90 minutes and having a conversation. Yeah, probably. Inward looking. I would love, I'm going to go home and listen to a bunch of these because, you know, I want to hear some of the other people just to hear you know. Please do. Jim Van Horn, a lot of interesting people came over to kick out the jam. So, please do. And thank you for doing this. I enjoyed it. I really appreciate it. And that brings us to the end of our 288th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Steve is at Simmons Steve.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Steve is at Simmons Steve. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Brian Gerstein. And Paytm is at Paytm Canada. See you all next week. Your smile is fine and it's just like mine And it won't go away

Cause everything is rosy and green Well, you've been under my skin for more than eight years It's been eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know why