Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Wilner Squared: Toronto Mike'd #612

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

Mike catches up with Now Magazine's Norm Wilner and Sportsnet's Mike Wilner.

Welcome to episode 612 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. And the Keitner Group. They love helping buyers find their dream home. Text Toronto Mike. One word to 59559. I'm Mike from torontomike.com. And joining me is Wilner Squared.

Hello, Norm and Mike Wilner. How you doing? Hey, Mike. How do you guys decide who to say hi first? Is it in age the older goes first or is it the order I said the introduction? I just filled the void. I think he just did. Yeah.

I let him. I jump in. I filled the void. I want to start with you, Norm. How the heck are things going, man? Just talk to us about how you're adapting to the physical distancing and and how's your health and uh everybody in your home there oh thanks i'm fine uh kate and i are both fine the dog is okay we um we started this uh both of kate's parents are

are older than the curve i guess um they're in their late 80s and her mom just turned 90 this past month. And so we just got ahead of it. We started limiting exposure. I want to say the last thing I did, the last movie I saw in a theater was the morning of Wednesday the 11th. So we were about a week ahead of everything, I guess. And we've just been being extra careful. I'm doing a grocery run once a week. Otherwise, I work at home anyway. So the world hasn't really changed very much. It's just gotten quieter outside.

And are you wearing a mask when you go grocery shopping? No. Well, I haven't gone this week yet. The last time i went was last tuesday and i've just been washing my hands obsessively uh you know and sanitizing before and after going in and coming out of the places but basically my rule has been um before i touch anything that is mine i will you know get to the car and sanitize your hands before you even open the car door. Then presumably you operate with the idea that you're more or less safe.

And I've been sort of scrubbing things as they come into the house. But no, no mask yet. I think as soon as they mandate it, I will, of course, do that. Kate's already sewing them just as an experiment to see if she can make those work. That's interesting because my wife is sewing masks as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We should trade pattern tips.

I was going to say, yeah, somebody on Twitter just asked today what pattern she's using, and I think she's right now sending the link over. But glad everyone's doing well in the Norm Wilner household. How are things going with you, Mike Wilner? I think pretty much the same. I mean, I've been home since March 12th and isolated for two weeks, but my kids have been going back and forth between my place and my ex's. And I did my 14 days while my older daughter was doing hers because she had been exposed at work. So she was in her own apartment downtown.

But once her 14 days came up, she's moved back home, which is great. So I get to see both my kids every day. And, you know, for me, this is not very much unlike my regular off season, right? That's what I basically do. I mean, obviously I'll go out and I'll do things and I'll see friends and stuff and family. And obviously that's not happening, but yeah, this, this is not as much for me to get used to yet. This is my basic November to January. Right. The big difference is I would make you get your butt butt over here. You'd be sitting right in this chair right here. Yeah, but at least now I don't have to worry about hitting my head

on the ceiling. That's true. That's true. So Norm, how many times have you been on Toronto Mike? This would be my third, I think. I did a kick out the jams and then we just did a straight one three, maybe three years ago. So you don't get a jacket for three visits. So I don't know you anything. And Mike, you got your jacket, right? Because this is like your sixth visit.

Yeah, this is six, right? How many members of the Six Timers Club whose podcasts you don't also produce are there mark weisblot i think that's uh does that count i don't know if that counts but uh i got a jam for you norm and then i have a bunch of stuff i want to ask each of you we'll kind of take turns here i'm i'm very excited to have wilner squared on toronto white and the idea just came to me somebody said there was a tweets on, somebody tweeted something about, I can't remember who it was,

but you guys know what I'm talking about. Was there a tweet that kind of tied you two together somehow yesterday? Uh, Oh, it was Mike, um, tag me in this, uh,

in the, in the TV thing. Oh yeah. But that was a while ago. The six TV shows or something? No. That was a few days back. Okay, I think I saw something.

Well, something just like the kick out the jams was sparked because of a tweet Mike Wilner sent. Something I saw on Twitter in the last two days gave me this thought. Like it would be, you know, since I'm doing remote episodes during this pandemic, it would be fun to have Norm and Mike on together. So glad you guys could do it,

but here's a jam. I want to talk to Norm about this. Let me play the song. Gonna take a ride on the N Train down to Coney Island With the money I saved Gonna get me great Drift down a lot of basil hay And get kicked out when I can't see straight And what an island to be on

Under the neon Red dragon tattoo Is just about on me I got it for you So now do you want me With nothing to prove Will you be my honey Oh yeah

In you I can fly Red dragon tattoo I'm fit to be dyed Am I fit to have you Norm, tell everybody what are we listening to right now? It was so hard not to sing along with that. That was Red Dragon Tattoo by Fountains of Wayne. It's the greatest pop single written and released in the last 21 years. It's the greatest pop single written and released in the last 21 years. And of course, it was written by Adam Schlesinger, who died on Thursday, I guess. No, Wednesday night.

He died Wednesday night from complications due to the coronavirus. And it breaks my heart. He was just, he was 52. He was maybe the best pop songwriter right now. And for the last 10 years, just doing incredible work. And Fountains of Wayne is, and I've said this a number of times since Wednesday night, Fountains of Wayne was my other favorite band. My favorite band is They Might Be Giants. And it turns out Schlesinger produced three songs for They Might Be Giants' album, Mink Car, including

Another First Kiss, which is probably my favorite love song, if you don't count Red Dragon Dead 2, which is also kind of a love song. But just, I mean, if you don't know who he was, you still do know his work. He wrote That Thing You Do. He wrote the songs for Music and Lyrics. He wrote most of, wrote or co-wrote most of the songs for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend over four seasons, I believe. And it was just, he had this instinctive understanding of how pop music works and what it represents to people. And all of the Fountains of Wayne albums

from 1996's first album, fountains of wayne albums from 1996's first album fountains of wayne through the last one i think was in 2014 sky full of holes they're all about how people relate to music and what music means to them and how it helps you figure out who you are and then come to terms with who you are and they're all just bangers too. The music is fantastic. And it's just this hole in my heart that he's gone and that he probably didn't have to go. Well said, Norm. I thought of you right away when I learned the news because so far you're the only jam kicker

to kick out of Fountains of Wayne jam. Really? Well, you know, it's still early. Can I say that, Mike? It's early? You can say that in that context. When it's true, it's true. It's almost always true. But Mike, you probably

I don't know if you're a fan of Fountains of Wayne, but for sure you know that thing you do. And I was thinking when you're making a movie and you have to kind of create a song that you have to kind of create a song that you have to buy as a big hit from that era, like that's not an easy task, but he hit that out of the park.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting. I was talking about that thing you do just yesterday with my kids, not knowing the connection because we were in the car listening to the radio and I saw her standing there was on, and there was clapping in that song. And I said, you know, there are just two people clapping their hands right by a microphone like they did in that thing you do.

That was the reference for them. And also, I think either on that trip or maybe Friday when I was driving around the city for two and a half hours, driving around various cities, doing little deliveries without seeing any humans. I also heard On the Dark Side, which is sort of the same thing, right? That was the Eddie and the Cruisers movie. And that's John Cafferty and Beaver brown band had to make this song that was supposed to be this seminal hit of an entire decade and i don't know that they hit that one out of the park but it was it was a solid song for sure but uh but yeah that's that when when you are have to write something that uh the story is this made a band and was absolutely huge.

That's a tough task. Yeah. His challenge, he said, was that he had to come up with a way of making the audience sick of it before the performers were sick of it. Like the Wonders have to keep liking it long after we get tired of it, and then it comes back around again. I still haven't gotten tired of it. No, it's great.

It holds on. I think they perform it 11 times in different variations in the course of the movie. And it's still unbelievable to me that it didn't win Best Original Song, but the Oscars are always wrong that way. Norm, what did win that year? Do you remember? It was 96,

so... Go to the Google machine. Oh, I think it was from Evita. I think it was the original go to the google machine oh i think it was from evita i think it was the it was the the original song the end credit song for evita oh madonna uh madonna something something from madonna right uh yeah she sang it at least you must love me she actually co-wrote it you must love me wasn't that in the song isn't that in the play that might have been the original one i'll give it to Google machine. Okay. It's never the one you think it is with these things.

Cause it used to be that in order to get an Oscar nomination for an adaptation of a musical, you would write a new song and they almost always just plug them in over the end credits because you can't disrupt the flow of the musical. People get upset. So I think that's what happened. Taylor Swift song was in there this year right that's actually in the movie itself in i i don't even want to say the title oh can i ask about that

because i have not seen it but uh can you give a little uh a quick review of the uh movie cats uh yeah it's terrible it's just it doesn't work at all. And I've seen people try to, you know, go in and enjoy it ironically. And I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by cats because it's just awful. It's, it's such a bad idea to do it as a film the way they did it. way they did it. And yeah, you know, this thing has been a studio property since the eighties. There was going to be an animated version, a hand-drawn animated version in the nineties, but they couldn't make that work. There was going to be a computer generated animated films. I think DreamWorks wanted to do it in like 2002 or something. Every now and then there'd be this spike where someone got excited about it. And then what happened with Tom Hooper doing it this way was he was absolutely convinced that the tech would work. And because of the way CG works, they had no idea. He shot it with a bunch of actors and leotards and that's fine. I'm sure it looked great. And then they

created this digital fur and it's grotesque. It just looks like there's a scene where Idris Elba takes off this coat he's been wearing, which is a coat of cat fur, which implies that he has killed and skinned at least one other cat. And he takes the coat off and he looks like just a piece of liver. It just, this, this ugly Brown texture that's supposed to be fur. And it's just, it's repugnant.

And the whole thing, I mean, everybody looks terrible, but that was the, like the crowning moment where, Oh, this was your design reveal 10, an hour and 10 minutes into the movie.

This is what you thought would sell it. And it's hideous. No, anyway, it's on Blu-ray on Tuesday. Please don't check the Google machine. And Mike is correct. You must love me.

It was, you must love the best song in 97. So that was the original song. That's in the film, right? Isn't that actually sung in the movie? Yes, it is in the film.

It's when, when That's in the film, right? Isn't that actually sung in the movie? Yes, it is in the film. It's when she's finally, the you must love me is to Juan Peron. She's finally convinced that he actually loves her because of the way he's treating her when she's sick or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like the third act. It's late in the film.

We'll take your word for that. By the way i say this yeah of course in 1995 in between the hardware city rock cats and 680 news i went to new york for uh three or four days with my then girlfriend now ex-, and we went to see Cats. And we saw it because, you know, it was this huge Broadway hit that everybody knew. And, you know, in that Saturday Night Live sketch where the hypnotist convinces everyone to come out saying it was much better than Cats, I'm going to see it again and again. And we sat there for the entire uh first half and could just couldn't believe what

was happening and a couple of times turned to each other and said people really like this right and and in the intermission she said to me should we I said, I mean, it's got to get better, doesn't it? It didn't. No, it doesn't. It's incomprehensible. It's always been. There's this great story about Andrew Lloyd Webber trying to get his usual director, I think it was Hal Prince, to direct the stage show. And he was telling him what the show was and he explained it.

And Prince was saying, okay, but what's the metaphor? Is this about the monarchy? Is this about British succession or, or parliament during the age where the play, where the poems were written? Cause they'd been written in the late thirties and early forties by, by, by, oh, I'm blanking on it. It wasn't Gates. It was, it doesn't matter.

T.S. Eliot, the guy who wrote The Holloman, of course. And so they're asking, so Prince is asking Weber these questions and Weber just looks at him blankly over tea and says, no, no, it's about cats. And that makes, the whole thing makes sense to me because there was never a plan. It's just a bunch of songs

where the cats introduce themselves to each other and then one of them gets to go to heaven. That's the entire two-hour experience. And it's just, it's maddening. On stage, at least you have the thrill of watching people in costumes jumping up and down and singing. And that's got to be impressive on some level. No, on stage it's awful. Well, in the movie it's worse i've never seen it but i've seen the uh brief uh satire in the simpsons where they they go see cats uh very briefly and when they i think it's when the when millhouse and bart uh get high on the sugar remember they they're it's a very brief cats mentioned there it's i think it's evita's andrew Webber too, right? Yep. So it's interesting. We've started off with a couple of coincidental Andrew Lloyd Webber

references right off the top here. I got a now question for you, Norm. But first, first, I need to hear a little more, Mike. Mike, what the heck does Sportsnet have you guys doing with no baseball? Can you help us out what you're doing to keep yourself busy? Well, I mean, I'm doing the Blue Jays simulation to keep myself busy and hopefully to keep people engaged and enjoying what should be Blue Jays baseball. Okay, on that note, a couple of tweets directed at you

when they heard you were coming on Toronto Mic'd again. Moose Grumpy says she doesn't have a question for you, but she wants to make a shout out to Mike for his Blue Jays Sim 2020. I think she's trying to get a hashtag trending there, but I clicked it. She's the only one who used it

so far, so we need to do a little work on that. Thanks. I've been using that. Was that right? Maybe she spelled it wrong. Blue Jays Sim 2020. Blue Jays Sim 2020. Blue Jays Sim 2020. Oh, maybe my Twitter machine was busted there. Thanks for keeping us entertained with some baseball. This is from a fellow 1980s music fan.

So that's Moose Grumpy. And then Kevin in Alberta. I'm hoping you can address this right now. Kevin says, ask Mike to better explain how this Blue Jays simulation he's doing works. So the floor is yours. Explain the Blue Jays sim. Sure. And actually, I have met that at Moose Grumpy, and she's lovely and a good Blue Jays and good 80s music fan.

I wonder why the hashtag isn't working. So you see what I saw, right? Because I clicked it. Oh, because mine is 2020 Sim. The hashtag I'm using is Blue Jays 2020 Sim. That explains it. Okay. So there you go.

As far as what it is and how it works, I'm just using an old-fashioned tabletop cards and dice game. It's called Dynasty League Baseball, though interestingly enough, if you want to find it on Twitter, the hashtag is at Pursue Pennant because the game was originally called Pursue the Pennant, and this is sort of the second version after it, I don't know if it went under or just switched during the 94 strike. But it's a game that I've played in part of a league that I co-founded in 1987. So I've been playing it for, this will be the 33rd season of this league going on. And it's, you know, most people have heard of Stratomatic, right?

And it's just a tabletop dice game. I know that you can see me, so I will show you what one of the cards looks like. Here's just the guy who was on the top of the thing. It's Javi Guerra. Because he's on my Geek League team.

it's Dungeons & Dragons for baseball, but the cards are based off of what the players did, actually did in the season, and it's on a percentage basis. So you put the lineups together, and then you roll the dice, and according to whatever number you come up with, and then you roll the dice and, and according to whatever number you come up with between zero and 999, it's supposed to be as close of a simulation to what they actually did. So there are some problems with the blue Jays, right?

Because we're expecting a lot of guys to be better this year than they were last year. Um, there's, there are no, um, there's no Shin Yamaguchi, for example. Tanner Roark wasn't especially good last year. Travis Shaw was awful. Those sorts of things. But that's what I'm doing. And you can find the game at PursuitPenant on Twitter, DynastyLeagueBaseball.com.

It's a really cool little simulation. And I may be porting it over to the online version this week because it's now available and because that way the rest of the season can be played around me while i just play the blue jays games but then i'll lose out on a couple of the um a couple of the things that i've done to uh to sort of a couple of other things that I've done to, to sort of get guys who aren't really around and able to play and, and some little switches here and there, but we'll see. Now, did we lose Norm? Like, did he fall asleep during that?

I'm just curious, Norm, you still. No, I'm here. My nose is bleeding. I was trying to understand it. I'll just clean those, clean myself up. I mean, he was around for the first few years that I was doing this and paying no attention, I'm sure. It's true. Well, you were doing your thing.

I was doing my thing. No, I get it. I understand the appeal of it. It's a stats game, but it's just not something I – yeah. Well, my buddy Hebsey had a question for you, Norm. He says, are you as big a sports fan as Mike is a movie fan? And before you answer, I don't think it's close. I think Mike is a much bigger movie fan than you are a sports fan. But you answer now as a normal owner. I have occasionally freaked out Kate by knowing how baseball works and going to games with when her niece and nephews come visit. We will go to a game if we can, and I'll be the one who explains it to the kids from,

you know, a perspective of at least some level of informed knowledge. Like, I know how signals work. I know how balls and strikes add up and things like that. But no, I mean, I used to, it was more fun for me to play it when I was a kid. And then I just sort of got away from that. And yeah, it's just not, yeah. I mean, it's nice when a Toronto team is in the playoffs,

but I don't think I get swept up the way I used to. But in 2015 and 2016, when the Jays were in the playoffs, but I don't think I get swept up the way I used to. But in 2015 and 2016, when the Jays were in the playoffs, would you listen to your brother on the radio? Oh, yeah, sure. I don't know. I need to know these things. Yeah, no, of course. I would actually, it was always really comforting back when I was doing the Wednesday night

summertime screenings at Harborfront that I would walk up via Skydome. I would walk home. And sometimes if it was because we started fairly late, we had to wait for sundown and I would walk down through Skydome. And if there was a game on, they would be pumping the Rogers audio out. So I could hear Mike doing commentary at the time, I guess it was. And that was always nice. It was comforting. It was good. I would get a quick sense of where the game was going and how things were playing. And then I would just go down and introduce a movie and then walk back and it would still be going on.

So in 2019, for example, would you go to your radio and actually tune in 590 just to hear your brother's voice calling a Jays game? Could that happen on a summer night? I don't know that I would. Let me think. Be honest, Norm. No, I'm trying to figure it out.

It's not that I would turn it on on the radio, but I would have a window going in my browser sometimes. What? Yeah, just to listen in. We can't stream live, though. You're lying right now. I was listening to something. What was I listening to?

Not the ball game. Was it a rerun i mean do they run afterwards i mean we from first pitch to last pitch we don't stream but everything before and after we do okay so it must have been the before and after because i would listen to you when you tweeted that you were on i would go click that open i think you're talking that didn't happen in 2019 so he continues to okay so i'm mixing it up yeah so but it was the year before yes okay so that's all i time has no meaning at this point we know this right like it's like people who who used to come up to me in 2008 and say you know i listen to you on 680 news all the time i think you're fantastic and i say well i haven't been there since 2001. Oh, I'll bet. I bet you that still happens. Now, I hope-

I still get people asking me what happened to my video column in the Star, which ended in 2006. So yeah, I think what it means, I like to see it as a positive in that it's nice that people liked it then and they remember it enough to mention it now. So yeah, think of it that way.

It's an echo of a past thing that people still appreciate. I still ask- Yeah, I used to tune in and listen to you but i would do it through the browser never on the radio weirdly enough i still ask mike how it's going with aaron lobel you yeah because you remember i watched i used to watch let's talk sports i think we've mentioned that i mentioned this every time you come over i think but i used to watch let's talk sports on cable 10 graham cable 10 baby right there in the heart of the city of york I mention this every time you come over, I think, but I used to watch Let's Talk Sports on Cable 10. Graham Cable 10, baby.

Right there in the heart of the city of York. Is that Newton Cable, or am I confusing my Cable 10? I was on Newton also, but I didn't... I guess Lobel only did a few shows on Newton. I had sort of a rotating cast of characters on the Newton show. That was up at Finch and Dufferin, right? Okay, I don't see i don't know because uh it's cam gordon and stew stone who had a short-lived show uh and that's where uh ed the sock was right um steve kerr there's another tie-in to my big brother here because he went to high school with ed the sock did you yeah steve steve kersner was

a year ahead of me wow okay this is uh this is breaking news i honestly although actually you know what it wasn't high school it was junior high it was at fisherville oh okay so there my bad yeah but yeah okay that's that's pretty small world that to to uh toronto famous media giants uh obviously i mean that figuratively with uh my our friend steve kersner but uh that's fantastic now i have i thought it was because the sock was small i know i tried to get away with that i'm not a you know i'm not no judgment you know stew stone i should point out didn't have to duck for my ceiling either but it's all good now i need to know exactly what's going on at now and but before i ask that update I need to know if Mike does read your columns

in now let me just finish answering your first question about what's going on at Sportsnet you kind of got side trying but other than me simming the Blue Jays season every day and through 10 games, they're 5-5 by the way

tomorrow in Philadelphia we are running lots of great replays of blue jays games um sportsnet tv is running those world series games and and some other great games of the past great 2015 games and and all that kind of stuff we've got tons of great Blue Jays programming. The beautiful part of it is that they win every game. So whether it's on the radio or on TV, you don't have to worry about that. Next week, I don't know.

I can't remember off the top of my head what's going on this week, though I do know. But next week I'm going to be doing some hosting on the radio from 7 to 8, Monday to Friday, I'm told. So that should be fun. But, yeah, we're trying to, you know, I think they're doing a phenomenal job, all the hosts at The Fan, of keeping the talk going every day,

filling a full day worth of sports talk when there, there's no sports going on. But, but absolutely there's some, some terrific stuff on the air all the time on, on radio and on television. It's gotta be tough. Like I feel for the sports,

well for sports radio personalities and broadcasters like yourself, that for those who have to fill up all this time every single day when there's absolutely no sports to talk about like uh it it's got to be tough i think that's got to be tough there's there's no question that it's tough but i mean i'm just looking at like look who we we had on the fan this past week. Masai Ujiri was on and James Paxton, Dick Vitale, a bunch of hockey players, Chris Pronger, Jason Spetson, Asim Qadri, Kevin Biggio was on.

Dante Bichette's going to be on the morning show on Monday. I don't know when you're putting this out, but on Monday. Putting it out in like a half an hour, yeah. All right, great. So if you're listening on the 5th, then tomorrow, but, um, Monday, putting it out in, uh, like a half an hour. Yeah. All right. Great. So if you're listening, uh, on the 5th and tomorrow, Monday at 7. Um, Dante Bichette, sorry, Bo Bichette is going to be on, uh, on the morning show. Um, and this week, all right. So I lied. They're not all wins, all wins but uh this week on the fan on tv and radio will be the 1993 world series so uh that's that's going to be awesome and yeah you know i have all the respect in the world for all our hosts who are managing to do good sports talk when there is zero sports to talk about because people need it. People need to

have something to hear that's not just the virus. And the distraction is a really wonderful thing. And I enjoy it so much when they call me and ask me to come on because I love talking about something other than as well. Norm. Yeah, I feel that. Talk to before we uh talk about what you're up to these days i want to know uh your perspective and what you can tell us about the recent uh acquisition because your uh your paper there got uh purchased yeah yeah we were uh we were acquired by media central i think they were called now it's now we are all now central. That would have been in December. And we're all still kind of figuring out what that means. The new people are very engaged. And I hate saying new owners because it sounds weird. And again, I work from home mostly. So I feel like this is all happening around me rather than to me. But yeah, we're pivoting. We're doing stuff

that we didn't do before. I mean, I'm doing a podcast now called Now What? Because part of that was the pandemic has given us the reason to do it, but also because I've been trying to launch a podcast now for two or three years and we've just met with, you know, not indifference exactly, but we never got around to it. We tested it, we did pilots and it just never happened. And so at the very least, the new guys want it to be happening. They want things to occur rather than be developed. So we've launched this thing, and it's taking up a surprising amount of my time, but I think it's going to be pretty good.

So that's it. They're encouraging us to do stuff that we – the original pitch was that they didn't want us to do anything that was, how can I put this? They liked what we did. They want us to play to our strengths and do more of the things that we're good at. And now because of COVID-19, that's not really possible. I can't do a lot of film coverage because there simply aren't any films opening. There's two, you know, two or three a week and they're all going straight to digital. So I can talk about that. And I actually did an episode of the podcast about that, but we also have to find other ways to cover it. So this show that I'm doing is non-culture specific. There will be

stuff about film, there will be stuff about stage, but mostly it's about how individual people and systems in the city are coping with this new normal life, life in our weird new normal of coronavirus. And drop the name again of this new podcast you're doing for now. Oh, it's called Now What? It comes out Tuesdays and Fridays. The next episode is going to be about, what's the Monday episode about?

It's about, well, housing mostly, but it's about a whole bunch of other things tied to that. And Now What? Is it only, it's a pandemic podcast? Is it for the duration of this new normal? Or is it like, just remind us that the idea there? Yeah, that the focus right now is about how things are different and how we're coping. I'm not sure if it'll continue after the after the self isolation ends. I'm not sure the self isolation will ever end. So that's nice that we have something to do.

But realistically, I'll probably just do some other thing, some other podcast thing we'll launch after that. And it might even launch beforehand. We're talking about all kinds of ideas. What about your podcast, Someone Else's Movie? Amazingly enough, five years old, last month, still going. Episode 272 comes out on Tuesday. And yeah, it got picked up last summer by Frequency Podcast Network, which is Rogers, Oregon. And yeah, nothing has changed. I still do the show

the same way as I did before, which is by the seat of my pants, talking to people who I can hang on to. And that's changing now because I'm going to record my first remote episode on Tuesday afternoon, probably, or evening, depending on when the guest is available. I have found that a lot of people are bored and looking to do more stuff right now. So I'm getting the opportunity to talk to people who also, who aren't in Toronto. So that's interesting.

And we'll see where that goes and whether it will change the nature of the show or not, I have no idea. I you sound, and your brother, Mike, sounds good, and I'm happy with his quality, but it can't compare to this, the Yeti mic you've got going there. So just be warned, you're going to have guests more likely to sound like Mike than yourself, but he sounds good. Well, yeah, thanks. One of the things I've been doing with the Now podcast is using it as a sort of a test to see if it's possible um what i found works best is getting everybody to listen with headphones and tape their own side of the conversation as voice memos on their phone and then it's a pain to stitch it all together but it can be done and once you do it you have great audio absolutely uh yeah a lot of people i know a frequency network you mentioned they They're all doing it. I have a quick question. Why not have, if Now is going to suddenly have podcasts, like Now what?

Why wouldn't Now want to absorb this someone else's movie and make that a Now podcast? Well, they never offered. But I also wouldn't want that. I've always wanted it to be my thing. It was important when I launched it that I have something of my own that would just be whatever I wanted it to be. Not that now would have forced me to do anything differently, but I just didn't want to have any kind of editorial oversight, I guess. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. Smart. No, control your own destiny. Smart, smart, smart. And they can never take that

away from you. That's your baby. Yeah. And there's also the whole issue of appearing to, well, no, I was going to say appearing to notice a conflict of interest, but that's not it. I mean, the reason there, so there is this optics thing that I've been wrestling with for a couple of years, which is that someone once accused me of only like, how did they put it? So I reviewed a movie called In the Tall Grass when it came out last year on Netflix. It's directed by Vincenzo Natale, who's actually someone I've known casually for 30 years because we had a mutual friend when I was in film school at York. film school at York and Andre Bajelic, who co-wrote Cube, ultimately 10 years after that. So Andre and I knew each other in film school. I met Vince through him and we don't, you know, we didn't socialize. We would see each other once or twice. And then ultimately I would run into him when he made a movie and he and I would have to interview each other and pretend that, you know, like I would go to interview him and we'd have to pretend that it was professional, even though

it's somebody I've known since we were kids. So Vincenzo did my podcast two, three years ago. He picked Blade Runner. It's a really good episode. You should listen to it. And then when In the Tall Grass came out, there was this comment left by some anonymous reader that I only liked the movie because he did my podcast. And of all the people to knock me for that, that's weird because I've actually openly declared that I know him in interviews previously and in previous reviews. It's like, you know, full disclosure, I know him a little. And it's just weird. So one of the concerns I had was that there were going to be people who would come on and talk and then it would be for something that a movie that I wasn't necessarily fond of or crazy about. And how do you, how do you deal with that? And that's something that had I been

doing the podcast for now, I would have had to turn down the opportunity to talk to people because of a specific movie that I did or didn't like. Whereas the podcast itself is not a promotional podcast. It's not always tied to something. And so this way I have the distance and I don't have to, always tied to something. And so this way I have the distance and I don't have to, you know, I don't have to endorse or pretend to like something to get the guest on. I don't do that, but it also leaves, it leaves me the space to maybe turn down a podcast guest this one time, because I know the movie coming out isn't something I'm fond of, so I can still review the film. Now, it's interesting you mentioned that one anonymous comment and it made me think about the thousands and thousands

of anonymous comments your brother gets. Yeah, again, the occasional knock that I get online from internet troll people is nothing compared to what Michael deals with every day, so there's that. It's not as bad as it used to be. Well, I was going to gonna ask what's it like for you norm to be on twitter and see the uh you know the snark and vitriol of some anonymous commenters regarding uh your brother whose work by the way i think is fantastic but well it almost

never comes up fortunately because while i follow mike i don't follow the people who respond to him i don't read the replies to most of his tweets. Although sometimes someone will try to tag me into something and just randomly insult you through me or ask me to ask you why you've blocked them. And the answer is almost always pretty obvious. And so I just don't get involved, which is, which is a simple, you know, it saves me so much time. Mike, take a moment to tell us about how much better things are for you online

since you started appearing on Toronto Mic'd and I humanized the beast. I don't know that it was necessarily that, but I do appreciate it nonetheless. But I think no longer doing Blue Jays talk is, is what has helped and also letting a lot more stuff go, you know, muting people, because I know out there that there's a community of people who are actually proud that I've blocked them. So I don't block people anymore, but muting them. So they're just screaming into the ether and not taking as much bait.

But also, you know, being a play-by-play as opposed to hosting the post-game call-in show means that there's not as much back-and-forth debate. There's not as much opinion, though I'm certainly not shy about my opinion. But also, I don't feel as though I need to go back and forth with people like I did when I was hosting a call-in show, because that's part of that job. Makes sense to me. Yeah, that job kind of forces you into being polarizing and then people start to, some people start to dislike your viewpoints and pragmatic approach to various topics. But I'm going to quote you, Norm,

on a tweet you sent fairly recently, like a couple of months ago maybe, but you wrote, Milestone, I joined Now Toronto 12 years ago today and as of this week, I'm the last founding member of the TFCA who still holds a full time gig as a film critic. I do not think any of us saw that coming.

Can you please elaborate on that for me? It's just really weird. I joined the TFCA and well, it was founded in 1997. Tell people what it stands for. Toronto Film Critics Association. Who doesn't know that? There are people who don't know that.

Well, they're bad people. We still have the, it's ridiculous that we still have the largest arts prize. We award a $100,000 prize, the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, every year. And it's absurd that we have anything like that much responsibility or power. We're just a bunch of people who argue about movies and aspect ratios and subtitles and stuff. But when we started in 1997, we formed because a city as big as Toronto, with as many film critics as Toronto, many full-time newspaper critics, because that's what we were. There were a couple of TV people, but we were predominantly a print media organization.

And we formed because we thought that the city should have an organization with a voice when it came to film. Los Angeles and New York and Chicago and Boston, everybody else was doing it or had been doing it, so it was time. And when I joined, I was a freelancer with a video column. I wasn't reviewing that many movies theatrically. I mean, I guess I was, I was writing for the star at the time. So I was probably reviewing one or two movies a week, but there were people who were reviewing eight and nine and somehow I am now the only with,, with Peter Howell and the Toronto Stars Entertainment section going away and all the film coverage ending, I am now the last remaining founding member who is still writing film reviews full time. And I guess I'm technically not either now because I'm doing other stuff in the wake of the pandemic. Although once that's over, I'm sure it'll all come back.

But yeah, it's weird. It's really weird. And I don't think anybody would have seen me being the last one. I wasn't writing for NOW at the time. And if I was still a freelancer, those jobs are all pretty much gone. The freelance work has just dried up completely over the last few years in Toronto. It's just harder and harder and harder to find a gig that lets you, well, it's impossible to find a gig that lets you make a living wage as a film critic now but um the idea that now would be the last paper with a full-time well that's not true there are

full-time film critics um excuse me the globe has them the star has had them but that i would be the last founding member still going after 23 years is weird to me. I just didn't think it would, I didn't think it'd be me. Are there full-time film critics in the city outside yourself? Sure. Barry Hertz at the national post,

Chris Knight. Sorry, Barry's at the Globe and Mail. Chris Knight is at the national post. And I don't know that the star, the star doesn't, I don't know that the star the star doesn't i don't know that the sun has one currently and that's it then there's me and it's weird but that's bananas right like is that is that three people that's what i'm saying it's crazy there are other people

writing reviews there are other staffers doing stuff and there are other uh websites and even blogs that have film critics going but it's not a full-time job uh in the way that it used to be as you know if you look at media organizations there's nobody doing it anymore i'm uh i'm i'm somehow a a relic i think that's uh sad like uh we have the oh yeah we have the what what arguably the biggest film festival in the world, at least one of the top two, I guess, right. Film Toronto international film festival.

And there's, there's us in can. Yeah. I think like there's Tiff and can, and I don't, I don't actually have anything to do with it other than I cover it, but yeah, you feel like you're a part of it because this happens in our city.

And there's three of you left doing this full time. I think so. I'm probably forgetting someone. There might be somebody who's technically a full-time film critic for TV, but I can't think of who that person is. Richard Krauss has written, he does review movies, but it's not his primary beat. Right. Right. That's right. Yeah. He's a, he's an FOTM as well. So we can't forget Richard, but, and Peter Howell is too too. And now the Toronto Star is still the largest newspaper in the country. I guess all the film reviews are syndicated? be running something against, or the fear there is if they run something that's written by Canadian press, that it might show up somewhere else in a competitor's, in the same territory in a

competitor's paper. And that is incredibly short-sighted and self-destructive because ultimately, if you are the Toronto star, you should be covering Canadian film. And if you're only taking reviews from American syndication, American wire feeds, you're not going to get Canadian films covered in there. It's just, I don't know why they would choose to do this this way. It's incredibly self-destructive. It just tells everybody that they're not interested

in the city that they cover or the country that they purport to represent. And it's just, it's a dereliction of duty in terms of arts coverage. So I guess it's basically news and sports only. That's the times we're living in now for a publication like that, right? News and sports. Well, but there's still so much, even if it's television, there's so much Canadian product happening, Canadian programming. I hate saying content, but that's what it is. I mean, there is a great deal of Canadian television that is fun, interesting, sharp, worth watching.

I mean, speaking of conflicts of interest, Paul Lee on Kin's Convenience is a friend of mine, but that's a fantastic show. And it is so important right now, even though watching it feels like a glimpse into an alternate universe where it's warm and sunny and people can go outside and go to work and hang out with friends and, you know, eat in restaurants. Right. But it's a show about Toronto as I recognize it. It's bustling. It's urban. It's diverse. Everybody has a story, no matter how peripheral they are to the story of the episode.

People come in in the middle of a thing and go out in the middle of a thing. There are lives happening. That's ours. We did that. Canada made that show. And it wouldn't exist anywhere else. Man. Oh, man.

So I'm sorry, though, that this is happening to your passion and your industry. But I am happy that you're still a full-time movie reviewer when this pandemic subsides here's hoping mike um i was on a on toronto mic we had a stew stone on friday he comes on every friday during the pandemic you would enjoy these episodes by the way you should check them out but stew says hi first of all i will say hello to Stu he said he was gonna set me up with Lunette from Big Gumpy Couch

and he did not come through I'm gonna ask him about that on Friday when he's back on with Cam Gordon from Twitter Canada but he had a question for Norm he wants to know since Norm is a movie man we know Norm is the movie guy did Norm watch Jack of All trades uh which featured uh mike wilner

jack of all trades it's a documentary so i don't think oh wait it was the one about the cards right yes yes uh no because it never came out i was going to review it when it opened here and then it didn't. Right. Like it just went to VOD. It's on Netflix now. Yeah. I don't know that it ever got released. Well, no, not in theaters.

It went, it's, it is now available. If people want to check it out, you can find it on Netflix Canada. Uh, so you never bothered, you never thought to maybe, uh, check it out on Netflix just to see your brother's performance. Uh, you know what? I will as soon as I have a minute. This is the biggest problem. Because we've opened up the coverage beyond film

because I write about streaming and television, there is not a thing I watch that isn't work. I'm constantly having to catch up on... You could write about it. Well, now? Yeah. I mean, it's already out. It's happened.

I've missed entire television shows because somebody else was reviewing them, and that meant I didn't have to watch them. And I like that. I embrace the idea that I don't have to watch it. It is a practical impossibility to watch everything that's interesting, relevant, and important right now just because there is so much of of it. And yeah, no, I haven't watched. We're just starting to watch stuff for pleasure again. Now, these last few days, Kate and I have been digging into the 70s New York thrillers just because that's something that she hasn't seen enough of them, and I just love

revisiting them. So that's what we're doing for pleasure. Jack of all trades instead of one of these 70s New York thrillers. Is there any footage of Jack of all trades shot from 1972 in Lower Manhattan? If not, I'm sorry, it's excluded. But a lot of it is, well, not a lot, but, I mean, it talks about Sluggers, the store, I don't know if you would remember it, but it's in the Toys R Us Plaza at Steeles and Hilda.

I remember the plaza. I don't remember the store. It was on sort of on the northeast corner facing Hilda, like facing the market. Okay. It was across the street where Lime Ricky's was.

Yeah, no, I remember the plaza, but no. So this was a baseball card, like a collectible store? Yeah. See, I feel like I'm causing some trouble here. I don't mean to... It's nothing that he ever would have been interested in. So I would have been stunned if I'd heard that he'd seen it. You haven't seen the rep, the documentary that I'm in about repertory cinema?

This is correct. I know that because it never came out really this is my point that's different then this is freely available on the netflix stew's gonna love that uh that that promotion there for sure but uh yeah if you get a chance uh norman you do see jack of all trades let me know uh what you thought of your brother's performance in this excellent Toronto-made documentary. So when you say performance, are you doing dramatic readings? I was interviewed. I was being interviewed. Okay. But that's a performance of sorts. It's not necessarily scripted, but still a performance.

I guess. I mean, I would more say, let me know how you think he did what do you think of the performance i'm trying to sell the grandeur the uh the mike wilner experience uh it's a great doc everyone should watch it let's uh let me just bring up a topic that i think brings you together. Norm is the movie guy. Mike is the baseball guy. There are a number of fantastic baseball movies.

Would it be okay if I just muted myself for a short period of time and if you two maybe, could you come to a consensus maybe as to what the top three or so baseball movies are of all time? Is that a,

probably a discussion you might've had in the past? Yeah, we've had it a few times. Back in the, the days before I had this gig on the play by play on the broadcast, I used to do fill in on the fan over the winter and I had him on a few years in a row over Christmas. Christmas shows. Yeah. Those were always fun. Yeah. And I had him on a few years in a row over Christmas. Christmas shows.

Yeah. Those were always fun. Yeah. And opening the phones and people would call in and we would talk about, I don't know if there's a consensus as to the best baseball movies ever. I mean, I, I love the stuff like bull Durham and major league Sandlot league of their

own. Those, those sorts of things, but there Major League, Sandlot, League of Their Own, those sorts of things. But there's a bang the drum slowly crowd, and there's definitely a big Field of Dreams crowd out there. The Natural was another great one. I probably missed a couple. League of Their Own comes up a lot these days. I think it's because people watched it on cable a lot and

grew up with it. There's a big wave of adults now who watched cable movies in the late 90s, or watched cable exclusively because it was before you could pick whatever you wanted on demand. The kids today don't understand what that used to be like. You only got what was on. And A League of Their Own was in heavy rotation on Turner, on TBS or TNT, and so a lot of people have formed an attachment to that. And Norm, just to interject really quickly, that also allows us to bring callback

performance by Madonna, who was in Evita, and Tom Hanks, who directed That Thing You Do. That's right. Yeah, it's the nexus of all callbacks. I think you're arguing that Penny Marshall is the nexus of all popular entertainment, and you do that's right yeah it's the nexus of all i think you're arguing that penny marshall is the nexus of all popular entertainment and you may well be right yeah that's right and the first uh celebrity uh voice guest uh guest voice appearance uh on the simpsons

was penny marshall was she well that makes sense she was the babysitter they had to they call that babysitter who uh do you know that's right in season one the menacing babysitter i thought it was wasn't dustin hoffman no he's later that's the substitute but uh penny marshall's in season one and dustin hoffman is in two or three i can't remember but okay i don't know why but i thought dustin hoffman was the first maybe he was the first pseudonym yeah he was uh credited as uh sam as in semitic yeah that was that was clever but please continue i have to interrupt or interrupt once in a while and interject these uh callback uh situations but please continue yeah very popular for me it's always the the best movies are, uh, the best baseball movies. The best movie about

anything is a movie where you understand why it's important to the characters. Why, um, you know, it's what Crash Davis says, baseball is a religion. So if you're making a movie set in the world of baseball, I need to feel the same, um, uh, intensity, that same love, the same respect for it as the characters do. So I will go to stuff like Bull Durham or Field of Dreams or Eight Men Out, the John Sayles film about the Black Sox, which is just, it's beautifully organized. It's a little stiff in its presentation because it's mimicking the feel of an

oldie timey story, but you, you really feel the, the betrayal in the players as well as the fans and the way that it plays out, the way that they're set up and destroyed by the thing that they loved. So, yeah, I mean, I'm obviously drawn more towards drama and conflict. It's less important to me if the team wins or not, but then that's the point of some of the best sports movies. You know, Rocky doesn't win the first movie. I know it's not baseball. I was going to go for major league, but there are, there are movies where do the Rockford peaches win.

They did not. Right. Right. Like they throw the game because of the, the sister, the ball, she knocked the ball out of Gina Davis's hand and scored the winning run. That's right. So it's not the Gina Davis lets Lori Petty do that.

Oh, we never know. That's right. Sorry. My feeling is that it's about sister sacrificing each other. They're one sister sacrificing your happiness for the other, but either way it works because you care about them. It's not so important that the game is happening. It's about the situation that's developed and played out between these two people. Right. And, you know, even in major league, we don't know that they win. All we know is that they win the division. Didn't they? And they go on to the playoffs after that great Tom Barringer bunt single.

Isn't the point of the sequel though? Doesn't the sequel confirm that they didn't win? The sequel, if I remember correctly, the sequel confirms that they didn't, I think. Yeah. That's what I was saying. Yeah, but it doesn't matter when you're watching the first one. Sure. Yeah, that's fair. So what would you say is your personal...

We'll start with you, Mike. What's your personal favorite baseball movie of all time, if I put you on the spot right now? I don't think i could pick one to be honest with you um bull durham was fantastic and it was it was a a real glimpse into the life more than we had ever seen before uh people made a big deal at the time that it was the first time we'd ever heard the major leagues referred to as the show um and and i don't know how much they were before but they certainly are now and you know we talk about the charter as the

show plane and show clothes and whatever um but it's because it was written by a guy who played a little bit of minor league baseball so that that certainly um helped add the authenticity a little bit. That came out sort of around when all the other stuff was coming out too, and that stood out to me. So I don't know if that's the best one, but that's certainly the one that pops to mind. But, again, I really enjoyed League of Their Own and The Sandlot, which is a you know, a baseball movie,

even though it's not about professional baseball till the end. Um, I, I loved major league, um, less so the sequels, um, eight men out.

I really liked two at the time. Although I, if memory serves, they had their shoeless Joe Jackson was hitting right-handed, which sort of takes you right out of it. Um, if you know such things, If memory serves, their shoeless Joe Jackson was hitting right-handed, which sort of takes you right out of it, if you know such things. I did not notice that. The Natural was great. But The Natural is on TV a lot, and I can turn away from it.

There are movies that you can't, right? Right. So, yeah, let's – well, I'll give it to Bull Durham for me. I'm not sappy enough to have it be Field of Dreams. I love all those movies, but Norm, what about you? Field of Dreams is, I mean, as an adaptation, for one thing, it's really, really clever and just a beautiful work of translation from the book Shoeless Joe.

So there's that. There's Burt Lancaster, who is just wonderful. Costner as a naive, believing guy who doesn't really fully understand what's happening to him, but goes with it anyway. It's a great performance. And it has that ending. It has the ending that absolutely is the smart, I mean, speaking of adaptation, the smartest thing it does is that it takes that out. We don't know who the catcher is. It's the first thing out of Kinsella's mouth in the book. He says, I know a catcher, and it sets it up. And because it's just there throughout the book, I mean, the book is beautiful and moving and wonderful, but it's there and you can see it. I saw Field of Dreams, I'm sure Mike's heard this story every time I did his radio show, excuse me.

started crying and baseball or not, that's something that that movie does that no other movie does. That is just that it brings you to this place of, you know, you've been having a pleasant afternoon in this movie. And then all of a sudden you're just walloped with this emotion and it works. It actually works. Nothing else does that. So I'm always going to go for something that's as big and mythic as, uh, of baseball can be. Now I also know that the baseball in the movie is incidental, but that's why I think that's why I love it. Yeah. That's a movie. It's not a,

like it's not a baseball movie, but it is about baseball. And it's too bad that we're not going to get our field of dreams game this year. There was supposed to be a game this year. Yeah. Cornfield in July, I think. And there's no chance that that happens. Oh man. Hopefully they do game this year. Oh, yeah? The cornfield in July, I think,

and there's no chance that that happens. Oh, man. Hopefully they do it next year. Field of Dreams is a movie I might have, maybe I've seen it, I don't know, 50 times or something, and every time I've seen that movie, I have wept, like actual tears dropping from my eyeballs when he says, you want to catch uh i'm

telling you and in fact even thinking about it now i need to move on quickly because it gets me every single time and there's only a handful of movies that can do that and that's that's one of them so for that reason alone i that's amazing yeah that's why it doesn't hit me the way it hits other people. I mean, I played catch with my father too. But did you have a good relationship with your father? I mean, it's up and down. But fathers and sons are always... I think that's true of most relationships.

Exactly. And for that reason, it should hit me um just as much if not more but but honestly i don't i don't know why it doesn't but it doesn't are you trying to figure out if the catcher is a real player no distracted by who that guy might be no not not at all um but but yeah i i guess i mean i probably might have checked out of it a little earlier um so i wasn't emotionally invested throughout the rest of the uh the the the movie but i don't know it i feel terrible that it doesn't tug at my heartstrings like it does everybody else oh it's okay there's plenty of popular you know, heartstring movies that I don't like. So you're totally allowed to not like the thing that other people like.

It happens all the time. I don't not like it. It just doesn't, like, it doesn't affect me. That's all. Okay. We also neglected to mention For Love of the Game. Did we, though? I don't think.

But the baseball parts of For Love of the Game. Did we though? I don't think so. But the baseball parts of For Love of the Game are actually excellent. I thought it was like two movies. You had this love part and then you had this baseball part and I thought the baseball part was fantastic. Yeah, I thought it was very trying to get, you're right there with a pitcher who's pitching a perfect game

at the end of his career, but it always bothered me that they didn't call it For the Love of the Game, which yeah always bothered me that they didn't call it for the love of the game, which yeah, it still bothers me. I get that. You know, Mike, do you identify as a Gen X-er? Like if I were to say put yourself in a bucket?

I don't... Maybe? I guess? I mean, when I think of Gen X, I think of like singles and heathers and those sorts of things. I sort of identify as an eighties kid. But Gen Xers are eighties kids, right?

Yeah. It's a larger span, isn't it? Well, I'm having a conversation with somebody about this on Twitter right now, where I referred to myself as neither Gen X nor Boomer. Cause when the book came out, when Douglas Copeland's book came out,

I was under the impression that Gen X started in 1970 and I missed it because I was born in 68. And clearly not a boomer. No, I'm not a boomer, but that's what I mean. I mean, I feel like I missed the cut for both of them. I think it's the experience that you had growing up and, and I guess mine is Gen X, but I guess yours would be too yeah I mean as far as I'm like we're 18 months apart we pretty much had the same life as kids I didn't identify with the people in in singles or in st. Elmo's fire or those

sorts of things who were young adults when I was a young adult well the same almost fire was 1985. Those kids are 10 years younger. You were 10 years younger than they were. They're supposed to be out of college and graduated and miserable. I thought that was the outgrowth of The Breakfast Club. Oh, you're thinking of the Brad Pack. Well, some of the same actors are in both films. But yeah, Emilio Estevez is playing a high school junior or senior in The Breakfast

Club. And then the next year he's playing someone who's seven or eight years older. That's because they were all doing cocaine and nobody was paying attention to anything. It was 1985. I thought it was later than that, but yeah. Okay. I will bow to your greater knowledge. The single soundtrack holds up, by the way. I don't know when the last time you spun it was, but it's still fantastic. A long time. Yeah. I think I heard something from it fairly recently. Oh, no, I was making a joke.

That movie, there's a couple of things in it that have never left me. One of them is the great way that Matt Dillon's character explains the name of his band, Citizen Dick. And he has a song. They have a song called Touch Me, I'm Dick. And it's a play on Touch Me, I'm Sick, which was an actual song at the time. And he just stumbles through this explanation to somebody who's interviewing him. He says, well, it means

that I'm Dick and you can touch me. And for some reason, that popped back into my head a couple of days ago, and I have no idea why. somebody must've said something about Matt Dillon somewhere, but it was just this, Oh no, I remember cause I was trying to figure out if Adam Schlesinger was involved at all in singles and if there was any connection there. And, um, cause that's the kind of joke he would have come up with. That's the only, that's the only reason it was in my head, I guess. But yeah, that's where singles is. I don't think about the soundtrack.

I think about that one joke. Well, some great, great stuff on that soundtrack. I think the Paul Westerberg Dyslexic Heart, I think it came up organically on Friday on Toronto Mic. It just came up. It's a good song. Yeah, The Replacements.

You know Crash Test Dummies had a cover of Androgynous. Is everybody aware of this on The Ghosts That Haunt Me? Did anyone listen to Crash Test Dummies? Alright, moving on. The Ghosts That Haunt Me had And anyone listen to Crash Test Dummies? All right, moving on. Okay, so The Ghosts That Haunt Me had Androgynous, which of course that's Replacements. What's the name of the Westerberg band?

Replacements. Yeah, the Replacements. Yeah, that's their song, Androgynous. But full circle, because it all came back to Adam. So let's close with this now. Norm, Mike, everybody, not everybody, but most people listening to us now are hurting in some regard.

Like you might be hurting financially because somebody's laid off or has less work or I know people with jobs you think would be safe who are being asked to take a pay cut. And there's a lot of people hurting economically. You have emotional. I think a lot of people hurting economically. You have emotional. I think a lot of people are going to suffer emotionally, particularly those who suffer from anxiety and depression.

The self-isolation is not going to be ideal for a lot of us and a lot of people are hurting that way. And then finally, of course, there's an actual virus out there. There are people, loved ones, we're afraid people are going to be sick. Some people are sick and then there's all that that entails. Now, I know you're just a baseball guy, Mike, and Norm, you're just a movie guy, but I think people would love to hear from you now. If you, anything, anything reassuring you could state and share with the listeners of Toronto Mike

would be greatly appreciated. What can you say to us? I mean, thank you for making us more than just our job. But look, it's going to be over. We don't know when and we don't know what it's going to be like. I'm actually buoyed by the fact that these worst case scenario projections of deaths are much, much lower than what I had thought we might see. You know, when I was down in Florida and I could not wait to get the hell out of there. And I'm so glad that I got back to Canada, the literal first moment that I could. literal first moment that I could. But I saw something like, well, 70% of people might get it and 2% might die. And that's like 10 or 12 million people in the United States. And it doesn't look like it's going to be anywhere close to that, which is wonderful. But people do have to smarten up and start to stay away. I think that really, you know, it's wonderful to see how most people have understood what's going on

and how important it is to distance and isolate. It's great that we have these, you know, imagine this happening 30 years ago when you didn't have a cell phone, never mind the ability to FaceTime or Zoom or whatever and stay in touch that way. And long distance was super expensive and all that. And, you know, that's all a wonderful outgrowth of this. outgrowth of this. But I think the good thing is that at some point this will be over and we'll be able to go back to a relatively normal life and maybe we'll learn a little bit more about not taking personal interactions for granted and all of that stuff. But I think the most important thing about this is to be smart and use even an overabundance of caution.

And I've told a few people, like, when this is over, if this all feels like an incredible overreaction, then that means we did it right. And so, you know, I still know of a few people who aren't taking it especially seriously. You don't have to be afraid of people, but you just have to be smart. My kid's having a birthday party this week, and it's going to be her and three friends on the front lawn, all 10, 20 feet away from each other. And she's putting a piece of cake on their chair that'll be waiting for them when they get there and it's not ideal obviously it's not ideal and um our duty is to protect each other and to be there for each other and i you know i don't want to get into

uh any sort of political stuff about it but it it amazes me that there are people out there that are just okay with old people dying. They'll say, well, it's only old people. It's only people over 70. And even if it is, and it isn't, we know that it isn't, but even if it is, yeah, we don't want a bunch of old people to die. So hopefully everyone who's listening to this is doing the right thing, we don't want a bunch of old people to die. So,

so hopefully everyone who's listening to this is doing the right thing, not Martin up and stay home. And, and, and it'll be over and you still, you know, you can watch old sports on TV. There's less anxiety involved and, you know,

a lot of it, to have a happy ending so you can just relax and enjoy it as opposed to sitting on the edge of your seat like you did the first time. And it brings back some great memories too. You know, watching some 92 and 93 World Series games has been, you know, you forget that that happened. And, oh, hey, there's that guy. And, oh, yeah, there's that guy.

And, oh, yeah, Jimmy Key was amazing and all that stuff. And also don't worry about learning a new language. You know, don't worry about cleaning your house finally. You got enough to do. Just stay smart and stay healthy and stay safe. And the truth of the matter is the sooner, the more everybody does it, the more everybody distances, the sooner this will be over. Norm, as the older brother, you get the final word. I'm pretty much in agreement with Mike. I would just add that, you know, the whole point of this, yeah, as Mike said, if we do it right, it'll look like we overreacted, but that's because we won't be

carting bodies out of hospital morgues for weeks. The only thing you need to do is just, the best advice I've heard so far anyway, is to assume that you have it and behave accordingly. Just take the appropriate measures if you're going outside to protect everyone else from you and make sure that the spread is limited that way. Just wash your hands. If they say to wear the mask, wear the mask. I'm waiting on final pandemic confirmation orders from all these different places. The CDC in the States is getting up. And the other problem, yeah, as Mike did point out, is that the contradictory information is being tainted with cynicism and this just this obscene disregard for the idea of safety. safety. It's Palm Sunday and some idiot was complaining last night that, oh, the anti-Christian liberal left is rejoicing at the fact that churches are going to be empty tomorrow. It's like, no, we don't want people to die. We don't want people to die because they're stupid. We don't want

people to die at all. We would like people to not die of this. And the way to do that is to stay indoors and to, you know, hey, I publish this thing in now every week where a bunch of people tell me what recommendations they have for other people, movies to watch. That's what I can do for the community. I can't help anyone. Not really. I just write and I do a podcast where people listen and talk. And that's basically the extent of my contribution. But what I can do is give you a distraction. I can offer you a TV series maybe you haven't heard of or a few movies worth watching, or I can ask other people for their recommendations. And that actually makes me feel a little bit better

about the sense of community. We are all locked away together, but what's happening now is the artists that I follow and the writers and filmmakers and actors are all just getting really weird. They're in isolation and they're being strange on camera. One of the most reassuring things I saw last week was an episode of Stephen Colbert's show where he and John Oliver just shot the shit for 10 minutes before talking more seriously

about the state of things. But they ended up, they started by talking about what they're doing to do their shows on their own, which they effectively are, with people helping them remotely. And then they somehow segued to talking about the worst experiences they'd ever had in front of audiences and the sheer terror of doing this and not knowing if it was helping anybody. And there's a level of vulnerability that's happening that I'm really responding to because nobody has the answers. And anybody who says they have the

answer is probably trying to sell you some weird fake cure. And so I'm just asking everybody to acknowledge that we don't know where this is going. But yeah, as Mike said, it's going to be over at some point. Now, whether that's because we all die because some idiot refuses to stay home or we wait it out, we flatten the curve and we kill the virus by refusing to give it hosts. I'm hoping for the second thing, but I'm going to do my best to make that happen. We're not going to all die from this. Everybody dies of something.

That's the thing. But it's a scary thing. And the only thing I would just say, since Norman brought up Palm Sunday, first of all, don't stay indoors. Stay stay home don't gather indoors or anything like that but um you know it's easter next weekend it's passover wednesday night um don't please just don't yeah don't congregate don't no easter dinners no passoverers, do it on zoom, do it virtually, but just,

you know, this is, it's a weird year. Take the mulligan. You have to do the things that you always do. Much more than a movie guy, Norm Wilner, much more than a blue Jays baseball guy,

Mike Wilner, Wilner squared. Thank you both so much. I just want you to know when this is over because I've heard you both tell me this will

end and I trust you both. We're going to have a monster TMLX. It'll be a TMLX six. I mean, it needs to be big because it means if we're having it, it

means health officials have said this is safe and we're going to go big. And I'm hoping I see you both there. Thanks for doing this today.

I wouldn't miss it. Thanks for having us, Mike. And that brings us to the end of our 612th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Norm is at Norm Wilner. Mike is at Mike. Nope, he's not at Mike.

He's just at Willnerness 590. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. And the Keitner Group are at

the Keitner Group. See you all next week. This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RoamPhone.ca to get started.