When I was a kid, Garfield was everywhere. I'd buy his books, his posters, I'd watch his TV specials... Garfield was the #1 cartoon of my youth. There was nothing better than scoring a new Garfield book at the Scholastic Book Fair. And if you could score an I Hate
An early disappointment for me was Big Top Pee-Wee. Big Top Pee-Wee came out in 1988 and starred Pee-Wee Herman a.k.a Paul Reubens and Susan Tyrrell, Kris Kristofferson, Penelope Ann Miller, and Valeria Golino. I was very, very excited about Big Top Pee-Wee. Trailer for Big Top Pee-WeeI
This post was inspired by a New Yorker piece by Colin Jost. As a teenager, I lived on the east side of the Humber River, but attended high school west of the Humber. If we're talking boroughs, I lived in York and went to high school in Etobicoke. There were
When I visited The Woodshed last month to chat with Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy, Jim asked me why I pronounced "pasta" with an "aw" instead of the way you'd say "past". I was often told I had it wrong, but I'd never been asked why I say it that way.
Yesterday I was checking in on Twitter, as I do several times a day, and I saw a tweet from Kevin Glew about Willie Upshaw. #OTD 39 years ago, Willie Upshaw hits a two-run single in the third inning to become the first Toronto Blue Jays player to record 100
On this day in 1991, thirty years ago, four seminal albums were released. Nirvana released "Nevermind," Soundgarden released "Badmotorfinger," the Red Hot Chilli Peppers released "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" and A Tribe Called Quest released "The Low End Theory." I owned and adored all four of these albums. I still
It's déjà vu all over again. Someone with a vintage Elmer the Safety Elephant statue has turned to Google to find out the value, only to end up right here at TorontoMike.com. Here's the email I received last night. Me and my partner have an Elmer The Safety Elephant
I used to buy 45 singles. I had a record player, purchased at Consumers Distributing, and I'd walk over to Sam the Record Man at Jane and Bloor to buy the Top 40 hits of the day. I had caught the video for Bruce Willis's Respect Yourself and loved it
Much Music is down to one single hour of videos during weekdays. Previously, they were still playing seven hours of videos weekdays from 6am to 1pm. This new schedule as the videos being played for an hour at noon. I'll be the first to admit this change won't affect me
During his visit Friday, Ed "Retrontario" Conroy gave me an old record he stumbled across in one of his crate-dives for vintage Canadiana. This glorious piece of vinyl is entitled "Mac's Exclusively Presents Great Moments of Hockey" and includes Hockey Night in Canada calls by Foster Hewitt et al. Now
The Barenaked Ladies have been the topic of many conversations this past week, so it's no surprise their reuniting for the Juno Awards came up in last Friday's Open Mike. Commenter mrmojorisica linked to this video featuring interviews with Steven Page and Ed Robertson. There it was, a quote from
I love writing about Blinky. In the early 80s, Blinky the Police Car was everywhere. He and Elmer the Safety Elephant were primary school staples. I remember Blinky blinking, but I forgot Blinky used to talk. Thanks to my pal Retrontario, here's raw footage from the 1981 Santa Claus Parade
I remember countless school trips to the McLaughlin Planetarium when I was in primary school. It was an amazing place to learn about the stars, planets, and cosmology. I watched La La Land yesterday and there's a scene in a planetarium that took me back to the 80s when we
Last night, I was at The Royal Cinema for an event billed as MuchMusic Retro Mixtape. It was a discussion with Christopher Ward and fantastic video collections curated by Retrontario. Along the way, other veejays from the era would take the stage to share stories. It was awesome for this
1982 was the first calendar year in which I purchased music for myself. Prior to then, the only music in the house that didn't spill out of the radio belonged to my parents. But in 1982, I purchased one album on vinyl and one album on cassette tape. The vinyl
My pal Ed (Retrontario to you, pal!) has uncovered a clean copy of Roland Parliament's 60-second version of "Ontario - Yours to Discover". As a child of the 80s, I remember this tune well. It was an earworm of sorts that still randomly spills out of my mouth from time
I fell in love with baseball during the summer of '83 when I caught Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth calling Blue Jay games while spending a couple of weeks at my uncle's cottage. I was hooked. Around this time, I was playing tee-ball. In my tee-ball league, the catcher was
I was catching up on some work last night when I saw this tweet from TSN1050 host Mike Richards. Watching a Leaf "Classic" game from 1989. I think Damphousse has just finished a 7 minute shift..#WTF? @TSN1050Radio pic.twitter.com/w9Ig5o43xl— Mike Richards (@MikeRichardsTSN) March 24, 2016Immediately, I knew
I went through an old bin of stuff I've saved for decades, throwing some stuff out and keeping a few priceless gems. In this bin of memories I found a couple of guides I received 25 years ago. One is entitled "Cycling Skills" and taught me the rules of the
My kids will never know a world without the internet. As far as they're concerned, it's always been there, a pervasive connection to a massive database of facts and myths. Periodically, I'll remind them that I didn't surf the web until university. When I was 13, my buddies and I
Do you remember the first time you spun Nirvana's Nevermind? I do. I'd pop it in the CD player, and after "Something in the Way", I'd start it again. At some point I realized there was a whack of time left in the final track, after "Something in the Way"
Over 11 years ago, I wrote about Magic Numbers. Trust me, there's nothing supernatural about this magic. Here's an excerpt of what I wrote back then. My fondest memories are of the Magic Number. The Magic Number is simply the number of games that the team leading a division needs
As a kid, summers meant collecting baseball stickers. This was a very big deal to me in the 80s. I've held on to some of these sticker books, and here's the photographic evidence.
