It's funny, but I find I drop at least one Degrassi Junior High reference every week. Lately, it's been a great deal more frequent with thoughts of purchasing a Joey Jerimiah hat and changing the name of our ball team to The Zit Remedy. Then, there was my retelling of
I remember seeing "Teen Wolf" at the old Humber Odeon theatre. I loved it, and when they aired "Teen Wolf" during a free preview of First Choice we recorded it to VHS and played it ad nauseum. If you need inspiration, you can always turn to "Rocky" or "The Natural"
In primary school, I was in the gifted program. Apparently I scored high in some standardized test and that led to further tests and the label "gifted". They may as well have labelled me "underachiever and proud of it". Being in the gifted program meant going to a different school
If you grew up in Toronto, you remember the TTC Student Cards. You had to show this card when you paid student fare to ride the TTC. Every fall the TTC would come to our school and take our picture. That's where the trouble began. In typical dumb ass teenage
About a decade ago, T and I were dining at the Golden Griddle across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens. On this particular morning the Grid was full of hungry Americans. They were very nice hungry Americans and they kept trying to converse with us. In their hungry American accents
As a kid growing up in Toronto, there was always plenty of cartoon action on Saturday mornings, but Sunday mornings were a completely different story. The stations were littered with church programming and news talk and the pickings for a kid were pretty slim. As a result, Commander Tom was
In the mid-80s, CBC aired a cartoon called "The Raccoons". Bert Raccoon was the hero and Cyril Sneer was the bad guy. I loved the fact Bert and Cyril had these faucet-like noses. The raccoon named Lisa, introduced late in the series, was actually voiced by Lisa Lougheed who also
It started with Scott. I caught him singing "Mah Nà Mah Nà", a song I know and love from The Muppets. I started singing it too, and I've been singing it all day. I remembered a version of the song recorded by Cake, and I went straight to the Wikipedia
In 1985, Jolt Cola was all the buzz in the school yard of St. Pius X at Jane and Bloor. When it was launched, we would discuss it secretly as if it was crack cocaine. The marketing push was based on the fact Jolt Cola was "All the sugar and
I loved the first two seasons of The Ren and Stimpy show that aired on MuchMusic back in the early 90s. I used to record the episodes and watch them over and over and over again. Space Madness, Ren's Toothache, Rubber Nipple Salesman and Sven Hoek were classics from Canadian
From about 1984 to 1987, I was a big fan of WWF wrestling. My favourite wrestler was Rowdy Roddy Piper who used to host a little segment called Piper's Pit. Here's a classic clip of Cyndi Lauper on Piper's Pit. Captain Lou Albano comes in to claim he's the reason
In the mid-80s, I loved WWF wrestling. Rowdy Roddy Piper was my favourite and I watched weekly. I even went to a couple of live events, including Hulkamania at Exhibition Stadium. As a fan, I loved The Wrestling Album, which I owned on cassette. That cassette tape bit the dust
When that Alphagetti Gobbler commercial entered my mind, it was the first time I thought about that ad in about 25 years. An ad for a similar product, however, never really left my memory bank. Who could forget the Zoodles song? Zoodles, like Alphagetti, was canned pasta that we kids
Yesterday Michelle was Wonder Woman and James was Spider-Man. They asked me to be the Green Goblin. Somehow, at that precise moment, "goblin" sounded like "gobbler" and I blurted out something I hadn't thought about in at least a couple of decades. I told them I was the Alphagetti Gobbler.
They're talking about building a city of Toronto museum and the Star is reporting they may build it by the giant Canada Malting Company silos. I have a long and interesting history with the Canada Malting Company silos. For a couple of summers in the early 90s, by pal Ed
As I age, I find it harder to interpret the distance between the current time and a memory. For example, while reading the paper this morning I got lost in a synopsis of the Blue Jays' first 30 seasons. There was a blurb about Dave Stieb losing a no-hit bid
It's warming up outside, so I took a stroll to Yonge and Dundas. Passing 333 Yonge, home to HMV, I thought about Kish. Kish was a local rapper who hit the charts back in '91 with I Rhyme the World in 80 Days. According to his Wikipedia page his real
CHCH, the Hamilton station we watched on channel 11, didn't supply us with a wealth of great television, but they did give us The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. The Hilarious House of Frightenstein starred Billy Van who played most of the characters. Vincent Price would narrate parts, including the opening
Lately I've done a lot of writing about TVOntario shows from my youth. I've covered Jeremy the Bear, Barbapapa, The Fables of the Green Forest and Dr. Snuggles, but I've yet to cover the granddaddy of them all. The TVO show I watched the most as a kid was Polka
Lesley just left a comment on my entry about Rocket Robin Hood. "Ah, memories! I was actually doing a search for the Barbapapas and came across your blog. Rocket Robin Hood was one of my favorite cartoons, too. And how about the Adventures of Hercules?" How about The Mighty Hercules!
I'm not a very big reader. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm not a very big reader in the traditional sense. That is to say, I don't read many novels. My wife is constantly reading a book or two, but I spend that time reading and creating content on the
I've finally created a category for my trips back in time to the late 70s and early 80s children's TV. Rocket Robin Hood was an animated show I used to watch daily on Global television in the 1980s. The series was actually created in the late 60s by a Canadian
I was the Wizard of Woe in my primary school's production of The Canada Goose. It was my big break. The Canada Goose was a musical that played for two nights in the basement of St. Pius X church on Bloor Street near Runnymede. The Wizard of Woe was no
Lately I've been playing retro recall with myself, remembering kids shows I watched in the late 70s and early 80s. For a while I was restricting myself to shows that aired on TVOntario, but today I thought of a show that aired elsewhere. I thought of "The Great Space Coaster"
I recently wrote about The Fables of the Green Forest, a children's cartoon I used to watch on TVO in the late 70s and early 80s. Lori left a comment on that entry asking if I remember Barbapapa. Do I ever! I loved Barbapapa. I thought the way they changed
