YouTube user Retrontario frequently uploads fantastic retro-Toronto-centric gems.  These clips never fail to bring back a ton of memories for me, so I feature them from time to time. I'm sharing a random clip of CBC television on December 22, 1985.  I was ten years old and my brother Ryan

I was listening to the Strombo show tonight and I caught a few seconds of "Thunder Kiss '65" by White Zombie.  That's all it took.  I was back at 410 Sherbourne Street in the big room moshing as if nobody was watching. For a period in the early-to-mid-90s, Monday nights

Mr. Mugs is a sheep dog who was featured in these readers I used when learning how to read.  Mr. Mugs taught me to read, and since he's no longer part of the Canadian school curriculum, I preserved him for all of eternity. Ranking #2 in Google for Mr. Mugs

You may have heard that Dolemite passed away earlier in the week. It was actually Rudy Ray Moore who passed away, but he was Dolemite, his 1970s blaxploitation persona. I didn't know about Dolemite until Big Daddy Kane introduced me to him in 1990.  I was a big Big Daddy

The other day I had this memory surface quite randomly.  I was about my son's age, maybe six or seven, and I was in the basement of my grandparents' house in Midland, Ontario. In this memory I can see the billiards table, the brownish-orange shag carpeting, and in the corner,

YouTube user Retrontario frequently uploads fantastic retro-Toronto-centric gems.  These clips never fail to bring back a ton of memories for me, so I feature them from time to time. Remember 1983?  I do.  Here's J.D "Don't Call Me John" Roberts looking back over the Entertainment world in 1983 on

This is fun.  In honour of Google's 10th birthday, they've brought back their oldest available index so you can Google like it's January 2001. Get your fill off it now b/c they're only keeping it online for a month. In January 2001, I was focusing on a site I

YouTube user Retrontario frequently uploads fantastic retro-Toronto-centric gems.  These clips never fail to bring back a ton of memories for me, so I feature them from time to time. It's been a while since we've shopped at Simpsons.  When I was a kid, Simpsons was a big deal.  It was

If you recognize the title of this entry, you're a child of the 80s and Canadian.  You're also likely a little creeped out right now. I'm a child of the 80s, and the ASTAR public service announcement from The War Amps always freaked me out.  It was a pretty cool

We had our first boy-girl dance in grade five.  It was the girls' idea.  They convinced our teacher who agreed so long as when we danced we held our arms straight out so there would be minimal bodily contact. The organizers wanted some slow songs during which we'd couple up

As a kid, there was nothing better than a trip to Consumers Distributing.  Consumers Distributing was a chain of stores where you would order via catalogue.  The catalogue would arrive at our home and I would go through it, circling the items I wanted.  Then, when my birthday came, we'd

Freddie P shared a chain email that's been making the rounds and it opened an old wound.  The email is for those of us born before the 1980s and it includes this line: Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to

A few years ago I wrote about old scrapbooks I uncovered.  I haven't really revisited these scrapbooks since, but it really does give you a nice snapshot in time of a different period in this city. Today we have a baseball team that hasn't played a playoff game in 15

I can't say for certain that Igor Kenk stole my bike.  It happened in 1989 and my bike was gracefully removed from our garage in the middle of the night.  One morning I woke up, saw the garage door was opened and realized my bike was gone. Shortly thereafter I

Has it really been five years since I played ball with Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys?  Yes it has, and I know this because I wrote this entry exactly five years ago today. You'll have to click that link to read the details, but I did indeed play a

I was reading the Toronto Star sports section last night when I came across the city's high school baseball team rankings.  At the top of that list, ranked #1, is Michael Power / St. Joseph's High School, my alma matter. This isn't a new phenomena.  When I was attending the school

Slick Rick won't be deported back to the United Kingdom thanks to a pardon he received for the attempted murders of two men in 1991. I collected the Rap Traxx compilations that came out in the late 80s and early 90s, and the best cut on Rap Traxx 2 was

I just read that Dennis Lee is a finalist for this year's Trillium Book Award, Ontario's premier literary prize.  Whenever I think of Dennis Lee, I think about the annual poem recital we had through grade three.  Dennis Lee's "Alligator Pie" and "Garbage Delight" were ripe full of fun poems

Writing about games we played in the schoolyard, like Butt's Up and Handball, I remembered Running Bases. Running Bases was a game I played often as a kid.  There would be two bases, and someone wearing a baseball glove and manning each base.  Everyone else would then run back and