Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Shoalts, Joyce, Kelly and Hall: Toronto Mike'd #1191
Episode Date: January 18, 2023In this 1191st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by David Shoalts, Gare Joyce, Liam Kelly and Gerry Hall. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Ca...bana, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.
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Welcome to episode 1191 of Toronto Mic'd.
Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery.
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Palma Pasta.
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And Sammy Cone Real Estate.
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at properlyhomes.ca.
Joining me today, the crew from every spring a parade down Bay Street,
David Schultz, Gare Joyce, Jerry Hall, and Liam Kelly.
Welcome to you all.
Great to be here.
Yeah.
Do I have to hit the applause button here?
You should.
You know what that is, Mike?
You know what that sound is?
That's the sound of an empty Great Lakes lager can.
I'm going to let everybody know you guys have drank all my gray legs.
Okay.
That's it?
You mean we're not getting anywhere we leave?
I came here with an empty bag, Mike.
It'd be dry February for your guests.
Yeah.
And to think I waived my actrophy for this.
Schultz, in all honesty, once I get a moment,
which means once I cue up Garen, he goes and talks for like 25 minutes,
I'll run up to the fridge and get you another beer.
I'll let me run up to the fridge because I'll grab half a dozen.
I'm going back to Hamilton where I can drink all the Laker I want.
Okay, that's a new voice.
Here's what we're going to do.
Laker, Laker.
I thought you grew out of that in high school.
I'll fix that in post.
I'll beep that out in post here.
Okay, two of you are returning FOTMs.
Of course, that's you,
Gare Joyce. That's you, David Schultz.
I've been on this show before.
By the way, Schultzy,
you were the first guy to get a Palma Pasta lasagna.
Do you know that? No, I didn't.
You didn't know that?
I did not know that. And how come you're not wearing a Hawaiian
shirt? When did you start?
I have rules about that. I only wear them
when the weather is appropriate. Okay, when did you start? I have rules about that. I only wear them when the weather is appropriate.
Okay.
That's not today.
Okay.
Okay.
So I want to learn a little bit about the fresh meat in the room.
Okay.
The new FOTMs.
I don't know.
If anybody looked at either one of them, the last thing that come to mind is the word fresh.
Certainly my proctologist doesn't call it that.
I like it.
Jerry Hall.
You're not the Jerry Hall I thought you were going to be.
Like when Geer said Jerry Hall is dropping by,
I thought it was a different Jerry Hall.
Oh, God.
I've gotten that before, actually.
I actually have a bit about it,
how I'm the third worst Jerry Hall.
Not even.
Well, I'm the worst Jerry Hall. There's Jerry Well, and the worst Jerry Hall.
There's Jerry Hall, the supermodel.
Six foot tall, beautiful,
Mick Jagger's ex-wife, rich, fuck her.
Oh, am I allowed to swear?
Is she with Rupert Murdoch?
I don't know.
She might be.
Yeah, anyway, there's her,
and then there's...
He's still alive, so I kind of doubt it.
And then there's the Jerry Hall still alive. He's still alive, so I kind of doubt it. He's alive. Then there's the Jerry Hall, as everybody knows,
in Canadian comedy.
Beautiful, red-headed, brilliant writer.
She's on, I think, is this ours, 22 Minutes?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
And then, you know, they get...
Then there's you.
They get me.
Gee, I thought you were going to say,
mention the former sports editor of the Toronto Star.
I believe that was a Jerry Hall, too.
Oh, good, I'm fourth now.
That's even better.
But the funny thing... Maybe I'm the only guy who knows that.
The funny thing is, when I went to do a police records check
so I could coach my kids' hockey team,
I found out there was a hit.
Someone with the exact same name as mine, Jerry Hall,
is a sex offender out in London.
Oh, a real stretch for you.
Uncle Jer. Well, I tell you, that was the most awkward thank you
letter I've ever had to write
because now I found out I wasn't the worst.
Jerry Hall out there.
So yeah, that's...
Now you don't have to coach kids hockey.
What would you say you do for a living, Jerry?
Well, I'm a
probation officer by day.
Okay, see, I didn't know this.
I'm learning on the fly here because I know your, uh, your, your side hustle, if you will,
is, uh, your, uh, standup comic.
Yes.
Uh, standup comic is the, what I do in the evenings and, uh, a little more, a little
different, uh, personality on stage than I have in the office.
Okay.
Wild.
And you came from the hammer.
So you're, you're heading back to the hammer after this.
Absolutely.
And you're hammered.
I can't wait. Can't wait for that drive.
45 minutes here, 2 hours and 30 minutes back.
It's a great system.
Oh, that's a quick one.
So, Jerry Hall, thank you for being here.
As we chat amongst here, I'll kind of explain how it's not your first visit to the TMDS studio.
We'll get a little history of the, uh,
every,
uh,
spring of prey down Bay street.
We literally just recorded two new episodes.
So we're all a little,
uh,
punchy.
I would say,
thank you.
Great Lakes brewery,
Liam Kelly.
Yep.
What would you say you do for a living,
Liam?
I'd say I'm a comedian.
Okay.
You're an actual standup comic.
Like you don't need a day job.
You can,
I could use one,
but I don't.
He's that rarest of birds, a comic in Canada, Okay, you're an actual stand-up comic. You don't need a day job. I could use one, but I don't need one.
Like most of us. He's that rarest of birds.
A comic in Canada who actually makes a living from it.
I thought it was just Ron James.
Yeah, it is.
I pick over his entrails every weekend.
Hey, bye!
Can I eat some of that?
Okay, give me an idea.
How long have you been at it?
How's it going uh i'm very curious
comedy i've been doing comedy a long time like 20 25 years i started doing sketch and improv
yeah what do you do for your skin care uh nivia uh nivia every day uh it's fantastic yeah no no i
people ask me that but no i uh i started doing sketch and improv in the 90s had a good troupe
called indoor recess we were pretty good and sketch was all the rage in the 90s because of the kids in
the hall so and then uh eventually i had kids what about four on the floor no floor on the floor
the frantics of course i actually i got to do a show with dan retican a couple times that was
really fun you had guys right yeah yeah yeah yeah and they had that opening i remember the show they
opened with what were the lyrics to Blinded by the Light
right
do I have the right guys
I don't think so
I think that was
the Vacant Lot
oh the Vacant Lot
you're right
yeah
they did the Blinded by the Light
Mark McKinney's brothers
in that one
Nick McKinney
Vito Viscomi
these guys will be very happy
I'm remembering all their names
wow no one has mentioned us
in 25 years
and now Liam's
dropping our names
on Toronto Mike
it was a great bit
I remember
it was a great bit
racked up like a douche.
They were discussing
the lyrics to
Blinded by the Light.
Yeah, they did JFL
with that sketch.
They had a six television deal
with Broadway Video
and CBC.
So they were pretty good.
Okay, what a time
to be alive.
Rob Graffer
and I'm missing Nick.
Do you know who wrote
Blinded by the Light?
Bruce Springsteen.
Of course.
Absolutely.
Don't try and get me
on rock and roll trivia, Mike.
I will.
I will try. You will not win. And trivia, Mike. I will. I will try.
You will not win.
And Liam, you said you
actually listen to Toronto,
Mike.
I can tell because you
seem to have some insight
and knowledge.
Yeah, I listen to a bunch.
Actually, Gare and
Schultz, friends through
comedy, got me into the
pod and I started
listening.
Wait, Schultz is in
comedy?
Well, I know those people
through comedy.
Not by being funny.
He buys a ticket.
I'm more shocked he has a friend.
I'm the master of the comeback.
Not even Sugar Ray Leonard has made as many comebacks as me.
You know who's dying right now?
I'm looking right at him.
The great Gare Joyce, because I only have,
this is a little inside of everybody,
I only have four microphones.
I'm using one.
That leaves three.
But there's actually, you know, five of us in the room.
So, Gare, you're going to have to wait because when we do swing that mic over,
you can kind of tell us how you assembled this, like, the Avengers.
The Avengers of whatever you're calling every spring of parade down Bay Street.
I can't even get the table.
I know.
And you said you knew.
Just to tie things up,
last week Darren Frost came over here.
Yeah.
And then we brought in Lisa Baker
through the magics of the internet
because she was in Edmonton.
Is she in Edmonton or Calgary?
She's in Edmonton.
She's in Edmonton.
I'm losing track here.
Okay, Gordon Miller was just here.
He's from Edmonton.
I think everybody's from Edmonton
because Monica's upstairs.
She's from Edmonton too.
Good Lord.
Everybody's from Edmonton. But you know's from Edmonton because Monica's upstairs. She's from Edmonton too. Good Lord. Everybody's from Edmonton.
But you know Darren Frost, right?
I played with him last weekend
at Joker's Comedy Club in Richmond Hill.
He headlined.
I hosted.
It was really good.
He has...
I like Darren.
He's very funny.
Great guy.
I've known him for a long time.
His head is shaped like a piece of wombat poo.
I don't know if you've ever noticed that.
But it's cubed.
He's cubed with slightly rounded edges.
It's quite fascinating.
He's very funny.
But wombat poo. Have I ever noticed that? It's the first thing I noticed. Wow. That's cubed with slightly rounded edges. It's quite fascinating. It's very funny. But wombat poop.
Have I ever noticed that?
It's the first thing I noticed.
Wow.
That's some wombat shit right there.
He's going to listen to me and be like,
Liam, you piece of crap.
I'm like, I'm sorry.
Well, you're the first person I've met
who's that well-educated in wombat poop.
Oh, well, listen, I know my scat.
He's a comedy whore, though, but he's proud of it.
Did you hear the Ken Robinson episode where I said,
congrats to your mom?
Yes,
I did.
And Kenny's mom,
of course is dead.
And then you started the last episode equally,
equally awkwardly.
He's a lot of comedian.
As a joke,
I said to Lisa Baker,
you know,
how's your mom doing or whatever.
And she's like,
Oh,
we don't talk.
We're estranged.
Yeah,
that was good.
That was really good.
Yeah.
Ah,
yes.
You'll recover from that. Okay, so
now we've met Jerry Hall
and we've met Liam Kelly. You guys
are both now FOTMs, so
welcome. So that means you gotta
go to Ridley Funeral Home when you die. You realize
that. All FOTMs taken
care of by Ridley Funeral Home. Okay.
Deal? Yeah.
And now I'm gonna... It's a well-earned honor.
Sorry, sorry.
I get it.
I get it because earn is where the ashes go.
Okay.
Gare, welcome back to Toronto Mic.
Great to be here.
Great to have you here.
How did you assemble, like, I got so many questions,
but like where does every spring of parade down Bay Street come from?
Like, I know you write it all,
but how do you decide who's going to be members of the cast?
Give us the lowdown there.
It's a very low qualifying height.
You have to show up.
No, you know what?
Schultzy read the Audible version of this.
Which is excellent.
Which is so much fun.
If you toss out Hammers.
It was so great.
How come I haven't got a royalty check yet,
for crying out loud?
It's only two years that you have to wait with Audible.
Did you at least get him some beer,
like any Great Lakes?
He loves the lagers, by the way.
Yeah, speaking of beer.
Okay, I will actually.
Yeah, keep going and I'll listen.
And if there's dead air, we'll fill it have to get one, Mike. Okay. I will, actually. Yeah, keep going, and I'll listen while I run up.
And if there's dead air, we'll fill it, Mike.
I really couldn't leave the room.
So just so the audience understands, Mike is now leaving the room. To get us degenerate beer.
Yeah.
Can we lock that door?
You'll never have to think very long when someone asks him,
who are the most obnoxious, overbearing guests ever?
But what I will say, in like ignoring the peanut gallery here is that
Schultz and I were sitting at one guys.
He came back with one,
one,
one beer.
Yeah,
it's for me.
Hey,
don't run away.
We'll crack them on the mic.
So Schulte and I used to be one number apart
with our phone numbers at the Globe and Mail
back in the mid-90s.
Do you remember the extension?
5194-5195.
Very good.
Nice.
There you go.
I still have my business card from there.
It's so old it doesn't have an email address.
Thanks, Mike.
So, yeah, Dave and I go way back.
Liam, I think the first time we met, I did a show up in Richmond Hill.
Yeah, my St. Louis show that you showed.
It was super.
When you had all the old geezers up at the bar,
the Cialis Row. Yeah, what we had was
we had a group of regulars who would come every week
and they would sit at the bar facing away from the
stage but laughing. So we called them
Cialis Row. And I would give them
the 20 minute warning that the show was about to end
so they could take their Cialis. That was the idea.
So they kick in by the time
they were leaving. That was our concept there, Gary. They could push their Cialis. That was the idea. So they kick in by the time they were leaving.
That was our concept there, Gary.
They could push their empty across the bar.
But in Jerry, I met, we met at Amateur Night at Absolute.
Is that what it was?
That's what it was.
And you were like, wait a minute. Or if you're doing your uh ted reeve wait a
minute uh but you were like gare joyce right and it was like yeah yeah you know and so anyways you
had you'd read a book or two you've probably been gifted them for christ Christmas, as all hockey books are. You got some from Vainglorious Remainders.
Vainglorious Remainders.
But, yeah, so you guys came out to do one of my book launches.
The only reason I would write hockey books is so that I can have a launch party
and invite my comedian friends to do time.
And, yeah, so that's how this came down you know to have someone do uh read these pieces here you'd have to want to you know you'd
have to want to like hockey a ton right and and these guys do and and liam is a machine with with uh with voices and
characters but then i have to wipe down the mic afterwards because it's always wet i apologize
hello i'm ready mike right on the mic liam kelly everybody there you go nice great lakes thank you
so much jerry is a huge hockey-loving guy.
It's just a nice fit.
I think we've got the right crew.
It's a good crew.
Jerry's also one of the best roast writers
and roast performers in the country.
You can give a roast joke or roast stuff.
Do you think he looks a bit like Wendell Clark?
He does.
A little bit.
Wait, is it Wendell Clark?
No, I used to get a lot of Wendell Clark when I was younger. Often, is it Wendell Clark? Is it? No. Yeah, no, I used to get, I used to get a lot of Wendell Clark when I was younger. And, uh, often it's funny because I used
to do the, just a kind of throwaway line. And, uh, some of my standup was like, uh, I used to
just mention, I look like a shitty Wendell Clark and it worked great in Toronto, but if you do it
outside of Toronto nowadays, nobody knows who the hell you're talking about. Right, right. Well, you got more hair than one.
Steve Bannon is what it is.
Yeah, and you used to use that line, too, about you looking like Steve Bannon.
He used that line.
He did a whole routine about it at TMLX3.
My career.
That was, by the way, that was, you know, astute FOTMs will remember that David Schultz
and Gare Joyce did stand up at a
TMLX event.
I guess that's right.
I too met one of these guys at amateur night at absolute comedy.
Only it was Liam.
That's where I met you.
And I remember I met Jerry at a show at a little joint in Brantford that was
put on by a Brantford comic named Robert Beckham.
Okay.
And Robert's a good guy,
and that was the first time anyone gave me 20 minutes.
And that's...
What'd you do for the other 19 minutes?
I'll tell you what, that was a few years ago.
That stretched me to the max.
I was scraping the barrel dry.
Even Mrs. Schultz doesn't give you 20 minutes.
Maybe 20 times in 20 minutes.
Oh, yeah.
And while Robert has put on some minutes. And while Robert has put
on some good shows,
while Robert has put on some good shows
with good audiences and well attended,
that was not one of the shows.
He had to do 20 minutes
in front of a lot of people who
really didn't want comics to be there.
It was a trial by fire
for sure. It was a tiny little restaurant that
even if every seat were filled,
there'd be less than 40 people in the room, I'm saying.
You couldn't have shoehorned 40 in that place, right?
It wasn't much bigger than this room we're sitting in right now.
It was tiny.
It was very small.
20 max.
I think this is a good crowd for me to ask a little more about
the Toronto stand-up community.
I kind of dabble. I get
a Darren Frost here. I just had
Precious Chong here a couple of weeks ago.
But I get a little taste here and there.
Maybe we can start with you, Liam.
Tell me
who are the fixtures on the Toronto comedy
stand-up
in this Toronto stand-up community?
Where are the places to go, and give us a
taste. Yeah, sure, I mean, there's the clubs, obviously,
right, which has got Yuck Yucks and Absolute. Well, nothing's obvious.
Alright, well, you have Absolute and
Yucks, but then, to me, the best
ones are Comedy Bar on Bloor
in Ossington, and then
they have a new comedy bar on Danforth,
2800 Danforth, that's fantastic.
There's the Corner Comedy Club,
which is great. A small little
back alley behind Yuck Yucks.
And then who's doing it?
You can go to Comedy Bar
any given night and see someone who has a
special on Jem or a special
on Barstool or a special on... Can you name drop?
I'm just curious. Well, I guess in
Toronto, I love guys like Chris Robinson
and Paul Thompson. I like
Keisha Brownie.
I like Zabrina Douglas.
I mean, these are my guys that, you know, to me aren't famous,
but are making a living and are really good at it, you know? Let's make them famous.
Like, let's shout them out.
Absolutely.
I think that, you know, unless you're, who am I thinking of?
Like, Jeremy Hotz comes through, right?
So he'll come on this program, and it's like, oh, yeah,
I remember Jeremy Hotz.
I saw him on Speed 2 or whatever.
Yeah.
Or the newsroom, right?
Like, let's name check some of these Toronto stand-up fixtures.
Yeah, I think Danish Anwar is one of these guys that Jerry's done some good work with
that we should bring up, who's, again, a great roast guy,
but also just a great comedian in general.
And you could probably speak to that, too, AJ.
I was just going to say, Danish is one of that category of comedian.
Not only can tell a joke, very smart, but very clever, very topical.
He'll just deal with all the present political stuff going on now.
He runs a great show.
I'm actually going to be on it next week called Your Hood's a Joke,
in which different communities will roast each other.
The idea is you're not roasting the other comic, although you can can kind of slip that in but you're roasting the place they're from
like uh last uh last time i did the show was i was representing canada and uh another comic uh
hersham and i hate what do you remember hersham's last name coletti i think coletti uh was uh
representing india and so I got to basically
say horrible things about India.
And hopefully that never
sees
the internet because
I may no longer have a job.
No, seriously though,
he runs...
He runs...
Gare Joyce, everybody.
That's why he's a sports writer.
Yeah, well, it was fun.
You know, the great thing about roast is you can just say things you can't say in real life.
But, you know.
Yeah, you got like a get out of jail free card.
Yeah, exactly.
But anyway, Danish runs that because he sees the humor in being able to sort of explore these boundaries.
And at the same time remain, you know, topical and respectful.
Yeah, like it's a safe, like roasts in a way are like a safe way to be outrageous, right?
Like you're allowed to say crazy stuff only because you're doing a roast.
If you tried to do that in your act, you'd be booed off the stage.
Which is also cool too because like I did a heckle show that my friend Patrick Russell produced at Comedy Bar the other night.
And again, because the audience was set up to heckle us, they were ready for whatever
we said to them.
And I kind of like that very much.
I like being able to just, I interact with the audience constantly anyway, but to have
them feel free to shout at us because that was what the parameters of the show were,
it was even more fun.
So that was awesome.
I saw the notices for that and I sort of wondered how wondered, how would Patrick control the audience in that regard?
Because I think it said on the notice, one heckle allowed per comic, was it?
Yeah.
And I thought, how the heck do you control that?
Because it's hard enough to keep people from heckling a lot of shows.
Once you got them started, how the heck did you keep them heckled?
Yeah, well, they heckled as much as they wanted to, which was fine.
But I was closing, and the bottom line with me is people don't heckle me because they know so i
got one or two heckles but then i just plowed through them it was great so the other problem
with inviting heckling is that too often the heckle is oh you suck yeah or racist or sexist
that's the other thing too right you know but no they were actually really good they really dug us
a lot of people brought their friends, so their friends were fun.
They were like, oh, good.
I've never been able to heckle my friends,
so now I'm going to roast my friend from the audience.
And that was kind of fun.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, Liam is excellent with crowd work too.
That's a big skill when it comes to dealing with hecklers.
If you're a smart comic,
set your friends up with a bunch of lines.
You could probably have written them.
What a five-minute spin.
Spoken like a true writer, eh?
Schultz, he writes everyone's bits.
Okay, I'm going to go around the horn with specific
questions for each of you. And Liam, my first
question, because I've now heard you record
four... Was Liam
at the first recording? I wasn't in the first one, no. Okay, I've now heard you record...
Yeah, we should shout out Hebsey,
who... Yeah, Mark Hebsey. So Hebsey did the role
of Liam Kelly, I guess, in the first episode. He was
great. Shout out to Hebsey. He did
Saul Corman. Yeah, he did Saul Corman.
He also did Peter Gross, didn't he?
I think he did Saul shortly after Saul was castrated.
He did a great job.
But Liam, I've been listening to you for three years.
So here's my question.
Okay, so we mentioned Darren Frost.
Well, Darren supplements his income
by doing voiceovers for cartoons and stuff.
Have you ever been
successful landing a
voiceover role? I think you'd be
great at it. Well, thank you, and no.
But doing things like this,
you asked earlier kind of why we would do it.
Well, things like this, right? I mean, we get good tape,
we get good opportunities. I get to explore
a character or two. I've done a couple
characters, and I get to explore them. I feel like even by the fourth episode here two. Like I've done a couple of characters and I get to explore them.
I feel like I,
even by the fourth episode here,
my third I've done,
he's changing a bit,
right?
But he was getting a bit of an edge to him.
He's getting a bit of this to him.
He's interjecting.
So Bud Hewitt is Foster Hewitt's grandson?
Grandson.
I play Bud Hewitt Foster.
He's getting quite enough.
He's getting a little uppity for my taste.
Exactly.
I think that's the fun part,
right?
Is we,
you know,
I think in the first episode,
I don't think any of us understood
who we were to each other
and how it would work.
And we're seeing that Jerry's character
is really sucking up
to your character, David,
and I'm kind of this bit of a...
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Yeah, exactly.
But I'm becoming a bit of a crust.
And that's artistically
where we're just instinctively
finding our way
how to read this
and play it properly. And that's
what I'm hoping I can parlay into things like, you know,
doing some cartoons. Just like, you know, you hear Darren
on Total Dramarama.
I hope I got the right name. And I know my
kids, for example, they
watch stuff from that
show and I was like just
letting them know, you know, the guy who played whatever
Harold was in our basement
last week and they get very excited about that.
But yeah, you would be great doing voiceovers for these cartoons.
Okay.
Yeah.
Give us my applause.
Jerry Hall.
Jerry Hall.
You ever concerned your night job here, your side hustle will affect your day job.
Like, are you ever worried that, you know, maybe you came down too hard on the Indian community
or anything of that nature?
Well, the funny thing is when you do the Your Hood's a Joke,
first of all, it's always a sellout, which is great.
It sells out the Toronto Yucks.
You got 250 people there and probably about 150 were Indian
at the last one.
There was a lot they get.
You can know it alive.
Whenever they see that.
And you know what?
They love it. They're absolutely great with it yeah they can take a joke uh and
that's fine so uh yeah i'm not worried my normal stand-up is not uh extremely uh yeah i don't say
anything racist or anything uh i don't say anything racist or homophobic uh i say a lot of sexist stuff
but um nothing that would uh ever uh affect but i did get warned when i first started
doing stand-up my manager actually came up and told me he goes you understand that right you
know there are people out there who may be looking you know you may be sitting there one day and one
of your uh your ex-clients um happens to be sitting in the uh in the audience and maybe you had to
preach them and maybe they're not happy about it. So that was always in the back of my mind. There are jokes that I have thought of and thought of
are extremely funny. And I thought, you know what, maybe for another comedian, not for me.
And I just wouldn't do it. All right. And you mentioned, Jerry, you mentioned Yuck Yuck. So I
had Breslin on this program and he tells this story. I think he tells it to everyone he's
interviewed by, but he tells a story about seeing Jim Carrey on the mics at Yuck Yucks and
thinking he wasn't very good.
And then,
you know how that story ends.
Like,
is there anybody now you want to shout out working in the Toronto standup
community who you think is destined for like us glory?
Like it's only a matter of time.
Oh,
I think when it comes to the young comics in the
scene liam's probably more qualified to answer that than me because liam you can take that one
over i just i'm saying because i'm from hamilton and i can tell you that uh i think there's a young
guy from hamilton i think one day he's going to hit a huge guy named mace galoni okay that's great
yeah he's he's not only a fabulous writer an incredible performer is he connected here what's
going on there well he's mace galoni and he's right performer. Is he connected here? What's going on there? Mace?
Mace Galoni.
And he's right now,
I think he was writing for... I think Mace is writing for 22 minutes.
Yeah, he was.
But he ended up quitting
because he ended up getting another opportunity.
But I think one day you're going to see,
he's going to be the guy
who's like one day writing for SNL
or something like this.
Wow.
Okay.
That's what I was thinking.
I'll shout out Hannah Veldhoven,
a young female comic in the city. That's actually who I'm up against at Your Hood's a Joke. Oh, that's great. That's what I was thinking. I'll shout out Hannah Veldhoven, a young female comic in the city.
That's actually who I'm up against
at Your Hood's a Joke.
Oh, that's great.
She's fantastic.
She's going to kill you, man.
She's repping Oshawa.
Oh, that makes sense.
And I'm repping Hamilton.
So you got two classy cities going at it.
Two pigs wallowing in the mud.
Decide which city has the best caviar.
That's a lose-lose, I think.
I'd also shout out Sarah Ashby, who I think is really great.
I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you again.
Sarah Ashby, I've personally battled a few times in roasts as well,
and she is also fabulous.
Any relation to Roger Ashby?
I don't think so, but I mean, it's good, but it's very funny.
How many Ashbys could there be?
There's a couple off the top of my head that I'm like, yeah,
these two, you can almost see them.
Here's the thing about comedy.
David and Gare will actually probably really
know this as they started comedy very late in their
lives. It just takes time, eh, guys?
It takes a lot, a lot, a lot of time.
And what we're saying is guys like Mace and
Hannah are people, and Sarah, who
really had it really quickly, who seem to have
caught it faster than the rest of us.
And that's cool. They found their voice.
And the other thing you need to be in comedy because,
well,
it doesn't pay any money and there's so many people in it.
Being young,
as Liam said,
is great because you've got the energy to do that.
But you need wealthy parents.
You need to be hungry.
Like you need to work at it.
Be so keen to make it that you work every day at it.
A guy like myself, I mean, I'm retired now and I got into comedy when I was in my last five years or so of working.
So I didn't have that incentive.
And I also, I'm basically lazy by nature.
So as I like to tell people, you know, I take periodic sojourns from comedy because I'm too lazy to write.
Well, it's a lot of work for very little, well, maybe no money for you, David Schultz, right?
Like, you've got to be willing to...
Well, yeah.
I paid him at the Toby Jug one time in Bolton.
How much did you pay him?
Keywords, one time.
A toonie, a toonie.
Okay, so...
You ungrateful ingrate.
Gary, I have a couple of questions for you i got half the town
out the first one is remind us of your personal relationship with jason priestly because he's
making the rounds right now because his harold ballard doc is uh coming out or maybe it's out
now we we can't decide yeah he's all choked up over that one yeah let me hear the priestly story um yeah i'm going
to uh his launch of his documentary is ballard doc tonight where is it tonight it is at the scotia
theater in richmond and uh my um my older daughter is my plus one i am a CPA. So she's going to be trying to drum up some work. And, uh,
yeah, Jason, uh, I mean, it was the craziest thing that he, um, came across the novel that I wrote
like within my first novel and within the first six or 12 months,
he'd read it and optioned it.
And that just isn't supposed to happen.
And that's called No Code?
What is it called?
It's called The Code.
Oh, it's a Pearl Jam album, The Code.
Yeah, it's called The Code, and it became Private Eyes,
which had a six-season run.
And who knows if it has an afterlife?
We don't know.
I know that Jason and the producers,
Sean Piller, Lloyd Segan,
and Cindy Sampson,
the star female lead,
everyone was sort of blindsided
when Global didn't pick it back up.
Well, real talk.
Why the hell didn't they pick it up?
It was popular, right?
Come on, let's see some Gary Joy's honesty here.
Yeah, I think that it wasn't its moment.
There are, if you take a look at shows right now,
I think that um if they're they they would say that there wasn't
an a diversity element to the show and i would sort of and and the producers would push back on I know that the one director who's a young black director,
he got his start on Private Eyes.
Now he's doing the reboot of Youngblood.
Like there was all kinds of...
They're rebooting Youngblood?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, they're doing Youngblood 2.
And definitely going to be better than Youngblood 1.
Is that possible?
But I do think there was questions of, is it diverse enough?
But can't you just add characters and diversify that shit?
Yeah, well, I mean, like you had...
They did that for Teen Titans, I noticed.
An Asian woman, a South Asian guy,
and they had a black supporting...
Did you think of going the Hudson and Rex way
and putting a dog in one of the leads?
Cheaper, by the way.
You don't have to pay the dog a lot.
The craft truck is really cheap, guys.
So help me God, in the code, right?
In the code, the dad of the main character of Brad Shade,
he was an ex-cop who had a German shepherd.
And I just thought, I'm going to spin this out.
Right?
And he was head of the,
he was the retired head
of the Toronto Canine Police.
Oh, yeah?
There you go.
Yes.
Yeah, well,
they may not have renewed it,
but he's still got six seasons out of it.
So the other thing Gare knows
that he's not mentioning
is it allowed him to become a member of the idle rich.
No,
you need a hundred episodes for the idle rich.
I'm sure you got a hundred.
No,
he didn't.
Okay.
But real talk here,
you know,
this is,
you know where you are.
You're on Toronto mic right now.
You don't have to show me like a,
I don't know,
uh,
your tax receipts or anything,
but,
uh,
is this like life-changing
income? Mike, you took the bus
from the city out here. Okay, relax.
No, I took the bus from the
Indian station. How bad is it that a George can stand a wallet there?
Let's see what's going on there.
No, I mean, it was fine. Mad stacks.
Right? It was fine. I think
if
I can
catch lightning in a jar again,
I think I'll be better prepared to negotiate a good deal.
But you know what?
I had no expectation that my novel
was going to get turned into a TV series.
That just found money.
So I was overjoyed with the process.
Awesome. Liam, what were you going to say? I spent a dayed with the process. Awesome.
Liam, what were you going to say?
I spent a day with Jason Priestley.
Can I tell you about it?
Yeah, let's hear it.
The date happened to be September 11th, 2001.
Wow.
It's true.
I was booked on a...
I will tell you the story.
I was booked on an extra.
I was an actor extra on a film shoot that Jason was starring in
in the artful Dodger at Young and Bloor.
We were shooting a bar scene.
I woke up that morning to find the news like the rest
because I watched the second plane in the second
tower. I took transit down to Young and Bloor
for noon. I stood at Young
and Bloor at noon on a Tuesday, I believe it was.
Not one person, nothing. It was
freaky as heck. Went to set.
Jason was the star of the movie. They said
you can all go home if you don't want to be here.
And that's never happened on a movie set in my
entire life before or since.
And Jason was
dating a makeup artist
and he was like, my friends in LA said
that a plane just crashed in LA and we were all freaking out
on the set and stuff like that.
Because he had cell phones
and blah blah blah like a real modern human in 2001.
But then we ended up staying there all day.
And, but it was a pretty wild day for all of us.
And just that, I mean, I was like, and Jason talked to all of us, which was, again, you know, when you're a background, that never happens.
But it was just one of those days where all the rules were kind of broken.
And he was a really cool, he ended up, I think, kind of basically directing that movie too, because it was a bit of a dog.
That day was the opening day of Toronto Maple Leafs training camp.
Oh, yeah.
And I remember driving in my,
it was one of the few times I had my old TR6 on the road.
It was a gorgeous day, sunny, warm.
And I was just on the ramp from the 427 to the Gardiner,
and they broke in on the news on the radio to say a plane had gone into the tower.
And we spent the rest of the,
most of the rest of the day down at the,
uh,
well then it was the Air Canada Center watching on TVs in the hall with the
rest of the players and everybody,
you know,
we saw the second plane and then,
and then the most dramatic moment after when each of those buildings came
down and,
uh,
yeah,
we were all of us sort of hanging around there that day.
We had to lower the barometric pressure in here, Hammer.
I'm glad 7-Eleven or 9-Eleven worked out for some people.
7-Eleven, 9-Eleven, whatever.
That's another disaster for Hamilton guys.
It'd be weird.
Like, you can imagine, though,
there's some people that good things probably did happen that day to them,
but it's forever.
Like some guy lost his virginity on 9-11.
My favorite Bob Dylan album came out that day.
Love and Theft by Bob Dylan came out that day.
One of my absolute favorite Bob Dylan albums came out that day.
And everyone who has a birthday on September.
Moby.
Moby.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You guys know John Gallagher, former mayor of Montreal.
Of course, yeah.
Yeah, I know, of course. John Gallagher tells a story where he was. It, yeah, yeah. You guys know John Gallagher, formerly of... Of course, yeah. Yeah, I know, of course.
John Gallagher tells a story where he was...
It's a great story.
You know the story where he's drinking with Marky Mark,
Mark Wahlberg, like the night, I guess September 10th,
their late night party.
And I guess they partied so late
that Marky Mark missed his flight
and he was going to have a connecting flight to...
I don't know, whatever.
I think he was going to Boston
and one of the planes from Boston
was one of the ones that crashed. He was supposed to be and one of the planes from Boston was one of the ones that
crashed. He was supposed to be on the flight, one of the flights that hit
the World Trade Center. And
he missed his flight because of John Gallagher
and John's got this in his book anyways.
But take all your
Gallagher stories of a grain of salt.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that
have missed flights because of John Gallagher.
Or a lot of people.
No more so than John himself.
Like the 25,000 people who say they were at Madison Square Garden
when Wilt scored 50, or 100 rather,
and it wasn't even in Madison Square Garden, right?
It was in Hershey.
Yeah, it was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, yeah.
But so I think there's a lot of people who are like,
I was supposed to be on that flight.
No, you weren't.
No, you weren't.
I feel like I've now heard from like 100,000 people who are at,
for example, opening day in 77 for the Blue Jays.
Right.
Same idea.
Like April 7th.
100,000 people were there, which is unbelievable here.
What's your 9-11?
You have a 9-11 story, Gare?
Like, where were you?
Oh.
You just can't remember.
No.
You know what?
I had a friend, a German woman that i met uh on no uh burget actually burget
and she was going to uh a hold of her that day.
And it wound up that she hadn't gone in.
It was, I knew it was that week and I thought it was that day, but it was, it was supposed
to be a couple of days after that.
She ended up work, like she worked for the NHL offices for a few years and worked for German Hockey Federation and whatnot.
All right.
Shout out to Leon Dreisaitl.
Awesome.
Now I want to ask you, Mr. Schultz, about your retirement.
You, of course, came on to tell stories.
Not a lot to tell about retirement, you know.
Shortly after you...
When did you ask me to the next?
Kind of sitting around every day.
Hey, didn't you run the cable under your street
so you could get the internet or something, can see you doing that okay so i think i think it
was that day that you got the first palm of pasta lasagna but we shout out the palm pasta for the
i was still working those days okay because you came on like right after to tell the story about
taking that they offered the package and you couldn't like contain your enthusiasm uh in the meeting yeah i uh by then had uh kind of gotten tired of the globe
mail i'm sure some uh some years before then they'd gotten tired of me i was gonna say
you said technically working yeah yeah um yeah i didn't do my best work in my last three years.
But actually, in a way...
Too busy working on Hockey Fight in Canada.
Yeah, you were working on...
You were covering that media.
But I liked that you did that because no one seems to do that,
but I'm always interested in the...
What do they call it? Soft quitting?
No, what do they call it?
Quiet quitting.
Quiet quitting.
David Schultz invented quiet quitting.
I was ahead of my time.
Because now with the millennials, it's a thing, I guess, right?
Absolutely.
But they don't get to offer those packages.
Back in my day, we just called it fucking the dog.
There's one in every group.
You're in some Globe and Mail meeting when they announced that they're going to offer packages or something like that?
Well, the rumors had started. I mean, I had been sort of thinking as my last year came up
before retirement, retirement being, say, 65,
the way the business was going in the last,
well, since the 2008 recession,
it was more or less,
are you going to be able to quit on your own terms
or are you going to get laid off
before the security guy
will come up with a little bag put your stuff in here we're walking you out the door and uh
we had had a few buyouts uh the first one in 2008 when the recession hit we'd had one or two since
then but we hadn't had any in uh four or five years and i I was just thinking, you know, I wonder if I'd be lucky enough in my last
year to have a buyout. And it wasn't long after that the rumors started, and I thought, ah,
geez, they're just rumors. They start from time to time. But as the winter went on, they got a
little bit stronger, and then a few management figures were actually, you know, joining in in
the gossip. So you knew then there might be something to it. And then in mid-May of, I guess it was 2019,
they called the community, what do they call these things now?
Community hall meeting where the entire place shows up.
And as soon as that happened, I knew, okay, that's it.
All right, this has got to be it.
What else would be?
And so we go in there and we're all talking among ourselves, you know,
I can't wait to take this sort of thing.
And Phil Crawley, the publisher, quite a formidable figure.
So he's up at the front talking and talking and talking.
And all I'm interested in, along with most of the others,
is it going to be buyouts or not?
And he just wanted to get up and scream, get to the point, you son of a bitch.
Don't bar us, get to the chorus.
Stop burying the lead.
Finally, after, you know, he says, yeah yeah we got to shape 10 million dollars off the payroll and i'm going yeah did you do like
a fist pump was there uh schultz's one tenth of that right pal yeah oh yeah no much bigger fraction
than that so when does the uh the prince edward island home come into play? Like, when did you pick that up and give us, like, let us know when you're there.
Well, actually, I didn't pick that up.
My parents did.
Okay.
So that's been there.
In 1990, they were on a vacation in Prince Edward Island.
They rented a car and just toured around with my two youngest sisters.
They rented the car, David.
It's a small province.
There's only one.
Yeah, right.
And in New London, PEI, which is about 10 minutes from Cavendish, let's say.
And it's the birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery,
which you can look at it on the opposite hill from our place,
that little house there.
And I believe for years it cost $2 to tour the small.
It might be up to $5 now.
But the Japanese, you know how much the Japanese love Anna Green Gabriel's,
they'd come through there by the busload.
Right.
It was insane until SARS came along.
But anyway.
SARS or COVID?
No, this was SARS.
Okay, 03.
Pre-COVID.
And then, yeah, just as they started coming back,
COVID came along.
But anyway, so my mom and dad drive by this old farmhouse that's about ready to fall
in on itself it's in such horrible shape and it's got a for sale sign on it can you tell us the
price because i'm super curious i would love to guess 1990 prince out of our own because i don't
know okay i'm curious get a guess so we'll start uh gare what's your guess what do you think this
is like prices right here 1990 and this this was a house that came with about three tumbledown buildings.
And how many acres?
25.
Okay.
All right.
And this is 25 what's considered shoreline acres because they go down to the Southwest
River.
Okay.
Okay.
It's still going to be cheap.
As far as us locals say, the Southwest.
In 1990.
Okay, Gare, what's your guess?
This is like the prices, right?
Yeah.
78.
78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78. 78 is like the prices, right? Yeah. 78, 5.
78, 5.
That's a good guess.
Okay, Jerry.
$33.
You can't do that.
All right, go ahead, Liam.
I'm going to go
$65,000.
Okay, I'm going to say
$49,000.
Say $1.
$1.
$1.
You guys are all way low.
Times two
most of your guesses.
They're like, look at these rooms. I want to get six figures for low. Times two, most of your guesses. They screwed Smontarians.
They're like, look at these rooms.
We ought to get six figures for this.
I think, because I've never nailed my dad down on the price.
Don't nail your dad down.
I think he paid $125 for it.
All right.
Still at a price of $100.
But that was the easy part.
That was the easy part.
There were two hurdles in his way,
even though this place, there was no one living
in it and it had been up for sale for a long time the problem was the old lady uh mrs cole or ms
cole i'm not sure she i'm trying to remember her first name because she became a friend of the
family um she did not want to sell to someone who was going to knock the house down and build like Joe's cottages for, you know, tourist trade.
And also the province had regulations for off, you know, come from a ways, uh, buying it.
They don't, again, don't want them turning.
They don't want the place to become like Niagara Falls East.
like Niagara Falls East.
So my dad, as it was a building contractor,
all of his working life,
and him and my mom were keen enthusiasts of antiques.
And my dad was an expert in heritage buildings.
He did a lot of work on Fort George and other historical sites.
And so he was well-versed in heritage buildings.
He went to Cyrar and uh and said
explained to her i'm a building contractor and i have a interest and he said i have no interest in
knocking down your family home um it had been in the family since it was built in 1880 and he said i am gonna to renovate it and restore it mostly he said um and so she said she
was convinced that okay she agreed to sell and so he spent the next year he even sent some of his
guys out from the construction company and they restored the place to even better than what it
was originally and he ended up winning an award, an architectural award from the province. A prestigious award.
Helping preserve, you know, the island heritage,
heritage buildings.
And the local CBC radio station did a documentary on it,
and they took, oh, God, I can't remember her name.
It was double-barreled like Fannie Mae or Ellie Mae.
I don't know.
They took her.
They were there when they brought her to the house
for her first look at what he had done with it.
And she was just floored.
She was crying.
And then she crowned the show by saying,
you know, I'm going to die happy now. Because she was living in a senior's room. And then she clutched her chest and she said, and then she crowned the show by saying, you know, I'm going to die happy now because she was living in a senior's room.
And then she clutched her chest and she dropped dead.
That's how we wound up with this place.
We've had it ever since.
My dad and mom are too old and have too many health issues to go out there now.
And, but we've sort of taken over the management of it. And he's also, over the years, he built an apartment in one of the outbuildings
and over top of the garage and what used to be, I don't know if it was the stable or what,
he put another apartment over there to accommodate.
Our family's getting kind of large because he had five kids.
All the five kids now have their own kids.
So we fight over who's getting out there what week.
I was going to ask you, like, do you spend the summers out there?
What's the deal with the...
There's too many of us spending the whole summer out there.
So basically we divide it up in two-week parcels.
There's 10 prime weeks.
So each kid gets two weeks.
Here's my question.
Are there any other, like,onto people that you know who are
also like in prince edward uh on prince edward well our neighbor is dion funoff well there you
go he lives across the river wow yeah his fan his mom is from somerset and his father's from
edmonton that's why he grew up in edmonton and their family has a big parcel of land, sort of kitty corner across the river from us.
And it started with his mom's family,
had a small house over there.
And then as the family expanded,
they would build more houses down the river.
Over the years, we watched them go up.
And then when Dion Phaneuf signed his first big contract
with the Calgary Flames,
he bought the farm next door, the entire thing,
and built this massive place that even has a helicopter pad.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
And he used to, for a while there, he'd have a party every summer.
It was the social event of the year at PEI.
And he would hire two bands so there wasn't a
break and they would perform right down on the river he had a little building there and they
would go from about nine o'clock at night till six o'clock in the morning and it was like they
were playing right outside the window and for whatever reason my two weeks were always when
this party was and he would never invite you, of course.
No, I never got invited.
No, not at all.
It was sort of a badge of honor among the locals to be invited.
The farmer who rents the 25 acres of land that my parents have,
sort of a family friend, he got invited one year,
and that was quite a feather in his cap.
Okay, awesome. So it sounds like retirement agrees with you. You look happy.
Well, sure. I'm not working.
You're working hard for Gare here on the Every Spring because you're Red York,
the most important character in these.
Self-important.
Yeah. Well, you know.
Which by the way, I'm going to get back to gare in a minute here but
uh if nobody's heard if people are like what the hell are you talking about okay so on audible.com
you can actually buy like the real deal every spring a parade down bay street and that stars
david schultz right gare yes that's correct i know that's correct because i've heard it it's very
very very good but we do these recordings we've done four of them now two are already in the wild
and uh two more will be coming soon.
Well, pompous blowhard sports writer.
It was quite a stretch for me.
Really tested by acting chops.
I'll just tease to say
there will be a special appearance
by FOTM Steve Paikin
in an upcoming episode.
That's like a big tease.
So I'm going to get to Garrett in a minute
but I want to ask you, Schultz,
two quick things here.
One is when these things are going down in the
sports media zeitgeist, for example, TSN Plus is going to
launch, there's a new app, and whatever shit's going down at the Fan 590,
do you ever wish you had a forum to chime in on that, or are you glad you don't have
to give a rat's ass about anything? Well, it's too much like work, man.
And with social media, if I want to chime in on it, I guess I can.
Yeah, you can tweet.
I do occasionally, although I will say I don't tweet as much as I used to.
I did tweet something yesterday, but I was just trying a joke.
I like your tweets.
I wish you'd tweet more.
Yeah, well, again, it requires some effort.
You are lazy.
But the other thing is, since Elon Musk took over Twitter,
I'm just not sure if I want
to stay on the thing or not. I don't know.
I haven't made up my mind.
Last topic for you, Mr. Schultz, before I go back
to Gare. I have a very interesting
question for Gare Joyce. David,
what's your relationship like
with Doug and the Slugs?
Doug and the Slugs.
Making it work.
Speaking of Norm MacDonald, his show used Too Bad as the Slugs. Making it work. It's too... Oh, speaking of Norm MacDonald,
his show used Too Bad as the theme song.
I was always a big fan of Doug and the Slugs,
right from the first time when I was a rookie reporter,
what do they call them?
Cub reporters,
out in Calgary for the Calgary Herald.
Was that when you worked with Simmons?
Yes.
Steve Simmons.
Is that when Howard Berger gets fired?
Well, that was later at the Calgary Sun.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, Steve has told that story many times.
Steve Howard Berger alone.
Yeah, well, you know, it shouldn't have happened.
It was done by a really poor management group.
But let's just say Howie didn't really help himself too.
But yeah, it was sometime in that period I heard,
I guess it would be Too Bad was their first big hit.
And I just loved it.
I just thought, you know, this is a really sort of infectious kind of,
it didn't, it's not the same as most of the music I like.
I'm sort of an old blues.
Yeah, yeah.
I always like to say I like both kinds of music, blues and rock and right and uh but I don't know I just I just really like that and I
got to see him a couple times mostly when I was covering the gray cups in the late 80s the the
CFL would bring him in to uh to do big events there yeah and and they just they put on a hell
of a uh a live show because Doug Bennett was just a great showman. He died way young, right?
Like 54.
52, yeah.
The booze got him.
I just thought he was so talented and the band was so good.
I just thought it was too bad.
Too bad.
To this day, I don't understand how they couldn't crack the U.S. market.
Well, Huey Lewis and the News was already there.
Well, yeah, but they were just a bit different.
And I thought, you know, there's been far worse groups.
They almost had a bit of a scar to them, didn't they, Doug?
It was almost a bit of a scar or something.
They were very unique sounding.
You can appreciate where they didn't quite fit in a niche
that America could put in a box.
Yeah, they did introduce a little reggae,
but they just sort of turned it on its head.
Yeah.
And I just thought there's far worse groups than that.
Sure.
Celine Dion.
Made it huge.
And I just, why?
These guys should have.
They should have been big stars.
But if we're going to play that game, there's so many great Canadian bands that should have been a bigger deal.
Well, sure, yeah.
From Blue Rodeo to the Tragically Hip to You Name It.
Well, Blue Rodeo is a good example as well.
Rusty.
All right.
Listen, Schultzy, good to see you again.
I'm glad you're enjoying your retirement.
And on the Doug and the Slugs, the reason I was asking is,
there's a documentary series right now on Doug and the Slugs?
Or a documentary?
It's a documentary.
One documentary.
It's on CBC Gem.
Okay.
You just want to call it.
Well, shout it out. I saw it the One documentary. It's on CBC Gem. Okay. You just want to call it.
Well, shout it out.
I saw it the other night.
We all get that for free.
And it's, is it Doug and the Slugs and Me?
Is Doug and the, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it was done by this young filmmaker who was the best friend of Doug's daughter.
Okay.
And grew up next door to them in Vancouver.
All right.
All right.
I'm good friends with Blair Packham, who is the lead singer and songwriter
for The Jitters.
And one of the things I kid him about
is that The Jitters was like
trying to be a Doug and the Slugs clone,
which was already a Huey Lewis
in the news clone.
But I digress.
Okay.
So shout out to Doug and the Slugs.
And I will check out that documentary
on CBC Gem.
And Gare, back to you.
You told me earlier it's on CBC Gem
where I can see this
Harold Ballard documentary,
right? Yes. I know you're the spokesperson
for Jason Priestley. That's why I'm asking.
He's a lap dog. He prefers to be
called lap dog. Now, I know
you're personal friends of Jason, who sounds like a
lovely man, and I can't wait to one day meet him.
So I know you'll be very careful here.
He did come out to the
Corner Comedy Club one night
at an open mic,
and I roasted him.
When Jason comes here, he doesn't have to worry about bumping his head.
What is he, about 5'8"?
What is he?
Oh, you are generous, sir.
I'm 5'8", and I bump my head.
5'8 does bump their head.
Yeah, that's true.
Okay.
But have you ever suggested to your friend, Jason Priestley,
that he come on Toronto Mic'd?
You know that I have. Well, I know. I'm
setting you up to hear what you'll say on the public record. He offered the part
of Red York to Jason
when he turned it down. You prick.
Honest to God, I was holding out
hope that maybe I could drag him
in here today. To talk about that. Does he know I did
a micumentary on Harold Ballard?
I think he got the idea from me.
That was great. Yes, thank you. Liam listened
to the micumentary on Harold Ballard and loved it.
And it's been out there for a couple years now.
And then suddenly he's doing this Ballard doc,
and he goes everywhere.
He's been on every show.
I haven't had him here.
Yeah, I don't really understand how he landed this as something to do.
But you know what?
this is something to do.
But you know what?
Jason, I think,
regards himself equally actor-director.
And I think sort of he might be more of a director
rather than actor going forward.
He directed those great
Barenaked Ladies videos, right?
My old apartment.
Hey, I just wonder why it took this long
for somebody to do
something about it.
That's a good point.
I can remember
Bob Lyke was ahead
of his time.
Yeah, I had the idea
for his picture show.
I mean, well,
not only Ballard,
but I can remember
in the early 90s
often talking with
my old colleague
Bill Houston,
who was a hockey writer
at the time for years.
Yeah.
If only we recorded that chat.
And we used to say to each other,
what somebody needs to do is a mini-series,
if not on Ballard, then on Maple Leaf Gardens.
Just go from, I mean, talk about drama
from day one through, right up through Ballard.
And in fact, we semi-seriously talked about
maybe getting together and pitching it.
We never did because neither one of us knew that much about television,
but to this day,
I just think there's like a huge story right there.
If you were doing a series,
who plays,
who plays Ballard?
Um,
I would pick the guy.
Um,
his name isn't coming to me right now.
He's a Canadian actor.
He played,
uh,
Nero Wolf on that series.
And I guess it was, it from the 80s or 90s what's that
shaken maury maury shaken he's long dead though yeah i thought he was still with us darren frost
i think frosty would be a fantastic harold ballard um there was a play about harold ballard in the
80s and the guy the guy who played him was an older actor. You used to see him in the lottery commercials. He played a baseball
umpire. But it was a very bizarre
play. My wife and I
went to see it.
It was at the
Factory Theatre.
It would be in the late 80s.
It was a very strange
I had this weird dream sequence where somebody in
a goalie equipment and a jockstrap was rolling around that stage and uh yeah it was just it was
very i just need to make sure people understand that the the great maury shaken did pass away in
2010 oh my goodness so he's not going to be playing Harold Ballard in this. I used to think of Brian
Cox. Like you need a Brian
Cox.
Fuck off!
Logan Roy.
Anything he's in.
Well, another old
guy. I'm not even
sure if he's Larry Mann.
Anyone who's alive, Mr. Schult sure if he's the Larry man.
Anyone who's alive, Mr. Schultz here, help us out here.
Okay, lots of possibilities.
Here's the big story I want from Gare before we check in,
before we say goodbye, because we've got to get somebody back to the hammer. But Gare, you and I had a, I don't think it was a private discussion,
but we had a DM exchange where you dropped a little nugget.
So I need to,
I need to ask you to tell this story because you've never told this story on
Toronto Mike.
Oh,
when you got married to your lovely wife and you've only had one wife,
is that right?
No.
How many wives have you had?
Wrong.
Two.
I fucked up again.
I won't ask about your mom.
Don't ask how his mother is for crying out loud.
Shout out to Kenny Robinson.
Okay. Okay.
Okay.
How long have you been married to your current and last wife?
I mean, who amongst us has had a couple wives?
I've been.
I'd stick with current wife.
I've been married 17 years on average.
Okay.
Is that right?
On my aggregate.
Okay.
One day I hope to match that.
Okay.
No, 20 years with Susan.
Okay.
Who was your best man when you married Susan?
Wrong wife?
Yes.
Oh, my God.
Holy fuck.
Holy shit.
Now I know the story.
Yeah, you definitely got the wrong wife.
What's the name of your first wife?
Sydney.
Okay, I can't believe I fucked up this story.
This is like Kenny Robinson.
You'll get this in editing.
Hey, Ollie, get this in editing.
Every time there's a state of climate, I'm going to show up.
The state of climate will be here with the papers any minute now.
When you married the first time, who was the best man at your wedding?
Tom Henke.
The Terminator.
Yeah.
From Taos, Missouri?
Yes.
Yeah.
Wow.
Okay, that's a mind blow for a lot of people right now.
Tom Henke.
You want the story behind this?
Yeah, how the hell does Tom Henke end up being the best man?
Now, are we talking Tom Henke, the Blue Jay pitcher?
The Terminator.
Much like David Schultz is not David Schultz,
the Philadelphia Flyer enforcer.
I'm just trying to make sure.
Oh, the hammer, the hammer.
Oh, I got a story about that.
Okay.
As it appeared in the notice,
it's Thomas Anthony Henke of Taos,
Missouri.
Okay.
Cause the ballad of Tom Henke is one of my favorite songs of all time.
How the hell does the,
uh,
blue jay closer,
the,
the great,
uh,
Rolaids relief,
man,
how does Tom Henke end up as your best man?
Uh,
so I was assigned a story for,
uh,
when I was freelancing,
uh,
for the globe,
uh,
magazine, uh, Toronto magazine, and they wanted me to
do a profile of Tom Henke. And I said, I'll go hunting and fishing with him in Taos, Missouri.
And I went down and I was supposed to go there for four days. And the full story is in my audible uh how to succeed in sports writing without really
trying i ended up stretching a four-day assignment into into 13 days geez he must have been well sick
of you by the end i was waiting for the sure be your best man just go away i was i was whatever
you want get out of here and so we well, I was waiting for the photographer to show up, right?
I went out hunting every night with Tom.
I don't eat meat.
Blasting away at the poor wildlife.
Quails and such.
At some point where you shoot at some food and up from the ground came a bubbling crude.
Right.
But the fishing was not great and uh
and so he said well you know what come on down to spring training we'll go fishing down there
and i said well you know what we're actually looking to you know elope and he go come on
down and get married and uh you know i'll be'll be the best man. And so all the pictures, Tom is the most nervous one.
Like, we're killing ourselves laughing.
Tom Henke.
But, yeah.
Well, he knew how it was going to end.
Yeah.
So Mike.
I bet that you didn't get a save on this one.
A blow and save.
Even Henke couldn't save that marriage.
Don't call me the Terminator for nothing, Matt.
My best friend,
I called him up because we kept it
completely on the down low that
we were eloping.
I called him up and I was like,
you know, Steve. Yeah, you told your best friend,
you can be best man at my next one.
He says, no sweat.
Calling her wife number one was a mistake.
I said, you know, Steve, like you would have been my best man.
But I knew on short notice that you couldn't come down.
So I went out and got.
Come on, fill in the blank.
This is like match game.
I went out and got.
Tom Hankey.
A reliever. A reliever.
Thank you.
See, I'm not the comic in this.
It's like Charles Nelson Reilly with the
catch. It's your fault, Gare Joyce.
When you married Susan,
your current wife,
Mark Icone was your best man.
He was a setup man.
Which friend did you have
on that marriage? Which friend did you have on that marriage?
Which friend did you have to promise he'd be the best man at the third one?
Yeah, don't go there.
This is honestly why I'm friends with Gare and Schultz.
I'm just waiting for them both to die because I love their wives.
That's it.
Susan and Iman are both fantastic. You won't have to wait long.
My wife's waiting for me to die.
Shout out to Ridley.
Come on, already.
All right, shout out to Canna Cabana.
Anyone here smoke weed?
Yes.
You're probably not allowed to answer that.
It's legal now.
I had to give it up before you were born.
It made me paranoid.
I can still remember the month.
1975, March.
Now they've got more control over the strains.
A bunch of us, we smoked weed like crazy back then.
That was my second year at the University of Waterloo.
And we went to a showing of Reefer Madness in one of the big lecture halls.
And I had noticed I was getting kind of paranoid when I was smoking like every frigging day.
And then I suddenly realized halfway through this film,
I was terrified.
I thought the piano player with the eyes was coming for me.
The googly eyes.
That's it.
That was it.
I stopped.
All right, well,
they've come a long way, baby.
Well, yeah, I did find out
that was a common side effect,
but when you're a 20-year-old
university student.
Mike, when you were getting
a can of cabana toques,
you should have been
pronouncing them toques.
I'm just going to say that
right now.
Where were you
when I needed you, Liam?
I was sitting there
listening going,
it's a toque for God's sakes!
But no,
you just couldn't hear me, Mike.
So Canna Cabana
will not be undersold
in cannabis or cannabis accessories
over 140 locations
across the country.
Shout out to Canna Cabana.
Get that mic.
Oh, you got it already.
Okay.
All right.
Jerry Hall,
not the Jerry Hall,
but the third or fourth
in line Jerry Halls.
How was this for you man
you're finally
you can tell everybody
you can tell all the
convicts you work with
and everything
you're now an FOTM
yeah absolutely
it was you know
when I first started
on the stand up circuit
when I first
when I first started
in comedy
this was like
the end game
so
so you're quitting
careers go to die
I am now going to retire.
I think you hit the joke spot.
Now that I've clarified.
Ron James has been here twice, okay?
Look what happened to him.
Actually, now that I've been here,
now that I've had a chance to say it,
I will hopefully stop getting creepy messages,
which has happened a couple times
from people who think I'm the girl Jerry Hall.
Why do I think she's married to Rupert Murdoch?
Can somebody Google that?
I meant the girl Canadian
comedy.
Getting creepy messages from people who
think you're Jerry Hall, the model.
That seems to me the only
legitimate time you could send somebody
a dick pic.
Well, that would be fun.
But no,
I'm sorry, I meant the actual two
times, this happened
a couple times
but it's
they've both been for
the Canadian
jury
oh these are guys
trying to pick up
they thought it was her
right
and they
hey good looking
they send me
like oh I got a friend request
they slide into your DM
they don't even notice
like I have a picture
of Homer Simpson
as my profile pic
I guess so
well guys are horny
and hard up for action there's not a lot of Homer Simpson as my profile pic. I guess so. Well, guys are horny and hard up for action.
There's not a lot of reading comprehension on social media, I've noticed.
But Jerry, great to meet you.
You've been here now at least three times because we've recorded three times.
And you're always great.
And it's always fantastic to hang with you.
And if you take a photo of me, I just want to tell people I met Wendell Clarks.
I want to plug one thing met Wendell Clarks. All right.
I want to plug one thing if I can.
Anything.
Plug everything.
Well, I mean, on a couple of shows,
but by the time this airs, they'll be gone.
It's going to air in 10 minutes.
Oh, okay.
Well then, hey, come out and see your Hood's a Joke on Friday at Yuck Yucks or Toronto Roast Battle
on Saturday at Comedy Bar, which is a great place.
Also watch This Is The Thing on Bell 5 TV
because I get to play a character called Rhodey Rick.
Oh.
Who is like, yeah, he's a guy who still wishes it was the 80s
because that's when his life was great.
It's a big stretch.
Oh, I thought you were going to say he was the guy
that Jackson Brown wrote the song about.
So that'll be Friday, January 20th at Yuck Yucks.
No, not at all.
Did I say this?
The week after, sorry.
This weekend I'm in Niagara Falls.
No, next weekend.
Sorry.
Not this weekend.
Yeah, sorry.
The 27th and 28th.
The 27th and 28th.
Yeah, there you go.
Thanks by agents here.
So Jan, this is everybody.
January 27.
What's the location again?
That would be at Yuck Yucks Toronto.
That'd be a late show.
That's a late show.
That's 1030, but it always sells out.
So if you're going to do it,
you probably need to get them online.
Your hood's a joke.
Your hood's a joke.
And you're battling some...
I'm battling...
What was that girl's name again?
Hannah Velton.
Hannah, yeah.
She's representing Oshawa.
It should be great.
Yeah, she's great.
It should be a great, great, great battle.
It'll be a great show, for sure.
Okay, amazing.
And Liam, we close with you.
Plug something and then...
I got a whole bunch of out-of-town things,
to be quite honest with you.
So I'm not, nothing that...
No GTA stuff?
Nah, nothing really going on, but...
You don't like the GTA?
No, I love the GTA.
I just seem to go in spurts
and right now I seem to be out of town.
That's all.
So I'm going to be in Woodstock.
I'm going to be in Del High, Ontario.
You don't call it Deli.
You call it Del High, right?
Jerry's giving the thumbs up over there.
Del High.
Del High.
Yeah, yeah.
Where is that?
Yeah, again.
Should I know?
That's tobacco country.
It's tobacco country.
Exactly.
It's near Simcoe.
It's near Simcoe.
We used to play fastball.
They were a rival town when I was a kid.
Yeah, absolutely.
Back in the 20s?
And I'm also doing Versus at Comedy Bar East, I believe, January 28th as well.
So that'll be fantastic, which is Patrick Russell's show.
So yeah, I've got, you know, always shows coming up.
All right.
At Liam Kelly Comedy and Instagram is the way to find me.
Okay.
Liam Kelly, very funny guy.
I'm not on social media, but I am.
Well, you're not on Twitter.
I'm not on Twitter.
Yeah, I'm on Twitter.
It's a cesspool.
Can I get a plug in here before we go?
A hair plug?
Absolutely not.
A hair plug?
Yeah.
That's probably what I need.
Fine. If I give you a plug, then Gare gets to tell hair plug? Absolutely not. A hair plug? Yeah, that's probably what I need.
If I give you a plug,
then Gary gets to tell us more about plugging whatever.
You go first, David.
All right.
Well, you know,
I'm not nearly as big a wheel
in the comedy world
as Liam or Jerry,
so all I can tell you is
I'll probably be at an open mic
somewhere next week.
As long as I get off my ass
and start my latest comeback
and actually write some material.
But we'll see.
We'll see.
Keep your eye on my social media.
We'll close with you here.
In fact, I'll give you
a little music here.
But you've got many things
on the go.
What do you want to promote?
No.
What's that?
Everybody knows this is nowhere.
That's for your episode four.
Yes.
In which I kind of sang some Neil Young,
but people don't have to tune in to find out.
They can tune in to hear Mike singing.
Helpless, helpless.
All right, you're not helpless, Gare.
Plug something.
You got the Every Spring a Parade Down Bay Street
on audible.com.
Yes, and I've got, I have also a sub stack of...
I highly recommend.
Yes. How to Succeed in Sports Writing Without Really of. I highly recommend. Yes.
How to succeed in sports writing without really trying.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
So I,
that comes out two,
three times a week with some paid content and lots of free content.
How do we subscribe to that?
Just on sub stack.
If you search my name.
What's your name?
Gear Joyce, everybody.
Look, he's trying not to promote, Mike.
Stop it.
How to succeed in sports writing.
I'm trying not to succeed and I'm trying.
How to succeed in sports writing without really trying.
Half of that describes my career.
Except for the succeed part.
Yeah.
So that's what I'm dedicating a lot of time to these days
and doing some writing
for some US outfits as well
and not doing too much comedy.
I'm hosting,
or not hosting,
I'm judging.
I was going to say,
I saw your face on a Kingston show.
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't give him permission to do that.
So now you're getting stopped in the street, I suppose.
Everyone knows everybody.
I know a good lawyer.
It's not that big.
No, if people could come and check out the Substack, that would be great.
And yeah, I started doing it to promote the Audible project,
which is a comic, I hope, memoir.
And it's sort of taken on a life of its own.
And that brings us to the end of our 1,191st show.
I actually have, yes, it is the 1,191st show. So actually have, yes it is, the 1191st show.
So you can follow me on Twitter.
I'm at Toronto Mike.
David, you're D. Schultz, is that right?
D. Schultz on Twitter?
Yes. D. Schultz.
And some variation of that.
Maybe even David Schultz on Instagram.
Although I post on Instagram
maybe twice a year.
Because I don't really understand it.
Gare, what's your Twitter handle?
Unfortunately, it's GareJoyceNHL.
You ever going to change that or no?
That's left over from ESPN days back in like 2009, I guess.
Jerry, I do follow you on Twitter.
What is your handle?
Uh,
it's,
uh,
Jerry with a G,
uh,
Jerry Hall comedy.
That is the Twitter handle.
All right.
Now what we already established,
there's no Twitter for Liam,
but he is active on Instagram.
Remind us what that is.
At Liam Kelly comedy.
At Liam Kelly comedy.
Kelly comedy.
Great Lakes Brewery is at Great Lakes Beer.
Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Recycle
My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. Canna
Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. And Sammy Cone, if you have any real estate questions
whatsoever, so long as it's not about Prince Edward Island, you can reach him at Sammy Cohn on Twitter, K-O-H-N
like I said, or you can
write him an email, Sammy.Cohn
at ProperlyHomes.ca
See you
all
tomorrow. great Well I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain
And I've kissed you
in places I better not name
And I've seen the sun
go down on Chaclacour
But I like it
much better going down on you
Yeah you know that's true
Because everything is coming up
Rosy and green
Yeah, the wind is cold
But the smell of snow
Warms us today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy now
everything is rosy and everything is rosy and gray Thank you.