In a productive overreaction, I blather about the nature of desire unedited while going from a busy intersection far away to a pair of twins in a stroller to the grave of a Prime Minister.
After the recording, I continued on through the cemetery until I realized I was getting tired, then had to work to find my way out the place. But I did and got back to Yonge just north of St. Clair, where I finally sat down again for a little bit, then kept going south and finally made it back home. I mapped out what I remembered of the walk on Running Map, and it said I'd walked 6.5 miles in total.
Thanks again for putting up with this. It's pretty important, but I know it's not exactly what you signed up for. As always, listening is optional. A more typical episode, which I was originally going to make Description 70, is really coming in the next week, so if you took out these Walking the Walk episodes, the time between that and the last typical episode (Description 68 - Gretzky) is still ahead of my usual pace.
And really, I'm fine. What happened isn't a bigger deal than I made it sound in Description 69 - I just had these extra realizations that made me have to kick my ass in a big way.
If I was so earnest and stuff all the time, would I still find this video 20 kinds of awesome? Not bloody likely. (Warning: not Canadian.)
So what was the deal with me mentioning rejection and acceptance in the blurb for the last episode? I explain and try desperately to avoid ChickLit as I make my way to Lake Ontario on Canada Day. With music by The Constantines and some douchebag with a bicycle bell.
Yes, already. But I wanted to get this out there while it was fresh and before it seemed too reactionary.
As often happens, it takes me a while to get going on this thing, but stay with me because I do get going.
For once, I guess I should explain a reference I made that is more American than Canadian. Lifetime is a tv network in the States sort of like the W Network in Canada, with programming aimed at women (Oxygen is a younger, louder variation on it). So you have makeover shows and movies with Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in them, and basically shows that are supposed to be empowering when maybe sometimes they're more enabling. Then there are the Lifetime TV movies (which often appear on W as well), which are often shot in Canada because it's cheap. The typical Lifetime TV movie stars some actress who used to be in a successful tv series which was cancelled years ago, who plays some woman who goes through some sort of great difficulty ("based on real events" and often caused by some man or men or psycho woman or "the system") and comes away from it a stronger person. Of course, there is much drama and sturm and drang along the way.
THAT is what this episode is NOT. You know why? Because drama should be the exception, not the rule. There are no good guys and bad guys, everybody does the best they can, sometimes they screw up or have intentions that don't match, life sometimes sucks by its nature and life sometimes rocks by its nature, and it's all good. And EVERYONE deserves to be empowered, regardless of gender.
So yesterday was Canada Day, and I spent the end of it walking from home to Harbourfront (which is kind of far) and talking most of the time, and that will probably be Description 69 maybe next week...if I don't puss out on it because it was mainly talking about me and some stuff I've been experiencing lately, which was hinted at in the latest episode.
One of the many wacky things that happened in June was Podcasters Across Borders in Kingston. What I said about PAB last year in Description 54 still stands - there was just way more of whatever I had talked about - so there wasn't much point to talking about it this time on my show, although I did talk about it on other people's shows. Also, I was a bonafide presenter this time (last year I gave a five-minute "Jolt"), talking for 25 minutes about the work I do on the other podcast, Movies For the Blind, and how its thought processes may relate to other forms of podcasting and new media. Needless to say, I was freaked out about doing it (though fortunately other things distracted me leading up to it), but part of the idea of PAB is getting out of your comfort zone and sharing your knowledge and passion in a welcoming environment, so I straightened my spine and got it done. The reaction was pretty great - the questions afterward were really interesting and interested, and while I got to the point I felt like I was talking too much about myself and my work, it was only because people were asking, so that's cool. I thank those people who were so interested, those who didn't ask anything but took it in (like I would have), and especially those people who got my ass up there in the first place.
Since this podcast is (usually) about little elements of this city and this country that somehow add up to something, anyone who listens would probably be interested in a project that does pretty much the same thing, although much more elegantly and precisely: Six String Nation. The creator and guardian of this project, Jowi Taylor, gave the opening keynote address at PAB this year, and he kind of swept us all off our collective feet. Basically, it's about this guitar which was constructed with pieces of things that each have some significance to this country - mammoth ivory, a Massey Hall seat, the oldest rock in the world, Louis Riel's school, a Rocket Richard Stanley Cup ring, the sacred murdered Golden Spruce, it goes on and on. Every one of the 63 pieces has at least one remarkable and very Canadian story attached to it, making it not merely an object but a sort of national encyclopedia for a people who would otherwise leave it on a shelf. Among those people, unfortunately, are people at the CBC (for whom Jowi worked for years, winning some major awards) and the federal government, who have intermittently supported him and left him hanging because of their own petty troubles and typically Anglo-Canadian angst. While he worked hard to suppress his bitterness resulting from those battles while talking to us, it had to sneak out sometimes, making us all the more empathic to his cause, since podcasters have some small idea of what it's like to be passionate about something but keep feeling as if you're rolling that big boulder up a hill forever. Regardless, what mattered in his talk, and through all of PAB, were stories - how to find them, how to let them find you, how to share them.
Other people who were there with me have done a great job lending their support to Six String Nation, both financially and in terms of getting the word out (helping get the story told, of course). This is my meagre attempt, but hopefully it combines with those others to, again, construct a greater whole. Today, a Canadian who wasn't at PAB but has much in common with its principles, Cory Doctorow, wrote a post about Six String Nation in the popular and influential blog BoingBoing - oddly enough, inspired by a Canada Day interview with Jowi which appeared in the radio and podcast editions of the CBC show "As It Happens" (Jowi and the CBC remain in a push-pull relationship). Cory's post is here, along with some links to the interview, the official site and the site regarding the Six String Nation book. The YouTube channel, with some of the stories, is here.
Because you may have noticed that I haven't really done an episode about Canada Day. To me, when it comes right down to it, every day is Canada Day. So any time to learn these stories is the right time.
I go to Brantford to start a month in which I got some rejection, but way more acceptance from people I could never have imagined. Featuring music from me and The Pursuit of Happiness, a stuffed cow in compromising positions, Canada's Dad and a surprise ending.
My song has nothing to do with anything in the rest of the show, but rather other stuff that happened in June. It's sort of a sequel to what I did at the start of Description 54, which some people really liked, and it was in me to do. As for the other song, that live version of TPOH doing "Gretzky Rocks" was recorded at The Bombshelter at the University of Waterloo January 25, 1996, and you can download it via the Audio/Video page of tpoh.net.
Again, I can't thank enough all the Boardies who were so awesome over the weekend, especially the patient souls (and Mooby) who talked with me at that diner. Some of them are already getting prepped for more ball hockey craziness in Kevin's native Jersey in July. To learn more, check that link for the Gretzky tournament thread.
Due to time and technical crap, I had to cut out two major parts of the weekend. On Saturday night, we all went to the lovely Sanderson Centre (thanks to syracuselaxfan and Tears In Rain for getting me to cut the line and being otherwise amazing) for "Stocky Night in Canada", which ended up being a live version of SModcast. Scott Mosier, unused to this star-type stuff despite his magic on the ball hockey court, was reportedly nervous about performing live, but he did brilliantly, and it was like any ol' SModcast, only even better with guest stars from Puck U: Jennifer Schwalbach (Mrs. Smith), old friend Bryan Johnson, Church and Wellesley's own Malcolm Ingram, webmaster/logistics genius/co-MVP Ming Chen, porn and Zack&Miri star Katie Morgan, and ex-Degrassi crew member (and Katie's new fiancé!) Jim Jackman. You can hear all of it as SModcast 88. Then again, maybe not all. They cut the part where the captains of the other View Askew teams went up on stage and presented Kevin with a gorgeous replica of the Stanley Cup. Here's a photo of Kevin lifting it in triumph.
The other thing you missed was me actually meeting Walter Gretzky. Seemed like everyone else had, which was easy because he was out there meeting and greeting everyone. But I was my usual gutless me. Sunday, watching those kids, I remembered that I'd produced description for a tv movie about Walter's recovery from his stroke and knew that he'd done a lot of work for the local chapter of the CNIB. So I walked up to him, waiting for him to finish laughing and joking with someone.
When I introduced myself and told him what I'd done on the movie, he raised his eyebrows and beamed. "Really!?! You did that!? Wow! What a little world!"
He laughed in amazement, which I think he does with many things in his life. I thanked him for everything, he thanked me, we shook hands, and I walked away as giddy as I could be.
At that moment, I couldn't have imagined being happier.
Considering the end of this episode, it's clear my imagination is limited.
From Toronto's oldest hotel to its oldest store, I go underground and show that not even a free breakfast can make me a morning person. With music from Modernboys Moderngirls, places where the water gurgles up, free radio consulting and a Correction From the Future.
That thing I sent the boys at Canadian Podcast Buffet was an audio comment in response to a discussion they had about, oddly enough, CKLW in CPB-141 - an episode I listened to while starting to put together this show. I talked about listening to that station when I was very little and the notion that its heyday was brought to an end in part by the advent of FM radio (yes, kids, it was that long ago) and in part by the less graceful advent of Canadian Content regulations by the CRTC (though I'd say it was more FM than CRTC). I got to tell them all that stuff, so you are spared from it. :-)
You were not spared from my trying to figure out what the furthest points of the PATH are. Technically, the southernmost point is the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, I guess because they count Skywalk (which you had a taste of in Description 44, connecting Union Station to MTCC and the CN Tower/Rogers Centre area) as part of the PATH. The previously mentioned bus depot...er, "coach terminal", is the northernmost point. And that's the limit of my geography geekiness.
Since PATH is capitalized, you may think it's an acronym. Alas, it's not. The logo is supposed to help you remember the directions: the red P for south, the orange A for west, the blue T for north and the yellow H for east.
Well, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
For its part, the Montréal version is officially called RÉSO, which is just a play on the word "réseau," meaning "network". So not much different in that respect.
The idea of underground and/or linked malls/office complexes is fairly common in Canada, where many people in suits would like to be saved from having to go outside at least four months out of the year. In Calgary, for example, they're connected by covered walkways above ground: the skywalks of +15. I haven't been to Calgary yet, but I know about it because of a very cool movie I did description for once called waydowntown, about a group of office drones who live in the system, so they make a bet of one month's salary and compete to be the one who can go the longest without going outside. To the relief of Jane Jacobs, I would guess, they each slowly start to go a little squirrelly in bizarre ways. It's well worth a rental, and it will definitely get you to go outside afterward and get some fresh air - even if it's -30 or +30C.
Yes, it's another of those posts I write when there's a new episode coming within the week. It won't quite have the stuff I wanted for the next one, because the H2 recorder had some sort of SD card formatting craziness that has so far destroyed about an hour's worth of audio. SIGH. So a pretty great soundseeing tour I did in February will be moved up to the next episode - which I guess is just as well, because, c'mon...it was February.
But as usual, that's not why I'm here.
This weekend is the weekend for the highlight of the Description content-gathering year: Doors Open Toronto, or as I call it, NXNE For Architecture. Last year, I shared the event with my visiting parents, so there wasn't as much recording going on, but this year, I'm going to be all over the place. My overstuffed schedule is mostly taken up by sites that are new to Doors Open, including more parts of Artscape Wychwood Barns, the Don Jail, the first new building in the Regent Park "Revitalization", Shamrock Bowl and the Toronto Reference Library. Not all of those will become future episodes, and I still haven't even scratched the surface of all the amazing places to check out, so if you're in town this weekend, please go to the Doors Open website and look through all the 175 possibilities to explore.
You'll remember Sage Tyrtle from the opening of Description 60, the episode about Canadian citizenship. I'd said the driving force of the brilliant QN Podcast was in the process of applying, with her husband and son, for Permanent Resident/Landed Immigrant status in Canada, having come, like I did, from the U.S.
Well, they made it. They were accepted not long ago. Yaaayyy!
Thing is, when most people apply for this status, they're usually not living in Canada at the time. When I applied, still living "in exile" in Ohio, it was emphasized quite strongly that you needed to go through this outside the country. But the Tyrtles have been living in Toronto for the past few years, with Todd working for a large company which was able to send him here. Very fortunately, that company wanted him and his family to stay here, so they had their own immigration lawyer work on the case for them (I had my Radio York friend Dani Zaretsky for my case, so we all have our legal angels...except for the people who don't). After the usual hoop-jumping and allowance for the times and tides of bureaucracy, they were successful.
However, as landed immigrants, they still had to "land": arrive in Canada from their original country. For me, in 1994, this meant packing up the AMC Eagle (built in Canada, so no import trouble), going to a TPOH concert in Detroit (okay, that wasn't part of the deal, but the timing worked out for a goodbye get-together), then driving up the gut of Michigan to Sault Ste. Marie on my way to my new radio job in Dryden. I had my landed immigrant document, a detailed inventory of what I had in the car, a document that said the car was built in Canada, the job offer letter from CKDR, and I think some receipt from my Canadian bank at the time to prove I had money there (when approved in my interview at the Buffalo Consulate, I was asked to have enough money to live for a couple months before getting myself on my feet, basically). I thought when I crossed over from Michigan to Ontario, people were going to inspect the car against my list and make we wait for hours. But that never happened. They didn't even look at my bank stuff. They just looked over the landed immigrant document and job offer, glanced around the car, had me fill out a one-page form about what I was bringing in, stamped a couple things and sent me on my way. It was only dramatic in its complete lack of drama.
Of course, if you know anything about Sage and her work, it could not possibly have gone that way for the Tyrtles. :-)
The Citytv odyssey continues, as I go from the kindness of a great music video director to the kindness of a former provincial policeman. Features a mashup of two Canadian music pioneers, being on live television and a million-dollar truck.
So here's a killer: in talking to these other CHUM/CITY people from Cleveland, I totally missed the biggest one - the guy I started these episodes with, Mark Dailey, aka "The Voice" of Citytv. He's actually from Youngstown, about an hour south of Kingsville. I've been nearby the guy at odd things, and Bob knows him well, but I've never talked to him. Too intimidated. Besides...I'm a citizen now! I don't need any more advice from people who've moved up here! Pffft! :-)
The guy on the CP24 set making me say my name was Bob Summers, amiable CHUM traffic reporter guy who of course is now doing the same with CP24 - almost exactly the same, since the legendary oldies station CHUM1050 has been made into an audio simulcast of CP24. Yes, this is about as depressing as Citytv running back-to-back episodes of "According to Jim" in prime time.
A couple months ago, I stumbled past CTV Newsnet (CTV's 24-hour news channel), and this strangely familiar guy was presenting the news. The hair was shorter and completely white, but the voice was the same: it was Brad Giffen. It turns out in the years after Toronto Rocks, he followed a similar path to JD Roberts, into American tv news, and that path has brought him back up here. I must say, when I cross paths with him on tv, I stick around for a while. There's something kind of comforting about listening to him. And the hair.
Go with the flow as I do a soundseeing tour of my television screen, then approach a big old building where cameras, ideas and egos ran free. Includes exclusive music from Memory Bank, an impending bathroom break at Second Cup and people pressed against the glass.
I have to say that in researching this show, I discovered there's a pathetic amount of Citytv/CHUM stuff out there on the ol' internet. For all the content that has been created, it was incredibly hard to find what little I did find. Maybe back then we thought of everything as being so of the moment, we didn't consider saving it for the future, like the whole vibe of the thing would always be there.
Yeah, that's what we used to say about the Oilers. :-)
So if you have some old tapes knocking around of stuff you recorded off City or Much or who-knows-what back in tha day, no matter how lame it may seem, think about converting it and putting it up somewhere. I know I will. It doesn't seem very likely that the parents in this divorce are going to do it for us.
Yes, JD Roberts of The New Music and City Pulse and any other number of things (because City people multi-tasked) is now John Roberts: previously Dan Rather's anchorman heir at CBS News and now the American Morning guy at CNN. And yes, Jeanne Beker remains the face, heart, legs and spleen of Fashion Television; which started the revolution of runway shows, supermodels and superstar designers on television - and is now a multimedia force unto itself (though it is worth noting she was the editorial director of @fashion, the first major fashion website EVER, in 1995). They are only two of the many, many Citytv people in front of the camera who took their work ethic and lessons learned into the rest of broadcasting and beyond.
But I haven't talked enough about the many more people not in front of the camera with the same elements of creativity and intelligence which made Citytv and its spinoffs what they were. More on a couple of those people is coming in the next episode in a few days. Just one example, though, is the late John Martin, who came up with the idea for The New Music and drove it for most of its (and the rest of his) life. For a great in-depth look at this work, check out this 1997 article about him from the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
He also applied his sensibilities to Muchmusic, about which he was quoted as saying, "My gig was to sort of mould the anarchy. It was a bunch of absolutely crazy people reinventing their lives every day. It was fun."
It sounds a little like what social media (including podcasting) has been going through. Mark well the achievements and issues of the past as they come back around.
I go to a place where I worked illegally to listen to a famous American guy caught up in a romance with Canada that echoes my own. Includes music by The Ambers, candy bars in Tupperware, Alanis yelling and the return of the King of Kensington.
I have a couple more dots to connect. Alanis also played God in Dogma. When that film caused a big ol' ruckus among panicky, crusading people who thought it was anti-Catholic (it's not), movie distributors got all spooked about releasing it. Who had the cojones to take it on? A fledgling outfit at the time called Lion's Gate Pictures - which, faithful to its name, was born in Vancouver. When I worked at AudioVision, we described quite a few films of theirs, but unfortunately not that one. I had to content myself with narrating and producing description for American Psycho (filmed in Toronto, btw), another film that courted controversy and my favourite one we did while I was there.
Speaking of Vancouver, Kevin is doing another snazzy Q&A ("An Evening With...") at the Centre For Performing Arts March 27. It's not confirmed as of me writing this that he'll turn up the next night at a Clerks Festival showing I&II at the Rio Theatre, but it still sounds like a good time.
If you're new because you've found this through some sort of Kevin Smith/View Askew-related search/link, hiya. Here are some useful things to know:
1) This podcast isn't about me going to movies, although I've now done two episodes in a row where that happens. Those are the only two movies I've seen in six months, and that's a lot for me. 2) Yes, I realized too late my spring jacket makes rustling noises when I walk. 3) I can't believe I said "I'll drink the Kool-Aid" twice. That was just wrong. 4) Yes, there may be samples in this episode that aren't the most legal in the world. I'm gutless, but I don't make money off this thing. 5) The editing isn't meant to be tight - it's a style I took from the Modern Roadie Cast. For more professional-sounding editing, check out my other podcast. 6) To the question "When does she stop talking?", the answer is "Eventually. Pack a lunch."
Born in Cleveland, Ohio; first moved to Canada in 1986, became a landed immigrant in 1994 and a dual citizen in 1998. Doing this podcast of the little things about my city and my country that may add up to something.
