Shownotes
On this week's Five Random Questions is Mike Boon, better known as Toronto Mike, the hugely popular podcaster from Canada's biggest city. Mike's topics include the afterlife, why his kids don't get his gum, his favourite bromance, and more. Let's jump in!
Answering the questions this week: Toronto Mike
Mike Boon, or Toronto Mike as he's better known, is the owner of TMDS, a digital marketing, content, and web design agency. He's also the host of Toronto Mike'd, with almost 1600 episodes under his belt.
Further reading for this episode
- Notable Guests on Toronto Mike'd
- The Old Man Brown Podcast
- Afterlife Adventures, A Very Picky Cat, and More with Em - 5 Random Questions
- Pandemic Fridays with Stu Stone and Cam Gordon - Toronto Mike
- Barenaked Ladies - One Week (Official Music Video) - YouTube
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Transcripts
We had a farewell event, the recording of the finale at Great Lakes Brewery in south Etobicoke. A hundred people came out. It was magic. We sent it off in style. And I'd like to think that maybe this bromance has three of us now.
Danny:Hi and welcome to Five Random Questions, the show where every question is an adventure. I'm your host, Danny Brown, and each week I'll be asking my guests five questions generated by a random question generator.
The guest has no idea what the questions are and neither do I, which means this could go either way. So sit back, relax, and let's dive into this week's episode. Today's guest is Mike Boon, better known as Toronto Mike.
Mike's the owner of TMDS, a digital services company that helps clients with podcasting, video podcasts, content and digital marketing and website development as part of its offering.
He's also the host of the long running Toronto Mike'd Podcast where he discusses various issues of the day with interesting guests about the serious and not so serious, all with a Toronto spin. So, Mike, welcome to Five Random Questions.
Toronto Mike:Danny, thanks for having me. I love an adventure. Sounds like you're promising me an adventure.
Danny:So not a lot to live up to there then. And I've just got to say, we are obviously using a green room, but it's an audio only podcast for the listeners. Mike's background is super awesome.
You can tell it's Toronto Mike.
Toronto Mike:Yeah, this is the TMDS studio, so you're my third recording of the day. So I had two guests down here earlier for Toronto Mike episodes and now I get to do a nice and easy remote. Five random questions.
Looking forward to this one.
Danny:Awesome. And as we record this on Monday, December ninth, you've just dropped episode one five nine five and your podcast started way back in September or August, I think.
September, August twenty twelve. Right. So what do you put down to your longevity?
Toronto Mike:Oh, I'm too stubborn to give up, Danny. You know, it's constantly evolving. Like, I think the minute I get bored, either I get bored or it starts to feel like a job.
When one of those two things happen, I think I'll tap out, but I'm still sort of digging where it's going. Like it keeps, keeps changing on me. And you know this, there's so many conversations to have. Right. Like it's like you mentioned one five nine five.
Well, I only dropped one five nine five, like I don't know, ninety minutes ago, but I have one five nine six that's going to drop right after we chat. So as long as there's interesting conversations to have and real talk to dig up. Then I'm going to do this.
Danny:And obviously you've been ensconced in the Toronto landscape for a good while, both as someone that lives there and in the media scene and the production scene.
So what would you say would be the biggest misconception you'd want to clear with someone that's never visited the city before but has a misconception or a myth that they've heard?
Toronto Mike:Well, any complaint I hear about this city, it's they all have one thing in common. So the big complaint would be, oh, the traffic. Okay. And I mean vehicular traffic. And it's pretty bad.
I mean, even going across the city, if you need to take a car, it's pretty awful. But I would just let everybody know that you don't actually need a automobile to experience the wonder that is Toronto this time of year.
I mean, the GO Transit and the TTC can get you everywhere. And in the warmer weather we have a great bike share program and it's so easy to cycle.
I would just say experience this city without an automobile and you will love it.
Danny:And as someone that used to live in Toronto years ago, I can attest to that.
In the warmer weather, especially maybe not so much in the cold weather, but the boardwalk by the Beaches down into the sort of Queen Street area is a great sort of trail-ish kind of area. And then you've got High Park as well, I guess.
Toronto Mike:Oh my God. So you're talking to a guy who lives on the Waterfront Trail. So. But I'm in the West End.
But yeah, I mean, you mentioned if you want to go to Ash Bridges Bay or whatever, go across the city, the Waterfront Trail. But there's two other great. There's a Don Valley Trail, there's a Humber Trail, there's a whole bunch of other routes.
You're talking also to a gentleman here. I just called myself a gentleman. I think that's the first time I've been called that. But someone's got to do it.
But I bike fifty two weeks a year so it's never too cold.
It's, you know, I biked to the art gallery on Friday night and it was kind of snowing and that's how I get around and I think that's why I love the city, because I leave the car where it belongs in the driveway.
Danny:Well, speaking of getting around, you just mentioned getting around there.
I'm glad that you finally got around to come around the show because I know we've been trying to arrange this for a couple of episodes, and power cuts here, et cetera, put paid to that. So I appreciate that. So let's jump in and see how we're doing on the five random questions.
Toronto Mike:Okay, I'm ready.
Danny:Alrighty, so I'm just going to bring my screen up and let's have a look at the random question generator. Okay. I feel this is a not bad one to start things off. Question number one, Mike. Who gives you the courage to try new things?
Toronto Mike:These are like philosophical questions. I feel like, okay, that comes from within, right?
I mean, leaving your comfort zone, which I did when I started this podcast because I didn't have a radio background. I never talked into a microphone. You know, I'm just a backhand guy who was producing technical producer of podcasts at the time.
Like, the courage to leave the comfort zone and to buy a mic and to speak into it and actually get somebody to listen, like that comes from within. It can't come from any other source. I don't know about you, but all these. These courageous decisions to advance come from within.
Danny:And is there. Is there, like you mentioned, obviously, like you say, the courage to buy a mic, and it's taken you on this big journey over twelve plus years now.
Plus the digital agency that you have, the digital services company. Has there been like a time where you've really not so much had buyer's remorse, but had that.
I mean, I'm guessing as a creator, you must have had the sort of, you know, imposter syndrome. What's. How have you overcome that?
Toronto Mike:Oh, you know, well, at some point you start to. I'm thinking of Public Enemy now. You start to believe the hype a little bit. So you. These live events. So I've had seventeen, I just had the seventeenth.
And, you know, when you plan your first live event, my thought, you know, is that I'll be alone. Like, it's. No one's going to come. It's like you have at a party. No one's going to come to my party.
And then, oh, my goodness, listeners show up and they speak your language and they seem to like the show. And then by the seventeenth event, you realize, oh, there is a community here. Like, I can reach out and, you know, consensually touch these people.
And I think you start to. To realize that there. There are people listening, they like what you do and you like doing it. So keep on evolving, keep on moving. Like it just.
Just keep moving forward.
Danny:And I imagine you, you mentioned there like this, you've done seventeen live events now. And I know you've got hopefully another few planned soon. We're in a.
We share a Discord group, the Canadian Podcaster Discord group. And I know that you're in there with the Ontario live events as well. What's the one?
I guess the one lesson that you might share to say a podcast or creator listening now, that is considering a live event. But as you mentioned, is scared that it won't work or it's too much to take on.
Toronto Mike:I would just say, don't worry about it. This is what I tell myself before these events.
I'm like, look, if five people show up, you'll create some compelling content with five people who love your podcast. And that's fine. Like, it's like, you don't need a hundred people to show up.
If you get a hundred people, that's great because you're trying to get people to a sponsored location, etc. But I would just say don't sweat the numbers.
Like, it's, it's a, you know, a passion of yours that you want to perform and you don't need to fill, you know, an auditorium or whatever. Just get some passionate fans out and, and record and not worry about those numbers.
Everybody, Danny, everybody's cons, like, overly consumed by numbers. Like, it's like, oh, I need this many downloads, I need this many unique visitors. I need this.
And I just say, put the numbers aside for a while and focus on compelling content and try to enjoy the ride.
Danny:It reminds me one of my favorite bands is Bon Jovi.
And when they were first starting, and Jon Bon Jovi will tell the story all the time, when they first started, they would play to be maybe the bartender and the cleaner or someone, but they would always put on a show like they were playing to a thousand people, ten thousand people in arenas, and obviously they became one of the biggest bands in the world, one of the tightest live sets, et cetera.
So it sounds like exactly like that, where you're saying, it's just love your craft, practice it, and what you're looking for will hopefully come anyway.
Toronto Mike:Yeah, if you create compelling content, you know, you'll find your listeners. But don't, don't sweat the number of people who come out to a live event. I will say, like, I never even considered a live event.
And I had a sponsor, Great Lakes Brewery, which said, hey, have you considered doing a live event at our brewery in South Etobicoke?
And I remembered the whole, like, well, what's going to happen is I'm going to promote this on my podcast, and then I'm going to find out nobody's going to show. And then when I remember that, like, being kind of nervous that day, like, who's coming to this, my very first live event? Like, who am I?
You mentioned imposter syndrome, Danny. Who the hell am I to have a live event?
Like, who the hell am I to think somebody's going to carve out a few hours of their busy day to come and sit and watch you record, bake this cake? Who the hell am I? And then when people show up, you realize, oh, there's something happening here. Let's keep. Keep on rocking.
So, yeah, Bon Jovi had it figured out. Not a big Bon Jovi fan.
I always talk about the Police because they played the Horseshoe Tavern in the late seventies, and depending who you ask, there was between nine and fifteen people at the Horseshoe Tavern to see the Police. This is before Roxanne broke and they. They put on a show. I mean, Gordon Sumner - Sting - came out in his underwear and he put on a hell of a show.
I've talked to, I think, all nine people who were there, and, you know, one. One year later, they were filling much larger venues. So it's. It's just. Just perform as if everybody is there, and then keep on trucking.
Danny:Excellent. But what a venue to perform in. Like the Horseshoe. I love the Horseshoe. The Rivoli. And there was one other, I can never remember.
It was on college, and I can't recall which one it was. My wife and I, before the kids came along, we used to go to a live event every weekend.
Toronto Mike:Lee's Palace, are you talking about?
Danny:Yeah, that's it. Lee's Palace. There you go. Great, great place. We saw Electric Six there, which was an amazing, amazing show. So, yeah. All aboard for that.
Toronto Mike:Amazing.
Danny:All right, so we will have a look and see what question number two brings up. All right, question number two. Do you think any kind of afterlife exists?
Toronto Mike:Oh, I feel like I should vamp on this. But the, the quick answer is, nope. No, I don't think there's anything after this. I think we're.
You get this one life to live, and at some point, lights are out and your awareness is equivalent to what it was like before you were born, which is that you cease to have any awareness of anything. And that's it.
Danny:One of the things that I feel, I'm on the same wavelength as you here. I don't believe in afterlife. I do kind of believe in some spirituality, but not like after you've gone.
But one of the interesting things I saw someone that does believe in afterlife mention was all the, like, the deja vu events that you have where you believe you've experienced something before.
And they said maybe that's part of an afterlife where you have experienced it in a different soul. Do you buy into that at all? Or do you think that's because obviously, as you mentioned, you don't believe in afterlife.
That's just a convenient option.
Toronto Mike:Now. These are all, like, coincidences or, you know, that I don't believe that has anything to do with other lives. Like, you get one life.
We're all animals, right? So it's. This is. This is nature. You're kind of.
By some fluke of everything kind of comes together so that you're born, and then hopefully you live a nice life. Maybe you can get in eight, nine decades if you're really lucky, and hopefully they're good years.
And then, like I said, it's just lights will go out and you will cease to be aware of any and all of that. And hopefully you're remembered well by people who know, knew, and loved you.
Danny:It's like the Keanu Reeves quote. He was getting interviewed by Stephen Colbert, and Colbert, not all the time, but he often asks his guests, what do you think happens when you die?
And Keanu Reeves came out and said something very much along the lines of that where I know the people that love us will miss us. Which I think is a great way to look at that and reply to that kind of question.
Toronto Mike:Well, that's just it. If you want to live forever, it's in the memory and thoughts of.
I have four children, and I want them to say, hey, Papa was a good dad, and I miss him. There you go.
Danny:And if you did, let's just say for like, a brief second, if you did believe in some form of afterlife, what would you. Or what or who would you like to come back as if you had an option or choice?
Toronto Mike:Oh, you mean like reincarnation?
Danny:Yeah, I guess. Yeah.
Toronto Mike:Well, you know what? Let me come back as Bon Jovi. I bet you he's had a good life. You know what? I would love to be a talented musician.
I have many conversations with great musicians, and lately I've been gravitating towards more music talk and really getting into the artistry of that. That medium. And I have no musical talent to speak of.
And I kind of would love to come back as a musically gifted person who could write and create, you know, musical art that people wanted to consume. So maybe I want to come back as Sting. And then there's that, you know, that tantric bonus, too. So, hey, let's do it.
Danny:That is. Yeah, I remember the tantric... Was it Judy, his wife? Was he still married to Judy? Trudi?
Toronto Mike:I think he's still married to her, absolutely.
But that, you know, that tantric period has been immortalized forever in the number one Billboard Hot One Hundred hit by the Bare Naked Ladies, one of Toronto's great bands. One Week. There's a line in there about, like, Sting, I'm tantric.
Danny:I've never picked up on that. Now I have to go back and listen to that now. But that makes perfect sense, right?
Toronto Mike:I won't do the rest. But Keanu Reeves, I think, is shouted out, too.
And I just want to let you know, I'm Toronto Mike, so I feel compelled to tell you that Keanu Reeves spent some formative teenage years living in Toronto.
Danny:Nice. Because he is Canadian.
Toronto Mike:He's, like, not born here. I don't know if he has citizenship, but he definitely spent some formative years here. I don't know if he's legally citizen of Canada, but.
Danny:Awesome. So. And as you mentioned, that's a recommendation for the Bare Naked Ladies.
I will leave a link to that song and on YouTube so listeners can check that out. And I will go back and listen to that myself for that very line.
Toronto Mike:Well, like Sting, you're going to be tantric too, so.
Danny:Perfect. Alrighty, let's have a look at what question number three has for us. Okay, I'm interested in this.
This has popped up before on the show, but it's been a way back, so I'm gonna allow this one to sneak in here. What's the best on screen bromance?
Toronto Mike:All right. My favorite television show of all time, and it's not even close, is. In fact, I have the DVD box set to my right here. I should grab it.
But it's the Wire. And my favorite bromance is I love it. I loved it. When In Homicide, Jimmy McNulty and Bunk were teamed up for a short period of time.
And, I mean, there's a scene, there's literally a scene where they're investigating a murder and they only use one word, and it's a bad word, but they use it in various contexts and it's just a tremendous scene. I love all the interactions between Bunk and McNulty.
Danny:And they are just purely colleagues? They're not friends outside colleagues and friends.
Toronto Mike:They go drinking at the Irish pub and then, in fact, they drink a little too much at the Irish pub, as I recall. They don't get Great Lakes beer in Baltimore, but they. It's just there's a great, great early seasons, particularly the arc with Bunk and McNulty.
And that's my bromance of choice on the, on the screen.
Danny:Now, I want to take you to your podcast because as we mentioned, you've had over fifteen hundred, almost sixteen hundred episodes now.
Have you ever had guests that sort of come on and been like a bromance or a romance or, you know, for not just bromance to previous guests or that have got existing bromances in the real world?
Toronto Mike:Oh, one hundred percent, absolutely. So there's so many there to count, actually. But I gotta shout out, this guy I met years ago. So I had a gentleman on.
He was the director of communications at Twitter Canada and he loved Toronto Mike. And I completely ignored his inbound emails for years. Okay, I get a lot of these. I'm sure you do too.
But I get a lot of people like, hey, you know, I have a new single out. Can I come on the show and talk about it? I get a lot of these. And this guy, this guy, his name was Cam. Well, it still is.
Cam Gordon wanted on Toronto Mike because he loved it. And at some point, I think he dropped the name of the drummer. Speaking of music of the Watchmen.
Like, he's like, I did a thing with Sammy Cohn and I know Sammy Cohn as the drummer of the Watchmen. Long story short is I finally said, okay, come on over and let's talk. And Cam Gordon was great.
But during this conversation, Cam's like, you need to meet my buddy from high school. His name is Stu Stone. He had. He was a child phenom actor. I mean, he started running down the credits. He was Jake Gyllenhaal's best friend.
On Donnie Darko. He was in professional wrestling as a manager. He wrapped these songs with Jamie Kennedy and they had a song with Bob Saget. And he was on MTV with this show called Blowing Up.
Anyway, this guy's like, who's this guy? Now he's directing his own movies. Like, who is this character? Stu Stone. I can tell you right now, Danny, that Stu Stone is being on Toronto Mike.
You mentioned we're going to hit sixteen hundred episodes. Almost a hundred of those are Stu Stone episodes. And most of that hundred are Stu Stone with Cam Gordon. That not an on screen bromance.
That's my podcast bromance of. Of choice. Cam Gordon and Stu Stone.
Danny:Love it. And I will again, I will link to these over in the show notes.
So whatever podcast app you're listening on, or if you're on the website listening to this episode, be sure to check out the show notes and we'll link back to Mike's site. What about yourself, Mike? Have you got a bromance?
Toronto Mike:No, I'm trying to get in on that Stu Stone, Cam Gordon action. Okay, well, you know, quick, since we have a couple minutes here.
When the pandemic struck in March twenty twenty and everything shut down, we didn't know what to do. I had. I would only record with guests in my basement studio. Like you had to sit right here and we go face to face. I still work that way.
Two people visited this morning, but what do I do? Suddenly I'm not allowed to have people in my basement. There's a pandemic or whatever. And Cam Gordon and Stu Stone and I had a call.
I think we met on Zoom and we chatted for a couple minutes and said we need to do something because these FOTMs, these are friends of Toronto, Mike. They're scared. Some of them don't live with people like I have. I happen to have a household of six people.
Like, I got a built in party going on here, but what if you live alone and FOTMs, what do we do? And I think it was Stu, but I don't know if it was Stuart, Cam or all three of us at the same same time.
We said, okay, let's do a recording on Friday, which was the twentieth of March, and it'll be thematic jam kickings and we'll call it Pandemic Friday. And we did this thing and then we said we got. People loved it. The feedback was great.
We were live streaming and@live.torontomic.com so we said, let's do it again the next Friday. Long story short is we did seventy six Fridays in a row.
Danny:Wow.
Toronto Mike:So seventy six Fridays in a row, Cam Gordon, Stu Stone and I recorded. We concluded with a farewell because I basically couldn't do it anymore. The pandemic, some say it never ended.
Maybe it's not over, but bottom line is we were all going to be in the same room again. We had a farewell event, the recording of the finale at Great Lakes Brewery in South Etobicoke. A hundred people came out. It was magic.
We sent it off in style. And I'd like to think that maybe this bromance has three of us now.
Danny:I like it and I feel you have to get that. You got to revisit that. Get it back up at the Great Lakes. I'm sure they'll have another great party.
Toronto Mike:Oh, we'll be back. Don't worry.
Danny:I will look out for that. I will definitely try to get down to that one. All right, I like that one. So let's see what question number four brings. Okay.
I'm curious about this, actually. I'm always kind of curious about sort of the more personal stuff of my guests. So, Mike, question number four.
What do you get every time you go grocery shopping?
Toronto Mike:A couple of staples that I have to have it. Well, the obvious. I'll leave the obvious out, which is like, I need apples in the house all the time. Like, I eat an apple a day. Like this is.
I've been doing this forever. My apple a day to keep the doctor away. I don't know how well that's working, but other than staples like that, you know, I like.
I like toast, so I need bread in the house. I would say the two items that are kind of different is I am in love with this very specific brand of Arabiata pasta sauce. Okay. I tried. I like.
I like my pasta sauce to be like spicy red peppers. And Arabiata is where I got to go for that.
And I've tried multiple types, and there's this one specific brand, and I can only find it at one chain in this damn city. And I. So I often go for a bike ride to East Mall and Burnhamthorpe. I want to say maybe it's East Mall.
And yeah, around there, there's a Loblaws where I can find this Arabiata sauce. So it's like I have a purposeful bike ride to just load up on my Arabiata sauce. And the other item I'm going to shout out because I need to.
It's a specific brand. There's only one type of gum that I like because it can hold the flavour for a ninety minute bike ride.
And at the end of the ninety minute bike ride, I still have flavour in this gum and it still feels right. And I love to bike with chewing gum. And, you know, I got to pick up my Five gum.
So there's a couple of items that are like staples of the Toronto Mike pantry here.
Danny:And the five gum, that's the one that's got the. It's like the long stick and it's got the stripes in the middle, like the lengthwise stripes or is that something.
Toronto Mike:No stripes in mine. It's. So it's five, but it's like a numeric five. So it's like numeric five. I've.
And there's like a couple of different, like, flavors, I guess, like a spearmint and a mint. And they are the only gum I've tried so many different gums. It's the only gum where I can, like, I can pop in a couple of pieces.
I can do a two hour, I can do a seventy five kilometer bike ride. And when I get home, I still have flavor in my gum. Can you believe that, Danny?
Danny:Nah. Knowing the gum that my kids like and that loses its flavor within about ten minutes tops of this crappy little stuff.
Toronto Mike:Yeah, there's some bad gum out there and you're lucky if you get ten minutes. But I discovered this one I like and I just keep re.
I'm worried because I've loved things like that in the past and they get discontinued or whatever. It's like, please don't discontinue my 5 Gum. And if I get a heads up they're discontinuing, I'm gonna find like, I'm gonna buy out a store.
Like, I'll be like, can I have a hundred boxes of your five gum, please? I don't care what it costs.
Danny:I know one of my guests, one of the early episodes, a lady called Em over in the UK, she's got a cat that only eats a certain brand of cat food. And she said the same thing.
If she ever heard on the news that this company was going out of business or something, she would just go and stockpile everything just to keep her life sane and happy.
Toronto Mike:Well, you know, Danny, this is a plot point on Seinfeld, right? When Elaine found out they were discontinuing today the sponge. Do you remember?
So it's like that was her birth control of choice and they were discontinuing it. And she basically went through New York City to buy up every sponge they had on a shelf. And that's where the famous term sponge worthy comes from.
Danny:I did not see it. I'm gonna admit here, I've not watched a single full episode of Seinfeld ever. But I've watched clips in that here and there.
But I did not know that's where spongeworthy came from. That's pretty cool.
Toronto Mike:Yeah, because they aren't making them anymore. And she has to determine up front if you're worth her burning a sponge for a good time. Right. So are you sponge worthy or not?
Danny:I like it. And you mentioned you've got six people, including yourself and your household.
Is there anything that you just look at the grocery list that someone's adding, you go, like, regularly, and they just don't take the hint.
Toronto Mike:Well, I don't want to come across like a misogynist jerk here, but the bulk of the grocery shopping is done by my wife, so I know that's going to. I can hear people booing at me as they're on their treadmill or something. Boo. Boo. But sad but true.
Danny:Now this episode is going to get one star on Goodpods. I'll have to try to put a counter campaign out.
Toronto Mike:As long as people know, I feel great shame.
Danny:Awesome.
Well, I'm gonna look out for the five gum, because I'd like to say my kids love gum, but they just pick up the crappiest little balls of gum that come in. These little single plastic kids deserve that.
Toronto Mike:I'm with you. I.
I hate it when my kids, because my ten year old likes to chew some gum while he plays his soccer matches and he's been going at my gum and I'm like, no, I'll buy the cheap crap gum for you because you don't care. Kids don't care. And that quality good gum, that's mine. You're not five worthy and not five worthy.
Danny:I like it. All right, well, speaking of five worthy, we've actually reached question number five. We're doing really well here, Mike, so I appreciate this.
Toronto Mike:That's a good segue. See, we're professional podcasters.
Danny:You'd think we do this for a living or something. Let's see what we bring up for the final question. Question number five.
Okay, I feel I kind of know some of this answer, but I could be completely wrong. So question number five, Toronto Mike, what are you most looking forward to in the next ten years?
Toronto Mike:It's interesting because I take it you don't mean, like podcasting professional wise, right? This is like.
Danny:No, it can be anything. I mean, I guess I sort of alluded to that when I said I think I could have an inkling, but no, it can be absolutely anything whatsoever.
Toronto Mike:All right, so for that, I would say I don't even like planning ten months out. So I'm really like, every day I go check out what's going on in the world and where we're going here. Things change so rad. Things change so fast.
Ten months ago, I was still like, oh, I love Twitter and all this. And now, now it's like, I hate logging onto Twitter and I'm into Bluesky. Like, things are just changing so rapidly. I don't know.
Google Podcasts was a podcast and now it's gone and everything's changing. So Google, I mean Spotify is changing this and that. So basically you can't afford to look ten years out on any of this.
You can't even do ten weeks out, really. Like you gotta be. Keep your eye on the prize the whole time and be ready to pivot. There's your pandemic word. Pivot. And adapt and evolve.
But I am looking forward to, because in the next ten years, I, and again, I, I don't know. If it doesn't happen, that's fine.
This is really none of my business because it's not my body, but it's very possible in the next ten years I become a grandfather.
So what I think would be awesome would be to be a grandpa because you get to do all that awesome stuff, but then you hand them back to the parents, like it's such a different phenomenon.
And I think I'd be really good like going to a hockey game with my grandkid or a bike ride or telling them this, teaching them that, you know, whatever. Hey, this, this band your grandpa listened to, they're called Pearl Jam. And wait till you hear this. Like, I think I'd be a kickass grandpa.
And I think that's, that's the way to go because you get all the awesome part and you don't have to deal with the, I don't know, middle of the night diaper changes and all that all. Getting the kid off to school, all that kid stuff you know about, you don't have to worry about.
So I don't know because I got two kids that are like one's twenty and one's twenty two, almost twenty three. And it's possible I'm a grandpa in the next ten years.
Danny:Very cool. And if, if you are, if you do become a grandpa and as you mentioned, the great thing about being a grandparent, my wife's mum is the same.
She loves it because she can hand them back. She loves our kids to death, but she can hand them back.
What would be the one thing that you, from a sort of cheeky point of view would want to teach your grandkid that you know, would get your own back on one of your kids for what they did previously?
Toronto Mike:Well, that's a tough one because I, I'm known, I'm pretty, pretty easygoing dad. Like that's a tough one. I'm so easy going. What would get my backup? I teach, you know, I don't know if there is a good way to wear place to go there.
Only because I Am so easygoing and laid back in the dad world. Like I would. What I'm really looking forward to with my grandkids is teaching them how to bike the city, right?
But I'm teaching my kids how to bike this city. So I don't know. I mean, I can tell you I hate it when my kids have sugary cereal. Like I hate it.
Like you get enough sugar through all the other sugar distribution systems in the universe. Like I hate it happening in the breakfast cereal. Like it's like a big pet peeve of mine. But I would care far less about that with my grandkids.
So if they want a bowl of Fruit Loops fill your boots.
Danny:Yeah. Get them all sugared up before handing them back over.
Toronto Mike:Yeah, why not?
Danny:I like it. Well, I mean here's hoping our kids are fourteen and twelve, so a little bit.
I mean, I guess maybe the fourteen and the twelve year old could have kids in ten years, but I'd like to think later than that.
Toronto Mike:No, I feel like kids are kids.
People are having kids older now than they used to and I was a twenty seven year old dad and that feels young now even though I'm, you know, only not that much older now. I'm only twenty nine now, Danny, so. Holy smokes. But I don't know if kids are having, if people are having kids in their twenties anymore. But you never know.
You never know.
Danny:Yeah, well, I guess there's a lot more. Like I know from when I was younger, there's a lot less. Not stability, that's the wrong word. But the future is obviously harder to pin down.
And then trying to build a life, you know, it's hard to like buy a house and you know, keep steady jobs, etc and it's maybe that's, you know, preferences change as well because they have to look after themselves first.
Toronto Mike:Well, I can't believe I ever bought a house. Only because the house thing is a big thing with me.
And that again, I'm fifty years old but in my twenties with my wife at the time I was able to buy a house in Toronto. Like I did that. I mean I put five percent down and the bank owned ninety five percent of it.
But I got property in Toronto in my late twenties and then had a couple of kids that live there. And I just wonder how the heck are my kids going to own property without some like.
And I never had this, but maybe somebody gifts them a whack of money. I don't know how they do it. Like unless they have some job that pays some wonderfully large sum of money.
So, I mean, these dreams we had that were realistic dreams, you know, buy a home in the city that you love, Toronto. These are the dreams of rich kids now. It sucks.
Danny:No, I hear you. We used to live in Burlington. It was getting super expensive, so that's why we moved up here.
Toronto Mike:So where are you now?
Danny:We're in Muskoka, so we are about two and a half hours north of you, I think. Yeah, but even now we were lucky. We moved just before the pandemic and then prices jumped way stupid high. We could not do the same move.
Toronto Mike:Now, like, do you remember, like back in the nineties, people are like, yeah, I'm moving to Barrie because they're giving you a home and they're giving you an acre and it's like it's going to cost you like fifty grand or something like that. And you're like, well, that's far away from the city.
But I guess if you can get all that for fifty grand or whatever, now your kids can't afford to live in Barrie. Yeah, Barrie's for rich people.
Danny:Yep. It's crazy. I know.
Good old Doug Ford said they'll pay for a bunch of houses and people will get big, big yards and five hundred yard plots and stuff like that. Where are you going with this, Dougie?
Toronto Mike:Don't get me started. He's ripping up my bike lanes. Don't get me started.
Danny:Oh, yeah, yeah, I hear you. No, I won't. I try to keep the show completely out of the political sphere, so I will.
Toronto Mike:Now my blood's boiling.
Danny:We'll stop there.
So, Mike, we've reached the end of the five questions and I really appreciate that, as is the case with every episode, to make it fair, because I've kind of put you on the spot for the last twenty five, thirty minutes or so, it's time for you to have your own question that you can throw back in this direction.
Toronto Mike:Do you find the character of Groundskeeper Willie to be offensive?
Danny:That's an awesome question. You know, I don't. And there's a couple of reasons for that.
The main reason is I think Hank Azaria does an amazing job on the accent and he does that with a lot of the accents he does on the show. And it can be really hard, especially for Americans, to do a good Scottish accent.
You hear it like Mike Myers did a great one for Married an Axe Murderer. So it can be tough, but, you know, he does it great. But the second one is Groundskeeper Willie.
Reminds me of a mix between my granddad and the janitor at my old school, my old high school. Both very gruff Scotsmen that had a hearty cold way deep down. But on the surface it was very gruff.
And I had a really short lived podcast called Old Man Brown that kind of based on my granddad and a little bit of Groundskeeper Willie and just really exaggerated the Scottish accent and the angry side and everything.
So I don't, I know I have friends that do find it offensive, but thinking, come on, it's a cartoon character, there are many more things that you could find offensive. So no, I think it's great. I think Hank Azaria is amazing.
Toronto Mike:Aye.
Danny:What about you? Is there any sort of Canadian stereotype that you get offended by? I can't see it actually.
Toronto Mike:Oh, no, no, no, no. I, I don't get offended by. And I do think we.
I kind of get angry that the go to punching bag in this country seems to be the Newfoundlanders and I feel it's unfair. That's an unfair. I'd rather you punch at like punch at me or something and leave our lovely Newfoundlanders alone, will ya?
And then I, earlier in this convo I used the phrase fill your boots. That my friend is from Newfoundland and I have in the studio a bottle of Screech.
Okay, much love to Newfoundland and Labrador because that is the proper name of that lovely province. But come at us, us idiots in the center of the universe here in Toronto and leave those Newfoundlanders alone.
Danny:We used to have a neighbor, we lived in Malton. Yeah, Malton, not Milton, Malton, which is not too far from Etobicoke, actually where the airport is.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
We lived there for a little bit before the kids came along and we shared a house, we had the sort of upper floor, it was like a back split and our neighborhood basement. And he was from Newfoundland and one of the things that he used to say at the end of each sentence was with respect, which I thought was amazing.
You know, with respect. Right, perfect.
Toronto Mike:Well, there's a lot of respect coming out of that beautiful province and one of the few provinces I've never been to. But one day, one day I'm going to get myself to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Danny:Take the live show on the road. There you go, you got a destination to go to. So Mike, as I mentioned, I appreciate you coming on the show today.
I know that I've been trying to arrange this for a little bit.
For anybody that wants to listen to one of the many, many, many, many, many episodes of the podcast, check out your live stream, or even if they're in the Toronto area, and maybe come down to the studio and see you there. Where's the best place to connect with you online and check out all the cool stuff that you're doing?
Toronto Mike:All right, the hub is torontomike.com like everything goes there.
But if you just go to the podcast app, slash aggregator of your choice and search for Toronto Mike'd, just remember, Mike'd is like M I K E apostrophe D. Some people think it's M I C apostrophe D. But Toronto Mike, search for it in the podcast aggregator of your choice and subscribe and listen.
But if you really just want to try before you buy, like, not that it costs you anything, but go to torontomike.com, at the top I have a button called Guests and I have a nicely sorted little like list of previous guests. And just cherry pick somebody you're interested in.
I don't know, maybe you want to hear Ron McLean from Hockey Night in Canada, or Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo, or Chuck D from Public Enemy. Whatever you're in the mood for, cherry pick the app. And in here, what I do, because you know, there's no blueprint, I do this thing.
And if you like this, you might like it a lot. And there's fifteen hundred plus episodes to choose from. And if you don't like this, no harm, no foul, it's okay, I forgive you.
Danny:And as you might guess by the names there, it's a very cool, eclectic mix of guests too. So there's bound to be someone for anybody. So as Mike mentions, hop on over to that page on the website and just take a listen.
So again, Mike, I appreciate your time today and for appearing on Five Random Questions.
Toronto Mike:Thank you, Danny.
Danny:Thanks for listening to Five Random Questions. If you enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to follow free on the app. You're currently listening on or online at FiveRandomQuestions.com.
And if you feel like leaving a review, well, that would make me happier than that time back in two thousand and six when after eight hours on a plane and two hours going through customs, I was finally on Canadian soil to start my new life. It's one of the best things I've ever done. Seriously, if you want to leave a review, that would make my day.
Until the next time, keep asking those questions.
