Which part do you want to talk about?

Well, I'll tell you something, Shane, I've actually spent the last day and a half digitizing tapes that people sent me of the day unfolding, right? A lot of people at the time stuck a VHS tape in their VCR.

Because they knew history was happening and they just let it roll.

And so I've been going through like these incredible recordings because it's one thing to look at it now, you know, and say, oh, you know, here's the highlights of the way that it was reported.

But to watch it as it unfolded, you know, most people obviously started to tune in to CNN or CP24 or whoever when already the first plane had hit.

But it's just blowing my mind, Shane, the naivety that was on display for that first kind of 15 minutes when they all thought this was just a freak accident.

Even after the second plane hit, there was still a lot of media coverage.

Like it was so willy nilly, if that's even a thing to say.

It was like $7.99 for the cassette and then like $13.99 for the CD usually.

And CDs crept up over time.

And, you know, I'd say between $15 and $25 was about your average price unless you got a discount.

So, I mean, these weren't cheap.

I mean, it's crazy when you think about buying CDs for one song, which is, let's be honest, what most of us did, right? I mean, you heard a great song and you went out.

bought the CD and then you just had that one song on repeat and now I mean let's talk about now because you know I'm a I'm a huge proponent of physical media you know I love my records I love my CDs all that stuff the streaming era I think the golden age of the streaming era is over now and I think the prices have crept up.

I think people are starting to notice that the songs they love are changing.

I feel like we've been robbed so many times, Ed, that that could be a big part of it.

Yeah.

That game ended, we were down two, and like Corchiani was driving in for a layup at th-...

This was like with 20 seconds left He throws it back out.

Monroe takes a three.

We don't need a three, we just need to get this game tied.

He takes the three, we rebound and throw it up to Goose, he takes a three.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

finish as cleanly unified family style as the tragically hips final concert did

no it's um you know when you're talking about the arts whether it's bands or or filmmakers or writers it is very very hard almost impossible i would say to create a body of work that has a beginning a middle and an end right because fate uh you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and and you leave all this work unfinished um with bands my goodness i mean i remember the rolling stones in 1989 steel wheels or as they called it uh Was it Gray Wheels Tour? You know, that was supposed to be it.

That was the last time.

And it just keeps going and going.

And there's a reason why.

There's a money reason why.

There's those rock stars.

So it's not so perfectly, but under the circumstances, I think it's probably...

Little did we know that that little pocket in time, the cartoon vibe for adults really started to change.

Major, major vibe shift, as the kids say, in '97.

Um, South Park, I mean, let's start obviously with that.

It- it's so accessible now.

It's so easy to watch South Park.

Um, but when it started, I don't know if, if it was similar for you, but I remember kind of hearing about this.

It was like this underground thing that was buzzing along, and in, certainly in Toronto anyways, the only place you could see it was on the Global Television network, who aired it at, like, 12:30, uh, in the night on, on Fridays.

Goes to show how, you know, 30 years later, how f- way far ahead of their time they were.

Can we talk about that for Throwback Thursday?

I would love to.

I mean, I think what's remarkable about BeaverTales to me is they don't really advertise on television.

They are one of those brands that everybody knows what it is.

They know exactly what you're talking about.

You see them, you see their locations all over the place, but it's like word of mouth.

It's not huge advertising budgets, which is cool.

It's good.

We always had the gliding orbiter.

You're right.

No, and what's funny is it took, you know, I think somebody of, you know, the caliber of, say, Elon Musk to make it cool again, right? It was going on in the background, but you always need, for the space program, you need a cheerleader, right? who is going to go out and talk about why it's important that we do this, that we get off planet Earth and we go and explore strange new worlds.

I think in the 80s, certainly as a child, I remember seeing the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, talked about this all the time.

He was always pushing for that, and he was the guy when the Challenger exploded that kind of talked about The tragedy of that and these people died, you know, trying to better society.

So, yeah, there was that blip there, that 15 years when it went away.

But I'm glad it's back.

But around the world, more than in Canada, there was lots of stuff going on.

But how do you see that all of these things sort of just sort of all transpired? Because there's even the smaller shows that never did go national that were pretty awesome, too.

Yeah, I mean, if you read my book, I go into great lengths to understand what happened.

And, you know, it's all thanks to basically one school teacher who was the television executive at the CBC who oversaw the children's department.

He hired Friendly Giant.

He hired Mr. Rogers.

He hired Mr. Dressup.

And he believed very strongly that you could form a relationship with children through television by speaking to them on the level, which is not being condescending.

Very similar to the fact that it was just speaking to kids, not at kids.

your

pension.

Yeah.

It was boomers part two, right? That was what was expected of those kids.

And Dungeons & Dragons, and I would say also around the same time you had the emergence of – Heavy metal as a genre of music and horror films and horror books and science fiction books and all this kind of weird stuff that was like bubbling under, I would say, the normies.

Normies didn't know about that stuff back then.

And it led to all kinds of really important people that would go on to shape the next generation.

and then into magic gathering and all these other things i'm basically name dropping what ryan says to me that's really what i'm doing um but i it's amazing to see it really is and i went with the reason why i talk about the strip mall stores because i went with ryan to one of those when he was here in ottawa we were in bar haven we went to one and and he's like let's just go in i was like okay show me i want to see this what does this look like right and it was it was just a bunch of kids doing kid things i mean i think that you probably could have trans for those who have never been to a store like that you could translate it to like a hobby store like the guys who like trains or airplanes or or whatever and they're making remote control airplanes in there in the store and it was exactly like that so it's it really seems to be the the the tipping point of where the avalanche started for so much that we know today

Where does your brain go?

Yeah, you know, Pizza Hut, because Pizza Hut is an interesting chain.

I mean, specifically with the stuffed crust in 95, you know, you're right in the thick of the fast food wars of the 90s.

And of course, I'm sure you're going to play it if you haven't already.

The Donald Trump pizza commercial where he says crust first.

You know, that was what was going on in 95.

You had... celebrity endorsements of fast food chains because they're all trying to undercut each other.

It was basically like lasagna.

And so do you think it really opened up the general public's eyes to Oh, by the way, like there are different pockets and versions of all of these songs in different places around the world?

Oh, yeah.

I mean like that was one of many things that became very common knowledge after the fact.

It's so difficult even though it wasn't that long ago to paint that picture of before the internet or the early days of the internet.

If you were a music fan or a DJ like you were, you would read about these things in a magazine or something that was already like months out of date.

I was a huge fan of British music, and so I would get these British NME, the music papers, and you'd get them months after and find out, oh, there's this rare extended version of something.

And then, yeah, I think suddenly the doors blew open with Napster and – It was just a feast.

Do you think that this was the cultural shift where we realized as, oh, the internet can give us all the things?

I want the

internet.

My goodness.

The kids have no idea how good they have it now, but You know, I think what's emerging, Shane, is this idea that back then, the wild west of the internet, there was something very special about it that we've lost.

And I think it comes down to now the internet is owned by about four companies, maybe.

Control everything, like literally every website, every social media app, everything that you interact with is four giant corporations.

The early days, 2007, I still consider that early days of internet.

Describe what an Internet meme is for those who don't realize they see them, but they don't really realize what they're seeing, because it's it's kind of like the current day comic strip, really.

They're good enough to do it.

No, of course.

They're worth every penny.

And look, they revolutionized comedy, a lot of those folks.

Now, we've had all kinds of homegrown comedians.

comedians and comedy tv shows that stayed in canada but i have this idea that really from 1970 until modern day we had really two different kinds if you're gonna you know pigeonhole it and talk about what were these reoccurring motifs in our comedy tv shows with comedians um And the first one, of course, Trailer Park Boys comes from what I would define as hoser comedy.

OK.

That's new to me.

And then the sweaty kid made it weird for

everybody.

Then it got weird.

But, yeah, the swatch was, I would say, maybe the centerpiece, excuse the pun, of all that.

And, you know.

that was just a magnificent innovation.

And the idea that there were so many different variant versions and no two look the same.

But it was the Seinfeld of that generation, wasn't it?

Right.

It's not like – it wasn't theatrical.

So it would get sold to – at the time in Canada, we had a pay-TV channel called Super Channel.

And they would just run stuff like that multiple times a week.

So as a kid, I saw it all the time.

And then I remember – you know, in high school or maybe even university thinking about it.

And then I went out to find it and it was like, no, this doesn't this doesn't exist on VHS.

I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense because the Washington, Oregon, sort of British Columbia Sasquatch Corridor.

Hey, it was a cool

interface, okay? It was.

You could get your skins.

Yeah, you could skin it.

But it made whatever lame 2005 song you were listening to seem a little bit cooler.

But look, I think more importantly, this comes up a lot.

I've been thinking about this a lot.

I mean, this is sort of pre pre house meltdown in the States time to like people were kind of happy people were trying things thing was going on before the big financial crisis hit to where what were our vibes like in 2005?

you were

talking about now.

No, sorry.

Yeah, nice.

No, there's a lot of parallels.

Trouble in Iran, trouble in the Middle East.

You know, people were drained, really.

um okay so this is cool 1980 uh before then what's the general tone do you think before terry fox after terry fox we've talked about it here just in the last couple minutes but let's put it right into context like because it really butts against because you had this sort of darker angsty 70s vibe thing post-war feeling and then all of a sudden the bright colors and the neon came and terry fox was right in the middle of that

Charge you $300 for the hour.

Maybe I can trace all of my problems back to that.

It's possible.

But no, I was 89.

I was already kind of outgrowing video games.

I think we've talked about this in the past.

I saw NES as kind of the peak of video game.

They don't even watch it.

And you think 1988 is a, is a big year based on your writing and experience.

I do.

I do.

I think 98 is one of those very transformative years because I think there's a lot of agreement that 90 sort of 97 is where the classic 90s kind of ends.

OK, 98 up until 9-11. is almost its own decade because that is when, as you say, Google comes into existence.

Suddenly everybody has an email address, even if it's skunkmasterj1981.

We all make mistakes.

was more of a hungry, hungry hippos guy.

So many things to do with that, isn't there?

Oh, wow, yeah.

And it's funny because there was a documentary about Charlie Sheen that came out last year where he's rehabilitated now.

He's very well-spoken.

And, yeah, I mean, that was a different universe.

But, no, I think 2011 was the last somewhat normal year because by 2012 – The majority of the world's population is addicted to smartphones and scrolling.

And I remember I was a very late holdout to that game.

I don't know.

Free love,

right.

Back in the summer of 69.

So, yes, it was...

What a brilliant way to start that year.

Yeah.

And I don't know if any of your listeners watched the great program Mad Men because the season that deals with 1969 does a really good job of showing that that year can really be split into these two pieces.

Certainly.

Was it a good era or a bad era?

Well, I'll tell you, in his biography, the creator of SNL said the 1995 season, I believe it was the 20th season, was the closest the show ever came to actually being canceled.

Wow.

Wow.

which is kind of crazy.

Well, considering that, what, 30 years later.

Right, and look at the quality that it's at now.

It was an upside down era.

We've said that many times as we talk about history.

No, no. Humankind does not learn from its mistakes, unfortunately.

I want to say, though, a very big thing I've noticed, a big difference between 2003, March 2003, and what's happening now.

I'm not feeling the anti-war sentiment in nearly the same way that we did in 2003, certainly in popular culture.

And I don't know if that is because everybody's just burned out.

They don't have the energy anymore and they feel there's no point.

But man, I mean, that doesn't feel to me that long ago, March 2003.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think, I mean, 70s is a different bag.

And I actually think the 70s kind of spilled into the early 80s.

The 80s, look, the 80s that people think about when you make a poster of the 80s, it's like 87, right? It's the neon lights and the big hair and the synth pop and...

You know, all that stuff isn't really early 80s and it's not really late 80s.

It's it's sort of the middle years there.

And we just don't let go, Ed.

I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I mean, I think, too, for people that, you know, weren't born then or were too young to remember, I mean, Princess Diana was arguably the most popular person on the planet, you know, in the 80s and 90s.

I mean, she was bigger than Michael Jackson, I would even say.

And as has been documented, you know, she was this fearless person that went into war zones and went into hospitals and did photo ops with people that were dying of AIDS and all kinds of stuff that just wasn't happening until she did it.

So she was not just like even beyond the royal family piece.

I mean, she was just this – bigger-than-life character, really.

And, yeah, I mean, I think the conspiracy theories aside, you know, dying in a car driven by a drunk driver, you know, unfortunately that stuff touches a lot of people's lives, whether they're famous or not.

And especially when, you know, the separating from the royal family... became well it changed the behavior of the royal family in that the the citizens forced the queen's hand to react so the influence of the individual became stronger than that of the crown and i think that it might have been a tipping point