Take the Toronto City Centre Airport story, for example. I’m not sure many people would care about the tussle going on there. It’s a three-way shoving match between the city, the Port Authority which controls the airport and I believe has it’s own squad of shadowy assassins, and Porter Airlines which managed to pull in record profits pretty much every year since it started flying. Oh, and the island residents who basically bitch 24-7, 365 about everything (“The city’s too loud! The lights are too bright! The planes are too scary! Wah! Wah!”)

(big!)

Bill would gnaw at this, getting angrier and angrier right up until the commercial break. I don’t remember his stance on the issue, but I clearly recall the outraged timbre of his voice. The current topic of contention is the proposed tunnel to the airport which no level of government wants to pay for.  It’s intended to replace the current ferry service which, at a full 20-second trip (maybe 30) from shore to shore, seems kind of inefficient:

But whatever. I’m sure Porter contributes to this inefficiency from its growing wallet so who cares? Bill does. Passionately. Desperately. I bet the fact that Toronto got the 2015 Pan Am Games probably caused his head to just explode. They probably had to drag his headless, blood-soaked corpse out of the studio live on the air. That would’ve been some show. If only it was still on at a time when I could listen.

I can just imagine his reaction at the $2.4 billion cost. He either would have been rejoicing that his beloved Etobicoke was getting a pool make-over, or cheesed that the athletes’ village will be in what is currently a large mud pit bisecting the east edge of town (ON TAXPAYERS’ MONEY, AND DOWNTOWN GETS ALL THE BENEFITS!!), or both.

He doesn’t care that he sometimes contradicts himself. Bill shoots from the hip and asks questions later. If there’s time. I don’t think John Moore even owns a gun.

Now I have at least three more days of waking up to do. Quite possibly a few decades on top of that. With Bill gone, I’m left sleeping in almost every day, but I don’t know where else to turn. The radio dial to. And with it staying dark outside later and later now, the problem is becoming more urgent. “Nature Sounds I” just won’t cut it, but what’s the alternative … the buzzer?!

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Let me take you way back to last Friday. For me it’s way back.

Anyway, former politician John Tory was on CFRB voicing his views on the announcement by Mayor Miller that he wouldn’t be running for office again next year. John and co-host Tarek took a call from a “Sandra from Toronto” who vigorously defended the mayor and his handling of the garbage strike.

“What the mayor did during negotiations is, for the first time, tackled that with two of the unions and said it couldn’t go on.” – Do I sense a spark?

“And I bet, John, if you run for office, you wouldn’t be able to do what he accomplished.” – Oh my! Is it getting warm in here?

“…putting out the most ridiculous comments about a man who’s probably the most brilliant politician, municipally, anywhere in the country who leads all the other mayors across Canada and was chosen by those mayors to speak on their behalf.” – Woaw, Sandra! Put it back in your pants!

Okay, maybe I’m misreading it, but that’s a whole lotta man-stand-behindin’ for an anonymous “Sandra”. And she didn’t sound like a typical CFRB caller. She was conspicuously comfortable with publicly gobbing off. At least I remember it that way; I was half awake when I heard the replay the following week. The one part that stuck with me, though, was this:

“And good luck to you, John, because you’re a three-time loser and I don’t see you being successful in the future.”

Come on, “Sandra”, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?

Okay, but that’s just the beginning. You see, “Sandra” apparently has a pretty recognizable voice. Tarek asked her, “”Sandra, do you work for the city?”, to which she replied:

“I don’t work for the city, but I’m telling you the truth.”

*ding*

Tarek was having none of it. He was pretty sure that that had been Sandra Bussin, city councillor for the fru-fru Beaches neighbourhood.

So CFRB did a little interview campaign the following day asking various councillors if the voice on the tape sounded familiar. Most responded by saying that it sounded an awful lot like Sandra Bussin. They’d know because she’s also the Speaker for city council.

It’s the Speaker’s job to establish decorum – basically to set and mediate the tone of meetings. A Speaker should also be (or at least appear to be), impartial so that all sides get to have an equal say during debates. So if this had, in fact, been the Speaker that had called in and been both belligerent and clearly in love with Mayor Miller (i.e. not impartial), that would be pretty serious.

It’s essentially breaking the first two rules of being a city council Speaker. Kind of like a cop murdering an innocent civilian and then committing an armed robbery while on the job. Well, maybe not that serious, but still it demonstrates that there’s an incapability there to carry out the primary duties of the job.

On Wednesday of this week, we discovered that – lo and behold – it was Sandra Bussin that had called in to the show. She fessed up and sent a letter of apology to CFRB in which she did the proper politicianly thing and fudged the facts:

“In hindsight, I realize that some of my comments were intemperate and that I should have clarified my identity.”

“Intemperate”, is that what you call just a wee bit of bitch these days? And I’m going to go ahead and suggest that not having an identity and denying an identity are two different things.

But, I suppose if I were doing something forbidden, I might want to hide my identity too.

“It was a very emotional day for me as result of Mayor Miller’s announcement. I called your program on the spur of the moment upset over remarks that were being made about the Mayor.”

Take a page from David Letterman, honesty will set you free, Sandra!

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To begin with, a bunch of personalities from my wake-up radio station were axed, en masse, this afternoon. I’ve only ever heard promos for the Motts’ show and I accidentally tuned into a Michael Coren repeat one night. Didn’t care for it. And Jacqui Delaney I found to be as awkwardly appended to my daily dose of waking petulance, the Bill Carroll Show, as the spelling of her name, and this clause. Plus, she was kind of abrasive.

But I wish them all well. It’s not always easy out there on the streets.

Take the Carties, for example. Almost everyone agreed that the concept was great; let’s have some alternatives out there on the streets instead of just the ubiquitous hot dog stand. The city clenched their butt cheeks extra hard on the requirements and only eight finalists (out of twelve entries), were accepted into the program. They had to pay a ridiculous sum for the carts which were sold, and branded, by the city. The vendors also had to wear city-issue uniforms. Oh, and the city told them where they would go and conduct their business. Some locations were great. Some, not so much.

There were also suggestions that the city might want to, you know, have a chat with existing street vendors to see how they do things. Kinda pick the brains of some of the people who have done this day in, day out, for decades.

Yeah … no, they didn’t do that.

I once bought a samosa from one of the a la Cart guys. His little shack was impeccably clean, almost too much so. He probably had the city’s sanitation inspectors living in his colon. The food was okay, nothing too exciting; proper City-Hall, middle-of-the-road flavour. And what’s this about handling every little thing with a pair of gloves on? With street meat, you get a dollar-store serviette (as dainty as the word implies), holding up a propane-soaked bun which is cradling a hastily warmed specimen of “dog” of some sort. “Hot” it most certainly is not. No latex glove, that’s for sure.

It’s almost inevitable then that the Carties would start dropping off, isn’t it?

Sad.

But Buskerfest helped me forget all about it! The name says it all; a street carnival filled with buskers. Open guitar cases, hats, plastic cups, and other collection receptacles abounded.

One of the performers flew in from overseas. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say somewhere in the region of Australia:

Strangely, this is as exciting as it got. At least for me. In the ten minutes or so that I stood there, the routine seemed to go nowhere. Those knives never saw any action. I still don’t know why those people were lying there. I waited, I applauded; tried to cheer him on. Nada.

Oh well.

Elsewhere, some of the buskers had so much polish, they were like some kinda disco machines:

It may not be to everyone’s liking, but everyone’s gotta make a living somehow. Even the very tall and gangly:

The evening ended with a rousing human beatbox, but that video is still being transjiggamafied. I hope this will suffice until then:

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Actually, it was all Torontonians and not me specifically, but I still felt the cold finger of blame pointed squarely at my face.

If you don’t know, Bill Carroll is the prime time personality for local radio station CFRB (AM 1010). His soothing repartee is my morning wake-up, usually taken with a caffeinated beverage, and followed by 680 News and a sunny toilet bowl.

The “Wall of Shame” segment, usually on just after 8 a.m., is a way for Bill to vent his rage and frustration in a generally non-violent way. Usually it’s the denizens of city hall or some child-abusers (I don’t think Bill sees a difference), who receive the honour of the simulated hammer-and-nail routine, but this morning Bill decided that Toronto — and everyone in it — was worthy of being shamed.

What got Bill so mad? The “minority” bicycling population of  Toronto is trying to impress their anti-car agenda on the city and we’re all just lying back and taking it. This stemmed from news that the group is trying to revive the proposal for a bike-only lane to be added to a section of Bloor Street West. Bill took this to be a personal afront: he drives, these people are obviously anti-car, hence they’re against him.

Usually Bill fake-hammers the virtual nail with measured disdain, but today he was pounding and yelling into the microphone like a man on a mission.

Why aren’t all car drivers furious with this “minority” agenda, he asked? Why is city hall filled with car haters? Why the hell isn’t the population of Toronto up in arms?! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL YOU PEOPLE?! (or something similar)

Bill phoned the deranged organizer of this three-ring circus to ask him what the big idea was. The guy on the other end replied that the city would be much better off if everyone rode a bike: environment, health, etc. Bill disagreed vociferously. The plan would be unworkable for the “vast majority” of people. It’s unconscionable how the bike-riding “minority” is trying to hijack city hall for it’s own nefarious purposes. How many people would use this extra lane anyway? Numbers! How many people, really?! TELL ME HOW MANY OF YOU SONS OF BITCHES THERE ARE!

The interviewee couldn’t come up with any stats.

How typical! Bill was sure it wasn’t a lot of people, not like drivers; there’s a lot of those, definitely a “vast majority”.

As Bill launched into another tirade, this was pretty much the end of the dialogue. Perhaps the interviewee left the conversation, maybe Bill hung up on him. The voice on the other end of the line simply stopped attempting to speak in between the Carroll deluge.

Now with only himself to convince, Bill kept absentmindedly knocking the imaginary nail while slowly descending into something resembling normalcy, all the while trying to re-frame the topic so that even the thickest of us would understand how awful it really was.

The phone lines were opened up.

The first caller agreed with Bill’s assertions and managed to earn himself a second sentence. “Why not lead a protest group like the Tamils?” he asked. “I can’t get involved,” replied Bill. “If you’re famous and lead a protest, they’re all over you. Somebody else needs to do this. Are you listening, Toronto? I’m so sick and tired of…”, and so on.

And then came the traffic report.

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Stop right where you are. Yes, you. Put that ass crack on the pavement or so help me.

Good.

All settled?

The voice of Bill Carrol came on. You know, the CFRB 1010 morning guy and his cadre of over-drole associates. “Did you see this on CNN?”, I paraphrase. “Now they’re using my idea to try and put a positive spin on the news. Using ‘Road to Rescue‘. I’ve been doing that for months! That was my idea!”

Those were the first words I heard as I opened my eyelids today. All of the stuff at the top of the post also came from the radio earlier, but managed to mix into an ongoing dream that you probably wouldn’t want to hear about.

This would be the first fully intelligible statement of the day.

He continued without missing a heartbeat, launching into a litany of woe and sorrow for the state of Toronto, Canada,  the world, and the shocking, s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g story of Natasha Richardson’s accident in Quebec. This last story, one that has riveted Bill the last couple of days, was described with such genuine emotion, such gushing distress, that I think his wife may have something to worry about.

Then came the latest updates in the Richardson case; apparently she was on the bunny hill. Eye-glazingly personal stories of  ski hill debacles followed.
Bill remained shocked.
Then came a three-way debate on head safety. Concensus: Mrs. Richardson may have been saved by it.
If only she had been safe. Shocking news.
Then the interview with the brain expert.
Bill: shocked.

Unfortunately I missed the certainly stellar entry for the “Wall of Shame” segment, but I was already amply satisfied with the course of the day. Nothing gets the heart pumping like a Monster energy drink and a positive, cheery, heart-warming Bill Carrol diatribe.

It’s a privilege, a shocking privilege, to be able to wake up to Bill’s verbal vengeance every morning. You too can catch it live, just remember this is Toronto time.

So sad about Natasha.