A flame-broiled retraction

Just over a year ago, I levelled a heavy accusation at Burger King.

In a post titled "My Beef With Burger King", I alleged that the flame-broiled Whoppers at the airport outlet were not flame-broiled:

My other beef has to do with how I observed Whoppers being cooked at the Halifax International Airport (now Robert L. Stanfield Halifax International Airport).
Much to my surprise, it appeared staff were *frying* the burgers. Whoppers are supposed to be flame-broiled. Cooked with fire. Special machines. That's the whole BK gimmick -- flame-broiled Whoppers.
So I called Burger King Customer Support to inquire. They promised to call me back after investigation. It's been a month and a half, but no one has returned my call. So, I'm posting the audio of the inquiry. Here's a 3.2 MB MP3: bk-airport.mp3.

Well, we passed through the airport again on our way to Cuba.

I asked the chap behind the counter whether their Whoppers were flame-broiled. That just confused him. One of his coworkers said they go over fire. I took a closer look and, whaddya know, they do have a Whopper flame-broiler back there. Yes, they do. One of those belt-driven dealies that takes the patties on a conveyor from cold to hot and dripping with greasy grill marks. The airport Whoppers appear to be the real deal.

So, apologies to Burger King if I raised an unnecessary stink. You still should've called me back about it. We could've sorted this out a year ago!

New Big Ass Music

Hallo, all! I hope the winter isn't wearing you all down. We've had storm after storm here in Halifax, but from what I see on the news, it's nothing like southern Ontario has been getting this season. Keep warm and safe!

I've put two new songs up on the Big Ass Superstar page at onlinemusicnetwork.ca.

Ticket To Spain is a cover of the opening track from Cub's second album Come Out, Come Out. I really like the way the drums turned out.

Buenas Tardes Amigo is a cover of "the Mexican song" from Ween's Chocolate and Cheese. It's my most ambitious production yet. It's more than seven minutes long and features a dramatically building mix of acoustic and electric guitars, drums, and even a string section! It's one of the few times I haven't piled a ton of effects on my singing.

Check it out and enjoy! (And slug me a good rating or review if you feel like it!)

Big Ass Music now online

I've signed up to a new service that's in beta testing right now. It's designed to be a MySpace/YouTube kind of site for Canadian musicians, focusing for now on Atlantic Canadian musicians.

I've put some songs up for listening. For the first time, you can now hear some remastered tracks in hi-fi from my first album Serotonin, and a couple of tracks prepared for the (eventually) forthcoming album Mind The Gap.

You can also sign up to be "a fan". I don't know what that gets you. Odds are I won't be mailing out candy and newsletters.

Check it out: the web site is www.onlinemusicnetwork.ca, and my profile page is at http://www.onlinemusicnetwork.ca/members/60/.

Rock on!

Cygnals: Ween: All about the high shit

From the pages of Cygnals Zine, Issue #9, Spring 1997

Remastered MP3 audio to replace the old MP3. (I found the cassette this weekend, w00t.)

---

"It's all about the high shit." The first words out of Gene Ween's mouth upon answering the telephone.

I can only assume he was talking to sidekick Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo), sharing a downtown Detroit hotel room after spending the night on the tour bus. Gene, known as Aaron Freeman to the police and anyone who needs his real name, is groggy, but fresh from a good healthy shit.

Based on previous interviews with Gener I'd read in other zines, I figured I might be in for a tough time. But little did I know that Gene Ween would be a more challenging interview than any politician or scientist I've ever talked to.

I introduce myself. "Did you just talk to this guy?" asks Gene to Dean. "Yeah, you were in the toilet," he answers. Woo-woo. Gene/Aaron puts down the phone, grabs a cigarette and comes back for the interview.

Warner was kind enough to send me a copy of Ween's current release, 12 Golden Country Greats, an enjoyable mix of Ween wackiness with country hurtin'. A country record from drug-punk-funk-alterna-whatever boys Ween? What must the record company have thought? "They didn't really know until it was finished, until we handed it in." Once finished, they were good about promoting it, I'm told, but I still haven't seen a video from it.

Ween's drug use is legendary, but Gene says that's over. "Not after the big bust in '92, there's no big drug lifestyle anymore. I can't talk about it. Pretty ugly." Yeah. Right.

I made the mistake of bringing up one of my other favorite bands, They Might Be Giants. I'd read Ween doesn't like them. "No, not really. Can't say as I do. A little too smart college boy for me. I was never into smart college boy music."

Aside from an anticipated tour with Marilyn Manson (is he kidding?) And last year's tour with Foo Fighters, Gene poo-poos opening for anyone. "It's something that we've never really done, and it's something that we're not going to start doing. I think we're a little different than that, our whole trip. Forty minutes in front of Beck isn't really where it's at. There's nobody out there that I like enough to do that with. Ninety-nine per cent of opening bands stink. Cuz of these stupid fucking club people who try to find a They Might Be Giants type band. So not only aren't they like They Might Be Giants, they're worse than They Might Be Giants. Which is hard to imagine."

Stupidly, I mention I saw TMBG opening for Hootie (ack!) And the Blowfish at Skydome a week earlier. "That sounds like a nightmare. Goddamn. Why am I even talking to you?" I lose his attention even more. "I got athlete's foot, I think...uhh, yeah?"

Pushing my luck after talking to Ween about Frente, I ask if he's heard of Cub. "Cup?" Cub. "I think 99% of that cute girl shit sucks. Alternative girl-rock. Very popular right now and they all sound the same."

After nearly twenty minutes of trying to pull more than "yeah" or "it's cool" answers from Gene, I wrap up the interview.

---

Follow up 2008:

- The October 23, 1996 show that I interviewed Ween for was later released as Ween's first live album, and a must-have for Ween fans. The release of "Ween: Live in Toronto" marked the launch of Chocodog Records.
- I have some rare photos from the show on the old Cygnals site
- Full audio of this interview has been resourced and remastered in MP3
- Reference file for the interview: 1996-10%20-%20Interview%20with%20Gene%20Ween.mp3

Cygnals: David Bronstein

From the pages of Cygnals Zine, Issue #9, Spring 1997.

"Get off the couch, get out of bed, go to the phone and call the number on the screen!"

** Remastered audio to replace the old RealAudio. Now in MP3! How modern!

If you've had the good fortune to be channel-surfing late at night, among the exercise equipment, food processors and motivation courses, you've no doubt found Dial-A-Date.

Surrounded by bikini-clad dancing girls, the self-proclaimed 'Prince of Love' David Bronstein compels viewers to "call the number on the screen" to "talk live to real single and women and men."

I tracked down Bronstein at the North York
headquarters of the Dial-A-Date empire, B&W
Entertainment.

"I'm an actor, that's all I am," he says.

Bronstein has appeared in a few movies, on CBC's Toronto After Hours, on YTV and USA Cable Network's Dog House, and on the syndicated film trailer show Hollywood Camera. (He was later replaced by granite-jawed pretty-boy Dan Duran. "The station, whoever was carrying it, thought I was an idiot. They hated me. They hated my goofiness. They hated my personality, whatever I was doing.")

After all this, Bronstein found he wasn't getting a lot of auditions. Fed up, he fired his agent, hooked up with partner Andrew Wells and grappled to produce his own show. TV production isn't cheap, however. Facing the prohibitive costs of writing a script, selling it, shooting a pilot, and shopping it around, Bronstein decided the now-common infomercial route would work best: buy the whole half-hour and program it yourself. Rather than sell advertising time during the show, he set up a 900 line to generate revenue. All, he says, to get his Seinfeldesque mug on TV.

On a few weekend mornings, I've seen Bronstein pushing a stroller on the subway. He's lived with wife and family in Toronto for 10 years. He seems like an otherwise nice guy. So, of course, the obvious question: is David Bronstein really the obnoxious Prince of Love we see on TV?

"Not the same guy," he confesses. "The persona I portray when I go 'Hey, baby, hey gorgeous, hey sweety,' I'm portraying all the guys who go to clubs who are all hot and cool . . . do you watch Saturday Night Live? You know the segment where they have the two disco guys? That's the role I'm playing on TV, because I'm not that guy. I wish I could be that guy, and have that kind of confidence when I go to clubs. On the screen, the role that I turn on and off light a light switch when I'm shooting, I wish I could be that. But when I go to Vegas with Andrew, my partner, he takes me to clubs because people recognize me, and he meets girls that way. But I don't have the guts to go up to girls and say 'Hey gorgeous, you're beautiful, what's your name?' -- I don't have the guts to do it. I wish I did!"

Now that you've seen the other side of the leering guy with the waving hands, dancing with the bikini girls, you might be surprised to know that the folks on the line are indeed "real single women and men, the kind of people you'd meet in clubs and bars, but you're too chicken to talk to."

Here's how it works. The people who appear on the show get access codes for the Dial-a-Date computer. They log in from home when they feel like taking calls. Then Joe Couch Potato calls the number on the screen, and is presented with a menu of who's logged in to take calls. He presses a button and the computer calls Real Single Chickee at home and gives her the option to take the call or not. They're connected, they chat, and she gets paid by the minute to talk to the guy. Of course, the longer she gets him to talk, the more she makes (and the more he pays).

"It just so happens the dating business is a great business," he says, "because it never goes away."

But that's not the end of it. "People are staying home more and they're going out less, and that was the whole point of bringing personal ads to television was to create a night club in your home so you don't have to go out and meet anybody because I'm going to bring them into your living room."

Bronstein and Wells want to take the interactive phone world even further.

"There's a billion types of shows I want to do. Dating is great, but Pepsi, they have Orange Crush and grape soda . . . for more shelf space. I read an article about how there's so many overweight people. I want to do a show giving you your own personal nutritionist-diet person you can talk to over the phone live, so they'll tell you what kind of foods to eat, and how much to weigh your food, and what'd you eat today, and talk about nutrition."

What's left once you have the market cornered on by-the-minute billing for fat folks and lonely people? Well, having a panic attack? Call the number on the screen!

"People are depressed, people have been abused, they have nobody to go to, nobody to talk to. So I want to do a show where people can call in, and you can talk to all these social workers who are out of work, and all these therapists can work from home and talk to these people. Yes, it'll cost them money on their phone bill, but the whole reason they're out of work is because the
government's not giving them any money. Everything costs money, but there's a big market for that -- unfortunately."

"I read all these articles about the Internet. All these women are leaving their husbands because of guys they're meeting on the Internet. So I want to capitalize -- not on people's problems -- but there are a lot of lonely women there . . . I guess."

The net's getting to be big business, with neat stuff like live teleconferenced strip shows getting more popular. Bronstein likes it, and would love to get in.

"More people have telephones and TVs than have computers, which is why I'm on television, even though I want to do the Internet. We do have a web site. It's a very lame web site, at http://www.dial-a-date.com/."

Yes, the web site is very lame. Very very lame and full of bad grammatical errors. (Seeing
"you're" as "your" really gets me going.)

---

Follow-up 2008:

- This David Bronstein is not David Bronstein the chess grandmaster.
- He has a new website: DavesTVDeals.com
- Check out a whole pile of David Bronstein video clips
- Want David to pitch your product on TV? $20-thousand gets you the King of Late Night!

- Reference file: 1997-03%20-%20Cygnals%20-%20David%20Bronstein.mp3

My first newscast

Back in 1982, my teacher, Bill Webster, invited the class to write a little newscast about the school to be aired in a weekly Sunday-night segment on Newmarket radio station CKAN 1480 AM.

IIRC, the whole class was assigned the job of summarizing a series of news items about the school into a short bulletin, and mine was chosen for the show.

Either that, or he picked me out of the class to do it. I'm not sure.

In any case, I present to you my first radio newscast!

I was at Pearson International Airport doing a story for 680News one morning, when I saw Mr. Webster walking through the terminal. I thanked him for giving me that break so many years ago. I don't know whether it had any effect on my future career, but I'm pretty sure I've never been as nervous filing a report over the telephone as I was that lunch hour in the principal's office.

---

Reference: scott%20simpson-grade%20four%20newscast.mp3

Cygnals: Crazy Joe: You'll be sorry!

From the pages of Cygnals Zine, Issue #8, Summer 1996.

Hear the interview in MP3. (~5.5 MB)

For sixteen years, a bearded man in a black suit has been hard-selling his way into Toronto-area living rooms.

Crazy Joe (the only name he'll give) hit Toronto's Multicultural Television (now CFMT-TV, channel 47) with fast-talking, low-budget TV spots based on a simple formula: "A crazy guy dressed up like a rabbi, with a hat, with a beard, selling blinds, verticals, furniture and carpet," says Joe. Yelling breathlessly for 30 seconds, Joe ambushes the viewer and implores him to "shop at Crazy Joe's or you pay too much ... you'll be sor-ry!"

Why's this nut dressed up like a rabbi? "I'm an Orthodox Jew, that's the difference," he says. "I wear this suit with the hat all the time."

The no-frills, crazy-crazy-crazy, dressed-like-a-rabbi gimmick has inspired spoofs from the likes of SCTV, with a parody piece dubbed "Crazy Hy's." Joe saw it two years after it went to air, calling it "very, very interesting."

Joe's hard-sell style has been imitated by many retailers, including Toronto jewelry fanatic Russell Oliver. "Oliver came to me for interview," says Joe. "He came to me, he want to know how to present himself, but basically he took off on me." And how's Oliver doing, in the eyes of the master? "I don't know, but he'll never come close to me as a promoter."

And what about the Bad Boy, Blaine Lastman? Another nooobody. "He's doing the same schtick from 20 years ago, so it's only going the same routine back and forth."

Both Lastman and Oliver read from a prepared script, something Joe denies doing. "Everything is on spot," he says. "I do it right away, on spot. Not no scripts, nothing." He admits, though, it takes about two hours to crank out four or five commercials.

For the small-time journalist trying to track down the big man for a quick telephone interview, he comes across more like Surly Joe than Crazy Joe. With all the good cheer you'd expect from a skeptical, stressed-out businessman with an unrelenting schedule, Joe was hard to find in a good mood.

Once the interview got rolling, though, Joe was the same goofy guy we see on TV.

But...he doesn't understand what a zine is. I guess that'll change soon.

---

Follow-up:

Crazy Joe's Wife Responds
Subject: Crazy Joes Article
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 1996 22:45:35 -0400
From: Chane Iczkovitz

Thank you very much for a copy of your "Zine".
Joe was very pleased with your article about him. He especially liked hearing the real audio of the interview.
He wasn't aware that you taped it. I have been trying to get him to advertise on the net for a while now without any success. Now, he's quite pleased to be on it.
I've tried explaining to him what a zine is, but I don't think he gets it.
I hope you sell alot of copies. Good luck.
Chane (Joes techhead wife)

---
Bonus links!
Official Crazy Joe's Drapery site
Interview link: 1996%20-%20Cygnals%20-%20Crazy%20Joe%20interview.mp3

Cygnals: Russell Oliver: Jewellery Fetishist or True Patriot?

(The thought of discontinuing my old site, http://www.cygnals.com/, has crossed my mind from time to time. A few articles from over there still get a lot of hits, so thought it prudent to republish them here. Besides, those articles -- many published more than a decade ago -- had tiny photos and scratchy RealAudio files, as was the style of the time. Now I can offer bigger photos when I have them, and MP3 audio if I can find the source tape. -- Scott)
---

From the pages of Cygnals Zine, Issue #8, Summer 1996.

Hear the interview in MP3 format. (5.5 MB)

If you've been up late watching TV in Toronto, you've probably noticed this guy begging for you to bring him your jewelry. He's Rusell Oliver. He spoke to Cygnals from his stately jewelry emporium on Eglinton Avenue West.

Cyg: For anyone outside Toronto who hasn't seen your ads, explain what you do on TV.

Oli: I basically go on myself, and I encourage people to come down and bring me any jewelry they have in the form of gold -- gold chains, gold bracelets, gold necklaces. I also encourage Cartier and Rolex watches or any big-name brand watches. I also buy diamonds, and I buy antiques and estate stuff. So what I do is I have encouraged people to come down, bring me their jewelry, and I pay them cash, on the spot, while they wait.

Cyg: How did you first get into these TV ads, these middle-of-the-night low-budget ads?

Oli: Well they're not really middle of the night any more. They started out that way, but now you'll find you'll see them on Oprah Winfrey, Dini Petty, Breakfast Television...

Cyg: ...And I notice you're also sponsoring the late-night movies...

Oli: Late-night movies I kept, because they're fabulous. If you watch any of those movies on Tuesday or Friday nights, you can't miss them, because they're sponsored by me...so I'm constantly on there. What started me on that was, I was selling used jewelry and the market was pretty slow -- most people were coming in wanting to sell stuff. So I decided, well, rather than get involved too much in the selling of jewelry to people, let me try buying from people. And what happened was, people started coming on a more frequent basis as I started advertising. And when I went on TV and people saw that...and people who don't know where to go, they have no idea where to sell their jewelry, would say Oh well, here's a guy who encourages and wants our jewelry. They're intimidated to go anywhere else because they're scared. People go into a jewelry store and say "will you buy my jewelry" and they're afraid the answer will be, which it is most of the time, no, we won't, and they're intimidated by it. So they're happy to see a guy on TV who's saying I want your used jewelry, I need your used jewelry, I've got cash for your jewelry.

Cyg: You're pretty passionate about needing people's jewelry. How did you first get into all this?

Oli: I've been in the jewelry business for 25 years. But I've been on the other end. I've been on selling jewelry.

Cyg: So where do you get all this money to buy all the jewelry? Where's all the jewelry that people bring in go?

Oli: Uh, well, what we do is we export most of it. So we've got customers all over the world who are giving us money...and we take their money and give it to the Canadian public.

Cyg: And now you've joined the ranks of Bad Boy and Crazy Joe -- a sort of kitschy TV personality. Do you think people take you seriously or do they look at you like some wacky pawn-shop guy on TV?

Oli: It doesn't matter. How they look at me is not important. They look at me and they come down. They react...everybody reacts differently. Most people are, you know, quite impressed. But what is fabulous is that I am the only one that you can actually come down and meet me. Should you want to go to Bad Boy, you're not really going to meet Blaine Lastman. You may or you may not. You're taking a shot. He's got four stores and they're huge. You come to my place, I guarantee you're gonna meet me. You're g onna meet Russell Oliver in person. That's what it says on the commerical. And people love it. Because they feel they know me. You have a guy in your living room, and he's talking to you, a few times a day, which I am, they feel they know me. They come in, they feel comfortable, they smile, they're in a good mood -- everybody likes coming, because they feel like they're meeting a television personality. And, quite frankly, they are.

Cyg: And do these people ever have second thoughts about going through their old family heirlooms and bringing in old gold?

Oli: Sure, sure. It's an emotional experience, and I understand that. I sympathize with people, and I'm the first one to sympathize and say "look if you have any use for it, use it.." But if you don't have any use for it, it's silly to have it in a drawer, jewelry box, or even your safety deposit box. You may as well turn it into cash, which whether you need it or not is not the important -- your cash can make you cash. Whether you put it in the bank, get some interest out of it, or buy a GIC or put it in the stock market, you're gonna make money. Sitting in your drawer and jewelry box is not going to make any money, it's going to sit there as dead money. So turn it into cash and then you can use it for something else that might represent something that you get more enjoyment out of.

---
Bonus links:
Cygnals Interview: 1996-06-19%20-%20Cygnals%20-%20Russell%20Oliver%20interview.mp3
Oliver Jewellery, Official Site
National Post article: A familiar ring to 'Cashman's' business success (Jan 8, 2008)