Justin Trudeau played nice with Jonah Keri. Now a baseball journalist in Denver, Montreal-spawned Keri scored the first podcast chat with Trudeau as PM. The final minutes find Trudeau contemplating the state of the news industry in Canada: “Do we want our six o’clock news to turn into fail videos and kittens tumbling down stairs? If that’s what citizens actually want, well, there are consequences around the kind of governments we’re going to get.”

Stephen Harper is now lurking in Silicon Valley. You know the previous PM is serious about his new role with San Francisco-based venture capital firm 8VC, because they posted his first-person announcement of his new advisory post on Medium. The whole thing sounds rather dull on paper—unless you do like Maclean’s and graph how Harper is now connected to a constellation of douchebags.

Even Don Cherry was scared by his blazer. “I had no idea how it looked when I put it on,” he told Joe Warmington, after taking note of the alarmed response to his Saturday night fashion crime. “It did look like splattered blood to me, too. I thought it looked grotesque." Grapes revealed that he bought it online from “Germany or somewhere” and will stick with less plasmatic tailoring into the future.

Happy Gilmore turned up on CBC Television once again. Now that Rogers owns Canada's NHL broadcast rights, they prioritize their own platforms, leaving the Ceeb in the lurch. So, this weekend meant an early appearance for Adam Sandler's golf flick, whose recurring place in the nation's public broadcasting rotation is a bit of an enigma. "Despite the multiple plays, it always seems to find an audience," CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson tells 12:36—he counts 20 airings on CBC since 1999.


Today's edition of 12:36 is brought to you by Home for Life, Toronto's most meaningful home-themed marketplace and auction, coming June 7 to the Evergreen Brick Works. Proceeds benefit Eva's Place and its work to provide shelter, opportunities and bright futures for homeless youth. For more information, or to get tickets, click right here.


Friendster's fail has a long, long tale. Fifteen years after Toronto native Jonathan Abrams launched his social network, which turned down a $30 million offer from Google just before the dawn of Facebook, there's continued intrigue about what was behind the punchline. (Abrams has been using the spotlight to try and plug Nuzzel, his new curated news thing.) The latest attempted explanation has one part about the rise and a second part about the fall:

Broadcast watchdogs couldn’t decide if a naked guy is "exploitative and degrading." CHUM FM’s advertising last fall featured a muscular goofball in a state of undress holding a card over his package, a video version of which aired on CP24 and CTV. The spot generated plenty of complaints, which escalated to the point where the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council had to debate the apparent double standards of sexism. But, because of a split decision, there will be no repercussions. (It has been nearly a quarter-century since similar non-conclusions about another naked CHUM FM spot.)

Remembrances of three intriguing Toronto media figures. Chris Bearde, who helmed the mid-‘60s CBC news satire show Nightcap—then went on to Laugh-In and The Gong Show—has died at 80; Rex Loring, best known as anchor of CBC Radio’s World Report, made it to 91 as "master of his own life"; and several colleagues paid a lively tribute to fashion scribe David Livingstone, who passed away at 69.

Word of the moment

DOG POOP

Waterloo is launching a pilot program to turn excrement into energy.




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