The police tend to be skeptical (sceptical?)

A whack on the head with a shovel handle

                     by Robert LaFrance

          Since this column is called my diary, I should mention that on the evening of Sunday, October 23^rd, 2011, I watched Red Green at the Playhouse in Fredericton. It was his live show called ‘Wit and Wisdom’ but I can’t say I learned anything new because I already know it all. That’s what mother used to say just before she whacked me with a shovel handle. When I regained consciousness I knew I had been talking when I should have been listening. However, after that I couldn’t listen much anyway because of the ringing in my ears. The doctor called it tinnitus, but I knew its true medical name was ‘Shovel Handle’ (spadapus whackus in Latin).

          After the show, Red Green came out to the lobby to sign autographs, but it wasn’t Red Green at all. It was a shy, quiet, scholarly gentleman named Steve Smith, who plays Red Green. Instead of using Red Green’s voice, he spoke to fans in Steve Smith’s voice. I felt as if I had been defrauded. Here was this quiet voice coming out of Red Green’s mouth. Red Green, the rough-voiced head of Possum Lodge.

          I wish actors would quit doing that. Oh, I understand that maybe the next day, or sitting in civilian clothes in a restaurant that same evening, he would use Steve Smith’s voice because, at that point he would be Steve Smith, but as long as he wears the Red Green getup he should keep that persona. But that’s just me.

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          I’m going out this afternoon, as soon as I mow the lawn for the last time before the snow flies (he said optimistically) and buy some green paint. That should ‘improve my image’ as they say. Apparently all anyone has to do these days to get that old image polished up is to ‘go green’.

          I am waiting for the moment when asbestos purveyors finally clue in to this phenomenon. Over the past few months I have seen advertisements for items that are now ‘green’, but rarely is there any information on what has changed. Surely raw sewerage, asbestos, flu viruses, toxic chemicals and George W. Bush are next with this treatment.

          Last week I watched a bit of a World (?) Series baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals and what did I see behind the backstop but that former president of the United States, the one almost single-handedly responsible for the sick U.S. economy and the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq. He was having a great time, sitting with former Major League pitcher Nolan Ryan. Soldiers returning home in coffins from Iraq didn’t seem to bother him in the least. He must have turned green, an operation that takes BAD and turns it into GOOD overnight.

          Look up and down the aisles of your favourite grocery store and you will see product after product that has the green label, showing that (for example) Product A, which last week was cited toxic to all human life, is now ‘green’ because in their packages they use 15% recycled materials. Wow!

          I know, I’m just too cynical.

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          My dog Kezman has what I would call ‘a gustatory flamboyance’ if you know what I mean. I wish I did, but I’m not D.C. Butterfield who has a vocabulary the size of Conrad Black’s ego. What I mean by that phrase is that Kezman eats and drinks some very strange things, even for a dog.

          He prefers white wine, but one day last week after his supper (stuffed anchovy hearts with a peanut butter sauce, etc.) he got more than his share of red wine – a Merlot if I’m not mistaken. I had decided to bottle an order of the red wine since I was down to my last 498 bottles, and, getting the siphon straightened around at the beginning, I had about a litre of it overflow into a big bowl.

          I wasn’t paying much attention—like none—so you can imagine what happened when I dozed off while watching Jeopardy. It turned out that the only one in jeopardy was Kezman, whose nose took him over to that big bowl as it sat minding its own business on the kitchen floor.

          You know how some people get belligerent when they drink? When I woke up and went into the kitchen Kezman was ready for a Tilley scrap so, being from Tilley, I ran, and didn’t stop until I got to the Carleton county line. I’m telling you this just so you’ll know why I was buck naked and up a tree at 4:00 am down at Muniac Picnic site. The police were a little sceptical, but they tend to be, don’t they?

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