Red Green jokes about everything, or nothing
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/11/2010 (5752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
How to Do Everything
From the Man Who Should Know
By Red Green
Doubleday, 230 pages, $30
RED Green should know better. The popular host of The Red Green Show was involved in a film folly a few years back that went by the name Duct Tape Forever.
The movie itself wasn’t bad, but the terrible box office did clearly show that fans and paying fans are two different birds.
The same fate may await this quickie book, which retails for $30. To put that in perspective, beer nuts are two bucks a bag and deer nuts are under a buck! (That corny old joke isn’t in the book, but corny jokes do abound, and some, of course, are very funny.)
Environmentalists, at least, will be glad that Red is green. Even when material is new, it seems recycled.
Although Red appears on the cover in his plaid shirt and fishing hat holding a ubiquitous roll of duct tape, the book isn’t all handyman tips. It really is about everything, which is a nice way of saying it’s about nothing.
Similar to the TV show, Red roams the domestic countryside sharing marriage advice (women never want tropical fish) and clues to help you know when your teenager is trouble (He receives cards on Father’s Day).
Red covers the entire home situation. If you blow a gasket, Red’s got tips whether it’s a real or metaphoric emergency.
The book is a jumble. In some sections it’s a straightahead For Dummies parody, some sections play out like monologues from the show and then there’s list after list after list of well … jokes.
For better or worse, since the days of Smith and Smith (a comedy duo Red started with his wife Morag), Steve “Red Green” Smith has been the master of the one liner.
So that’s what you get. And that’s not all bad. Only Dave Broadfoot has delivered up so many good zingers over the years. For Red they must now number in the thousands.
Here are two:
— “If I had a dollar for every stupid thing I’ve done, it would have encouraged me to do more stupid things.”
— “Taking Viagra is a bad business decision. You’re creating a supply for which there is no demand.”
The book is literally written by Red in the sense that many pages are handwritten. There seems no reason for this, nor do Red’s simplistic Vonnegut-style doodles bring much extra comedy to the table.
Every year, a slate of humour books comes out appealing to Christmas shoppers with little imagination. Sometimes they deal with a comic’s career. This year Russell Peters has a memoir; last year it was Howie Mandel.
An actual memoir from Steve Smith, who built a showbiz empire from a Hamilton cable access show, might have been a better choice for him to write.
Otherwise you could pretty much build your own version of the book from old VHS copies of The Red Green Show and a roll of good duct tape.
Al Rae is artistic director of the CBC Winnipeg International Comedy Festival.
