Possum Lodge membership open to all at next meeting

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This article was published 12/09/2016 (3671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’M NOT OLD, I’M RIPE!: That’s the name of the touring show of comic Steve Smith, a.k.a. Red Green, which hits the Club Regent Event Centre Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. “People in the States only know me as Red Green,” he confesses during a phone interview, although he admits they’re not far wrong. “It’s not a veneer I put on. It comes from inside — a compilation of people I know and some of my own sensibilities.”

People keep wanting more of the handyman’s misadventures, so Smith, 70, still tours, doing 25 to 35 show dates at a whack across North America. The Red Green Show aired 300 episodes and amassed a cult following on both sides of the border. Although the CBC show ended in 2006, people demanded more. They loved the raft of crazy country characters who gathered at Possum Lodge for men-only meetings, fix-it experiments, hee-haws, plus Green’s down-home philosophy. His famous fix-it projects generally blew up — and fans waited all show for it.

Green’s notable sidekick was Canadian actor Patrick McKenna, who played Harold — Green’s awkward, giggly, buck-toothed, bespectacled nephew. “A lot of women wanted to adopt Harold!” Smith says.

The motley crew would start their lodge meetings seriously, their motto being “Quando omni flunkus moritati” (Pseudo-Latin for “When all else fails, play dead”). That was quickly followed by the Man’s Prayer: “I’m a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.” Green is also famous for his philosophical talks dispensing pearls of wisdom such as, “If the girls don’t find you handsome, make sure they find you handy,” and, “Keep your stick on the ice,” which could mean just about anything to the master of the double entendre.

Smith says he enjoys the road, but by the end of tours, “everybody gets tired, except me. I get my batteries recharged every night… and Morag travels with me,” he says. (Morag is Smith’s wife, also a comedian.) “We’ve been a great team — our 50th anniversary is on Remembrance Day.”

These days, Smith is into golf and he’s been renovating their house in Hamilton — for three long years. (No doubt with some duct tape.) And in the winter, he and Morag go to Florida “with the old people, where you find out you’re not rich and you’re not old.”

ROSEANNE: Comedian Roseanne Barr surprised everyone at Club Regent Event Centre Thursday night by acting like their pal at the bar. Was she raucous? Yep. In your face? Oh yeah. Profane? Extremely.

She asked for a show of hands for all different sexualities, and got them. She’s pro-gay, pro-gay teachers, pro-gay divorce, telling the audience her sister is lesbian and her brother is gay. Plus, she confessed, “When I was young, I thought I was a boy inside a girl’s body, but everybody just called you a tomboy.”

Now she seems to thinks of herself as fat and bossy — although she’s not very big anymore. “I lost a lot of weight, but I’m going up again. I figure I’ve gained and lost about 1,500 pounds in my lifetime.”

She talked American politics, but didn’t mention Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump by name, although everybody knew who she was taking about. Her ex-husband didn’t get off so easily, though.

She said: “I don’t like (U.S. President Barack) Obama. He made too many stupid mistakes. He was wrong to shoot Osama Bin Laden. That was too good for him! They should have made Osama marry Tom Arnold. He deserved to really suffer.”

HERE COMES THE WAVE: Wave, the Interlake Artists’ Studio Tour (Sept. 3 and 4) saw a long line of cars travelling north to Oak Hammock Marsh and beach country from Winnipeg to visit studios, cabins and barns from Matlock to north of Gimli. There were 49 studios open to meet the artists who specialized in numerous art forms, including painting, photography, pottery, jewelry, sculpture and print making.

Flame-haired blues singer Angel Calnek of St. Andrews showed off her glass art on our first stop, revealing the other side of her creative nature. She displayed her pieces on a farm off Highway 67 with fellow artist Alan Lacovetsky, who has lived and worked around the world, and this fall will commute to teach art students at the University of Winnipeg and Brandon University. It’s a giant studio with a fiery kiln.

Nearby is photographer Alex Reinhardt, who is so off-the-wall he creates big bubbles in the air in winter, freezing them instantly and photographing them. An outstanding stop near Lake Winnipeg was the Paper Filfridi studio in Matlock, where Milli Flaig-Hooper sails above her handicaps to create beguiling pieces of art from previously used coloured office paper. Cards, costume jewelry and large paper paintings fill her studio, and she gave demonstrations on how to make paper structures with explanations by her lifestyle facilitator Lori Frejek.

Custom worker Glenda Knoll hosted a tour of Whimsical Windows & Words on a porch at 24 Deaconia St. in Matlock. She intrigued people with reclaimed windows painted with designs. People enjoyed a window painted with the words, “Don’t stay where you are tolerated. Go where you are celebrated,” surrounding a young woman on a swing held aloft by balloons.

Other artists on the tour included Rosemary Miguez of Butterfly Womyn Productions, jewelry maker CJ Tennant and glass artist Angel Calnek, to mention just a few. The twice annual shows (June and September) really are a two-day project if you want to see all the different studios.

AGORA: Big excitement at the blossoming restaurant district at Kenaston Boulevard and McGillivray Boulevard.

Agora Fine Foods, a specialty foods market with a bistro and bar offering fresh fare to eat-in or take out, opens later this fall. (The word agora comes from Greece and means marketplace or gathering place.)

“It’s going to be a little Italian, a little Spanish and lots of Greek,” says George Tsouras, the owner, well-known for his popular Beachcomber restaurant at The Forks.

He describes the interior as “very rustic, refinished wood, tones of blacks and greys. We put lots of energy and money into the atmosphere.” And, he confesses, the restaurant is finally a convenient location for him. “Agora is only 10 minutes from where I live.”

Got cool things things happening in your world? Fun events? Been rubbing shoulders with stars. Email mscurf@shaw.ca