Duct Tape Forever

So I'm sitting in my room out of complete boredom (which tends to happen on days with negative windchill) when all of a sudden I hear a familiar tune playing on TV. It had been a few years since I'd heard it, but it was the comedic dinner bell to my inner Pavlovian dog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km2rzNnxmXo

It hit me like Kirstie Alley going after a cake: I dearly miss The Red Green Show.

Yes, this little slice of awesome was a cornerstone of my CBC-Friday-Night driven childhood. Every school week's end was marked by watching the good ol' boys from Possum Lodge get through everyday Canadian life; hell, I'm actually an honorary member of the Lodge, according to the fan club kit (with OFFICIAL iron-on patch) I still have. There was nothing I wouldn't have given to win the Possum Lodge Word Game, or read poetry while camping in Northern Ontario in the dead of winter. A sample:

"It is Winter.
A time to pause.
The driveway is half shoveled out.
But I lay down the shovel
And I stop to enjoy this moment.
After all, this is my first heart attack."

Anyway, there was an hour-long special on the Comedy Network tonight featuring the entire cast with clips from the show. That's when I realized just how much I miss Red & Company; they took impossible handyman tasks and made molehills out of mountains, yet the can-do (and will-do) spirit made you see a mountain in the end result all the same. And they did it for 300 episodes, making them the longest-running sitcom EVER, second only to the Simpsons.

I really can't describe why I loved the show so much. Maybe it's because it was one of the first TV comedies I was introduced to / allowed to watch; perhaps it was the inadvertently sound advice at the end of every show to "keep your stick on the ice" that got me through hockey the following Saturday morning. If there's anything I can thank them for, though, it's giving me the wisdom for getting me where I am today: If something doesn't look like it'll work, keep at it and it probably will; if it doesn't, well, maybe it wasn't meant to work anyway. But you're never a failure, so long as you've got good friends, good health, and a full roll of duct tape.

It also taught me you can make a bread machine out of a dishwasher.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati, indeed.

Dan