Here’s a shocker: Puppetry isn’t really the Trailer Park Boys’ thing.
But, despite their complete disinterest in anything Muppet-related, Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are forced to do cross-Canada puppet shows on the evils of alcohol and drugs — it’s part of their latest community service sentence.
The three members of the popular TV mockumentary series Trailer Park Boys will stop at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre on Wednesday, Nov. 18, to perform a 75-minute live stage presentation called The Community Service Variety Show.
While their puppet extravaganza has a good chance of devolving into their usual fighting, partying and singing mayhem, the Trailer Park Boys will be appearing on stage with their cobbled together cloth creations — that somehow look remarkably like Ricky, Bubbles and Julian.
“I needle-pointed them together with all sorts of fabrics and yarns and trinkets and things,” admits Bubbles (who is really Mike Smith).
Julian (John Paul Tremblay) interjects, “I’m not doing it, I hate puppets!”
“Yes he will or I’ll boot him in the jewels,” says Bubbles, who refuses to return to the Big House.
It would mean leaving his beloved trailer parks and cats behind.
“I either have to find somebody to look after them, or leave a food mountain of 600 pounds of cat food. I have them trained to ration it out and not eat it at once.”
Besides, Bubbles confesses his puppet-making ordeal took a lot out of him. “I hot-glue-gunned my ‘bird’ to my leg by accident.”
Is he referring to some kind of feathered friend?
Bubbles responds, “No! My ‘bird’! My ‘unit’! My ‘lunchbox’!”
Yikes, that’s got to hurt.
“Oh, it did, believe me,” he confirms.
Julian, who’s never been to Red Deer, asks what he can expect to find here. When told Red Deer has a lot of parks, Julian says, “I don’t care about parks, how many bars are there and strip joints?”
But is that an appropriate question to be asking, considering the terms of his community sentence?
“I don’t believe in those terms,” Julian responds, adding that only people who drink too quickly become alcoholics.
“You’ve got to pace yourself.”
The Trailer Park Boys are once again seeing their anti-social, criminal antics on the big screen, with the release last month of a second movie, Countdown to Liquor Day.
Ricky is woken from a stupor by the question: “Are you three getting any proceeds from the film?”
“Julian completely screwed that up for us! He traded the film rights for 10 packs of cigarettes!” shouts Ricky (Robb Wells).
Julian counters that he was bamboozled by the “weirdo” film people, who threw 20 typed pages at him and expected him to sign on the bottom line.
“I was told it was a fair deal. I didn’t know I’d been screwed.”
There is silence for a moment.
Then Julian is asked how he and the boys are getting to Red Deer — by car, bus or hitchhiking?
“We’ll probably take some kind of ferry,” he says.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com