The choice: Energy powerhouse promoter or seal hunt defender?
DW: I'll take seal hunt defender for 30 minutes, Larry.
The Prem must be busy this year, so instead of the main act, the road company of the province's 2007 edition of March Madness will be headlined by fish minister Tom Rideout, right.He's leading a crew to an anti- anti-seal hunt stunt on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Hilarity is sure to ensue.
They are calling it Up the Anti! and in every respect, the whole affair is reminiscent of the international public relations disaster led by Frank Moores in the 1970s or Codpeace, another one of those silly ideas someone milked for a few minutes of fame around the same time.
The marketing genius who came up with the name of the latest effort should have tried a google search first. ironic given this administration's apparently difficulty with Internet search engines that Danny Williams will be talking to the province's high-tech industry on Friday about expanding business opportunities in cutting-edge technologies.
But I digress.
uptheanti.org leads you to a "resource for collecting interesting articles and items for anarchists and autonoms from across the web."
In 2005, Up the Anti! was the title of a performance by comedian Eddy Brimson at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The blurb went like this:
After having his house raided by MI5, Brimson has a few 'issues': Anti-Hunt, Anti-Royal, Anti-Police and ultimately Anti-Establishment. Mixing stand-up with reconstruction... A true comedy terrorist... You've been warned.The reviews weren't all that good.
But look, if we are going to resurrect ancient comedies, why not try and imitate something genuinely funny?
Like the Carry on... series of films that ran to tremendous success from the 1950s until the 1970s.
Rideout can take the roles normally played by Charles Hawtrey, (left), for example. He's got the toque thing down already.Danny can probably be enticed to fill in the Sid James roles as the ringleader of the gang. Top billing. One show a night. An interview on Canada AM with Seamus. That sort of thing. bound to get his attention.
There are enough characters in cabinet to fill out the rest of the cast. if they come up short, then there the other members of the House. Some of them could use a trip out of the province.
A revival of Carry on... wouldn't be any less productive than what Rideout has embarked on already.
It would fit in with the cultural strategy that apparently will offset demographic change in the province on top of everything else it is supposed to do. "It's a cultural strategy. It's an economic strategy. No, it's a tourism promotion. No, it fights ageing and promotes immigration."
And it will make your dishes sparkly, like new.
One strategy.
Five uses.
Coming soon to The Shopping Channel, with Tom Hedderson sandwiched between Tony Little and Joan Rivers.
Heck, a travelling comedy show - billed as such, for a change - might actually be able to charge admission, thereby recovering the hundreds of thousands of public dollars being spent on the pro-seal hunt publicity stunts. And the associated travel that must go with these ventures, of course.
It might even generate enough cash to offset the cost of last year's laugh-fest, right.That might be too much to expect of anything produced by any government.
