Warning: Language in this story may be disturbing to readers. Discretion is advised.
Bring on the sh*t talk.
Two characters from the hit television series Trailer Park Boys are coming to Whitehorse for one night only.
Mr. Lahey and his sidekick, Randy, will be playing themselves in a two-man show at the Yukon Convention Centre on Saturday.
Don’t even try talking to John Dunsworth as though he were anybody else but Jim Lahey, supervisor of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Nova Scotia.
Sure, you can find a short bio about Dunsworth on the internet. Surf the Trailer Park Boys website and you’ll find out that he’s a veteran actor of the theatre scene in Halifax who spends most of his spare time on a yacht near Bridgewater, NS, where he was born.
But in conversation, his background changes a bit.
“I’m from Shitalkway, Ontario,” Lahey said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Calgary.
“That’s where shitalk is a way of life.”
It’s not hard to picture the perennially pickled Mr. Lahey sitting on a boat in Nova Scotia in the sun or the rain, sipping rye whiskey and philosophizing about life in language laced with references to excrement.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to imagine Patrick Roach, who plays Randy, as a married father of two kids working as a sales manager with a bottled water company.
He’s far better known as the half-naked assistant weekend trailer park supervisor at Sunnyvale.
“I mow lawns, I clean the playground, I put up clotheslines for seniors,” said Randy.
“If someone is in their washroom and having a sh*t and they fall in the toilet, they’ll call me sometimes.”
The pair insist they have been unfairly portrayed as villains on the television series.
“Reality television is the new panacea for the f*cking producers to save money,” said Lahey, his voice warbling with either true drunkenness or a well-practiced imitation.
“It ain’t reality TV! There’s still a thing called editing, you know. Sometimes you edit out the uncomfortable moments of some of the people that are involved.
“But the thing that really pisses me off the most is that I never get to look good. They always make me look bad.
“There’s nice moments when I do nice things for people, and do you ever see it? Noooo.
“Randy and I are the element of good in the park, and people think we’re the villains. But we’re not.”
So they’re setting the record straight with a cross-Canada tour, with Whitehorse at the end of the western leg.
Neither of the actors, nor the characters they play, have been to the Yukon before.
Their act is not an all-ages event.
It’s not just Lahey’s swearing and boozing or Randy’s obscene gut that are likely to offend.
Those would be some of the cleaner parts.
“We measure appendages,” said Lahey.
“Mostly length. But sometimes breadth.
“We have measuring contests called super-expansion contests, where you suck your gut in and you push your gut out, and then we measure, and the person has the biggest spread wins.”
They’re also looking for investors for an invention called the “poopatorium,” a bidet-like contraption with a metre-long hose.
“Pooping is number two on the list of man’s great accomplishments,” said Lahey.
“Rectal health is half the battle. It improves your posture, your stride.
“And pheromones. That’s why a lot of guys don’t get laid, because their pheromones get interfered with by rectal odour.”
Not exactly highbrow humour.
But without the outlaws Ricky and Julian and their trusted friend Bubbles around to antagonize, you can hardly blame Randy and Mr. Lahey for waxing eloquent on their favourite subjects.
“I’m a doctor of epistemology, and I piss Randy off sometimes, because my range of interests runs the gamut from buoyant fecal fetish to sublimated anthropological design,” said Lahey.
“Randy? Diller dollar, six o’clock’s a caller. Would you get me another double over there, Rand, please?”
“Your drink’s half-full.”
“It’s half-empty, Randy. Toddle off and get me another drink.”
Lahey is off the rye. He won’t reveal what he drinks. It drives the price up, because too many people start buying his liquor of choice, he said.
“I don’t mind contributing my share of taxes — oh, thanks Randy, that’s great, boy — but it’s the people who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol and gamble who really support this government.
“And it’s a selfless thing and we hardly ever get thanked.”
Despite his aloof ramblings, Lahey is religiously informed, politically inclined and up to date on current events.
Mankind is going downhill, he says. It’s only a matter of time before Canadian politicians and football players who switch teams are assassinated, just as one man in Afghanistan is currently facing the death penalty for converting from “Muslim-inanity to Christian-inanity.”
But whenever Lahey begins rambling into topics like politics or religion, it’s up to Randy to stop him short.
They hold a special kind of sway with each other, as anyone who has watched the show will know.
“We’re very happy,” said Randy.
“It’s Platonic,” said Lahey. “Randy keeps me enlightened, because he’s so perspicacious, and he keeps me entertained, because he has such a nice pickle bone.”
Right now the Trailer Park Boys is in the midst of its sixth season. A feature film is due to be released by the end of the summer.
Tickets to the Randy-Lahey show are available at the Hougen Centre and the High Country Inn.