Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How To Do Everything by Red Green

How To Do Everything from the man who should know. A completely exhaustive guide to do-it-yourself *and* self-help by Red Green.

Never before have I come across such a random assortment of hilarious homespun wisdom. Red Green covers everything from Surviving the Seven Stages of Marriage (which looks suspiciously similar to the Seven Stages of Grief - I'm just saying) to Docking a Power Boat; from How to Hang a Door (with hand-drawn pictures!) to How to Avoid Conflict; from The Benefits of Fishing to How to Tell if You're Boring (the first step in solving any problem is to acknowledge there is a problem). Not only is his advice inventive, but he delivers it with such dead-pan seriousness I was chuckling laughing out loud through the entire book, reading excerpts aloud to whoever happened to be nearby, usually Hub. Hub, incidentally, is now reading it himself and laughing in sympathetic, long-married, handyman recognition.

(back cover) Red Green has established himself in fifteen seasons of his enormously popular TV show as one of North America's, if not the world's, handiest men. In How To Do Everything he shows that there are no limits to his lack of specialized knowledge. 
In an age of so-called experts he is an inspirational throwback to the days when every man had a toolbox and was prepared to tackle any challenge that life threw at him, whether it be fixing a leaky roof, reducing a carbon footprint, or coming to terms with the fact that marriage does seem to go on for a very, very, very long time.
So - if your home and/or life is falling apart, or you are wondering how to take revenge on your lawnmower, or you would like to establish once and for all whether you're boring, this book is for you. Want to repurpose fitness equipment? Or have a UFO sighting? Cook with acetylene? Or measure your hat size with a two-by-four? How To Do Everything has all the answers. Quite Honestly, this book deserves to be 

Winner of the Nobel Prize for physics and literature.




To keep your favorite handyman from going postal, here's what not to say when he shows you the results of his latest project.  


- oh boy . . . 
- is it finished?
- what's that thing sticking out on the side there?
- shouldn't it be level?
- is the duct tape only on there until the glue dries?
- what exactly IS that?
- I hope it didn't cost anything.
- you'll need to take that apart before garbage day.
- did you hurt yourself again?
- it doesn't look anything like the one in the magazine.
- I blame myself.
- don't let the neighbours see it.
- which way am I supposed to look at it?
- is this what you've been doing all day?
- we should check our insurance coverage before anybody sits on that..
- you get the gasoline, I'll get the matches.
(pg 182)

2 comments:

Kailana said...

This sounds like a fun read!

Trish said...

It was a lot of fun, yes :)