DownHome Show slated for Variety Village
Apr. 20, 2006
Goggle-eyed? Love kittens? Retrieve shopping carts in your spare time?
If you're a dead ringer for Bubbles on Trailer Park Boys, next weekend at the DownHome Show is your chance to shine.
A Bubbles Lookalike Contest is a new highlight of the DownHome Show, an East Coast "hospitality" festival that runs April 28 to 30 at Variety Village in Scarborough.
But why not also search for Bubbles' pals at Sunnyvale Trailer Park, Ricky and Julian?
"Let's face it, Bubbles is the most likeable character on the whole show," DownHome promoter Sheryl Snook said this week. "Maybe next year we'll do all three."
As an added bonus for fans, all Bubbles wannabes will be judged by John Dunsworth, who plays Mr. Lahey, and by Patrick Roach, his shirtless sidekick Randy on the Showcase series filmed in Nova Scotia.
Judging starts at noon next Saturday, April 28, with finals at three. The person who wins gets to do a skit with Dunsworth and Roach.
Contestants don't just have to look like Bubbles - they have to act like him, too. Snook admitted she's anxious about some possibilities if Trailer Park Boys fans bring props.
"Oh God, I hope they don't bring kittens," she said.
"As long as it's not live kittens, I could care less."
Returning to the show next Friday at 6 p.m. is Miss DownHome, a pageant (judged by actor Gordon Pinsent, no less) Snook maintained has nothing to do with beauty.
"It's all about attitude and your East Coast mentality," she said, noting contestants bait hooks and dance a jig with a bottle of beer in each hand.
There's also a bologna-eating contest overseen by sou'wester-wearing East Coast comic Jimmy Flynn.
The show needed a new home for its second year, preferably a part of Greater Toronto sheltering plenty of East Coast people. The obvious choices were Scarborough and Brampton, said Snook, a Scarborough resident who's Newfoundland-born.
"There's a lot of Newfies in Scarborough."
Rent for the event and $1 a ticket goes to Variety Village, a training and fitness centre on Danforth Avenue for people with special needs.
Some people say the characters on Trailer Park Boys are stereotypes of East Coasters, but the show doesn't make fun of the East Coast, it has fun with it, Snook said.
"People are too serious about themselves."
Visit
http://www.downhomeshow.ca for details.
http://www.insidetoronto.ca/to/scarborough/briefs/story/3454801p-3993180c.html?loc=scarborough
