Q & A: Gene Simmons

By Kate Fillion - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 11 Comments

Famous for onstage blood-spitting and tongue-waggling, the Kiss bassist and singer also appears in a hit reality show, now in its fifth season, with actress and former Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed and their two children. Born Chaim Witz, he immigrated to New York from Israel with his mother, a concentration camp survivor, when he was eight. Today, his far-flung business empire includes comic books and a marketing company with international interests.

Q: Your public image is over the top, but judging by your reality show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, your kids, Sophie and Nick, are normal and well-adjusted. What’s your parenting philosophy?

A: Never negotiate with kids. They don’t have life experience, and they don’t have repercussions for bad decisions, they still get fed and housed. And most importantly: I’m bigger! Don’t hit, but don’t pander or give power to kids. They have to know where the power lies. Otherwise, why would they respect it?

Q: You’ve never done drugs or gotten drunk. How did you teach your kids to resist peer pressure, growing up in Hollywood?

A: If Sophie came home high or drunk, she’d find her Beverly Hills butt in the middle of the Arizona desert in a work camp. I’m deadly serious. The only jobs kids have are to do well in school, to be charming and polite, and be thankful. That’s it. I’ll house you, protect you, I’ll even give my life for you, and in return, you will behave. Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on stampede hockey

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Jason Kenney moonlights as a hockey coach
Nothing says Calgary Stampede like a lively game of hockey. While the big summer festival was in full steam, Alberta Conservative MP Blake Richards organized the Wild Rose Hockey Challenge charity match between MPs and Alberta MLAs. Environment Minister Jim Prentice played centre. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was one of the coaches. “He was a good motivator,” quips Richards, “not so good on the strategic plays.” The game included NHL pros Dana Tyrell, Zach Boychuk and Jay Rosehill, who just signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Richards says Rosehill was traded from the MPs’ team to the MLAs during the game because the MLAs were doing so poorly. In the end, the MPs won 17 to 13. The event raised $10,000 for victims-of-crime funds in Richards’ riding of Wild Rose. Richards is helping keep up the athletic reputation of the MP he replaced in the last election, Conservative Myron Thompson. “He was quite a ball player,” notes Richards of Thompson’s younger days. “He tried out for the New York Yankees. He could really hit.” Richards, who used to work for Thompson when he was an MP, says his old boss is now selling steel buildings for use in the oil patch and on farms.

Shannon Tweed’s parliamentary tour guide
When celebrity couple Kiss rocker Gene Simmons and former Playboy playmate/actress Shannon Tweed needed a tour of the Parliament Buildings, they were put in touch with Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre, a 30-year-old conservative Conservative not exactly known for moving in rock-star circles. Tweed, a former Newfoundlander, had contacted Tory supporter and former Ottawa city councillor Linda Davis, a friend from the days when the actress was living in Ottawa. Davis hooked her and Simmons up with Poilievre, who took the couple to the library of Parliament and the House of Commons, where Tweed sat in Stephen Harper’s seat and Simmons sat in Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon’s seat. Later Senator Hugh Segal joined the group and gave them a tour of the Senate. The couple, who were being followed by video cameras for their reality TV show Gene Simmons Family Jewels, were also taken to Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella’s office. When Tweed saw the gilded mace, she quipped: “Oh, that’s where I left that.” Simmons thought it looked like “an old club.” Poilievre replied: “The Senate itself is an old club.” Poilievre says he was happy to help boost Ottawa’s tourism appeal by getting the sights of Parliament Hill onto a popular TV show. “I like Gene Simmons,” he says. “He’s a great entrepreneur.” Continue…

Mel Gibson's hand puppet, Dave Carroll's broken guitar, and "Shannon Tweed Day" in Oshawa

By Lianne George - Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

Kim Jong Ill?
So much mystery attends North Korea, Asia’s only Communist dynasty, and so fraught are the geopolitics of the region, that the merest sign of health trouble for its Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, sets off international alarms. So it was this week when South Korea’s YTN television, citing Korean and Chinese intelligence sources, reported that the 67-year-old has pancreatic cancer and, at best, five years to live. In his recent appearances, Kim has looked gaunt, with thinning hair, a limp and an asymmetrical bent to his mouth, indications he’s not entirely recovered from a stroke last year. Renewed fear that Kim is not long for this world caused Seoul’s main stock index to plummet, so vexed are the markets by what his death could mean. Though he is said to have named his youngest son, the Swiss-educated Kim Jong Un, as his successor, there’s concern the installation of a weak leader still in his mid-20s will destabilize the regime and the region.

What’s wrong with being sexy?
Shannon Tweed, the Canadian adult-film star, has been denied recognition for such contributions to world cinema as Hard Vice and Indecent Behavior 3. But the acting mayor of Ottawa, Doug Thompson, issued a proclamation that this Wednesday would be “Shannon Tweed Day,” to celebrate the blond bombshell’s visit to the city where she lived in the 1970s. He soon rescinded the proclamation, however, admitting sheepishly that he “spoke to the media before the item had been fully vetted.” Tweed told the Ottawa Citizen that she had “no hard feelings” about the rejection, but bristled at a councilwoman’s suggestion that she is a porn actress: “I’ve done movies with love scenes,” said the star of Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, “but I’ve never had real sex on camera.” Oshawa, which recently finished first in an online contest hosted by KISS, doesn’t care either way. Oshawa city councillor Robert Lutczyk, who headed up the spring contest effort, promised a “Shannon Tweed Day” in Oshawa if she and the band come through town this fall. “I’ll be there,” said Tweed. “I’ll be there.” Continue…