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From: The Canadian Press It's 9 a.m. on a weekday morning and famed KISS bassist GENE SIMMONS is spoiling for a fight as he calls up to discuss his new hit television show, "GENE SIMMONS Family Jewels." With no provocation and barely a split second after pleasantries are exchanged, Simmons launches into a ribald half-hour defence of his refusal to marry the mother of his children and his longtime love, Canadian Shannon Tweed. It seems Simmons expected to be nagged. The A and E show, after all, features him going head-to-head on the subject of matrimony with everyone from Tweed herself to his two teenaged kids and an angry female stranger in a bar who ends up wrestling him. Even Barbara Walters has asked him to explain himself. "You women should grow up," Simmons, 57, says of his theory that the vast majority of women are desperate to walk down the aisle and will cajole and harangue their men relentlessly to make it happen. "You have to get over that stuff, because it will drive men away. And then you wonder why he's mounting your sister instead of you." Marriage, Simmons says, is designed for women - it's "quicksand" for men. "You just have to say 'I do' and you're done. You may as well just close the lid on your coffin because you can't get out; you're lowered six feet under. To get out of marriage is impossible without you women tearing one of our two God-given balls out, entrails and all." So why are married men said to be the happiest of any demographic? "Because if they say otherwise, their wives will kill them," he replies. "Do you know why men die before their wives? Because they want to." For all his macho bluster, however, "Family Jewels" reveals the legendary rock star to be a man still enthralled by the lovely Tweed after 23 years together and, for all intents and purposes, happily married. He's clearly devoted to his two children, the hunky 17-year-old Nick and Sophie, 14. He refers to Sophie as "the love of my life" and still recalls clearly the first time he ever laid eyes on Tweed at the Playboy Mansion and fell in love with her independent, no-game-playing persona. On "Family Jewels," Tweed and Simmons are physically affectionate and have settled into the type of easy friendship and mutual understanding that's a hallmark of any happy marriage. These aren't the Osbournes - the show, airing Monday nights on A and E, shows a family remarkably respectful and loving to one another. Like Ozzy Osbourne, Simmons is the butt of most of the jokes in the Beverly Hills household, but the barbs on this show are gentle. "It's good being a bastard," Nick remarks slyly at one point, causing a brief flash of remorse to cross his father's face before he quickly recovers. Even the Newfoundland-born Tweed's proddings are sweet - at one point, she simply hums the wedding march, and she's frequently seen lovingly rolling her eyes at some of her sharp-tongued man's more outrageous pontifications. But unfortunately for the onetime Playmate, Simmons insists in the interview that marriage is not in the cards and there's no surprise wedding in the works for "Family Jewels." "Does Shannon want to get married? Of course! It's called woman. But do I want to get married? No. So therefore the answer is no," Simmons says. "It's my decision for myself. Life should be a menu. If I order a hamburger, and everybody else orders salad, it's just as valid, you see. But people tend to think that life is a menu with one food for everybody. That doesn't work." The show has been a huge hit for A and E, and in Canada the network is holding a "Family Jewels" contest (details at www.aetv.com/genesimmonsfamilyjewels/index.jsp). The family with a dynamic as compelling and unconventional as the Simmons clan will win a signed GENE SIMMONS guitar. Simmons, in fact, is also a hugely successful businessman. He's keen to point fans to his website, www.GeneSimmons.com, as he calls from the back of a limousine in Florida where he's promoting a new KISS fragrance line - that's right, a KISS fragrance line that includes deodorant and body wash. KISS, in fact, continues to be a juggernaut of licensing and merchandising, all due to Simmons's business acumen - there are KISS Visa cards, KISS cameras and even KISS postage stamps. There's also a place on the website for women to submit racy photos of themselves, in keeping with KISS's guy-friendly image. And while some might suggest that proves Simmons is outrageously sexist, in many ways he's not. Women, he says, have to stop defining themselves by their men - a message he's often imparted to his daughter. It's the social conventions that women feel they must adhere to, he says - not women themselves - that so vex him. "It's the 21st century, you're free!" he shouts with gleeful exasperation. "Women are no longer indentured slaves. 'My car, my house, my woman' - that's over. You're free! You can make as much money as men, you can bed down as many men as you want. You're free!" |
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