Tim Allen: Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

If I cleaned the house I'd want a vacuum cleaner with a motor on it, not one of these dainty supersucks. I am sick of the pitiful excuses for vacuums my wife keeps coming home with just because they're on sale and she saved fifty bucks.

One day I got off my butt and went to a Holiday Inn and asked the housekeeping chief, "What do you use every day to vacuum fifteen floors?" Turns out the answer was "industrial." They used a cross between a sandblaster and a pinball machine. It was chrome, it had rubber bumpers. The wheels were rubber, not plastic with ball bearings. It had a leather bag, not a paisley bag. You could take the bottom off this machine and see the work that had gone into it. It had a purpose. Someone thought about using it and not just selling it so that two months later you have to buy another.

I'd have bought one, but the manufacturer said I could only purchase these units in lots of a hundred-like any fine hotel. Rather than remodel my house to add a sixty‑room motel wing, and hire a full‑time cleaning staff, I settled for a shop vac. I'm so proud of it that I don't hide it in the closet. I leave it out. When people ask, "Where's your vacuum?" I just say, "You're sitting on it."

Men and women will do the same job in completely different ways. I don't like to wash dishes individually-as if I liked to wash them at all. I'd sooner have a sinkful of dishes and wash them all. But if I leave one unwashed dish in the sink, my wife acts as if I'd cut off her mother's arm.

She says I leave messes everywhere. I've tried to explain.

"Well I can't stop to clean up right behind my footsteps every minute. But I'll be back that way, and once the footstep is brown enough, I'll get at it."

A comic I know, Diane Ford, put it best: A woman works her ass off all the time. The guy does two things around the house and he's got to show her: "Honey, look! I fixed the screen! And look over there: I washed my dish! I put my shirt up!"

What can the wife say? "Well, why don't we put a little star on the refrigerator?"

Honestly, I don't try to get away without doing my part. I'd just rather not do it. But once you've reached a certain level of home cleanliness, it's hard to go backward. My wife is an absolute neatnik, which makes our house very pleasant to live in.

Except when I'm there.

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Women depend on men to defend them, particularly from insects. If I'm in another room and hear my wife scream, I know that either some miscreant has managed to navigate our formidable security net, not to mention the surplus land mines I laid around the lot perimeter, or she's seen a trail of ants.

The last time this happened the procession ran through our bedroom all the way back into the master closet. It looked like columns of Allied troops marching into Berlin in 1945. I don't really have a problem with ants myself. They do what they do and that's okay. But for my wife's sake, I decided to encourage them to conduct their business elsewhere.

The first thing I noticed was that a couple dozen had broken off from the main group only to return with my wife's tiny $3,000 purse. It was actually kind of cute. They looked so proud. I didn't have the heart to tell them that nothing would fit inside.

An ant is a worthy opponent. It can jump a distance equal to forty times its length. And they're indestructible. You can fling them across the room-which would be like throwing me across the streetand it doesn't faze them. They just run away. And they're so stupid they don't know they can't walk upside down.

That is why I'm glad they're not the size of dogs. If they were, they could easily lift me up and carry me off. I know this because as I embarked on my mission of destruction I saw one ant running for cover, carrying a huge piece of bread. Compared to his fellow troops, he looked like the hero of the raid. He had the biggest booty, was decorated with medals, and was so excited he was going in circles, shouting, "Look at this! We'll eat for months." Back and forth. I brought my foot up. He gazed up at me. His antennae drooped. "No. Naw. No." His little ant paw went up. "Please. This is my moment. The bread. . the children. . my medals. ."

Squish. Immediately a subgroup surrounded him. One was wearing robes and a cross.

I felt bad killing those ants. It was a holocaust, if you ask me. They'll be talking about this in their community for a thousand ant years. I hate thinking about the karma I've earned. But we can't live together. Sorry. So I wiped out an entire generation of ants. On the other hand, another generation will be born any minute now.

I don't like spiders either, but the more I learn about them, the more my fear turns into respect. I have not killed one purposely for a long time. I take them out in jars, leave their webs around for three or four years. What do they do with the webs once they're done? Do they recycle? The up side is that I've not been bitten by one lately. I think they tell each other: "Tim's okay. He could have killed a million of us. No bullshit. Did you read about the ants?"

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Men's and women's magazines are very different. What's most interesting about women's publications is their preoccupation with men:

∙ How to tell if he's lying.

∙ How to stop his snoring.

∙ How to make him a better person.

The articles constantly emphasize a basic philosophy: If we can't live without men, let's at least try to change them.

Women get to be embarrassed, too.

∙ Six exercises for your love muscle.

∙ Sports medicine and your love muscle.

The first was actually on the cover of Cosmo. Helen Gurley Brown scares me.

Men's magazines do not constantly give guys advice on how to deal with her period. Or on how to stop her bullshit from getting to you. Or on how to change her.

Men's magazines reveal that men tend to mind their own business. We care about women, even celebrate them. We also celebrate the geeky guy who gets the beautiful model. But that's about as far as it goes. Men's magazines don't offer one‑page quizzes to see if a couple is compatible. We don't ask if a marriage can be saved. We don't offer quick makeup tips. Men's magazines are more about fashion and getting ahead in business. I think biker magazines are the only men's publications that deal seriously with women, as in "How to make your chick look tough on your Harley."

I have some advice for women who are absorbed in women's magazines: Read a Road and Track now and then. Get a metallic flake‑paint job and some boss rims, and maybe you'll get our attention.

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Men like salty food, so you'll find us chowing down at red booth eateries like the Cock and Balls, the Cork and Cleaver, the Peach and Frog, the Slag and Bastard.

Women like anything with high‑quality service. I'm not really into great service. Food is still fuel to me. The French think of food as art. Americans invented fast food. Women like restaurants where they can lunch. Women lunch. Men eat-and that's just the word you can use in polite conversation. Once, I even went to a restaurant so expensive that only the men's menu had the prices.

Of course, I only went once.

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Men don't really like to dance. If you can drag us out onto the floor, we'll do it, but we don't like it. All dancing is to men is killing time.

"When are we going home? How long do we have to do this until we can go home and do something else." Of course, there are always spoilers-guys who really get into dancing and make the rest of us look stupid.

"Look at them dance," my wife always says. She asks me all the time why we never go dancing anymore.

Why do I always have to remind her that my peg leg makes it a bit tough for me to do a carefree waltz?

We used to dance. When I was in college, discos popped up. I took Saturday Night Fever so seriously I even bought a white suit. At the time I had no idea that the seventies would turn out to be the cheesiest, most garish of all eras. Neck chains and more neck chains.