Slapstick Meets Slap Shot in Goalie’s Double Life

He does volunteer work for the Kings because, well, somebody has to, and he has been on call for 15 years, ready and willing to take a puck in the teeth at a moment’s notice.

But a man’s also got to eat, so on this afternoon in a Hollywood sound studio, Harris Peet sets aside his 44-ounce “Super Tanker” of diet soda, clears his throat and bellows into a microphone, letting loose a foghorn blast that rattles the window separating him from the director.

“LET ‘ER RIP, CHOLLY!!”

Outside the door, a few feet away, stands a rack of film canisters bearing such titles as “No Pants Today,” “Ren’s Pecs” and “To Salve Or Salve Not.”

Peet tries another line.

“YOUR HEAD IS DUE . . .

“FOR DEMOLITION!”

For 40 minutes, Peet sweats and sips and screams and tries to please a demanding director who is intent on making this episode the “Citizen Kane” of “Ren & Stimpy,” no small task. “Ren & Stimpy,” the cartoon tale of a psychotic Chihuahua and his fat, bloated “eediot” of a sidekick, has been grossing out parents and teaching kids the difference between “nose goblins” and “underleg noises” for three years now.

Peet, who provides the voices for Muddy Mudskipper, Fire Chief and Bus Driver From The Black Hole, is proud just to be a part of it.

“When they showed me the pilot and I saw stains in the toilet,” Peet says, “I knew these people had something.”

It’s an odd job, the work comes and goes, and sometimes Peet will go months between readings. But then, Peet’s entire adult life has been one odd job after another.

For 17 years, he has struggled to make a go of it as a stand-up comedian. “An unblemished record of failure,” Peet quips.

He pops up with an occasional cameo in the occasional box-office flop--”Duck Factory,” “The Five Heartbeats.”

And since 1980, he has served in the unpaid capacity of practice goalie for the Kings, which is basically hockey’s version of the blocking sled, except blocking sleds never require hospital care after a workout.

Peet, 40, has been hospitalized twice for his work with the Kings.

“Once I sprained a knee. Al Sims crashed into me,” Peet says. “Another time, I broke a finger. Marcel Dionne.”

On this day, Peet is sporting a softball-sized shiner on his right bicep, another practice mishap.

“Brent Thompson,” he says.

Call it welt association. “Hardest shot I’ve faced?” Peet says. “Richard Martin, Jerry Korab, Bob Kudelski, Randy Holt, Tomas Sandstrom.

“Martin and Korab were probably the worst. Most people, the puck might hit you here (Peet pokes his breast bone) and drop to the floor. But Martin and Korab would hit you and the puck would keep biting you, like a Pac Man. They’d put so much torque, so much spin on the puck, that it would hit you here and then squirt over there.”

Peet takes this abuse, several times a week during hockey season, and refuses to take a cent for it.

“No money’s involved,” Peet says, laughing at the very idea. “If Bruce (McNall) realized, he could charge goalies to do it. He could make money that way. A cottage industry with practice goalies . . .

“I love to do it. I have canceled work to do it. I’d rather do it than do anything in the world.”

Why? It’s the perks, Peet says.

As practice goalie for the Kings, Peet has met Wayne Gretzky and been allowed into the inner sanctum, permitted, even, to baby-sit The Great Infants. Peet has eaten dinner at Marty McSorley’s house, vacationed with Dean Kennedy and hung out with Tiger Williams.

He has “gotten to see a side of the game I never would have seen before. Now, it would be hard to go back to being just a fan. I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Peet is loyal, too, the first truly interactive Kings fan, but he’s also a businessman and not above accepting a modeling job with the enemy, if the money’s right.

In the top-floor restaurant inside Anaheim Arena, there’s a hologram of a Mighty Ducks goalie making a sensational diving save. The man behind the mask is Peet, who was paid $350 to don a Ducks uniform and pose for the Disney cameras.

“The photographer gave me some Polaroids,” Peet says, “so I stuck some up in the Kings’ dressing room and wrote, ‘Do you know who this is in a Ducks uniform? Hey, hey, that’s Harris Peet, long-time hanger-on and ass-kisser of the Kings. What’s he doing in a Ducks uniform? Has he flown the coop? Has he become a trendie? Don’t let him squirm his way out of this. Ask him.’

“So they all asked me. Until I told them I got $350, they were upset.”

Peet latched onto the Kings in 1980 when he was working The Comedy Store on a sold-out night and spotted Murray Wilson, a Kings left winger, outside the door. Peet got Wilson a table, for free, comped him some drinks and “he told all the other Kings. So, if you want hockey players to be your friends, just give them free drinks.”

Soon, Peet was showing up at King practices and talking about his days as a goalie for tiny Nassau Community College in Garden City, N.Y., and talking the Kings into making him their practice goalie. What a deal: no salary, no insurance and a promise from Peet that “I wouldn’t sue ‘em.”

Peet has been cracking them up ever since, sometimes intentionally.

His comedy act draws from “my experiences driving my motorcycle all over North America, what’s in the news and the idiocy of everyday life. I used to say that I was like Jay Leno, only not as good. Now I say I’m like Jay Leno, but a lot better.”

And his goaltending act?

“Cap (Raeder, King assistant coach) has critiqued me,” Peet says, “and has told me I’m pretty lousy.” Peet has his own word for his style:

“Whatever.”

For years, Peet’s closest brush with celebrity was brushing with the celebrities who skate for Bruce McNall, but thanks to “Ren & Stimpy,” that is beginning to change.

“A year-and-a-half ago, I went to visit my nephew, who was 5 or 6 at the time, and the kids at the playground would say, ‘Hey, Aaron, who’s that guy?’ ” Peet says. “And Aaron would tell them, “He’s my uncle and he’s on ‘Ren & Stimpy.’ ‘

“When they heard I was Muddy Mudskipper, these kids would line up and I would have to call each of them ‘ya lousy bum,’ like in the cartoon. And then they’d go to the back of the line. It would take all day.”

Eventually, Peet met some of the parents of those kids, who informed him, earnestly, that “This cartoon you do, we don’t believe it’s right for children. But we let them watch it because Aaron’s uncle is in it.”

“Ren & Stimpy” regular. Comedy Store veteran. Motorcycle maven. Practice goalie for the Kings. Hologram model for the Mighty Ducks.

Harris Peet, Renaissance man for our times.