Quote of the week:

"It was a terrorist act motivated by vengeance, hatred and prejudices directed against a cultural community." - Quebec Court Judge Jean Sirois, on Tuesday, sentencing Sleiman Elmerhebi, 19, to 40 months in prison for firebombing the United Talmud Torah school last year.

More tsunami benefits

Prime Minister Paul Martin was in South Asia earlier this week, as thoughts on reconstruction gradually replace sorrow in the tsunami-devastated region. Montrealers who want to help still have the chance.

On Friday, Jan. 21, Mess. Music, a new Montreal music production and resource company, will hold their inaugural concert and photography auction at Club Soda (1225 St-Laurent). Performing will be Mess. Music's Nadine Berry's experimental band Vice Versa, as well as Tamashi, Alek et les Mauvaises Raisons and ska mainstays General Rudie. The photos to be auctioned are by local artists Carlos and Jason Sanchez, Suzanne Wolfe, Dylan Cram, Alanna Riley and Elena Willis. Entry is 10 bucks (available through Ticketpro - www.ticketpro.ca or 908-9090). Doors open at 8:30 p.m., and all benefits go to Oxfam Quebec.

For the more athletically minded, the Quebec Table Soccer Association will be holding a benefit tournament for the Montreal Children's Hospital and the Red Cross this Sunday, Jan. 23, at Skratch West Island (11829 Pierrefonds Blvd., Pierrefonds). Entry is $10, with the proceeds being split between the Children's and the Red Cross. There'll also be a private box for cash donations. For more info visit www.quebecfoos.com. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Goopy rejection

2004 was a banner year for Rick Trembles, the Montreal artist responsible for Mirror's weekly Motion Picture Purgatory. Britain's Fab Press published a compilation book of his strips, and Goopy Spasms, his short animated film 14 years in the making, finally premiered at Fantasia. The film, about his history of sex and relationships - with extremely graphic sexual imagery but intensely personal and often wry, self-deprecating but darkly humorous narration - was subsequently praised by industry giants Bill Plympton and Robert Crumb, among others.

2005 isn't looking as promising, at least here in his hometown. In a letter dated Jan. 3, the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, a festival dedicated to local filmmaking, said it couldn't accept Goopy Spasms because it didn't fit with the rest of the event's programming.

Trembles says he was eventually contacted by one of the programmers and told that while the committee considered the film technically excellent, the graphic content was such that they couldn't match it with the other entries. "It's wishy-washy," Trembles says. "I guess it just shows they don't want to show extreme stuff."

Ségolène Roederer, the Rendez-vous' general director, told the Mirror that the selection committee received 417 entries but could only accept 167, although Trembles' film was much discussed during the selection process. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Debt plan irks students

Charest's Liberals might've figured they'd bought some praise from students with a new policy that subsidizes the interest payments on student loan debts for grads earning less than $25,620. But the concession hasn't softened up the student reps.

"It's a distraction for what really needs to be done right now," says Tim McSorley, head of the Quebec office for the Canadian Federation of Students. He says part of the problem started when the same Liberals took $103-million away from the bursary program. "So now they're trying to legitimize that student debt. They should look at a way to provide low-income students with bursaries and grants when they go into university rather than try to solve the problem of debt after the fact."

McSorley's B.C. counterpart Ian Boyko shares the assessment. "They're not reintroducing the money that they took away in grants," he says. "This is clearly a pretext to lift the tuition fee freeze in the near future. Quebec's education system is unrivalled in Canada; students should be fighting tooth and nail to preserve it." » Kristian Gravenor

Coffee Pot closed

To little fanfare, the Coffee Pot, the Latin Quarter pot-smoking lounge and restaurant, closed its doors last month. After only a few weeks of doing business, proprietor David McKenzie, who also runs the Duchess of Amsterdam head shop on St-Marc, said business was so slow that he had no choice but to shut its doors just before Christmas. "It's really too bad," he says. "It's really disappointing. There was all this talk about it, but people just didn't come."

McKenzie speculates that perhaps would-be patrons were afraid of being arrested by police, a fear he says was misplaced. "There were a couple of minor incidents at the beginning, just stupid little problems, but all in all it was really good," he says. "The cops were cool, we never got raided. They'd come in and do a walk-around, but they do that in bars now too."

McKenzie says he might try to open up another place, but on a much smaller level. He wouldn't provide figures, but he said the Coffee Pot was costing him "enough to not keep it open." » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Jan. 21–Jan. 28, 1993

On the cover: German chanteuse Ute Lemper, who will be singing Dietrich and Piaf at Place des arts. "It's not an homage," she tells Andrew Jones. "I wanted to evoke the small situations and statements of cities, the existentialists and authors of Paris in the 1950s, New York exploding in the 1960s."

• "Whatever happens [in India] gets imported here," Zaheer Khan, president of the Council of Concerned Pakistanis Abroad, tells Alex Roslin, referring to mounting Hindu-Muslim tensions, after a Montreal conference that would have featured Hindu fundamentalist speakers was cancelled.

• Reviewing Dave Markey's Sonic Youth concert film 1991: The Year Punk Broke, Chris Yurkiw writes that the footage "creates the sensation of being sucked into a vortex of grit - the feeling of being flushed down a toilet filled with sand, watching the kaleidoscope swirl of the world as a horrifying yet compelling din roars."

• The Mirror's Health and Fitness Supplement features articles on the evolution of aerobics, art therapy and dance classes available in Montreal.

Angel >> CÉGEP Quebec Education Minister Pierre Reid announced this week that the CÉGEP system wouldn't be abolished, devolved, expanded or changed in any significant way. Which is good, because if the system ain't broke, no need to fix it. Most students who graduate enjoy the two (or more) years of creative freedom, lax discipline and reasonable workload. Many of the province's artists, photographers, actors, filmmakers and journalists got their start in CÉGEP - and while that fact shouldn't be held against it, the system does have an open flexibility unique in Canada.
Insect >> Kyoto breaks for heavy industry Environmental groups are puzzled and annoyed that, despite high-profile campaigns to get Canadians to green their consumption habits, the federal government is considering easing the burden on heavy industry. A Canadian Press report charged that the feds were mulling over a proposal that would let industries reduce their emissions by only eight megatonnes a year, as opposed to the 73-megatonne target set in 2002. The Climate Action Network of Canada, including the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, the Pembina Institute, the Conservation Council of New Brunswick and the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, called on Ottawa to shoot the proposal down. The feds wouldn't comment.