Yeah, that’d be bad
“Hopefully my cock doesn’t get infected and fall off.” —Female-to-male trans person Roger-James, on his upcoming surgery

Gambler, anonymous
“If you take a friend for $1,000 some night, well, you’ll find you’re not really going to be friends anymore.” —Young gambler “Adam Lester”

One wicked porno scene?
“You have 30 policemen armed to the teeth raiding a strip club, and there’s a naked woman on stage with a dildo in her hand. What kind of image does that make?” —Stella executive director Claire Thiboutot, on the arrest of Montreal dancer/porn star Tangerine Dream at a Newfoundland strip club

Headless and legless
“I have not seen the ghost of Mary Gallagher, but I figure if we drink enough Bloody Marys, we might certainly see her.” —Author Alan Hustak, on the scheduled septennial re-appearance of the Griffintown prostitute, beheaded by a rival in 1879

Equal rights for all!
“Girls dig violence and gore too sometimes.” —Seppuku, of the all-girl professional video game team the Frag Dolls

Did they land on their feet at least?
“This summer I heard of five cats that fell from high rises and, no, they don’t have nine lives.” —Animal rescuer Dolores Duquette

Deaf before dishonour
“You really feel it when you go to sleep at night and you hear a nonstop ringing in your ears, or if you are in a bar with other extraneous noise and you’re trying to listen to somebody. I have to kind of read their lips now to find out what they’re saying, and I’m only 30 years old.” —Cursed singer Chris Colohan on heaviosity-induced hearing impairment

Plus, Burt Reynolds isn’t around
“It was an illegal effort that I did when I was young and crazy, and now I’m concerned that it’s going to hurt somebody.” —Original Cannonball Run founder Brock Yates, who isn’t fond of its Canadian reincarnation

All heart, that porn biz
“She signed a contract for the rights of the scene no matter the consequences.” —L.A. porn journalist Luke Ford, on the ethics of including the double-anal scene in Split That Booty 2 wherein Montreal porn starlet Lara Roxx contracts HIV

Mid-life crises and meth
“In the U.S. there are a lot of these fuckfest orgies. And older guys, especially if they’re single, sometimes seem to go sex-crazy, trying every kind of drug.” —Local drag queen Mado, on why he thinks syphilis is affecting mostly older, anglo gay men

Free junk, woohoo!
“There is a certain attractiveness to the idea of receiving free heroin.” —Darlene Palmer, who doesn’t think finding volunteers for a scientific study involving free heroin will be a problem

Bet you they won’t
“We’ll see if the Department of Justice takes the onus for somebody getting murdered by some psycho who gets ID this way.” —Greg Jones of Montreal-based adult-entertainment provider 2much.net, on a proposed American law that would expose the names and addresses of porn actors

But what about his excellent work with the Boomtown Rats?
“I find Bob Geldof irritating.” —UN AIDS envoy Stephen Lewis

Cream of the crap
“They’d come to our table readings and send a fax afterward, outlining everything that had to go. At the end of the message, they’d summarize, ‘Please eliminate two asses, one bitch and a crap.’ So our job then was to go through the script and be like, ‘Okay we’ve got three instances of “crap.” Which ones are essential? And which ones can we lose?’ So only the very best fart jokes made it in.” —Family Guy writer Steve Callaghan on FOX’s censorship practices

Yeah, we’re funny that way
“I didn’t know if I was gonna stay here, but the first band I saw in Montreal was this old man on bagpipes, this 14-year-old kid with a Misfits shirt, this guy with dreadlocks and pigtails juggling knives and this little four-year-old girl marching back and forth like a soldier, and they had this kinda Skinny Puppy beat. I was laughing my ass off ’cause it was the most fucked up thing ever, and there were 200 people there for them. That’s when I thought, ‘Mmm, maybe this would be a good town to make music in.’” —Giselle Webber of the Hot Springs on why she chose Montreal

Kinda like drunk McGill jocks
“Some were idiots—they’d mount the female’s head, things like that. They all showed inappropriate sexual responses.” —Concordia sex researcher Jim Pfaus, on drunk rats

You sure about that?
“Suddenly it’s no problem to fly us across the continent and back in a day, whereas two years ago we were just struggling for a loft show, and one is not necessarily better than the other. In many ways, it was fine to be in a band that barely made enough to survive.” —Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade

Gee, do you think so?
“They offered information very early on that, ‘This is not, we repeat, this is not the homosexuality thing.’ And to me that’s a pretty good indication that it’s about the homosexuality.” —Kevin Bacon on the NC-17 rating for Where the Truth Lies, which has a gay love scene

Doth protest too much?
“I’ll never forget walking into John Wayne’s room. It was just this weird thing for a 16-year-old to suddenly have access to the great man….And no, I didn’t have a threesome with John Wayne.” —Atom Egoyan remembering his summer job as a houseboy at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C.

By eating a lot of cheeseburgers?
“It’s not as easy when you’re growing up and people aren’t telling you every day that you’re beautiful. You have to go out and earn that title.” —Miss Ronde Québec 2004 Paméla Desrosiers

Oh those crazy Germans
“People’s pants were dropping. Excessive shimmying—people were shimmying with other people and cleaning the floor with their hair and stuff. It was crazy. I’ve never seen such an international amalgamation of freaks.” - King Khan on the first time he and BBQ played a show together in Berlin

Stoner Buddha
“He’s the Led Zeppelin of the weed world, the granddaddy, the wise elder to whom we all turn.” —Boris St-Maurice on San Francisco pot guru Ed Rosenthal

CHILDHOOD HERO SHATTERS DREAM
“He was my hero as a kid. In my grandfather’s time, he was as big as Will Ferrell is now. So I e-mailed him—you can go to shelleyberman.com and write him and he’ll write you back—with this idea to do one of his famous telephone sketches. But I articulated it really badly and he was outraged. He totally told me off, threatened me, it was just nasty.” —Actor Joe Cobden on recruiting old-school legend Shelley Berman for his live-to-radio show, Golden Age

Either that, or it’s a flash in the pan
“The older people have their music. This is the current music, this is for our generation, the sound we’ll remember when we look back.” —Local reggaeton performer Frankie Neño, aka Genocyde

New beginnings
“The waitresses see us and know right away where we’re from. We’re from Bordeaux prison. And that brasserie is the place to start as soon as we get out.” —Luc Markov, on newly released prisoners’ first taste of freedom, getting off the 69 bus at the Henri Bourassa metro brasserie

Backdoor men, indeed
“Led Zeppelin were not cock rock. They idolized Joni Mitchell. If anything, you’d think it was girly music. There are actually many feminine things about Led Zeppelin. They were skinny pretty boys with long hair. I really believe that a lot of guys picked up on that girlishness and found it extremely sexy in an unconscious way.” —Steph Payne of Lez Zeppelin

THIS PUD’S FOR YOU
“It had a big squirrel, and he was really ugly and had a big penis. There was a rope that came off his penis, a yellow rope, and it came down to the street and then I had a big piece of plywood that was painted yellow and had sculpted a little splash on it. And then I screwed the rope in, so it went up to the billboard and then down to the street. So it’s coming out of the squirrel’s penis, and it’s, um... you know, good ol’ Squirrel Squirt Beer. Squirted by squirrels that drink 100 per cent pure Rocky Mountain spring water.” —Agit-Pop artist Ron English

With a soda spritzer?
“How do you make a mass murderer funny?” —Jerry Snell, on making his The Passion of Henry [Kissinger] multimedia show

BUNCHA JERKS
“I had one guy who said to me, ‘You can take a picture of my dick while I’m masturbating but not of my face—it’s too personal.’... Guys really like to talk, but they don’t like to show, perhaps, as women do.” —Sefi Amir on her difficulties recruiting men to model for her Never Needed Nobody exhibition, paintings of photographs of people’s faces while masturbating

Cooler than hell
“They say, ‘Write us a letter explaining why you wanna play the festival.’ Well, why do you think? We all wanna rock! What if some death metal band writes, ‘Because we wanna conjure Satan’? Would that be cool enough for the cool club? I don’t think so.” —Nate Munn of Ghettonuns on Pop Montreal’s application process, one of the reasons he founded the Unpop Festival

Pot logic
“It’s very simple, but you don’t want to fall asleep while you’re doing it, because you might blow yourself up.” —Dylan Perceval-Maxwell, owner of Boutique Je l’ai, on converting diesel engines to bio-diesel

Coke-addled losers need places to drink too!
“Remember how on Dec. 31, 1999, the city let bars stay open until 8 a.m.? Essentially, it was a good idea, but by around 6, the only people coming into the bar were people on fucking coke or drunk out of their minds.’” —Blizzarts owner Peter Pinheiro, on why extending closing time to 8 a.m. would be a bad idea

Watch your back, SpongeBob
“So we thought, what do people at work and private school boys need most? Voilà: the Cumsponge! … It’s got a chemical compound that’s perfect for cleaning cum off of any surface—sheets, the ceiling... your face.” —Kidnapper Films writer/director Matt Silver on his plans to rule the world of porous comedy

The real sonic youth
“I have a strange fascination with people like Hillary Duff and that kind of squeaky-clean pop sound. I have a 10-year-old daughter, so I hear a lot of this stuff in the car. She’s really turning me on to stuff like that. One of the best records I’ve ever heard was this CD called Heroes and Villains: Music Inspired by the PowerPuff Girls. I just crank that shit up in the car.” —Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth

The real talent is on the street
“To be honest, some of [New Orleans’s] most down-and-out, rummy street musicians who can barely string a sentence together are better players than a lot of people you’ll find in the clubs here in Montreal.” —John Dodge of the Fat Tuesday Brass Band

For some reason, that’s of little comfort
“People forget that this is a generation born out of South Park. They almost wear their—and I mean this in a good way—‘I’m-an-idiot’ badge with honour. It’s pretty obvious that they are laughing at themselves.” —Director Michael Tucker defending the young, dumb American soldiers featured in his documentary Gunner Palace

Those poor Olsen twins
“I’ve known Saget for 20 years and he’s always been known as the filthiest comedian who ever lived.” —The Aristocrats producer Penn Jillette

Poster politics
“Postering culture, which is street culture, is competitive and driven by individual, needed, desire. If you have some sacred space where posters are supposed to go, people are obviously going to cover it with other posters.” —Starvin’ Hungry frontman John Milchem on the misconceived notion of a designated postering space

Bring on the mushy Peas and chip butties!
“Traditionally, U.K. music hasn’t survived outside of the U.K. because the music gets exported, but the culture that goes with it doesn’t.” —U.K. DJ Charlie Dark on the future of grime music outside of East London

Kind of like Bono
“Hitler was like a pop star to her [although] she now realizes the extent of what he did. But back then, when the Americans came and were destroying photos of Hitler, she and her friends were crying. It was their Führer.” —Oliver Hirschbiegel, director of Downfall, a film about Hitler, on his mother

STEP UP TO THE DARTBOARD, PUSSIES!
“People think darts can’t be a sport because it isn’t physically demanding and that all dart players are overweight and out of shape. But let’s see one of those people play for four hours and then tell me whether or not their elbows hurt or their knees are worn. Then they’ll know what we go through.” —Quebec Darts Association President Maggie LeBlanc

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, FILIPINAS
“It used to be prostitutes, so nanny is definitely a step up.” —Miss Orient(ed) co-creator Nadine Villasin on typical Filipina actor typecasting

ST. LAWRENCE SEE YA
“Imagine, as an ocean surfer, that the river is one giant rip tide, and when you’re in that thing, boy, you’re going. And if you don’t know how to swim out of a rip, you’re pretty screwed.” —Corran Addison, St. Lawrence River surfing aficionado, on the waves chez nous

Sorry Kirk, no sympathy here
“I don’t have any advice for Mr. Shatner. He’s been number one all these years, I think he can handle coming in second for a change.” —Roy Dupuis, after finally beating William Shatner for Best Actor in the Mirror’s Best of Montreal reader’s poll

Pimps are people too
“There are already laws against abuse, fraud and manipulation. We don’t need an extra law against pimping.” — Stella director Claire Thiboutot speaking out against federal regulations criminalizing those who live off of the avails of prostitution

IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS
“Le vrai goût du smoked meat sans bière est un jour sans soleil.” —Place mats at le Roi du Smoked Meat, as observed by restaurant reviewers Alice and Yanka

Bright Eyes for president!
“Once Middle America realizes that the Bush administration is only serving the smallest sliver of the population—big business, the wealthiest of Americans and the extreme Christian right—and once they realize that all the jobs that have been lost aren’t coming back and three more neighbourhood kids have gone off and died for no reason, public opinion is gonna shift. My fear isn’t that people aren’t gonna catch on to Bush’s bullshit, it’s the damage that he can do in the next four years.” —Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes

No, wait, Lady Bunny for president!
“It’s funny, because Americans have joked about Canada for years as being slow. But you are speeding past us in terms of progressive policies like this gay marriage one, as are Spain and the Netherlands. I guess that is because we have an idiot for president who is trying to turn back the hands of time on everything from gay rights to abortion rights.” —Famed New York drag queen Lady Bunny

Baruch Adonai, muthafucka!
“I’ve been doing this music, touring, trying to figure out what it is, this Jewish hip hop shit.” —Montreal musician So Called (aka Josh Dolgin) on his five song EP, The So Called Seder

Forget flowers and chocolates
“Tease her. Walk up to her and say, ‘Oh, you poor thing, you are just so horribly unattractive, guys must never come on to you. But that’s all right, come here, it’s okay’.” — Professional pick-up artist/teacher Stephane Hemon, on how to seduce beautiful women

You take your glasses off when you say that, buddy!
“You have to be smart to be good at trivia, but you don’t have to be good at trivia to be smart.” - Andrew Segal of the McGill Trivia Club

Thank you, Sex Industry
“So much of Montreal is based on the sex industry, and not enough people give the strippers, the escorts and the porn stars enough credit.” —Transgendered artist/photographer Elle Ryker

The shit hits the fans
“They have these really big video screens and they’re showing Greg’s sphincter opening up and everything. He gets it in the bag and throws it out in this huge crowd and somehow, the bag got thrown back. I don’t know what happened after that, but Greg was covered in his own shit. I was watching the video, and you can see him gag while he’s trying to sing. That was pretty cool.” —Liam Wilson, bass player for Dillinger Escape Plan, on a show in the U.K where singer Greg Puciato decided to defecate into a bag

More flying shit!
“Enemas are so important for an anal scene, otherwise, seriously, the shit will fly.” —Local pornographer Corey Ex, revealing industry tips

And finally, some poop
“I knew when he said, ‘I’ll poop in her butt hole then she’ll poop in my butt hole,’ that it had to be pitch-perfect or it wasn’t going to work.” —Director Miranda July on the making of her indie hit Me and You and Everyone We Know

Try being a Mirror journalist
“It’s very hard to be taken seriously.” —UFO investigator Ken McCracken, on his job