Quote of the week:

“My Very Excellent Mother Could Just Serve Us Nuts, Pizza, Carrots ’n’ Xylophones!” —A possible new mnemonic proposed by physicist David Sturm, to include the three Kuiper Belt iceballs hoping for an upgrade to planetary status this week: Charon, Ceres and Xena

Skate politics

The peril facing the Big O pipe has been international news this past week, with bloggers, Web sites and magazines pitching in their support to save the unique site being paved over for the Impact’s new soccer field. But another skateboarding site is also in danger, and this time it isn’t cheese barons who may shut it down—it’s the city of Montreal.

Gabriel Laduke, the 27-year-old co-owner of Orkus in TMR, is worried that the city’s plans to resurrect the Taz Mahal skate park in nearby Villeray will kill his. The way he sees it, the city, which is pouring millions into the Taz, will bring the kiss of death to an already precarious enterprise.

“If I even lose five per cent of my clientele, that’s it,” he says. “We’re not gonna make our rent.”

Laduke doesn’t know why the city needs to spend so much money—he estimates $9-million—on a skate park so similar, and so close, to his.

Laduke and an estimated 100 supporters will gather outside City Hall (275 Notre-Dame E.) to protest at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 24. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Screw the circus

The Shriners’ circus is rolling into town again this weekend, and again, Global Action Network will be there to greet it. The Montreal animal rights group will be outside the Carrefour Angrignon (7077 Newman) on Saturday as of 11 a.m. to protest what they consider the cruel treatment of exotic animals.

In the Carrefour parking lot—which, being private property, they aren’t technically allowed to be—GAN will gather about 50 activists, with loudspeakers, music and compassionate clown. “He’ll be dressed in the whole get-up, with sad-face make-up,” says GAN’s Martine MacDonald. “The circus is sad because it’s prostituting animals around the world, and making them travel in small, often dirty cages.” She also accuses circus trainers of using electric prods to make the animals perform what she calls “unnatural” acts. “All this abuse makes them unhappy and can make them crazy,” she says.

She also says parents shouldn’t be bringing kids to the circus. “They shouldn’t be taught that it’s okay to use animals as products,” she says. “And it can be pretty dangerous” if the animals do go berserk, she claims. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Kisses for hurricane season

Just in time for this year’s sure-to-be-a-doozy hurricane season to come around and destroy all the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts made to date is From Montreal With Love, a one-night event to raise money for Emergency Communities, a Louisiana-based relief organization.

Featuring, among others, the United Steelworkers of Montreal, the People’s Gospel Choir of Montreal and the Cockroaches, alongside a special preview of the documentary film InTentCity by Montreal filmmaker Saroj Bains, the action goes down Tuesday, Aug. 29 at Les Saints (30 Ste-Catherine W., $20).

According to organizer Tracy Biddle, “Emergency Communities have already served over 100,000 meals to thousands of returning residents. They provide food, clothing and comfort for returnees from this awful storm. But more importantly, they provide a safe, warm space for the community—a space filled with compassion, love and hope.”

Biddle, who traces her own roots back to lower-class Afro-American southerners, says From Montreal With Love “will be like sending a kiss out to the people of New Orleans.” —Chris Barry

Poetry for peace

Huh? Poets? Speaking out against carnage, destruction and war? Since when? Ezra Pound must be rolling in his grave.

This Wednesday, Aug. 30, at 8 p.m., all those negative stereotypes about wordsmiths being fascists will forever be laid to rest as Poets Against War goes in to battle at Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent).

“Actually,” says poet/organizer Norman Nawrocki, “there’s always been a strong tradition of socially engaged, strongly anti-war poetry here in Canada. So here we are again, proposing dialogue as poets, trying to help people imagine the world differently—a world without war, a world where money is used for housing and education and health care instead of being wasted on killing people.”

Sure, it’s an outrageous concept, but the multi-ethnic, fundraising poetry/music event will feature 20 poets and musicians all basically stating the same thing—that war, believe it or not, is bad.

Tickets are $10 at the door, with all monies going to the Sanayeh Relief Centre in Beirut, an organization providing frontline humanitarian aid to internally displaced Lebanese civilians. —Chris Barry

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Aug. 25–Sept. 1, 1994

On the cover: McGill ablaze, a riot cop, military vehicles, a fleur-de-lys-wielding protestor and a dead body, illustrating Breakup: The Coming End of Canada and the Stakes for America, by U.S. author Lansing Lamont. As “fact-based fiction,” it predicts Quebec’s bloody secession from Canada. “It is saying that this is basically an unworkable and unnatural relationship that has deteriorated over time,” he says.

• Dee-lite’s Lady Miss Kier discusses a mushroom trip, technology, environmentalism and dance music. “I tried [Mexican hongan mushrooms] on some cornbread and then went up to the top of a pyramid and was time travelin’,” she says. “It was really beautiful, primitive and tribal, and I just felt this spiritual quest of humankind throughout time.”

• Natural Born Killers is “a measured pastiche of boob-tube culture, music videos, advertising (will Mickey and Mallory wear khakis?) and home movies.”

• Andrew Steinmetz of Good Cookies wins the Mirror’s Rock ’n’ Roll Moments contest by describing how he was electrocuted onstage by inhaling saliva left on a mic.

Angel >> City living On Tuesday, Statistics Canada released a report comparing obesity levels of urban and rural dwellers. City folk, it turns out, are much less likely to be hugely overweight than our country cousins. Still, the numbers aren’t great: the report said that 20 per cent of urban dwellers are obese, compared to 29 per cent among those living in rural settings. Interestingly, the report determined that the larger the city, the lower were obesity levels. The report’s authors don’t have a reason why this is so, but some experts point to city dwellers’ ability to walk every day, compared to rural areas where distances—especially to and from work—can be greater.
Insect >> Lousy water management No, this isn’t about the city’s disgusting swimming pools. In a new report, the conservation group WWF warns that climate change and rich countries’ irresponsible use of water will lead to water shortages even in the most developed countries. And our thirsty avariciousness isn’t just using up our own water—the rich world’s demand for everything from cheap produce to jewelry and oil encourages wasteful water use in developing countries. The report is well-timed: Saturday marks the end of World Water Week, with hundreds of international experts gathering in Stockholm to talk about the world’s water needs.