Corrections and stuffers

Thanks to everyone who voted for the Best of Montreal Readers Poll. We received thousands of ballots, and as always, we made every effort to weed out the stuffers who try to unduly influence the science of our poll. Our online tracking system was able to eliminate virtually everyone who voted for themselves more than once on the Web site.

Unfortunately, a bizarre online technical malfunction made the results for four categories disappear. Thus the winners of Freakiest Musical Act, Best Record Label, Best Dance/Choreographer and Best Vietnamese restaurant will not appear until next year. We apologize for the error.

While we do our best to make sure the addresses and phone numbers of the winners are accurate, mistakes will sometimes occur. Send your corrections to us by June 21 (to be printed in our June 28 issue) to letters@mtl-mirror.com or through the mail (465 McGill, 3rd floor, Montreal, QC, H2Y 4B4).

Forecast: animal rights

>> CBC weather girl Geeta Nadkarni’s
infectious enthusiasm for the weather
extends to our furry friends

BEST TV PERSONALITY AND FRUITS AND VEGETABLES:
Nadkarni at Jean-Talon Market

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

One of the first things Geeta Nadkarni says when we meet is, “It’s going to rain in a couple of hours,” with a laugh. What else would one expect? CBC News at Six’s ebullient weather girl is certainly on top of local meteorology (more on her intelligence-gathering methods later), but there’s more to the BOM Best Local TV Personality than meets the weather map.

Born 27 years ago in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, to a journalist father and oncologist mother, the oldest of three girls, young Geeta broke into journalism with Asia-Pacific Broadcasting while living in Singapore. Fate intervened, however, in the form of a French-Canadian man she met, fell for, and followed to Montreal—where life had a couple of more surprises in store.

Besides the mind-boggling weather, she also had to wait months before her work papers came through, just as her relationship was dissolving. Luckily, she soon scored a gig as co-host of Indo-Montreal, the CH ethnic community channel. An unusual stroke of luck, in the form of some extra cash floating around the CBC, and the Mother Corp’s desire for “community journalists”—namely community journalists from Montreal’s sizeable and anglophone South Asian community—got her an interview. But not a job. In the end, it was her story-pitching persistence that eventually got her a reporting gig. “It seems I’m going backwards sometimes,” she says. “Usually someone goes weather, traffic, reporting; with me, it’s reporting, then over to weather.”

She was given a whopping four days’ training at the Ceeb’s meteorological centre in Toronto, and a one-year contract. She’s been delivering the weather with a sweet perky charm since.

But Nadkarni has a burning passion for animal rights. A staunch vegetarian, she also produces a pet care segment for the CBC’s Living Montreal on weekday afternoons, where she’s considered “the mad animal lady who lives with two cats and a dog.” The dog, she says, is named Lucy, and is francophone; the cats, Elvis and Steenki, are both male and anglophone. Her pets are also a big part of her show, which is all about “holistic, humane and eco-friendly pet care.”

She talks passionately about vegetarianism, consumerism, local food, women’s rights, education and animal rights—and she walks the walk. Her francophone fiancée (who happens to work at MétéoMédia—“yeah, we’re known as the weather couple”) and she will be tying the knot here in the fall, and plan on having “a big shebang” in India sometime later. Her father would like a traditional wedding, with dancing hijras—“the third sex,” usually effeminate males or intersexed—which are considered omens of good luck, “but no elephants,” she says.

She also uses her vegetarianism to help her work. “Here’s how I do the weather: first, I check various sources. Different forecasters use different models, so there’s a lot of cross-referencing, and calculations are based on a series of factors involving distance and geography. But I made friends with the meteorologist at RDI, upstairs at the CBC building—I bring her some yummy vegetarian meals, and she gives me the scoop.”

She is getting used to fame, although it can still surprise. “One time I was at St-Laurent and Mont-Royal, and this guy started yelling, ‘You’re the best fucking weather girl in Montreal!’”

Hey, who can argue?

Live, from upstate New York

>> Java Joel fills a hole in Montreal
radio from south of the border

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Java Joel Murphy is back home and loving it. The 32-year-old radio host is on the phone from upstate New York, where, following his rookie year as a radio host at 94.7 Hits FM, he’s in stunned amazement at having been voted Best Radio Personality and host of Best Radio Show by Mirror readers. “That’s pretty amazing,” he says. “Especially for a market with such a rich radio heritage.”

His afternoon drive show is devoted to urban rhythmic music—50 Cent, Ludacris, Kelly Clarkson and Pink are some of the names he throws around—mainly, he says, because there’s a glaring hole in the market and local stations here aren’t rushing to fill it, even though his show is aimed specifically at the anglo West Island. He personally prefers indie-er fare like the Shins and the Decemberists when at home because “hearing that stuff for five hours a day, every day” can be tiresome.

Java can trace his love of radio back to 1982, when he first discovered CKMF broadcasting 12-inch dance music singles in French. “That’s when I first became a real radio geek,” he says in a rapid-fire, rounded radio voice. “My sister and I called it ‘the weird station’ because we couldn’t understand the DJs.” He says he took high school French to try to figure them out—which he admits got him nowhere, although it did turn him on to Canadian bands like Platinum Blonde, Gowan and Corey Hart.

After trying college for a year, he dropped out to devote his life exclusively to radio, and soon took his first paying radio job in Potsdam, New York at a station that was “like Q92, but played even lighter music.” He bounced around stations in Syracuse, Utica (“a truly horrible place”) and Rochester, getting fired enough times for him to start asking himself why. “I was getting good ratings,” he says. “But the sordid truth is, radio is so political and so corporate.”

He was eventually hired by KISS FM in Chicago, where he spent four years until he was fired again, this time for making an off-colour racial joke on air, which he admits was stupid, even in the days before Don Imus and Opie and Anthony. Nevertheless, he says he left Chicago on reasonably good terms and was more than happy to return to his native upstate New York. “I’m very comfortable here, the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in my career,” he says.

These days, he’s helping emerging Montreal artists by calling for listeners to send him links to MySpace pages, where he will play their music on air. The response, he says, “is overwhelming. I’ve been doing this for a year and haven’t had to repeat once.”

He tries to come up to Montreal, which is only an hour and a half away, at least a few times a year with his wife, and sticks mainly to the Ste-Catherine West strip. “The French thing still intimidates me,” he says.