2000
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The year in quotes
Save our swingers
"I'm not a swinger, but I feel it's my duty to fight till the end, so that these people, who are not doing anybody any harm, can have their lifestyle protected. No law says you can't have sex with more than one person at the same time."
--swingers' lawyer Robert La Haye
**
Who you calling brain-damaged?
"People die skiing. Brain damage is common in football, not to mention boxing. In tennis people get stabbed. Figure skaters get their kneecaps popped by thugs with crowbars. No-holds-barred is the safest sport in the world."
--Travis Fulton, 22, the fifth-ranked heavyweight in the International Fighting Championships, an anything-goes extreme fighting "sport"
**
Pussy power
"We've often been criticized as being flaky and dated--something out of the '70s. But more and more women are responding to the 'pussy power' thing. And for us, pussy power is just a good place to begin. From there, you can address even more issues about girl-body politics."
--A.D. of Bloodsisters, a collective that promotes menstrual health for women, especially the use of reusable menstrual pads
**
Smoke dope much?
"If I took an electronmicroscope image of a brain cell and a spectroscopic image of our entire universe, and if I put those images side by side, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them."
--McGill astrobiologist Hojatollah Vali
**
The colonies protest
"We all recognize that Canada is a colonial system of genocide and repression towards indigenous people and continues to be."
--member of Concordia's Anti-Colonial Working Group
**
Red-light blues
"We are not toxic waste. We are women."
--Darlene, president of the sex workers' rights group Stella, after a red-light district planned for the Centre-Sud is panned by public pressure
**
Animal industry
"The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is just a pound in disguise. They're not a protection organization at all. People who work at the SPCA have a good salary. Don't kid yourself. It's an industry."
--Dr. Charles Danten, author of Un Vétérinaire en colère (An Angry Veterinarian).
**
And a lot of people call you Dinck
"A lot of people call me 'Big Dog,' which is a nickname I got on the golf course. I even have it on my answering service--I tell people to leave a message and I'll bark right back at them. My housekeeper of 20 years calls me Mr. Humpy. My Japanese friends call me Engie Chan."
--Engelbert Humperdinck, promoting his Place des Arts show
**
Fat and happy
"Our weight-loss plan consists of the following. One: repeated consumption of large amounts of hard alcohol. Beer is good, but then you get the dreaded beer-belly effect. Two: lots of jumping around with instrument in hand. If you don't have an instrument, a silly dance step nobody can duplicate will suffice. Three: BBQ. All great athletes need their nourishment, because man can't live by alcohol alone. But let's face it, who really wants to lose weight? After all, we're all perfectly happy being FAT!"
--an unnamed member of the Fat Wreck punk rock band
**
Fat and happy 2
"I eat a lot and I love chocolate. When I go out for lunch with my agents, we stuff ourselves. I've never been told to avoid any particular type of food. It's all about proportion. My selling point is that I have an hourglass figure. I have to work to keep it and to keep it toned."
--Ashleigh Foster, 19, Canada's home-grown plus-sized supermodel-in-the-making
**
PQ youth
"The PQ is going to come out of that Summit with its own recommendations and say, 'We must act in the name of our youth.' We refuse to let them get away with it."
--Eric Fontaine, organizer of a protest against the PQ's controversial Youth Summit, which didn't think it necessary to invite many youth organizations
**
Me, mom and cockroach lawyer mutants
"We did our first big theatrical shows there, hanging a huge papier-maché penis pinata filled with condoms over the crowd, dressing the club like Alice in Wonderland or a post-nuclear Montreal overrun by cockroach lawyer mutants."
--John Jordan of legendary disbanded Montreal rockers Me Mom & Morgentaler on the resurrection of Club Soda
**
At least our dollar will go up...
"We have two years left before we reach the point of no return and annexation by the United States becomes inevitable."
--Paul Hellyer, leader of the Canadian Action Party
**
Drugs are bad but...
"In general, drugs are bad. The problem is the adults don't really have any way of telling you that. You have to learn it firsthand. I mean, 'Just Say No' is the stupidest reason not to do drugs."
--NYC DJ/producer Oliver Chesler
**
Sexist watchdog howls
"This is a message for Al South and Roger Argent. This is Jake Brown, remember me? This rant that you published--'I'm looking for women who are highly fuckable and dumber than dirt,' are you out of your fucking minds?! (screaming passionately) You fucking assholes! Fucking cocksuckers! You print that? What for? What possible, possible justification could you have for printing that TODAY? You fucking assholes, cocksuckers! Fuck you!"
--spoken word artist Jake Brown, in the Rant Line(TM)
**
Deaf, dumb and developing
"Bourque has his ears open only for the developer, but to his citizens' concerns he is deaf."
--Michel Prescott, leader of the official opposition at City Hall on Mayor Bourque's political motivation
**
But what if you hit a Dutch guy with a wooden shoe?
"The Dutch people have no inhibitions. They're the only ones who play our videos fully intact. In Germany, they didn't like the dwarf getting run over in the end. In Sweden, they took out the footage of the real monkeys screwing. Over here in the States, they took out the French guys getting hit with baguettes. They thought it was gay-bashing."
--popster Jimmy Pop, of the Bloodhound Gang
**
Affirmative!
"Yuh huh. Yep yep yep yep."
--the Mad Professor, a DJ
**
Uh, by the nagging tone?
"When you are called by your mother, how do you know it's actually her?"
--Dan Sherman, Gulf War vet and author of Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny, on how he knew he had telepathically communicated with aliens
**
Getting real personal
"Sorry, I'm in the bathroom."
--actor Stanley Tucci, after flushing his toilet during an interview
**
Virginal but not snooty
"So many girls sleep around. They don't understand the importance of virginity and saving yourself for your husband. Some people see us as snobs because we look down on non-virgins, but it is not a question of snobbishness. Rather it is simply about the fact that virginity makes one a more complete person."
--Amira, member of Montreal-based virgin group, Chastity
**
Getting wood
"I did huge amounts of acid in the '60s but I haven't touched anything, including alcohol, since 1968, because I got really screwed up on it. I mean, how do you think I came up with the band name Mahogany Rush? I was actually talking about the rush of turning into a tree--that's how screwed up I was!"
--musician Frank Marino, in an interview promoting his Spectrum show
**
Poultry pogrom!
"They're perfect, if you think about it. They're so often the subjects of ridicule. They always seem to be the extras in animal movies. We wanted to fight for the cause of chickenkind."
--Nick Park, half of the animation team behind the claymation film Chicken Run
**
Plateau vegan expounds!
"I think [genetically modified food] scientists are looking for power. They're neurotic, they have had bad relationships with their mothers, and by extension, this planet. It's a vicious cycle of neurosis that creates a complicated human psychology fabric of violence. Sick people want to have slaves, and nature and animals are the scapegoats."
--Marie-Pierre Michaud, founder of Plateau vegan restaurant Les Vivres
**
Deadly stench
"You should smell it in the summer, the heat makes it much stronger."
--François Houle, public relations officer for the Montreal Coroner's Office
**
Stupid comedy analyzed
"We're big believers in [audience] tests. If things are too mean-spirited, audiences don't like it. For example, there's the scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jeff Daniels hits a woman in the face with a snowball. It gets a huge laugh. But there was a trace of blood under her nose. Then it wasn't funny, because she was hurt now. We had a computer remove the blood from under her nose. We learn as we go: comedy plus blood equals tragedy."
--Peter Farrelly, of the Farrelly Brothers, directors of Me, Myself & Irene
**
Exploding homeless predicted!
"We have to be careful because we might come to a point where we'll have a serious security problem. And if we're not able to deal with these people with our resources, they're going to end up blowing up on the streets."
--Isabelle Leduc, the director of the St-James Drop-In Centre on why Mayor Bourque should reinstate funding to three downtown homeless shelters
**
Although Tom has more ball...
"I think Tom Green is the only one to take things further than I did on MTV. But I'm different from him. I was always more... vulnerable."
--Pauly Shore, on why he believes he is the godfather of '90s dumb comedy
**
Why is this band not famous?
"The weirdest thing that ever happened at a Shlönk show was when we played at G Sharp. I was wearing a dress and I sat on this guy's face and screamed 'Eat me' and then I suddenly felt him licking my balls. That was weird. Also, I've always wanted to put cheese slices on my sweaty back to see if I could manage to eat them while I sing."
--Al Warnock on the rock band Shlönk's reunion show
**
Day on gays
"First of all, as far as my campaign, I don't ask people if they're homosexual, lesbian or heterosexual. People who are working on my campaign are doing so because they believe in me... So I don't ask. Nobody has to pass a sex test to be on this campaign."
--Stockwell Day, when asked how he reconciled his socially conservative views with the fact that gay people were working on his campaign team
**
Discrimination rights now!
"I'm fighting for the right to discriminate. If people want to discriminate, that should be their business."
--"Jean," a gay Stockwell Day operative, who asked that his real name not be used
**
But other than that, he's okay?
"He stands for everything I despise. I fear that if he becomes Prime Minister, Canada would become an international pariah in the area of human rights, peace, the environment and social justice."
--Green Party of Canada leader Joan Russow on Stockwell Day
**
Rainbow bus
"I try to celebrate all the different nationalities in Montreal. Sunday [Aug.13] was a national holiday for Pakistan, so I decorated the bus with Pakistani flags. When it was a Peruvian holiday a while back I played salsa and meringue all day."
--singing route-80 bus driver Christian Lachance
**
France, chère France
"Ah, la France. How le Pierrot misses you, my dear bosom of my mother. Le Pierrot, he is missing the delicate odours of snails cooked in garlic butter, of freshly baked croissants, of ripe garbage in the alleyways and half-smoked Gauloises smouldering in puddles of red-wine vomit. Le Pierrot misses the pleasant nature of the waiters in the Parisian cafés and the humble charms of the Arab cab drivers. France, my dearest beloved, le Pierrot misses you."
--Le Pierrot, on how dearly he misses France
**
More stench reportage
"It smells like burning flesh. The stench always lingers, becoming especially pungent once or twice a week and it gets to the point where you can't sit on your porch. I've lived here four years and it's getting worse and happening more often."
--Plateau resident Robert Galletti, who lives near the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRMC) at the south-west corner of St-Urbain and Pins
**
Although execution is not out of the question
"Our policy is to follow up after we've disconnected someone and offer to connect them legally. After someone has pirated for one or two years they are addicted--or their children are. We have never arrested or fined a homeowner."
--Claude Hurteau, director of technical quality at Vidéotron cable, on his company's policy toward piracy
**
The pro-pimp lobby
"If you're going to ban pimping because of violence, you're going to have to ban marriage, because more husbands have put their wives in graves than pimps have hos. There are bad pimps, but the majority aren't. I'm not a bad person just because I manipulate women. Dogs and children get manipulated all the time."
--Rosebudd, one of the pimps profiled in the film American Pimp
**
She's so glam
"I never dreamed that gay men would come out for me. It's been one of the most humbling experiences of my life, the way they've taken me in and loved me. When my husband Roe was in prison, they were the ones who took care of me. They sent me money, they sent me gifts. I think I'm a safe person for gay people, because they've been made fun of, put down and ridiculed and I have too."
--Tammy Faye, the first lady televangelist
**
Pounding the hammer and sickle
"We don't have a pacifist ideology, and we don't think we'll have a big change in Canada without violence. The confrontation between classes will get bigger, and it won't happen democratically."
--East-End communist leader Patrice Legendre
**
Choice witches
"The protesters are very, very violent verbally. Blasphemous, I have to say. They would have taken our signs and ripped them up again this year if the police hadn't been there. They're crude. It's absolutely inadmissible. They are anti-democratic and dangerous. Heinous."
--Gilles Grondin, the 74-year-old pro-life president of Campagne Québec Vie on clashing with pro-choice feminist group the Witches
**
Proof they don't teach spelling in landlord school
"NOTICE BE ADVISE THAT THE BUILDING IS CLOSE. NOBODY IS ALLOUAD IN. WE WILL CHARGE IN JUSTICE. FOR ANY EMERGENCY CALL PAGER (514) 801-5052." [sic]
--a sign put up on an apartment building at 1195-1201 Mackay after crazy-glue was jammed into the building's locks so 30 tenants could not get into their homes
**
A cure for crime?
"It costs $75,000 a year to house a prisoner. A bullet costs only 65 cents."
--ex-cop Bob "Trigger" Ménard, a member of the notorious Night Patrol in an interview about the bad old days of Montreal policing
**
Hair fashion heights
"Fashion sense is different from province to province, apparently. In the Western provinces the highly sprayed, backlighted helmet is the height of hair fashion."
--Mirror writer Noemi Lopinto, who ran for the NDP in the federal election in Rosemont/Petite-Patrie and won three per cent of the vote
**
Grotesque steroid abuser repents!
"My fans are Democrats, Republicans, gay, lesbian, black, white, old, young, woman, man--it makes no difference to me. My main objective is to entertain the world. I've never done anything to feel that any one group should be locked out. I'm the most tolerant person in the world. I must say, I give America credit for that, because I did not come to America tolerant. I came to America prejudiced. And because of the education I got here, I learned differently. I was prejudiced generally, against anything that wasn't me."
--Arnold Schwarzenegger
**
Criticizing Israel
"As a Jew, if you criticize Israel you're seen as being somehow disloyal to your own ethnicity. But being Jewish has nothing to do with giving your unconditional support for the State of Israel. We feel the State of Israel can do a lot better."
--Scott Weinstein, founder of the Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation, which initiated a petition signed by 30 people, including Noam Chomsky, for Israel to withdraw from Palestine
**
And then they start a shitty band
"Every year there are always a few pasty-faced kids dressed in black who initially enroll in the funeral directing program because I suppose they think it's cool, or weird or something. But they almost always drop out after the first couple of semesters once they discover that there is nothing particularly sensational about it."
--Elise Briand, funeral director of the Mount Royal Funeral Complex
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