Quoted on that

>> Silly and sage things said in these pages

by CRAIG SEGAL

Couple of dicks
“Basically we’re saying, ‘Look, there’s nothing pretty about the male genitalia, but let’s all have a good belly laugh at its expense. Let’s be honest—it’s very funny.’”
—Simon Morley, one half of Puppetry of the Penis, in town for the Just for Laughs

All tapped out
“Well, this late in our careers it’s too late for ideas. If we get the first sign of an idea we have to lie down and take a pill.”
—David St. Hubbins of mock rock group Spinal Tap on whether the group has any new ideas

Orgie de censorship
“If this had been an image of 12 women having sex, the cop would have cum all over it.”
—Local painter Martial, reacting to police taking down his painting “Orgie de culture,” featuring several gay men involved in sexual acts, from the window of the dance club Sky

Yuppie invasion
“These people move here from the suburbs because they have been drawn by the hype, and they are in for a shock. The kind of person who drives to the dépanneur to buy milk hates the street festivals and the parades. They buy a condo for thousands of dollars on l’Esplanade and they call the police to complain that there are Tam-tams. What I want to say is, ‘When you were buying the beautiful place on Mont-Royal or St-Denis, you didn’t look around?’”
—Constable Sylvia Da Sousa of Station 37, on the new wave of Plateau residents

Snob snubber
“I had a couple of Westmount ladies walk out on me. I guess I can’t blame them, you know? There’s only so much you can take.”
—Playwright David Fennario, on reactions to his anti-Westmount Mysteries of Montreal: A Hidden History of Canada walking tour

Looking to get some
“One night I went to a club in the Village, and someone who worked there came up to me and said, ‘Do you realize where you are?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘You’re in a gay bar.’ And I said, ‘I know.’ And he said, ‘So you want to be here?’ And I replied, ‘Yeah.’ At that point, the bar employee seemed to get it.”
—Yvon Provencher, a gay blind man on being gay and blind

And we don’t want to hear
“I’m certainly not going to use my position at this newspaper to hammer away at issues when people don’t want to hear it.”
—Imported Gazette editor-in-chief Peter Stockland

How to be cool, #2,398
“I’m more into photography. I had a thing where I wanted to do a page in Hustler or maybe two pages, like Kool Keith’s picks, girls I find myself and photograph.”
—futuro music nerd Kool Keith, on one of his loftier hobbies

Mussolini lives
“I had to walk out on my grandmother’s funeral because I found it too disturbing having this guy on the ceiling of the church looking down.”
—Frank, a 46-year-old TMR resident, who doesn’t like the painting of Mussolini on the ceiling of the Madonna della Difesa church

Nice work if you can get it
“It can smell of shit or really rotten meat. Especially when the freezer is on defrost cycle or on really hot days when it decides to shut down completely.”
—Autopsy attendant Kurt Hemmings on whether the autopsy room smells bad

Women cheat better
“I can tell you absolutely that women are much more careful about cheating than men—they are a lot more discreet.”
—Patrick Leroux, private dick

Bin Laden’s not queer positive?
“Bin Laden would hate this book! He would want to burn it. It has queer-positive articles, pro-feminist articles. It’s anti-violent. B’nai Brith is using the tragedy of September 11 to attack the CSU and it’s an insult to all of the people that were killed in the September 11 attack.”
—Concordia Student Union researcher David Bernans, on B’Nai Brith’s accusation that the CSU-published student agenda is a blueprint for Osama bin Laden

Electric car, anyone?
“Sell your SUV right now—they’re destroying the planet and killing people. It’s bad.”
—Keyboard player Money Mark

Misfortune teller
“A lot can happen in two weeks. Your foreign office might be in a tent in the mountains by then.”
—Mirror journalist Ken Hechtman to a Taliban official who told him to bring back his visa application in two weeks

Batter up
“It’s like being an athlete. You have to be well-trained before you try any of this.”
—Local porn star and web mistress Abbraxa, on how she is able to insert the slugger end of a baseball bat into her anus

Ready for jail
“I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Me, if they want me to do a couple of days in jail, I’m glad to do it, I don’t give a fuck. You know, bottom line, I pay taxes, I pay rent and what the fuck, I’m trying to make money and if English works for me, or French works for me, it’s fine. Chinese too.”
—Sam Servello, owner of Boutique Rock on Sherbrooke and Girouard, on being fined $604 by the language police

This just in: karaoke does not suck
“Karaoke is the great equalizer. Anyone can do it, and that way you get a greater variety of ‘entainment.’ Sometimes you’ll be surprised and even moved, to laughter or to tears. Usually, I find it moves me to a certain grey area where I’m not sure if it’s tears or laughter.”
—Canned Hamm’s Little Hamm

Callous arsonists
“This particular group doesn’t really care if people live. That’s what we find particularly disgusting about this investigation. In general, people trying to control a bar will ask people to leave before tossing in a Molotov cocktail. But these particular fools set fires in stairwells or roofs. They have no regard for human life and property. They are dangerous.”
—MUCPD’s Doug Hurley on why bikers terrorized residents of the island’s southwest with a series of arson attacks

Canuck wisdom
“America’s great, except for the people.”
—the right neighbourly Planet Smasher Dave Cooper

A woman’s best friends
“I don’t want anything to do with that fucking day anymore. It’s been ruined by prissy ooh-I-broke-a-fingernail women who just use the day as an excuse to get flowers from their husbands. That we continue to even have a day blows my mind. What’s it for anyway? To celebrate womaness? It just proves that we haven’t made as much progress as anyone thought. I’m staying in with my vibrator and a box of chocolates.”
—activist Karyn Kanu, on Women’s Day

Each to their own fetish
“I’m into plush bunnies, but not just sexually. I feel more comfortable when I’m in my bunny suit or online talking to other furries about what it means to be a fur. Furverts are people who like to give it to teddy bears through strategically placed holes (SPHs) and fuck other furries in fursuits. Or sometimes we just have pile-ons where a bunch of furries lie together like pack animals. We make up a pretty small part of the community.”
—Plushofile “McElhone,” on his love of plush toys

Cross legs and wince
“For a long time, the treatments had to be injected directly into the penis with a hypodermic needle, which a lot of people were uncomfortable about. But now it is also available as a penile suppository. You insert it with an applicator into the tip of your penis.”
—A telenurse, explaining the medical marvel behind treating erectile dysfunction

Junkies support fascism
“Most of the heroin used here comes from Burma. Buying heroin just supports the military regime, since they control the drug trade.”
— Comité de Solidarité Birmanie member Jean-Michel Archambault-Cyr

Ah, to be young and foolish again
“I was 22 years old, I was coked out of my head and infatuated with the Mafia and got involved with the Cotroni family.”
—Former musician-turned-Texas-court-case Yank Barry, on his slow descent into a life of crime

School of hard knocks
“This will be a good education for the next generation. They were in danger of growing up soft.”
—Tribal fighter in Pakistan, as volunteers marched off to war in Afghanistan

Good and gras
“I spent a year bingeing out—I made a film about grass, after all. I had a very healthy appetite.”
—Documentary filmmaker Ron Mann, promoting his new film Grass

I’m a god, you hear me? A GOD!
“In some parts of the world we pro bowlers are looked upon as gods. Bowling is the national sport of Malaysia, you know. It’s even bigger than ping-pong.”
—Danyck Brière, professional bowler

Frogs were not meant to be cows
“There’s a lack of logic about development in this city and a lack of democracy. We don’t say it often enough. Other countries say no to this kind of development. We shouldn’t be the frog that wants to be as big as a cow.”
—BenoÎt Bélanger of Action du Parc, on the impending Loblaws at St-Urbain and Mont-Royal

Don’t matter to us one way or th’other
“If one day you read in the newspapers that I have died in a hospital of ‘natural causes’—do not believe it: I was murdered.”
—multiple murderer psycho Valery Fabrikant

No wonder Joey died young
“I think ripping off the Ramones is part of the American way. A lot of bands do it, but we used to get singled out for copying them—it’s not even worth talking about.”
—Donna R. guitarist for the Donnas

He deserves $22 an hour
“But occasionally when I’ve come face to face with a pair of beady little red eyes I’ve taken my finger and put it on the rat’s nose—not really playing with him exactly, but kind of. It’s a myth that rats will attack you.”
—Denis Heroux, sewer worker, on one of his job perks

Best not get arrested south of the
border
“A lot of people would be surprised how many Canadians are doing extremely long sentences in the U.S. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws have led to obscene sentences compared to what we have in Canada. Some inmates are kept 23 hours a day alone in a cell, and when they’re allowed out they’re handcuffed and shackled with a stun gun held against them.”
—Graham Stewart of the Ottawa-based John Howard Society, which works with prisoners’ rights

He kisses you
“I want to help face-to-face hungry children. I will work every time peace. Who needs help, we work together and we help face-to-face. Very important. Because, this time, all famous people, pop stars and movie stars, they know me. I have many fans—Meg Ryan, David Bowie, they are my fans! All famous people, they don’t contact directly poor people, malaria people, hunger people. They live very big house, many, many cars. But we must think other people too! We must share!”
—Turkish Internet swinger Mahir Cagri of “I Kiss You” fame

She’s high class
“I’ve been thinking about my cello sitting there in my room gathering dust. I’m very anxious to get back to it and start sweeping those strings.”
—Chyna, WWF wrestler and author, on taking a break from the madness

What did you expect?
“Mother Earth is a spaceship and human beings are in mutiny aboard her. [And] Canada is a cow where the milk of democracy leaks, and we must admit that it’s in Quebec where we find the cream of freedom of expression.”
—Mercier Bloc Pot by-election candidate Pierre Audet on something or other

Good thing you found a replacement
“We were on our soundstage, ready to do the scene where the women devour Christ. An actress was very cool with it, but then her boyfriend read the shot list and said if she did the scene, he’d break up with her. We found a replacement, which was lucky, because she was the one who disembowels Christ and then masturbates him with his entrails.”
—local filmmaker Mitch Davis, on his not-that-easy-to-watch film Subconscious Cruelty

Does that mean genitals are full of bad tattoos?
“You don’t have a lot of leeway to do interesting work on genitals. Even breasts are a challenge. You want to do something that will still look good as a person ages and their skin changes.”
—Tattoo artist Safwan, on tattooing the privates

Wouldn’t we all
“I’d like to be known as a guy who runs through water sprinklers while playing with puppies and, uh, cats too. I’m not a depressed guy. I mean, I’m happy most of the time.”
—Singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo on his disposition

Man’s best friend
“What has the world come to when children are just things you kill or abort, and if you have them they become drug-addicted whores like in Traffic, and you raise a dog because they’re more preferable?”
—Subculture filmmaker Paul Morrissey on America

Killer instinct
“Frankly, I was sitting there thinking, ‘Nobody knows I’m here. This man has killed 5,000 of my people and is bragging about it to me with no remorse, no hesitation. I could just kill these two—I’m familiar with how to do these things—and be gone and nobody would ever know about it.’ It was like an out-of-body experience I was having. But in the end I decided not to kill them. I do my best to follow the law.”
—Nazi hunter Steven Rambam, on keeping control of his inner-animal around an ex-Nazi in B.C.

Yo Momma
“Friday I went to the home where [Tremblay’s] mother lives in Outremont, and she asked me, ‘When will my son visit me?’”
—Mayor Pierre Bourque playfully accusing Gérald Tremblay of neglecting his 91-year-old mother

Perhaps it’s just resting
“Jazz is dying. I mean I was up at your Montreal jazz fest, and it was okay, but it felt like I was in a jazz supermarket.”
—Neo-jazzbo Matthew Shipp

Hippie bashing
“The hippies brought with them this Eastern mysticism that they didn’t even understand themselves. They questioned everything that was good about progress and technology, and destroyed Western civilization, as far as I’m concerned. Culture is dead, and has been since the mid-‘60s, when the dirty hippies took over. And now corporate thought – you’d think corporations would be a purely American product of progress and capitalism, but they’re not. Not any more. Now corporations are run by ex-hippies, people who go to retreats and beat drums in the woods and bury themselves up to their necks and have Indians piss on them. Can you believe all this crazy stuff? They’ve taken over everything!”
—Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, promoting his new cartoon, The Ripping Friends

Nudity is not sexy
“Some people want to have sex there and we don’t want that. To be nude on a beach has nothing to do with sexual activities.”
—Jean-François Audet, president of the Quebec Federation of Nudism, on how the lack of official monitoring has occasionally led some to defy the spirit of the pastime

Stinky piggy
“I’d say pig manure is the prime source of pollution in Quebec and nothing is being done to control it. For example, many pig farmers manipulate the rules by keeping 599 pigs because 600 would force them into public hearings and the government tolerates this.”
— Priscilla Gareau, president of the Green Movement of the Mauricie, on the drawbacks of Quebec’s considerable dumps of pig manure

Gas mask money
“I expect to be completely sold out of gas mask filters in the next day or two. We’re not trying to gauge our customers but wholesalers have jacked up their prices as much as 100 per cent.”
—local International Surplus owner Jack Moloughney on skyrocketing gas mask sales

It’s probably where you belong
“There is one reason why I chose the Canadian Alliance. The word ‘alliance’ is first used in [the French translation of] Genesis 9, the story of Noah’s Ark, God’s gift of the rainbow to the world, and the seven laws for the world to follow. Those are the Noachian laws.”
—Shiloh Quinn, on why he ran for leadership of the Canadian Alliance

Legal hate crimes
“The problem is the Montreal police department has a hate-crime policy on paper, but no infrastructure on how to collect data, how to get victim impact statements, when to recognize a hate crime and when not to. The problem is we don’t have a very effective hate crime system.”
—Fo Niemi, director of the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations, on why Montreal hate crimes are not being treated properly by police

Why can’t we be friends?
“For those who think about it, Sept. 11 was proof that the most sophisticated weapons in the world cannot save you from disaster and thus was a direct blow to the rationale that stockpiling nuclear weapons is a deterrence. The best security is to build friendship across the world, to desist from arms production and sales. If the Americans, who export close to 50 per cent of the world’s arms, do not learn this lesson, we’re all in trouble.”
—Documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, promoting his new film, War and Peace

Star basher
“Hollywood is full of immature fuckwits! If they were manufacturing shampoo it wouldn’t be so bad, we’d just wash our hair in it. But they’re making film which affects our children, our art and our culture. Films affect the way people think. Stars also are bullshit. Stars are in the sky, not movies! It’s bullshit!”
—Filmmaker Paul Cox on his movie Innocence

Fun with activism
“Political activism can be very pleasurable and joyous and it’s not something dowdy and sucky and boring. It’s really sex and fun and maddening and sad. I really wanna make people dance.”
—Kathleen Hanna on how her band Le Tigre is not anti-pleasure <<