Quote of the week:

“With the magazine in one hand and the penis in the other hand, there’s no room for a crack pipe or a gun.” —Playboy-TV actress and former Penthouse Pet Julie Strain, eulogizing the soon-to-be bust Penthouse, in Saturday’s Globe and Mail.

AIDS comings and goings

The battle against HIV/AIDS continues, and two events this weekend show that the prevention and awareness warriors aren’t ready to talk peace just yet.

The first is a fundraiser at Brutopia (1219 Crescent) on Thursday, Sept. 11. Odette Pretty, a youth educator at AIDS Community Care, is looking to raise money for the groups that are sending her to Togo, West Africa next week. Her six-month stint there—sponsored by AIDS Community Care and Canadian Crossroads International—will involve AIDS prevention work.

“What I want to stress is the importance of information exchange,” says the 28-year-old. “The programs we have here aren’t culturally specific, so I hope to develop some sort of support connection and open communication between organizations here and in Africa.”

Bands at the show include Dibondoko, the Shane Murphy Trio, Bull Moose, the Cains and the United Steel Workers of Montreal. Suggested donation is five bones.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Sept. 12, Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the UN and now the UN’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, will be opening up a weekend honouring the two recipients of this year’s second annual Awards for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. “It’s high time we bring attention to HIV/AIDS as a human rights disaster of the 21stcentury,” says Ralf Jürgens, head of the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, who is presenting the awards along with Human Rights Watch. The winners will be announced on Friday.

Free public workshops and panels continue over the weekend at the Holiday Inn Midtown Montreal (420 Sherbrooke W.). For more info, call 397-6828, email nmorin@aidslaw.ca or visit http://www.aidslaw.ca/Maincontent/events/agm2003/e-finalprogram.pdf. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Magic knows no borders

You got your Doctors Without Borders, Reporters Without Borders, Engineers, Teachers and any assortment of other professions that have been linked with the catchy title.

The phenomenon didn’t go unnoticed by magician Fouad Filali, who moved here from Algeria a decade ago and who launched his Magiciens Sans Frontières three years back. Filali has assembled other big-hearted mystery men to put smiles on the faces of youth affected by war, terrorism, exclusion and physical and moral misery, and now plan their most ambitious project, a benefit for young Algerians orphaned by last May’s quakes. Fellow mystics and illusionists taking the stage for the cause include big swingers like Karl Cloutier, who has won awards on three continents, as well as Canadian magic champ Mario Choinière, Stéphane Bourgoin, who consults on things magical with the Cirque du Soleil, along with the esteemed Yannick Lacroix, Donald Côté and Mehdi Talbi.

“He visited Algeria and saw these orphaned children living in tents with nothing to play with. Their deprivation really struck him so now he’s trying to do something for them, give them some toys and other supplies that would bring some joy to their lives,” says press rep Sylvie Deslauriers.

She notes that Syria, Angola and the rest of Quebec are all on next year’s itinerary for the borderless magicians. “They go wherever they need to make children laugh.” The 400 tickets at the Théâtre du Gesù benefit on Friday, Sept. 12 go for $75. For more info call 246-9305. » Kristian Gravenor

Music as medicine

They say that music soothes the savage beast, but it can also make the sick feel better. That’s why today, Thursday, Sept. 11, marks the first Voices United/ Voix Unies benefit concert for music therapy, held by Tyberiade Productions and the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation.

“Music therapy uses music to maintain or improve a client’s quality of life,” says Pascal Comeau, a therapist in the palliative care department at the Children’s. But music can help kids with all kinds of problems, he says, from autism to low self-esteem to helping calm them down before surgery. “It’s an art, therapy and a science,” he says.

The concert will help fund his work at the hospital, one that organizers feel should definitely be kept going.

“Given that there’s only one foundation in Canada dedicated to music therapy [Ontario’s Canadian Music Therapy Trust Fund], we thought that the benefit would be a nice annual event to lend support the hospital’s program,” says Véronique Bégin, vice-president of Tyberiade.

The bilingual concert will be held at the Cabaret, 2111 St-Laurent, with the bands Exilium, Moza and Stunned. Band bios and audio samples are available at the Tyberiade Web site, www.tyberiade.com, and ticket-holders will be given a promotional CD. Tickets are $20 and profits go to the Children’s Hospital. For tickets call Tyberiade at 814-4337. » Alexandra Spunt

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

16 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Sep. 4-17, 1987

On the cover: A very fuzzy photo of B.C. punk poet Judy Radul, as the Mirror looks at the Ultimatum II new literature fest. She says humour and especially improvisation are especially important to her work. “You can change it right until the second, you can change it right when you’re doing it. It’s much more fun than making an object and looking at it, coming back into a room to see if anybody else is looking at it.”

• Whither business ethics? wonders the Mirror as it reveals that only Université de Montréal’s Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) requires students to take an ethics course, although only at the post-graduate level.

• Jenny Ross reports that “Sons of the Desert’s van broke down in Vegas, ruining their tour. They were in the Nevada desert for six hours. ‘We really earned our name!’” says band member Maureen.

• Two Michael Caine films are reviewed: The Whistle Blower, in which he plays a grieving father who suspects MI5 murdered his son, and The Fourth Protocol, in which he plays an MI5 agent.

Angel >> Retirement Quebec’s unemployment rate may have leaped sharply of late, but young graduates, don’t despair. There will be jobs for you, eventually. Emploi-Quebec estimates that between now and 2006, 169,000 new jobs will have to be filled in the Montreal region, and of those, 87,000—or 52 per cent—are thanks to people retiring from the workforce. Most of the jobs opening will require some sort of skill or specific training, and the provincial government has stated that making the workforce qualified for those jobs is a priority. Which is good news, because all those baby-boomer pension payments are going to be killer.
Insect >> The impending Chez Marijane crackdown Montreal’s finest are threatening to arrest anyone found with marijuana at the new marijuana café slated to open in the Latin Quarter later this month. This despite the fact that there will be a strict no-trafficking policy and that a marijuana decriminalization bill is slated to pass through Parliament any day now. Although the two café’s main organizers—the Bloc Pot and the Marijuana Party—say the opening will go ahead as planned, this decidedly un-Montreal behaviour on the part of our constabulary is disheartening. With similar coffee shops set to open across the country—even in Toronto!—our good name is sure to suffer.