Quote of the week:

"Journalists are following me everywhere, even to my home." - 17-year-old Russian-American tennis phenom Maria Sharapova, in town to compete in the Canadian Open women's tournament this week, in Tuesday's La Presse.

City suffers
compost snafu

Montrealers eager to smell the acrid-but-fulfilling stench of rotting food in their backyards are still waiting for the City of Montreal to give them their compost bins, back-ordered since April. Julien Clot-Goudard, coordinator of Éco-Quartier Rosemont-Petite-Patrie, says the city had the idea of selling the bins dirt-cheap to promote composting but forgot to give someone the job of distributing them. In the meantime, Clot-Goudard is still fielding complaints from wanna-be composters waiting for ecological satisfaction.

"The problem is that the representatives have disappeared," says Clot-Goudard. "Nobody is holding the portfolio right now. In fact, if you can find him, let me know. The city has a store of recycling boxes and compost bins, but nobody at Public Works seems to know who is responsible for getting them to us."

The bins sell for $25, which is as little as a third of the retail price at Rona or Home Hardware. "Since the vote for decentralization, some boroughs are getting them and others aren't. Maybe there are problems between the city and the boroughs, I don't know. There seems to be a problem with recycling bins as well."

Clot-Goudard says approximately 20 people are calling him a day. No one at Public Works seems to be capable of going to the city store, picking up the bins and delivering them. "It's a symptom of a general problem at the city, where they get all their stuff from the same store," he says. » Noemi LoPinto

Balls on the waterfront

Verdun wanted a way to make sure everybody has a ball, so last spring 19-year city council vet Laurent Dugas convinced the borough to put $200,000 aside for the world's only ball festival. "We noted that there was a lack of activities on the waterfront so we thought about putting this on," says Dugas, in a rather excited tone. "There'll be activities with every type of ball, and we'll even be putting up hot air balloons, all on the waterside. There'll be loads of things to do, and contests."

The orbs will start being launched around 4 p.m. on Friday, as participants indulge in football, tennis, basketball, volleyball, baseball, pétanque and soccer, through to Sunday evening. If that's not frenetic enough, there's a BBQ, an outdoor café, a pool party and free balloon rides Friday and Saturday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Plus there'll be musicians and clowns, all of which will culminate in a big show Sunday evening at

8 p.m. on the waterfront near Allard, starring singers Eve and Wilfred.

John Gallagher, another Verdun council vet, credits Dugas with the plan and promises to be there. "But I'm not at the age to be out playing sports," he says. To find the festival, look up and follow the balls, or else simply scoot over towards the riverside in Verdun (behind the Verdun Auditorium might be a place to start). Detail freaks can dial 765-7150 or 765-7255 for more. » Kristian Gravenor

Immigration a joke

Daliso Chaponda can't stay away from Montreal, even when Immigration Canada wants to keep him away. The 24-year-old Concordia creative writing student and comedian from Malawi is looking at getting the boot from Canada by September, he says, because of a bureaucratic foul-up on his part and our country's low priority on keeping foreign artists here. Undaunted, however, Chaponda will be hosting an appeal to Canadians next weekend with his show Don't Let Them Deport Me!

Chaponda's first Montreal appearance was in 1999, when he attended McGill as a computer science student. That didn't work out, so he came back a couple of years later to study creative writing. Since then, he says, he has published several short stories and has plans on releasing a book, and has done a number of stand-up gigs and has appeared on CBC.

"My comedy is mostly about immigration," he says. "Immigration is really, really funny. But comedy for me is also a coping mechanism, it's cathartic."

He says that he doesn't have high hopes that he will be allowed to stay, but if his student visa application isn't accepted, he will try to stay as a registered self-employed artist. "But usually that only works if you've done something huge at Sundance or something," he says.

Chaponda says he has tried several different strategies to stay, including proposing, unsuccessfully, to 97 different women. He will be enlisting the talents of other ethnic comedians next Thursday, Aug. 12 through Saturday, Aug. 14, at the Comedy Zone (1749 René-Lévesque W.), $10, $5 for students. » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Aug. 4–Aug. 17, 1989

On the cover: Lou Reed, coming to town to support his New York album. Reed tells interviewer Martin Siberok he has "15 minutes." When asked why it's taken years for him to reconnect with former bandmates Maureen Tucker and John Cale, he replies, "I don't know. Why is there no God?" Later, Reed asks, "Are we pulling to a close?"

• The Mirror lists Montreal's four worst eyesores: the scrap heap in the Port, the massive warehouse at the foot of Amherst, the Miron Quarry dump and the dilapidated Park Ave. train station.

• Mike Leigh's High Hopes, a bleak look at the Thatcher era, makes it "apparent that the civilized world should pick up an island-sized shovel, and dig a grave for England," writes Lynn Suderman.

• "God appears in this modern capitalist Sodom, but he turns out to be more pathetic and snivelling than everyone else," writes Aurele Parisien in her review of Paul Keenan's adaptation of the Brecht/Weill cabaret Mahoganny Songspiel.

Angel >> Buprenorphine Some 60,000 American heroin and painkiller addicts have been getting access to a less addictive and less humiliating form of help than that offered at local methadone clinics. Buprenorphine is a prescription drug that provides a less euphoric high and is less addictive than methadone, and does not require its users to visit depressing, stigmatized clinics. It relieves withdrawal symptoms like nausea, sleeplessness and the shakes, but won't produce a high if taken above a certain dosage, so overdose risks are far lower. Relapse rates over the past year and a half the drug has been on the market are very low, and its popularity is expected to grow drastically. Unfortunately, it is still not available in Canada.
Insect >> Student debt debacles Quebec's once famously generous student loan system has been going through a bad dance with the Charest paring knife lately, and results are gruesome. Not only because bursaries have dried up and loans soared, but also because the government has had to pony up for defaulted debts like never before. Last year alone, the province forked over $129-million to banks to cover almost 11,000 borrowers who couldn't make their payments. Then, last week, the new computer system that supposedly made loan distribution easier crashed, delaying cheques to between 15,000 and 20,000 students. And Charest made education an election priority.