| Montreal, On the Net

The Montreal Screwjob

Among my many RSS feeds (about 300) I have a few set to scour the Internet for any new mentions of “Montreal”. While this alerts me to press releases from companies based here, news about the city and news from abroad that has some connection to here, it also picks up on a few things regularly that aren’t quite what I’m looking for:

1. The Montreal Canadiens. The last major sports team in the city. NHL digests, standings, briefs, game reports and other information are all over the place online, and so a single AP story will generate hundreds of hits all about the same game that I just watched on TV.

2. The band “Of Montreal”, who are not actually from Montreal. Tour date announcements (they’re playing here next week), reviews, and random MySpace rants for and against the band, or diaries of people going to see the band.

3. My favourite: The Montreal Screwjob. Of all events that have happened in this city, from the Richard Riots to Expo 67, none has so little relevance to people who live there and yet so much relevance to a worldwide niche as when Vince McMahon double-crossed Bret “the Hit Man” Hart at the Molson Centre. The Wikipedia article is extensive, as are articles still being written about it a decade later. The story is a fascinating look at the politics of professional wrestling, and an interesting spin on the idea that “professional wrestling is fixed.”

| Media

CBC podcasting Quebec election

The CBC is running a weekly podcast of news in the run-up to the Quebec provincial election. It’s short (about 10 minutes) and seems to be just a series of radio news stories strung together by Laurent Lavigne’s very news-like introductions.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Getting the week’s election news digested into 10 minutes should find an audience.

| Montreal

Couldn’t see nothing

I went out this evening to try to catch the lunar eclipse. My first stop was the Planetarium, which I heard had special plans for it. Though others must have also gotten that news (including a CTV cameraman), there was no organization outside the building as advertised. It’s just as well, since the cloud cover and tall downtown buildings prevented anyone from seeing anything.

I decided to head up to the mountain to check it out from the Camilien Houde lookout. By the time I got up there (taking the 11 bus through a narrow road with cars double-parking snowbanks on both sides was excruciatingly slow), the moon was well in the sky and the eclipse was on its way out.

At the lookout I found two amateur astronomers who were taking pictures through their telescopes. They were kind enough to let me look through one, but all I could see was a blurry white circle. The clouds prevented any good photography, and they weren’t too crazy about that.

Though the moon did disappoint somewhat, the view of the city at night from that lookout is always worth going

Now I’m headed out for the Nuit Blanche.

| Business, In the news

Mommy, where does coffee come from? (and other stories)

In today’s paper:

Kate Lunau and Vincenzo D’Alto have an interesting feature series on fair trade coffee in Nicaragua, and the economic impacts of this producer-friendly system.

Meanwhile, Roberto Rocha’s tech blog is live, renamed “TechnoCité” and with a cute mug shot.

Freelancer Christopher DeWolf has a long feature on the STM’s smart card payment system, which is supposed to go live next year.

This Financial Post story is hilarious, quoting RBC’s chief over ATM fees:

“There are areas of concern [for Canada] such as the accelerating growth in public spending, a tax structure that is biased against investment, a fragmented and expensive regulatory structure, and the deterioration in [Canada’s] competitive position,” Mr. Nixon said.

Exactly. Why focus on issues real Canadians care about? They’re small change. We need to focus on those poor investors who are only getting 6.5% annual return instead of 7%. Those are the people in crisis here.

Not to say I’m all in favour of eliminating ATM fees. After all, that’s what’s given us those white-label ATMs all over the place, which are so expensively convenient. ATMs are the future.

| Media

Indistinct society

The Other Bloke’s Blog has an interesting comment on the recent Society for News Design awards haul (23 total) by The Gazette: shouldn’t usability (both online and off) be taken into account as well?

The National Post (38 awards) also felt the need to toot its horn.

La Presse was best in Canada with 43.

Meanwhile at least one person is pointing out that giving out over 1,000 design awards a year kinda dilutes their value.

| Media, Montreal

Journalist, diss thyself (now with video)

So Concordia journalism prof Ross Perigoe was all like “hey Gazoo, you be all racist, mofo!”

And Gazette editor-in-chief Andrew Phillips was all like “oh no you didn’t!”

And Ross was like “yuh-uh, I looked at 362 articles you done published just after 9/11 and you be all negative ‘gainst Muslims, biatch!”

And Andrew was like “why you be all up in our journalists’ face man?”

And Ross was like “hey man, hate the game, not the playah, yous peeps be cool, yo, they’s just part of the oppressive system.”

Ross be all done write a thesis ’bout this cuz he got no life.

And so Ross was like “you didn’t do enough to fight back against racist tendencies, you white-ass crackah”

And Andrew was like “dude, it was right after frickin’ 9/11! What are you, brain damaged or somethin’?”

And then this guy Rachad was like “Ross dude, you need to review your methodology.”

And Andrew was like “oh snap! Pwned!”

And there was a Gazette journalist right there and he wrote about the whole thing. Dude.

UPDATE: YouTube has video of the question period. Perigoe’s speech and Phillips’s rebuttal are on Google Video.

The Concordian covers it here.

| Media, Movies

How can it still be before time?

Remember The Land Before Time? I do. It was a well-regarded 1988 animated movie about tiny dinosaurs separated from their parents. It had a happy ending (sorry if I spoiled it for you) but for a young kid watching it, there were some tense emotional moments there.

For some reason (greed), its makers decided to turn this story into an industry.  They produced 11 sequels, about one every year and a half. Instead of a well-written, gritty adventure story that can be enjoyed by young and old alike, they turned it into a musical farce that a four-year-old would quickly find boring.

Their latest outing comes out on DVD this week. I just saw a commercial for it on TV. I know all movies pick and choose what critics they’ll quote, but in this case the only two quotes were from a parenting magazine. In fact, it was Parenting Magazine. This magazine. Somehow I don’t think their movie critics are as harsh as the L.A. Times or Roger Ebert.

This spring, they’re adding a Cartoon Network TV series to the empire.
God help us all.

| Business, Media, Montreal

This hour has 26 minutes

I glanced at this ad in the West Island section of today’s Gazette. It’s for commercial real estate for rent.

Under “public transportation” it lists two things: the 210 bus from Fairview and “minutes from P.E.T. international airport”. First of all, I don’t know how appealing it is to have a rush-hour school-days only bus that’s filled to the brim with CEGEP students being your only source of public transit. Secondly, this building is more than 20 km from the airport. Google calculates the travel time as 26 minutes, which is clearly when there’s no traffic. Does that qualify as “minutes from the airport?” If so, isn’t the entire island minutes from the airport?