It's all greek to me.....

Montrealer loses battle to paint Greek flag on garage door in Quebec Superior Court

ALAN HUSTAK

The Gazette

Sunday, August 24, 2008

MONTREAL - A Pierrefonds man has been ordered to remove the huge Greek flag painted on the garage door of his house because it violates the borough's esthetic standards.

Quebec Superior Court judge France Charbonneau ruled last week that nothing prevents Theodore Antonopoulos from flying the Greek flag on his property, but that by painting blue and white stripes on a garage door he has violated a municipal bylaw that governs the overall look of the street.

"A municipality has the authority to set uniform standards within its jurisdiction and for the buildings within it," she writes.

The ruling has taken Antonopoulos by surprise.

"It's a shock to me. I haven't been informed, and the flag is still there," he told The Gazette this morning. "I will speak to my lawyer and see if there are grounds for an appeal. None of the neighbours have complained to me about it. None at all."

© The Gazette 2008

Now I don't know about you, but why the fuck would a superior court judge, who is so backed up, what with meth addled rapists and such waiting years to get their day in court, feel the need to take such fast action about the color coding of one poor bastard's garage door. I mean there are all kinds of better ways to spend his time. Personally, I think if you want paint a mural of Ron Jeremy and Bill Clinton playing poker with those dogs from the painting, knock yourself out. There are whole blocks, metro cars, buses etc. looking like something straight out of the Road Warrior thanks to graffiti and tagging, but this guys garage door is an obscenity. You just know that people are going to bombard the newspapers with photos of buildings painted white and blue from all over Quebec. I wonder if they would have bullied this man if it had been a Canadian flag guarding his Geo Metro.

Memoirs of an Idiot Hunter, Part I

I was out for an early morning stroll on Wellington street in Verdun today (picture oldschool small town main street, shopping district 15 blocks long) taking in the sights ( breakfast cafe patios, hookers with their thongs showing in three or more places) and smells ( fresh croissants and danishes at Gaummond, roofing tar on the next block) and came across something I just didn't understand.

In the doorway of a down and out pet shop, was a pink cardboard box. I go to check it out. On top of the box is marked " kittens, two months old" in blue marker. The box was then taped up eight ways to Sunday, and laying in the already ruthless sun. Oh, I forgot to mention that the saint who did this poked two holes in the top of the box with a Bic pen.

So this wonderlunk had the brains to leave the kitties with their mother till they were weened, looked after all their needs, then stuck them in a cardboard box to roast for a few hours before the pet store owner sobered up and decides to open. Real genius. I'm surprised he hadn't tried mailing them to Bubbles in Sunnyvale.

I looked around and spied a stack of boxes in front of the Dollarama, bound for recycling and walked down, got a good size crate and folded it in three. At least this way I could shelter them from the sun without killing the airways.

I'm gonna go by in the afternoon tomorrow to check in on them at the store. Hopefully they made it.

Finally The Pendulum Swings Back.....

I was really pleased this week reading stories out of Ontario, that municipalities are starting to take a stand against bottled water. London is phasing the sale and distribution of it out of all public buildings by the new year. Now Toronto is looking into similar steps. Sure there will be public outcry ( hello smokers and cell phone toting vehicular death machines) for the first little while.

Its not a total ban, just the governments saying they have to do their part. You can still sit in your 2 1/2 apartment smoking up a storm, and rest easy, knowing that you have both of your closets half full( gotta save room for a few flats of WildcatXXXmax Dry) of that water that was on sale at such a good price last month. But all your clothes fit on the shower rod anyway. And learning sponge bath without hot water will be easy - especially when you realize that the five quarter full, lukewarm bottles from yesterday are enough to do it. Now you are truly recycling my friend.

I can't wait for Montreal to jump on the bandwagon. Its great that the STM has finally put paper recycling boxes for their newspapers, but placing bins for plastic at exits would be a great idea too.

It's not like we don't have good tap water in the northeast. It's not as if it tastes like fertilizer(howdy Saskatchewan). Time to give it a try.

The Wild Winter That Was 2008.

You know, Montreal really does roll the winners as far as winters go. Who can forget the savage seven day stretch of -30 temps in January 89? How about the viciousness of the Icestorm of 1998? It's now the 10th of April 2008 and I still have over three feet of snow in my f@#king backyard.
We should have known that with the mild November and start to December that we would have to pay for it on the other end. The city really did its best to keep on top of the snow removal,at least our section of the city, but the sheer amount of snow dumped by four major ( 30cm plus) storms caused lengthy disruptions to traffic, life and living in Montreal this Winter.

There is an old Cucumber Rock song that goes ' don't know what you got till it's gone'. I came to learn just how true that is this winter. The whole point of living in a lower apartment is having the backyard for the dogs. Space for them to play in and call their own. When your four and five foot fences disappear they think they own the whole damn block. Let them out for a quick pee before bed and it turns into a T shirt & shorts chase down the alley in minus double digits yelling at two retarded jailbirds who can't quite pull together an organized getaway. Murray, the Samoyed mix used to be real good at it. Gone for days, till we could find out which pound he was at. I think the whole concept of leaving the general vicinity of the food dish was a little confusing to Nalin, and she was slowing him down. At one point we were having to tie the fluffy one up if he was going out. That didn't work for him at all. What's important in the end is that there were no major incidents and both of them made it through the winter safe and healthy.
The great thing about a cold brutal winter like we had was the lack of flu season. The warmer temperatures of the last few years bred virus on top of virus. Not this year. I've already got my fingers crossed and bought a new shovel for next year.

Raffle winner saves giant lobster
By Les Perreaux



Click here to find out more!

MONTREAL — Goliath the giant lobster was hours away from a scalding, steamy end at a Boston-area Super Bowl party when Marlene Casciano looked deep into his beady eyes.

Casciano bought a raffle ticket, won the 20-pound New England bar prize and set off a rescue mission that will land the large crustacean in a Montreal aquarium.

“I really wanted this after seeing the lobster, just the sheer size of him was incredible,” said Casciano, who says she normally eats lobster like “a good New Englander.”

“People were explaining to me that he would have to be really old to get to that size. It just seemed to me he deserved to live rather than end up in a boiling pot.”

Casciano was with friends at a bar called Steamers in Taunton, Mass., when she caught a glimpse of the lobster, likely aged somewhere between 30 and 50 years, with a crusher claw the size of her forearm.

“I was actually holding the tickets and started praying so we could rescue him,” said Casciano, who works at a Boston executive training firm.

“I was so excited.”

After winning the draw, she named the beast Goliath for his obvious girth as well as in honour of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

As a diehard fan of the defeated New England Patriots, it seemed fitting to toss her own Giant into the ocean from a Cape Cod beach.

“The bar owner got such a kick out of me,” she said. “He started explaining, ‘No, you can’t just dump him on the beach, you need a boat, it would have to go deep in the ocean.’ It wasn’t as simple as I was thinking.”

Goliath went back into the bar’s lobster tank for the night, and the next day Casciano started calling wildlife experts, including the New England Aquarium in Boston.

It turned out the Montreal Biodome had just been in touch about acquiring a giant lobster, should one fall on the doorstep of the Boston aquarium.

Serge Pepin, the Biodome’s curator of animal collections, says he was looking for a large specimen for his aquarium’s 2.5-million-litre tank.

“Large lobsters are pretty rare and pretty impressive for the public,” Pepin said.

“American lobster is a key species of our collection plan for the St. Lawrence ecosystem. We have smaller specimens that are not so easily seen, so this specimen will be wonderful.”

The day after the Super Bowl, Casciano swaddled Goliath in towels soaking in salt water and ice packs, and bundled him into her car for the hour-long drive to the Boston aquarium.

The rubber band immobilizing his finger-snapping claw fell off.

“So there he was, alone in the car with me, with his crusher claw free,” she said. “It was a bit nerve-racking, but he didn’t move around at all.”

Goliath is doing well in a quarantine tank at the New England Aquarium, brandishing his claws at anyone who comes near. He is expected to move to Canada once paperwork is completed early next month. He will likely go on display a few weeks later.

“He’s very alert, and being very aggressive about defending his territory,” said aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse.

LaCasse said there is an important conservation element to Casciano’s good deed. Biologists and fishery authorities in Canada and the United States try to discourage feasting on large lobsters.

The reproduction rates of lobsters over five pounds are exponentially higher than those of the one-pound lobster more often found on plates.

In parts of Canada and Maine, which produces 80 per cent of the U.S. lobster supply, anything more than five pounds must be thrown back.

LaCasse says large lobsters make up a small market share, and are often desired more for the spectacle than the meat.

The big ones don’t even taste very good, Pepin adds.

“It’s not so good to eat, the flesh is tough, it’s really not so interesting.”


I am so there at the Biodome as soon as this bad boy shows up. What a great story. He is gonna so rock the St Lawrence tank. Snapping at the 6 foot Sturgeon and Arctic Char. A great excuse to go back soon.

Holy Trustfunds, Batman!

ELLWOOD CITY, Pa. - Holy collectibles, Batman!

A near-mint copy of Detective Comics No. 27, a pre-Second World War comic featuring Batman's debut, was recently found in an attic and sold to a local collector.

The comic is considered to be the second-most valuable available and can fetch up to US$500,000. The only comic considered more valuable is Action Comics No. 1, in which Superman makes his first appearance.

Collector Todd McDevitt said the Batman issue he bought is worth about $250,000, but he won't say exactly how much he paid or who sold it to him.

"It was a typical story of someone cleaning up junk in their attic and finding an old comic book and wondering if this was one of those ones that was worth a lot of money," McDevitt told the Beaver County Times.

McDevitt, owner of the Pittsburgh region's five New Dimension Comics stores, said he has been saving money since 1986 so that he could buy a valuable comic when it appeared.

When the seller walked in with the Batman issue, "my eyes almost popped out of my head," McDevitt said.

"I guess I should have been more reserved, but I'm not a very good poker player," he said.

Experts estimate there are between 20 and a few hundred copies of the Batman debut.

McDevitt's comic now sits safely in an airtight bag in a bank vault. On occasion, he takes it out to show friends and customers.

"I've been toying with the idea of reading it, but I haven't yet," he said. "I'm going to savour it.


No matter who you are, when you see one of these stories of a comic book selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars,it has to freak you out. The guy has been saving money since 1986 in the hopes of one day... wait for it.... buying a comic. I know that collectors are collectors and its a type of mania that will someday rank up there with pedophiles and necrophiliacs( some would say they are already combined thanks to you sick beanie baby lot!) on the can't help themselves scale. Being an enthusiast is cool, that's what keeps the industries going. But when you see dudes with tons of money making crazy bids on things and hoarding them just to stroke their own ego and POSSESS, you have to kind of sit back and go - is this 70 year old, mint condition, ground breaking comic of which there will probably not be more copies ever found in this condition - worth 5 to 10 years salary of an average working class Joe? I would be really interested in knowing what the people who found the comic end up doing with the $200,000.They've probably always had their eye on those Royal Dalton figurines of Wayne and Garth on Ebay......

A Strange Dream I Had

I had a strange dream the other night.I was at a show in a small town. This was obvious by the fact that the band was playing on an outdoor,screened in veranda. The band reminded me of Berurier Noir, wearing clockwork orange gear, but with Chi Pig singing. Very serious stuff. Then there came a song where the band just stopped in the middle of the song and calmly set down their instruments and slowly start to file out of the porch into the night. Chi stays there, frozen in space, staring down the crowd with his best solo era Rollins gaze. As if on cue the crowd starts to leave too. After a couple of minutes every one is gone except me. I've had a couple and I've got a full one, very comfortable perched on the picnic table. Minutes pass and I realize that his eyes are on me staring me down so hard his eyebrows look like they are about to slam shut like a bear trap. I begin to become aware of someone to the side behind me. This petite woman in glasses and all kinds of tats ,approaches me and tells me I have to leave. I ask why.S he says that its the artists usual grand finale, representing each persons solitary fight against madness. Once he has stared down every one of his "demons" he can exit through the back of the hall and everyone will be allowed to re enter the club. I tell her that its the loopiest thing I've ever heard of. She insists that I have to leave to conclude the performance. I ask her if closing and covering my eyes while he made his escape would do. Finally she tells me shes willing to give me an autographed copy of a book written about Chi. I start to laugh and tell her that I'll give in and leave. As I exit through the front door the crowd has formed a wide arc and begin applauding. Confused I look for a escape route through the throng. They advance and begin to slap me on the back and rub my head. An acquaintance I don't recognize but somehow feel comfortable with,tells me I have set a new best time at 6:38 ...and I awake to this time on the clock.

Now the moral of this story might be don't take yourself or others too seriously. And the moral might be don't eat greasy shit before going to bed which my buddy Will blames strange dreams I remember on. Either way I wouldn't mind finding that club, nice fresh air, good beer and the smell of BBQ.