WANNA BUY AN AIRPORT?
From
CBC Online.
Mirabel looks for new role–again
Last Updated Wed, 28 Apr 2004 16:17:03
MONTREAL - Mirabel airport on Wednesday marked the coming end of an era by asking for proposals to redevelop its terminal when passenger flights stop arriving later this year.
The airport near Montreal, opened to great fanfare in 1975, will cease operating for passenger flights probably in November, leaving it only with cargo flight services and some light industry.
Aeroports de Montreal, the company running both the Mirabel and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau (formerly Dorval) airports, said it was looking for a viable, self-financing concept.
But it also held out the possibility of state economic aid or its own financial participation.
ADM said it would save "over $10 million" annually from the closure.
Montreal-Mirabel, at the time of its opening the biggest airport in the world, has proved to be a costly white elephant similar to the city's notoriously still unpaid-for Olympic stadium.
Its double hump-backed shuttle buses, rumoured to have cost $1 million apiece, stood as a symbol of the waste of taxpayers' money. In 2003, Mirabel made an operational loss of almost $18 million.
Transport Canada's decision to split traffic between international flights in Dorval and domestic flights in Mirabel proved disastrous.
Located 50 kilometres from Montreal, Mirabel simply never attracted enough activity to justify its existence as a passenger flight airport. Montreal's economic decline relative to Toronto also contributed to Air Canada's decision to make Toronto's Pearson airport its main international hub.
In 1997, scheduled passenger flights were transferred back to Montreal's old international airport, Dorval, and only freight, cargo and charter remained at Mirabel.
ADM, which took over the Montreal airports in 1992, said Mirabel had a successful, growing cargo operation, and had attracted industrial tenants like Bombardier.
In 2003, it moved about 110,000 tons of cargo. This compares with Frankfurt, Germany, which handled over 500,000 metric tons of cargo in the first quarter of 2004 alone.
The terminal complex includes a 5,000-space car park, a 355-room hotel and an eight-storey office building. It will be leased for a minimum of 20 years, renewable by five years until 2045.
Proposals, of which ADM said it had received "a few" already, must be submitted by September 15.
What I think they should do with it is bring in Donald Trump to convert the terminal to huge, sound-proofed luxury apartments or condominiums, which come complete with limousine and personal drivers, and then the government should maintain them as fully subsidized housing to which to relocate all of the dumb clucks who move to Dorval or the eastern part of Pointe-Claire and then have the nerve to write to the
Gazette and the
Chronicle to complain about airplane noise, as though, even if they hadn't looked at a map of the area, they weren't aware from the relatively low prices of their homes that
Dorval International Airport Trudeau International Airport was just a street or two over, because, as Confuscius once said, "Don't move to Dorval or the eastern part of Pointe-Claire if you don't like the sound of airplanes, you stupid fucks." (And they claim that no other major airport is as close to residential areas as Dorval Airport is... well,
Haneda,
LAX,
JFK International are all rather close to residential areas.)
While I am being facetious, it would still be a lot cheaper for the city to house all the whiners in luxury apartments than it would be to move air traffic back to Mirabel.
WHEN IT COMES TO THE ABORTION ISSUE, I'M WITH POPPY! (AND DAVID PUDDY!)
Yes, I know it's not fashionable, even amongst libertarian-but-pro-war-on-terror "
South Park Republican"-type bloggers, to admit this, but I am pro-life when it comes to abortion except for the rare circumstances when the mother's life is in danger. And I'm not even pro-life for religious reasons, so I wince at newspaper photos of "anti-abortion" protestors like the
National Post published the other day with signs saying "God Hates You", listing "Feminists" and "Sodomites" and such; yeah,
that will really win them over. I won't apologize for my pro-life stance, but I don't talk about the abortion issue much because it is so polarizing and because there's really very little that hasn't been said millions of times already, and I wasn't planning on talking about
the giant "pro-choice" rally held in Washington D.C. over the weekend; I could mention that there were several
"March for Life" rallies in Washington D.C. in the nineties that also attracted hundreds of thousands of people but not nearly as much media attention, but I've seen that noted elsewhere.
However, RottenTomatoes.com forum poster
Shacira*, a so-called "troll" from Britain with a great sense of humour, posted
this thread entitled "UMA THURMAN Also Starred In KILL BABIES! BABY KILLER CELEBRITIES!" linking to
this article, very supportive of the march, on the website of "Windy City Media Group", a "Chicagoland"-area gay rights organization** which lists "pro-choice" celebrities, and I noticed an interesting discrepancy between those celebrities who mouthed support for the event and those who actually spoke *at* the march.
First, the celebrities who spoke *at* the march itself.
"Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Ashley Judd, Kathy Najimy and Cybill Shepard were among some of the most well-known to address the crowd."
Now the celebrities who supported the event but who did not appear there.
"The March Celebrity Coalition also included Carly Simon, Christina Aguilera, Kirsten Dunst, Calista Flockhart, Salma Hayek, Ewan McGregor, Demi Moore, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Kristen Davis, and many others. Lesbian comedian Kate Clinton hosted the morning portion of the program. Both Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls treated adoring fans to brief performances after the march. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and dozens of top pols, including lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin, also spoke to the crowd"
This
NewsMax.com article has a more complete list of celebrities who were at the pro-abortion rally versus celebrities who merely endorsed the pro-abortion rally.
What I noticed is that the A-list celebrities who endorsed the event didn't actually bother showing up, while the celebrities who spoke at the event were either stictly B-list celebrities or has-beens, with the possible exception of Ashley Judd, but she hasn't been in a heckuvalot lately.
What does this imply... hmm? While I'm sure the A-listers will use the excuse that they had previous commitments and couldn't make it, and that probably is true in some cases, could it be that they know how brash and inflammatory the speakers at these events get and didn't want to be filmed on the same stage as them since it could be used against them in the future? Or maybe they just know that poll after poll shows that
America swings pro-life on the abortion issue, and it crosses demographic groups, so, even if the A-list celebrities want to show their support of the "choice" euphenism by endorsing the event, they know that, if they actually appeared on stage, they'd alienate much of their audience, and a small portion of them would boycott.
Not that I'm a pro-abortion-position celebrity boycotter myself (unless profits are explicitly going to pro-abortion groups); if I was, I wouldn't be able to buy the
King of the Hill DVD boxsets, since Kathy Najimy, the voice of Peggy Hill, is also, as I like to put it,
the "head vampire" of the pro-abortion movement in Hollywood. (In case you're wondering, the "Van Helsing" of the pro-life movement in Hollywood is Ben Stein, the author, Republican, and former Nixon speechwriter-turned-monotone character actor best known for being the "Anyone? Anyone?/Bueller? Bueller?" teacher in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off and host of
Win Ben Stein's Money, since he's on the board of directors of the
Life Legal Defense Federation.)
So, as a pro-lifer, I'm weirdly energized reading the list of "pro-choice" celebrities who didn't actually appear at the rally since it is tantamount to admitting that, outside of the liberal oases of the left coast, the pro-life position has much wider and deeper support than the marchers would have us believe. And I agree with the announcer on Rush Limbaugh saying (paraphrasing from memory) "Trust us, we want nothing to do with Camryn Manheim's uterus."
* Yes, it used to be Shakira, but this person got banned from RT before for trolling, so Shacira is the name "she" uses in "her" current profile.
** Fortunately, a growing number of gays and lesbians are refusing to follow the "party line" on abortion, since abortion has nothing at all really to do with gay rights, hence the existence of PLAGAL- the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. I did some other research on non-traditional pro-life groups and, yes, there is also an Athiest and Agnostic Pro-Life League, the ultimate group for people who oppose abortion but don't care for the religious slant of some pro-life rallies (though athiesm is a sort of religion in and of itself, but that's besides the point).
MAKING MOVIES, MAKING MUSIC, AND FIGHTING ANTI-SEMITISM 'ROUND THE WORLD... RUSSELL CROWE!
There's nothing I can find on the Internet about this yet, but, according to
CJAD,
Russell Crowe, Oscar-winning actor, singer with
"30 Odd Foot of Grunts", and subject of the
South Park episode
"The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer" has made a large donation to the United Talmud Torah School in Saint Laurent borough, Montreal to replace
the school library which was firebombed on April 5th. To be more precise, he's one of many donators, and the exact amount he donated isn't known, but, still, nice to see that even a celebrity from as far away as New Zealand was disgusted by the attack.
Good for Russell... now please say you'll be Captain Haddock in
Steven Spielberg's live-action Tintin.
EDIT: Here's the first article about it. Apparently, Russell Crowe is filming
The Cinderella Man, about 1930's boxer James Braddock, in Toronto, and he called the principal directly.
Ooh, the
Anime Sucks Foundation was one of the highlights of this week's installment of
Something Awful's weekly Weekend Web feature, showcasing dubious achievements in the field of message board posting.
The Anime Sucks Foundation portion of the Weekend Web starts here.
I do get the idea that Zachary "Spokker Jones" Gutierrez is making this page out to be a bit more serious than I take it to be.
"For as long as I can remember there have been websites devoted to hating a certain thing, whether it be anime, Sailor Moon, Star Trek, Star Wars, what have you. The problem with these sites it that the people who run them are usually no better than the morons who like the shit they are professing to hate. It's like the kawaii otaku ^_^ person is one end of the spectrum and the person devoting hours of their time to hating that person is the other end. Both are morons and the only sane person is the guy in the middle calling them both fags and moving on. I'm that person."
See, while I can't claim to be completely sure of the motivations of the person who runs that site, I think the whole page is just fanboy bait from normal, reasonable, pragmatic anime fans like me (even if they deny it) who get a chuckle from and like yanking the chains of anime fans who take these sort of things far too seriously and far too personally, since they are just cartoons; a fun, exciting, or emotionally-moving time waster and nothing more.
Most of the excerpted posts are pro-anime, though.
In other message board-related news, for more information than you could ever have possibly wanted to know about me, please check these
Rotten Tomatoes forum posts (for the last one, the part I'm talking about is when I'm talking about Yuki Sohma from
Fruits Basket). It's all completely true, but I would be lying if said that I didn't write them secretly hoping that someone would be kind enough to send them to "Spokker" for consideration for the "Weekend Web", since, to quote Magnus Buchan from
Rushmore, "I've always wanted to be in one of your fucking plays". ;)
Oh, man, that's one reason I love
King of the Hill so much... it's educational about Texas in much of the same way that I find
Super GALS! educational about Tokyo. Just as an opening gag, they had "Big Tex", a giant talking statue of a cowboy, at the Texas State Fair, so, I looked him up, and, sure enough,
"Big Tex" is real!
And I watched
The Simpsons an hour-and-a-half earlier on
NTV, "Canada's Superstation" (from Newfoundland, natch) and there's a very well-done spoof of the stylish animated opening for
Catch Me if you Can. I'm the sort of guy that thinks
The Simpsons mostly sucks now, but, if I find something funny, I'm not afraid to admit it.
