Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): For many male athletes, sex before a big game is taboo. They believe it saps their energy, hurting their chances of winning. The coach of the Chinese Olympic ping-pong team has gone even farther, banning his players from falling in love. In my opinion, this is crazy and wrong. According to…
DIY of the Locust
Formed in 1995 from ex-members of San Diego hardcore bands Swing Kids and Struggle, the Locust has steadily drifted away from typical forms of “extreme” music, earning it the contempt of a supposedly open-minded audience. In fact, some of those disapproving reactions to their newest release, Plague Soundscapes — out on Epitaph subsidiary label Anti…
Tax man cometh
Wayne County loves you, and understands your problems — but you’ve gotta pay your property taxes, hoss. Or come up with a real good explanation. And we mean, like, really good. That was the message at an administrative show cause hearing that took place at the International Center in downtown Detroit last week. News Hits…
Under the radar
Some packages come across this desk enclosed with lovely gifts. I once received CD burn from a local band that was kind enough to include a stale steak and chicken sub on pita bread, complete with a side of sweet relish, plus a balloon with its own handy inflation device. Another band sent me a…
N&D Center
23 FRI • ISSUES & LEARNING The Activist Virginia Woolf — The Cranbrook Humanities and Critical Studies Lecture Series has been developed to offer “opportunities for engaging some concepts and theories prevalent in contemporary art.” This week, novelist/essayist Rebecca Brown of Goddard College is slated to bring some irreverence to the series with her lecture…
Seize the day
Seize the day — The abandoned structure squad (that’s ASS, suckah) always gets a kick trolling the Wayne County Web site (www.waynecounty.com/WCAuctions) to see the latest palaces up for bid. We never cease to be amazed at the price relatively decent-looking properties are going for. Take, for example, this little gem at 8766 Bessemore in…
More ink on kinks
Q: Just out of curiosity, are you married yourself? Because if you are not, where do you get off telling married people how married sex should/could be? —Amy K. A: Maybe you missed the reference to my boyfriend and the Finnish men’s swim team in last week’s column, Amy K., but I’m a huge homo.…
Babe ruthless
When I pulled the assignment to cover the Babes Against Bush press conference in Ferndale, I didn’t know what to expect. This Detroit-area group produced a wishful pinup calendar that counts down the days to the “regime change” on Jan. 20, 2005. The photographs that illustrate each month are saucy, but not salacious, and many…
Got any Kola?
Jamar “Cash Kola” Evelyn’s River Place apartment is typical. It would win an award for presentation in any bachelor pad competition. Inside the two-bedroom digs there’s a wraparound couch, a single three-headed lamp, a 50-inch television and a Sony PlayStation 2. There are no paintings or plants, but there is a Big Lots-caliber dining room…
Readers respond to the breeder
A: Frustrated Midwestern Breeder Chick sent me a letter complaining about her husband who — get this — offers to eat her out every time they have sex. So what’s the problem? FMBC’s husband likes to stroke himself while he goes down on her. "I feel rejected," FMBC wrote, "because shouldn’t the act of giving…
Surprise choice for president
I won’t be able to attend the Feb. 7 Democratic caucuses, and so I sent away for a ballot, which last week actually arrived in the mail. I could have voted on the Internet, but I wanted the quaint experience of checking the little box for the candidate of my choice, much as Abraham Lincoln…
What Would Trotsky Drive?
Buried deep within the dark, rusting bowels of industrial Detroit, a carnival barker takes the stage and shouts to the freshly seated minions: “We’re gonna destroy a car … we’re gonna destroy ourselves up here tonight.” A couple of people in the back of the room shout, “Fuck yeah!” while the rest take a slug…
Confessions and recantations
Vidale McDowell sits in a room at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, playing with the zipper on his blue prison jacket. The slender 19-year-old says he is nearly 6 feet tall, but he looks smaller. He is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder. “I’ve gained weight since I’ve been here,” says McDowell, who…
Singing with King
With the eeriest juxtaposition of menacing lyrics and playful, bouncy piano, a scene is set: It’s Alabama in the year 1955, one of the most dangerous periods in history for Southern black folk. As paired-off dancers step and twirl before him, a brown-skinned young man portraying a Caucasian bigot sings his warning, “If you don’t…
Shades of the past
It has become an unspoken tradition at the Detroit Repertory Theatre to use the second play of the season — which runs during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and February’s Black History Month — to celebrate African-American culture. Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman — a play that made its author a Pulitzer Prize finalist — fits…
Whackin’ Jack in court
What was Michael Jackson doing in a Detroit courtroom last week? Oh, wait, our bad. That was Whackin’ Jack White, not Whacko Jacko. It’s just that from a certain angle, with his unearthly pallor, delicate features and stringy black hair, the White Stripes leader can bear a disturbing resemblance to the alleged pedophile who inhabits…
Letters to the Editor
Tattling on titles Re: Your article on the Nuisance Abatement Program (“Nobody home,” Metro Times, Jan. 7), the situation in Detroit is certainly as you describe it. In fact, it cost me $3 in money order (no cash, no check, no credit card accepted) just to get in and help a client settle a commercial…
Faves & surprises
Proprietor Sameer Eid has been serving meticulously prepared mideastern food to the locals since 1970. He knows his way around the market and the kitchen, and gives a more sophisticated spin to the well-known litany of shish kebab, shish kafta, baked kibbee and lamb chops. Seafood dishes are also specialties.
French Cafe
French chanson, musette and manouche are song styles best experienced in the intimate cafés and bars of Paris. Chanson is most often associated with the singer Edith Piaf, who was an international star from the 1930s to the 1960s and remains a figure of cult appreciation. The other two are less purely French and more…
From Sixty-Six To Timbuktu
T’was in the darkest depths of Mordor where it came to pass that many decades of corrupting decadent excesses would inexorably pile up until, just like Gollum before him, rock’s ultimate archetype was reduced to looking like an old crone who’s run out of estrogen. (And if you think he doesn’t know it, think again:…
Eyes Without a Face
This French ’50s horror film is a cut above your usual slice of Euro-horror. It tells the story of a mad scientist who kidnaps women for their skin, which he grafts onto his daughter, who was disfigured in a car accident. With moments of eerie beauty, this pedigreed horror flick is directed, scored and written…
A Vermeer for our time
Set in 17th century Holland, the film follows the footsteps of Greit (Scarlett Johansson), a new housemaid in the Vermeer household. In this story of a great artist, Peter Webber and cinematographer Eduardo Serra make a film that’s like a gallery of 17th century Dutch paintings come to life. Thanks to Olivia Hetreed’s terse and…
The Fog of War
You can tell that this is an Errol Morris documentary because it isn’t boring, even though it’s essentially two long interviews with Robert S. McNamara, former secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson, focusing on his experience in WWII and as a Vietnam War policy maker. There’s no guarantee that a long interview can be…
Torque
Like a music video, Torque lingers on one shot only long enough to grab its visual essence, before racing on to the next image. And the images don’t add up to much. But they serve their purpose: helping you accept the worst dialogue ever committed to film. But leave your too-clever sarcasm in the lobby…
Along Came Polly
Hollywood needs a big Band-Aid for this sorry, forgettable story, which features shticks such as a guy getting the squirts in the bathroom of his girl-of-interest’s apartment or playing basketball with sweaty, hairy-backed men. It seems director/writer John Hamburg works better in collaborations — he had a hand in the scripts for Meet the Parents…
Modern art is sexy
There is a small revelation in the thesis of this joyfully bawdy coffee-table book — the thesis being that contemporary art is, in its bones, all about sex — but what it reveals has less to do with the meaning of art than the meaning of sex. Art: A Sex Book collects 175 prints of…
