Metro Retro
23 years ago in Metro Times: Doug Ross, director of the Michigan Commerce Department, hopes to prevent a second Michigan recession in the ’80s by using some of the state’s pension funds to invest in entrepreneurship in Michigan. Ross hopes that through these investments, new jobs will be created for the 71,000 employees of the…
The Girl Who Played With Fire
In adapting Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy for the big screen, The Girl Who Played With Fire clearly suffers from middle-child syndrome. Lacking the assertive inventions of its predecessor or the breathless energy of its sibling sequel, this second chapter ratchets down the mystery to parcel out the unsavory details of Lisabeth Salander’s past — while…
Dawn’s early light
Q: My husband of eight years confessed to wanting to watch me with another man. I asked if he meant it. He said yes. I asked if he wanted me to set it up. He said yes. I found a guy, and he agreed to a full STD screening — at my husband’s suggestion and…
Park’s love match
Last week I rode my bicycle over to Palmer Park to check out a demonstration against Mayor Bing’s announced closing of 77 Detroit parks to help bridge a city budget gap. As I pedaled along, I wondered how many people it would take to adopt the park and keep it neat, clean and usable. When…
Songs of the hour
Christiaan Macdonald, Jennifer Paull and I are strolling through Corktown, meandering down leafy side streets that lead us from Mudgie’s, where we had lunch, to Hello Records, in search of some Detroit heart and soul — on the ground, in the air, on vinyl. "This neighborhood’s quite nice," says Macdonald, a quietly crucial player in…
State of corruption
Kurt Hesse is about as purebred a Detroiter as you can find these days. He was born here, grew up here, and still works for the company his granddad founded in 1888 — Detroit Cornice and Slate. He’s a 47-year-old businessman who for years has been trying to help his community and make a living.…
Food Stuff
Home slice — The chef-owner of Bacco has opened Pizzeria Biga, serving fresh, handmade pizzas and Italian fare. They churn out the pies in two 20-ton ovens, crisping them at 800 degrees. What’s more, their pull-up service means you can load up on food, beer and wine to go without even getting out of your…
Hemingway’s ‘Last Good Country’
It’s great northern air. Absolutely the best trout fishing in the country. No exaggeration. Fine country. Good color, good northern atmosphere, absolute freedom, no summer resort stuff and lots of paintable stuff. —Ernest Hemingway to his friend Jim Gamble, 1919 For Ernest Hemingway, northern Michigan was an imagined frontier; his fictional north woods reveal a…
Letters to the Editor
Media silence I just read your article on the U.S. Social Forum and would like to thank you. It was a fair, balanced, accurate article. I was there and, although I was a bit disappointed in some regards as to the event schedule, the event was not covered by mainstream media because they are not…
Motor City Rides
Right about now, folks in a one-stoplight Michigan town are scratching their heads, wondering what the hell just went by on their sleepy little road. See, Ann Arbor boogie-woogie piano legend Mr. B (Mark Braun) has taken his piano on the road with him, on his bike. Granted, it’s not your average Schwinn. Mark enlisted…
Getting steamy
At this point there are as many questions as answers, but one thing is certain: The owners of Detroit’s incinerator are negotiating sale of the facility to the company that provides steam for heating and cooling buildings to 104 downtown and midtown customers — including the city of Detroit. Leland Bassett, spokesman for Detroit Thermal,…
Sheila & her ‘left-hand man’
Jazz vocalist Sheila Landis loves to sing. There’s no better way to summarize her. During an interview at the Rochester Hills home she shares with her longtime guitarist-collaborator-beau, Rick Matle, she sings the answers to several questions, belts verses from her blues song in progress ("Taller in the Morning") and plays a Charlie Parker number…
Northbound lodge
The café, which seats 160, creates its own rustic atmosphere with a shingle and stone exterior and a lodge-like interior flaunting the obligatory moose head over a huge stone fireplace, fishing and hunting prints, stuffed animals, a full gun rack, and other outdoorsy paraphernalia. Those looking for a light meal can choose Buffalo chicken salad…
The Last Airbender
The setting is a fantasy world where rival kingdoms representing the cardinal elements are all at war for some arcane reason, and the key to lasting peace lies with the legendary “Avatar,” a one-of-a-kind mystic of great power. The menacing, technologically superior Fire Nation are the aggressors, having hunted the Air Nomads into near extinction,…
Puff the magic
One day, a 4-year-old Dave Menzo tripped over an old Beatles tape lying on the carpet of his brother’s bedroom. "That’s where it all started for me," he says. "I was one of eight kids, most of whom were older than me, so, at 4 years old, I had seen my brothers put a tape…
Beaten to a pulp
In bringing Jim Thompson’s 1952 nihilistic noir to the screen, genre-hopping director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, A Mighty Heart) spares the audience nothing, not even the abstraction of words, when it comes to violence. As brutal and disturbing as the novel’s above quote is, the film’s naturalistic approach to the murder leaves the…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY JULY 7-10 Wyandotte Street Art Fair ART FOR FOLKS More than 250 fine artists peddle their wares at this annual event, one of Michigan’s oldest juried art fairs. Besides art in a variety of media — from fiber and metal to jewelry and paintings — the four-day fest also features food vendors, crafters, kids’…
I Am Love
As far Euro-histrionics go, I Am Love is well-heeled, buttoned-up passion that revels in the sensual — shrimp is eaten with near orgasmic delight, rooms are sumptuously lit to accent their impeccable taste, lips linger on flesh, snow delicately falls on Milan’s picturesque avenues. The men are all clean lines and expensive suits, the women…
Morel support
The Eastern Market is a Detroit treasure, especially on summertime Saturday mornings, when teeming crowds — numbering as many as 40,000 people — descend upon the century-old marketplace. In the stores that surround the sheds, people shop the old-fashioned way, rubbing elbows and using all five senses pick out a few marbled steaks, a choice…
Everyone Else
Young, attractive and woefully wrong for each other, German couple Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) are on an extended Sardinian vacation, where they lounge around as the Mediterranean sun slowly bakes their pale skin and curdles their uncertain love. Surrounded by natural beauty, they can only see imperfections in each other, and to…
