Hot rocks for a crotch crippler
Q: I am a 26-year-old straight male interested in ballbusting. At a party, I met a lesbian who goes by “Buck.” She’s 20, dresses like a boy, and made it clear that she hates males and their anatomy. Before agreeing to play a friendly game of truth or dare, she specified that she would not…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
I have a band feeling about this
A funny thing happened to producer RJD2 on his way to indie hip-hop stardom. From the sounds of his new disc, The Third Hand, RJD2 has gone C3PO. The 30-year-old beat-maker from Philly — by way of Columbus, Ohio — put down the records and samples that were his hip-hop tools, picked up some vintage…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood. Supple Cord My brother, in his small white bed, held one end. I…
Kind rewinds
Bedazzled Fox It’s obvious why the people at Fox featured a half-naked Raquel Welch on the box art for its Bedazzled release. She’s Raquel Welch in 1967, and they want to move units, so to speak. But, as if they were guided by the hand of the devil, Fox’s prominent marketing of Welch is deceptive.…
Talking trash
Like a mad scientist’s laboratory, full of preposterous gizmos and gadgets, the fantastic sculptures in Willie Bester’s Apartheid Laboratory at Art Gallery of Windsor reveal the fiendish intentions of evil designers. Rebuking the museum’s sleek surroundings with salvaged chains, padlocks, ropes, hoses, hospital drips, soiled rubber gloves and more, these mute and inoperable machines speak…
Short stack of cool
Dressed up in splotchy Partridge Family hues of tangerine orange, lima bean green, and that curious cornflower blue unique to toys and Buicks of the era, Fisher-Price’s plastic wind-up phonograph is an icon of the 1970s. Its blocky tone arm was great, and so was the scratchy sound that tickled out of the little speaker…
Media Blackout
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered that part of MB115 be printed using quantum-key encryption! ov4o 0fLd0w (X0slp312U-Cel3-4) :: jdwe90u23r90c jd0ru2304dc. rh34r9083h9rrh9fr 453f0h05? Sdo3u20erh9c4h9 rj04c9x 9c4059f120cdj109? 54855j02 j348j0-813 gfk-t0yi24-i0-i4! Soulkid#1 Americanized (Secret Agent) :: Derek Flint would approve of this modern retroactive rock ‘n’ soul music with a jive talkin’ dash of black light,…
The people’s pariah
If there’s an overarching goal to An Unreasonable Man, it’s to undo Nader’s status as a left-wing pariah. To the man’s fans — the ones who watched him grow from a scrappy author of a bestselling auto-safety exposé to one of the staunchest advocates for the rights of the American people — it’s unfathomable that…
Nappy love
The first time I saw a picture of Bob Marley, nappy hair hanging in ropes from his head, I was enthralled. I knew it was the hairstyle I’d been waiting for all my life. I’d had an Afro for several years, but not one of the well-coiffed, puffed-out, shiny ones. Mine was tight, lumpy and…
Maxed Out
Are credit card offers jamming your mailbox? Ever wonder why banks think you’re worth the credit risk? It’s not your financial stability they’re after, says James Scurlock’s documentary Maxed Out, it’s the opposite. They want you to get screwed. To illustrate just how our concept of credit has changed in recent years, Maxed Out juxtaposes…
Mitt, Rudy and John
You wouldn’t know it from the media, but the presidential election is next year, not this year. Why, it’s so far away that if my mommy got pregnant tomorrow, my new little sibling would be gurgling and cutting teeth well before the first votes are cast on Election Day. But, alas, Mommy is long dead,…
Disturbia
The teen thriller bears all the hallmarks of modern-day movie-by-committee filmmaking: A voyeur-mystery premise that rips off a masterpiece (Rear Window) just enough to avoid paying royalties, a director-for-hire who cut his teeth on the small screen (D.J. Caruso), and most grievously, an R-rating that’s been edited down to a preteen-friendly PG-13. (Meaning all those…
Night and Day
Thursday • 19 Nas MUSIC Songs like “Money over Bullshit” and “Carry on Tradition” on Nas’ 2006 release, Hip Hop is Dead, are turning out to be more relevant than most of us imagined. After a publicized truce with the ultra-powerful Jay-Z and a recording contract from the positivity-pushing Def Jam camp, Nas’ rapping-as-storytelling has…
The Situation
Amateur screenwriters often make the same three mistakes: 1) passive protagonists, 2) didactic dialogue and 3) aimless narratives. Predictably, first-time screenwriter Wendell Steavenson’s The Situation hits the film school trifecta. American reporter Anna Molyneux (Connie Nielsen) becomes convinced that her inquiries into the death of an Iraqi teen thrown from a bridge by US troops…
String-along Sundays
Tim Pak is a legend in Detroit’s music scene. He’s been a main player in some of the most lauded outfits in town (Angry Red Planet, the Salt Miners), and owner of the Woodshed Recording Studio in Oak Park. If he hasn’t shared the stage with one of your bands, he has probably recorded you.…
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
The big screen conversion of a late night cartoon series about wise cracking, sentient, crime-fighting fast-food products that live in a New Jersey crash pad, Aqua Teen Hunger Force may be one of the most love-it-or-loathe-it properties ever to find its way to a cineplex. Brilliant in fifteen minute doses, at just under ninety minutes…
Don’t tell us
Of murder, mea culpas and e-mails.
After the Wedding
Angular Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen gets plenty of opportunities to empty his tear ducts in writer-director Suzanne Bier’s new three-hanky import. He has been performing steadily in Danish melodramas for years (including Bier’s breakthrough, Open Hearts). And this film goes a long way in establishing him as a soulful, simmering leading man, even as his…
Back pat
State bar honors MT news editor.
First Snow
First Snow might not signal Aussie actor Guy Pearce’s return from relative obscurity, it does showcase his simmering intensity, and ability to rivet an audience’s attention even while the plot drifts quietly away. Here he stars as factory-standard noir protagonist Jimmy, a frustrated flooring salesman with big dreams of moving up to his own more…
Motor City Cribs
Dykehouse’s Ann Arbor home.
Perfect Stranger
Halle Berry’s timid effort to dip her little toe into the deep end of the R-rated psycho-sexual pool may not ruin her career, exactly — it’s too competently made for that — but it certainly won’t erase anyone’s lingering memories of Catwoman, either. The film ultimately isn’t even all that erotic, although it comes on…
Tried and true
When I called Adnan Charara to interview him, he immediately invited me to his studio, and then, when I began to explain that I had no transportation, he responded, “OK, I’ll come pick you up,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world for this accomplished artist to offer his services to…
Spice it up
The congee, the soup, the kimchi and other bangan (side dishes), can be brought to you in a small semiprivate room with light wooden tables and chairs. Many of the dishes are brought unordered, as a matter of course. Next come four small white bowls of bangan: orange kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage), dark green seaweed,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "I was the wife of Vlajko Stojiljkovic, deceased, who was indicted at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. First, I assure you that the indictment was politically motivated and utterly without merit. Secondly, I need to transfer our vast fortune out of the country. The funds are in excess of 64 million…
Cutting it out
Working for a nonprofit organization can be gratifying, and it can also be hellish. Midsized groups often have just one employee who works like a dervish, spinning around the office as an accountant, promo person, party planner, membership coordinator, office administrator and janitor. The average day involves managing bill collectors, buying toilet paper and training…
Ghostly breeds
Dear diary On his upcoming album, Matthew Dear reveals himself to be a “Midnight Lover.” Not surprising, is it girls? But Dear — versatile, accomplished and a local shining light for the last decade — also tells us he’s a “deserter” from love, a man who’s been around the world, seen his share, smoked too…
Schools out
At Berry Elementary School last week, there was a clear case of denial about a future that’s fast approaching. Students walked to and from school together. In quiet corners of wide hallways, volunteers from the neighborhood tutored children. Parents attended after-school workshops to learn how to help their sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and neighbors…
Grape expectations
Crush chef Stephen Patrick talks “vineyard-style” cuisine.
Letters to the Editor
Tortured conscience? Are we supposed to feel sorry for Tony Lagouranis because he can’t sleep nights and has panic attacks because he tortured in the name of Bush and Cheney in Iraq (“Torturer’s Toll,” Metro Times, April 11)? By his own admission he “started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent,” yet he doesn’t…
