Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): America’s invasion of Iraq will unleash far-reaching consequences that profoundly affect all of us. In the coming months, we’ll encounter events that require us to revise our understandings about the very nature of reality. Our imaginations will have to be ingenious and our hearts alert in order to keep up with…
Not with my wife, I don’t
Q: I just read your column devoted to people in sexless relationships. But you didn’t cover being in a sexless relationship while raising kids. My wife and I had two kids right off the bat. She doubled her weight and got depressed. That was eight years ago and we’ve probably had sex a dozen times…
www.war.com
From silly to sobering, the ’net is bursting with war commentary….
The reelest thing
Filmmakers set to complete biopic on Detroit blues legend Uncle Jessie White….
Midnight oily
A long time ago in a land far, far down under, the singer in an overestimated ’80s band by the name-a Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett, once triumphantly moaned/queried “How can we dance when our Earth is turning?/How do we sleep while our beds are burning?” The answer to our Australian pal is “Slow down, Garrett.…
Killing fields for couch potatoes
25 antiwar forays into the heart of darkness….
Air war
Homers and humvees….
Brits hate Yanks?
My name is Shireen. I was born Shireen Saidi, if you want to get picky about it. My mother is of Scottish descent, my biological father is Iranian, and my so-long-term-it’s-insulting-to-call-him-a-step-parent is Jewish. And I’ve lived in the UK for the past eight years. My experiences abroad may be a little slanted, since most of…
Manhunting for the MBA
Anyone who remains unacquainted with the media’s relentless fascination with the Single Woman can be brought up to speed quickly with the mention of a few titles. Why There Are No Good Men Left. “The Bachelorette.” “Ally McBeal.” Bridget Jones’s Diary. The Rules. The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing. And those are just from…
Vineglory
The Vines: International bright young things….
Silicon chips and salsa
Taqueria la Tapatia is a no-frills kind of place. A metal cage safeguards the front door, a grill smokes and sizzles just behind the counter, and the menu items are numbered and pictured on a backlit display like those found in coney islands and chop suey takeouts. The taqueria, at 4314 W. Vernor, is a…
Laughoholics Anon.
From gorillas to human beans to Rototron Cornbobbers to bondage faeries, metro Detroit is about to see a couple local movie productions get their place in the sun. Whether they burn or tan remains to be seen. Watch comic book-store clerks go to the dogs in the feature-length film Zeitgeist, presented by Pitbull Filmworks this…
You can go back
Melbourne, Australia’s Dirty Three have been making music for nearly a dozen years, forging melancholy instrumentals that shudder with the weight of their emotional heft. For those raised on rock without much exposure to classical music, the ability to convey such haunting and touching emotional content without words is something of a revelation. To hear…
Catchin’ tax dodgers
A fight is brewing at Detroit City Hall over the mayor’s proposal to hire a California firm to collect $160 million in overdue taxes — including property, income and school taxes, plus other unpaid bills. City Council President Maryann Mahaffey’s office is raising concerns about the company, MBIA MuniServices. The company was formed in 1997…
Should Michigan get to vote?
This just in: There is a threat to democracy on the home front that has nothing to do with usual suspects Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or even John Ashcroft. No, Michigan’s major political parties are behind this one. Behind the scenes, they are both gearing up to deprive you of choice as to who…
(Sub)urban connections
Dearborn’s Padzieski Art Gallery delves into the inner city….
April 2-8, 2003
4 FRI • MUSIC Maria Muldaur — By the time she completes her first song, you’ll know that the sultry jazz sounds of Maria Muldaur go much further than her ’70s hit "Midnight at the Oasis." She will be performing songs from her latest album A Woman Alone With the Blues: A Tribute to Peggy…
Union’s table time
In another city drama, locals of Detroit’s largest union are lining up to reject the proposed contract between AFSCME Council 25 and Mayor Kilpatrick’s negotiating team. That’s what News Hits hears from leaders at some locals. Council 25 represents some 5,400 workers and sets the tempo for contracts with the city’s other 12,000-odd union workers.…
Food chain loses link
Detroit has lost a beloved neighborhood grocer. Eastern Market’s Ellis Albert Jr., owner of Al’s Salvage Groceries, was hit by a car while walking to work last week. The 78-year-old, known as Al, was in good health. He was hit on Gratiot; the driver apparently couldn’t see him because of morning fog and a thick…
Loose lip leaves town
In other, albeit lesser, sad news, the Motor City is losing a lawyerly scribe to the Queen City. Casey Coston, a Metro Times columnist, has accepted a job with a Cincinnati law firm. For the last 10 years, the corporate bankruptcy attorney had the unlikely position of feeding Detroit’s desire for nightlife gossip in two…
Still against the war
New York City did it. London did it big time. San Francisco stopped the presses. Now it’s Detroit’s turn. Damn it, more than 1,500 people have to turn out if we want to get on television as a city with forces in opposition to war in Iraq. On the 35th anniversary of the assassination of…
Takin’ care of bid-ness
Considering all the doom going down in the world this week, the abandoned structure squad (known far and wide as ASS or, occasionally, known far as wide-ASS) thought we’d give y’all a break this week and offer up a hot tip to any prospective homeowner willing to put in a little sweat equity. This dwelling…
Letters to the Editor
Punch this, sucker Hey, Brian Smith — so a couple guys in bands are whining about being taken advantage of at SXSW — sounds more like sour grapes to me (Suckerpunch, Metro Times, March 26-April 1). You sympathize with these musicians because they were “pimped” for their art and because they toil for their craft.…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Considering all the doom going down in the world this week, the abandoned structure squad (known far and wide as ASS or, occasionally, known far as wide-ASS) thought we’d give y’all a break this week and offer up a hot tip to any prospective homeowner willing to put in a little sweat equity. This dwelling…
Gourmet roulette
The Hill specializes in seafood from Foley Fish in Boston. The Grosse Pointe establishment also serves plenty of steaks and chops, a few under $20 but most $28 and above. Signature side dishes are a highlight as well as their supreme dessert selection. Most desserts at The Hill are quintessentially American. The molten lava cake…
Safe
According to their official bio, Ontario’s all-girl metal-mongers Kittie are “setting new standards by hammering out honest metal music” — a revolutionary notion since metal has never been grounded in truthfulness. How honest were Ronnie James Dio’s Dungeons and Dragons librettos when the only castles he’d ever visited sold him square hamburgers? How honest was…
Music from Tomorrow’s World
It’s like you’ve paid perfectly good money to hear your favorite band and — luck of luck — you have to end up at a table with the noisiest party in the club, especially this big-mouthed broad who’s nearly as loud as the loudest horn, way louder than the piano player. “You gonna take me…
Bright Black
When rappers decide to settle down and become serious musicians, we can talk all we want about how laudable it is that they’re following their artistic muse, but the records they make usually suck. Q-Tip changes his name to Kamaal, and instead of the Love Movement, we get the bowel movement. Harsh, sure, but more…
Alcohol, testosterone and lithium
If you read Jim Harrison’s memoir, Off to the Side, and are left unmoved, you should call your life insurance company and demand some cash — because, though your heart may be beating and your lungs still breathing, in real terms you’re dead. Harrison is the greatest unfashionable writer in America. Although he’s critically regarded…
Hate
Talking about the Delgados’ new slab, Hate, without invoking the weighty twin reference terrors of the Beatles and the Flaming Lips is impossible in this context, so let’s just get it out of the way right now, ’cause the former haunts this record and the latter helps color it. One of several crowning, majestic moments…
The Iceman Cometh
At a running time of four hours, this 1973 film of Eugene O’Neill’s play about the down-and-out denizens of Harry Hope’s bar is a marathon offering of various types of despair and comforting illusions — with Robert Ryan, Fredric March and Lee Marvin.
Immortal combat
What happens when paranoia reaches its perfect pitch? Here’s how Robin Kirk describes it: “Contact was contamination and contamination was death. Had a store owner bought from or sold to a guerrilla? Death. Had a telephone exchange operator placed a call for a paramilitary? Death. Had a teenage girl danced with a teenage boy who…
And sat down beside her
Patrick McGrath’s adaptation of his own novel (about a man recently released from an asylum and staying at a seedy halfway house in 1950s London) is an original, if maddening, depiction of madness. It gets under your skin and one wouldn’t expect less from director David Cronenberg — with Ralph Fiennes, Gabriel Byrne and Miranda…
Cowboy Bebop
In the 21st century, money still makes the world go round, but much of the world is on Mars. Director Shinichirô Watanabe’s postmodern, animated epic laced with film-noir savvy drives us through a fantastic land, taking advantage of the anime medium with unearthly angles and delicate details.
Divine Intervention
There has been much praise for Elia Suleiman’s film, including the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year. But it’s far more successful at capturing the feeling of life than actually depicting it in an entertaining way — it’s one of those films that get better as you mull it over, if you can get…
View from the Top
Gwyneth Paltrow — sweet, simple and wholesome as homemade apple pie — determines to take to the sky as a flight attendant in this failed modern romantic-comedy version of those American-dream stories of going from rags to riches by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
The Core
Director Jon Amiel helms this sci-fi disaster flick that tries to keep the adrenaline pumping, but not much else. In the end, it’s the acting — particularly by Delroy Lindo and Stanley Tucci — that saves this silly movie from being unwatchable.
View from the Top
Gwyneth Paltrow — sweet, simple and wholesome as homemade apple pie — determines to take to the sky as a flight attendant in this failed modern romantic-comedy version of those American-dream stories of going from rags to riches by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Gourmet roulette
Many of the Hill’s “signature dishes” cater to a Reagan-era notion of good eating — surf and turf, lots of blue cheese and bacon in the house salad. Seafood is a strong point: the grilled swordfish is tall and terrific and the calamari appetizer is out of the ordinary. Desserts are quintessentially American: the molten…
