Training day
When it comes to beef, Virgil Marble, aka “Chef Virgie,” knows his stuff. With 30 years in the business, and five years as chef at Southfield’s Morton’s Steakhouse, he’s learned how to work with the highest quality beef. Many of the steaks he normally grills would not be available at even better supermarkets, the double-cut…
Double vision
In Oakland County, a new breed of political action committee has emerged — and it’s focusing on school districts. Some see the groups, known as 20/20s, as a threat, a well-organized, cohesive, secretive and conservative political movement that works to erode the quality of public education. To their members and supporters, the 20/20s are grassroots…
In My Country
Despite director John Boorman’s numerous accomplishments (Deliverance, Point Blank and The General), he does little to save this problematic and conflicted film. Based on a memoir by South African poet and journalist Antjie Krog, the film charts the budding romance of a white Afrikaner (Juliette Binoche) and an African-American reporter (Samuel L. Jackson) as they…
How to get your street hustle on
Q: I’m a 20-year-old bi guy with a girlfriend of seven months and a few male friends-with-benefits (FWBs). I’m happy, but I have a kink and I’m wondering how I could safely explore it. I want to try hustling. A random guy picking me up on the street and paying me for sex is an…
Bill of flair
Chefs who are worth their sea salt are at least accommodating, and generally pleased, when a diner orders “off the menu,” whether it’s a regular customer who’s savvy enough to know that past menu items can often still be had for the asking, or someone who simply wants to test — and taste — the…
Everybody was kung fu fighting …
Writer-director-action star Stephen Chow has been heralded as Asia’s next big thing, and is poised to invade the West with his inventive mix of cartoonish nonsense and martial arts spectacle. His latest, Kung Fu Hustle, is a deliriously manic (sometimes surreal) send up of martial arts films that boasts so many visual puns, gags and…
Schtick it to ’em
You gotta get a gimmick. This sage advice once dispensed to the queen of striptease, Gypsy Rose Lee, now also seems to apply to an unlikely bunch — restaurateurs. Apparently fantastic food is no longer enough to sustain a restaurant and draw in the crowds, especially in the highly competitive markets of big cities. So,…
By the book
If you have limited shelf space or simply want a few well-chosen volumes to serve as the reference backbone of your work in the kitchen, these useful 10 will be turned to again and again, destined for an old age as dog-eared treasures. Larousse Gastronomique (Clarkson Potter, $75) — An absolute essential in any serious…
Turtles Can Fly
This Iraqi film takes place in a Kurdish settlement near the border of Iraq and Turkey, where a group of children earn some much needed money by defusing and selling land mines. The director uses non-professional actors, and it’s a matter-of-fact approach which serves the film’s material well. However, there seems to be no particular…
Ruffled sensibilities
Gerard ter Borch, the 17th century Dutch painter whose work is currently on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts, is known for his complex psychological and social portraiture. The more fashionably superficial eye, however, is more riveted by his depictions of extravagant attire — specifically the ladies’ lavish and formal gowns, often luminous focal…
Hand jive
Hands say a lot about a person. It’s a matter of taste really, the condition in which we keep our paws, but if there’s one thing that bartender Laura Rock and manicurist Amber Hartman know, it’s that any hand looks better with a martini in it. For nearly a year, the girls have been hosting…
The World’s Greatest Sinner
In 1958, actor Timothy Carey embarked on what may be the ultimate in Hollywood weirdo vanity projects. For three years he labored as the writer, director, editor, producer and star of The World’s Greatest Sinner, an unsettling reflection on religion, politics and fascism, it presages the behavior of people like Charles Manson and Jim Jones.…
Artistic currency
Cat Chow may not be a ruff buff, but this Chicago talent is leading the pack of fashion designers fitting in the fine art world. Her pieces are scrupulously constructed from everyday items like zippers, dollar bills, bobbins, measuring tapes and baby bottle nipples. It’s wearable art that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary in…
Computers & break dancing
Angela Reyes, a mother and southwest Detroit native, “got tired of burying kids” from the increasing gang violence in her community. Using small donations, she began the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation in 1997. The program provides education and job readiness skills to ex-gangbangers. Her living room functioned as an office for her and the two…
The Amityville Horror
Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George find out it’s a bad idea to ignore those bloodstains on the ceiling of their new Dutch Colonial in this remake of the 1979 horror flick. The first film was no gem, but even those who were young enough be scared by the original release may be in for a…
Warming up
Catherine Herve is a producer, DJ and vocalist who purrs her lyrics in French and English. In the early ’90s, she started performing in her native Grenoble, probably best known as the snowy mountain town that hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics. Born five years later, the girl who would be Miss Kittin was less interested…
The state of the table
The state of the table in metro Detroit is in flux, a good thing, but it’s a slow-moving river of change. Where meat and potatoes, simple food, once reigned, with fried perch and walleye always holding their spots lower on the menu, variety crept in and we are now, after about two decades of giving…
Media Blackout
Consider yourself warmly welcomed to the Time And Relative Dimension In Space edition of MB29! • Doctor Who (BBC) :: Luckily, the cracked actor who played the new ninth Doctor as an arrogant, self-righteous twit quit after only one season because he was afraid of being typecast, if you can believe such twaddle. So, until…
Dream scheme
Deluded thinking or willful deception. Take your pick. Either way, this much is certain: The proposed budget Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick submitted to City Council last week is a fiction fraught with real danger. By ignoring political reality and banking on proposals with little chance of materializing, Kilpatrick is increasing the likelihood of state intervention.…
Head cheese
A graduate of the University of Michigan (Class of ’77), Bart Plantenga is a music writer (contributor to the anthology Reggae, Rasta Revolution), fiction writer (“I Had Sex With Andy Warhol Until His Wig Fell Off”) and radio host of 17 years (currently on Radio Patapoe out of Amsterdam, where he lives). His Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The…
Kwame’s fundraiser fun
So here’s what Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would have us believe: That he held a fundraiser at the home of one of his department heads, a function he personally attended, yet he has absolutely no idea how many people were there, and is completely clueless as to how much cash was hauled in. Mayoral spokesman…
Rock city licks
The first annual Motor City Music Conference (MC2) in Detroit this week (Wednesday through Sunday) is a head-fuck to be sure. Dig it: more than 450 bands and artists splayed at 50 venues and nonvenues across Detroit and Hamtramck, all running the blues, rap, rock, R&B, electronic, world and folk genres. Headliners include the Black…
Urban drama
Wayne State University administrators planning to close the books on the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA) have by now realized they have a fight on their hands. This much was clear during a town hall-style meeting Friday afternoon attended by more than 70 students, teachers and concerned graduates of the college at…
Motown booster about to go bust
Remember that slogan, “Say nice things about Detroit”? Burn that slogan. It’s time to start saying the truth about Detroit, screaming the truth about Detroit, because facing up to the truth is the only chance we have to save this city, provided it’s not too late. It’s taken me awhile to face up to it…
Buses, not bombs
Two buses packed with political activists will roll from Oak Park to New York City. No, the folks aboard won’t be looking to catch a Broadway show. Instead, they will be attending a May 1 rally in Central Park supporting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Detroit Area Peace With Justice Network — a collaboration…
Raising the bar
You know it works. You may not know why, but you know it works. You put it in your mouth and it immediately begins to melt in a silken flow that finds its way to the back of your tongue, and down. You find that, if you felt bad, you’re starting to feel better. If…
Fired up
This two-story house at 12120 Maiden on Detroit’s East Side, not far from City Airport, has broken windows, a wide-open front door, profitable aluminum and a charred facade. The Abandoned Structure Squad (that’s A.S.S. to you, pal) discovered that this house had been home to squatters, neighborhood drug dealers and street gangs in the past,…
Economics for dummies
Here’s something you ought to think about. Our lifestyle is now entirely dependent on the willingness of foreign nations, most of them far poorer than we are, to lend us vast sums of money — about $1 billion — every day. That’s what the federal budget deficit really means. Additionally, we’re transferring another $2 billion…
Proactive
Hamtown HEAT— In the environmental movement, the victories can seem few and far between. So winning one is cause to celebrate — which is exactly what’s happening beginning at 7 p.m., Friday, April 22, at the People’s Community Services Building, 8626 Joseph Campau, Hamtramck. Why? Because, after a mighty long struggle, it looks as if…
Sitting pretty
“Sit on it,” “sit tight,” “sit back and relax” or “sit and spin” — there are several phrases (and even more proverbs) that refer to the act of sitting. And even though it’s little more than a position of rest, its execution can be categorized as anything from passive to peaceful, from punishing to pleasurable.…
Letters to the Editor
Sharon McPhail responds Re: “Name game, Detroit style” (Metro Times, April 6), to say the least, I am surprised, maybe even shocked. You never tried to reach me and yet, in the article, you mention me prominently, as if I have something to do with calling Freman by his first name, Helmut. You seem to…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong tells this story: "A guy walks up to me and says, ‘What’s punk?’ I kick over a garbage can and say, ‘That’s punk.’ So the guy kicks over a garbage can and says, ‘That’s punk?’ And I say, ‘No, that’s trendy.’" Keep this tale in…
Night & Day
Wednesday • 20 John Sinclair’s 4:20 Festival of Music and Art MUSIC/ART The term "4:20" is argot for reefer lovers to spark up a joint, but this week, it doubles as the date for a unique D-town affair. In an effort to raise awareness about marijuana law reform, the original "Mary Jane" martyr himself, John…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
Backslash
White collar, spiked collar — Times are tough. Whenever there’s a Bush in office, you know the economy’s gonna suck a big fat one. And jobs aren’t easy to come by — especially if you have a 2-foot purple Mohawk and you’ve got enough metal to set airport security into a tizzy. Thus, the tattooed…
Commercial grade
We know something about you, Mr. or Ms. Typical. We know that if you’ve ever noticed the passing facades for a shop like Macomb Restaurant Supply in Utica, or People’s Restaurant Equip Co. in Detroit or Advanced Restaurant Equipment and Design in Dearborn, you most likely drove right by. Maybe even on a day when…
Do ask, Don’t tell
A couple of years ago, I went to a gallery opening on Chicago’s North Side. As I walked in, a young guy who looked like an Egyptian god welcomed me, winking a green eye and handing me what I thought was his laminated business card. Instead it was a wallet-size reference guide on how to…
Fresh, cheap and out of control
Unfamiliar, surprising to the uninitiated shopper, sometimes unusual enough to evoke laughter, foreign products and produce can make for some happy accidents in the area’s ethnic markets. Not only do the exotic wares dazzle newcomers, these markets serve clienteles that demand low prices and a high degree of quality, giving all shoppers a good value…
Art Bar
She’s a Jolly Gugg-Fellow — Congratulations go out to local artist Beverly Fishman, head of Cranbrook Academy of Art’s painting department, who is one of 186 artists selected from a group of 3,000 applicants — artists, scientists and scholars — recently awarded a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship. The funding will support Fishman’s cost of materials and…
Gold earring, tin ear
We’ve now passed through the last membrane of reality into the world of Marxian surrealism, not that of Karl, but of Groucho, Chico and Harpo — and sometimes Zeppo. Dalí would have loved it in Detroit. In the fog of leisure on Sunday mornings, I’m apt to take my politics in small doses, or not…
