April 24-30, 2002
24 WED • MUSIC: AALY Trio w/Ken Vandermark — If you think all Scandinavian jazz sounds like the pensive Euro-jazz of the ECM label, think again and listen to saxophonist Mats Gustafsson with the AALY Trio. If you think Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark has a sound hard enough to hammer nails with … well, you…
These anarchists mean business
Political tracts, punk fliers, underground zines and other counterculture directories… Idle Kids bookstore has quickly integrated itself into the burgeoning community.
The Scorpion King
Though this film’s fundamental tragic flaw is its script, the sets and most of the actors on them are "B" quality and director Chuck Russell never fires The Rock into the steely blood lust required to spark life into this kind of hero.
Laughter after tears
Second City’s new review takes a lighthearted look at the social ramifications of terrorism
2002 Detroit Music Award Winners
On April 19, 2002, the alternately coveted and scorned Detroit Music Awards were handed out to a wide variety of local talent. For a full list of nominees and other information about the nomination procedure and this year’s show, visit the Detroit Music Awards’ own Web site. And be sure to read Metro Times correspondent…
A Century of Noir: Thirty-Two Classic Crime Stories
More leftover pulp again, Ma? If you’re looking for the definitive collection of pulp/noir fiction, A Century of Noir, edited by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane, isn’t it. Collins states in the introduction that three of the masters of this hard-boiled genre — Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich — were “out of…
Rap and revolution
It would take a nation of millions to hold back the Coup. In the wake of Sept. 11, Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress found themselves the subject of intense media scrutiny with the release of Party Music, which featured an eerily prophetic cover depicting the group blowing up the World Trade Center. Oakland’s…
A Jetson bookshelf
Three books explain the dumbing down of the robot mind….
Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas
Ahoy, ye dirty doggs! Relinquish yer booty or we shall cleave your accursed heads and feed them to the sea! How we love to remember that grand, golden age of plunder, pillage and romance, when reckless rogues scourged the deep blue in search of ill-gotten goods and profit with dagger in hand and evil in…
Tips on drips and crips
The correct etiquette for dealing with bodily fluids on someone else’s body … & Disabled readers applaud Dan for being equally mean to everyone.
Where’s Nate?
Metro Times’ listings editor goes on tour to Europe and all we get is this stupid tour diary.
The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories
It takes a certain intuitive strength and skill to pull a reader into the realm of the unreal and hold her there. With just one hypertext novel (Patchwork Girl) under her belt, young writer Shelley Jackson has constructed The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories with a level of seductive engagement that reeks of something primitive as…
Letters to the Editor
May the Schwartz be with you As usual, Lessenberry hits the nail squarely on the head ("Rx for the Republicans," Metro Times, April 10-16). John Schwartz would be good for our state, regardless of political affiliation. Imagine! A straight-talking pragmatist concerned about whether we have real jobs with real benefits that enable folks to buy…
Tiny, tony take-out
Step inside Aunt Olive’s and you’ll be overwhelmed by the densely packed shelves and the stuffed refrigerated cases. You can buy wine and beer, all kinds of high-end munchies, desserts, freshly baked bread and pies, sandwiches, side dishes, and complete dinners-to-go (four prearranged choices including roasted chicken, meatloaf and pasta, along with sides, salads, and…
Soul of Things I-XIII
Two new trumpet-led quartets from Europe take off from Miles’ modes and come up with a few meaningful silent ways of their own. After track one (“The point”) of Erik Truffaz’s Mantis sidles in with electro-funky interstices that part like curtains for Manu Codjia’s screeching-sliding guitar, the second cut, “La Mémoire du Silence” (“The Memory…
Minding the art
The last in our look at local galleries… Downtown artist Mitch Cope stops to think at Cranbrook Art Museum.
Reviews from the lowlands
Motörhead ferocity and Totino’s crispy crust highlight this neighborhood collective where life is low and beer is cheap.
The Night I Met My Second Wife
Sir makes music that is something beyond naked; it’s utterly bone-chilling. Picture a divorced couple from Melbourne wearing only an organ and a guitar as fig leaves, standing in whatever today’s anti-Eden might be (OK, so maybe that’s the entire modern world). Sir droopingly sings about love with a breathy otherworldliness that exposes this enigma…
Insult to injury
The government’s “One Strike, You’re Out” policy was created with good intentions, but domestic-violence victims are tragically ensnared under its legal umbrella.
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Giving notice — News Hits was drawn to this tiny house with lace curtains on East Warren because it sits only four feet from a torched two-story duplex. We asked 83-year-old Elizabeth Kent, who owns the well-kept home, what it is like to live so close a structure that appears ready to topple. “It’s dangerous,”…
My All American Girl
While Cleveland doesn’t pop up that often on the national radar of musical hotbeds, sharp minds will recall how in the late ’60s the Velvet Underground frequently called it their home away from home. The subsequent proto-punk fallout — Velvet progeny Rocket From the Tombs, Pere Ubu, Mirrors, Dead Boys, et al — forever painted…
What to do about baseball?
The Tigers might not be able to compete, ever again.
Tales from the nosh pit
High-falutin’ and lowbrow shenanigans at the Detroit Music Awards….
Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down: A Tribute to Kris Kristofferson
A tribute album is like an old squeeze. Just like you’ll get drunk and call her up hoping for some of that sweet ol’ mmm-hmm, only to feel kinda dirty-guilty the next morning, you sometimes reach (drunk, natch) for one of those horrible Kiss or Zep tribs you couldn’t bear to trade in ’cos of…
Naturists
Two new gallery shows: Whimsical brilliance at the detroit contemporary, & an Earth Day celebration at Alley Culture.
Deep Natural
When I pulled Deep Natural out of my homework bag and read “Twenty-eight track 2 CD Set, Two hours of music,” my first thought was, “My God, what did I do in my last life to deserve this?” Totally unfair and uncalled for. Michelle Shocked is still doing her bit to use her platform to…
Ethics, please
Commissioner declares attorney’s get-tough ethics proposal is “10 years too late.”
Mantis
Two new trumpet-led quartets from Europe take off from Miles’ modes and come up with a few meaningful silent ways of their own. After track one (“The point”) of Erik Truffaz’s Mantis sidles in with electro-funky interstices that part like curtains for Manu Codjia’s screeching-sliding guitar, the second cut, “La Mémoire du Silence” (“The Memory…
Let’s make a deal
Detroit City Police Officer, once investigated for multiple shootings, may receive monetary settlement.
Deadly desperation
There are no moustache-twirling capitalists and saintly workers in Robert Guédiguian’s tale of the seemingly peaceful French port city of Marseille, just people caught in a situation created by forces too large to be seen and doing the best they can — and the overall impact is perfectly devastating.
Humbuggery
Triangle Foundation addresses antiquated Michigan sex statutes…
Murder by Numbers
With their hearts as hard as the walls of Columbine High School and their protective birthright of upper-class privilege, two poor little rich boys make the art of the perfect murder their extracurricular activity — with Sandra Bullock.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To drive home the point I want to make this week, I have gathered a compendium of bumper sticker slogans about what makes people decelerate. “I Brake for Leprechauns” is my favorite, but I also like the following: “I Brake for Hallucinations,” “I Brake for Whales,” “I Brake for Overturned Payroll…
Fair forecast
Eviction notice for Nederlander’s State Fair Development Group causes legal upheaval.
Big Bad Love
This isn’t so much a story as a poetic portrait of a writer, pieced together with running metaphors, cheap beer, haunting memories, a broken marriage and a sound track of Mississippi hard blues that works like a train pumping the poetry along its way — with Debra Winger and Arliss Howard.
Spank you very much
Q: I took a 33-year-old woman home from an evening out. She wanted sex; so did I. I let her know I was a well-hung; she told me that wouldn’t be a problem, and added that she wanted a good spanking first. She opened a drawer and pulled out a leather strap cut in strips…
Giving notice
Giving notice — News Hits was drawn to this tiny house with lace curtains on East Warren because it sits only four feet from a torched two-story duplex. We asked 83-year-old Elizabeth Kent, who owns the well-kept home, what it is like to live so close a structure that appears ready to topple. “It’s dangerous,”…
The Way We Laughed
Italian director Gianni Amelio’s film is in the long tradition of stories about bumpkins who come to the big city and are corrupted or irrevocably changed by the experience. Amelio does a good job of depicting the often-baffling persistence of family ties.
The spaceman cometh
Spiritualized lets the harmonics float down….
The Haddad papers
Questions pertaining to Rabih Haddad’s unusual confinement lead pursuers of First Amendment freedoms to a silent halt.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Raised on loyalty, tradition, moussaka and guilt, Toula Portokalos is Greek, and never allowed to forget it for a second. Directed by veteran sitcom director Joel Zwick, her story is that rare animal known as "a perfect family film," because it’s about family and ethnic tradition.
