Bard of Brooklyn
Hubert Selby Jr.: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow Eclectic It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, Michael W. Dean and Kenneth Shiffrin’s loving tribute to cult author Hubert Selby Jr., suffers from a frustrating tendency common in cinematic biographies: It takes the unpredictable, turbulent life of an American maverick and molds it into a safe and familiar structure. According…
3 to get ready
It’s a tradition in jazz that before starting a band, a rising talent plays in an established one for some years, finding a musical voice, developing a name and absorbing firsthand how a professional band operates. For example, before musicians such as alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett and bassist Rodney Whitaker became stars, they first served…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
"Hey Media Sellout! Why didnt u mention Wrestlemana in yor last two columns? What ahhepoend did the WWE take u off there payroll??? Who cares what u think about the Diodes whoever they are ROFL!!!! or did they pay u more to write about them insetad u crook??" That dippy epistle is just a…
All mixed up
Q: My wife of five years, mate of 11 years, and mother of our two kids has dropped a bomb on me: She thinks she’s a lesbian. About eight years ago, shortly after our first child, she had a couple of experiences with another woman. Being young and ignorant (she was 19, I was 23),…
Motor City Cribs
Woodbridge home rocks for two.
Under the gun
Now for the truth about the murderous rampage at Virginia Tech last week. We asked for it. We got what we deserve by virtue of our utterly insane gun laws. Our demented or cowardly politicians of both parties made it possible — make that certain — by being afraid to do anything other than kiss…
Fashion that walks the line
Birds of paradise: Blanche’s Tracee Mae Miller wears a Eugenia Paul piece with ruffles while taking tea with Detroit’s couture designers Eugenia and Paul Patterson. (MT photo: Cybelle Codish) International media and hipster crowds go bonkers over their designs. Their clothes have been displayed in national magazines and on TV. But few in Detroit know…
Rock this vote?
Over the years we’ve poked fun at the Detroit Music Awards. We’ve waxed philosophical, taken the awards to task, and even taken a few cheap shots. But there’s a reason we keep going back and addressing the annual evening of accolades and commemoration: We still love music in this town and think it’s deserving of…
Justice delayed
Call it the arc of environmental justice. Although its origins may be diffuse, a primary starting point can be traced to North Carolina, circa 1982, when the state opened a landfill for soil contaminated by the highly toxic compound PCB in rural Warren County. Area residents, predominantly African-American, organized in protest. That resistance attracted the…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Diary of a stylish meta-morphosis
Photo illustrations by Cybelle Codish. Clothing modeled by Ingrid Bushamie. Hair styling by Scott Hulbert of Birmingham’s Red Salon. Makeup by Barbara Deyo of Birmingham’s Touch Spa. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. —Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis …
In stitches
Sarah Lurtz and Sarah Lapinski are done fucking around. The two young women have given this guy every opportunity to pay up and he’s still making excuses. As the designers of Wound Menswear and founders of Motor City Sewing, “the Sarahs,” as they call themselves, have a business to run — two, actually. They made…
Last call
Between funding squeezes, competition from new media and plain ol’ hard times, metro Detroit’s small theaters are up against some harsh challenges. The good news, however, is that they’re hanging on, creating plenty of live entertainment worth watching, and a new venue has even been established. As the theater season winds down, here are some…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To manufacture one penny, the U.S. Treasury spends 1.4 cents. To process petroleum for use in operating a car, the oil industry expends 20 percent more energy than the gasoline yields. These are the kinds of situations you’ve urgently got to avoid in the coming week, Aries. You need to get…
Precious metal
Cicadas and grasshoppers, a miniature saw, a tiny golden tooth. These might sound like the makings of a Grimm’s fairy tale, but they’re actually delicately wrought necklaces dreamt up by Detroit-based jewelry designer Regina Pruss. Peruse her cutely titled Chain Chain Chain collection and you’ll find an array of delightfully offbeat, whimsical adornments — a…
Soaring with style
If I needed an image to perfectly portray what I think of Los Angeles, this would be it. A designer named “King Jeremy the Wicked” reigns on the cover of L.A. Weekly’s recent fashion issue. Sitting on a fur chair, Jeremy Scott’s wearing fluorescent green pants patterned with black rotary telephone receivers and a black…
American nightmare
As foreclosures spiral, housing activists offer help.
American Life in Poetry
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 Houdini never gets far from the news. There’s always a movie coming out, or a book, and every other magician has to face comparison to the legendary master. Here the California poet, Kay Ryan, encapsulates the man and says something wise about celebrity. Houdini…
Nattering about Nader
Crusader or spoiler: Your pick.
Back to Black
While Newsweek wasted an entire page talking about her out-of-control drinking and raging fists, I’ll only waste two sentences. Sure, the image goes in hand with the music (or the name) — Winehouse’s unapologetic rejection of sobriety on “Rehab” is the built-in promotional tool that lets PR guys go home early. But if shambalism alone…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 25 The Thing MUSIC If their reputation as a world-class free jazz ensemble doesn’t ingratiate them to Detroit audiences, The Thing’s 2001 CD Garage should do the trick. Reedman Mats Gustafson, percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love and low-ender Ingebrigt H. Flaten’s jazzy improvisations liven Detroit’s slightly dank Bohemian National Home with texture and nuance and…
Letters to the Editor
Mad about Marcel Let me begin by pointing out how your paper is actually read by Arab-Americans — especially since the number of Arab-Americans in the metro Detroit area is more than 300,000. That said, I would like to point out this preview about Marcel Khalifé that appeared in your paper (Night and Day, Metro…
Moosejaw grows up
Before things get too toxic, I want to say that, honestly, I love looking at stylish women in catalogs. As a child, I spent long hours perusing the women’s apparel section in a Penney’s catalogue. (Especially, ahem, the intimate apparel). Although I’ve never ordered a stitch of women’s clothing, I enjoy the images, especially the…
Yes I’m a Witch
You either respect Yoko Ono as an artist, the presence that loomed so heavily in John Lennon’s post-Beatles career, or loathe her as a more pretentious Linda McCartney who broke up the band. Either way, she’s part of pop history. For Yes I’m a Witch, Ono’s tapped a who’s-who of under-the-radar alt-rockers to remix and…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Resurrection
Chimaira are the quiet loners of metalcore, preferring the comfort of their own dark thoughts to those of their more popular peers. While just as intense as their death-metal cousins, the Cleveland sextet is not nearly as relentless — there’s too much room for melody and prog experimentalism (such as the intermittently Crimson-like 9-minute epic…
Criminally entertaining
The latest offering from the team of actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, the maverick comedy minds behind Shaun of The Dead, is a wild genre mash-up of macho buddy cop pictures, fish-out-of-water humor and pools of Agatha Christie-style murder-mystery blood. Pegg, who co-wrote the script, stars as grimly efficient supercop Nicholas Angel, ace…
There’s no 666 in Outer-space
While hardly mainstream fodder, the duo of Spencer Seim and Zach Hill take a step toward accessibility as they morph into a prog rock quintet, headed by caterwauling singer Aaron Ross. Like Mars Volta with a sense of humor or a noisier, more inscrutable Primus, Hella works whirling-dervish pyrotechnics into song structures while maintaining a…
Vacancy
The concept here is pretty much the same as any wrong-turn horror flick that’s been made since in the last 20 years. But as tempting as it is to lump Vacancy in with its “peers,” it’s a significant notch above them. It’s a grim, nasty little movie, expertly crafted to twist your gut into a…
In the Land of Women
Adam Brody stars as Carter, a hack screenwriter who flees tinsel town for Michigan, to care for his aging grandmother and to recapture his groove. Back in a lush little Eden of manicured lawns, shiny new cars and gorgeous, fragile people, he’s found the perfect place to shake out the creative cobwebs and to get…
Fires on the Plain
In Japanese director Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 classic Fires on the Plain, survival is a curse, the ultimate purgatory. Charting the long, uncertain journey of a rogue World War II soldier from a decimated platoon as he wanders across a Philippine island, the movie is like a sustained howl; there’s nothing thrilling about wasting away. The…
Mafioso
Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso is a forgotten comic gem that’s sneakier than it first seems. Uptight Fiat foreman Antonio Badalementi (Fellini stalwart Alberto Sordi) gathers up his wife and kids, and heads south to vacation in native Sicily. Though he’s been away from home for many years, the old country fills Antonio with a giddy sense…
