Cover Story
Opening Day
All-star oddballs Brawling, clowning, kicking high and spacing out — here’s a look at 10 offbeat Tigers worth remembering Scoping out the situation Tigers’ orthopedic consultant Jeffrey Michaelson steps up to home plate for our Opening Day interview Grabbed by the balls Explaining baseball’s cousin can be a sticky wicket
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
Detroit Pleasure Society and The History of Jazz (Record Store Day-eve)
4.19.13 Found Sound Records in Ferndale ft. Detroit Pleasure Society’s songs and Jim Gallert’s music-history presentation 7 pm On the eve of Record Store Day, (a day reserved for reverence towards recorded music and homage to the enthralling, geek-ish actualization attainable by those ascribing to the esteemed cult of vinyl,) The Detroit Pleasure Society…
City Slang: The Hounds Below light up
The Hounds Below, fresh from awesome sets on the SXSW Metro Times Blowout Stage and opening for Ash at the Magic Stick, have put a song out to prepare for a summer UK tour. Frontman Jason Stollsteimer’s previous band the Von Bondies made great strides across pond, landing respectable slots at festivals like Reading and…
City Slang: Bored Youth returns
Old school Detroit punks Bored Youth are back with a new album and, according to them, a new sound. Jon Katz of the band says, “Bored Youth was one of the original punk/hardcore bands of the Detroit/Midwest scene of the early 80’s. Due to a couple of things that happened we broke up. Now there’s…
City Slang: Charity at Street Corner on Record Store Day
Saturday, April 20 is Record Store Day and Street Corner Music in Oak Park has teamed up Charity Music Inc. to give something back. They say, “Every year for five years, as we get excited about the cavalcade of new releases coming out on Record Store Day, we get dizzy with event planning for this…
City Slang: Battlecross launches crowd-funding campaign
Local metal-heads Battlecross have launched a crowd funding campaign via IndieGoGo to secure the funds to offset their expenses related to their appearance on the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour this summer. According to a press release, “This is a very expensive tour for such a new band but we can’t afford to miss this opportunity.…
Roger and Me: A Personal Eulogy of Roger Ebert
“Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.” -Roger Ebert, 2002 I first read those words in early 2006, during a particularly cold winter and a particularly cold time in my life. I had just graduated from college after a long series of…
Ritual Howls
Tonight in Ferndale… This band (with a new record, out-soon on Urinal Cake Records) is opening up for Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Ritual Howls Urinal Cake Records Ritual Howls are a local trio putting a groove to cacophony. Samples of every day city noise are stretched and sequenced to slamming beats from…
Phantom Cats and The Anonymous
The heading of this blog post are the respective names of two local music outfits: The first a melodious clatter of nicely nervy post-punk and operatic new-wave whirl. The second an offbeatly-bookish duo digging a darkly-humorous, eclectic meditation on hip-hop. Both are interchangeably still-early-on or too-healthily-open-to-stylistic-change-ups to summarily say what they sound-like, though… The Phantom Cats, the ostensible indie-rock…
City Slang: ICP announces Mighty Death Pop tour
The Insane Clown Posse this week announced dates for the Mighty Death Pop tour, in support of the album of the same name. According to a press release, “The tent is pitched the Dark Carnival spirits are in the air and the Faygo is ready to rain! Insane Clown Posse and Psychopathic Records are proud…
Hammering the EM law
Thomas Stephens, a progressive attorney who works for the Detroit City Council’s Research & Analysis Division, has just posted a long, scathing piece on the web site of the lefty publication CounterPunch. Titled “Detroit’s New Bankster Plutocracy,” the biting commentary, among other things, takes local mainstream media to task for failing to provide any meaningful…
#CoOwnaz
Photo by: Carjack. Doc Waffles says it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s a hash-tag or it’s a rallying call or it’s an allegory, it’s a sanctifying inside-joke or a password or, actually, maybe it’s bigger. “…Co-Ownaz…” came cooing in a cartoonishly melodious drawl from EmCee J. Walker (of MidCoast Most) as he shuffled into “The…
The Axis Mundi Experiment
Centers of Universes This starts with llamas and leads up to stand-up comedy. Fact-file cards about camels shuffles toward spoken-word artists. It starts with frayed National Geographic clippings of Alpacas taped to poster-board and winds up to acrylic on canvas. In the middle, along the way, there is lots of weird music, played loudly, often…
City Slang: Short but sweet
Celtic rockers the Codgers will have their CD release show at the Gaelic League this Saturday, April 6. Also on the bill will be Mike Galbraith, Larry Larson, and Carl Henry. Katie Grace has been nominated for four Detroit Music Awards, and she will perform at the event on Friday, April 19 at the Fillmore.…
City Slang: Ryan Dillaha rocks for Camp Casey
On Tuesday evening, we attended “Brews and Bites” at Fifth Avenue Billiards in Royal Oak, basically a preview to the “Wild West Summer Beer Fest”. Americana/alt-country dude Ryan Dillaha performed live, and there was much in the way of great food and beer on offer, though the real story was the amazing work being done…
Going for the Gusto
A good friend of mine, a lifelong Detroiter in her 70s, has had enough and is planning to leave the city as soon as she can. A couple of weeks ago someone broke into her car. A few days later somebody broke through three doors — a locked storm door, a barred security door and…
Short cuts
Q: I am trying to understand some sexual fantasies I have. They involve having sex with a woman who has a penis. Sometimes I fantasize that my wife grew a penis. The fantasies started when we first tried pegging a few years ago. We recently had our first child and can no longer find the…
A world of dining choices in Royal Oak
Al’s Famous Deli 32906 Woodward Ave.; 248-549-3663; alsfamousdeli.com; $: Local deli for locavores, buying and selling only Michigan-based products, including corned beef, pickles, breads, rolls, chips and more. Andiamo 129 S. Main St.; 248-582-9300; andiamoitalia.com; $$: Unquestioned master of the Best Italian Chain category in our annual readers’ poll, the many iterations of Andiamo’s…
James Linck: Flying Solo
It was only last year that alt-soul band House Phone was tipped as one of the hottest acts at Blowout 2012 and throughout that year. Half of that prediction proved to be true. House Phone killed at last year’s festival — the band’s ability to summon the spirit of Arthur Lee & Love and mix…
Film Review: No
No | B+ Opposed to political killings? Well, there’s a jingle for that. Or so goes the thinking of advertising executive René Saavedra (Gael García Bernal). It’s 1988 and the Pinochet government is under international pressure to hold a referendum on its ultra-right-wing police state rule. For 15 years, the generalissimo has ruled Chile…
Letters to the Editor
Praise for ‘Sun’ Thank you for featuring a photograph of me in Jim McFarlin’s story “Detroit Stars in Low Winter Sun” (March 27). I am writing to thank Metro Times — and the entire Low Winter Sun team for making me a part of it. Every aspect of the production impressed me — such as…
Cutting through the smoke
Looking at changes to Michigan’s medical marijuana law that went into effect on Monday, it struck us as appropriate that it happened to be April Fool’s Day. Because at some level, these first major changes to a law approved by voters in 2008 are like a bad joke. At least some of the changes strike…
Food Stuff
Fast, cheap and out of control — We got an announcement from the people behind Moo Cluck Moo that they’re launching “the first of what is planned to be thousands or at least hundreds or maybe even tens of locations.” The new restaurant opens this Friday, April 5, with an 11 a.m. ribbon-cutting by Dearborn…
DPS — a mess of conflict
An interesting bit of political theater occurred without getting much attention in the mainstream media last week. It began with some members of the DPS Board of Education hanging a banner from their sixth floor offices in the Fisher Building on West Grand Boulevard. The banner showed a clenched fist with a shackle around its…
The RNC vs. the filthy gay cabal
Were you aware that Michigan’s man on the Republican National Committee believes gay people live a “filthy lifestyle” so depraved that many have hundreds of partners, and almost four-fifths of them have sexually transmitted diseases? Even worse, they have a secret “homosexual agenda,” which is “to get the public to affirm their filthy lifestyle.” Filthy…
Satay House
Satay House 31101 Dequindre Rd., Madison Heights 248-588-1779 satayhouseus.com Handicap accessible Entrées: $6-$11 Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. If you’ve been keeping a bucket list of all the world cuisines you want to try, now you can head to Madison Heights — already known for its excellent Vietnamese restaurants — to…
We’ll eat on the road
The Montana state Legislature recently passed a bill legalizing the salvage, consumption or donation to charity of animals hit and killed by cars — aka roadkill. The law applies to deer, elk, antelope and moose, and puts the state in the company of Alaska, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, Florida and West Virginia (though not Michigan…
EM law heads to court
It didn’t take long for Michigan’s new emergency manager law to face a legal challenge. Last Wednesday, one day before the law officially known as PA 436 first took effect, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the act was filed at the Theodore J. Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit. The fanfare came a day later…
Scoping out the situation
Player Stats: Name: Jeffrey Michaelson, MD Age: 43 Occupation: Orthopedic Sports Surgeon Employed: Principal at The Core Institute/Porretta Orthopedic Center Affiliated Medical Center: DMC Sports Medicine No. Seasons with Tigers: 4 MLB Position: Orthopedic Consultant No. of Games Attended Annually: 28 Description of Duties: Preseason evaluations of players in both the minor league farm…
Let them eat roadkill
The Original Road Kill Cookbook (1985) by B.R. “Buck” Peterson Satire always gets there first, eager to poke fun of where the winds are blowing before we ever get there. This humorous book of “recipes” was a gag gift worth a few chuckles back in the 1980s, back when “Grandma Got Run Over by a…
All-star oddballs
As Detroiters, we’re fortunate to have a team with such a long and storied past. The Tigers have played continuously under one name and in one city longer than any other team in the American League. You could dive into the franchise’s 110-plus years of history and put together a list of almost anything: power…
Should we call them Orr-ders?
Just to make sure you don’t run afoul of any fiats issued by Detroit’s new emergency manager, Kevyn Orr has helpfully had his minions create a site where folks can go and gander at his latest orders. Two have been issued so far. The first, signed on March 25, restored the salaries of Detroit’s mayor…
Grabbed by the balls
Editor’s Note: In honor of our Opening Day issue, we are happy to welcome a regular sports offering to our MT lineup. Baseball’s just not Cricket … likely won’t mean much to the majority of you Yanks. “Of course it isn’t,” you’ll declare — and you’re right. However, this being Metro Times’ big…
