Loftus’ other fanboy crush REVEALED.
The guesses have petered, and the jokes, however funny, have ended. (Care might win with Foreigner. C’mon, Foreigner?) And that means it’s finally time to reveal my other shameless fanboy crush besides Sebadoh. Are you ready? It’s Sahara Hotnights, the Swedish quartet who, like most Swedish groups, have the sick ability to link shit derived…
Letters to the Editor
Bullying teaches kids Re: Jack Lessenberry’s “Bully for nobody” (Metro Times, March 28). I’m not defending the two Michigan state representatives (John Moolenaar and Jack Hoogendyk) mentioned in your article, but do you really think that if they pass an unneeded bill, that these children are going to stop bullying other students? No. Kids don’t…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Market basket
The menu centers on soups and sandwiches thus far, though within a few weeks Bailey plans to add some steak and pork chop specials at dinnertime. Perhaps it’s the lack of transportation costs that keeps prices down — shopping is done on foot within the market, and virtually everything on the menu is bought within…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Damn! Give the MB113 some! Peeler — Evils of the Modern Pleasure Dance (Angel Green) :: The boozy bozo "HEY YEAH! SO! COME ON! YEAH!" caterwaul which opens this album makes it pretty obvious that Craig Peeler has his Yo! Jimbo! shtick down pat, especially on heavy stonerdelic songs like "Half Past High." The Doors…
One eye open
Black Christmas Dimension Home Video Here’s the story of a serial killer who returns to his childhood home, which happens to be a sorority house. OK, so it’s not so original today, but when it came out back in 1974, seminal slasher Halloween was still four years away. This pathetic rehash mines every cliché; from…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): On April 1, 1976, British astronomer Patrick Moore told his radio listeners that a rare configuration of Jupiter and Pluto was occurring. So dramatically would it affect Earth’s gravity, he said, that they might feel lighter than usual, and perhaps even be able to float up into the air. I’m wondering…
Cat power
Video essayist Chris Marker notices a series of whimsical cats painted atop a handful of Paris buildings. Orange with insanely toothy smiles, the graffiti cats are perched on rooftops and hard-to-reach walls, he wonders who made them and why? Taking to the streets, video camera in hand, Marker searches for the felines, finding them everywhere.…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006 I’ve talked often in this column about how poetry can hold a mirror up to life, and I’m especially fond of poems that hold those mirrors up to our most ordinary activities, showing them at their best and brightest. Here Ruth Moose hangs out…
Blades of Glory
Will Ferrell’s trademark mixture of dim-witted bravado, oblivious machismo and inappropriate sexual fervor can be relied upon for cheap yuks. This time out, he’s taken his cocky shtick to the ice of competitive figure skating, a venue so ridiculously stuffed with overinflated egos that it verges on self-parody already. Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels, skating’s…
Three degrees of saturation
“Astonish me!” According to a 20th century legend, that’s what Ballets Russes impresario Serge Diaghilev once said to young Jean Cocteau, as he explained to the budding poet and filmmaker what he wanted from art above all. For viewers who expect the same kind of aesthetic jolt today, Outpost, the new photography show at Ferndale’s…
The Lookout
Scott Frank has a steady and distinguished career as one of Hollywood’s most accomplished screenwriters. In his new film, Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Chris Pratt, a golden-boy high school student whose life is upended by a tragic car accident. Consumed with guilt over the death of his friends and handicapped by an odd form of…
Here and now
He doesn’t consider himself a collector, he has an extensive background in modern art, and he lives in New York City. Meet the Detroit Institute of Art’s new adjunct curator of contemporary art. Mark Rosenthal replaces Joe Cunningham, who, about two years ago now, bailed after only a few months in Detroit. Newly appointed, Rosenthal…
The Host
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has mixed inspired visual jokes and Spielbergian sentimentality into an unapologetic criticism of U.S. political arrogance and overreaction. Years after an American Army officer forces a Korean lab technician to dump dangerous chemicals down a drain that leads to the Han River, a horrifying mutant frog-fish-beast runs amok, swallowing and…
Outshining Britney
When it suddenly seems like game over for the pop-dance tarts, Christina Aguilera has somehow managed to snag all the props. She used to be two steps behind rival and Mouseketeer co-star Britney Spears, so much that her career seemed like a series of reactions to Britney’s. But while the star of Crossroads has handily…
The Earrings of Madame De…
Director Max Ophuls’ graceful, deceptively tragic late-career masterpiece is an effortlessly plotted tale of lust, longing and avarice. It’s the kind of lush, dreamy tragedy that will satisfy the most die-hard romantics, even as it undercuts all the swooning desire with a scathing indictment of the upper class. The fickle Madame Louise (Danielle Derrieux) is…
Government inquiry
Drew Bardo and Will Linna have questions. They have a long list that addresses the U.S. government’s war machine, the psychological deadness they say afflicts modern society, and members of what they call an increasingly “vain” rock ‘n’ roll community. It’s not surprising then that the two Detroit-based musicians — who plan to bring all…
B-movie brats
The lights are dim. Buck-fifty shells of beer clank on the bar and smoke rings waft slowly to the ceiling. The barkeep turns down the juke for the night and a grizzled biker gets his head chopped off in the corner. OK, so the biker is a character in Northville Cemetery Massacre, a movie that’s…
Plate shifting
Rick Halberg’s culinary journey.
The mastering master
Mastering is the key process to the final sound of a recording. It’s where the mixed master from the recording session is technically fine tuned (through equalization adjustments, sound compression, signal leveling, editing, restoration and blah, blah, blah) for listening on vinyl, CD or any other format. In short, pretty much every commercial recording you…
Snappy answers
Q: I’m a 22-year-old male from Canada and in a long-term relationship. The sex is fantastic, we’ve always been GGG, and our bedroom habits include talking dirty and light bondage, which she loves. However, my girlfriend sometimes complains that I “degrade” her in the bedroom and she thinks that this is representative of a larger…
Start me up
Truth be told, you don’t need to mortgage the house for a great sounding two-channel system that’ll kill any big box “product.” For a bit more (or less) than a grand, you could piece together a brand-new system that’ll reveal things you’ve never heard before and last for years. High-end isn’t supposed to be a…
Head Cheese
The hard R of a heartland drawl and clangy Fender distortion: “Plain-faced” doesn’t even nail how straightforward the Offramps really are. What can they say? They’re guys who love their record collections. But the Ypsilanti trio is a fine addition to our beer-core movement, especially since vocalist-guitarist J. Porter writes lines like “I fell in…
Motor City Cribs
Liz Copeland’s studio space.
Night and Day
Wednesday • 4 The Feeling MUSIC England’s rep for churning out the wimpiest rock ‘n’ roll stars might not be fair; but when such epicene combos as the Feeling take the charts, it’s hard not to believe the cliché. But just because these iron-deficient chanteurs sing in the same key as Broadway’s Oliver doesn’t mean…
Take us to the river
Everett Stewart routinely picks up his son, Alexander, from school at the corner of Conner Street and Jefferson Avenue, walks with him the few blocks to Maheras Park, and watches while the 5-year-old throws rocks in the Detroit River and looks for fish. Freighters cruise by, wildflowers bloom, and the Stewarts are an urban planner’s…
Slip of state
Last week we finally learned that Anna Nicole Smith died of an overdose, and nobody said the Kennedys had anything to do with it. Closer to home, it appeared that our local media were reluctantly forced to conclude that they were not likely to find more rotting fragments of the chopped-up Macomb County mom. And…
Shock waves
Andy Dillon’s power plan.
Black like Obama
His father deserted the family when he was young. He was raised mostly by a single mother, whose second marriage also broke up, and he lived with his grandparents for much of his early life. During his teen years he played basketball but turned to marijuana, alcohol and cocaine to help deal with his feelings…
Hmong among us
National gathering to take place in Detroit.
Ear entry
It’s all about the chase. Eager-faced lawyerly gents with perfectly trimmed gray coifs merge with adrenalized blue-collar dudes with perfectly shaped beer bellies. There’re twentysomething music fans in tour T’s bobbing heads next to dad-rock types in khaki who’re just old enough to remember hi-fi’s golden age in the ’70s. There are aging hippies, R&B…
