Bleak and blue beauty
The calendar says it’s spring, but inside the Susanne Hilberry Gallery, a wintry atmosphere prevails. Gordon Newton’s black mixed-media works and Benjamin Hoy’s stark black-and-white photographs assert abandonment and loss. James Duffy’s photos, while less bleak, capture a possibility of rebirth that remains unfulfilled One of the original Cass Corridor artists to emerge in Detroit…
You Don’t Know What I Know
The Fat Possum label has for years been unearthing underappreciated bluesmen and bringing them back into the spotlight (see, among others, R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough). And, praise be to Allah, they’ve done it again with Little Freddie King. You could call this garage rock — mainly because King works in a real-life garage. He gets…
Why the next pope matters
Twenty years ago, a young, vigorous man named Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen leader of a now-vanished nation called the Soviet Union. I was then about to go do some reporting in what was the world’s other superpower, a nation which then was the most important foreign country in the world. Gorbachev’s selection seemed exciting, since…
All tangled up in the ties that bind
Q: Here’s my wah-wah: I’m 20, gay and my boyfriend of eight months is into tying me up. I work out a lot and I have pretty decent muscles, and something about tying me up makes him extra horny, which is a turn-on for me too. I’m wondering if I have anything to be worried…
Guero
Midnite Vulture’s lobotomy beats faded as Beck drove east into the desert, and soon he’d eased into the contented weariness of Sea Change. That transition was jarring for some. But by 2002, most Beck fans were rolling with his shifts of music and mood, and Guero rewards that perseverance. It brings Beck’s two brains into…
Night sparks
It helps to be nervous in Detroit’s club culture, where the smallest of margins separates certainty and doubt, triumph and failure. What appears lost one day is often found the next — like hope and faith in the organizers of the upcoming Fuse-In festival, which is just about seven weeks away from its promised Memorial…
Later days and better lays
It used to take years to become redundant in American cultural life. If your last movie bombed you could wander around television until you got your chops back, and if things got really dire, an extended stint on Hollywood Squares or The Love Boat could slow your depressing slide from the red carpet to an…
Give Daddy the Knife Cindy
Anybody remember the Dukes Of Stratosphear, XTC’s nom du rawk tribute to psychedelia? Against all odds, the high-concept project worked because the originals tapped the same sonic mainline as the actual ’60s tunes that inspired them. Similarly, in 1984 when the Damned mounted their garage/psych set of covers, plus two right-on originals, it felt and…
Kelly Clarkson vs. Bob Dylan
I know you haters expect another hatchet piece on America’s Sweetheart of Song Gone Electric, and as much as every bilious globule left in me hates American Idol for awarding record contracts to singers that couldn’t get the emotional gist of a milk commercial right, I’ve got to fess up that Kelly Clarkson could conquer…
Head Cheese
Radio DJs Origix and D.C. have been rockin’ indie airwaves for nearly three years, playing the hottest hip-hop records from Detroit and the Midwest. Known for their willingness to support local artists that mainstream radio stations ignore, Origix and D.C.’s weekly show The Zone (WHFR 89.3FM) has become a hip-hop staple throughout Michigan. Without funds…
Weekly Fecal
Picture the git-tone of Hendrix, the syrupy slop of Sabbath, and mystical Narnia-borne lyrics that should only be in a Tenacious D song. These guys know one tempo (boring … uh, we mean slow) and fail to deviate from it. While their self-titled debut album isn’t too different from Feathers (their fourth studio LP), it…
Man of steel
Mention John Werden’s name to local artists, and you’ll hear about a best friend, the pushiest personal trainer, a sage professor, a drill sergeant, the Marlboro Man, a savior and the dad you’re ceaselessly trying to impress. But it’s better to see the reactions. “The Unc!” bellows an artist-type named Mark in a downtown bar.…
The Prince talks
Old school is synonymous with retirement home when it comes to rap. While pop old-timers like Phil Collins are still charting years after they’ve flat-lined or entered a persistent vegetative state, classic rappers like Eric B., KRS-One and Prince Paul might as well have died from mainstream hip-hop’s perspective. They’re too busy trolling the rap…
Ginger EP
Toss this disc by Detroit trio the Cyril Lords on the ever-growing pile of records that aren’t nearly as good as they should be. On the surface, the individual performances are strong, and studio button-pushers Jim Diamond and Al Sutton give the band a bright, crisp sound that’s remarkably a few steps away from garage…
Up in the sky: Super Cochran
I was one of those who always thought O.J. did it. Still do, matter of fact. But whether or not O.J. Simpson really did murder his wife and Ron Goldman, I have to say that during the trial I developed a huge amount of respect for Johnnie Cochran, who died last week at the age…
Backslash
One man’s trash… Perhaps it all started when a nerdy teen decided to sell his virginity on eBay, back in, oh, 2000 or so. Then it wasn’t long before every yahoo with an AOL account figured out how to amuse themselves with hoax auctions on eBay. Suddenly, that half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich, your stinky pair…
Nothing bottled here but the wine
With fresh ingredients and plenty of imports from the old country, the Barbieri family is attempting to re-create an Italian café in Grosse Pointe with Café Nini, the latest restaurant to bear the name Da Edoardo. They have Mokarabia coffee, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma and mortadella with pistachios — all that’s lacking is a…
Why a Duck? (Part I)
To celebrate nothing in particular, I spent the weekend with a duck. This best-known and most-loved game bird is one of my favorite foods, period. It’s full of flavor, the mahogany-colored breast more satisfying and meaty even than veal. The leg and thigh meat, unlike chicken and turkey, are milder, and because they’re more sinewy,…
Art Bar
Poetry for the People: New Pulitzer-winner Ted Kooser, America’s 13th poet laureate, gets us. He’s no suit sitting in an office consulting ancient texts. For 35 years, he worked in the insurance business. “I wrote each morning … and I often took my fresh drafts of poems and showed them to my secretary. … If…
Sin-sational
Sin City 4 stars Robert Rodriguez’s pulp noir on steroids is the damnedest thing you’re likely to see all year. Sexist, nihilistic, and riddled with enough tough-guy dialogue to fill a library of detective novels, Sin City is a relentless assault on the senses. Gorgeous black and white visuals splashed with arterial reds and yellows…
Proactive
Seal of disapproval — Animal rights activists will gather on both sides of the Detroit-Windsor border at noon on Saturday, April 9, to protest the slaughter of seals that takes place each year on the ice floes off Canada’s Atlantic Coast. “Canada’s commercial seal hunt is the largest and cruelest slaughter of marine mammals on…
Finally, a room of his own
Dirk Bakker, the Detroit Institute of Arts’ director of photography and an extraordinary artist himself, recently agreed to meet and discuss the paintings of his countryman, Gerard ter Borch, the 17th century Dutch painter whose work is on exhibit through May 22 at the museum. As we walk into the exhibit, the first thing Bakker…
Off the Map
Off the Map 3 1/2 stars Based on the play by the same name, Off The Map is a loving character study of the Grodens, a family living off the grid in Taos, New Mexico, in the ’70s. Superbly directed by Campbell Scott, the story is told through the eyes of the precocious 12-year-old daughter…
Name game, Detroit style
What’s in a name? If you’re involved in a bitter mayoral race, maybe a lot. Though it’s only April, the opening salvos have already been fired at Detroit mayoral candidate Freman Hendrix, who, like a lot of people, chooses to go by his middle name instead of his first name, Helmut. Hell, with a name…
Dodge this
There’s medieval torture, there’s hand-to-hand combat, there’s Brazilian bikini waxes — and then there’s elementary school athletics. An evil unto itself, those seemingly innocent and carefree playground games of youth have never been for the weak of stature or character. How many of us don’t carry scars — emotional or physical — from haphazardly dangerous,…
Old Boy
Oldboy 3 1/2 stars This Korean film is a ferociously violent and compellingly twisted re-imagining of The Count of Monte Cristo. Kidnapped and locked away for 15 years by mysterious captors, an unassuming businessman is suddenly and inexplicably released. Left with nothing but a hunger for revenge, he sets out to find who imprisoned him…
Justice delayed
The first legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act received a lot of press when it was filed way back in July 2003. Initiated by the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and six advocacy groups — including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ACCESS), the Muslim Community of Ann Arbor and the Council on…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Personality crisis, you got it while it was MB27! • Jennifer Gentle — Valende (Sub Pop) :: If I were the guy who recorded this dire disc of dissipated diarrhea, I’d hide behind a girl’s name, too. • Gliss — Halfway Gone (Mountain lo-fi) :: On the first track he tries to kick like a…
Up and Down
Up and Down 3 1/2 stars This Czech film from has separate and complicated stories that touch at certain points, in a manner that emphasizes randomness and the fact nothing is really under anyone’s control. The first details a couple’s adoption of a black market baby, the second shows a man who returns home to…
God’s velvet rope
It’s been all fire and brimstone since a priest at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores turned a lesbian couple away from his congregation. Last month, Cheryl Mathers and her partner, Mary Horon, visited the church and, seeking to join, filled out a membership card. They were promised a prompt mailing…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 6 22nd Annual Funeral for Ol’ Man Winter FUN FOR ALL Before succumbing to spring fever, take time to send off Ol’ Man Winter with a proper goodbye, and good riddance. This week, Wayne State University students and staffers will stage a send-up funeral procession to kiss off cold weather, accompanied by the…
Game Over
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine 3 stars This documentary examines the famous bouts between Russian chess master Garry Kasparov and the IBM computer Deep Blue. It explores what happens when a man’s intelligence, tinctured with emotion, encounters a machine that seems capable of effectively imitating those qualities that we’ve always thought of as being…
After-school special
This house on 3332 Hunt St., on Detroit’s East Side, is one of the most urgent cases the Abandoned Structure Squad has uncovered to date. We’re told that the house has been vacant for at least five years, serving as a haven for squatters and a refuge for drug activity. With nearly every window broken…
Planting new roots
For nearly 30 years, Marlon and Jeanette Booth lived in a brick bungalow on Detroit’s East Side. As with many of the city’s neighborhoods, the area around their Hamburg Street home deteriorated over time. Houses around them fell into disrepair and were abandoned. Crime increased. In a single year, the couple experienced three break-ins. “The…
My Beautiful Mari
My Beautiful Girl, Mari 3 stars This Korean animated film is a mostly low-key and bittersweet story of childhood fears and fantasies. 12-year-old Namoo takes refuge in a fantasyland in the sky inhabited by a giant dog and an elusive sprite named Mari. Although it may sound like kiddie fare, the depiction of adolescent awkwardness…
Still having a party
Giddy young girls in pin curls and boys with reined-in hormones wait in this Oklahoma City auditorium on a Friday night in 1959. It’s the age of the virgin, at least for appearance’s sake, and by all auspices this room is packed with them. They’re patient and polite. Then Wanda Jackson takes the stage, and…
Body basics
The capsule in which we travel through life is complex, as is our relationship to it. Our bodies: We love them, we loathe them; we pamper them, we abuse them; we alter our own, and judge those that belong to others. With this wide range of issues in mind, the Humanities Center of Wayne State…
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
The Ballad of Jack And Rose 2 1/2 stars This latest intensely personal drama from director Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller) mixes heavy-handed metaphor with moments of true beauty and sorrow; it boasts beautifully rendered performances from the cast, but the script is pretentious and muddled. Daniel Day-Lewis is an ailing father, living…
Letters to the Editor
McPhail not a racist Re: Ric Bohy’s “Color-coded politics,” (Metro Times, March 23), Sharon McPhail’s appearance at the “Sambo Awards” was indeed troubling. But those who have worked closely with her (including me, a gay, white male) know that a) McPhail is not a racist (indeed, her staff, friends and family are about the most…
N&D Center
Wednesday • 6 22nd Annual Funeral for Ol’ Man Winter Fun for all Before succumbing to spring fever, take time to send off Ol’ Man Winter with a proper goodbye, and good riddance. This week, Wayne State University students and staffers will stage a send-up funeral procession to kiss off cold weather, accompanied by the…
Melinda and Melinda
Melinda and Melinda 2 stars Continuing his downward spiral into mediocrity, Woody Allen offers up an intriguing premise that falls flat in its execution. Two intertwining stories examine how a single set of circumstances can become comedy or tragedy. Unfortunately, the comedy isn’t very funny and the tragedy plays like a second-rate Neil LaBute play.…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
The folly patrol
Not too many years ago, I learned to my inexplicable delight that the word “disgruntled” has an opposite, although it took “gruntled” nearly 250 more years to enter the language. Use it; it’s a fine word. I’m not feeling gruntled this week. Surprise. And, with apologies to the great bluesman and one-time Detroit assembly line…
Free Will Astrology
Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Some people weave burlap into the fabric of our lives, and some weave gold thread," says Cosmo Doogood in his Urban Almanac. "Both contribute to make the whole picture beautiful and unique." I would add that there are certain people who on some occasions weave…
Cowbells and sex!
Millions of Americans embraced Coldplay’s weepy mush-pop. That’s fine; there’s a place for trite pianos, and it’s called Banana Republic. In the real world America still crushes on the basics — electric guitars, fireballs, thumping cowbells and sex in bucket seats — and Ash has been bringing those for years. Not that we ever noticed.…
