A UNIVERSAL EMOTION
(This memory, written in 2006, is sort of a pre-companion piece to Brian Smith’s misery-in-baseball story, “Fly Ball,” Metro Times, April 7, 2010.) A young fellow on the bus, light mocha color, bald head shined, creaked open my file of memories. He wore a white knit football jersey. “D. THOMAS” on back with Thomas’ number…
Insane Clown Posse May Be Ignorant Of Science But They’ve Made A Kick Ass Video About “Miracles”
To enjoy Insane Clown Posse’s feature film requires a… shall we say… certain mindset. Not true of their “Miracles” video, however, which is actually pretty damn cool. Favorite lines… “Fed a fish to pelican at San Franciso Bay He tried to eat my cell phone. He ran away.” Ah, green screen. What would modern cinema…
REMEMBERING PROOF & THE “SEARCH FOR MEANING “FOUR YEARS ON…
Searching for meaning behind the details of what happened.
HONORING BOOTSEY X — TONIGHT!!
Just a reminder that the first Bootsey X/Bob Mulrooney tribute/benefit show is at the Painted Lady tonight. If you’re anywhere in the area and you love rock ‘n’ roll, you should be there. Bootsey is a Detroit rock legend…but more than that, he’s always been one of the good guys. $10 at the door, which…
CHERIE CURRIE & “THE RUNAWAYS”…TONIGHT…FOR FREE!
We’re a little late on this — have been swamped all day — but The Runaways movie is making its area debut tonight at the Magic Bag in Ferndale at 8:30 p.m. What’s even better is that the admission is the right price — which is to say, it’s free! And Runaways lead vocalist Cherie…
Cheat Code
MLB 2K10 2K Games Xbox 360, PS3 Let’s face it: For the last couple years, the MLB 2K series has sucked. Playing was such a bug-filled glitchfest that you’d likely tear your rotator cuff launching the controller in frustration. While 2K sports games have usually been top-notch, it’s disheartening that the MLB games should be…
Night and Day
THURSDAY APRIL 8 An Evening with Sarah Vowell MAKING PURITANISM POP! In her latest book, The Wordy Shipmates, writer, humorist and frequent This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell explores America’s Puritan beginnings, focusing on such illustrious residents of the Massachusetts’s Bay Colony as John Winthrop and Roger Williams. Mixing historical analysis with references to everything…
Double feature
Adam Wingard’s Home Sick plays like a nihilistic acid-fueled parody of so many soapy homecoming flicks. You know — a buddy returns home to discover his friends still stuck in the same dead-end town, their dead-end lives stuck on an endless loop. In Home Sick, nobody’s a lovable loser, they’re all losers. And the homecoming…
Dagwoods galore
Alcamo’s Market 4423 Schaefer Rd., Dearborn; 313-584-3010; $: We asked our friends for tips on eating on the cheap, and our former photo intern Antal Zambo told us about the ultimate turkey sub deal. He told us, "There’s an Italian deli in East Dearborn called Alcamo’s that serves up big turkey subs for $3," adding,…
Metro Retro
25 years ago in Metro Times: A bidding war over GM’s new Saturn operation has 21 governors vying for the project. Ultimately, it would not be Detroit nor even Michigan but Spring Hill, Tenn., that would get the first Saturn assembly line six years later. GM now plans to phase out the brand by October.…
‘let’s call this’
"let’s call this" for Jayne Cortez baseball, poetry, & rhythm & blues— & all three in one most glorious day, april 15, 1982— let’s call this opening day, like the sky opened up & grinned all over detroit & at the shrine of truth & beauty at michigan & trumbull even the tigers came thru…
Letters to the Editor
Opera seria "Opera made to look easy" (March 31) was a great article with great personality analysis, inspiring as well as instructive. (One overlooks such journalistic pianissimi as "with a toothy smile and steady eye contact.") Although not schooled in any of the arts and only a fair hand, I am fascinated by the creative…
Reinventing the wheel, part one
The music industry today is certainly a lot different than it was 20, 10, even five years ago. Music video request shows are irrelevant; radio is shunned as much as it’s relied upon; and CD and vinyl buyers— the ones who prefer hardcopy over downloads — are purchasing music from their armchairs instead of lining…
Mixed blessings
The story of the stately row house at 133 C St. in Washington, D.C. has been around for a while. The Washington Post last June wrote about what it described as a "shadowy religious organization" and its role in providing a home for a handful of conservative Christian congressmen. But, unless you watch the Rachel…
The first pitch
Detroit was already trailing the Texas Rangers 1-0 when Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammel drew first-inning walks. Many in the Tiger Stadium crowd of 51,238 were still looking for their seats. That’s the way it goes on Opening Day. There are lots of folks — frequently a lot of suits — who don’t attend many…
Splitting greens
Proponents of wind turbines tout their ability to cleanly generate power, transmit it to the grid and do so without the pollution of coal plants and potential dangers of nuclear sites. But opponents of the giant propellers worry about the noise they create along with threats to birds, disruption to lakebeds in construction, and the…
Play ball! — and an outpouring of memories
One of the most famous days in Tiger history was June 28, 1976, when phenom Mark Fidrych (who would go on to be the first athlete ever to grace the cover of Rolling Stone) outdueled the Yankees on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball. It also happened to be my 11th birthday, and my gift just happened…
Studies in cool
Salim Washington was hooked on music as a kid in Detroit, and, since then, the music has taken him to South Africa and South America, Northern Ireland and Paris, not to mention spots along "the underground ‘chitlin circuit.’" In addition to his records as a leader and sideman, 2008 saw the publication of Clawing at…
‘Curing’ a kink?
Q: I’m a young, straight feminist male, and I’ve been dating my feminist girlfriend monogamously for almost two years. Recently, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I am turned on by rape fantasies. Of course, I find the idea of actual rape repugnant, and this is probably, of course, an important reason…
A bit of Italy
Joe Bologna and his wife Adele opened their place in 1985, and ever since have served cuisine scores well on the cost-benefit scale, with none of their substantial main courses costing more than $16, while the appetizers average around $8. Pizza is available in a variety of formats, including often-inventive thin-crusted individual pies, such as…
Baseball jones
For the Love of the Game Universal Studios It’s mighty easy to slag Kevin Costner. No star can hit a career high with Dances With Wolves then hit box-office bunkers with rank films such as 1995’s Waterworld and 1997’s The Postman, without getting used to jokes and guffaws. Helmed by Royal Oak native Sam Raimi,…
Clash of the Titans
Up in Olympus, feuding bros Hades and Zeus are once again caught up in a cosmic dick-waving contest over how best to quiet earth’s rabble. Seems its citizens have stopped praying to the gods and are edging toward a full-scale revolt. If Liam Neeson’s gleaming armor doesn’t distract, you’ll learn that Hades plans to scare…
Super fan
A native of St. Clair Shores, Mike McClary has never stopped following the team that he fell in love with as a kid. Even after moving to Colorado and then Scottsdale, Ariz., he continued to keep close tabs on the Tigers from afar, sticking with them through a string of miserable seasons that reached its…
Gimme Danger …
Come April 13 — about a month after Iggy & the Stooges finally were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and a mere 37 years after their Raw Power album was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world) — this 2-CD Raw Power: Legacy Edition will hit the streets. One disc is the original…
Greening our minds
Last week’s sunshine and warmth had me out raking and picking up the yard in anticipation of getting my garden growing. I even started some seeds germinating indoors and wondered if it was too early to put lettuce seeds in the ground. Lettuce does well in cooler weather and is one of the first things…
Live! In Long Beach (October 30, 1974)
A few rock ‘n’ roll bands, often born of misunderstood loner kids who loved music everyone else hated, were simply destined to be anachronisms. They’d have to walk a mile through shit and spit to get any respect. New York’s Dictators were kinda like that, having braved the laughs, before the Ramones and Richard…
Getting off base
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. —French-born historian Jacques Barzun Baseball has the most intense historical consciousness and historical pretension of any sport … yet it readily abandons tradition for commercial advantage. —Gerald Early, professor and essayist Every year, the Tigers home opener is one of Detroit’s…
Album
For those who detest preciousness in their up-and-coming indie bands, Girls will require a Herculean amount of patience, for several legitimate reasons. For starters, this San Francisco all-male duo named themselves "Girls" and dubbed their debut Album, going two-for-two in the too-cute-by-half category. Then there’s the music itself, which adheres to the hipster-approved formula of…
Neon angels
On Aug.12, 1975, the Runaways played their first gig — at Back Door Man fanzine founder Phast Phreddie Patterson’s parents’ house in north Torrance, Calif. I was there. So were the rest of the original Back Door Man staffers, a whole lotta other South Bay earthdogs, and a few adventurous souls who were willing to…
Stop Don’t / Yes
A year and a half after the release of their debut 5 the Hard Way EP, a record that sadly found the band publicly grieving the loss of Tom Furtaw, their guitarist who collapsed onstage while opening up for the Blue Öyster Cult and subsequently passed away, Spitting Nickels have dusted themselves off, gritted their…
Food Stuff
Can do spirit — The Michigan State University Extension’s Food, Nutrition and Health division is offering courses in Food Preservation 101, teaching about freezing, water-bath and pressure canning, with simple demonstrations and resources for those interested in pursuing food preservation. This one-day presentation will be held twice: From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 26 and…
Queens of noise
The movie even opens with singer Cheri Currie getting her first period, the menstrual blood running down her leg (lots of bodily fluids in this movie, by the way, which may or may not be “symbolic” and a “metaphor” for something). For many tastes, Fanning’s been too precocious as a child star. But while she’s…
Strong-armed
On Opening Day last year, the youngest player in the Major League was the $11.5 million kid Rick Porcello. When the ink from Porcello’s pen hit the paper, his contract with the Detroit Tigers became the most expensive a high school baseball player had signed in league history. Yes, high school. The deal included a…
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg was indeed once the most dangerous man in America — at least he was to those in the political power structure who had supported the Vietnam War and continued to push it at an unspeakable price. As a high-ranking Pentagon analyst, Ellsberg was one of the conflict’s architects, working alongside Defense Secretary Robert…
Fly ball
I love how the baseball diamond is basically a vagina. An aerial view of a major ball field clearly shows how it is as anatomically correct as man-carved acreage can be. Not even "bat" and "ball" metaphors and schoolyard schemes of getting to first, second and third base, and nailing a home run, can compete…
Mitten men on the brink
Extending from the left side of a photo on this book’s cover is a set of hairy dude legs; each skinny trunk falls into a sloppy set of white tube socks, each foot bound in a pair of haggard black-and-white Chuck Taylors that look as naturally American as a black-and-white ’57 Chevy. If it weren’t…
