Joker’s den
A wall covered with dozens of containers full of loose screws, bolts and homeless parts signals a failed attempt at organizing an office that’s in complete disarray. Papers are stacked, some waist-high, restricting mobility in an area about the size of a closet. Between the basic office supplies and machines lie oddities such as a…
The young and the cultured
Marketing a product toward teenagers can be a financial gold mine. That’s why the Roseville Theatre, at the corner of Gratiot and Utica in Roseville, pulls out all the stops. Functioning as a coffee shop, indie movie theater, ice cream parlor, local music venue and techno dance club, the theatre is perfect for young adults…
When freaks streak
Twenty-five-year-old Beth Short admits that even though Mom and Pop are supportive of her theatrical pursuits, it’s doubtful that they’ll attend her next project. “Ever since they came to a play where I ended up in my underwear, they’ve been wary,” she says. Short’s upcoming adventure might leave more folks than just her parents a…
For the long run
Why name a restaurant after a footrace? Marathon’s owner T.J. Hagos wants to call attention to Ethiopia’s prowess in long-distance running: 12 Olympic gold medals, four of them in the marathon. It may be living and training at 9,000 feet on “the roof of Africa,” as his native land is called, that builds strong bodies…
Tommy says so
Perhaps you were one of many who jeered the news that Tommy Stinson had joined Axl Rose as a member of the reconstituted Guns N’ Roses back in 1998. While Replacements diehards screamed bloody treason — wasn’t this the same Stinson who’d mockingly asked, “You wanna see my Axl Rose impression?” during the ’Mats final…
Protecting the question
New York-based poet Elaine Equi’s newest collection, The Cloud of Knowable Things, bears a title that speaks of the gentle dichotomy that occurs over and over again in her poems: The thing that contains the knowable also obscures it. The idea is cold, almost scientific, but her treatment of it is anything but. It’s through…
Think before you snap
Q: My boyfriend and I recently posted pictures of ourselves performing very kinky sexual acts on a porn Web site. This is the first time we have left our faces unblurred. To use the site you must pay a yearly fee; pictures stay up on the site for about a month before they are removed.…
Music From the Motion Picture Masked and Anonymous
Every decade or so Bob Dylan agrees to act in a rambling shambles of a movie that rivals Elvis’ Harum Scarum for monumentally wasting star magnitude. It’s hard to believe the same savvy, sarcastic manipulator of the press and public we first saw in the 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back is the same guy who…
The power that wasn’t there
We’re a superpower with a Third World [electricity] grid. —Bill Richardson, former U.S. energy secretary, Aug. 15, 2003 Here’s a snapshot of the state of early 21st century technology: We can aim a missile at a specific building thousands of miles away and actually hit it. We can send complex space probes to planets…
Be More Flamboyant
Kenne Highland cut his rock ‘n’ roll teeth with legendary Hoosier punks the Gizmos back in the mid ’70s, going on to play in D.C.-area cult heroes the Afrika Korps and eventually heading to Boston and becoming a mainstay of that burg’s garage/punk scene in the ’80s. Highland sightings during the last decade have been…
Disreputable activity
Writing about music, it’s been said, is like dancing about architecture, which is an elegant way to suggest what I do is pretty useless. Who am I, and why should you pay attention to my taste, when it’s culled from experiences that are in all likelihood different from your own? Explaining or justifying this self-indulgent…
quebec
It should come as no surprise to longtime Ween disciples that quebec, the band’s ninth studio effort, is an eclectic mix of wildly divergent musical genres, all rendered with expert craftsmanship, fluidity and more than a touch of the absurd. Having proven themselves equally adept as whiskey-soaked country crooners (on 1996’s 12 Golden Country Greats),…
Love thy music
Like any good flack, Stephen Cramer enjoys what he’s doing. An organizer by proxy and a fan by definition, this pasty-white lover of indie rock has just completed his fourth foray into the world of music promotion. “Since I am not really a musician myself, this is one of the only ways I can put…
Love unto death
Geezer: 4 stars Weezer: 4 stars A review of Shaolin Soccer was supposed to be our Geezer & Weezer swan song, but that film got bumped to an unspecified release date. And with no cool new movies on the horizon, we decided to rent a cult favorite, one not too many readers would know about,…
The streets are alive
As the sun begins its slow descent on a Detroit summer Saturday, a slight breeze passes through the open windows. Smoke trails of Nag Champa hang on the air, and heads bob and sway to the beat from the studio monitors. It’s a moment that could only be captured in music, and producer Waajeed knows…
The Cuckoo
The Cuckoo takes place toward the end of World War II and opens with a Finnish soldier named Veiko (Ville Haapasalo) being chained to a stake driven deep into a huge rock, for reasons that are never made clear. Apparently he’s done something to offend his brothers in arms. Possibly he’s indulged in too much…
August 20-26, 2003
20 WED • ART “Four Seasons in Japanese Art”—The minimalistic beauty of Japanese artwork is a thing to behold in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s “Four Seasons of Japanese Art.” Guest curator Natsu Oyobe has put together a unique installation of paintings, prints, ceramics and lacquerware of the 18th to 20th centuries which…
Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who opposed Adolf Hitler and his brutal regime, first openly in the early ‘30s and then more clandestinely as the dictator’s power became absolute. Bonhoeffer, the documentary by Martin Doblmeier, is a straightforward telling of his life, of his early triumphs as a critical thinker in Christian circles, of…
Letters to the Editor
Fear factor Jack Lessenberry, you are wrong in one assessment: The domestic policy of the Republican Party is not to make white people feel comfortable and secure (“The white people’s party,” Metro Times, August 13-19). The entire domestic program of the Republican Party is built on one basic premise — fear everything. And if you…
Camp
Camp is a clever title for this offbeat and occasionally laugh-out-loud teen musical comedy set at a summer drama camp (think a gay-themed spoof of Fame, in the woods). First-time director Todd Graff’s fish-out-of-water plot plays up some of the secondary meanings of the title: “artificial and extravagant … teasingly ingenuous,” “a person who adopts…
R.J. Spangler’s house of blues
R.J. Spangler is into the blues.The music stalwart helped resurrect and nurture the careers of such luminaries as Johnnie Bassett, Alberta Adams, Odessa Harris, Joe Weaver and the Motor City Rhythm and Blues Pioneers. With the exception of Bassett, he still manages these acts. Spangler, 46, is also an accomplished musician, a drummer. Cognoscenti say…
Le Divorce
As a Merchant-Ivory film, Le Divorce comes with its own set of preconceived notions about what it should and should not be. Indeed, its plot would be right at home in the costumed, pre-20th century halls of M-I films of the ’80s and early ’90s. But Le Divorce takes place in the now, with all…
Dearth and taxes
Allen Shiffman sits at his favorite deli and riffles through tax receipts. City of Detroit records indicate the 61-year-old Southfield Township resident is among the city’s top property-tax deadbeats, owing more than $1 million on nearly 300 rental houses. Problem is, Shiffman doesn’t own those houses. He’s got documents to prove it. “The tax rolls…
Grind
Grind borrows from so many places that it barely has its own identity, instead gamely attempting to subsist on a steady diet of Tony Hawk, road trip bromides and repeat viewings of Dazed and Confused. And for all its eager consumption of what came before, the movie is incredibly anemic. Only a pair of witty…
Is ICP the most horrible of all time?
Squirt the Faygo! The September issue of Blender magazine elected Insane Clown Posse as the most talentless musical act of all time, ever, ever, ever. The “50 Worst Artists in Music History” list even trumpets ICP as inferior to the tepid Goo Goo Dolls! Gosh! Shoddier than Celine Dion! Heaven forefend! Worse than Bible-thumpers Creed,…
Tragedy revisited
After reading “Five Past Midnight in Bhopal,” you may savor filling your lungs with air. Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro’s description of the mass suffocation caused by a leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant outside of Bhopal, India, is stunning. They vividly capture how, in the midnight hour of Dec. 3, 1984, low-hanging gases…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Warning! The following statements may pop into your head with annoying frequency in the coming week: "Nobody sees me for who I really am." "Life’s a bitch." "Sooner or later, everyone will find out how I’ve been faking it all these years." "I’ll never have enough money." "I’m afraid to change…
Working for change
Hey, all you slackers and anarchists, get your shit together and vote. Not registered? We shoulda known. Here’s a site that lets you register online. Site: Your Vote Matters Email: yourvotematters@workingassets.com Site Unseen is a new feature at www.metrotimes.com. It highlights any sites that provoke weird, enlightening, introspective, eerie or downright repugnant reactions. Happy thoughts…
Just passin’ through
There’s a guy passed out at the corner of the Attic Bar in Hamtramck. Including him, there are four customers, one bartender and one cigarette-smoking, acoustic guitar-abusing man who’s sitting up on stage. A single bulb burns behind the silhouette of the guitar man. A closer look reveals the hot ember of a burning butt…
