City Slang: Ten things Detroit can learn from Miley Cyrus
1. If you grind Robin Thicke while sticking your tongue out, the buzz on the net will quit focusing on bankruptcy. Get to work, Kevyn Orr. 2. Teddy Bears are not sexy, unless you’re a furry. The furry market is increasingly lucrative though, and we have houses to fill in Detroit. Grinding a teddy bear…
Times Shamrock Announces Sale of Alt-Weekly Division
DETROIT—Times Shamrock Communications announced today that it is placing its alternative weekly division on the market for sale, which includes the Detroit Metro Times, Detroit’s largest weekly publication. The Metro Times is one of five properties in Times Shamrock’s alt-weekly portfolio; other weeklies in the division now on the market include San Antonio Current, Cleveland…
Songs For A Self Conscious Summer
New(-ish) songs circling the indie-rock galaxy vary from dread to doubt to a blunt takedown. MGMT snared everyone’s attention when, five years ago, they set fire to underground dancefloors with instant, hook-heavy synth pop juicers like “Kids,” “Time To Pretend,” and “Electric Feel.” It was a triple whammy of quirky yet fairly simple pop punchers…
Remembering The Stuff
While we still have Josh Malerman on the cover, it seems a good time to revisit The Stuff, a horror film from 1985 starring Detroiter Michael Moriarty. Thanks to the glorious people at Netflix, The Stuff is available to watch at will, which is great. Kinda. Here’s the thing; I remember being about 10-years-old, walking…
The Top Collections Most Likely To Be Sold From the DIA
Trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts have been a part of my life since I was 10 years old. My mother would take me once a year, where we would spend all day admiring the vast collections. Getting the opportunity to be up close with works by Rembrandt, Botticelli, Van Gogh, and Picasso was…
You Don’t Say. My latest sip of Mumblecore.
Mumblecore may be remembered for what it never said. That word ^ won’t really mean anything in nine or ten years, I’m betting. But, for now, if you’ve never heard it (and, indeed, most artists ascribed it won’t likely acknowledge it) it is a slang/categorization for a genre of American indie films and directors who…
Film Review: You’re Next
You’re Next | B- Characters in horror movies have a nasty habit of behaving like people who have never seen a horror movie, which helps explain why the venal trust-fund dimwits in this effective yet cynical thriller spend most of their time stumbling around darkened rooms, screaming incoherently and trundling down to the basement solo. Of…
Film Review: In a World…
In a World…| A- Juicy parts for actresses can be scarce in the best of times, but in the 3-D, blockbuster-franchise-obsessed summer season, women are all too often reduced to eye candy or hapless victims. The only place leading ladies fare worse are in romantic comedies, a genre that has largely devolved into a muddle…
City Slang: Mike Hard at the Lager House on Saturday
Thrall/God Bullies/They Never Sleep main man Mike Hard plays PJ’s Lager House this Saturday, August 24. Also on the bill is Lava Moth, and Fuckknot, the subject of this week’s City Slang. As Fuckknot’s Brad Erwin said, “Mike Hard is amazing. It’s Mike. You can’t beat a guy who is in a three-piece suit at…
Would You Cross a Picket Line for a Quarter-Pounder?
In a hush-hush meeting at Cobo last week, fast food workers and union organizers from across the country planned strikes they said would hit at least 15 cities August 29. Organizers said 500 Detroit fast food toilers had already struck May 10, part of a wave of walkouts that have hit eight cities thus far,…
Film Review: The World’s End
The World’s End | B+ Life is hard. Killing zombies, psychopaths and alien robots is easy. Or so goes the premise of most of the films of Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World). The World’s End, the third installment in Wright and Simon Pegg’s “Cornetto” trilogy, once again mashes…
What is THAT? – Oddities from the MT mailbox
Here’s the deal. Every day here at the Metro Times, our mail delivery includes CDs, books and all sorts of other promotional items. A lot of it we can use and review – local-interest music, DVDs, etc. But we also get a lot of weird and whacky items that just kinda build up. So that’s…
Depeche Mode just can’t get enough of Detroit
In 1989, Depeche Mode came to Detroit to hang out with Derrick May and Juan Atkins, having heard that the duo had been mixing the band’s songs into their sets at clubs like the Music Institute. David Gahan, Martin Gore and the boys tentatively ventured over from Essex, on the outskirts of London, no idea…
Is this it for Phil Coke?
In this week’s edition of the blog, I’ll take a look at Phil Coke, who was sent down to the minors following Tuesday’s loss to the Minnesota Twins. Though Coke has been a household name for more than a few years in Detroit, this move had been coming for quite some time now. He was the…
City Slang: Sponge replaces Puddle of Mudd at Arts Beats and Eats
Apparently, there is a God and he isn’t quite as pissed with Metro Detroit as we might have thought. Violently terrible Kansas City alt-post-grunge monstrosity Puddle of Mudd have pulled out of this year’s Arts Beats & Eats Festival, with our own far superior Sponge replacing them. It could have something to do with the…
City Slang: KerryTown BookFest coming soon
The KerryTown BookFest takes place on Sunday, September 8 in Ann Arbor. All of the info can be found here. Of interest to music fans will be the panel titled Michigan Narratives: From Motown to Iggy Pop, which will be moderated by yours truly. Consider my own horn tooted. I’ll be speaking to Peter Benjamin,…
Tony Hawk Visits Detroit Skate Park
Tony Hawk at Detroit’s Ride It Sculpture Park. International skateboarding star Tony Hawk touched down today at Detroit’s Ride It Sculpture Park (the subject of last week’s cover story) at about 1:30 p.m. The park, largely funded by a grant — the largest ever — from the Tony Hawk Foundation, had been spruced up over…
MC Hammer vs. Starship
Both MC Hammer and Starship (featuring Mickey Thomas) are performing on the Main Stage at Arts Beats & Eats this year, albeit on different days. If you were only planning on going for one day this leaves you with one hell of a dilemma. Allow us to help. In one corner, we have the disputed…
City Slang: Boldy James heading on tour
Local rapper Boldy James is preparing to hit the road with Mobb Deep on that act’s 20th Anniversary tour. James has had a busy 2013 thus far, and next week he drops his “Jammin – 30: In The Morning” mixtape exclusively on Livemixtapes. Bonus content will be available via the app LISNR. His publicist says,…
Why is DPS Stonewalling?
Former Detroit Public Schools’ Emergency Manager Roy Roberts could at times be disarmingly candid. One of those moments came in April, as he unveiled the district’s new strategic plan. Closing more schools every year, he acknowledged, was a losing plan. “When the team came to me with schedules for reviewing the list of schools that…
Eleventh Hour Motion to be Filed in EM Challenge
Last week, the geeks here at News Hits raised the issue of the two federal challenges to Michigan’s emergency manager law — and the possibility that they could be put on hold as a result of the decision by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and Gov. Rick Snyder’s to seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection for the…
Ottava Via
Ottava Via 1400 Michigan Ave., Detroit 313-962-5500 Entrées: $10-$16 Pizzas: $10-$14 Handicap accessible Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11 am.-9 p.m. Sunday O lucky Corktown, to be blessed with so many eating establishments where bold flavor rules the day: Slows, Astro and Mercury Burger rub shoulders on the same block, with other…
Fixing Wayne County; Fixing Detroit
Well, like, duh!!! Do you think? I mean, like how could somebody charged with overseeing the affairs of Michigan’s largest county possibly say something like that? OK, so the commissioners have never organized sufficient oversight over anything, which has just cost Wayne County taxpayers at least $125 million to partly build a jail that will…
The Cabrera Dilemma
Following up a triple-crown-winning season isn’t easy. Typically, what follows for a ballplayer who has a great season, having inflated fan expectations to the stratosphere by nothing other than having a good season, is nearly always disappointing. But for Miguel Cabrera, who’s currently on pace to finish this season with more home runs, RBIs and…
Rash Choices
Q: I recently discovered that my 14-year-old stepson, who lives with us full-time, has been stealing, wearing, soiling and hiding his toddler sister’s pull-ups. I’ve found them after he hides them in his closet, which also serves as a general storage area. After discussions with him, I’m certain that wearing them is a pleasure thing…
Superchunk
Superchunk I Hate Music Merge North Carolina’s Superchunk plays pure indie rock. You know the drill: kicking rhythms and a veritable wall of feedback, all mixed with the intention of saturating the senses. It’s a restless rock sound that knocks the wind out of you — and reliance on nostalgia is minimal. If it sounds…
Transition Between Life and Death
A few years ago while working in her garden, pressing the dirt in her fingers, an image planted itself in the mind of artist Monkey Teeth. With the dirt still under her nails, she purchased a box of clay and began sculpting her first piece, a fetus, titled Oya, after the spirit of transition between…
Ty Segall
Ty Segall Sleeper Drag City Sleeper is an enchantingly disquiet acoustic memoir from 26-year-old rock stylist Ty Segall, a notably productive West Coast-based singer-songwriter. The record’s vibe resonates with the bleary gloom and subtle marvel of San Francisco, viewed from his apartment balcony — appropriate as that’s where Segall recorded and mixed these lullabies. Not…
Food Stuff
FOOD THOUGHT Taste of Home Appetizers: 410 Party Favorites By Catherine Cassidy Readers Digest, $10.95, 256 pp. With countless genres and recipes to choose from, the title isn’t deceiving at all. You’ll never need another appetizer book again. From chicken satay with peanut sauce to walnut toasts with goat cheese and fig, there are plenty…
Film Review: The Spectacular Now
The Spectacular Now | B+ When you inventory the movies that attempt to take teenagers’ emotions seriously, you realize how dreadfully short that list really is. It’s not that films like The Way Way Back or Easy A don’t try, but it says something about their approach when, 24 years after its release, Cameron Crowe’s…
“Low Winter Sun” is Just Lowbrow
In my last Stir It Up column, I referenced the old Naked City television show to help discuss the narrative going on about Detroit in the media. This week another cop show, AMC’s Low Winter Sun, set in crime-ridden Detroit, steps up to the witness stand. Who do they think we are? The show is…
Fuckknot
Ever heard the term “fuckknot” before? We hadn’t either, but Brad Erwin, frontman with the band brandishing the moniker, explained what it means in glorious, vivid detail: “My wife started the Detroit Roller Derby Girls in our basement about 10 years ago,” Erwin says. “She also cuts hair and does color, and in turn she…
Protesters Assemble to Denounce Emergency Manager Law and Media Apathy
While lawyers engage in battle over the constitutionality of Michigan’s emergency manager law and whether Detroit should be allowed to proceed in bankruptcy, there are ongoing efforts to engage the court of public opinion. To date, activists claim the mainstream media seem to be fully on board with the actions taken by Gov. Rick Snyder…
To Fight Debt by Forgiving Debt
“Debtors’ Prison” by Robert Kuttner, Knopf, 335 pp., $26.95 hardcover We recently finished a new book by Robert Kuttner called Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. It was quite an eye-opener. Austerity, of course, is a dirty word around the left end of the political spectrum, one we’re used to arguing against,…
Lions struggling in the preseason…
What about it? With just 20 days before the Lions season opener against the Minnesota Vikings, and the Tigers having a day off yesterday, this week’s blog will gander away from baseball and into the up-and-coming NFL season. The Lions have completed two of their four pre-season games, and haven’t been all too impressive. But…
Irish Eyes A Smilin’
Meet Erin Swofford | Amber in the City … Strangers don’t often approach each other on the streets in downtown Detroit, so when I sat down next to Erin Swofford on a park bench, he was taken a bit by surprise. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind talking with me for a few minutes, about himself,…
RIP Elmore Leonard
Elmore “Dutch” Leonard, one of Detroit’s best-known novelists, has died at the age of 87. According to elmoreleonard.com, the author passed away at 7.15 a.m. on Tuesday morning at his home, surrounded by his family. Leonard, of course, wrote Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Mr. Majestyk and Rum Punch, the latter filmed by Quentin Tarantino…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Send CDs, vinyl, cassettes, demos and 8-tracks to Brett Callwood, Metro Times, 733 St. Antoine, Detroit, MI 46226. Email MP3s and streaming links to bcallwood@metrotimes.com. Geri Allen’s Grand River Crossings: Motown & Motor City Inspirations sees the pianist, composer and bandleader pay tribute by her hometown by exploring the tunes (mainly but not exclusively Motown)…
