Cover Stories
What’s so funny?
The art of comedy isn’t actually funny. For most comedians, it’s serious business. Think of it as a complex equation that never yields the same answer twice, and "funny" is usually measured by how hard the audience laughed — but even that is subjective. Why we laugh, and what we laugh at, is as much…
Escape from New York
These two words are the cornerstone of improv: "Yes, And." Your scene partner introduces a premise, and you build upon that premise. You "yes, and" it. So, whenever I meet someone new or run into someone I haven’t seen in years, the recent past comes up and this exchange inevitably happens: Them: "You lived in…
City Slang: Dirty Show 13.5 will include dancing
Anybody familiar with the world famous Dirty Show that takes place around Valentine’s week every year at Bert’s Warehouse will know that visitors can see some crazy-ass performance art. This September (21-23), there will be an extra event at Clutch Cargo’s in Pontiac, dubbed Dirty Show 13.5, and for the first time it will include…
City Slang: Final House Shoes video online now
The final video in Abraham Beltran’s interview series with local hip-hop guru House Shoes in online now. According to a press release, the new vid takes the viewer on a tour of House Shoes’ debut album Let It Go. The video can be viewed here. For the previous episodes, click: Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode…
City Slang: Eliza Neals back in Detroit for three shows
Over the next few weeks, sultry rock ‘n’ soul singer Eliza Neals will be playing three Detroit area shows, at Campus Martius, the Pink Pump boutique, and Arts Beats & Eats. Neals will perform a free show as part of Campus Martius’ Summer in the Park series on Thursday, August 30 from noon-2. Later that…
Weekend Hit List
Friday 24th The Gipsy Kings The world music explosion of the 1980s — the term wasn’t even much used before — may have opened American ears for all manner of sounds from abroad, but it also made an opening for a handful of… [READ MORE] Kathy Kosins You ought to have a sense of your own…
City Slang: Local attorney donates gold records to Detroit Historical Society
Birmingham-based attorney Henry Baskin will be donating some of his cherished and valuable records to the Detroit Historical Society, proving that lawyers do indeed have a heart. (Hey, even we are not above the occasional lawyer joke). Fair play to Baskin though. “From gold records like Eddie Kendricks’ Boogie Down to platinum album Marvin Gaye’s…
City Slang: Warrior Soul raises a Stiff Middle Finger
Awesomely underrated rock ‘n’ roll band Warrior Soul, featuring Detroit’s Kory Clarke, is preparing to release new album Stiff Middle Finger. Warrior Soul has long been a City Slang fave. In a feature on Clarke last year, we said that “In New York, Clarke formed Warrior Soul and signed to Geffen Records. The band went…
Premium Rush
Gary Oldham in Leon the Professional. Eric Roberts in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Al Pacino in Heat and The Devil’s Advocate. Vincent D’Onofrio and Nicholas Cage in just about everything they do. When it comes to unapologetic scenery-chewing, there are few who can match these actors for their glorious embrace of overindulgence. Michael Shannon…
Robot & Frank
Robot & Frank| B+ This isn’t the movie you expect it to be, even while you’re watching it. The feature debut of screenwriter Christopher D. Ford and director Jake Schreier, this modest and disarmingly sly buddy film masquerades as domesticated science fiction in order to obfuscate the tender and artful drama that slowly reveals itself.…
City Slang: Amy Gore & Her Valentines’ album to drop October 13
Amy Gore and Her Valentines will release their debut album, In Love, on October 13. A record release party is planned for that evening at the Lager House in Detroit, at which point the band will likely already have stunned the Arts Beats & Eats crowd. They say, “After spending the summer recording, the band…
Robot & Frank
Robot & Frank| B+ This isn’t the movie you expect it to be, even while you’re watching it. The feature debut of screenwriter Christopher D. Ford and director Jake Schreier, this modest and disarmingly sly buddy film masquerades as domesticated science fiction in order to obfuscate the tender and artful drama that slowly reveals itself.…
High but not dry
There have been plenty of books published on marijuana in recent years. Many of them have been oriented toward politics and the law, generally arguing that prohibition is misguided and its consequences are abysmal. Another group falls into the "marijuana is medicine" category, with authors citing study after study indicating the curative wonders of the…
Do unto others
Q: I am a college-age gay male. Last year, I dated two guys. The first — let’s call him Mitt — I dated for five months. He broke up with me, and it hurt as much as breakups do, but I got over it. A few months later, I dated another guy — let’s call…
Ayn Rand vs. LBJ
Confession time: I too was once attracted to Ayn Rand’s nutty philosophy, for maybe a week. I read The Fountainhead and slogged through Atlas Shrugged, and was impressed. What I admired about her novels — called "mesmerizing nutworks" by one forgotten reviewer — was that they celebrated self-reliance and believing in yourself. Like most teenagers,…
Under orange skies
Walking into Riverview High School to hear a presentation by University of Michigan professor Paul Mohai and two of his colleagues last week, News Hits caught a whiff of the nauseating petrochemical stench spewing from the nearby Marathon oil refinery along I-75. It’s a truly sickening smell. Inside the school, a steady stream of charts…
Precious mettle
Golden Torso plays Saturday, Aug. 25, at Small’s (10339 Conant St., Hamtramck; 313-873-1117) with Jello Biafra & the Guantanamo School of Medicine and Against the Grain. The show happens to be at the New Way in Ferndale on a Tuesday evening, but it could be anywhere on any night of the week. What’s important is…
Snoops.com
Microsoft and Yahoo are selling political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, ZIP codes and other registration information that users provide when they sign up for free e-mail and other services. The Web giants provide users no notification that their information is being used for political targeting. In one…
Hit and Run
Hit and Run| D In what must be the vainest of all vanity projects, Hit and Run is written, directed by and starring Dax Shepard, and it stands as a monument to the catastrophic downside of the auteur theory popularized by the late critic Andrew Sarris. An action-romance-crime-road movie, it is also allegedly a…
The Queen of Versailles
The Queen of Versailles| B- The biggest bombshell in Lauren Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles is a passing boast by subject David Siegel, a billionaire who has made his fortunes by hard-selling timeshares to people who can’t afford them. Casually he admits, "I got George Bush elected." When pressed for details he demurs,…
Laugh till it hurts
That Moroun clan. What a bunch of jokers. Here at the Hits we’re still chuckling over the latest comedic offerings sent our way by the benevolent owners of the Ambassador Bridge. You know them. They are the people who so love the residents of Michigan that they’re willing to spend millions upon millions of dollars…
Italian renaissance
Maria’s of Royal Oak 112 Catalpa Dr., Royal Oak 248-439-6645 Handicap accessible Entrées: $12-$16 Open noon-10 p.m. weekdays, 4-10 p.m. Saturdays, 4-8 p.m. Sundays. There are movies about restaurants (Big Night, Ratatouille) and there are countless movies about comebacks, but has there ever been a feature film about a restaurant comeback? If not, The Buddy…
Letters to the Editor
Hope for Detroit I graduated from the University of Michigan, live in Grosse Pointe, and have a second home in Traverse City. I think that would qualify me for the proverbial a-hole trifecta! But, like many in my shoes, I was born in Detroit (1961) and my grandparents lived in the city until they passed…
Food Stuff
Old is new — We dropped in briefly at the opening fete for DeVries & Co. 1887 last week. The shop, which was previously the R. Hirt Jr. company, remains in the same family that opened it in 1887, under the guidance of Hirt descendant David DeVries. One wag had joked that the store would…
In the light of the lavender moon
"It was a life-changing experience as a songwriter," Los Lobos’ multi-instrumentalist and co-songwriter Louie Pérez says about the making of Kiko (1992), the band’s career-defining album. "Something happened." What happened, actually, began to take shape five years earlier. In Luis Valdez’s acclaimed La Bamba, Los Lobos’ version of the title song (a 1958 Ritchie Valens…
Campaign songs
North Carolina resident Crystal Harris was listening to Garth Brooks’ "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)" when an ad appeared on her iPhone screen, followed by a pop-up message. "To help Mitt Romney become the next president, Romney for President, Inc. would like to use your e-mail address — tap OK to let…
Now hear these!
Doc Waffles Ambulance Chasers Release Party (and Ping-Pong Battle Royale) featuring SelfSays, Passalacqua, Josef Coney Island, Eddie Logix, Dial81 and J. Walker is Saturday, Aug. 25, at 1440 Gallery, 1440 Service St., Detroit. Ping Pong participants sign up at show for competition immediately. Selfsays’ iNsect 7-inch comes out Sept. 25. April is available online and…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
