Food stuff
CHEW SMART I was excited when I heard about Brain Gum, advertised to help do away with those "senior moments." According to its promoters, six sticks a day can help anyone who’s started to notice memory lapses. Chemical engineer Brian English-Reichenberg is the Toronto native who dreamed up Brain Gum. He explains how Brain Gum’s…
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD (OR DETROIT IN HOLLYWOOD)!
Amy Surdu: a boot fetishist’s dream. Detroit rockers are a very big deal in L.A. this week, with upcoming shows there by the Detroit Cobras and the Gore Gore Girls getting the lead headline, above both MF Doom and the reunited Squeeze, in the ROCK PICKS section of the L.A. Weekly. The respective shows –…
THE TEMPLATE FOR EVERY INDIE LABEL
Tony Wilson, one of the fathers of club culture and the indie label boom, has died of kidney cancer in Manchester at the age of 57. A former TV and radio journalist, Wilson was the founder of the indie Factory Records label, where he launched the careers of Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. He later…
DJ HOUSE SHOES IN EL LAY VIA FLORIDA
It’s not widely known that one of MT’s local music freelance writers, Jonathan Cunningham, is now doing well manhandling the music editor post at New Times Broward-Palm Beach. Here Cunningham blogs with updates on former Detroiter House Shoes, in particularly the DJ’s podcast involvement with artist/musician collective HVW8. The L.A.-based House Shoes is, you’ll note,…
A NEW WHITE
Jack White and his model wife Karen Elson welcomed a new life into the world yesterday with the birth of their second child, a baby boy they’ve named Henry Lee White. The couple also have a 15-month-old daughter, Scarlett Teresa White. “The new child and his mother are both feeling very healthy and happy,” White…
NOBEL NOMINATION A GO!
We posted here last week that former Detroiter Mark Norton aka Ivan Suvanjieff (of the Ramrods, who’ll be doing a reunion show at the Magic Stick on Aug. 16th) was on a short list of possible nominees for a Nobel Peace Prize. It turns out that Norton/Suvanjieff, his wife Dawn Gifford Engle and their PeaceJam…
Drama queens
BoxFest ain’t your mama’s summer theater festival. Scratch that. The four-day-long festival at Hamtramck’s Planet Ant Theatre is exactly your mama’s theater fest, and your sister’s and your auntie’s too. The annual festival celebrates women in theater, namely women directors. It serves as an incubator, letting participants develop their skills, talents and ideas, hoping that…
Group therapy
Jeff Howitt spent nearly a decade outside of Michigan — traveling with the Renaissance Fair, living in Phoenix, essentially becoming, to use his own word, a “hobo.” Sometime in 2005, he caught wind of what some of his old friends were up to back in Detroit, and the thought struck him: He had to get…
Bowled over
Pho Hang is a strip-mall storefront on an unlovely strip of Dequindre Road, but who cares: 31 of Pho Hang’s generous entrées can be had for $6, 11 cost $7, and only 14 cost $8 or more. Diners find the real deal at Pho Hang, where they’ll get the lightness and, yes, grace of Vietnamese…
Pop and corn
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show — The Complete Series Warner Home Video Form of a box set! Shape of a bonus feature! This isn’t the original early-’70s Super Friends show, but the later 1984 incarnation created to tie in with the Super Powers Collection line of action figures (thanks, Reagan-era FCC deregulation of…
El Cantante
Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony, who co-star in this biopic about the life of ’70s salsa king Hector Lavoe, never stop being JLo and Marc Anthony. It’s annoying, but that’s not the worst of it. El Cantante is basically a long (really long) music video broken up by flaccid, fleeting narrative and herky-jerky camerawork.…
Opposable Thumbs
Driven gamers hit the DiRT.
Hot Rod
It might be time to reconsider the policy of automatically handing a starring vehicle to nearly every SNL cast member who graduates past “featured performer” status. It’s a time-honored tradition that has produced such classics as Meatballs, The Blues Brothers and Beverly Hills Cop, but also massive, steaming turds like The Ladies Man and It’s…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Bourne again
It may seem odd to praise a big-budget action flick for its maturity, but Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum unequivocally proves that a summer blockbuster needn’t be brainless to be exciting. Unlike the overstuffed CG bravado of Spiderman, Pirates and Die Hard, this third (and, reportedly, last) chapter in the Jason Bourne saga is lean,…
Nostalgia among ruins
Tiger Stadium’s fate: It ain’t over till it’s over.
Bratz
Faced with the challenge of anthropomorphizing these little consumerist demons, their creators have made the bold decision not to just animate the damn thing — as they have with countless Bratz videos — but to cast real live girls. After what was surely a week or two of arduous filmmaking, this labor of love has…
Flicker & flash
A photographer’s job is to see things differently, to capture scenes others miss. When you show something that normally others wouldn’t think to look at, at least framed that way, that’s when you become a photographer, as opposed to just another person with a camera. A sensitivity to the people, places and things that surround…
Becoming Jane
The movie cherry-picks a few details from Austen’s frumpy, mostly unhappy existence, melds them with witticisms and situations that intentionally call to mind her novels and inserts a dashing but duplicitous love interest. Behold Jane Austen, the spunky rom-com heroine. It’s not as bad as it sounds, actually. Crummy title and convenient plot twists aside,…
Motor City Rides
Monica Blaire and her green Jetta.
Underdog
Disney’s Underdog movie doesn’t completely blow puppy-food chunks. Jason Lee, who has gotten plenty of voiceover practice on TV’s “My Name is Earl,” narrates and speaks for the title character, a beagle that gets CGI-supplied superpowers. Yes, it’s another live-action version of an old cartoon. But updated: Our heroic beagle gets his powers after a…
Reasonable doubt: Part II
He was a curiosity to her, this man in prison — a friend of a friend — who wanted someone to write to. He offered to be a good listener if she wanted to “talk about” anything through letters and over the phone. She sent him back a letter saying, “Sure, I’ll help you pass…
Goya’s Ghosts
Goya’s Ghosts is the work of an old master who, like the painter he depicts, is a tireless chronicler of his tumultuous times, even when he’s making a period film. Czech-born director Milos Forman has said he wanted to explore the effects of the Spanish Inquisition long before the current War on Terror began, but…
Night and Day
Thursday • 9 The Last Atomic Bomb MUSHROOM CLOUD It may not be a golden jubilee — 62 years is a pretty nondescript span of time — but that doesn’t make this anniversary of the 1945 nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki any less relevant. In an attempt to promote awareness about the horrors of…
Soul to soul
In 1969, Southern record men Shelby Singleton and Finley Duncan stood on a concrete slab in between two bayous in the Florida panhandle town of Valparaiso, upon which they would soon construct the Playground Recording Studio. Pausing for a photo, they stooped down — Duncan with his short hair, white shirt and business suit, Singleton…
Letters to the Editor
Apparent laments Dear Mr. Holman: I cannot thank you enough for your article (“The seven deadly sins of kid culture,” Metro Times, July 11). My husband and I were astounded to find someone with the same views as ourselves. Though I’m not sure anything can make Dragon Tales much better, it can allow a good…
We Are the Night
The Chemical Brothers have consistently created perfect psychedelic experiences. What makes it hard to definitively describe the duo, however, is their addiction to crossing genres. We Are the Night — their sixth album — doesn’t pioneer or break any new ground, as haters will surely point out. But it does strengthen a legacy that has…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Country Mouse, City House
This guy’s been putting out a steady stream of intelligent continental soft pop, the kind of perfect party background music that doesn’t intrude on anybody’s personal space but rather swirls around the contours of one’s head like a comfortable pillow. And on even closer investigation, you’ll find Rouse singing funny lyrics, such as “I wanna…
Photographers’ picks
Here we asked the four photographers to offer up their cultural picks — books, music and film — that move them in some way, that aid in how they see things. Cyrus Karimipour Books: Daniel C. Dennett: Brainchildren: Essays of Designing Minds — Great collection of essays, such as The Practical Requirements for Making a…
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Borrowing much of its plot from King Kong, 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon was Universal’s last attempt to create a monster as iconic as Frankenstein or the Wolf Man. With an unabashedly B-movie pedigree, it was the postwar era’s version of Alien, inspiring a trio of sequels and influencing filmmakers like Steven Spielberg…
Celebrity skin
Steve Buscemi is nothing like the characters he brings to life on the big screen. He’s not sarcastic or even quick-witted, he’s not frenetic or eccentrically animated, and he’s not that funny either. He’s actually serious, alarmingly sedate, and, of course, he loathes being interviewed — this despite the fact he just directed a movie…
Pixel to the people
Screening showcases video art done with a toy camera.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
A rollicking roundup of recent recordings.
Old-school bangs
I’m working the shit out of this antiquated exercise bike. Peddling to the beat of ESG’s “Dance” blasting from a cassette tape. Behind me, a massive handcrafted faux “turntable stereo” of plywood and 2-by-4s forms the stage’s backdrop. A panel of circular windows like headlights flash fluorescent pulses, mimicking the device’s electronics and bathing the…
Heavy pegging
Couples take a crack at that resilient little cavity.
Little Ramona
I wander into the Bronx Bar looking for a girl I’ve never met who has “black hair and blond streaks.” I’m meeting Ramona Shureb, the Magic Stick’s recently hired talent booker, for beer and bar food. The place is nearly empty, save for a couple of grizzled regulars chatting with bartender Charlene. I join them…
PUSSIES ELECTRIC
Speaking of Starling Electric, Scott McClintock was practicing with the band when their house got egged. Why would anyone want to egg the house of four of Michigan’s pre-eminent pop tunesmiths? Well, the Metro Times, of course. Seems when Starling Electric’s “Motor City Cribs” piece hit the streets, their neighbors in Giraffatitan weren’t amused. Yes,…
GREAT LAKES APPENDECTOMY SOCIETY
Not sure if he was going to be able to make the show, Elm From Arm guitarist Josh Tillinghast learned all the band’s basslines Wednesday night. On Thursday, Scott asked hospital employees what he had to do to get discharged. He was told if he ate everything on his plate, kept it down and took…
EVERYONE’S A CRITIC
Jack White continues his quest to win friends and influence people via his recent interview with Interview Magazine, in which he takes on the Fourth Estate. “Journalists are inherently the laziest people on earth,” the White Stripes frontman told the magazine. “Even in the age of Google, they don’t do any work to check what…
NO MORE WALKIN’
Was saddened to read of the death of Lee Hazelwood in Las Vegas last weekend. The man who discovered and produced Duane Eddy and basically gave Nancy Sinatra a career had been ill with cancer for some time, and the writing was on the wall. Still, it was sad to hear. Some people may not…
NO STONE UNTURNED
Keith Richards has just signed a deal to write his autobiography for Little Brown & Company, the group’s publisher Michael Pietsch announced late last week. The memoirs will be a collaboration with his close friend, writer James Fox. Keith’s reportedly getting $7.3 million dollars for the book (just so his grandchildren’s great-grandchildren never have to…
YES, I HAVE AN EGO
Here’s a link to that music chat room site called the Velvet Rope and the thread about me that I mentioned in my first column. Only reason I thought about it today was that someone revived it yesterday as I was celebrating my 25th birthday
