Cock-a-doodle dada
Since his first book, 1964’s The Very Thing That Happens, Russell Edson has been writing poems that, for lack of a better term, can only be described as Edsonesque. His read like fractured fables, resonating the way that riddles sometimes do. Call them parables, fairy tales, prose poems, flash-flash fictions — it makes no difference.…
Art Bar
William Carlos Williams, one of our country’s most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day. August Morning It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly.…
The Night Listener
If for no other reason, the new psycho-thriller The Night Listener is worth seeing because it contains something long thought extinct: a decent performance by Robin Williams. Of course, you’ll need to get over the notion of Williams playing a successful, gay radio personality turned amateur detective. Late-night radio host Gabriel Noone is a successful…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1986, an accident at the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine caused a nuclear meltdown. Radioactive waste spewed into the air, making the area uninhabitable. Twenty years later, humans are still absent, but wildlife is thriving. Native populations of badgers, wild boars, and deer have multiplied, and species that had…
That sinking feeling …
A year after a family tragedy, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is coaxed by her close friends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid), into spending a weekend spelunking in Appalachia. Joined by three other women, these beautiful adrenaline junkies hope a little outdoor adventure will help their friend move past the memories that haunt her. But…
Earnestly hell-bent
Maybe the only thing the Detroit public school system needs to reverse its sad fortunes is for Chandler Bing to get a teaching certificate. Plummeting enrollment, a looming teacher strike, tumbledown facilities, parental apathy — no problem! Just bring a “Friend” to school! Clearly, the classroom crisis in Detroit and across America is systemic, deeply…
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Talladega Nights tells the deeply silly story of redneck racing legend Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell), the type of man who feasts on KFC and Taco Bell, and brags about his “smoking hot” trophy wife and his two nasty little brats, whom he has christened “Walker” and “Texas Ranger.” With the help of his dim-witted best…
The gentle touch that money buys
Sometimes it pays to be a member of the privileged class. Just ask Mel Gibson. Hell, you can ask O.J. Simpson. This is really pretty obvious, but I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard someone say — and actually believe — that this is all an illusion. When folks like Rodney King…
Barnyard
Barnyard has none of the CGI virtuosity or cultural wit of Pixar and DreamWorks, but most pre-school kids don’t care about photorealistic animation, storytelling, inside jokes or whether male cows should have udders. They’re looking for laughs, a few thrills and fun characters. On that level, writer-director Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura, Jimmy Neutron, Bruce Almighty)…
Still on track
The Whistle Stop’s Matt Rafferty talks business.
Sinner
Front and center at a Runaways show back in the late ’70s, I was gobsmacked by frontwoman Joan Jett’s sheer, visceral rawk presence. Hell, I would’ve licked her toenails if she’d let me. As it was, I was happy just to get a guitar pick and a whole ‘lotta ‘tude. Sinner revives that feeling. The…
Blaire it loud
Monica Blaire has grown accustomed to the status quo suppressing her. Metro Times’ November 2005 music issue even declared her “The best struggling talent who confirms that the music industry is too lazy to concern itself with creativity.” But if she’s struggled in the past few years to define herself, it’s to avoid being defined.…
Port report
Port deals scrapped after scrutiny.
A pop cherub gets his wings
Christian isn’t wearing his angel wings when he shows up for our interview. But he does sport the outfit you see in the photo that accompanies this article, the one where he’s clad entirely in white, with a close-fitting sweater pulled over a collared shirt, its pristine French cuffs folded over like gauntlets of fine…
Giblets and jive
Do critics call foul on Conyers because he talks turkey?
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
I can’t stop running! If I stop running I’ll MB81! Agoraphobic Nosebleed – PCP Torpedo / Anbrx (Hydra Head) :: The most distorted screamo album ever made opens with a foul-mouthed excerpt from a Richard Pryor movie. Then they strike up the band and put the dialogue to a mess age of musick. 1986 –…
Geek week
The unctuous Old Navy ad campaign has already begun, the 9-cent bottles of Elmer’s Glue are flying off Office Depot’s shelves and dammit if 64-packs of Crayola crayons aren’t on sale for crazy cheap prices. “But it was 103 degrees outside last week,” you say? No matter. Like it or not, the kids are on…
Putting things straight
Q: I was dating an amazing guy — smart, funny, caring and interesting. I just wasn’t that attracted to him. I enjoyed hooking up with him, but it was never one of those “Oh man, I just have to have you” things. Enter my good friend, on whom I’d been harboring a crush for quite…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Head Tease
Bigger was the theme for Lollapalooza 2006. With more 130 acts on the bill, the lineup was definitely bigger. There was also a bigger surface area — this year’s Lolla oozed across almost two miles of downtown Chicago park space. The corporate presence was bigger too, of course, and so were the ticket and concession…
Of blogs and bombs
Mazen Kerbaj is just like any other free improv musician. He sweats in recording sessions, comments on how small the scene is and spends his free time drinking double espressos in a café and beer in bars with friends. On his "Kerblog," he confesses his taste for tequila, recalls a fine karate session and draws…
Something to talk about
Occupying a spacious, ruggedly handsome, early ’20s structure on Joseph Campau adjacent to new lofts, apartments, and the almost-completed Riverwalk, They Say has a menu of old standards, some of which involve Cajun preparations. Late diners will be pleased to discover that They Say is one of the few downtown restaurants that offers their full…
A Laughing Matter?
Those familiar with the sometimes brilliant, often embarrassingly un-funny offerings at a comedy club’s open-mic night will have some small sense of what’s in store at the Gallery Project’s latest offering, The Humor Show. Just as familiar will be the recognition of the truly funny and inspired, simply because it hangs so close to works…
Lipp service
As the legendarily acerbic newspaper man H.L. Mencken once said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” That’s a maxim clearly taken to heart with equal vigor by both politicos and entertainers. Mencken also famously noted, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the…
Oh, give me light!
Lisa Germano has always searched for answers to complex questions. In her songs, she often spins confusion, heartache and sometimes her own tears into a singular beauty. It’s weighty stuff, but always intriguing and even comforting. Germano’s 1994 epic Geek the Girl was a tale of a young woman’s awkward confrontation with womanhood, and 2003’s…
In too deep
Marisol Ybarra resisted the temptation as long as she could. She resisted the vibrant, bold fliers promising fun and freedom, featuring beaming students blessedly released from the weight of financial burdens. She resisted the smiling coeds about the campus and their soundly convincing pitch: Just a quick signature on the dotted line and you’ll never…
Perilous times
Editor’s note: While many pundits paint Middle Eastern conflicts in broad strokes, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole, on his blog Informed Comment, is more of a pointillist, offering analysis steeped in detail. This piece, which examines how the fighting in Lebanon could affect the U.S. position in Iraq, is a prime example of…
Feedback
Maybe it’s that the Jurassic 5 have to include a song, “Where We At,” on their new album in which they defend their backpacker status. Not that this kind of thing isn’t done, but J5 were always able to show their superiority over Hot 97 emcees by rhymes alone, not by having to state it…
Other views
If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent…
Made up
In 1992, celebrated playwright Doug Wright (Quills) met with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a 64-year-old transvestite who turned her East German home into a loving museum for antique phonographs and priceless furniture. Already the subject of a German documentary and the author of a popular autobiography, Mahlsdorf was a minor celebrity. Known as the Granny Tranny,…
Tapes ’N Tapes
It suggests something about Tapes ‘N Tapes’ wildfire buzz that, by the time they properly released this major label effort, it already seemed dated. This year’s belles of the blogosphere pump life into The Loon by invigorating the familiar charms of the Pixies and Pavement, and muster an energetic Frankenstein of post-everything bedroom rock. The…
Letters to the Editor
Beautiful lines Praise for poetry winner, Tom Schusterbauer’s “my father’s song” (“Telling tales,” Metro Times, July 26). This piece deserves more than an award — it deserves to be shared with many people in many different aspects of life. As citizens of metro-Detroit we can relate to the working-class character, sacrificing for his family and…
So much for free speech
Geoffrey Fieger, the flamboyant and brilliant courtroom lawyer, has been known to be rude, crude and to say things that are in very bad taste. Last week, however, we learned that four of the seven Michigan Supreme Court justices are far ruder, cruder, more obscene and — this is the scary part — far more…
It’s Not Fun. Don’t Do It!
Twin sisters who’ve long perfected the art of onstage sibling rivalry, it was only a matter of time before Tegan and Sara issued a live DVD documenting their bantering and between-song bickering. So it’s somewhat surprising that It’s Not Fun. Don’t Do It!, the 25-year-old Canadians’ first DVD release, lacks the familial fisticuffs that make…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Night and Day
Friday • 11 DirtyLoveBites MUSIC We’ve said it before, but musical incest is, well, incessant in this town — damn near every rock ‘n’ roll musician in the D plays in a handful of bands: DirtyLoveBites is yet another example of this frequent practice, touting a former member of A Thousand Times Yes, not to…
Saudades
As Miles Davis did when his fusion sound was new, the original Tony Williams and Lifetime left audiences more confused than elated circa 1969. Unlike his erstwhile employer’s group, though, Williams’ outfit fizzled before it caught on, and Lifetime’s amped-up (and sometimes spaced-out) drums-organ-guitar format became the stuff of legend rather than lucre. Years later,…
Lolla Lolla Lollapalooza, please
"Dude, Wolfmother Guy is about to jump on the table. Grab your beers!" It’s 4:30 a.m. Saturday at Estelle’s, a low-ceilinged after-hours hang in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, exactly 12 hours after Andrew Stockdale and his mates in the throwback Australian trio tore a hole the size of the 1970s in the middle of Lollapalooza…
