Lofty residential visions
Although not nearly as gaudy as riverfront promenades, state-of-the-art sports stadiums or mammoth casinos, the relatively simple (in theory) yet foreign concept of people living in downtown Detroit is a key component to its rejuvenation. While one can find 9-to-5 activity during the workweek, an active entertainment scene, and several pockets of full-capacity residential components…
Paranoid premonitions
Aldous Huxley: Complete Essays Vols. I-VI Robert S. Baker and James Sexton, editors Ivan R. Dee, $35 each George Orwell and Aldous Huxley shared a talent for prescience, but little else. Orwell, the son of a civil servant, worked as a colonial police officer, was wounded while fighting in a revolutionary war in Spain, eked…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
For many, the name Kercheval evokes images of an elegant, tree-lined street where shoppers named “Biff” and “Buffy” are all clad in madras shorts, busy setting up dates for golf and tennis. That’s in the Grosse Pointes, which don’t generally provide much fodder for the Abandoned Structure Squad. But unlike many a white suburbanite, Kercheval…
Dec. 18-25, 2002
18-21 WED-SAT • ART The Retro Toybox: Vintage Toy Sale and Exhibition — Remember Tinker Toys and Easy-Bake Ovens? Remember how the confusing smell of a Strawberry Shortcake doll was neither strawberry nor cakelike? What was that? Anyway, this week is your opportunity to take a stroll down memory lane with a special exhibit and…
There is always hope
This is balls-to-the-walls blockbuster entertainment in its purest form: action, action, action, set design, special effects, characterization, action, action, action. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a pitch-perfect second act, full of dark wonder and the slow, pounding pulse of Aragorn’s unflagging hope.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You will be more lighthearted about love in 2003. I see you taking yourself less seriously as you seek riper versions of romance and intimacy. I envision you injecting more humor into your sexual experiences. Here are my suggestions about holiday gifts you should give yourself: 1) A bumper sticker that…
Booty-litigious
Jennifer Lopez has dropped a prenuptial bomb on her soon-to-be third hubby Ben Affleck, say pals, leaving nothing to chance as they head to the altar. Friends say she wants Ben to agree to live by a set of strict rules … . Her pals say she drew up a whole list of fines, ranging…
Star Trek: Nemesis
Ever since the leadership baton was officially passed from Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), the pleasure-factor of the series has been dipping with each outing. What makes the new movie and its immediate predecessors seem a little dull are the yawn-inducing fights and the seen-it-all-before special effects.
Humping the handicapped
Q: I am a 22-year-old virgin going to college in Texas. I have never had a girlfriend (I’m from a stupid foreign culture, my mom doesn’t allow dating, etc.) and will wind up in an arranged marriage in two years. But I’m still horny. Sometimes I see girls on campus who are disabled or burn…
Phun with bigots
Several weeks back, News Hits reported that Kansas minister Fred Phelps is bringing his traveling hate show to Ferndale just before Christmas. It seems Fred believes Fernhole is a sodomite haven, and he’s coming to exorcise a few demons. If you want an inkling of just how vile and intolerant Phelps and his followers are,…
Analyze That
This sequel to Analyze This, again directed by Harold Ramis, has almost all the same writers on board, along with many of the same tired jokes and some new tired ones too. Part 2 regurgitates and waters down many of the previous film’s successes, with a few new swings thrown in.
Blood on the saddle
I was musically weaned by Casey Kasem, baptized by Kiss on 8-track, lost my live virginity to the Jackson 5 and Huey Lewis & the News (I’m not too afraid to admit) and I slutted myself out to Echo & the Bunnymen. I was 12 when the Sex Pistols and punk rock found me under…
Forked over
When Phelps and crew are in the area, they might want to stop by the Roseville Denny’s to chow down. It sounds like their kind of place. We say this because Harold Shank, a gay employee of the Denny’s at 31831 Gratiot, claims he had an altercation with a co-worker who’d continually harassed him. The…
Drumline
Most of the responsibility for this film’s entertainment lies with star Nick Cannon, whose confident swagger finds just the right balance between the script’s mediocre beats, the sweetness of a story about battling bands instead of gunslinger shootouts, and his character’s overly superior attitude.
Making it Clear
Detroit’s fashion & design quarterly is an international event….
Billboard magazines
To attract customers, the owners of All Star Books, a comic-book shop, painted a fanciful mural on an exterior wall. The artwork went up shortly after the shop opened on Detroit’s east side this year. But folks driving along Mack Avenue through East English Village shouldn’t bother looking for it. The owner of a nearby…
Maid in Manhattan
This Cinderella story assures us that good and decent people will somehow manage to find each other and live happily ever after. It moves along in a well-oiled manner, theoretically buoyed by the charm of its stars (Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes) and the amusing antics of its supporting cast.
Lessons learned
Songstress Liz Larin comes full circle….
Hearth and home
Genetically predisposed to reject the feel-good stories that proliferate this time of year, the misanthropes here at News Hits nonetheless feel compelled to bestow some happy holiday news. It regards Anetta Foster, the 28-year-old single mother who was renting a rat-infested Detroit hovel lacking heat and running water. Featured in our piece about the city’s…
Bank shot
Power struggles stall Detroit’s long-awaited land bank….
Closed shop
For many, the name Kercheval evokes images of an elegant, tree-lined street where shoppers named “Biff” and “Buffy” are all clad in madras shorts, busy setting up dates for golf and tennis. That’s in the Grosse Pointes, which don’t generally provide much fodder for the Abandoned Structure Squad. But unlike many a white suburbanite, Kercheval…
Lott’s true colors
I don’t care what anybody says, Sen. Trent Lott is my hero. I’m serious as a heart attack. See, it’s guys like Lott who make it easy for guys like me to make the case that racism is just as strong now as it ever was, and not just in the backwoods where guys named…
Front sliding
Robert Jr. Whitall knows good things when he hears them, and he likes to share. Things like sacred steel, a musical genre born in the House of God Keith Dominion (a group of small African-American churches) in the late 1930s and one of the best-kept secrets in the blues. It’s faith-inspired slide guitar music, a…
Jury wigged
When the government ordered me to jury duty, I was ready to go. Hokey as it sounds, I’ve always believed trial by a jury of our peers is our best American right and duty. Little did I know that I’d get the case of a 24-year-old Detroiter charged with a brutal rape. Upon entering the…
Letters to the Editor
Supporting the struggle We were pleased to see Ann Mullen’s stories regarding Detroit’s experience with the living wage, and the legislative/Chamber of Commerce efforts to prohibit local governments from passing such laws ("Payback?" and "Dying to kill the living wage," Metro Times, Dec. 11-17). Columnist Robert Kuttner was right when he called the living wage…
Boogie knight
From blind pigs to Carnegie Hall, Bob Seeley hasn’t missed a beat….
Name your poison
Almost everybody wants to get high — and almost everybody does. It’s just a matter of degree. You might limit yourself to the brittle enthusiasm derived from morning jolts of coffee and/or stress-unraveling sips of post-work alcohol — or you might be a weekend warrior who takes the party journey from heightened sociability to the…
Why Lott matters a lot
Everyone knows the story by now. Trent Lott, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, showed up at the now-senile Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party Dec. 5. The Mississippian gazed affectionately at the oldest senator in history. “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the…
Quality
In a recent magazine interview, Talib Kweli Greene admitted to being somewhat uncomfortable with putting out a true solo album. The self-described team player misses his homeboys Mos Def and DJ Hi Tek, with whom he shares membership in two groups — Black Star and Reflection Eternal, respectively. Instead of offering the usual “I took…
Once more with feeling
Amahl and the Night Visitors launches Motor City Lyric Opera….
On Parade
Despite first impressions, it is neither accurate nor fair to tag the Witches as rock ’n’ roll retro vaudevillians. We could rattle off lazy, stream-of-consciousness adjectives and knee-jerk comparisons all day long and it still won’t bring the essence of the band into focus. The Witches can be moody, erratic, joyful and destructive all at…
Knights of the turntable
The DJ — from Alan Freed to the Electrifying Mojo, from Jam Master Jay to Carl Craig — has been an irresistible force in American music. For more than two decades now, disco booty-motivators polishing their segues and mixes, hip-hop rhythm masters scratching their way to the top, and techno pilots layering and programming the…
Stories Often Told
A rattler wriggles restlessly across the desert floor then stops, coils, flicks its tongue and emits a sinister “sssssss!” at a menacingly poised scorpion. Suddenly, down in the nearby wash (filled, strangely, with blue-green water), along comes a hard-twangin’ surfing Dick Dale, whistling the theme to a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. Hanging 10 not far…
The Porky Skillet
Suzy Hall wants to get some chow but she ain’t quite sure if it’s still open this late. It used to be open this late. It used to be open every time Suzy wanted to get something late. They call it Roberto’s now. It used to be a Silverman’s Deli. It’s right by Orchard Lake…
Original Pirate Material
The Streets’ 23-year-old Mike Skinner is the British Eminem — an MC with just too much going on in his life to rap about the usual fodder of clubs and champagne. And unlike other UK MCs, he isn’t trying to be down with hip hop so much as come up with his own version of…
Warrant for life
The bloom is off the Cherry Pie….
A Season of Hope
Long before the snow started to fall, more than a dozen local jazz, gospel, rock and R&B musicians came together in the true spirit of holiday giving, with the aim of benefiting childhood cancer research at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. Said efforts have been compiled in the 16 tracks of Season of Hope, a…
