Art of science and silence
Most people know Helen Bevan as the co-founder of Detroit’s ambitious and now-defunct Tangent Gallery. Along with artist and friend Mitch Cope, she launched the venture in 2001, a couple of years after the two of them arrived in Motown fresh out of the Pacific Northwest. Bevan had always dabbled in art but she had…
Night and Day
Wednesday-Friday • 21-23 Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village FUN FOR ALL Charles Dickens himself couldn’t have described a better holiday landscape scene than what’s to be seen at Greenfield Village in Dearborn these days. The lantern-lit sidewalks guide the way to the sights, sounds and smells of Christmas past. For the entrance fee of $15…
German club
Like well-known painter Gerhard Richter, who also studied in Berlin, German-born artists Hartmut Austen and Geka Heinke make art about art. Their MO is irony, pulling on the skirt of modernism. Theirs is a characteristically German kind of funny, a backhanded analytic humor, presenting puzzles that turn on themselves in ridiculous ways. Their paintings could…
We want the airwaves
About 120 people brave the frigid afternoon on the last Sunday before Christmas to publicly air beefs about WSU-owned WDET 101.9-FM, and its recent decision to kill weekday music programming. They want the airwaves back. They want the WDET of old, its mix of eclectic, heard-nowhere-else mix of national and local sides, where on weekdays…
Art Bar
I’d guess that many women remember the risks and thrills of their first romantic encounters in much the same way California poet Leslie Monsour does in this poem. Fifteen The boys who fled my father’s house in fear Of what his wrath would cost them if he found Them nibbling slowly at his daughter’s…
Dial straits
When it comes to the format changes that occurred last week at Detroit public radio station WDET-FM, the bottom line is the bottom line. “We couldn’t afford another year like last year,” says Michael Coleman, who became the station’s general manager in August. “Our survival was in jeopardy.” Coleman says the station racked up a…
Edge of dawn
Natives of the New Dawn is a local band, but you can’t tell by their draw. It’s huge. A recent CD release show for their new live album, Music for Old People, sold out Fifth Avenue in Detroit two days before the date. Most local bands count their lucky stars if any part of their…
Tortured logic
A lot of heat is being directed at U.S. Sen. Carl Levin for his role in proposed legislation that critics say would deprive prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of basic constitutional protections. Levin, a Michigan Democrat, finds himself in the unenviable position of defending a measure that he’s co-sponsoring but…
Christmas with the rubber couple
She’s strikingly shapely, with exotic almond-shaped eyes filled with coyness and a little mystery. He’s tall, ruggedly handsome and has a winning smile that melted her heart when they first met by chance in a bar a few years back. They’re now a happily married couple living in a northern Detroit suburb, and share an…
Shaky ground
Far be it from your humble News Hitters to get up on a pulpit (the soapbox is more our style), but we’d like to share a little story with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. It’s a tale, you see, about a man who tried to build a house on a variety of foundations: sand, mud and…
God bless us, every one
Here’s an indication of how crazy and sick things are in this country today: Last week, I heard an anchor on CNN casually mention words to the effect that U.S. Sen. John McCain and the president’s national security adviser “were still meeting in an attempt to reach a compromise on torture policy.” What, you have…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Sick flicks
In comedy, chestnuts like disembowelment, eye-gouging, skin-peeling and hyper-sexualized bunnies never lose their crunch. To a certain type of connoisseur, there is nothing funnier than seeing an adorable cartoon character drink, puke, swear, hump and then get chopped into a million pieces by a grain harvester. These are the core values that have propelled Spike…
Sweet comeback
You’ll find plenty of flavors of ice cream here: Moose Tracks, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Cookies and Cream, chocolate, strawberry, butter pecan, Mackinac Island Fudge, mint chip, black cherry, Bumpy Cake ’n’ Cream and Superman. All can be made into sundaes, shakes, sodas, malts or Detroit Coolers (a Vernors ginger ale float).
Noise for COTS
If the endless holiday movies and songs have it right, this is the most magical time of the year. December is, after all, the time of year when we’re inexplicably kinder to each other, when smiles come a bit easier and pockets get a little deeper. And, in this town, for the past four years…
Way hot West
Although the film starts out hot, it will disappoint some and comfort others to know that this film isn’t all about gay sex. As the decades pass, the two cowboy lovers’ mustaches and clothing become more garish, but their romance settles into a pensive, intimate rhythm. Struggling to enjoy all of the things that straight…
Proactive rhyme
Over the course of hip hop’s 30-plus year history, its rebelliousness has been its best and worst trait. At its worst, it has caused many artists to renounce grassroots sensibilities and make way for corporate strategy and outside interests. In other words, to sell out. Nas is a good example; he actually put on a…
Fun with Dick and Jane
When Dick gets promoted at his high-tech, high-pressure company, he and his wife Jane indulge in all the luxuries they once denied themselves. Their prosperity, however, is short-lived. As his CEO Jack McCallister (a terrifically slimy Alec Baldwin) makes a speedy helicopter exit, Dick learns he’s been promoted just so he can be the fall…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Happy Holy Daze, Aries! I’ve been meditating on the perfect holiday gift for you. What symbolic item might inspire you to take maximum advantage of the cosmic currents in 2006? And the answer is: "The Daughter of Jacob Meyer," one of Vincent van Gogh’s first drawings. He did it when he…
Gocco gone
About 28 years ago, some smart Japanese designers were searching for an efficient way to produce New Year’s greeting cards. Little did they know that their invention, a screen-printing gizmo called the Print Gocco, would also become popular with a devoted group of American fine artists, zine-makers and craftsy types. Looking like a cross between…
The Family Stone
The cast tries to strike up a jovial camaraderie in an effort to save the material, and McAdams and Wilson almost succeed in rescuing the movie from its pathos. But in the end, the film rests on the performances of its two female leads: the maudlin, pleading Keaton and the shrill, irritating Parker. No one…
A man for all seasons
Dr. Jerome E. Ferretti made his appearance on the world stage when he proved yellow snow to be a replacement for fossil fuel. Upon receiving the Nobel Prize, Dr. Ferretti devoted himself to social causes. Although he had success in uniting the American people, he was forced into hiding for reasons never fully explained. This…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
I can’t drive MB55! • Sammy Hagar — Standing Hampton (Geffen) :: [Insert suitably snide Van Halen remark here] • Vailcode — Vailcode (Times Beach) :: This lean and lanky new album by Motor City guitar legend Slammin’ Sammy Vail is easily as thoughtful as Elliott Aquashow Murphy at his “Diamonds by the Yard” best.…
Precious wanderings
John Gimlette’s a regular contributor to Condé Nast Traveler and author of At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, a previous travelogue through Peru. In Theatre of Fish, Gimlette follows his intrepid great-grandfather — a medic tagging along with a missionary — through the untamed wilds of Newfoundland and Labrador. It seems like the author…
Holiday treats: Tales of losing it
Lest I be accused of waging a war on Christmas by the pro-Christmas lobby — oh, whatever would I do if the all-powerful puckerbutts at the American Family Association called for a boycott of Savage Love? — I’m presenting a heartwarming selection of how-I-lost-my-virginity horror stories submitted by my readers. What do these stories have…
Metro Retro
20 years ago this week in Metro Times: Gay Zieger chronicles the history of the Meadow Brook Theatre as it celebrates its 20th anniversary. The former Oakland University lecture hall’s acoustics and amphitheater design helped it become the Detroit area’s only fully professional theater company. Audiences keep the theater at 80 percent to 90 percent…
Contact high
Solid Gold Hits trims the fat from the Beastie Boys’ 1999 retrospective Sounds of Science and updates the hit list to include material from 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. The result is entertaining — anything including “Shake Your Rump,” “Pass the Mic” and “Sure Shot” would have to be. But Solid Gold is such an…
Head cheese
Maryland funk-metal maestros Jimmie’s Chicken Shack skirted the edge of mainstream popularity in the late ’90s, and their hodgepodge of musical styles never found the same audience as lesser bands like Korn or Hed PE. Between blasts of chunky and sludgy hard rock, JCS often kicks into pop-fueled punk rave-ups (“Do Right”), reggae-stained ballads (“String…
Letters to the Editor
Familiar faces Re: “Meet the Bloggers” (Metro Times, Dec. 14), I really enjoyed the article. I was really interested in the one about the homeless people. Having been homeless at one time, I just had to check it out. I saw a number of people in the archive that I knew from being homeless in…
Souls
Matt Arbogast’s dry rasp really does suggest Tom Waits, as everyone seems to say. But he sounds as much or more like Dickey Barrett (Mighty Mighty Bosstones), which no one ever seems to mention. Maybe it’s because it’s cooler to conjure the Waits imagery — the cabarets, the broken-down bandstands, the shot-out streetlights. But Arbogast…
Banging out ’05
At the bar inside the Majestic Cafe, party promoter Adriel Thornton sips tea and clicks on a laptop. Messages on his MySpace account and postings on the electronic music forum DetroitLuv get his full attention. Then a 1996 flyer for an event called “Family” appears on his screen. “That was the first one, at Tom…
12″ pop shots
Pas/Cal & Asobi Seksu “Last Christmas” b/w “Merry Christmas Baby (Let’s Not Fight)” Romantic Air Recordings When you have musically inclined friends over to make holiday sugar cookies and decorate them in progressively obscene-macabre permutations of frosting, you could do a lot worse than having this 12-inch single on repeat for your soundtrack. It was…
Africa Unite: The Singles Collection
What new trick could Island Records possibly have up its gilded sleeve when it comes to releasing yet another Bob Marley reissue? How about a recently discovered “brand-new song” from 1979 recorded in a Miami hotel room, plus two stellar remixes of quality Marley tunes. There’s radio-hit fare (“I Shot the Sheriff,” “No Woman, No…
The questions are dead serious
What qualifies as redemption? Does it matter? On the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 13, Stanley “Tookie” Williams was put to death by the state of California; he had spent more than a quarter century on San Quentin’s death row. A former gangbanger who admits to being responsible for co-founding the Crips, one of the nation’s…
A mini merry Manson
In the past, stop-motion animation has been used to make such brilliant seasonal classics as the famous Rankin/Bass productions Frosty the Snowman (sung and told by Jimmy Durante), The Year Without a Santa Claus (in which Mr. Claus’ part was spoken by Mickey Rooney) and the adorable Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Airing on major U.S.…
Guerolito
This remix version of Beck’s Guero tosses a few unexpected curveballs at the obvious similarities. Take Octet’s remix of “Girl.” While the original version is by no means harsh-sounding, Octet’s lilting and reverberated piano line and sparse instrumentation elevates the song to new heights. And that’s the pleasure of remixes; it’s impossible to expect anything…
More humiliating tales of losing it
My humiliating loss-of-virginity story is so incredibly unbelievable that it’s virtually an urban legend among my friends. But I swear that each and every word of this is true. When I was in high school I was awarded the opportunity to go on a foreign exchange to a lovely tropical paradise — ah, Brazil —…
The seduction of space
Before your eyes glaze over from staring at all the blinding lights and puffed-up paraphernalia of the holiday season, check out two current shows at Pontiac’s Museum of New Art — Space Affair and Drawing You In. They are extravaganzas of subtlety, reminding us that life is a constant negotiation between the clutter of the…
S.P.I.T.
It’s strange how sometimes the most celebrated battle rappers from the streets get signed to record labels, then put out studio albums that aren’t worth two dead flies. From Jin to Craig G and beyond, countless emcees with blazing improv skills often cough up little more than phlegm on commercial releases. So when champion freestyler…
