Raise your leg
Sean Crane gets a lot of dog jokes. It’s to be expected, considering his recently released book is devoted exclusively to the documentation of … fire hydrants. Go ahead, smirk. We here at Metro Times had a similar reaction, indulging in a mocking giggle when Crane’s American Hydrant (Santa Monica Press, $24.95, 176 pp.) first…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
Out come the freaks
When people talk about quintessential Detroit bands, they usually cite proto-punk outfits like the MC5 and the Stooges or proletarian rockers like Seger or the Nuge. But perhaps no band better reflects a Detroit aesthetic than Was (Not Was). Was (Not Was), like Detroit, is an endearing mess. Through the ’80s, the band’s records were…
Their honor, your dime
How in hell could anyone, anyone, look at the current condition of Detroit City Council and not agree that something drastic must be done with that hideously malformed body? You need no more evidence than our Lisa Collins’ report on the council in last weeks’ News Hits. Teamed with her well-reported cover story in the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
It’s time for the Champagne music of Lawrence Welk and his MB15! • Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians — Auld Lang Syne (Longines Symphonette) :: Happy New Year! • Valdy — Viva Valdy: Live At Last (Rack-On-Tour) :: The troubadour you can trust who gave us the enduring “Rock ’n’ Roll Song” is back…
Billion-dollar baby
Martin Scorsese gives cinephiles everywhere a holiday present with The Aviator, his lavishly gift-wrapped biography of the young Howard Hughes. While not without its flaws, Scorsese’s film is a three-hour epic that literally flies by, boasting technique to spare and a stellar turn from Leonardo DiCaprio.
Screwing the wretched of the Earth
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore . . . And we’ll kick the scum right back out the door. —With apologies to Emma Lazarus That’s not quite what is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, but my parody may be…
Beyond the Sea
Perhaps they should have titled this film: Kevin Spacey’s Beyond the Sea. The late ’50s and ’60s crooner Bobby Darin gets the shaft in his own biopic, as Spacey insists on being the star of the show. That said, the film does offer a lovely stroll down memory lane, with some truly glorious song-and-dance numbers.…
The perfect roast
Being both a food guy and a word guy, I’ve gotten a bit tetchy about the term “bistro.” The way it’s been used in this country for years now nauseates me. That’s actually too strong an objection, but I use it to make a point. The word “nauseous” was for so long misused by Catskills…
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Too clever by half, this latest outing by Wes Anderson — the deadpan wit behind Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums — fails to tell a coherent or powerful story. Bill Murray struggles valiantly to breathe life into his underwritten character, but fails against a tidal wave of droll sight gags, eccentric supporting characters and distracting…
Art Bar
If your New Year’s resolution is to rediscover your artistic side, you’re in luck. Starting in 2005, the Waterford Cultural Council will be offering a series of art and creative writing classes. An eight-week watercolor class begins Jan. 11, meeting 7-9 p.m. every Tuesday and taught by art instructor Dawn Eggenberger. After completion of the…
Fat Albert
Beyond a few trips down memory lane, there’s not much here for purists who remember waking up with the Cosby kids every weekend. Bad script calls include the remaking of characters: Dumb Donald hits the library and Mush Mouth is taught to speak proper English. Cosby’s on an increase-the-dignity mission! For folks younger than 20,…
Adieu DAS
“Go up Woodward toward Baltimore. No, that’s the one with the White Castle. Yeah, past the railroad tracks. Take a right and look for the door that looks like a wrought-iron sculpture. There’s like a trumpet on it and if you look close, you can make out the words ‘Art Space.’ You can park in…
Darkness
Featuring a tangled, poorly written plot about a haunted home in the Spanish countryside, Darkness is a prime example of the disaster that ensues when a director attempts to integrate all of his favorite scary movies into one poorly conceived mess. Director Juame Balagueró’s heart was in the right spot in his attempt to emulate…
Kick-start ’05
Ringing in the New Year can be a daunting experience. Some use the holiday as an excuse to lament the mediocrity of their existence; others see it as a way to rejuvenate and “start again.” Then there are the rest of us who seize on another excuse to party down and boogie. We at Night…
Tell that girl to shut up
Lindsay Lohan’s Speak is barely 40 minutes of pink grease and plastic guitars. “I’m not above being under/I’m at the brink though I know that I’m empty” or “There’s a good kind of pain/An insane kind of sane” — its lyrics are soul-choking jumbles of self-empowerment and love-speak generica, attended by manically tweaked instrumentation and…
Damsels in success
Unless it’s a textbook for a women’s studies class or a feminist manifesto, all too often the women who have made important contributions to our society appear in history books as a little more than tokens, listed as a means to achieve a level of political correctness. Yet, more and more historians and scholars are…
Chastity
“Meet Chastity … She’s a bummer, a loser, a cop-out and a dropout!” Hmm, guess they left out a scamp, a camp and a bit of a tramp. Just in time for the fourth year of Cher’s farewell tour, MGM has released on home video, for the first time ever, Cher’s earliest dramatic role, this…
JC’s crusade
Detroit’s own John Conyers received a nice little holiday gift from the good folks at the online mag Salon last week. Writer Tim Grieve heaped much gift-wrapped praise on JC for leading a probe into problems that marred the recent Ohio presidential vote. “For those who believe that the 2004 election was stolen by George…
Want Two
Rufus Wainwright has, quite appropriately, established himself as one of contemporary pop music’s most interesting songwriters. With the release of his fourth album, Want Two, a follow-up to last year’s Want One sessions, there is, however, very little that is modern about the singer-songwriter save for his flag-waving homosexuality. With a flair for the theatrical,…
Grand theft grandstand
In the words of the press release he issued last week, state Sen. Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit) has sent a “not-so-subtle” message to the video game industry by announcing his intention to introduce legislation that would ban the sale of ultra-violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto in our fair state. “This issue is not…
100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong … The Premiere Collection
While most of the nation’s rock critics were lining up to polish whatever remains of the late Kurt Cobain’s rotting knob with their hosanna-draped reviews of the Nirvana box set, this four-CD/one-DVD collection from one of the groups Nirvana and its grunge ilk set out to destroy quietly slipped into the Best Buys, Targets and…
Calling all saviors
The good folks in the office of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick passed along to us news of the upcoming Detroit Economic Forum, an invitation-only event being held at Wayne State University on Jan. 4-5. Day Numero Uno, according to the Kwamster, will be spent discussing past and present economic conditions affecting the city, as well…
Double take
José Saramago, Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist, has many astounding gifts — none more disarming than his uncanny ability to sharply widen our field of paranoia. Like Kafka, Saramago can take an absurd premise and imagine it so thoroughly, in a world so indistinguishable from our own, that it becomes as familiar as our own nightmares.…
N&D Center
Wednesday • 29 Ted Nugent MUSIC The only thing about Ted Nugent more alpha-male than his proclivity for the hunt is his ability to wield a six-string like both a phallus and a weapon. Lovers of the Motor City Madman should unite at the Palace of Auburn Hills this week for Tarzan-caliber high-powered rock ’n’…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): *Machismo* is a term that refers to the aggressive demonstration of stereotypical masculine qualities. *Feminismo,* on the other hand, signifies a potent expression of what are usually thought of as feminine traits. These include sensitivity, receptivity, emotional intelligence, nurturing and a skill for building relationships. This will be important for you…
Head Cheese
Hands down, Minx is one of the baaaddest female DJs in Detroit. Raised on a mixture of Chicago’s house and Detroit’s techno scenes, this fetching DJ — and founder of an area distaff DJ collective called Women on Wax — has a no-bullshit approach to music. She’s collaborated with Jerry the Cat, Richie Hawtin and…
A nice end to a naughty year
Q: Any regrets about 2004? —One Concerned Dude A: Regrets? I’ve had a few — I mean, I must have had a few, right? But thanks to short- and long-term memory loss (I drove a nail into my own head in fourth grade — really), I couldn’t recall any off the top of my head.…
Snider’s follies
One of America’s great heritages is the open road. The freedom that highways and railways represent — the promise of something or someplace else better — can be traced throughout the our ephemeral culture, from Kerouac’s dreams of a railroad earth to “Born To Run” to the continuing adventures of the Starship Enterprise. And the…
The reindeer hunter
I’d been trying to set up an interview with Rudolph for months, but when the runaround continued after Christmas, I got suspicious. I could never manage to get past Santa Claus’ office. It seemed like every time I called, the same dimwitted secretary would answer the phone, tell me to “hold please” in a voice…
Letters to the Editor
The bloom is off I read your review of Magnolia in Detroit online today. I had lunch there today with some co-workers. I had to check the review to make sure we were talking about the same restaurant. The food was decent — I will give it that, but only reluctantly because everything else from…
