BARROW SEEKS INVESTIGATION INTO HANDLING OF ELECTION
Tom Barrow, who lost to Dave Bing in the Nov. 3 Detroit mayoral election, has sent letters to a variety of public officials — ranging from Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice — seeking a criminal investigation into the way the contest…
Food Stuff
Resolve — Share in a 75-minute "evolutionary yoga" session led by Gregg Newsom, appropriate for those new to yoga and seasoned veterans, with musical accompaniment from violinist Dixon. After the session, enjoy a local and organic raw foods feast prepared by Angela Newsom, and a discussion on the benefits of a healthy and humane diet.…
Amateur night
Hey, we’ve been there. We’ve felt the tremendous social pressure to have a great time on a night when things often go horribly awry. Rushing out half-cocked, dealing with friends who’ve drank too deeply, being stranded somewhere tedious while the world is partying: New Year’s Eve can be one rough night! We asked you to…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
D-spirited!
All signals — analog, digital, auditory, sensory — lead to and from Detroit. No other city remains as dedicated to the connectivity of mind, body and 4/4 beats. London? Berlin? Los Angeles? New York? Sure, those are all filled with sexy club life, we’ll humbly grant that … and more! But for sheer day-to-day local…
The year in lists
COREY HALL Bromance is in the air The dude-bonding genre really flowered in 2009. So too bad that the genre’s Babe Ruth, Vince Vaughn, hit a slump. Elsewhere, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel were the funniest buds since Bert and Ernie in I Love You, Man, The Hangover took ritual male bonding to absurd heights,…
The best music of 2009
Does it actually matter when we still have no public option and it looks like there’s never going to be one? Lou Reed may have sung about lives saved by rock ‘n’ roll, but the public option would probably save a lot more down the line. … Anyway, no more critical consensus, blah, blah, blah…
Idols, survivors & Bauer
Hundreds of years hence, media historians seeking to learn about American society in the early 21st century will stumble across evidence of our TV viewing habits — maybe from the remnants of a cable listings schedule, or the flickering images of an antiquated 60-inch flat screen — and wonder what the hell we were thinking.…
Farewell to 2009
WASHINGTON — If you were writing the great American novel about Detroit, how would you come up with an ending for a year in which General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt, the city held four mayoral elections and the first black U.S. president took the oath of office? If you were some great man of…
Grand River runs through it
Andiamo Novi 42705 Grand River Ave., Novi; 248-348-3838; $$$$: Not only does this spot offer the award-winning cuisine that has propelled the Andiamo mini-chain to its current success, it offers dinner theater as well. Call for upcoming shows. Bangkok Sala Cafe 27903 Orchard Lake Rd., Farmington Hills; 248-553-4220; $: Bangkok Sala Cafe is quite an…
Thumb raiders
With 2009 in the books, it’s time to look back at the gaming year’s cream of the crop. Casual gamer? Check. Are you hardcore? We got you too. Here’s what caught this gamer’s eye in ’09, plus a peek at ’10.  10) New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Duh … Wii) Mario and Luigi need to…
Fighting athlete abuse
I haven’t heard any crazy conspiracy theories lately, so I thought I’d drop in to see my pal Mulenga Harangua and catch up on the latest paranoid rumors. I figured there is plenty of fodder out there with the recent arrest of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for allegedly attempting to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight…
Letters to the Editor
Generational shift? Re: Curt Guyette’s "Fast times in Washington, D.C." (Dec. 16), Thomas Mahaney seems to function from the same sort of resilience that the federal government expects from its Army. More than once, the man starved himself to make a point, and more than once he lost weight and went largely unheard. The difference…
Reporter sandbagged?
News Hits will be the first to admit that Diane Bukowski isn’t a conventional mainstream journalist. She is, after all, a freelancer for The Michigan Citizen, a publication that bills itself as “America’s most progressive community newspaper.” Whatever you may think about Bukowski’s skills as a journalist, however, there’s no question that she’s tenacious. As…
Word up
Ever since Myriha Burton chopped her shoulder-length hair— to a Me’Shell Ndegeocello cropped coif — people tell her she looks like a poet. Well, that is what she does. See, this 18-year-old Cass Tech senior shows the kind of resolve common among world-class poetry competitors, a ghetto-bred poise and tenacity that pushes her through the…
It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are Annie and Jack, a divorced couple who, at their son’s graduation, drunkenly stumble into bed again. To their mutual shock, the old spark’s still there, and they start having clandestine hookups in plush hotel elevators, under the noses of their dippy grown children. The only real snag is that…
Kisses, fails & farts
Q: Set me straight. I married my wife several months ago after dating for three years. Things are generally excellent, except for one problem: When my wife gets drunk, she gets crazy flirtatious. She’ll dance close to people, touch them, hold hands. A couple of times, I thought it went too far and I told…
Holmes sweet Holmes
We’re introduced to the decidedly a disheveled Holmes (Downey Jr.), an arrogant smarty-pants and amateur boxer who’s incapable of social niceties and susceptible to mental breakdowns whenever his fidgety genius isn’t engaged. His partner is the ever-patient Doctor Watson (a perfectly cast Jude Law), whose impending engagement threatens their codependent bromance. Enter beautiful Irene Adler…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 30 Club Bart’s Eve of Eve RAISE THE GHOST OF GRAM PARSONS! Prep your liver for "amateur night" at Club Bart’s Eve of Eve, a boot-stomping night of Detroit’s finest country rock. The lineup includes the white-trashin’ Don "Doop" Duprie of Doop & the Inside Outlaws, the aptly named singer-songwriter Katie Grace, the…
Soul heir
Don and Katrina Studvent’s new place is a bistro, if there can be an American version with a soul food foundation, and no liquor license for a few more months. It’s a bistro in the sense that it’s a family-owned place that serves moderately priced, relatively simple dishes and simple meals. It’s pretty, with attractive…
Gilded eternities
Without spoiling too much of the current thrill-a-minute Subterraneans column, which puts to rest a bloodstained year in a fractious imperial democracy and looks ahead to even stranger days ahead, I thought I’d jot down some essential tunes to take with you to the island of your choosing, when you need to get away from…
