Accusing Detroit cops
Harassment, excessive force, beatings and murder are some of the accusations city residents lodged against the Detroit Police Department at the public hearing on police brutality last week. The Detroit City Council, which was petitioned by the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality to hold the hearing, listened to about 60 people tell their stories and…
Bloodlines
The kitchen isn’t big to begin with, but it seemed even smaller than usual on the dreary Sunday night last January when the kin of Mable Tubbs Johnson all crowded in for a family meeting. Clumped around a rectangular table neatly laid out with polished silverware and empty plates, Johnson’s clan sat quietly or stood…
Violations found
After suffering a severe reaction while undergoing dialysis treatment at the Northwest Detroit Dialysis Center on Sept. 26, 1997, Mable Tubbs Johnson was rushed to Sinai Hospital’s emergency room. She died less than three months later from an infection, according to hospital discharge papers. This February, members of her family began holding weekly protests at…
Changing the Rules
When it comes to malpractice litigation, reform is in the eye of the beholder. To the medical community, so-called “reforms” engineered by Gov. John Engler in 1994 were a virtual godsend that brought some sanity to what they described as an out-of-control situation. “Michigan’s new liability law is one of the top three laws like…
Mark my words
There’s something delicious about fear. Not the kind of fear that comes with a crime, illness or tragedy, but the spine-tingling fear that rises from the unknown. I used to love the way fear made each pore of my skin come alive, the way the blood coursed through my body like a river, the way…
Yule-side swingin’
MT crits pick the finest antidotes to Bing Crosby and Muzak this season. From Judy Garland to Etta James to the Squirrel Nut …
Seaweed-wrapped gems
Sushi chef Simon Bennett cheerfully shares his enthusiasm as he explains menu items or guides a newcomer in a beginner’s assortment. The sushi comes in three categories: Nigiri, Rolls and Inside-Out. Especially important when you’re eating raw fish: The restaurant scored 100 percent in its health department inspection.
Millenial bloodhounds
Katherine Ramsland and I are chatting, about guys, blood drinking, Keanu Reeves, the ring she inherited from a murderer who killed himself to become a more powerful vampyre. You know, girl talk. It could be a slumber party — scary stories, giggling, she lets me try on her clothes, insists she’s not sleepy and invites…
Hard Core Logo
Hard Core Logo is the name of a Canadian punk band which reunites after a five-year hiatus in order to play a benefit for English punk legend Bucky Haight (Julian Richings). It seems that Bucky has been the victim of a random shooting and has lost a leg or both legs, depending on who’s telling…
Gourmet pop
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks Black Eye Books 1030 St-Alexandre, Suite 203, Montreal, QC H2Z 1P3 e-mail at www.blackeye.com/books $20, 300 pp. The comics avantgarde has tried for years to convince the reading public that comic books are a legitimate form of literature. It’s a hard sell; myopic editors, squeamish publishers, bean-counting distributors, a clueless arts…
Psycho (1998)
The furor that greeted the news that director Gus Van Sant was planning a shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) exemplifies a tempest in a teapot. In Hollywood, where very little is sacrosanct, the remaking of movies is routine. And, as a medium, film has always fed upon itself. But what really piqued the…
Pitch’d
DETROIT’S IN THE HOUSE VS. DETROIT IS THE HOUSE Now that national attention is turning to Detroit-based dance music producers and deejays, the real question for those would-be ambassadors of the Detroit sound is: When is somebody gonna pony up with an all-Detroit compilation or mix CD? Stacey Pullen, in between signing to the UK’s…
Psycho (1998)
A few years ago, in an article on Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs which traced the evolution of the killer from Psycho, via In Cold Blood and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, all the way to The Silence of the Lambs, the reviewer called Norman Bates “the Brando of killers.” But in 1959, the people involved…
Goodbye to all
Say what you will about Jack Kevorkian, but the cadaverous old bird’s got moxie. No less than “60 Minutes” — admittedly during sweeps month– gave Black Jack a solid quarter hour to showcase his singular talent for inducing the Big Sleep. Rendered in that washed-out camcorder look we associate with “America’s Funniest Home Videos” were…
Shattered Image
What happens when you mix the high-octane French film La Femme Nikita with a Lifetime-woman-in-peril movie? If you’re an avant-garde filmmaker trying to construct a movie about identity and parallel dream lives while working with glossy trash material, the resulting hybrid might look like Shattered Image. The Chilean-born, Paris-based Raul Ruiz is considered one of…
Gifts with a difference
EarProtec If La Niña’s predicted cold weather makes its way here this winter, you’ll want to be prepared from head to toe to face the cold. But for everyone who keeps having to take off their earmuffs to answer their cell phone, keeping the draft out of your ears is a challenge. The EarProTec device…
Fishiness as usual
“This Modern World” comic strip appears in more than 100 newspapers, mostly in so-called alternative publications such as this one, but even a few dailies. Inked weekly by Dan Perkins under the pen name Tom Tomorrow, it features a host of supporting characters right out of clip-art books and 1950s advertisements, cheerfully mouthing the official…
The great divorce
This week, they set the date for the long-awaited Kevorkian murder trial, probably this spring. The other night, I was at an elegant dinner party where a lot of the guests were very good lawyers. (Okay; I was serving the canapés, but I was still there.) Not surprisingly, talk turned to the next scheduled performance…
Moon Pix
“My magic friend … her magic heart feels everything,” sings Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, on “American Flag,” the first track off her spellbinding album Moon Pix. She could be singing about herself: Listening to Moon Pix, you can’t help but feel that Marshall possesses a copy of the key to your secret self, the…
In One Ear
BOOKENDED — NEATLY! If you missed the opening of detroit contemporary’s “Sight;Sonic: The Art of Music” exhibit — and judging by the shoulder-to-shoulder throngs in attendance, not many folks did — you missed more than the art on the walls, sculptures and installations. The exhibit connected the art of musicians and the music of artists,…
Edgy Space Rock
Nearing the end of a decade, it sounds as though the best elements of experimental guitar-based indie bands — i.e. Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, Spacemen 3, Jesus & Mary Chain — and early ’90s grooving Britpop have ground together to bring us The Things We Make, the attitude-driven debut by Six by Seven. Among the…
Spotlight on welfare
For many years, across the United States, huge tax breaks and subsidies have been going to corporations. Occasionally, the media spotlight falls on an example of how government policies stand Robin Hood on his head — shaking down the poor and middle class while handing over the proceeds to wealthy individuals and big businesses. Sometimes…
Prokofiev-Bartok
The Argentine pianist Martha Argerich is justly celebrated for her fiery, panther-like approach to the keyboard. She doesn’t merely set off sparks, she ignites conflagrations. She is most impulsive and volcanic in live performance, although her studio recordings, including this one, sometimes capture her wild fury. At 57, Argerich hasn’t extinguished any of the fire…
Stop Santa’s sweatshops
My friend Erin tried to clue in her teenage sister Denise about Nikes. A lot of people won’t buy Nikes, Erin said, because they’re made with child labor. A lot of people don’t like 14-year-old girls working 12-hour days, for $2.28 a day, so Nike president Phil Knight and Michael Jordan can be rich. Denise…
Pop-Cult Dropouts
With decades of punk-rooted, political mayhem-making behind them, anything the Mekons do is interesting, since it means they’re still alive and kicking — a wonder in itself. Well, this former art-student pack is now poking fun, kicking back, lightening up and, whether they like it or not, getting older. We already know — or still…
U-M’s best defense?
The legal defense of minority students at the University of Michigan rests largely in the hands of a law firm with connections to a nonprofit group that aims to destroy affirmative action, not only at U-M but nationwide. The Center for Individual Rights, a conservative organization helping to represent the white plaintiffs in two class…
Masterful Bluegrass
That high, lonesome sound associated with bluegrass music comes from the bends and twists given to a voice by singers whose technique sounds deceptively simple. James King and Del McCoury are co-champions in these sweepstakes, with fans of one acknowledging the skills of the other while assigning primacy to their own hero. While McCoury’s new…
