The Forgotten Arm
In the world of literary fiction, great short story writers usually fail to produce a novel that rivals their briefer works. For Aimee Mann, her lyrical vignettes of dysfunction and addiction — every bit as complex and beautiful as a Raymond Carver or Flannery O’Connor story — have always had just as much difficulty assembling…
Granholm’s half time show?
Well, since the big football game will be played in Detroit this week, as a good newsman I’m honor-bound to say something about the Super Bowl. So here it is: Don’t take any blah-blah from the media as to What It Says About the City of Detroit too seriously. I hope and believe we’ll all be…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Untouchable Sound — Live
In the mid- to late ’90s, the Make-up rightfully walked as royalty among the underground DIY kingdom — a kingdom defined by the outer reaches of the imaginations of bands on Dischord, K, Touch & Go and other, sub-Sup Pop reluctant marketeers. With peers such as the Dub Narcotic Sound System and Brainiac goading them…
The chowman cometh
A lifelong obsession with culinary delights is what makes for a food dude.
Super Bowl mania
Myth busters by Sarah Klein A handy guide to the true and false tales of Motown. Stuper bowl by Jim McFarlin How wild will the Super Bowl commercials get this year? Better than Christo by Rebecca Mazzei What artists would (will?) do to Detroit. Detour guides by W. Kim Heron What to see (and what’s…
Salvadoran comfort food
Mama Tita doesn’t serve a full menu, but the offerings are enough to give you a feel for Salvadoran food and to fill you up. It may remind you more of Puerto Rican food than of Mexican — less spicy, with lots of yuca and plantains.
Revealing clothing
For most of human history, cloth has not only been used to cover nakedness or lure a mate, it has been deeply symbolic and often connected to rituals. If you lived in Bolivia, for example, in the 20th century up until the last few decades, you might have a special woven bag for carrying your…
An idiotic guide to football
For the uninitiated, Super Bowl can be a confusing time. Americans from all walks of life gather before TV sets across the country to watch the big game, fueled with brats, beer, bud and blow, sporadically erupting in guttural Rambo-like cries, sending Chee-tos flying everywhere. To those who don’t know the rules of the game…
Myth busters
Poor, misunderstood Detroit. If America were a high school, Detroit would be the weird, loner arty kid defacing the picnic tables with a butterfly knife — bursting with creativity and untapped potential, yet treated as an outcast and punching bag by New York and Chicago. Surely, we can win as the most misunderstood city in…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): My friend Rose comes from a large extended family that does not include a single millionaire. There’s no chance she will inherit a windfall from a dead relative. On the other hand, many religious devotees, humanitarians and do-gooders have graced both sides of her family line. She regards her own idealistic…
Dance music
One of the "Big 10" when it comes to music as well as football, the University of Michigan is celebrating the 125th anniversary of its School of Music this year. This weekend, the University Dance Company salutes the music school with dances set to music by nationally and internationally known faculty composers. William Bolcom is…
High stakes beyond the game
Just last week, Ford Motor chief exec Bill Ford tried to put a somewhat optimistic spin on the fact that the wheels are coming off his company. What a great way to cap the 2006 Detroit International Auto Show — an auto show that we may not be able to keep for much longer, at…
Letters to the Editor
Still holding on Re “King con” (Metro Times, Jan. 25), way to jump on the media bandwagon for this story, which broke quite a few weeks ago, I might add. I read the book, loved the book, and, frankly, could care less whether his police record was completely accurate. The fact of the matter is…
Art Bar
There is nothing disingenuous about the way a dog praises, celebrates, frets or mourns. In this poem David Baker gives us just such an endearing mutt. Mongrel Heart Up the dog bounds to the window, baying like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds from the belly, as if mourning a dead king, and now he’s…
Night and Day
See Also: Super Bowl XL Party Guide Night & Day’s top picks: beg, borrow or steal your way in … Wednesday, Friday & Saturday • 1, 3 & 4 Lagerbowl MUSIC There is no “i” in “team” this weekend at the Lager House in Corktown. The joint will be packed to the gills with pasty…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Don’t worry, Kyoko, Mummy’s just looking for her MB59 in the snow! Jeffrey Morgan’s Fully Erect Media Blackout — My Column’s New Vertical Format :: It don’t mean a thing if it don’t make me schwing! The Rolling Stones — Super Bowl XL (FOX) :: Everything seems to be ready, are you ready? Disney —…
Team players
Chris Cornell looks over the heads of his offensive line, trying to read the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense. Blitz? the Soundgarden singer and Seattle Seahawk quarterback thinks. No, just a pass rush. I can see Rusted Root crowding my man Mark Arm at left tackle. And sure enough, the loopy Pittsburgh jam band is cheating on…
From Russia with drugs
Q: I generally don’t agree with the advice you give, but I need help and I can’t talk to my friends. About two months ago I broke off a relationship with a guy I had been seeing for about seven years. I am only 24 years old, and I needed to explore other fish in…
Stripper economics
Metro Times’ crack Hit Singles squad dived into the neon wilds of Detroit’s strip club row, to Eight Mile and beyond. It was research, to be sure. We commandeered back booths and climbed frightful staircases to speak with fearless DJs. We interviewed waitresses, managers and the dancers themselves, all while keeping our eyes and ears…
Probing blitzkrieg’s bop
Nicholas Rombes, the Detroit-based author of a new Ramones book, found a whole new world when a high school girlfriend played him the band’s Pleasant Dreams LP. Like many of us, he discovered the band’s world of horror movies, comic books and junk culture that was surprisingly sophisticated behind its facade of stupidity. Rombes grew…
Dance the bowl hype
We already know the Steelers and Seahawks, the Stones and Stevie are getting ready to ball over at Ford Field, where Super Bowl XL seemingly has been in the planning stages for the past 300 years or so. But when does the real frolic start? Where can you go to dance the overhype out of…
Super Bowl XL Party Guide
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 1 Biz Markie Elysium Lounge (625 Shelby St., Detroit; 313-962-2244). He’s got what you need, even if you say he’s just a friend. $20. A Legendary Night with Magic Johnson and Robert Porcher Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (315 E. Warren Ave., Detroit; 313-494-5800). Autograph-signing charity event. $200. THURSDAY,…
Food Stuff
A full plate for local foodies.
Stupor bowl
In massive brick-and-mortar structures in major media centers across America, cunning ad executives have convinced their biggest clients to fork over $2.4 million to buy 30 seconds of airtime. Again. How could anyone in their right mind keep falling for such a con, you ask? Well, let’s see. Do you remember these taglines? “Wow! Thanks,…
Starlet nights
Hit Singles believes that Gina Lynn ranks up there with Jewel D’Nyle, Belladonna, Taylor St. Claire and John Stagliano in porn chicks and dude(s) who delve to the depths of their sexuality to exercise their most base desires and in the process learn something about themselves and maybe teach the viewer a thing or two…
Blast from the past
It’s hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of political comedy getting made in Hollywood today. A bold assault on the anti-Communist hype of the ’60s, Dr Strangelove was, essentially, an endless succession of big-dick jokes. Such characters as Gen. Turgidson, Maj. Kong and President Merkin Muffley obsessed over lack of control, withholding information and the…
Sipping tea and a simple plea
Detroit Repertory Theatre has nabbed one of the best plays of this or any other season, presenting it in a fine production, with two damn fine actors. The title for Going to St. Ives, written by Tony Award-winning playwright Lee Blessing, comes from a child’s nursery rhyme that is really a riddle meant for grown-ups.…
Proactive
The union’s real state — By the time this issue of MT hits the streets, President George Bush will have blitzed the mainstream media with his State of the Union address. For a reality check, try Peace Action of Michigan’s “Counter-State of the Union and World Address,” presented by Fran Schor, Wayne State University prof,…
The White Countess
Merchant-Ivory Productions found modest popular success with stately and understated films amid the bluster and bombast of Hollywood juggernauts. The films had meticulous period details, impeccable casting and highly literate scripts, transporting the viewer to another time and place more effectively than most fantastical summer blockbusters. But their films didn’t always work. Their strengths and…
Better than Christo
A few weeks ago, with wet and dirty rags, men washed graffiti from the windows of the abandoned United Artists building in Detroit’s Grand Circus Park. Nobody protested, and, for the most part, the media ignored it. But, to many, the Ilitch family ruined the one real tourist attraction downtown. The signs of life on…
Ultimed’s ulti-trouble
Long-troubled health insurer finally taken over by state
Annapolis
There’s nothing and no one to care about in this film: no character who makes any sort of lasting impression, and no challenge you haven’t seen a million times before in other basic-training underdog movies. This film is like one of those over-the-top, no-budget kickboxing movies you see in the middle of the night on…
The trouble with monogamy
Last week you wrote this about your readers’ responses to WILLIE and FS: "I find it odd that no long letters arrived laying out what FS was doing wrong. Is it always the man’s fault, I wonder? If something is going wrong in a couple’s sex life, the man must be to blame?" I wanted…
No ethical dilemmas here
the Macomb County Board of Commissioners “can’t mandate ethics.”
Nanny McPhee
Nanny McPhee is the anti-Mary Poppins. Forget spoonfuls of sugar; this nanny’s preferred method of discipline includes doling out spoonfuls of icky, black, bubbling crude to her charges, and casting a spell that renders them unable to move from their beds (their punishment for not getting up on time and faking sick). Emma Thompson clearly…
Head Cheese
Koufax’s MESS OF sing-song garage, new wave and chamber pop was seamless on last year’s Hard Times Are in Fashion. If you’re looking for touchstones, think the Walkmen, though Koufax ain’t as quirky and “rock” harder. After sweeping the room for bugs, singer- guitarist Robert Suchan shared his pressing paranoias, er, monomanias. 5. Alex Jones and…
Nabbing grannies
Baiting retirees with checks, then slapping on the shackles
Big Momma’s House 2
If you can recall this sequel’s amiably stupid predecessor, you may dimly remember a time when Martin Lawrence was actually considered funny, a period that seems more remote with each passing frame of this cinematic train wreck.
Super Bowl XL vs. Super Bowls I thru XXXIX
Make all the rock ‘n’ fossil jokes you want to about Mick, Keef and the rest of Mount Rushmore, but according to Pollstar — the touring bible for the music biz — these strolling bones snagged $162 million in concert ticket sales in 2005, becoming the top-grossing tour of the year and of all time.…
Detour guides
How many Detroits are there? Ask, and you’ll find there’s a different metropolis mapped in the head of every resident here. We asked a handful of folks to tell us something about the map in their heads, what one thing they’d show an out-of-towner to explain this place. It probably says something about Detroiters that…
