BLOWOUT SET TIMES ANNOUNCED
Just in case no one has yet noticed, the individual Blowout set times have now been announced. Unlike past years, producer Eve attempted to stagger set times for bands that might share the same fan base, thereby allowing attendees to catch as many artists as possible each night. Go here to view the updated schedule…and…
BLOWOUT IN A TEN-MINUTE ESSAY
The Hamtramck Blowout, a name so in tune with its definition, so provincial in its cheap rock ‘n’ roll metaphor as to render all other title suggestions moot, owes a kindly hats off to Chris Handyside and Brian Boyle for nailing it 12 years ago. Lord knows we’ve tested our livers and tripped overourselves down…
Stating their case
After a 90-minute hearing where attorneys debated whether a Detroit journalist can invoke the Fifth Amendment and not testify in a former federal prosecutor’s civil suit against the government, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland said he would issue a written opinion. “It’s complicated,” said Richard Zuckerman, an attorney for David Ashenfelter, who writes for the…
Sitting pretty
Take seats: The audience at IBEW Local 58. 1930s sit-downers Geraldine Blankinship and Olen Hamm honored with plaques. Martha Reeves helps fire up the crowd. On the evening of Monday, Feb. 9, at IBEW Local 58 on Abbott Street near downtown Detroit, workers who staged a high-profile victorious sit-down strike at Chicago’s Republic Doors and…
THE WONDER TWINS…UNPLUGGED & UNLEASHED!
MT’s own Wonder Twins attended ETC’s Unplugged Detroit II at the Lager House last Saturday night, February 7th. Here are their thoughts… D’Anne: This is Unplugged Detroit II! Did you go to the first one? Laura: I did — it was great. D: Did it have the same lineup? L: Nope — totally different. D:…
Morons at the movies.
The president has been pushing for more civility lately, but it can’t come soon enough to the multiplex. Last night I attended an advance screening for a hard R rated slasher movie, one held at a later time of night than usual. Exactly the sort of event where you wouldn’t expect to hear the cries…
Push
Director Paul McGuigan’s film is a psychokinetic actioner about sexy young stars with mind-over-matter powers. It’s also an inert mess, rehashing ideas from better, more interesting films. Desperate to avoid the shadowy organization that killed his father, Nick Gant (Chris Evans) is a telekinetic living off the grid in Hong Kong. Enter 13-year-old Cassie Holmes…
Lust for life
A woman who called herself Parker was the first to share and bare after we erected our second annual Live and Lust poll a few weeks back. She skipped as many questions as she answered, but filled in blanks to explain that love has a lot to do with it … except when it doesn’t.…
Wendy and Lucy
Heartbreaking, compassionate and cautionary, the film’s plot couldn’t be simpler. Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a young Indiana drifter headed to Alaska for a job with her yellow lab mutt, Lucy. Far from the starry-eyed but economically entitled character Emile Hirsch played in Into the Wild, Wendy is the underprivileged casualty of our country’s pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality.…
Granholm’s world
Instead of tough-talking leadership, we get banalities and dreams
Pulling no punches
My experience with the Von Bondies, at least as far as the band’s relationship to the Detroit rock scene is concerned, is akin to walking in during the middle of an interesting movie. I was living in L.A. during their local rise to fame, so my entire musical introduction to them came via their major…
Empowerment
K’naan storms the stage, beating a conga drum as though he’s trying to raise the dead. Sporting a plain gray three-button sweater and a brown fedora that hides his eyes from the audience, he fires lyrics at the crowd through a microphone that seems about ready to tip over. Although most of those in attendance…
Coraline
Coraline is a moody and hallucinatory marvel. Writer-director Henry Selick crafts his handmade universe with the anal-retentive care of a gleefully sinister artist, telling a sophisticated tale that never condescends to its underage viewers. Adapted from a novel by Neil Gaiman, the story follows the dark and quirky adventures of Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY • 11-14 STANLEY JORDAN — DIRTY DOG ANNIVERSARY FLY MAGIC FINGERS The Dirty Dog this week celebrates a year of great jazz and fine dining in the Pointes, which is to say, a year of extending the path for jazz fans to beat. The club has built its rep on A-list local combos with…
Money lust
Why we get silly when cash is in the mix
Letters to the Editor
War stories Re: Larry Gabriel’s “Trouble in mind” (Jan. 28), I could trade war stories with you — that’s what I call living in Detroit now. It’s like a war: the haves vs. the have-nots! What is so amazing is the people running for mayor are not addressing this issue at all. There aren’t many…
Our choice: Cockrel
Always a difficult job, the process of deciding which candidate to endorse for mayor of Detroit this time around is made even more complicated by the electoral fiasco currently facing the city. As if there weren’t enough problems to grapple with — the most pressing being a budget deficit of at least $250 million —…
Market forces
Ferndale school fight spills over into local businesses
Sword no shield
How a Privacy Act suit has targeted a local reporter
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Isn’t it romantic?
Annam 22053 Michigan Ave., Dearborn; 313-565-8744; $$: This intimate storefront restaurant serves traditional, high-class Vietnamese cuisine. Expect light traditional dishes served amid spare and elegant decor: wicker chairs, fragrant vanilla candles, white linen and fresh flowers — for Valentine’s Day they’ll even have red roses. The appetizer sampler plate is good for sharing, and the…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Lust comes in spurts
The younger we are, the harder it is to shock us. There was a time, back in the good old days, when a cross-dresser could eat a piece of dogshit and elicit pandemonium in a movie theater. But kids today have 2 Girls 1 Cup, and they don’t even have to make an event out…
Model citizen
The raw material of Erin O’Brien is not the stuff of pinup legend. I am neither young nor thin, and stand just a grilled baloney sandwich over 5 feet tall. I am not the sort who nips, tucks, primps or frets over the grays or dons lipstick. I do, however, tend to pounce on the…
Hell-bound for leather
Tucked safely away in a corner of a bewilderingly tacky suburban retail landscape are two mad dreamers with a vision of making the world a better place, one pair of assless leather chaps at a time. Founded in August of 2005, Leatherocity is a full-service boutique offering everything from hot pants to harnesses to Boy…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
I lov th sound of braking glass whn I’m always crashing in th sam Jffry Morgan’s Mdia Blackout #205! David Bowie — Low (RCA) :: The premise. John Lee Hooker — Anthology: 50 Years (Shout! Factory) :: These incendiary barn-burnin’ boogie-chooglers from the Detroit blues legend — especially the early minimal ones spanning 1948 to…
High German
Not many Detroit restaurants have been around for more than 70 years. Even fewer have been owned and operated by the same family for as long. The Dakota Inn Rathskeller can claim both. The quiet neighborhood at the crossroads of John R and McNichols isn’t exactly a hot spot for the dining crowd. Get there…
Until the wheels fall off
From a worn-in Coney Island diner booth on a worn-out street in the worn-downest side of Pontiac, Melanie Rutherford sits like a captain before her ship’s instruments — ink-heavy notebooks, creased inspirational paperbacks, scuffed laptop — steering her fledgling music career and plotting to take over the world. It’s here within the Formica fortress of…
Adventures in the skin trade
Eugenie de Sade Blue Underground Back in the ’70s, the Catholic Church drew up a shit-list filled with directors who made dirty movies. It’s no wonder Marquis de Sade fan Jesús Franco placed well on said list.. Here, comely cult actress Soledad Miranda is Eugenie, a teen temptress living at home with her stepdad, who’s…
Motor City Cribs
Detroit-based Suicide Girl Jessica Martin
He’s Just Not That Into You
Real star power abounds here, with a huge cast of tabloid darlings including Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Jennifer Connelly, Ben Affleck, Kevin Conroy and Jennifer Aniston. The film’s set in an alternate dimension where Baltimore’s the epicenter of romantically neurotic, club-life-loving supermodel-hot singles, where such gorgeous women have trouble getting dates. The basic premise is…
Swing shift
She decided to reject his polyamory — but only after marrying him
