JAZZ FEST NAMES HEADLINERS: MILLER, MARSALIS, HAYNES …
Earlier than ever, the Detroit Jazz Festival has released a list of early headliners. It’s good news. First, there’s the artist in residence, pianist Mulgrew Miller. The AIR designation guarantees that like John Clayton, Christian McBride and Regina Carter before him, Miller will hit Detroit for some special events leading up to the festival, in…
PRIZE TO LUST FOR IN MT POLL
And the winner of our Live and Lust Poll III drawing is … 27-year-old Annika, who told us she looks for hands in a man, small waist-to-big ass ratio in a woman, who wold like two guys at once, and who advises (for long-term relationship mojo maintenance): “Make sure sex is on your list of…
Benefit for Mick Vranich on Saturday
Those who know Mick Vranich, whether through his Word Band, his books of poetry, his spoken word performances, or through the private gallery space he runs with his wife Sherry Hendrick, know he is a kind and gentle person who’s not easily forgotten. But now is an especially important time to remember the countercultural fixture:…
SAD NEWS REGARDING GARY GRIMSHAW
Gary Grimshaw — one of Detroit’s greatest graphic artists, Grande Ballroom poster legend, creator of the MC5 logo, former ’80s CREEM art department honcho, and just all-around great guy — has been quite ill for several years now. He has been maintaining nevertheless. Sadly, we received this e-mail earlier today: Our friend — and Detroit’s…
KELLY CLARKSON DOES THE WHITE STRIPES…
WTF? Not a bad version, though…
On the Asian tip
Akasaka 37152 6 Mile Rd., Livonia; 734-462-2630; $$$: The sushi bar is the heart of Tomiko DeMeere’s serene restaurant. The full array of Japanese dishes includes teriyakis, tempuras, noodles in broth and yakitori, with a gourmet dinner for two ($46) offering a chance to sample many dishes economically. B.D.’s Mongolian Barbeque 200 S. Main St.,…
Get your Irish up
For more than a decade, Dick O’Dow’s has been Birmingham’s most popular unpretentious watering hole. The dimly lit pub, graced with simple wooden tables and chairs, faded wall murals from the Book of Kells, agricultural paraphernalia and a wide variety of Irish kitsch, is a surprisingly accurate recreation of a rural local in the Ould…
A real potty-mouth
Q: My boyfriend and I have agreed to abide by whatever decision you make. We’ve been together for nine months. We are gay. We live in a college town. We both found jobs here after we graduated, so we stayed. Since his sophomore year, my boyfriend has had an "arrangement" with an older man, a…
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a rom-com designed for mass appeal, and it’d be totally flavorless if not for a layer of cloying sweetness strong enough to rot out your teeth. Featuring a cast of thousands, it’s an overlapping day-in-the-life muddle, like Robert Altman plotting a Lifetime movie, with a host of photogenic singles and couples colliding…
Cut across shorty
There are two things that stand out about this year’s crop of short-subject Oscar nominees: 1) There isn’t a clunker in the bunch. In recent years there have always been one or two head-scatchers, films that were clearly outclassed by their competitors. Heck, one — 2005’s West Bank Story — even took home the prize.…
The Wolfman
It’s been nearly 30 years since we’ve gotten decent werewolf film. Now, nearly 70 years after the The Wolf Man (1941) first hit the screen, Universal has decided to revive its creature feature as a moody period piece set in Victorian England. Returning home to his childhood mansion after his brother’s grisly and mysterious death,…
Promises fulfilled
Love relationships between great artists have inspired some fine literature throughout history, be it works the artists created for each other during their own lifetimes or as fodder for novels, memoirs or even motion pictures and plays after the fact. Surely one of the greatest such love affairs of the past half century was the…
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Based on the Rick Riordan’s fantasy novel, The Lightning Thief introduces us to the troubled teen Percy Jackson (Logan Lermann). He’s dyslexic, has an abusive stepdad and can hold his breath underwater for impossible lengths of time. With those facts barely penciled in, the movie hurls Percy and his best-buddy Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) into…
Too little, too late?
Gov. Jennifer Granholm finally moved toward real leadership last week, seven years and six weeks after taking office. With state government facing its most dangerous financial crisis ever, she moved to try to save education, our hope for a better future, from being crippled or destroyed by the politics of inaction. The bottom line is…
Soldier of Love
Solider of Love, Sade’s first album since 2000’s genteelly soulful Lover’s Rock, finds her trademark Quiet Storm sound maturing and transforming into a scorched-earth Desert Storm of the heart. And wearing her purple heart on her sleeve, the first lady of neo-soul wanders shell-shocked and love-is-a-battlefield-weary through tracks that alternate between a detached, abstract hip-hop…
Food Stuff
Hot dog — Somebody brought to our attention Zack’s, a hot dog stop with locations in Macomb and Clinton townships. We’ve never been, but some of their specialty dogs look pretty extreme. (Like a bacon slaw dog? For real?) Have a peek, at 18427 Hall Rd., Macomb Twp.; 586-329-3798; and 40097 Groesbeck Hwy., Clinton Twp.;…
Villa Manifesto EP
Plagued by death, in-house drama and label politics, the backdrop to Slum Village’s incredible discography reads more like that of an old R&B group than a rap trio. A brief catch-up for those unfamiliar: The trio’s second album, Fantastic Vol. 2, helped build their cult following. But founding members J Dilla and Baatin would eventually…
Rip a new …
Though he created the ’90s cable cult smash Mystery Science Theater 3000, an innovative show that finally gave millions of fans an open excuse to heckle the movie screen, Joel Hodgson remains a humble Midwestern kid, just some dude named Joel, not too different from you or me. After a brief flash of fame in…
Night and Day
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 18 Saskia Olde Wolber TRANSFIXING STARES Drawing inspiration from news stories, TV shows and snatches of overheard conversations, Saskia Olde Wolber creates entrancing narrative films that combine the styles of documentaries and news reports with fantastical sets and surreal voiceovers. Lacking actors, the narration propels the films through a series of dreamlike visuals,…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
V power!
Valentine’s Day is a holiday for women. Obviously! V = vagina. Red = vagina. Hearts = vaginas somehow too. So it was fitting that on Valentine’s Day eve, the Wonder Twins attended "Women: A Celebration of Art and Culture" at the Crofoot where people with XX chromosomes were celebrated for the talent they have, ……
Letters to the Editor
Where were you then? I’d like to applaud Curt Guyette on his well-researched article, "Smashing ACORN" (Feb. 3). It’s not often I read an accurate story about ACORN. The criticism I have is that Guyette attempts to paint a picture that portrays the unjust attacks on ACORN as successful due to inadequate journalism on part…
Schoolhouse divided
During the last two monthly meetings of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, News Hits has hovered nearby, trying to keep tabs on what’s happening behind closed doors. We can tell you with certainty this much: Things are getting really ugly inside the New Center headquarters, and besieged union president Keith Johnson, attempting to stomp out…
Master of the obvious
Freelance contributor Corey Hall, who usually does movie reviews for this rag, volunteered to join the News Hits team this week to do a little venting over a Super Bowl commercial he found particularly irritating. Here is Hall’s pithy report: Super Bowl viewers statewide were served an unusual side dish with their chip dip on…
Street fightin’ man
The guy was coming to shoot up Jack Rabbit’s house in the middle of the night. He’d already fired on other homes in the old east side neighborhood to scare residents he’d suspected of calling the cops on him. It turned out the gunman was a drug dealer, and when neighbors had called the cops…
Mastering social justice
Forget about irrelevant classes, students who never use their degrees and faculty who sit isolated in their ivory towers. A five-year-old master’s program in social justice at Detroit’s Marygrove College is more like guerrilla academics. "The program encourages each student to get out there and do something. One of the primary objectives is to promote…
Dead head
She does not see dead people, so get that Haley Joel Osment image from The Sixth Sense out of your head. When little Becky Rosen from Omaha goes to work, transforming herself into Rebecca Rosen, nationally renowned psychic medium, she says she’s more likely to see "balls of energy, or waves, like heat rising from…
Motor City Cribs
Former Saturday Looks Good to Me keyboard player Scott Sellwood and his wife, Laurie, now live in New York City. But they return to Ann Arbor frequently — it’s where Laurie works for the University of Michigan’s School of Education, and where Scott’s veritable supergroup Drunken Barn Dance is based. They own a condo a…
Metro Retro
26 years ago in Metro Times: Bill Rowe examines the "Rock and Roll Comic Book" that CREEM magazine allegedly had become over the years post-Lester Bangs. Rowe talks with current editors Dave DiMartino and (our current MT music editor) Bill Holdship about the changing of the guard between the earlier and latter staffs. Holdship defended…
Blowing again
Charles L. Latimer writes about jazz for Metro Times. Send comments to letters@metrotimes.com.
