Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Before he died, ex-Beatle George Harrison recorded the album Brainwashed. Reviewers at People magazine found it exceptional. “Rollicking, jaunty and wry,” they wrote, “Harrison looked death in the eye and took out his ukulele.” Let this image inspire you in the coming week. While you won’t have to deal with an…
How to tell if you’re a slut
Q: When you warn against being a huge fucking slut, I know that I agree. But I don’t know if I’m being a huge fucking slut. I’ve had anal sex (with protection) on the first date, and I’ve had sex with guys without quite remembering their names. But my lifetime sex partner count is not…
Up from the semiunderground
You hear about guys like Ted Leo every year during the World Series or the Super Bowl. Dudes who have been around, played the field from every angle, who have accrued a lifetime of experience and props from teammates, but who’ve never been to the big dance. They’re called journeymen — for both their nomadic…
New Horizon in art
The flags of eight countries hang just inside the front doors to Horizon High School in Hamtramck. Representing the student body of the half “alternative,” half ESL (English as a Second Language) school, the flags of Albania, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Yemen, and the United States proudly greet visitors. All eight of these flags…
Letters to the Editor
Save the children I hope I never bump into Patrick Lang from Warren. The anger expressed in his letter to the editor (Metro Times, Feb. 5-11) was as disturbing to me as the thought of war in Iraq or anyplace else. Anger is anger. Hatred is hatred. Fear is fear. Nothing will change for the…
The naughty professor
Pornography has historically been the stuff of plain brown wrappers and back-alley bookstores — books thumbed through and passed around as furtively as a joint. But since “erotica” has entered the storied realms of Barnes & Noble and the Book-of-the-Month Club, pornographers have gotten something of a makeover, too. Hanne Blank, Baltimore transplant, self-described publisher…
Judging the judge
Leonard Townsend works hard and fast; the results are debatable….
February 19-25, 2003
20 THU • FILM Brew and View presents: Jackass — Devilishly handsome (though wholly revolting) Johnny Knoxville and father-flogging Steve-O are up to the same old antics … only this time it is unedited. Disgusting and hilarious, the antics that MTV’s show, "Jackass" made popular have made their way to the silver screen. From bathroom…
Anti-war galore
We’ve heard plenty about the Bush administration’s desire to get the Iraq war rolling before the desert sands heat up. After watching the anti-war throng that marched down Detroit’s Washington Boulevard in the biting wind last week, it seemed there might be another timetable for the planners to consider: The opposition that’s likely to grow…
Case western
Neko’s right at home on the range….
Intimate vistas
Landscapes are cityscapes in the show at Lemberg Gallery….
Avant-shitters!
Before he turned his strange and dubious talents to the cinema, director Ed Wood dabbled in theater. Few souvenirs survive of this unfortunate epoch, but interested parties would do well to check out ZeitGeist’s latest production, The Ubu Variations, based upon the prodigious and esoteric writings of Alfred Jarry. You get the classic Wood lineup:…
What kind of country?
We are truly sleepwalking through history. In my heart of hearts, I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings … this war is not necessary at this time. —U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va, Feb. 12, 2003 What may someday rank as one of…
Table for one
The place was as narrow as a hallway. Grill on the left, large cardboard boxes in the back, tables for two on the right. There were pictures on the wall that reminded us of the notebooks little girls took to school. Pictures of unicorns. Mia Katz hated this place. “Why do you come here? Why…
Guidelines … what guidelines?
Judge Leonard Townsend does what he wants when it comes to sentencing convicted felons. He argues that the tough sentences he sometimes metes out are perfectly legal. But in some cases, the Michigan Court of Appeals disagrees and sends cases to the Wayne County Circuit Court judge for resentencing. And in some cases, Townsend tells…
Turtle talk
News Hits’ turtle graffiti report last week sure stirred an impassioned debate. Among those who called to weigh in was internationally known artist Tyree Guyton, who’s responsible for the polka dots decorating buildings throughout much of Detroit. He called to say he doesn’t consider TRTL a kindred spirit. “I’m really vexed with this whole thing,”…
Arizona revisited
Detroit City Council members are trying to help Arizona Vaughn, the grandmother who rehabbed an abandoned property at 5210 Marlborough St., only to be rewarded with an eviction notice from the city. Metro Times reported last month about Vaughn’s struggle to gain title to the house based on an agreement with a city official and…
Mountain or mole Hil
It’s a pretty good bet City Council candidate Gil Hill won’t get Edet Otudor’s vote in next month’s primary. A city parking lot attendant, Otudor filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court last month, claiming that Hill, while serving as council president in early 2001, violated his civil rights. The Cameroon native is also accusing…
Century club
The Ambassador Bridge serves as a majestic backdrop for this week’s abandoned house at 734 Lansing on the city’s southwest side. The house, built in 1900, is one of five abandoned structures on the quaint street located between West Fort and the 4400 block of Fischer. The trash and broken furniture that is usually found…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
The Ambassador Bridge serves as a majestic backdrop for this week’s abandoned house at 734 Lansing on the city’s southwest side. The house, built in 1900, is one of five abandoned structures on the quaint street located between West Fort and the 4400 block of Fischer. The trash and broken furniture that is usually found…
Jokes and pokes
Forget the vagina rock. Carolyn Mark sings songs about after-bar parties and fuzzy slippers. No room for existential questions or grand laments on the human condition. More to the point, Mark didn’t get laid last night, and she thinks that’s kinda funny. While writing country tunes that provide the perfect accompaniment to life’s fleeting moments…
No Good For No One Now
Mike Kinsella’s spent much of his life in the shadow of his older brother Tim, a founding member of emo pioneers Cap’n Jazz, and, with Mike, a part of American Football and Joan Of Arc. But in contrast to his self-consciously arty brother, Mike seems to have no qualms forging simple, unpretentious pop. With Owen’s…
Plans still aloft
Mum’s the word … apparently, that is the mantra of the forces currently involved in the much-ballyhooed yet at-times snakebitten Merchant’s Row project in downtown Detroit. The blockbuster development seeks to fuse six adjacent and abandoned buildings on the west side of Woodward, across the street from the old Hudson’s building, into a $35 million,…
Original Blue Recordings Original Blue Recordings
Long regarded as “the Sam Cooke of reggae,” Jamaican vocalist Cornell Campbell comes off more like the genre’s Curtis Mayfield on this excellent and comprehensive compilation of his best work with producer Bunny Lee. Unlike, say, the usually good but sometimes merely archival Blood and Fire compilations of overlooked ’70s reggae, OBR has a relevance…
Bob Dylan Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue
Who is Bob Dylan? For more than 40 years, the mercurial Mr. Zimmerman’s ever-changing persona has exasperated critics. There’s Early Bob, reverently copping Guthrie while ripping off Ramblin’ Jack. There’s Protest Singer Bob, railing against a crumbling establishment. Later, we meet Electric Guitar Bob (call him Judas), and even Country & Western Bob — complete…
Fear Yourself
What if Brian Wilson had never completely returned from ruined-voice, MOR-mush zombieland? Would we tiptoe around such delicate matters and still treat him like a conquering hero? How about Syd Barrett? If he’d ever completed that third solo album, given that the bits and pieces he did get down on tape before his final collapse…
Redemption’s Son
Finally there’s an album where getting religion and getting pissed off aren’t mutually exclusive. Like the film The Apostle when Robert Duvall keeps asking God for a sign and the devil keeps intercepting the call, songwriter/multi-instrumentalist and Peter Gabriel discovery Joseph Arthur has made a treatise on faith and salvation that gives his demons their…
Thought dances
In a way, to begin is to embrace an end. Knowing that end intimately is more than an intellectual exercise; it’s a move toward more conscious living. Poet and writer Lyn Hejinian delves deeply into this idea in this second edition of her short work of poetry, The Beginner. The book’s cover shows a group…
The Orson Fader
Without actually knowing the band it’s hard to say if Paik nicked its moniker from Fluxus member, Cage/Stockhausen student and father of video art Nam June Paik, who casts a long shadow by any reckoning upon those who seek liberation through the interface of technology and art. Coincidental or not regarding the choice of name,…
Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight
Thirty-two years after his untimely death at age 27, Jimi Hendrix remains one of the most prolific artists on the planet. Thanks to the keepers of the legendary guitarist’s estate — and record executives who stuff their own pockets — Hendrix’s legacy is alive and well, due in no small part to the nearly two…
Flying Saucer Tour/Love, Laughter, and Truth
As a trailblazing social commentator, Bill Hicks was also a standup comedian who transcended conventional notions of what most consider funny. A bluntly rational truth-seeker who made people uncomfortable for a living, his confrontational style of perceptive dark humor also made him a target of corporate censorship in the early ’90s. His fiery improvisational rants…
Bronx Bar
The Bronx is short on frills – no bands, no parking, no Red Bull or exotic martinis – but long on character. Its pool table, cheap beer (an ice-cold Old Milwaukee will set you back as much as your DDOT bus fare) and jukebox stocked with old soul, hip-hop and greasy rawk, keep the place…
Down-home blues
In director Abderrahmane Sissako’s acutely observational and dreamlike film, a young man returns to his small seaside village on the west coast of Africa. Having forgotten the native dialect and cut off by his inability to communicate, he watches the locals like a curious and not entirely comfortable tourist.
Recipe for revenge
Many years ago, when I was young and stupid, I fell for a verbally abusive alcoholic, Karl, who cheated on me, spent the rent money on strippers and turned out to be on the lam from a warrant in another state for trafficking cocaine. The relationship ended badly, but I still think about him sometimes:…
The Guru
There’s a message in this second-rate movie somewhere — perhaps it’s a parody of American cultists, a joke made all the more explicit by the hero’s accidental success at playing guru to dozens of rich New Yorkers who dub him the "Swami of Sex."
Derrida
Contemporary French philosopher Jacques Derrida is a charismatic figure — and even those who find the bite-sized bits of his philosophizing offered here obscure will likely be charmed by this man who falls so easily into his role of gray eminence.
Daredevil
In his saggy, dull-red leather gear, Ben Affleck hangs on the screen like a forlorn biker who’s lost his buddies in a bar brawl. There’s been a tragic lack of imagination in the handling of this classic comic-book hero — somebody sucked all the chutzpah out of our poor sightless devil.
Lockdown
Besides a couple of film festival showings in 2000, this B-movie spin-off of Boyz ’N the Hood has been locked away for more than two years. The reason is evident: At best, its script, acting and direction are an uneven motley ranging from effective to ridiculous.
