Keweenawesomefest.
A nice writeup on Keweenawesomefest, which took place this past weekend on the Michigan Tech University campus in Houghton, Mich. Detroit-area types like Terrible Twos, Mason Proper, and Annie Palmer made the trip up north for the event, and I really wish I could’ve, too. I’ve been in and out of Houghton (well, the entire…
Tila monster.
EXACTLY. When it debuted sometime in 2006 — I’ve forgotten when and don’t care to look it up — Brooke Hogan’s single “About Us” was probably the worst song I’d ever heard, ever. (Ever.) “I’m just trying to live but you’re all up in my grill,” she sang, and conintued to blab about how difficult…
Cass Tech’s finest.
“The music industry needs more young female rappers,” teenage Detroit emcee Lady Te says. “I keep it real. I write my own songs and I write from my heart when I’m happy, sad or mad. I am a young lady and I can’t say everything that I want to say, so I express myself in…
Woman on the verge
Even before her first book of poems, Blue-Tail Fly, was published this past fall, 42-year-old poet Vievee Francis was a vital and well-known presence in the Detroit poetry scene. Now that this book has been brought out by Wayne State University Press, her presence in the literary world has grown beyond the borders of city…
BMF
Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory, CEO of BMF Entertainment, is seated at the head of a monolithic marble-slab table, watching the events unfold with untrusting eyes. A man in a white dress shirt, the only one in the room not wearing all black, starts his spiel. “Yo, Meech,” he says excitedly, leaning into the table, “I…
Art Bar
My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn’t resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet Sharon Chmielarz. New Water All those years — almost a hundred —…
Head Cheese
Florida’s Underoath exploded onto the metalcore scene in 2004 with They’re Only Chasing Safety. The terrific Define the Great Line followed last year, and it added melody and more dynamics without sacrificing the intensity of the sextet’s metal-hardcore hybrid. Nothing, however, compares to the band’s writhing live performances. In anticipation of Underoath’s upcoming Ypsi gig,…
X BOX
It’s time for two more Blowout artist profiles as we close in on our big preview issue. Go to www.metrotimes.com/blowout for a full schedule and, starting Feb. 21, a link to purchase your festival wristband. —Johnny Loftus Projekt Gift myspace.com/projektgift313 Apparently 311 still has fans. Or at least Harper Woods-based Projekt Gift are still…
When pigs fly
In Hollywood they say that under all the tinsel is real tinsel. Well, in southeast Michigan politics, you could say that under all the crap is real crap. Take the debate on expanding Cobo Center, which lays bare all the dysfunctional relationships that have hindered us for decades. Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson (the…
The drug addicts who control Lansing
How about this idea to help out Michigan’s sputtering economy? We grant all the big drug companies total immunity from being sued if their products, say, just happen to kill you or make your baby daughter grow a beard. As long as the stuff they sell has been cleared by the federal Food and Drug…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Have no fear of the damp and the dark and the cramped. In a place fitting that description, you can track down clues to a mystery that will inflame your curiosity and educate your soul; you can tap into a fresh surge of courage that’ll render at least some of your…
Bill Kirchen’s Telecaster thunder
Bill Kirchen’s life changed dramatically that day in late-’60s San Francisco when he traded his Gibson SG for a Fender Telecaster. Kirchen’s unsure of the guitar’s exact age, though he knows it was made in the late ’50s. Over the 40 years he’s had it, it’s seen some road wear — most of the finish…
Malt liquor nights
Murder, Set, Pieces Lions Gate Entertainment DVD Say one thing about director-producer-writer Nick Palumbo, he never misses an opportunity to pound the offend button. According to this movie’s press release, two Hollywood labs refused to even process the film. He brings to the sliver (yes, sliver) screen the tale of a Nazi fascist fashion photographer…
Queer without tears
Too many people believe that a vanilla type and a kinkster can never live happily ever after. Others are convinced that anonymous Internet hookups always end in tears and positive HPV test results. Where do people get these false impressions? Reading columns like mine. Contented couples — twosomes who have successfully incorporated one partner’s kinks,…
Detroit’s his oyster
Tom Brandel has the city on the half shell.
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Bent on happiness
I was at a science-fiction convention, wandering between a free-cappuccino booth and a free-hard-cider booth, a little drunk and a little buzzed, when an amazingly hot man wandered into my blurry field of vision. My first thought was, "Wow, his boyfriend is lucky!" Built, 6-foot-3-inches, and as furry as a walking carpet — just my…
My three sons
What if you found out one day that you weren’t unique? That’s one of many questions driving A Number, a drama about cloning that is getting a Michigan premiere from Hamtramck’s Planet Ant Theatre. The story revolves around Salter, an aging father, and his son Bernard. Actually, he has several sons, all cloned from one…
Cold chillin’
Wintry February is winding down, Valentine hearts are trashed, and the promise of spring is still a few whispered rumors away. While working producers and DJs count the days until the Winter Music Conference, the dance music schmooze ‘n’ groove fest held each March in Miami, Detroit’s clubbers and ravers are getting their dance on…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
As your attorney, I advise you that Salem, Massachusetts brings you the crazy world of MB107! Dr. Hunter S. Thompson — 1937-2005 (R.I.P.) :: Has it been two years already? Yoko Ono — Yes, I’m A Witch (Astralwerks) :: Got a match? Queens of the Stone Age — “Burn The Witch” (Interscope) :: Got a…
Motor City Rides
The Hard Lessons and their cushy Dodge Ram B1500.
Danza in the dark
Sometimes in the lull between auto shows and Super Bowls, or when not squabbling over stadium and casino construction sites, Detroiters tend to forget that our dowdy rust-bucket metropolis has a cultural life as rich and deep as a three-tiered German chocolate cake. And much of that richness happens far away from the nexus of…
Grim glitterati
Anyone who’s ever been through a high-school prom — or at least watched Carrie — has an innate sense of what the Oscars are all about. A committee of snotty, oversexed, air-headed “peers” is assembled to shoddily throw together the cheesiest ceremony possible, at which only the most popular kids in poofy hooker dresses and…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 21 Love Boat MUSIC When he’s not oozing love as Detroit’s favorite ascot-wearing white boy rapper, esQuire’s always good for some stellar cock ‘n’ bull and an impromptu dance-off. All the more reason to hit the Northern Lights Lounge on Wednesdays: He’s hosting their latest DJ night, Love Boat. Roving hands, sweaty dance…
Letters to the Editor
Porn yesterday When I hear the local porn-shop owner take up the lament of the local church pastor of declining attendance, I know something is amiss in our society (“The last peep show,” Metro Times, Feb. 14). Where is that day-to-day contact and moment-to-moment bonding that makes for human existence? Stifled by fear and dulled…
Brothers’ keepers
Their attorneys depict them as a couple of regular guys trying to make it in the competitive entertainment industry who were indicted with circumstantial evidence. The feds say they’re the kingpins of a nationwide drug ring that moved millions of dollars of cocaine through Detroit and other cities. A jury will decide later this year…
Wandering in wonder
For my friend and I, pulling open a particular red door in Detroit on an otherwise normal Saturday afternoon reveals a weird and wacky world just for the two of us. This world is Zeitgeist Gallery, transformed into the realm of Playful Chaos, an "on-growing" installation show by Jacob Montelongo Martinez (aka Monte), rising artist…
Stars align
For nearly a decade, Toronto’s Do Make Say Think has been a crucial component of Constellation Records, the fiercely independent Montreal-based bastion of post-rock and experimental music that also includes Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s monstrous racket and the wrenching solo work of Carla Bozulich (ex-Geraldine Fibbers and Ethyl Meatplow) among its ranks. DMST is currently…
Backwash
On the kitsch-meter, Peruvian singer Yma Sumac buries the needle deep into the red. Her intergalactic records from the 1950s and ’60s offer ample evidence that the Incas really were from space. With her “Sun Virgin” persona and costumes that rivaled Parliament Funkadelic in their weirdness, she represented sublime exotica at its best. What gets…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Grim glitterati
Every year it’s pretty much the same: Celebs grit their teeth and applaud for nominees they’ve never heard of and films they’ve never seen while members of the home audience take a bathroom break. A tradition since 1932, short subject films are the red-headed stepkids of the Oscars. When these awards — now divided into…
Breach
From the opening frame, “Breach” is all business. It’s a thriller as brisk, economical and keenly honed as its central character. Robert Hanssen is a buttoned-down professional, a pious catholic, devoted family man and one of the most infamous espionage traitors in U.S. history. Hanssen spent 25 years as one of the FBI’s leading Soviet…
Ghost Rider
It’s tricky stuff adapting comic books to the screen. Writer-director Mark Steven Johnson made his first stab at the genre with Ben Affleck’s “Daredevil.” Maligned by many critics, it really wasn’t that bad of a film. In this flick, Cage plays an Evel Knievel-style stunt rider who once sold his soul to Mephistopheles (a wildly…
Iraq in Fragments
"You have to study the Iraqis to know them," says an old man taking a pull off a hookah about halfway through the new documentary Iraq in Fragments, right as an artillery shell sounds in the distance. "It’s impossible to change us with the barrel of a tank." Made over the course of three years…
Breaking and Entering
Building on his work in “Closer,” Law plays Will, another well-heeled Londoner with everything going for him, save an ability to appreciate his many gifts. He’s an architect with a lovely flat, and he has a stunning live-in girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn) and a talented stepdaughter who adore him, but just can’t seem to communicate…
Revolucion: Five Visions
Documentary filmmaker and Michigan native Nicole Cattell’s timely rendering of five Cuban photographers is a poignant examination of what Cuba was and is 48 years after the revolution. From true-believers to and exiled surrealist, Cattell’s interweaving personal narratives paint a complex portrait of political and artistic expression. Not surprisingly, the film’s most interesting subjects are…
