7″ pop shots
Waxwings “Leave Less Waiting” b/w “Sky’s A Mirror” Cass Records Brendan Benson “What I’m Looking For” V2 (download) It should be noted that the Waxwings aren’t a singles band. These four corduroyed dudes have proven nothing if not how to make languid jangle stretch out over an entire record. Here, with two cuts plucked from…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
N&D Center
Friday-Saturday • 11-12 Rennie Harris Puremovement: Facing Mekka DANCE This week, hip-hop street dancing takes the spotlight at Ann Arbor’s Power Center. Rennie Harris Puremovement — the progressive and ultra-cool dance company — will perform Facing Mekka, a spiritual dance explosion that traces the lineage of American dance around the globe. From Turkish whirling dervishes…
Remember honesty?
It was an astonishing story with a headline that stopped me cold.The Detroit News, Friday, Feb. 4, 2005: “$1.2 M? Thanks but no thanks” It was the banner headline, even played above the papers’ daily Super Bowl story (but not, of course, important enough to knock sports off Page 1 altogether). At first glance I…
Role play day
Last night, I dreamt of Hugh Hefner and his circle of pals — barbarian warrior Jose Canseco, skateboarding magician Rob Dyrdek and shaman musician Felix Da Housecat — clutching magical weapons and laying waste to unending hordes. Well, all except Felix, who’s banging 1986 Miss February Julie McCullough on the expensive Galaxy couch. It’s a…
Classroom clips
This is documentary about a middle school class in Tennessee that embarks on a Holocaust memorial project, and decides to collect a paper clip for each person killed in the genocide. During the process, students meet with Holocaust survivors, and a racist teacher has a change of heart. Although the premise may sound cliché and…
America: Still eating its young
Do they still make water pistols? I’m pretty sure cap guns and air rifles (which I loved when I was a kid) are in the Smithsonian by now, but I was just wondering if you could still get a good water pistol anywhere. … As you can probably tell, I don’t have kids — or…
Incident at Loch Ness
This elaborate practical joke begins as a documentary on director who’s planning to shoot a documentary on the Loch Ness monster. However, it quickly becomes clear that the entire premise is an elaborate practical joke, a la Spinal Tap. If you don’t pick up on the joke within the first 15 minutes, the cat is…
Why we must lose this war
Gwynne Dyer isn’t exactly a wimp. Not many guys from Newfoundland are. Born during World War II, he has been fascinated by things military all his life, and has served in three navies — ours, Canada’s and Great Britain’s. He has university degrees from all three countries too, and a Ph.D. in military and Middle…
The Wedding Date
New Yorker Kat (Debra Messing) pays male escort Nick (Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her overseas to her sister’s wedding, where an ex-fiancé and overbearing mother await her. As expected, business turns quickly into pleasure, but lies, betrayal and screwball antics threaten to upend the nuptials and split up all the happy couples. The stars and…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Happy Valentine Daze, Aries! During my quest for the advice that might be most helpful to your love life, I gathered the following words of wisdom. 1) "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." —Friedrich Nietzsche. "Love is not about losing freedom;…
Head Cheese
Lansing-born Ethan Daniel Davidson is a road soldier, has been one, he says, since he split home at the tender age of 14. Since, he’s made a handful of records that often brim with not-so-subtle politicking, literate road tales and terse social humor that miraculously sidesteps the flippant. His latest, the Times Beach-released Free the…
Boogeyman
After lending his muscle to the U.S. remake of The Grudge, Sam Raimi puts his producer’s stamp on this routine shocker. Despite a handful of cool shots and a welcome supporting performance by charming newcomer Emily Deschanel, Boogeyman isn’t fit to be shown anywhere other than a drive-in, preferably under the influence of mood-altering substances.
Should I go for one last fling?
Q: I am a thirtysomething, happily married woman except that I’ve never had satisfying, passionate sex with my husband. But I love him and am, for the most part, resigned. Here’s where it gets complicated. I survived cancer a few years back. I’m having symptoms again, but I haven’t told anyone. In a few months…
Shapely steel
What could be more antithetical to a consumer culture obsessed with commercial value, instant gratification and disposable everything than artwork culled from patient attention, corruption-resistant materials and centuries-old technique? Ornamental, a show of metal wall sculpture by artist Amy Haskins at the P.F. Galleries in Clawson, offers an antidote to the bland and forgettable. “In…
Claptrap kitsch?
Stereo Total cut records on the line between downtown art party and precocious absurdity. Depending on your ear, the continental duo — Brezel Göring’s representing Germany; Françoise Cactus was raised out in France — make either underdeveloped claptrap kitsch or intellectual, refreshingly clean and simple indie pop. The verdict on Do the Bambi? As usual,…
Salts of the earth
Now that the serial killer Kevorkian has been put out of action, what’s an aspiring suicide to do? Eat too little salt. It’s a slow painful way to go, but death is certain. You’ll get all twitchy, develop intense muscle pain and eventually shuffle off this mortal coil as a wizened mess. If you want…
Guilty as charged
It’s common knowledge that almost every musician in this town plays in at least two bands. Rent’s cheap, practice spaces are easy to find and time — well, an ever-dwindling economy has made sure that we have got a lot of that. And although the hedonism facilitated by D-town’s low cost of living makes for…
The Documentary
The Game’s debut album went from impressive to suspect to trade-bin fodder in a week. Dr. Dre, Scott Storch, Kanye West and others laid a bangin’ enough template to stand on its own, sure, and Game, who’s been rhymin’ for only three years, fires a few lines that could raise a brow. On one, he…
Art Bar
All art, all the time: It’s hard to believe that, decades ago, art students actually worked and lived in museums. Lacking in proper facilities, their studios were often located in the attics of renowned institutions. With that kind of all-access pass, young artists spent all day sketching or second-guessing masterpieces, and at night, they’d gather…
Maister is mourned, Moss gets nod and Rock loses ginch
Lost Horizons Dan Maister, former guitarist for Bogue and Detroit City Council, and bassist for P.W. Long’s hillbilly punk outfit Reelfoot, committed suicide on Monday, Jan. 31. His mother found the 34-year-old dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in their suburban Detroit family garage. Maister had been wrestling with depression and heroin addiction for years, though…
Emoh
Sebadoh sort of fizzled in the late ’90s, and the Folk Implosion was always a barely .500 team. But the spottiness of his recent work only makes Lou Barlow’s Emoh better. The veteran misanthrope has quietly crafted some of his most cohesive work to date. “We were simply buried alive,” he sings in “Puzzle,” “And…
Rising above
Ypsilanti, 9 p.m., the dead of winter. One Be Lo is exhausted. He just drove 800 miles from Minneapolis, through a blizzard and without sleep, after performing a raucous hip-hop show with Atmosphere and Brother Ali the night before. “Well, we ain’t doing push-ups, yo,” Lo says, as a way of insisting the interview go…
Classless clowns
The silliness reached epic proportions last week as Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the City Council sat down to deal with the council’s 4-4 deadlock over the mayor’s request to refinance $1.2 billion in debt owed to two city pension systems. Things had hit a crisis point. If a majority of the council did not…
Lil’ Pimp
It’s not just Webmasters who pine for the dot.com days. Back in those heady times when terms like “Webisodic series” were still being bandied about, creative teams like Peter Gilstrap and Mark Brooks, not beholden to network execs or studio heads, went straight to the people with hilarious weekly Web Flash animated shorts like Lil’…
Rhapsody in black
Few would think classical music attracts metro Detroit’s African-American listening audience en masse. But a well-researched and growing Web site may challenge that notion by exposing enthusiasts and neophytes alike to the African influences on this elegant art form. According to africlassical.com, there were black composers who were at the top of their creative game…
Winter (strike) break
Ed Petykiewicz was being coy. We’d heard that the editor of The Ann Arbor News, owned by the Newhouse chain, was among a group of employees who’d temporarily relocated to Youngstown, Ohio, to serve as scabs at The Vindicator, an independent daily rag where 170 workers have been on strike since Nov. 16. Union members…
Weekly Fecal
What joy! A two-disc Crüe best-of (with a single Simple Plan-assisted turd dropped in for max radio potential), regurgitating that same greedy, woman-hating Republican rock amped on calculated outrage and that astonishing PR machine that upholds the honor of marketing choad-gurgler Gene Simmons. The outhouse-quality covers of “Street Fighting Man,” “Helter Skelter” and “Anarchy in…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
You don’t understand! Tonight the moon will be full! And I’ll turn into MB20! • Paul McCartney — Super Bowl XXXIX (FOX) :: Never mind the Beatles, how about that “sweet banana,” “body gun,” FCC-baiting version of Wings’ “Hi Hi Hi”? • Coralie Clément — Bye Bye Beauté (Nettwerk) :: Look, if I want to…
Watchful eyes
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, known for helping refugees worldwide since its formation by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950, is about to bring Canada-U.S. border points such as the Ambassador Bridge into the world spotlight. Commission officials in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, have been invited by the United States and Canada…
An institution founders
It seems likely that by this time next month, the Belle Isle Aquarium will be closed. With a $230 million deficit looming, Detroit city administrators are looking to cut costs, with major cuts to city bus routes and large-scale layoffs first on the list — and a 101-year-old aquarium facing declining attendance and needing major…
Last stand
If you like a home with an airy feeling, you might be interested in this place at 12274 Grandmont. Since it has no roof, the home offers an unobstructed view of the sky. Adding to the feeling of spaciousness is the absence of doors and windows. Trash cans and old tires littering the property add…
A cute pain
For the month of February, Hamtramck’s Primary Space gallery further establishes itself as a local champion of all that is emerging from bittersweet and honey-buttery painter Trish Grantham. With Toast, Trouble and Tears, Grantham — a self-taught artist from Portland, Ore. — draws from the comic-manga-sanrio canon to turn such items as white toast, teeth…
Proactive
What, no musicals? — To answer our own question, the answer is, thankfully, “no.” The Michigan Coalition for Human Rights is offering a fluff-free film series for the serious-minded. Or, as they put it, “A rare opportunity to experience a powerful film series and participate in thoughtful discussion following each and meet activists from local…
Woman’s work
Photography isn’t so much about capturing the truth as the power to manipulate it. In the 19th century, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a talented painter who helped to invent photography so he could get the illusionism he wasn’t getting from painting. Henry Fox Talbot, the Englishman who created the first modern camera using paper negatives, was…
Still kicking
On a wearying, blizzardy night when traveling seems impossible, Ernesto Machado, 25, and his girlfriend, Holly Payne, 21, are undaunted. They head to the inconspicuous storefront for the Tribo Afro-Bahiana de Capoeira Angola Tradicional (TABCAT) in southwest Detroit, as they have three times a week for months. Diminutive in stature, neither Machado nor Payne has…
Backslash
HAVE A HEART: Valentine’s Day is upon us once again, a holiday that will guarantee you a night in the doghouse if you don’t get your sweetie a card … or, at the very least, an e-card. But what if you’re one of the many bitter, single people who loathe this occasion? Or you recently…
Letters to the Editor
Time for a new issue Re: “It’s time for a new navigator” (Metro Times, Jan. 26), I would have never thought that you would jump on this stupid topic as well. Would everyone please stop talking about this stupid SUV? There are more pressing issues in this city than what the mayor and his wife…
