Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): It’s show-and-tell time. Are you ready to reveal the beautiful truths you’ve been holding back? Your knees may knock and your palms may sweat until the moment you hit the spotlight. But I bet a magical calm will settle over you then, and suddenly you’ll be flowing freely, showing off as…
Take me to the river
Summer on the Bob-Lo boat — when the livin’ was easy….
Letters to the Editor
Longing for the old days Self-respecting lefty journalists once got themselves arrested for clashing with police during sit-ins and demonstrations. Now comes Jeremy Voas, who tries to make himself out as the last hero of the indie press not for railing against sweatshops or decrying the actions of the World Bank but for being shitfaced…
The latest in lusty lit
They don’t rip bodices like they used to….
Aurora goes dark
Editor’s note: In Part I of this series, Metro Times relied on sworn testimony to report allegations that, after buying Greater Detroit Hospital with a partner in 1994, Dr. Soon K. Kim threatened to bankrupt the facility if he wasn’t able to gain full control of it. Depositions taken in litigation against Kim also alleged…
Permanent record
Jeff Mills talks Detroit techno and the exhibit that hopes to explain it….
Trailer court tirades
Hello, Rock City. I ain’t cranked out a column in ages because last year was the worst year of my embarrassing life and I’ve been too overwrought to wrap my thoughts around much else besides my most basic survival. The mother of my children has left me. My grandfather and two other friends passed away.…
Pregnant pauses, problems
Q: Usually, I love your open, honest, thoughtful advice, but what you said to Momma Violates Poppa, the sexually frustrated pregnant woman whose husband won’t sleep with her, was as cruel as what her husband’s doing to her. Yes, it’s possible that her husband’s just plain not turned on. But no sex with the love…
Breakin’ all the rules
Unpredictable, introspective, forceful, subtle. Trying to assemble adjectives to describe New York’s Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company is like trying to convey the intricacies of someone’s multiple personalities. The company employs a fiery mixture of modern dance, traditional West African dance, live and recorded music, and martial arts movement. This volatile ensemble stops at…
Pulling the Reigns
Prediction: In 2003 Greg Cartwright will become a household name. Well, maybe. If not the man himself, then perhaps his band, the Reigning Sound. If not in every nuclear household from Memphis to Missoula, maybe just in the apartments and dorm rooms of the growing army of vinylphiles and music fans that have made “garage”…
Parch the poor
Access to clean running water is not only a basic human need but also a deciding factor in whether a place is civilized. Yet last year the city of Detroit shut off water service to more than 40,000 homes, in some cases pouring concrete over meters so they couldn’t be jimmied back on. The same…
The smokeless gun
So little time, so much to rant about. Rant No. 1: It seems likely our government is going to be at war with Iraq sometime within the next several weeks. There are bags full of reasons for not going to war and bringing home Lord knows how many body bags. But, at this point,…
Hamtramck Disneyland
When you think of Detroit, what pops into your head? The skyline from Windsor? Tiger Stadium? The giant, limp-wristed fist? I’m not sure of the best postcard image, but I think I’ve found the one most appropriate for our times. The creator calls it Hamtramck Disneyland. Suburban pseudo-liberals like myself can take I-75 south, get…
Morning has broken
The bar slithers like a snake, undulating from the front door all the way to the jukebox. From Woodward Avenue to the Allman Brothers Band, from the front steps of Ferndale all the way back to Kid Rock and Frank Sinatra and Cat Stevens. Past the dart game. Past the golf game. Past the beer…
God save the queens
Hilberry Theater’s sexual farce takes the low road to high topics….
Rush to judgment
Why did a record number of people enter Michigan prisons last year? The Michigan Department of Corrections doesn’t have a clue. “We don’t know if more crimes were committed. We don’t know if judges are sending more people to prison. We don’t know if county jails are crowded and don’t have an option,” says MDOC…
Jan. 15-21, 2003
16 THU • MUSIC detroitrap.com 2002 Hip-Hop Awards — Long before big-budget movies were commissioned and multimillion-dollar record deals were signed, the Detroit rap community did it themselves. And in manner of all things accolade-worthy, the Detroit hip-hop scene will be having their own forum for recognition. With presenters such as Rising Sunz, the Impaler…
Fuel for love
In a departure from the normally acidic tone many environmentalists take toward Detroit’s North American International Auto Show — aka the Love the Auto Orgy — the Michigan Environmental Council is holding a clean-car scavenger hunt for kids under 14. The contest form asks kids to locate auto show vehicles with the best gas mileage…
Nonprofit, for-profit interplay
Government regulators responsible for the oversight of nonprofit organizations said that, although there is potential cause for concern, there is nothing illegal “per se” regarding the nonprofit structure of the Aurora and Greater Detroit hospitals and their financial relationships with for-profit companies affiliated with Dr. Soon K. Kim. According to Mike Bagley, a nonprofit specialist…
Affirming actions
Sorry to bombard you with auto news, but News Hits is pleased to hear that the Big Three supports Ferndale’s Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center, in a big way. GM leads the pack with $40,000 pledged for the third year in a row; DaimlerChrysler follows with its third annual pledge of $30,000. Ford gave…
Lost boys
Male runaways and boys aged 16 to 20 who are kicked out of their homes will have no place to go in Oakland County unless the Department of Health and Human Services changes its mind. The federal agency last week denied a five-year, $1 million grant for a program at Common Ground Sanctuary shelter in…
Aurora’s web
Aurora Healthcare, Inc. A nonprofit corporation started by Dr. Soon K. Kim in April 1997. Over the next four years, it would pay at least $23 million to companies affiliated with Kim. Michigan Mental Healthcare Network (MMHN) In April 1997, the for-profit Michigan Mental Healthcare Network purchased the 140-bed Aurora mental hospital on Detroit’s west…
Rosemary’s baby
A dilapidated tow truck sits behind barbed wire at 498 Peterboro, site of our Abandoned Structure of the Week. According to one neighbor, the truck serves as residence for a vagrant who apparently thought it offered better shelter than the rundown apartment building. Neighbors say the building, vacant for more than 10 years, lures derelicts.…
Aurora board
Aurora board William Stone chairman, owner of an insurance agency in Southfield Agustin Arbulu Attorney, businessman Edna Bell Former Wayne County supervisor Rosemary Bannon Former executive director of Detroit’s International Institute George Gaines Jr. Former CEO and Detroit public health official Richard Golden President and CEO, D.O.C. Optics William Hoffman Former UAW official Bernard Moray…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
A dilapidated tow truck sits behind barbed wire at 498 Peterboro, site of our Abandoned Structure of the Week. According to one neighbor, the truck serves as residence for a vagrant who apparently thought it offered better shelter than the rundown apartment building. Neighbors say the building, vacant for more than 10 years, lures derelicts.…
Flight attendant
Judy Yerkey is watching over us. She does so by keeping an eye on the Peregrine falcons in downtown Detroit. From the Book Building’s 32nd floor, she peers through binoculars on a gray January day. The 62-year-old amateur ornithologist spots a pigeon carcass on a window ledge of the Ameritech building. “Ah, yummies,” she says.…
Stop making sense
David Felsenstein is an American terrorist with a library card. He wears a magnet on his bald head to boost his weak sense of direction, but it doesn’t seem to be working. He’s lost in a destructive and solipsistic dream made frighteningly real from the very first page of Mark Swartz’s short, idiosyncratic novel, Instant…
Helplessly hoping
Director Mike Leigh’s leisurely examination of the emotionally chaotic lives of the down-but-not-quite-out in South London is more than just a masochistic wallow in the realm of stunned disillusionment. Rather, it’s a slow-tempo trip to the possibility of emotional renewal and, against all odds, believably optimistic.
25th Hour
Before convicted heroin dealer Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) takes his last ride as a free man up the river for a seven-year sentence in a federal penitentiary, director Spike Lee plays on our pity. But beneath the film’s almost ridiculously simple slice-of-life story is a subtext that’s disjointedly cryptic.
Narc
Jason Patric and Ray Liotta have an intense, good cop-bad cop partnership in director Joe Carnahan’s good-looking crime thriller. But the constantly coiling intentions of Liotta’s character ultimately undo him and the believability of the entire scenario.
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary record of David Bowie’s last concert featuring his Ziggy Stardust persona is a pretty bare-bones affair, with a few backstage snippets to add a touch of intimacy to the historical moment. Now restored and sounding good, it’s still not one of the great concert films.
