Gene pool
As this incredible year comes to an end, I find that its triumphs and overwhelming tragedy have created a new spiritual awakening in me. My senses have become more fine-tuned, and I now approach each day as if it were a major adventure. This year I celebrated my 40th birthday and continue to delight that…
Graduation looms
Senior year. Everyone always said that it was the best year of your life. So far, I haven’t exactly felt the love. It seems like everyone is always on edge, you know? Like I’m always on thin ice with people whom I had always gotten along so well with. I don’t know if it is…
Who’s winning?
Mean people really do suck. High school civics was extremely important, and one should be ashamed that it took a horrifying, cataclysmic act of terror to get them to realize that, from the president on down. The world changed forever on Sept. 11, as it does every day. People live and die. It’s a question…
More at www.metrotimes.com
High school students Alex Gorosh, Besima Alessevic and Amber Keen on Sept. 11 and personal growth; activist and business professor Mike Whitty on hope for Detroit; attorney Khaled Sekander on hope for Afghanistan; Tarek R. Dika on the Intifada; historian Paul Lee on the racist seeds of Sept. 11; and bewitching last words from band…
Sonic retrospection
The sound track to 2001 as compiled by Metro Times music writers….
The year as they lived it
Terror, worries, losses, politics, hopes, faith, 7 weddings and more … Detroiters talk about the year that changed everything. (Or did it?)
Slow Renaissance
It’s hard to know where to begin, reflecting on a year with so much that has happened. Celebrating my 20th year in the real estate business (with 15 years with my own company) in downtown Detroit is a good place to start. Now, an opportunity to liquidate and move on has become more enticing as…
Season of the witch
This was a year that started out well enough. After all, it was the first real year of the millennium and Detroit’s 300th birthday. Unfortunately, Americans had not listened to Jessie Jackson’s election warning to "Stay out of the Bushes." We had just had an almost Republican president in Clinton. The economy was starting to…
Shooting the blues
Reflecting at year’s end 2001 in this time of peace and religious traditions as publisher and editor of Big City Blues, my thoughts and passions focus on New York City. Trying to keep the blues alive, the road led to New York four times this year. It began New Year’s Eve 2000 with a feature…
Open channels
In the process of creating art there is first a communion with oneself before the manifest art is brought before its audience. However, with the knowledge that there is more of an audience than simply the creator, the artist is faced with a challenge. The artist will choose to refine or muddle, and to repress…
Facing the unknown
Fear, shock, strength, sadness, hope. Just some of the words that spring to mind when reviewing 2001. Each year most people have high and low points and last year proved to be no exception. In the first half of the year my husband and I had personal triumphs, enjoyed visits to my birthplace in England…
Faith and absurdities
2001 will forever be defined by the events of Sept. 11, both personally and universally. What else are we to write about — the Beatles having a No. 1 record 30 years after the band’s creative death or the cynicism of Britney Spears (that she exploits sex for profit without understanding it; that her handlers…
True potential
All I’ve actually discovered in my 16 years of life on this planet is that I know absolutely nothing about life. Once I finally answer one of life’s questions, it seems more questions are just around the corner. This summer, however, I was given an opportunity to grasp who I really am. About five months…
Detroit prognosis
I love Detroit. I believe we are all Detroiters at heart. That is why I call myself Dr. Detroit, for a city which is proud, joyful and creative. I am an optimist. My Gray Panther friend Ethel Schwartz said, “Don’t tell me what’s wrong. I already know that. Tell me what’s right, how we can…
We’re No. 1?
That makes three in a row: Detroit’s named the nation’s most dangerous city. Whoo-hoo!
Goodbye, Bowens
Outgoing city press secretary Greg Bowens admits how much he really loves News Hits.
Year-end yammerings
No lame Clement Moore parodies here (well, not really) … Instead find a sampler of the Detroit scene, from hip-hop to hipster, represented at the annual Robert Stanzler / Made in Detroit / Bob “Kid Rock” Ritchie holiday soiree.
No apologies
"Why do they hate us?" As a historian, this question — asked mostly by white Americans in the wake of Sept. 11 — struck me as naïve, at best, and arrogant, at worst. As a student of U. S. foreign policy, and particularly the CIA‚s half-century of covert (but by no means secret) intrigues abroad,…
Bewitching finale
Recognize regalia onto the present day, let it out … until it’s all beside yourself … no movie stars … no sleight of hand … No Goliath for the taking where on earth it was nothing but nobility. Need gigs nothing else … no Jackpot … the shock of your own cavities here on Temptation…
At the drive-in
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Samuel Z. Arkoff, 1918-2001
The art of living
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Balthus, 1908-2001
No big eyes
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Jane Greer, 1924-2001
Living in darkness
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Jane Greer, 1924-2001
Catch a wave
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Jeanne Loriod, 1928-2001
The smell of the grease pit
A salute to some of 2001’s dear departed cult culture heroes: Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, 1932-2001
Archeology of a dream
A mother-to-be remembers why adoption feels so right….
Backdrop Detroit
Writer Gary Hardwick won’t forget the Motor City….
Who needs enemies?
Q: I have been friends with a woman for 10 years. She’s 39, I’m 31 and we’re both single. I am not the platonic friend type and I do not use the “be her friend to get into her pants” ploy. She’s beautiful and has a sexy body. I was interested as any guy would…
Across generations
Lost: 1,400 jobs, some lives and much hope. It has been a strange year, filled with unprecedented events for all of us. The Latino community witnessed the loss of a major employer, Mexican Industries. The long battle to bring the union into this major parts supplier owned by former Tiger Hank Aguirre ended sadly. Workers…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Welcome home,” the festively clad greeters blessed me as I entered the Burning Man festival last August. In one sense it was ironic: I would spend a mere week in a temporary community erected in an inhospitable desert environment. But it was also profoundly appropriate. Surrounded by smart weirdoes who shared…
Screen gems 2001
The best movie-viewing bets of the past year (and a consensus worst 10), as compiled by Metro Times’ film writers after hundreds of hours in the dark, a ton of popcorn and a truckload of Twizzlers.
Letters to the Editor
Get over the past How come someone doesn’t write about how the African-Americans are also very racist to the white people these days ("Niggers old & new," Metro Times, Dec. 12-18)? I understand that they suffered in the past, but the past is the past. My people certainly had nothing to do with their suffering,…
Seven weddings
The course for 2001 began in August 2000 when my divorce proceedings finalized. We’d been separated for three years, so I expected it would be pro forma. But before I knew it, I was in a funk that affected nearly everything that I did (and didn’t do) this year. On New Year’s Eve, I watched…
In the year 2001
Looking back on the music world, in a year of revivals and revisions, hybrids and new juxtapositions: The return of the ’80s … DEMF 2001 … & more.
Party lines & mischief
The new year will bring many big changes — a new governor, newly redrawn state and congressional districts, new voting laws, and more. Will you make your voice heard?
Power of one
Never have I felt so vulnerable and alone, yet so close to family and friends and to people around the world as I do today. The personal losses I experienced this year have taught me the preciousness of life alongside moments of profound pain. This is a time when I, and others suffering losses, get…
History & hamburgers
Named after the railroad tycoon, Diamond Jim Brady’s Bistro started as a bar and hamburger joint; it’s celebrating its 47th year in business, and its 10th year in the Novi Town Center. The menu begins with bar food — “I still say we have the best burger around,” says executive chef Mary Brady — but…
The Bluff
Lies — those you’re told, those you tell others, and those you tell yourself — are at the crux of Sarah Dougher’s third solo album of folk-rock investigation into matters of the telltale heart. And like her previous, near-perfect recordings, The Bluff is no half-hearted exploration of deception, and it makes for no half-hearted listen.…
Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea
Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea is a subtly beautiful album in the spirit of confused (albeit passionate) adolescence that has come to typify the Glaswegian sound. However, the strong influence of traditional Indian music adds a new and welcome atmospheric spice. Future Pilot AKA is the alias of Sushi K Dade and friends, members of Belle…
Here’s to Shutting Up
If there was a time to listen to Superchunk after its initial punk-entrance in 1989 (“Slack Motherfucker”) it may be now. In the early ’90s — see Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91) — Superchunk’s medium had been largely its only message. But albums such as 1999’s Come Pick Me Up and the new release, Here’s to…
Nude Dimensions III
For those of us already taken with Jay Dene’s digital soul and Miguel Miggs’ tight dubs, Nude Dimensions III only goes a little way there. This blended portion of the series includes more dance geographies, with all of the songs pulled from an international record crate. The enveloped aroma of dusk seeping from Gaelle’s “Rain”…
Avant-gangsters
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 feature looks back to the B-movie gangster homage of his 1959 debut, Breathless. Beautifully shot in black and white by Raoul Coutard, the film takes place under the perennially overcast winter skies of Paris, its muted ambience suggesting both a claustrophobic fatalism and a glaze of nostalgia — with Sami Frey, Claude…
Ali
Somehow — regardless of Will Smith’s months of physical, mental and spiritual preparation — his performance as the charismatic poet-of-the-ring only completely gels for brief moments before it falls apart, perhaps under Ali’s colossal weight or is swallowed by the Greatest’s shadow.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Sampling tales of boyhood adventure that have lit up both the small and big screens for over 50 years, this cartoon feature is "B" quality at best, but it does take you for a few thrilling rides; it has some laughs, and it assures us that if you scratch a nerd deeply enough, you’ll find…
The Shipping News
Swedish director Lasse Hallström has become an American master of middlebrow literary adaptations (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat), but fans of author E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel will find little to love in this one — with Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore and Judi Dench.
The Affair of the Necklace
While director Charles Shyer ably moves from light comedy (Baby Boom, Father of the Bride, I Love Trouble) to costume drama, he never delivers the gravitas needed for this tale of intrigue. He forgets the cinema’s prime directive — show, don’t tell — and never convincingly makes his point. With Hilary Swank.
