Poop patrol
State finally agrees to monitor factory farm pollution….
Charlotte Gray
Perhaps if you live on a diet of romance paperbacks and keep your TV glued to Lifetime with a hanky handy, you might like this movie, but Charlotte Gray pales in comparison to Armstrong’s Australian work — with Cate Blanchett.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Kinky is using a feather,” begins an old folk gem. “Perverted is using the whole chicken.” Make that your cautionary metaphor. You have cosmic license to indulge in all manner of extravagant, exploratory, exotic adventures. The only way the license will be revoked is if you try to get far too…
Rent-a-cop
Investigating the cop standing guard at Johnson Controls….
Amethyst Rock Star
Nuyorican poet and American recording artist Saul Williams’ new album, Amethyst Rock Star, works on all the levels that Cornel West’s opus does not. Amethyst, produced by Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash), is an angry, psychedelic, conflicted monster of a hip-hop record filled with drum ’n’ bass breakbeats, upside-down string work and ungh-riff guitars.…
Three’s too crowded
Q: My husband is really into girl-on-girl sex. He constantly wants to take me to strip clubs and encourages me to get involved with women. I have “enjoyed myself” with women in front of him to fulfill his fantasy, but I really prefer heterosexual sex. I tried to tell him this, but he gets angry.…
Dialed down
Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting clear house in the local radio market….
eternally hard
Queer to the core, bitch and animal’s eternally hard requires a certain amount of queerness for comprehension. That’s not to say straights won’t enjoy it. But of the three album reviews I’ve read in mainstream (i.e. straight) publications, I’d bet good money that all were written by folks who don’t sleep with their own sex.…
Rainbows for the city
Dancer-choreographer and Detroit native Aku Kadogo comes home to breathe new life into Ntozake Shange’s seminal work: for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.
Hull of a place
We can’t give the exact address of this week’s abandoned house because flames removed the identifying numerals from this charred hull on the 15000 block of Burgess north of Outer Drive on Detroit’s west side. Looky-loos should be cautious, though, because neighbors tell us vagrants have been hanging out there. Bring some air freshener too.…
Drag kings
Some perform for fun, while others do it to consciously challenge gender stereotypes. In Detroit’s thriving drag scene, the best men are often women.
From Russia with lox
A few key klezmer CD issues … and beyond….
Masquerade 101
Part of our “Drag kings” cover story feature: Writer Jennifer Bagwell gets into character as a man.
Humbled by Hobbits
Disney (mis)manages to lose a lucrative film franchise.
Remember the mane
Billy Guzman bids adieu to 6 feet and 16 pounds of hair….
For love of country
Is it unpatriotic to go after a hot Arab man? … plus, Islamic guys need help with Internet porn, Middle Eastern prisons and orgy planning.
Letters to the Editor
Wish for a dish I really enjoyed your article about Comcast ("Mega hurts," Metro Times, Jan. 9-15). I believe everything written about its rotten service. Comcast changed my converter boxes to digital during its upgrade. Since then, I have not been able to use either my VCR or the picture-in-picture feature on my television. I…
Joe Weaver
There never would have been a “new” R&B if there hadn’t been an original, and some of the best of that original sound is right here in Detroit. This old-school pro’s time-tested credentials place him in a league his “new” rhythm and blues counterparts can only hope to enter on a very good day —…
Epigram on an epithet
That N-word sure gets a lot of people fired up. A new book talks more about its history, definition and future.
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
We can’t give the exact address of this week’s abandoned house because flames removed the identifying numerals from this charred hull on the 15000 block of Burgess north of Outer Drive on Detroit’s west side. Looky-loos should be cautious, though, because neighbors tell us vagrants have been hanging out there. Bring some air freshener too.…
Moldies but goodies
These anti-folkies sing their innocent dirty minds….
Soul & heart
The prices here are family-oriented (lots of food at low cost). Sweet, cheerful-yellow cornbread comes with your entrée, and you get the traditional choice of two sides. The menu here is from the upscale end of the soul spectrum — no chitterlings or pigs’ feet, but three kinds of steak. Best of all are the…
The plunder of our airwaves
A media lesson: How we went from the fairness doctrine to the current vast wasteland of mindless local news reports.
Soap
The High Strung doesn’t exactly sound like an uptight rock band. High … probably. Girl problems … yeah, man, for sure. But that doesn’t seem to get this band down. At the end of the day, it seems a little sense of humor and a small but significant dose of hope keep THS from being…
Jazzing with Baker’s & the Frog
Escaping into a fabulous, jazzy night at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge … Looks like the Frog Island Fest has croaked … Zillathon benefit sends electrifying energy through everyone at Lili’s … & more.
Sketches of My Culture
On the opening track of Sketches of My Culture, “The Journey,” Harvard professor Cornel West follows the “guttural cries” of the middle passage to the musical “joy” — from gospel to hip hop — that has sustained African-Americans through continued racist encounters. Amid spoken-word segments and musical thumbnails, West’s voice, a preacheresque combo of upright…
Out of joint
Bill McMaster is a high-profile anti-tax crusader. But he isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to be raising hell over a pair of gay hippies killed by police.
Blood simple
With a screenplay based on journalist Mark Bowden’s best-selling account of a 1993 U.S. special operations mission in Somalia gone catastrophically wrong, director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Hannibal) drags us into a bitter feast of flying metal, fire, blood, sweat and fears that may go down hard and leave you empty.
Saturday night live
The Lager House hosts some rockin’ Saturday nights, Detroit-style … The Come Ons, the Hentchmen, Ko, and other local greats join the Sirens for an awesome birthday party (and you’re invited) … & Warn and the gang quiet down.
Dark Blue World
The story of World War II Czech pilots who fought for the British RAF, only to be persecuted back home, is from director Jan Sverák and his screenwriter-actor father Zdenek, the same team who made the 1997 foreign-language Oscar winner Kolya. A timidly conventional film about extraordinary heroics.
Crystal balling
Is the Michigan State Fair in Joe Nederlander’s future?
Fighter
This video documentary by Amir Bar-Lev is an unusual addition to existing Holocaust-related material, sometimes comic, often devastating and wholly original. It introduces us to two Czech-Americans (formerly persecuted Czech Jews) who have developed a tenuous friendship.
Comcastigation
Comcast in trouble with union workers….
Snow Dogs
Cuba Gooding Jr. stars in this salsa-paced comedy about a big-city dentist flung into a small-town wilderness due to unforeseen circumstances that flip-flop his squeaky-clean, nicely flossed world. Definitely geared toward the little tykes, the humor is self-aware and well perpetrated by an unusually high-caliber cast.
