Hamtown hooray!
Stop the presses. Close the streets. It’s time to celebrate in Hamtramck — a free paczki for every woman, man and child! No, the pope’s not coming back for a visit. Better. The state Department of Environmental Quality has denied Michigan Waste Services’ application for a permit that would have allowed the company to change…
Heart & hands
No matter what’s wrong in the world, you can always turn to life’s simpler pleasures: drink, song, and, yes, manicures. If any of the aforementioned indulgences appeal to you, do yourself a favor and head over to Hamtramck’s Belmont Bar for Mademoiselle Mondays, the popular series for hygienically conscientious, music-loving sots. The price of admission,…
Letters to the Editor
Believe in change To Keith Owens: I read your article, “Bullet holes & torn lives” (Metro Times, Jan. 12, 2005). Thank you for a great article! I’m very sorry to hear of the loss of your Aunt Jean, and for the loss of her grandson. My sympathy and love to you and your family. There…
Workers of the world, create
In the United States, people generally don’t see labor culture as something active and world-changing. Since World War II, discussion of labor in the media has been relegated to tempered features in the business section, about as exciting and relevant as a discussion of the Sherman Antitrust Act. A vibrant popular labor culture that, at…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
It’s time for a new navigator
Mainly, I thought it was just so damn sad. Here we were, hit by the biggest blizzard and some of the coldest temperatures Detroit has suffered through in years, right during the auto show. There were homeless people dying out there, I feared, and children whose homes didn’t have heat, and valiant tired workers trying…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Web site learningtoloveyoumore.com invites its readers to carry out assignments. I have borrowed some that I feel will help you fulfill your destiny in the coming week. Do as many as you feel moved to do. 1) Photograph one of your scars and write about its origins. 2) Write down…
N&D Center
Wednesday-Sunday • 26-30 Oliver! THEATER Oliver! — the musical adaptation of Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist — has been thrilling audiences for years. This tale of a young orphan and his harrowing adventures on the mean streets of 19th century London features such memorable characters as the Artful Dodger, Fagin and Nancy Sykes, and touts…
Welcome to the dungeon
Q: I’ve just started dating a guy who is into being dominated. He also has quite the foot fetish. Problem is, I have zero experience with any sort of kinky sex. He’s 35 and has been around the block, while I’m 24 and all I’ve ever had is sex with guys who claimed to have…
Psychedelia lives on
Hatched in San Francisco in the ’60s and perpetuated by Jefferson Airplane and the like, psyche-rock is an important part of rock’s tapestry. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the baton was passed to a little English band called My Bloody Valentine, and, since then, the style has moved headlong into the future. New…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): It’ll be a bumper-car kind of week, Aries. As long as you stick to the designated course, you can expect lots of thuds, jolts, and caroms that won’t hurt a bit. In fact, most of them will actually be fun even as they knock some sense into you. That’s why you…
Outside the box
We went looking for radical ideas. Not ideas we necessarily espouse, but rather examples of thinking outside the box. Consider what follows a starting point, a place to begin the debate about where to go from here. Because, face it, city business as usual has only led us to where we are now, staring at…
Bowling for Soup vs. 1985
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna Way before Nirvana There was U2 and Blondie And music still on MTV Her two kids in high school They tell her that she’s uncool Cuz she’s still preoccupied With 1985. —Bowling for Soup, “1985” I don’t know about you, but this “1985” song has been the bugging the bejesus outta…
Detroit deserves better
For a couple of weeks, I’ve known what I wanted to write for this column, my first as arts editor at Metro Times. I felt I needed to wake up a semi-comatose city, and figured it might grab attention if I mentioned that Detroit art dealers, curators, critics and scholars have not-so-nice things to say…
Head cheese
Warn Defever is one-half of the brains behind the ever-evolving Times Stereo Records and the leader of schizo R&B-dub-electro outfit His Name is Alive. Cognescenti attest that he has also produced some of the finest music to come out of Detroit in the past 10 years and his funky downtown recording studio, Brown Rice, is…
Dagwood heaven
This restaurant’s beef is rich, tangy and lean, and even better paired with pastrami in a combo sandwich on rye, grilled in butter. And the corned beef reaches its apotheosis at Louie’s when made into hash, moist with plentiful onions, a $3.75 side of which is enough for three. The ham is both salty and…
Ballroom bust
The Detroit dance scene endures by any means necessary. From its pre-rave beginnings in the early ‘80s at the Music Institute, to massive illegal underground parties 10 years later at abandoned factories (like, most famously, the Packard plant), to the more recent rise and fall of clubs like Motor and Panacea, the culture has always…
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Although it treads familiar ground, this film based on real life events is an original and disturbing achievement. Sean Penn plays a troubled, failed man who plots to strike back at the world by taking out Tricky Dick. An honest and painful presentation of a bizarre and bloody footnote to history that most people had…
Living to the fullest
As a young girl, Sharon Dumas-Pugh was obese, weighing more than 200 pounds. Typically, she was teased by her classmates and skipped school to avoid the name-calling, laughs and glares. She was lonely and her self-esteem plummeted. Ultimately, she got behind in school and had to work harder to keep up. As an adult, Dumas-Pugh’s…
Are We There Yet?
Acting alongside two precocious kids in this clichéd road-trip comedy, Ice Cube shows he’s gotten so soft he’s all but melted into a drippy little puddle. Still, he doesn’t seem all that out of place in this silly little picture. His grimace always reads "stop bugging me, punks," which is perfect for his character, Nick…
MLK Jr. gets pimped again
One year ago this month, I wrote a column titled “The Pimping of MLK Jr.” to argue that King’s legacy has been perverted by those who profess to love and admire the man. In truth they are doing all they can to destroy everything he stood for — and died for. Here’s some of what…
Lord of the Dead
This splatter flick plays like a late night cable access production, complete with actors struggling to remember their lines, cheap puppets, jarring edits and a Casio keyboard soundtrack. The gore is cheap and plentiful, the jokes are unabashedly adolescent and the fog machine puts in overtime. If you’re a fan of the band Gwar, then…
Inducements for mayhem
Let’s talk about justice. Not karma, that ineffectual slacker substitute whose “it all works out in the end, man” philosophy is akin to the suckers they give out at the doctor’s office. Nor am I speaking directly of the “monopoly of legitimate violence” that passes for the justice system. I’m talking about the better-in-theory-than-practice conception…
No sexist slaver
It’s rare these days for a hip-hop artist to drop an album that embraces simplicity, shuns braggadocio, and is not a 30-track mixtape. After working at it for nearly two years, Tasherre D’ Enajetic has finally dropped his long-awaited debut, Enavisions, on his own NEI Records. Steeped in nostalgic rhymes of the hip hop he…
Art Bar
A ballsy show: There is a raunchy sexual subtext in the performance of pinball machine-playing, but the experts of cultural ephemera at Eastern University believe the game has other “seedy roots” that make it an appealing exhibition: It was originally intended as a high-octane diversion from the doldrums in the bars and pool halls of…
Art of Modern Rock: the Poster Explosion
It’s a good thing Willie Dixon was thoughtful enough to remind us that you “can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.” If you could, you’d run far, far away from the new coffee-table tome Art of Modern Rock: the Poster Explosion. The painfully clichéd, stiff-nippled “devil girl” who pollutes the cover gives no…
Waves of hypocrisy
The American press loves natural disasters. Late last month, after a powerful earthquake rocked parts of Asia and sent tsunamis roaring, the waters had scarcely receded before swarms of American journalists hit the shores. When a cataclysm strikes, the full arsenal of the multibillion-dollar wire services and media syndicates is mustered. Ambitious reporters besiege remote…
Backslash
You know the feeling: After years of pawing through grimy thrift stores and second-hand shops, you’ve finally found it on eBay — be it the perfect leisure suit, a limited edition Star Wars toy or that upside-down label misprint Budweiser can that’s always eluded you. You place your bid, your eyes glued to the computer…
Substitution Mass Confusion: A Tribute to the Cars
Another tribute album? Make them stop, Mommy. Well, after this one maybe. Despite one man’s studied opinion that the Cars only made one good album (1978’s debut The Cars), if the whole raison d’être for a tribute is not a group wank but rather to refocus on what made the band special in the first…
1 +1 = 3 in Detroit
It’s becoming frighteningly clear that on top of all the financial problems Detroit’s facing, it’s got another to contend with: A city administration that clearly doesn’t have a plan to deal with all the massive deficit holes opening beneath us like cracks in the earth. For starters, we hear from city insiders who say all…
7″ pop shots
Terror at the Opera “I’m in the Eye” b/w “Masquerade” (Ypsilanti Records) It is truly lovely — heartwarming even — to drop the needle on a little platter and hear a tale of tiny moments of satori told over a delicately unraveling sea shanty torch song. With “In the Eye,” Terror at the Opera’s Faith…
Grab That Gun
Comparing the gloomy pop sounds of the all-femme Organ to the gloomy pop sounds of Joy Division is too damn easy. So we’ll skip the obvious while eschewing any mention of Interpol. When the Organ played Detroit, supporting the New Pornographers a few years back, it was the girls’ stoic and distant cool that made…
Dialed in
The good news is that progressive talk radio has arrived in Detroit. The bad news is that Jerry Springer will soon be included in the lineup. Damn. As if lefties didn’t have enough problems, now we have to deal with the King of Sleaze carrying our standard. Double damn. News Hits was jazzed to learn…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Hey kids, what time is it? It’s MB18 time! • Mario — Turning Point (J) :: Stingro. • Canned Hamm — Erotic Thriller (Boompa) :: Flo & Eddie start a synthesizer disco band that’s influenced by A Night At The Roxbury. Really. • The Dears — Protest (Ace Fu) :: Just when I thought that…
