Outside the line
The question of whether artistic proficiency (apart from technique) can be taught is an old one — and never was the question more relevant than now, with MFA programs popping up faster than you can say “20-year payment plan.” It isn’t surprising then that “outsider” artists — who didn’t go to art school or who…
Japanese Story
This culture clash tale of love and loss is set mainly in the Australian outback. An Australian geologist (Toni Collette) and a Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima) are on a road trip. The film becomes an intriguing character study with much of its pleasure derived from the performance of Collette. And then something happens that it…
Argentine beat
The average high monthly temperature for January in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The average high monthly temperature for January in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is 33 degrees. And, yes, I realize that Argentina is in the Southern Hemisphere (duh). And, no, I’m not spewing meteorological trivia just to make you want to whip…
L.A. Story
Cue soundtrack, Laura Taylor is having a rough day. The screenwriter’s huge movie deal dissolved before her eyes, her agent disappeared without a trace, her car broke down, the power company shut off her electricity and she’s flat broke. It’s the kind of bad day that only happens in the movies. Like sitting through any…
Ken Butler & the anxious objects
Ken Butler plays a mean ax. And he plays a mean snow shovel. And, over the years, a hammer, a hockey stick, a golf club, a bicycle wheel, a broom, a toy Uzi, a toy handgun, a knife, a rocking chair leg, a motorcycle manifold and lots of things that are just hard to describe.…
Back in Baghdad
Last fall, Metro Times told the story of Teresa and Lateef Al-Saraji, and how the couple and their various family members were being touched by the war in Iraq (“Road to Baghdad,” Oct. 22, 2003). Lateef, an Iraqi native, lives with wife Teresa in Erie, Mich., just north of Toledo. Teresa’s daughter by a previous…
Drinkin’ with donkeys
Remember childhood birthday parties, where you were blindfolded, spun around and told to pin a paper tail on a drawing of a tailless donkey? It seems that this children’s game is about to be played by adults — minus the blindfold and paper tails, but with the much-welcomed addition of alcohol. Also, plenty of donkeys…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I suggest you deal creatively with budding tension between you and your allies. Maybe you could convince them to get down on the floor with you and tussle like puppies. Or how about organizing a game of paintball? Gather together in someone’s backyard and throw rocks at dishes, bottles, and old…
Ain’t singin’ for da man
U.S. Rep. John Conyers and singer-activist Harry Belafonte want to know what you’re doing from 9 to 5 this Saturdaaayo. Sorry, we couldn’t help it. Conyers’ office, along with the Institute for Policy Studies (a progressive think tank), is hosting a seminar called “Shape the Debate.” The intent is to help influence which issues take…
Double Dutch
Elmore Leonard’s Birmingham launch of Mr. Paradise, his first Detroit detective novel in twenty years, confirms the old adage, “Build it and they will come.” Nearly 100 people packed the café at the Woodward Avenue Borders on Saturday night to hear the author Time magazine once dubbed “the Dickens of Detroit.” In an inversion of…
Once more, with feeling
The storied Music Menu in Greektown has gotten something of a reprieve. It originally was scheduled to change hands last weekend, but the buyers have asked the sellers to keep the nightclub and music venue operating as it is for a while longer. “We’re just going to stay open during the process of the liquor-license…
Peter Pan & the Man
First of all, Michael Jackson is a grown man. That should be obvious enough to most normal-thinking folks, given the fact that Jackson is now 45 years old. His fans can call him Peter Pan all they want, but I think we all know that Peter Pan was not a bleach-skinned brother with a process…
Mercury rising
The old Central Train Station has cast a shadow of emptiness down the stretch of Michigan Avenue for years. But, as the city revives hopes that the old station may be resurrected, renewed interest is being taken in the buildings that lie in its shadow. Such is the case at 2163 Michigan Ave., better known…
Freecycle this
Michigan State University librarian Kriss Ostrom needed some stereo equipment, and she didn’t necessarily want to pay for it. She got what she needed by surfing the Web over to the Lansing-area “freecycle” site, which connects people who want to get rid of stuff with people who might want it. Ostrom enjoyed similar success when…
Design for living
Eileen Jewell’s downtown Royal Oak gallery is filled with chic, contemporary furniture that would make an art lover swoon, the kind of handmade pieces aching to live inside one of those swanky new lofts around the block. But on Jan. 31, most of the studio’s colossal eye-catchers will be moving to the basement for a…
Letters to the Editor
Winner take all? Re: Jack Lessenberry’s article on Instant Runoff Voting (“Here’s something to vote for,” Metro Times, Jan. 7), I am still not convinced that IRV is the solution. While it may have prevented Bush from being elected in 2000, you have no idea how it would affect further elections. I see the Electoral…
Chaste makes waste
Q: I’m an 18-year-old senior in high school. I met a girl at a party one night, and we ended up going out for about a month. During that time we never went further than me fingering her, because she didn’t want to. We had both had sex before, she with her boyfriend of eight…
Dang Blues
I was sitting in the lounge of the Empire Hotel. I was watching as the Maple Leafs and Red Wings slugged it out. A little woozy floozy staggered over to see. “Wussa score, Honey?” she slurred at me. I tried to tell that woman that the game was tied late in the third. Instead she…
N&D Center
28-31 WED-SAT • THEATER We Are Not Good Girls — Grammy-winner Kate Hart’s musical about the woes of the blues circuit has been receiving standing ovations lately. Struggling with the pressures to live a domestic existence or to keep singing the blues, the women of We Are Not Good Girls use their voices to carry…
Thai me up
Friendly but unassuming environment, great food, low prices and immense portions. Service is not top-notch, but it’s the food you’re coming for. Although quality varies from dish to dish, soups such as Tom Kha and Tom Yum are delicious, and more excellent soups are hidden in the “Noodles” section of the menu. It’s closed on…
Rockabilly ability
Most every major city possesses a subculture composed of people who look like they just stepped out of a 1950s B-movie. To some, they may seem like a caricature of the “kid from the other side of the tracks.” Hair is greased and fashioned into tall, bulbous pompadours, and cuffs on button-fly denims are 3…
Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
My god, what the hell is this? Seriously, I want to know where the hell these three Brooklynites get off blindsiding us like this. Brooklyn is supposed to be a center for nervous overly-hyped bands and here comes this throbbing slab of elegiac soul. It’s … it’s … did Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone and David…
Co-op on the verge
On a recent Friday night at the Cass Corridor Food Co-op, a few employees mill about the store and muse about the financial well-being of the longtime Detroit fixture. They talk in terms of a medical crisis. “The patient is on its sickbed,” says Bobby Peeler, a cashier at the cooperative for 12 years. The…
Ghosts of the Great Highway
So in this age of multiple anxieties, when none of us can be sure of how sick we really are, we ask a singer who writes songs peopled with sentimental serial killers and absent fathers to lead us out of the depressive muck and into a better way of feeling good? We do? Well, yes,…
Sin salvation
Oh death, Won’t you spare me over till another year? Well what is this that I can’t see, With ice cold hands taking hold of me? Well I am death, none can excel, I’ll open the door to heaven or hell. I’ll fix your feet till you can’t walk. I’ll lock your jaw till you…
Silence is golden
This landmark Charlie Chaplin film was his last silent feature and the last appearance of the “little tramp.” Not that the movie is entirely silent; a few voices are heard but only through some technological aid like a public address system or a large television. It’s a willful anachronism which emphasizes the movie’s theme: a…
The fog of terror
Imagine that you came home to find that your next door neighbor had built a pyramid of human heads on his front lawn, and was out there carefully inspecting it. When you, stunned and shocked beyond belief, ask the meaning of all this, he tells you earnestly the real challenge was to stack the heads…
Tokyo Godfathers
Three Men and a Baby meets Japanese anime, but with subtlety and substance. A motley trio of Tokyo’s homeless watch a nativity play, then stumble on what one of them calls "a Christmas present from God," an abandoned infant girl wrapped in swaddling clothes. Tokyo Godfathers becomes a clever and well-written parody of Christ’s nativity,…
