Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Yawning often occurs during the time we’re transitioning from a passive state to a more active one, like when we’re waking up in the morning or when we’ve decided to stop watching TV, get up off the couch and head out for a jog. Psychology professor Robert Provine, an expert on…
Exposed
Sky Covington has a huge smile, but she wears it like a young girl who’s embarrassed of its size and has learned to rein it in. Her dark eyes are wide and welcoming. Her Afro adds a good 4 inches to her already statuesque frame. And with her makeup — white stars pooled at the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
I’m the Mayor of the MB77 Sunset Strip! Stereophonics – Live From Dakota (Vox Populi) :: I never realized how much the lead singer sounds like Marilyn Manson and the band like INXS until I heard this twofer. Which means they sound alright. Wholly unoriginal, but alright. Jesu – Silver (Hydra Head) :: The marathon…
The future is wow
Since most of us have never been to Japan and might not ever get the chance, we often build our perception of the country from what is available to us — anime, the Pokédex, moody cinematic pastiche (from Lost in Translation to the production design of Blade Runner), manga, Hello Kitty, high-tech gadgetry and game…
Over the top
In the breathless world of high fashion, the hat resides between provocative ornament and pure sculptural form. But this all changed the day that Isabella Blow, queen bee of British fashion, friend of Warhol and Basquiat, scion of scrofulous British nobility, met Philip Treacy, audacious novice milliner out of London’s Royal College of Art. He…
Letters to the Editor
Rebound pointers It was heartening to read Keith Schneider’s article, “Across the Great Divide” (Metro Times, July 5). As a frequent visitor to Detroit, I am consistently awed by the quality of the city’s architecture. Keith’s comparison to Chicago is particularly apt — before the 1950s, Chicago and Detroit were without question the two greatest…
Ultimed’s demise
While Bill and Angela Calder of Belleville were being hounded by creditors seeking thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills, executives of the company that was supposed to be providing their health care coverage were living the high life, using a corporate credit card to fund everything from trips to Las Vegas to pricey meals…
Pitchslapped
It’s summertime in economically unstable Detroit, and the living isn’t necessarily easy. But this is still the season we beg for during the other nine months of the year, with rhythm options available from international DJ stars, as well as favorites and up-and-comers who call Detroit home. You think you can find another weekday night…
Bye-bye Barwin
Ferndale boss was friend of transit.
Thugs & muggers
There has been a lot of predictable and hypocritically horrified coverage of Adolph Mongo’s latest print mugging. That had to please Mongo, whose person strongly suggests a word that rhymes with mug. But if you happened to spend the week catching up with the Hilary Duff fan mags (a better use of your time, actually)…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Juvenile defenders
Mandatory sentences doom youths to life in prison.
Gloss & Dross
Boop-boop-a-boo! Artist Michael Paulus has captured the attention of med students, X-ray technicians, serious cartoon geeks and middle school teachers. Even one forensics instructor. Paulus, a 40-year-old illustrator who hails from Portland, Ore., has sketched more than 22 structurally accurate renderings of skeletal systems belonging to beloved cuddly creatures, from favorite 1960s-era cartoons as well…
A filling station
There was a time not too long ago when you stopped at a service station for gas and maybe a soft drink or a candy bar. Although most now have morphed into convenience stores offering sandwiches, hot dogs, donuts and slurpies, few if any flaunt the restaurant-quality cuisine turned out at Mr. Kabob, located inside…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier,…
Cocked & reloaded
Every modern jukebox worth its coin slot has them on heavy rotation. But ask your mom — or your little brother for that matter — who the Buzzcocks are. More than likely, you’ll get a bewildered smile and an embarrassed reflex. The band name is peripheral to most, recessed much deeper than the average fan’s…
Preaching to the perverted
If you haven’t seen the original show, which aired briefly on Comedy Central six years ago, you’ll be swimming upstream here, even though the story is basically a 90-minute recap of the entire series. Once again, the spider-tattooed, helmet-haired, eye-twitching former junkie whore is released from prison, only to find her father (Dan Hedaya) in…
Head Cheese
Modena Vox updates the British Invasion fetish of fellow Ohioans Guided by Voices with good looks and slick, layered guitars that’ll ring true for anyone who dug college rock in the 1990s. The quintet can sound familiar, but the songwriting’s as lively as their Midwestern-band-meets-the-road adventures. Here are frontman Anthony Timperman’s monomanias: 5. Minivan rentals:…
313 vs. 313
Fueled on OJ-tinged vodka, Panamanian-born Mary Ramirez, the effusive and assertive Detroit Cobras guitarist, met Detroit native Amp Fiddler down at the Metro Times offices last week. Jet-lagged and visibly drained, the spindly African-American still put on a good show. These two have never seen each other perform; in fact, up to this point they’ve…
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Inventive, playful, sprawling and sloppy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is a joyously raucous slice of cinematic mayhem. Following up the 2003 surprise hit that grossed nearly $700 million worldwide, Verbinski and his spirited cast shamelessly mug their way through the second chapter of an elaborate pirate trilogy. Johnny Depp returns as Captain…
Grossed out by group work
Q: I am a female in my 20s and will soon be marrying my boyfriend of four years. We met overseas via a personals site, and while most things are great between us, we do have one issue: group sex. He wants it, I don’t. After we met, my fiancé brought up the idea of…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
The Heart of the Game
It’s all too easy to describe The Heart of the Game as “Hoop Dreams for girls,” but this winning documentary reaches beyond the clichés of your typical sports movie. First-time director Ward Serrill takes an in-depth look at Bill Resler, a charmingly rumpled tax law professor who takes a side job coaching a Seattle high…
Help is here, look in the mirror
At this late date, I think most Detroiters would agree that the likelihood of a city-saving miracle featuring the angelic appearance of cash-heavy care packages floating down from the sky and into the city treasury appears highly unlikely. The state and feds have their own money problems, and we can stop looking around waiting for…
Who Killed the Electric Car?
The timing couldn’t have been better. With gas prices hovering around three bucks a gallon and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth just leaving theaters, Who Killed the Electric Car? hits the mark, but unfortunately may get lost among the summer blockbusters. Charting the celebrated debut, mysterious recall and ultimate demise of the EVI — GM’s…
Going preppy
Birmingham’s Chop Shop teaches home cookers to cut and run.
Stabbed in the ear
In 1981 Lester Bangs wrote a piece called "A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise" that explained his attraction to abrasive scree thusly: "There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack." It’s a good one-sentence explanation…
Field day
Double header: Take in a baseball movie, then a game.
Ticket Crystals
Bardo Pond has rarely deviated from its brand of heady, inky psychedelia and space rock across 15 years and more than a half-dozen full-lengths (some named after lickable toads and psychoactive mushrooms), and they don’t with Ticket Crystals either. This is bewildering stuff, but beautiful too; as grotesque as it is exquisite. Opener "Destroying Angel"…
Innate pride
The Innate Healing Arts and Ecological Center in Detroit is a visual anomaly; the sunny yellow building swathed in lush landscaping sticks out beautifully on a dispossessed stretch of Woodward Avenue, just south of Seven Mile Road. The juxtaposition provides a welcome relief from the area’s security fences, dilapidated billboards and crumbling or empty storefronts.…
Mo’ Mega
It’s understandable that Mr. Lif doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as a "political rapper." That’s a phrase as limiting as the quotations that surround it. But despite Lif’s best efforts to showcase his other sides (the vaguely humorous "Washitup," the sentimental "For You"), he’ll always be best as a political rapper, with everything else coming…
Mix master C
Georges Collinet, host of the weekly public radio show Afropop Worldwide, is well aware of the mysterious power that music has to help shape people’s hearts and minds. During the four decades that Collinet worked for Voice of America, he spun American rock, R&B and jazz to audiences in Africa. His English- and French-language shows…
The Eraser
The Eraser should satiate Radiohead enthusiasts salivating for their favorite band’s forthcoming seventh album, which is slated for 2007. Neither unpredictable nor unrewarding, Yorke’s debut solo outing follows his established MO of asking and answering questions in a cryptic figure eight. But even though every electronic tick, werp, bleep and scratch is in its right…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 12 Faux Fox MUSIC There was a sticker on the cover of Faux Fox’s 2004 release Black Glove or White Glove that read “Hey CMJ Reporters! Dig Gary Newman and Suicide? Meet Faux Fox. Make out. Have babies.” And based on the band’s arrogant nose-thumbing and cheeky electroclash swagger, we can only assume…
Worthnothings
It’s pretty impressive that Georgia Anne Muldrow played all the instruments, and wrote and produced everything on her debut EP for Stones Throw. Thing is, even with all that talent on display, the record’s still missing something. There’s nothing overtly wrong with Worthnothings; actually, there’s even a lot right with it. Muldrow has a great…
Backslash
Sustained beliefs — So, what is this wacky “sustainable living” stuff anyways? In an organic nutshell, it’s a commitment to living life in a manner that protects and ensures the survival of our natural resources. There’s info aplenty to be found at such Web sites as sustainableliving.org, eartheasy.com and centerforsustainability.org. LOHAS wha? No, that’s not…
