Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
Bumbling with bees
In one midsummer night’s dream, I was suspended just above the ground, held aloft by a dark amber electric storm of warrior bees, female warriors, stinging and roaring with one hellish voice. That day, it had happened for real. They didn’t lift me from the ground, of course. That’s where I ended up. Some lessons…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Have you been dreaming of frogs, worms, and potted plants? Researchers have found that pregnant women have an inordinate number of encounters with those three things during their sleep-time adventures. And while you may not technically be carrying a developing baby inside you, you are at least gestating a brainchild. Like…
Blow up the mall
It ain’t just about great music, it’s who delivers show, particularly on this year’s Warped Tour. Here’s our firsthand look at bands big and small you’ll want to see. Valient Thorr — Self-styled Venusians whose crash landing has made possible their absolutely electric performances. Combining the over-the-top self-conscious metal theatrics of with a decidedly…
Profile without courage
Normally, I have absolutely no patience with immature all-or-nothing liberals who, when they aren’t totally pleased with a candidate who has a chance to win, sulk or sabotage the process, causing us to get, well, George W. Bush. That’s exactly what happened five years ago, as all the world knows. We wouldn’t have this senseless…
Made in China
Tom Driver, Croswell • Grand Prize, Flash Fiction The guys from the shop are over and dismantle the wood chipper. They dig a hole by the back yard fire pit and bury it. “Shit steel — thin gauge,” Lou says. “Cheap screws — stripped threads,” Frank adds. We toast the burial with beers. With…
Weaving
Stephanie Antonian Rutherford, Portage • Honorable Mention, Poetry> A pile of black strands on the bamboo floor. My abandoned hair, from a night of unconscious twisting, braiding and rebraiding, offers itself as evidence of my maniac vanity. My hair has a memory. A weight. It began with fingered curls, my fussy face, reddening under…
Backslash
Smudging Drudge — Love him or despise him, Matt Drudge is still a force to be reckoned with in the world of online media. After starting up his news-gossip Web site www.drudgereport.com in the ’90s, Drudge was catapulted to national notoriety when he broke news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Although Drudge claims to be…
Curator
Erik V. Wicks, Royal Oak • Runner-up, Flash Fiction Viktor Donaldovitch, never a cheerful sort, was in an unusually sour temper. He was curator and director of the Museum of Giant Stalin Statues, and the job was not going well at all. Donors were getting hard to find; only Americans seemed to care. The…
Writing on the wall
Visiting Still Standing, a carefully selected show of art by Hugh Timlin, is more like spending time in a sanctuary than a gallery. Charred wooden tombs and towers of smooth limestone are raised on pedestals as if they were models of monuments, staggered throughout the room like skipping stones. Timlin is also a poet and…
Common sense
Check out what persistence does. It builds on the scorn of cynics, the warnings of the hesitant. It becomes solid, like rock. Or it just makes you one damned resolute emcee. Chicago’s Common (born Rashid Lynn) has earned the right to see his mug placed above the dictionary definition of “persistence.” It’s hard to believe…
The answer
Nevada Scheffler, Royal Oak • Grand Prize, McOndo Ten a.m. on Sunday, a half-caf soy steams morning crust from my eyes, though I’d tossed with adrenaline the night before — the night I knelt and asked that old-fashioned thing my forefathers had asked all the way back to the days right after love stopped…
Boning up on going down
Hey, everybody: I’m on vacation — my first in years — so I’ll be running some much-loved, frequently requested classic Savage Loves for the next few weeks. Q: A couple of months ago you invited women to send in cunnilingus tips for straight guys. We’re still waiting for that column, Dan. What gives? Didn’t…
Night and Day
Wednesday-Thursday • 27-28 Erasing 8 ISSUES & LEARNING Erasing 8: Perspectives of Detroit and Its Suburbs is a developmental theater and visual arts project whose aim is to bridge the gap between Detroit and the suburbs. Eight Mile Road is much more than a busy thoroughfare — it’s a well-known barrier that divides southeast Michiganders…
Sestina: The Cleaners
Donald Levin, Ferndale • Grand Prize, Poetry Every midnight when we leave our small room in the boarding house basement where we stay beside the lumberyard in Hazel Park we drive to Birmingham, to finish the night inside an empty theatre. We clean. We pick up what the rich leave behind. Stuffing the car’s…
Diecisiete
Maria Maniaci, Sterling Heights • Grand Prize, Fiction Faster. You need to go faster. Through the streets and down to the Malecón, your bare feet slapping the pavement. Car horns bleat and music blares from doorways and open windows. The two of you twine in and out of traffic. At the seawall Rey turns…
Questions & answers
A mea culpa is in order, and to give it the play it deserves, I’ll make it here, at the top. In the print version of last week’s paper containing our Detroit mayoral endorsement package, a parenthetical explanation in the Q & A with Kwame Kilpatrick was factually wrong. During the mayor’s recounting of his…
Lake Ice in the River
Cynthia Bostwick, Port Huron • Runner-up, Poetry This year, as every year, the lake ice in the gray river floats south. Lower down it will jam and lock tight the channel. No ships will move and docks will break with the press of it; nothing can stop the ice from deepening, widening and choking…
Choirs of Angels
Matt Sadler, Detroit • Runner-up, Flash Fiction Pastor Anthony is sleeping with Barbara down the street. We can tell by the choirs of angels singing music above her house. You have to admit, choirs of angels (even just one choir) hovering above a house, with their multitude and their plenty, is bound to attract…
Hell on wheels
*Murderball* will make you see quadriplegics differently. It will help you to understand what it might be like to lose limbs, to live in a wheelchair, to exist without the full use of arms, hands, legs. But more than that, *Murderball* will move you, it will engage you in a compelling story and it will…
Lamp Abandoned
Butcher Black, Detroit, Runner Up, Poetry LAMP ABANDONED when once the sun’s promise escaped the famous form. Among the nothing singers: shafts and canyons, steel cactus, skull and stars. Send comments to letters@metrotimes.com
A spider’s web, some freckles and bright yellow hair
Glenn Forter, Detroit • Runner-up, Fiction He stood in the dark room peering through the dusty window. A spider busied itself in the corner of the pane, carefully weaving a silken web, strand by glistening strand. The early light toyed with the silky threads, dancing shadows across the man’s withered face. He watched as…
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
The new documentary on the Minutemen, that influential and much-loved ’80s punk outfit from San Pedro, California, is essential viewing. We Jam Econo resurrects and hoists high a genuinely maverick spirit, with its depiction of the Minutemen’s humble beginnings, the band’s visionary music (a hybrid of punk, funk, jazz and beat poetry) and populist approach…
Ode to Summer Morning (after Neruda)
Michael J. Barney, Dearborn Heights • Runner-up, Poetry Why should I ode you, odious wretch, wrecker of the still velvet night, blotter-out of stars, despoiler of dreams and mysteries; you who heave your honeyed laser-beam of light deliberate as a drill-bit into my innocent eyes; you, arouser of noisome swallows and sparrows and noxious…
On the existence of male bisexuality …
There are many possible explanations for the results of the study on arousal patterns of men claiming to be gay, straight or bi. The obvious explanations that the bi men are either not telling the truth or don’t understand their own sexuality fall a little flat for me. I think a more likely explanation would…
The Bad News Bears
Billy Bob Thornton proves a worthy successor to Walter Matthau in this gleefully crude remake of the 1976 misfit Little League classic. Rowdy, rude and un-P.C., The Bad News Bears is as profane as you can get and still receive a PG-13 rating. There’s nothing wholesome about it – and that’s a good thing.
Puffy rolls
As a resident alien, Guadalupe Guzman shouldn’t be eligible to vote in any election held in this country. That’s a privilege reserved for citizens. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But last month, Guzman received a voter registration card issued by Detroit’s Department of Elections. If Guzman were to show up at…
Taking a stand, walking the line
I’ve heard it said any number of times that our lives are defined by the choices we make. The first time I heard that I was fairly young and, like most fairly young kids, I didn’t pay much attention to advice, even good advice offered by those who were actually qualified to give it. Besides,…
Hustle & Flow
Expectations for Hustle & Flow, — which John Singleton produced — were not high. However, Singleton and writer/director Craig Brewer pull through, offering a compelling and controversial tale, despite some cliché trappings. It sounds like a southern-fried 8 Mile: DJay [cq] (Terrence Dashon Howard), is a slightly underqualified Memphis pimp in a mid-life crisis who…
Memo demo
What’s that? You say you didn’t hear about the 300 or so people who packed an auditorium to overflowing at Wayne State University last week to participate in a town hall meeting marking the creation three years ago of what has come to be known as the Downing Street memo? What’s that? You say you…
Out of the ordinary
Sometimes the best poems and stories aren’t written. When I think about my favorites lines, they are comments culled from random conversations. I remember, from years ago, my best friend relating how an unidentified sharp object pierced the taut skin of a plum at the bottom of her backpack. I recall a conversation with a…
The Devil’s Rejects
Writer-director Rob Zombie has decided to hop on the sequel bandwagon and revisit the bloody, maniacal, serial-killing bad guys of his first film, the gory House of 1,000 Corpses. It’s sort of like Boogie Nights crossed with the Manson family. Devil’s Rejects may not be very scary, but as far as sick, funny trailer-trash extravaganzas…
Desperately seeking asylum
Refugees fleeing persecution and hard times from around the world are increasingly crossing into Canada illegally from the United States, according to Freedom House, a local nonprofit that provides support services to asylum-seekers. Freedom House representatives discovered this while helping the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) monitor the so-called Safe Third Country Agreement…
Tour de Warped
The Van’s Warped Tour and its acts have reaped truckloads of ink in the past 11 years. Though there are worthy recipients of press on this year’s traveling punk rock big top, I’m not here to bestow band blow jobs, but to reveal bits of the tour’s flavor. I arrive the morning of the tour’s…
The Island
For the film’s first 40 minutes or so, director Michael Bay keeps his itchy scissor-fingers in check and delivers a creepy and reasonably thoughtful sci-fi film. Unfortunately, his attention deficit disorder kicks back in during The Island’s final two acts and Bay offers up yet another of his sleek but bloated ‘thrill-rides.’ Boasting the most…
I, Publius
Before the polls close this Tuesday, Michigan voters have a valuable resource at their fingertips. It’s called Publius.org. On it, one can find out not only if you’re eligible to vote, but also where to vote, what issues are on the ballot and what stances the candidates hold on important issues. It all started in…
The hot seat
A handful of people in wheelchairs have converged in the parking lot of the Main Art Theatre, amid the hustle and bustle of downtown Royal Oak. The curious have gathered on the perimeter of the lot, craning their necks with quizzical looks. It’s an odd sight, for sure: These aren’t your everyday wheelchairs. The wheels…
Panic in Detroit
According to Panic in Detroit’s press release, the local indie film “explores the violent struggles, bold eroticism and raw emotions of people fighting for respect.” We’ll see; it doesn’t premiere until September. But there are definitely elements of that statement in the film’s sound track. Fully 100 percent homegrown, it blends R&B, hip hop and…
Sundown for Moonrise
“Why do all the cool buildings go up in smoke in Detroit?” laments an anonymous blogger at atdetroit.net. The blogger was referring to 207 Henry St., a three-story, former brick beauty in the Cass Corridor. The bottom floor once housed the Moonrise Café and the Moonlight Restaurant. Now there are boarded-up doorways and dingy green…
Art Bar
Money in the bank — For the past few weeks, Art Bar has been tracking the events of the recent Piquette Storage fire that destroyed the props and sets used by Swords into Plowshares Theatre Company. After the disaster, the theater group solicited donations that could help them replace their inventory. Finally, here’s some good…
The Road Leads Where it’s Led
Secret Machines, a three-piece neo-psychedelic pop band from Texas, ought to be warned. Record label hype for their new EP, The Road Leads Where It’s Led, suggests that the SM’s relocation to NYC might be the beginning of one of those “great rock ’n’ roll stories” — like the Beatles finding a second home in…
Proactive
Green scene — Tired of pollution, air quality alerts and soaring gas prices? Then the “Green Cruise” might just be for you. Metro Detroit, not surprisingly, is the sixth-most polluted region in the United States for year-round concentrations of soot, according to an analysis released last year by the Michigan Lung Association. Participants of all…
Feel the heat
It’s the 10th anniversary of Heatstock, one of summer’s most anticipated outdoor music events. The annual two-day offering of blues, booze and barbecue has kept the masses coming, and this year will be headlined by blues, rock and soul man extraordinaire, Larry McCray. The festival’s founder and owner of No Cover Records, Michael Boulan, couldn’t…
Buried Alive in the Blues
There’s no question that the first wave of white Chicago musicians to take up the blues from the music’s black innovators advanced the form. These musicians (including the departed Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield) helped connect legends like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf to the white rock of Janis Joplin, Dylan and the Stones. This…
Letters to the Editor
It’s about skills, not skin Re: “Home team advantage” (Metro Times, July 13), I couldn’t care less about the race of the firefighter, police officer or paramedic who responds in time of emergency. So what if the Fire Department had a majority white academy class. If they were the best candidates, then so be it.…
Head Cheese
William Beckett, singer for The Academy Is, is a star. What separates him from the morass of whiny pee-pant, post-hardcore singers isn’t just strange lithe beauty. He’s a guy unafraid to take chances; he climbs out on musical limbs and sometimes tumbles because he’s curious about life, its characters and the inherent experiences. We need…
