Granholm kills history, arts and libraries
JUST IN! Governor Signs Executive Order Closing HAL From Art Serve: Just minutes ago, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed Executive Order No. 2009 – 36 officially closing the Department of History, Arts and Libraries. This ends months of waiting as the planned closure was included in the governor’s fiscal year 2010 Executive Budget recommendations. The closure…
Forgotten anniversary: The strike that changed journalism in Detroit
I might have gone through the day without noticing, but then a colleague forwarded a link to Scott Martelle’s blog. A throng of memories jostle for attention: the moments of confusion and rage, the feelings of power and powerlessness. Picket lines and line-crossing scabs. Friendships tested — and sometimes ended. Solidarity and betrayal. Great shows…
The incinerator, Dave Bing and red flags
Even if you don’t give what my grandmother used to call a tinker’s damn about the fate of Detroit’s municipal waste incinerator, if you do care about the city and what kind of leader its residents have put into its top office, then you should pay attention to the veto Mayor Dave Bing signed Wednesday…
Judge grants new trial for men imprisoned 9 years
An uncle and nephew imprisoned for nearly a decade in the shooting of an Ecorse man will get a new trial, a Wayne County Circuit Judge ruled today. “We’re going to try and get them out on bond as quickly as we can,” says David Moran, attorney for DeShawn Reed and his uncle Marvin Reed.…
Smoke gets in our eyes
The July 1 deadline for deciding the long-term future for disposal of Detroit’s garbage has come and gone, but we here at the Hits, even with a fixation on the issue that borders on the unnatural, can’t tell you with any certainty what that future will be. And part of the reason we don’t know…
Short Order
For vegetarians, going out to eat poses serious challenges. You can’t just live on salads, dismal steamed vegetable plates, and the same overpriced Boca patties from sit-down chain restaurants — usually the ones keen on hiding bacon in damn near everything! Luckily, there’s vegetarian food with heart, soul and flair out there, restaurants that keep…
Cheat Code
Prototype Radical Entertainment Xbox 360, PS3, PC Living in New York City sucks. Rent is ridiculous, the Knicks blow, and Mariah Carey hails from somewhere around there. Most importantly, when shit goes down, it always goes down in NYC. When was the last time an alien armada attacked Detroit? Think about that! Prototype’s disaster du…
Food stuff
Polska pride — The American-Polish Century Club is ready to throw its 29th Annual Polish Festival, celebrating Polish heritage. The festival offers a diverse mix of local music, art and Polish-American cuisine at a very reasonable cost. Last year, the fest drew more than 12,000 guests, and they hope to attract another great crowd this…
Backing it up
Q: Here’s a hypothetical for you: You’ve been corresponding with a handsome young man who lives in Paris. You know him through a friend in France, and your friend has vetted him. He has offered to pay more than half of your airfare so that you can visit him in Paris. You’ve spoken to him…
Too soon?
"I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle. I’m not!" President Obama snapped those words at MSNBC’s Chuck Todd a few weeks ago concerning the violence in Iran. But, in other world news, the Michael Jackson Death Watch coverage immediately jumped from celebration of the self-appointed King of Pop’s artistry to toxicologist reports…
Boho like you
Tucked into a Hamtramck neighborhood, a few blocks off the Joseph Campau strip, the Atlas Bar is efficiently (if not magnificently) anonymous. It’s really a hideout; a place to buy drinks, bully the juke and shoot pool; a place to lay low and wait it out — whatever it might be. You might hear Fela…
Fat-fighting man
Sometimes it’s tough being Exercise Man. Burrell Solomon, the man behind the superhero-style moniker, is all about fitness in a city famous for fatness, a staunch nutritionist in a town whose food motto, repeated on signs everywhere, is "You Buy, We Fry." So driven is Solomon to get the people around him in shape he…
Couch Trip
Beau Geste Universal The only reason Sgt. Markoff, the sadistic sergeant played by Brian Donlevy in 1939’s Beau Geste, isn’t considered one of the top 50 villains of all time by the American Film Institute is because not enough people have seen the movie. With a cruelty that almost dips into the cartoonishly evil, Markoff…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackoot
How sweet Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #223 is! Ray Charles — A Message From The People (Concord) :: I don’t care if the sun don’t shine — but if I hear this flamboyant, cloying, overwrought, terminally maudlin, tear-jerkin’ melodramatic version of "America The Beautiful" one more time, I’m gonna kill something. Chris Velan — Solidago…
Depp charge
Director Michael Mann brings his visual A-game to Dillinger’s legendary heists and escapes. But, for all its gorgeous imagery, Public Enemies disappoints for this very reason. Covering only the last 14 months of the cat-and-mouse showdown between John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and G-man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the film promises to be a meaty exploration…
Clicking and streaming
It’s difficult to think of a better film released in the last year than Hunger. The directorial debut of video artist Steve McQueen, it traces the events of the 1981 Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger strike in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison, in which Bobby Sands (played by Michael Fassbender) starved himself to death, as did…
Food and lodging
The views are striking through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor of the Ren Cen (though I would give a lot to expunge Caesars from the Windsor skyline). Outdoor seating exists, and that might forgive almost any other flaws, but we were driven inside by the wind, and our server told us the terrace…
High flutin’
As the story goes, in 1973, Alexander Zonjic was a twentysomething aspiring rock guitarist with dreams of selling out arenas some day. All that changed one fateful day when a stranger on the street sold him a secondhand flute. “When I saw the flute in the case, I fell in love with it. I asked…
Moon
In Moon, directed by Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of David), you get a double-dip of the talents of unconventional actor Sam Rockwell. Working from a script by Nathan Parker and a well-spent budget of $5 million, Jones taps into the panicky, paranoid sci-fi of the ’70s to meditate on personal identity, corporate greed…
Stuck in phone hell
Years ago, back during the Vietnam War, I talked to a spokesman for the New Left who came to my campus. “You are going to see the United States and the Soviet Union becoming more and more like each other,” he said. “They are going to get color television. We are going to get secret…
Allen gets woody
Once a Nobel Prize candidate, Boris (Larry David) now spends days teaching chess to spoiled nitwits and shambling around the Lower East Side grumbling about inescapable entropy, rap music and the general pointlessness of human life. He’s jolted out of melancholy when a bubbly Southern-fried naïf appears with a name as silly as her demeanor,…
Night and Day
THURSDAY JULY 9 Bury Me Deep reading ALL HAIL FEMMES FATALES Detroit-area native Megan Abbott is an award-winning novelist who now lives in Queens, N.Y., with her husband and fellow writer Joshua Gaylord. Abbott authored several highly recommended "female noir" novels, including The Song Is You and the 2008 Edgar winner, Queenpin. Her novel Die…
Tetro
This florid melodrama is filled with smoldering passions and deeply buried family secrets. Vincent Gallo is perfectly cast as the title’s seething, bitterly stifled artist, haunted by his shadowy past and the notion that he’s never quite lived up to his potential. He’s been in semi-exile for a decade, hiding away in a funky Buenos…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Know your enemy
As great as it can be as an art form, punk rock is not a genre conducive to growth. In fact, the words "punk" and "evolution" seem almost antithetical. The Clash brilliantly demonstrated how far a band could successfully take the form with London Calling (basically a classic rock ‘n’ roll album when push comes…
Top of the pop
He’s a legendary performer — a titanic crooner, R&B rocker and soulful balladeer who, at 69, still oozes the smoldering sexuality of his early years. He really doesn’t need much of an introduction, aside from: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Tom Jones! Metro Times: You’ve influenced punk rock, country and jazz musicians, as well as…
Dirty Girl
With a record title like Dirty Girl and some rather saucy sleeve art, one could be forgiven for half expecting some ’80s-esque sleaze rock. In fact, the listener could even be forgiven for expecting some dumb fun, based on first impressions alone. The truth, however, is that the Strange is less White Lion and more…
Letters to the Editor
Stop. I’ve got enough. This past Sunday I received an e-mail from some leftist organization, informing me of a coup earlier that morning in Honduras. That evening, seeking more information on the situation, I turned on CNN several times. However, they didn’t seem to want to interrupt the Michael Jackson show to give their viewers…
Jay $tay Paid
Despite a catalog that includes seminal solos and timeless collaborations, patterns suggested that J Dilla’s new disc would be a disappointment. Why? Because as is evident from the abuse of 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G.’s unfinished recordings over time, that’s what posthumous rap albums seem to do. Add the controversy of Dilla’s royalty checks going to…
Motor City Cribs
Visiting Mike Emmett’s Ypsilanti tattoo parlor in Depot Town is like stepping back into a few different eras of classic Americana. Depot Town’s architecture harks back to the 1800s and all the little towns that sprang up in Michigan along the Detroit-Chicago rail corridor; the interior that Emmett decorated in reds, blacks and whites is…
CHILD BITE: MICHIGAN’S “BEST NEW” BAND?
Well, at least according to a few writers and editors in Boston, they are… For the second year in a row, alternative weekly the Boston Phoenix has picked the “best new band” in each of the 50 states. And according to this year’s poll, Detroit’s own Child Bite is “the best new band in the…
THE GO DO MICHAEL…
Just in case you don’t plan to catch today’s Michael Jackson tribute at the Staples Center in L.A. on one of the three major networks, the cable news stations, or one of the recaps the networks will be running tonight (including NBC’s Dateline), Detroit’s Charle H. Wright Museum of African American History (315 E. Warren…
Goodbye, Casey Kasem
So long, Casey! Without any advance warning, this weekend radio legend Casey Kasem went off the air. After four decades on U.S. radio, he disappeared from the airwaves, ending his last countdown show for good, apparently. For those who came of age between 1970 and 1988, Kasem’s warm, welcoming voice seemed to be everywhere over…
