Excessive force?
Chuck Lawler, 53, doesn’t dispute that he was driving while intoxicated when he was arrested by Taylor police. Lawler also doesn’t dispute that it was his third drunken driving offense in the past decade, which constitutes a felony and could put him in jail for up to a year, according to his attorney, Earl Ward.…
Top of the Pops
We’d gladly choose a double root canal over a conversation with the Detroit rock ’n’ roll fashionistas about their favorite records. Hell, most of those records nobody’s ever heard of anyway. But, when you get them to talk about their favorite No. 1 records, the conversation gets a little more down to earth. When we…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Current human life expectancy is already at 78 years, and it’s steadily increasing. So if you’re 22 you could easily be here for another 60 revolutions of the Earth around the sun, and if you’re 45, you’ve got a minimum of 33. So what are you going to do with all…
Letters to the Editor
Music to our ears I just read the piece on the future of the Movement festival (“The blurred crusade,” Metro Times, June 9) and I have to say that I was very impressed. Unlike most of the articles written about the festival, it was not ego driven. There was none of that I-been-down-since-day-one bullshit written…
Pieces of Silver
“If somebody had put a gun to my head and told me that I had to either choose composing or playing the piano I would have chose composing,” says hard-bop pioneer Horace Silver, speaking from his Malibu, Calif., home. At 75, the pioneering pianist is semiretired from the music he has played for six decades.…
Chinese at home
When I was a kid, my family usually ate Chinese food at least once a week. The typical meal included an appetizer of egg rolls, chicken chow mein and gai kow, sort of like the chow mein with larger pieces of chicken and vegetables and without the bean sprouts. We seemed to be one of…
Hard Again
Hard Again (1977) I’m Ready (1978) King Bee (1981) Epic/Legacy The album made my little pee-pee hard again! This apt description, offered by Mr. Waters himself, holds true for this trio of expanded reissues as the remastering work bestows a nice warm sonic sheen and the bonus song selection is inspired. Produced by blues-rocker…
Movin’ on up
With his latest show, artist Dennis Michael Jones has literally and figuratively moved uptown. After solos at 4731 and Tangent last year and at Cass Cafe the year before that, showing at the Robert Kidd Gallery in Birmingham marks Jones’ entry into the Detroit art world, big time. Kidd shows the likes of abstract expressionist…
Southern discomfort
You might scoff at this film’s over-the-top stereotypes of a Southern town, but as it unfolds it sucks you in. Lili Taylor is a neurotic loner named Evie Decker, who is captivated by a small-time solo rocker. To prove her adoration, she carves his name with glass on her forehead, and an obsessive romance ensues.
Bitter is revenge
The hour grows late on a school night and Billie worries because Sara, her teenage daughter, hasn’t returned home from a Christmas play rehearsal. Her husband Frank reassures her, telling her not to worry. “She has a crush on Jesus,” Frank says, referring to an actor in the play. “Man, what do we do if…
Ersatz garage
I’m the last guy to decry derivativeness in garage music, but these kids are really cruising for a critical bruising. Y’see, in my rock ’n’ roll classroom, neatness never counts, but I do expect a modicum of originality now and then. In other words, when a new record comes out, I don’t like to be…
Tiki time
It’s no secret that Tiki, that lovable little red-eyed idol, is a hot commodity these days. Legions of metro Detroiters are captivated by his snarling — yet charming — grimace, and these devoted “Tikiphiles” have anxiously awaited the future of Detroit’s own long-lost temple of Polynesian paradise, the Chin Tiki, since reconstruction plans were announced…
Raw Voltage
Goudron is, essentially, Detroit-area visual artist Ron Zakrin stretching out into sonic space. And Raw Voltage, crammed with deceptively simple bleeps, blots and analog beats is a decent sonic döppelganger to his plastic work — particularly his acrylic paintings of enigmatic simians, at once threatening and lighthearted, similar yet each with a sparkle of its…
Arab contemporary
Last week Detroit’s Tangent Gallery launched an exhibit of four edgy, contemporary Arabic artists in a show that explores issues of exile and identity, language and communication. With the exhibit, New York/Palestinian artist and curator Aissa Deebi seeks to bridge the conceptual gap between the Middle East and the West by probing the relationship between…
Up Pops the Sac
The Starving Artists Crew is coming out on some ol’ ’93 ‘Til Infinity, Super Macho Man type shit. If you haven’t heard of Detroit-via-Flint’s finest throwback emcees, then copping Up Pops the Sac will definitely plant a grin on your grill. Thanks to production from Thes One and SP, the Starving Artists Crew manages to…
Amping up your sex
Q: My boyfriend and I have Prince Alberts, enjoy sounding, and sometimes use Prince’s Wands. Recently, my boyfriend suggested that we try electro-stimulation, attaching electrodes to the ends of our sounds and butt plugs. But could we accidentally electrocute ourselves? Could the pleasure be so intense that it would spoil us for other things? —Enjoys…
Elephants Memory
Blues Image Open Sundazed From the misty portals of hippiedom we have two key (well, sorta …) avatars of the era. Elephants Memory was the NYC combo that would gain notoriety in the early ’70s as John and Yoko’s backing group. The 1972 Elephants Memory release, Sometime In New York City, however, didn’t sound…
Dad, a late thanks
I think maybe it’s time to say something about my father. As of this Sunday, 29 Father’s Days will have come and gone since Dad died of pancreatic cancer, and I don’t think I have ever written more than a few sentences about the one man who influenced me more than any other man ever…
Into Al Jazeera
This documentary is an antidote to the sanitization of war and a close look at the way truth is mangled in its service. Patchy but compelling, the focus is on the Arab news agency Al Jazeera, showing the journalists, producers and broadcasters, as they are appalled at the unfolding of the war. But the most…
N&D Center
17 THU • MUSIC Jesse Malin — The road to fame is often a long and harrowing trip, and along the way many aspiring musicians either give up or burn out. But Jesse Malin, a man who spent the better part the ’90s with the virtually unnoticed glam/punk rock outfit called D Generation never gave…
Justice
The somber events of 9/11 play a critical role in this touching romantic comedy, and it’s a delicate balance of humor and tragedy. A cute, dorky comic book writer who’s still struggling with crippling grief over losing a close friend to the World Trade Center attack, so he cooks up an "everyday hero" based on…
Same as the old Boss
This story is the second part of our Century of Sound series, tracing Detroit’s musical heritage over the last hundred years. A waitress from Los Angeles working the lunch shift at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge just happens to be DJ Quik’s godmother. She recognizes Detroit rapper Boss, who’s in a booth getting photographed, and introduces…
Around the World in 80 Days
Loosely based on Jules Verne’s 1873 science-fiction romance, this PG-rated Disney kid flick follows a Chinese thief, a disconsolate inventor and a French chippy on a journey around the globe in 80 days. Jackie Chan stars, so the requisite martial arts sequences are fun. There are also absolutely bizarre cameos, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Owen…
Driven to destruction
At the heart of everything — especially a city as complex, tortured and promising as Detroit — are stories; big stories that explain smaller ones, and small stories that turn into big ones, all of them folding in and out of themselves and taking you as close as you can get to important things. Detroit’s…
The Stepford Wives
Frank Oz’s remake of this ‘70s sci-fi/ horror flick not only misrepresents itself as “feminist” but also wrongly claims to be funny. Its rigid stereotypes of the sexes and dogmatic rhetoric prevents the film from provoking any thoughtful commentary. This could have been forgiven if the film were actually funny.
Femme gems
For more than two decades, Dell Pryor operated a fine art and antiques gallery in downtown Detroit’s Harmonie Park. Nearly a year ago, she set up shop in a shared space at the corner of Cass and Willis in what was once an artist’s hangout, Cobb’s Corner Bar. The legendary Willis Gallery was two doors…
Blow by blowhard
Call it the battle of the over-bloated egos. In one corner we have attorney Geoffrey Fieger, whose most recent claim to infamy was a low-rent rip-off of Donald Trump’s unnervingly successful TV show, The Apprentice. And in the other corner we have Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a true heavyweight when it comes to blowing his…
Saved
The misadventures of teenagers at American Eagle Christian High School should be funnier, but the gags in Saved often fall flat. The movie is also too preachy. While the message is noble, the after-school special delivery and sugary, happy ending in which all the characters see the error of their ways and hug couldn’t be…
Is our educators learning?
“How are we going to redefine education so that 30 to 50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that large numbers will end up in prison?” —Grace Boggs Some years ago, I had a car stolen from a parking lot at Wayne State University. “Did they break the…
Bruised peach
Sensitive creatures that we are, members of the Abandoned Structure Squad occasionally take to heart the criticism that we are, like, totally shallow and way too negative. Kick us enough, and ASS’ tender psyche suffers trauma — nothing that a night of heavy drinking won’t cure, but still. … So, this week, we will try…
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The third episode of the Harry Potter saga suffers from a bit of sequel-itus, attempting to substitute new-and-improved, bigger-and-better effects into a rather familiar plot. But while the zooming, soaring and whipping about pleased the Chuck E. Cheese crowd, it left some of us adults snoozing in our seats for a butt-numbing two hours plus.…
The VIP section
Imagine having this conversation in a packed, sweaty club: “We’ve never met. What’s your name?” “I’m Tiffany. And you?” “I’m Ken. Tiffany — nice dress. Gigi Hunter? Can I ask you a question? Are you registered to vote and, if not, would you like to register tonight?” We know. This sounds like the worst-coded language…
Shifting sands
Imam Husham Al-Husainy frames his words with photos as he describes the 180-degree flip among Iraqi immigrants regarding the war in their homeland. There are snapshots of jubilation in the streets of Dearborn as the war with Iraq began last year. Those images stand in stark contrast to pictures taken just a few weeks ago…
