Seven Easy Pieces
Everybody’s favorite bar band and standard-bearers for the Detroit garage-rock archetype, those fabulous Detroit Cobras have gathered the gang for another run at reinventing a stack of dusty obscurities. And don’t let that sound dismissive when you read it. What the world needs now sure as shit ain’t another mopey buncha indie-rock twinks. And while…
Letters to the Editor
Pay for paint I enjoyed your photo essay “Great Walls of Detroit” (Metro Times, June 4-10) and commend photographer Dirk Bakker and writer Glen Mannisto for great work. Of course, the real credit goes to the artists and the property owners who encourage artistic expression in this socially significant medium. I hope both groups are…
Flushed clean
Gambling addict Mahowny is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who excels at delineating miserable characters. Here the misery on display is that of a tightly wrapped paragon of denial, and Hoffman plays it close to the vest, foolishly stoic and tragically deluded — with John Hurt and Minnie Driver.
Spank me — I’m yours
My Boyfriend the Stripper is a comic hard-on waiting to happen….
Enfant
Local filmmaker Jeff Ensign has given birth to this non-narrative, speechless short film that crawls its way into the public eye this weekend at Dreamland Theater in Ypsilanti’s Depot Town, forcing us to tap into the down-on-all-fours primal times that haunt our unconscious thoughts.
The summer of ’43
Race riot still reverberates, six decades later….
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Geezer: no stars / Weezer: 1/2 H
A warning to fans of comic mindlessness: The mother turd of all prequels is upon us! Veteran director Troy Miller and rookie screenwriter Robert Brenner don’t have the faintest idea about what makes a movie funny.
The “I have a dream” cruise
On a bright summer day in 1963, an estimated 125,000 people marched down Woodward Avenue, the largest mass assembly in Detroit since the huge labor marches of the ’30s. Walking with prominent city leaders at the head of the march was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would deliver an early version of the address…
Hollywood Homicide
With some movies, it takes a while before you get the impression that they’re going to be bad. With this one, it takes about five minutes. The problem isn’t with the directing or acting, which are both serviceable, but the script, which is abysmal, both in its unimaginative plot and dialogue.
Light-fingered
City workers still on job despite charges they helped vendor steal millions….
Rugrats Go Wild
There’s no earthly reason why any sane adult would go to see this movie. By turns stupid, boring and painful, especially when it comes to the musical numbers, it isn’t much more than a slightly extended episode of the TV show — and while that’s no surprise, it’s no excuse either.
Apocalypse service
No doubt, when comedian Christopher Titus’ father filed for his fifth divorce, he had no idea that his son would parlay his various un-fatherly pathologies into a nationally syndicated television sitcom. Cruel childhood circumstances — such as brutal father-son fistfights and a suicidal mother — are more the stuff of a Dickens novel than a…
Hips & salsa
In a society that gets too much of its Latin flavor from Shakira’s Pepsi commercials, the patrons of Detroit’s Parabox Café opt for something a bit more authentic. Saturday nights bring people of all ages and backgrounds to the Parabox Café’s Latin night for dancing, drinking and a celebration of culture. The club is located…
Bragging rights
A friend and I were talking about personal power, about how reliant people are on labels — Mrs. This, Dr. That, Swami Such ‘n’ Such — to define their value to and success in the world. “Hmph,” mused my friend, “I’ll listen to what a former drug user or prostitute has to say about finding…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The dictator of Turkmenistan, Saparmurad Niyazov, has had streets, farms, children, a brand of vodka, even oil pipelines named after him. Recently he decided to change the name of the year 2003 to that of his dead mother, Gurbansoltan, “to immortalize her sacred image and blessed memory.” While I’m not in…
Courtroom camaraderie
What could very well be a historic first took place at the U.S. District Court in Detroit last week. Following the conviction of four people accused of “unreasonably obstructing” access to that same court during a March anti-war protest, the federal prosecutor trying the case walked over and gave one of the defendants a warm…
Funky machine
When you look back on the last half-century of backbeat-driven, hard-pocket funk, it’s strange that one of the genre’s major innovators was inspired to start playing because of the square, oompah rhythms of a marching band. “I remember witnessing my first parade and I knew that I had to drop that piano and start playing…
Hot potato
Richard Winslow is aggravated. The local director of ACORN, a national community housing organization, is demanding that the city comply with its “repair to own” program, which requires that 20 city-owned properties a month be made available to Detroit residents. The houses — dilapidated properties mostly slated for demolition — should go to qualified applicants,…
Love at first bite?
Q: My mom taught me that striking a woman is something that you just don’t do under any circumstances. However, while I was being intimate with a female co-worker, I made a joke that she reacted to quite negatively. She is a very loud, chatty person by nature and while she was performing oral sex…
Brick house
“I had one guy arrested about two weeks ago — caught him with a crowbar in his hand doing it,” says Bert Dearing, owner of the liquor store he’s reopening on the corner of Concord and East Jefferson. Dearing caught a man stealing bricks, not from his store, but from the historic house next door…
Buzzcocked and still loaded
Pete Shelly’s personal anarchy as a pop prophet….
Waxwings fly free; Jack White officially a rock star
Bling, bling, bling Hats off to up-and-coming Detroit hip-hop pair Bookie and Big Q, also known as the Rounders. Two of the duo’s songs, including the forthcoming single “Better,” were chosen by dapper thespian Morgan Freeman for inclusion on the sound track of his next film, Guilty By Association. Blood on the tracks After…
June 18-25, 2003
18 WED • ART “Detroit Now” — As part of the collaborative “Detroit Now” show, Renata Palubinskas’ unusual brand of artwork is a standout. With a bizarre Mark Ryden-meets-Norman Rockwell contextualization, her works are both provoking and sweet. Dick Goody, director of Meadow Brook Art Gallery, says, “We think the work is interesting, challenging and…
Ba’ath Party playa
Sometimes, it takes a while for the implications of a news story to reverberate fully. Take a piece that reporter Colin Soloway posted last week as an Internet exclusive at www.newsweek.com. In it, he described the contents of some of the thousands of videotapes — both homemade and commercially released — that were left behind…
Hungry heart
Cranbrook Art Museum gives us Bruce Springsteen in-depth….
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
“I had one guy arrested about two weeks ago — caught him with a crowbar in his hand doing it,” says Bert Dearing, owner of the liquor store he’s reopening on the corner of Concord and East Jefferson. Dearing caught a man stealing bricks, not from his store, but from the historic house next door…
Five Pillars of Soul Vol. 5
Roll over, Sadie Mae, and tell Uncle Charlie the news: Glam-slammin’ Bloomington punk combo John Wilkes Booze has dropped the final installment in their year-long Five Pillars Of Soul EP series. Vol. 5 is dedicated to none other than Yoko Ono — but why? The first four volumes paid tribute to, respectively, Melvin Van Peebles,…
In need of Negroes
Excuse me, but would you like to rent a Negro? Perhaps your life has been a little, well, you know, blah, lately. Trust me, we’ve all had those days where we just can’t seem to find our rhythm. Somewhere along the line your dancing shoes turned into work boots, and whenever you try snapping your…
Here comes a regular
Like most holes in the wall, Gusoline Alley has gone through its fair share of alterations, but a bar like Gus’, it never really changes. If it did, it would die. For a joint whose history reads like a family tree of burned out ex-rocker-cum-starry-eyed hopeful, Gus’ has been both home and hideout for many…
Der Bote
Valentin Silvestrov Leggiero, Pesante ECM New Series Sometimes the mistakes we make take a long time to get corrected. In the case of two sets that ECM released last June, it’s taken me almost a year to find the occasion (maybe the courage) to write about the emotions they bring up. Is it the clouds…
Back from the dead
From the Top 10 to the bottom and … appearing in a bar near you….
My So-Called Life
Unfortunately, despite the promising album title, this is not hunky Jared Leto’s band. Judging by the inset photos, not a single one of these guys can even hold a candle to Jared Leto’s yumminess; in fact, From Zero are rather ugly. Not to be superficial or nothing, but when your music is as full of…
Empty words won’t beat Bush
The first thing you notice about U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, one of the major Democratic candidates for president, is how devastatingly handsome he is. He is boyish, young, with a runner’s physique, and one glance at him makes everybody who knows their history think of John F. Kennedy. He has a seemingly…
