MAGIC BAG DECLARES INDEPENDENCE FROM SMOKE…
As the state waits for the Legislature to make some sort of iron-clad decision on second-hand smoke, the Haberman brothers have decided to act, banning smoking from inside the two venues they own, Ferndale’s bosco lounge and the Magic Bag. The siblings have decided to declare their independence from cigarette smoke beginning this Independence Day…
LOCAL CLASSIC ROCK TIDBITS
*Just learned Friday that former Detroiter, Was (Not Was) cofounder and super-producer Don Was is currently working on nine or so outtakes from the Rolling Stones’ great Exile On Main Street album to include on a remastered reissue of the classic double album, scheduled for release later this year. As Keith Richards said of Don…
Save that Tiger (Stadium)
photo courtesy of Roland Young Thom Linn, president of the Tiger Stadium Conservatory sent us an email this afternoon regarding the recent decision to completely demolish the old Tigers ballpark in Corktown. We were touched. “I was shocked to find out that the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) held a meeting yesterday morning about which…
MIDTOWN IS THE PLACE
Sad but true, the Detroit Festival of the Arts is not being produced this year. In a moment of creative re-birth, the University Cultural Center Association (UCCA) and Wayne State University (WSU) kick off their new summer series, Midsummer Nights in Midtown, tonight! The festivities continue every Thursday, Friday and Saturday in June. Thanks for…
Verse chorus verse
"I think it’s ghetto French slang for the word ‘et cetera,’" says Blasé Splee singer, songwriter and guitarist Mike Frelick explaining his band’s name. The rest of the quintet is doubtful, however. "Well," says Carl Larson, Blasé Splee’s other primary singer and songwriter, "it was either that or Bon Appetite … or Sausage Prince." One…
Critic vs. Critic
With Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi decides to dance with the genre that made him, and he’s ready to rumba with all sorts of devils, demons and things that go "boom" in the night. The film has most of the critic class foaming over with rabid praise, but is this really much ado about…
Wedding balls
Q: My boyfriend and I have been together over eight months. We really love each other, and I see us spending our lives together. At least I did, until something he said a few days ago. Long story short, for the last five months or so, he’s brought up marriage. Then a few days ago he…
Backlot
Stone Who stars: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Milla Jovovich. John Curran (The Painted Veil) directs. What it is: A cat-and-mouse thriller that’ll see comely co-star Jovovich — as arsonist Norton’s seductive wife — schtupp prison guard De Niro. Does that mental image give you the heebee-jeebies too? Well, Milla was spotted dining in…
Low and slow
Bo’s Brewery & Bistro 51 N. Saginaw, Pontiac; 248-338-6200; $$: With three separate levels occupying almost 12,000 square feet, Bo’s Brewery & Bistro offers patrons full bar service, billiards and more. As many as 40 people can sit at the bar and enjoy such Michigan craft beers as Bell’s and King’s, followed by special desserts…
Designer pies
Located on the second floor of an old brick building on Times Square, Taste may not be the easiest place to find, but once you arrive there’ll be no doubt you’re in the right place. Seating as many as 175, Taste sprawls through two rooms, with the dining area separated from the even larger lounge.…
Punch drunk love
There are several pitfalls of youth you’ve got to avoid — like peeing your pants in public or getting picked last for the lunchtime basketball game — but probably most terrifying is losing to Glass Joe. See, losing to the first guy in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! is akin to failing the tutorial that teaches…
Kid sophisticate
The gold standard in computer animation, Pixar has always had a thing for the bittersweet and melancholy, but this film moves into deeper, richer terrain, confronting the redemptive and corrupting influences of wish-fulfillment and devotion, all while maintaining the studio’s incredibly high standards. Crotchety old Carl Fredrickson (Ed Asner) decides to live out his deceased…
Book slam
Hilarity by Patty Seyburn New Issues Poetry & Prose, $15, 75 pp. Poet Patty Seyburn, a Detroit native who now teaches at Cal State and co-edits the Los Angeles-based poetry journal POOL, offers a new collection of playful but sharp ruminations on Detroit, Judaism, insomnia, mythology and humor in Hilarity. And it’s good stuff. Seyburn’s…
Raimi’s master stroke
Alison Lohman is Christine Brown, a chipper, ambitious Los Angeles loan officer who makes one very bad call, and watches her near-perfect life descend into damnation. Angling for a promotion, Christine bucks her nature and declines a loan extension for an aged and pathetic Eastern European widow (Lorna Raver) who’s on the verge of eviction.…
Garage rocks
When the Discovery Channel introduced the gearhead-gone-to-heaven show Monster Garage back in 2004, host Jesse James was as badass as the Frankenmobiles he and his team of elbow-greasers attempted to piece together each season. James, the (ex-)pornstar husband and rock ‘n’ roll bodyguard-turned-West Coast Chopper biz-brain, was largely responsible for the resurgence of chopped and…
Every Little Step
Every Little Step documents the auditions for recent New York revival of “A Chorus Line.” We’re introduced to the its original creative team and meet a legion of bright-eyed hoofers and dancers, all ready to kill each other for a job. As self-absorbed as actors can be, the film is engrossing, and creates genuine suspense…
Pap attack
Editor’s note: The Wonder Twins generally cover music for Metro Times … but, hey, these gals are well-rounded individuals, culturally speaking, and this week they decided to check out one of the area’s newest comedy venues (mainly because the publicists at the musical event they were planning to cover didn’t get back to them in…
Rise all the way up …
Like Yosemite, Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, the Meat Puppets are a national treasure that we have too often taken for granted. Name another American band that has spanned the generations of punk and grunge, fusing those eras together while adding a curiosity and appreciation for classic rock, psychedelia and folk music. And then name…
Crime show rumblings
Ruminations of a professional vidiot … The most pressing challenge facing NBC this summer — besides trying to make The Jay Leno Show at 10 o’clock five nights a week not look like The Tonight Show Lite, so Conan O’Brien won’t figure out he got screwed — is what to do about Chris Meloni and…
Do Your Duty
Let’s all hail reissue labels (such as Sundazed) that do it correctly: lovely packaging and mastering (from original mix-down tapes) and the good taste to keep absurdly great music from rotting in vaults and basements. Here it reminds us how soul singers are born, not created, how they often began their careers as mere pups…
City song
Is there a really good song out there for Detroit, a theme song that can capture who we are and what we’re about? The folks at Radio One — home of prominent stations WCHB, WHTD, WDMK — seem to think so. They’re running a "Write Detroit’s new theme song and win $5,000" contest. I gotta…
The Brothers Bloom
It’s a lively and lovely cross between David Mamet and Wes Anderson. Writer-director Rhian Johnson has set his bar high, tackling that trickiest of genre flicks: the breezy con-man thriller. It’s a decent ride. Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody play sibling hucksters who construct elaborate cons, complete with dramatic arcs and literary allusions. But Brody…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Got a sweet Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #218 up upon my wall! The Black Crowes — Warpaint Live (Eagle Rock) :: I’d never heard these guys before but after listening to this one, I’m in no hurry to hear them caw again. The first track, "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution," is a great Exile on…
Smoked out
Last week I went to the Emory, a popular bar and eatery just south of Nine Mile Road in Ferndale. Reliable sources told me the hamburgers were supposed to be great, and my last remaining major career goal is to eat at every local restaurant on Woodward Avenue before they embalm me. Well, my sources…
Letters to the Editor
A cut above Re: last week’s letter about the Dequindre Cut Greenway ("A cut too deep," May 27), it’s unfortunate that the writer has such a negative view of such a positive happening. Here is a pathway that now connects both Elmwood and Lafayette Park districts with Detroit’s best amenity, its riverfront. Yet, her views…
It’s the new us!
First off, you may have noticed that we recently stopped all home deliveries. Times are tough all over. Which brings us to the product we’ve been sweating over for several months now, the redesigned MT finally in your hands with more features and doodads packed into a more flora-friendly size and format. You’ll find the…
Faces of the recession
Earlier this year, 26-year-old photographer Andy Cook drove away from his home in suburban Baltimore on a quest to match faces to the big story of the day: our economic meltdown. Having lost his own job at a media company the previous fall, he’d begun close to home, taking pictures of metropolitan Baltimore residents in…
Bukowski found guilty, plans appeal
With her supporters packing the 36th District courtroom of Judge Michael Hathaway on Monday, Michigan Citizen freelance reporter Diane Bukowski was placed on probation for a year, fined $4,000, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit. A jury last month found Bukowski guilty on two felony…
Food Stuff
Musky Monday — Starting this week, Slows Bar-B-Q has inaugurated a new weekly "wine happy hour" called Muscadet Mondays. Most drinks from the bar are $1 off, including cold glasses of Muscadet, the dry white wine from the land where the Loire River meets the Atlantic Ocean in Western France. The event should spill out…
In tent city
When the Detroit Economic Club hosts a gathering of corporate executives and others in mid-June, the focus will be finding ways to improve America’s ability to compete in the global economy. Those leaders will be met by a counter-gathering of people who, we think it’s safe to say, won’t be wearing $1,000 custom-tailored suits. In…
Couch Trip
M. Butterfly Warner Home Video Released in 1993, M. Butterfly was the most commercially viable project David Cronenberg had directed, save perhaps for The Fly. The story seemed almost too prestigious for a director born of cult-horror ethos — a Vietnam-era period piece, based on a renowned play, starring Jeremy Irons as a French diplomat…
After the foreclosure
Traveling around the Chadsey-Condon neighborhood on Detroit’s west side, Chaunci Cline can point out entire blocks of homes she grudgingly admits need to be demolished. The area may have already been struggling as the city’s population dropped in recent decades, but now it’s a casualty of the housing crisis as well — with vacant and…
Double Reissue: The Rockets, No Ballads
The Rockets The Rockets No Ballads Renaissance It’s difficult to listen to Detroit’s Rockets without sensing tragedy, nodding mostly to its singer Dave Gilbert, a guy gifted with sexual tension and a voice tailored for ’70s FM radio, but who drank himself out of stardom, and later, into the grave. And as much as Gilbert…
Motor City Cribs
The online bio of Detroit hip-hop artists Stoopz and Breeze is implausible. Bob Stoopz, the duo’s producer, was "raised by wild German shepherds on the streets of Farmington Hills [and] had to learn how to play the keytar at a young age to make ends meet." Drew Breeze, the duo’s emcee, was "signed by Disney…
Night and Day
Thu June 4 June’s Children HOPE SPRINGS In celebration of the "New Detroit spirit," PJ’s Lager House presents a month-long series of free concerts highlighting some of the amazing and beautiful music that’s created in a city most often associated with decline and decay. Kicking off with the divinely delightful sounds of the Sisters Lucas…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
