Cruising Gratiot
Smooth steering up and down that same old strip….
Between-world
Ron Allen’s transcendental Tibetan journey bridges poetry and theater….
Stretching your wacko dollar
Low-cost and amusing in the near and distant hinterlands….
Letters to the Editor
Fix the neighborhoods Kudos to Jack Lessenberry for his commentary on leadership in Detroit (“They just don’t get it,” Metro Times, May 28-June 3). I have been hearing and reading about Detroit’s rebirth ever since I moved to this area in 1975 — and I’m still waiting. Stadiums and casinos look great but they won’t…
Vacational rescue
Cooling oases where you can beat the blistering blues….
Kuwaiti waits
20 months behind bars, one-time terror suspect faces deportation to Syria….
Things to do in Windsor
International Wine Championships June 7 Hilton Hotel, Windsor Armchair sommeliers (wine experts, that is) will get a chance to taste the best of our neighbors to the north with the 23rd annual All Canadian Wine Championships. The Hilton (277 Riverside Drive W., Windsor) will host this year’s public tasting of championship wines from wineries across…
Top picks
Concert of Colors July 11-13 Chene Park, Detroit Unless you’re the most ardent of musical globalists, you’ve got to read the Concert of Colors lineup and go “yeah!” to the headliners but “huh?” to at least some of the others. And if you’ve been to this world music bash on the riverfront before, you know…
In the heat of the night
The coolest classic movies are a doldrums antidote….
Resort island hopper
No doubt southeast Michigan’s movers and shakers are dragging after a long weekend of schmoozing and boozing at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual leadership conference on Mackinac Island. This is where everyone who’s anyone in business, politics, media and consulting pays $1,000 just to get into the elite Grand Hotel, where mostly minority employees in…
Primal teens
Visually, this fresh film lives up to its title, going from caffeine-overdose jitters to seismic quakes, as if director Jordan Melamed is reaching for an atmosphere of free-floating adolescent anxiety. Don Cheadle is a staff psychologist guiding his teen patients through group therapy sessions at a mental institution — with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Splish splash
Go jump in the lake (or the river) for a season of water sports….
Con man now a con, man
Con man Rick Stover kept spinning stories right up to the end, but his glib-tongued run of luck and evasion finally ran out in Macomb County Circuit Court last Thursday. Stover, dressed in jail blues with cuffed hands hanging at his waist, had been on probation since October after pleading guilty to one count of…
The Italian Job
The performances in this remake of a slick, Michael Caine caper movie are adequate and nothing more, which mirrors a script that lacks any character depth whatsoever. In this version, the co-conspirators are Edward Norton, Donald Sutherland, Charlize Theron and Mark Wahlberg.
Hoops all in your face
At Peterson Playfield, the court is in session for pick-up b-ball….
Ice cream, you scream
The door is always open at 3912 Third St. Step inside the Cass Corridor storefront and you’ll find yourself knee-deep in cardboard boxes, soggy newspapers, and the bottom half of a toilet. Wade in a few feet deeper to behold the garden area, where thriving plant life stretches toward an expanse left by an open…
Wrong Turn
Geezer: 1/2H / Weezer: 1/2H
Oh no, not again — another horror flick with unsuspecting twentysomethings traveling through the boonies and getting waylaid by dark forces. Rob Schmidt directed this rehash of clichés warmed over for the umpteenth time and, according to Weezer, "It’s awful."
Staple legend
Oh, yeah. The minute I heard that voice there were no doubts. Even when simply conversing via phone, that unmistakably warm, husky, gospel-drenched Sunday-morning tone still manages to reach out and touch. And this Friday, Mavis Staples will share that gift — the same gift she has shared with audiences for 53 years — with…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
The door is always open at 3912 Third St. Step inside the Cass Corridor storefront and you’ll find yourself knee-deep in cardboard boxes, soggy newspapers, and the bottom half of a toilet. Wade in a few feet deeper to behold the garden area, where thriving plant life stretches toward an expanse left by an open…
Finding Nemo
This movie is stocked so full of neuroses, paranoia and 12-step programs that it ought to sink under the weight, which is perhaps a bit inappropriate for a G-rated Disney flick. But all these deficiencies provide a nice diversion from the typical Pixar "somebody is lost and trying to get back home" plot.
Two wheels good
Pushing on down the road, biking as everyone’s business….
Queens in the kingdom
When you think of Gay Days at Disney, several trademark images come to mind — be they of loose-fitting red T-shirts over latter-year bellies or the T-shirt-less bodies of the gym-ed up, G-d out circuit boys in purchased revelry. Cynicism and bitchiness prevail. For authors Jeffrey Epstein and Eddie Shapiro, both of Out Magazine editorial…
The joke is on us
The day after the story broke about the alleged Manoogian Mansion boogie, some of the younger guys I work with unloading package trailers during the early morning shift were cracking all kinds of jokes about Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Stories of an enraged wife who supposedly went ghetto-style on one of the strippers said to be…
Seedy underground
In Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, wields his reporting skill like a razor-sharp, but well-balanced, knife, cutting deep into the underbelly of American culture and exposing the guts of our hypocritical legal and financial systems. For the most part eschewing the titillation that would have been all too easy…
Unique date spots
June 7 — Classic Film Series The Michigan Theatre Getting your date in the mood doesn’t have to be rocket science if you keep your eye on the Michigan Theatre’s summer movie schedule. The historic theatre will offer an escape from the heat while patrons enjoy the diverse programming of the Classic Film Series. The…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I enjoyed Matrix Reloaded, but I hope you won’t see it or any film like it this week. It was loud, frenetic, pounding, bewildering and epic — the exact opposite of what you need right now. You will thrive instead on intimate, subtle pleasures; you will come alive in the presence…
Ann Arbor Summer Festival
Top of the Park Series June 13–July 6 Power Center Parking Structure, Ann Arbor If you’re a little short on loot and looking for the best free entertainment in the area, try the Ann Arbor Summer Festival’s Top of the Park Series. It transforms a downtown parking structure in Ann Arbor into a hub of…
Extreme pest adventures
Taking on Freddy Roach, Roddy Rodent and the parasitic hordes….
Redefining rape
• We’re sick and tired of hearing about your sick fascination with Ashton Kutcher. Whatever happened to making cheese from breast milk, ejaculating into women’s shoes or screwing your sister? —Hot Old Twosome Bored Of Dan My thing for Ashton is sweet and wholesome — and it’s annoying the shit out of my boyfriend, so…
T-ball for dummies
Sandlot meditations on infinite patience for your inner adult….
Grace, Jimmy, love & vision
Most American workers have geared themselves to a standard of living that is based on a five-day week plus — either in the form of overtime or another job, part or full-time … there can be no smug plan for reforming this system.” —Jimmy Boggs If there is a more fascinating story of love and…
Toning the Motor body
Rediscovering the warm-weather joys of working out….
Cleaning house
Out with the old, in with the new — the commonsense mantra feels a little strange when applied to Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project, where radically new art depends on relics of old times and ways. But Guyton, world renowned for recycling stuff from the streets, alleys and abandoned buildings of Detroit into postmodern sculptures, paintings…
Summer jobs from hell
Somebody’s gotta do them, but why you and me?…
Great walls of Detroit
Dirk Bakker photographs a city full of painterly odes to work….
