Nail time
Detroit artist Davin Brainard made a big hit at a Manhattan beauty salon recently with his toenail paintings that looked like strawberries. “They’re so sexy,” said one satisfied client. “You want to just eat them.” Nearby, Hitoko Sakai did a fingernail art series titled “Clouds for Peace,” reminiscent of the 1960s idealism of Fluxus artist…
Dow’s defenders
News Hits has been keeping an eye on the dioxin situation up Midland way ever since Metro Times wrote about the issue (“Shadow of Dow,” March 27, 2002). You know Midland, home to Dow Chemical, one of the state’s leading employers. And you should know dioxin, one of the most toxic substances known. Certainly the…
Under-over
The thirtysomethings are getting serious about the future, but not necessarily with babies and benefits. The urge to propagate and succeed among the anti-conformist crowd previously labeled lazy and unmotivated is translating, locally, into the establishment of means and mechanisms to provide security for creative endeavors. Detroit artists are pooling resources in a practical and…
Sunshine and shadow
Sunshine falls quite pleasantly on the tall — really tall — front lawn at 6128-30 Rosa Parks Blvd. The grass at the two-family flat on Detroit’s north side hasn’t been cut in ages, and stands 2 or 3 feet high. Denise Knight has lived next door for 18 years. She says the place was abandoned…
Seven up
Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton is like many a musician or artist: He’s looking, waiting, hoping for his “big break.” The question is, what are you going to do with your chance once it stares you in the face? In Plowshares Theatre Company’s production of Seven Guitars, the sixth play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, we…
Shutter time
"Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter." Can you relate to this Ansel Adams sentiment, to that astonishing feeling when an ordinary moment becomes eternal and there you are with a camera in your hands? If so you’re in luck, because it’s time for Metro Times’…
7″ pop shots
Wolf Eyes “Stabbed in the Face Pt. I” b/w “Rat Floods” & “Stabbed in the Face Pt. II” Sub Pop Weirdly popular mitten state noiseniks Wolf Eyes’ first single — well, this is actually a three-song 12-inch — for the finest from Skidaddle, Wash., is an entirely perfect introduction to the band’s two main sonic…
Letters to the Editor
Kudos for us “48 Hours On Belle Isle” (Metro Times, June 2) was one of the most compelling stories I have ever read in your paper. Congrats to all who worked on it — outstanding job! —Martin Bandyke, Harper Woods Reagan’s revolution Re: “Getting out of this mess” (Metro Times, May 26), I am…
Gazing at the scars
Q: I know this isn’t a sexy or even remotely enjoyable subject, but I could really use your advice. I’m an 18-year-old girl, though I can easily pass for 25. I’m pretty attractive (though I think everyone has things about themselves they would change), thin and altogether relatively normal, although I graduated high school early.…
TOP quality
It’s a strange concept, to say the least — a free outdoor festival of music and movies … held on top of a parking structure? As odd as it may seem to frolic among huge slabs of gray concrete, Ann Arbor’s annual Top of the Park series has been a huge hit and a time-honored…
From soul to world beat
Solomon Burke If his career timing had been half as sharp as his musical timing, Burke would be as well-known as soulful contemporaries Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. As it is, late-life accolades like induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Grammy in the blues category are garnering Burke at least…
All around the world
Violinist Regina Carter has just finished practicing. She’s in a hotel room in Richmond, Va., waiting for room service. She wants to fuel up because she’s rehearsing with bassist Christian McBride in a few hours. Then she’s leaving for a pair of dates in Boston, followed by a trip to Traverse City to play with…
Mussel worship
The concept is Belgian brewpub and the atmosphere is totally unpretentious, quirky and interesting. Belgian food is heavily influenced by Germany and France, and some of Bastone’s menu items are quintessential Belgian, such as moule (mussels), brandade de morue (puree of salt cod, potatoes and olive oil, a staple of the poor for centuries) and…
Bad so good
bad•ass (‘bad-as) Slang (vulgar). adj. 1 : (Of a person) difficult to deal with; mean-tempered; touchy. 2 : Distinctively tough or powerful; so exceptional as to be intimidating. n. 3 : A mean-tempered troublemaker. That’s the dictionary definition of “badass.” But writer, director and actor Melvin Van Peebles patented his own definition of the…
Franz Ferdinand
Once upon a time there used to be a band called Deaf School that was led by an ersatz-Bryan Ferry crooner named Enrico Cadillac. And because they were a rubberized sleazoid version of Roxy Music, I wiped my feet on their fourth album English Boys/Working Girls when I reviewed it in the July 1978 issue…
The blurred crusade
We come not to praise nor bury Movement ’04, symbolically still the most important free — operative word: free — electronic music festival on the planet. Nor to neuter the players who entertained us nearly round the clock for just short of 100 hours during the last weekend of May. We come to hijack it…
Bling Free Vol. 3
Thank God for wack emcees. Without them, true-school alum like Ann Arbor’s DJ Graffiti would have little motivation. Back with the third installment of his anti-hip-pop consortium, Graffiti’s Bling Free Vol. 3 raises the bar several notches higher while Graf quietly vies for the mixtape throne of the Midwest. With such a solid showcase of…
N&D Center
11 FRI • ART Paint Creek By Number — For many, seeing the “Mona Lisa” for the first time is a bit of an upset; to the surprise of legions of Louvre-goers, the smirking diva is only 21 inches wide by 30.5 inches tall. But at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts, she’s all…
Strayed
An intimate drama set against the tumultuous backdrop of WWII. French director Andre Techine’s film begins with the exodus from Paris preceding the Nazi invasion. A widow and her two kids flee with a mysterious 17-year-old who wants to become part of the family. This story of subtle and complex relationships doesn’t go quite where…
Out of our tree
Reader response from our genealogical “Century of Sound” music tree brimmed with both glowing salutations and roaring disapproval. The phone rang and rang and my e-mail box exploded with notes filled with contemptuous blather and blowjobian adulation, saying we either walk on water or should be lynched. Incensed members of marginal groups new and old…
Love Me If You Dare
French director Yann Samuell’s film is best appreciated as a psychedelic fairy tale. Under strange circumstances a young girl and boy forge a friendship and launch a lifelong game of dare. The premise takes the tired love story places it’s never gone before. And people do play cruel games in the name of love. In…
Old king Cole
Musical theater is easy to ridicule. There’re the pirouetting ruffians of West Side Story. There’s the likelihood that every little girl who’s ever seen Annie will annoy her family with the shrill testimony that the “sun’ll come up tomorrow.” But designating musical theater as effete or passé is unfair. And when it comes to the…
Valentin
Do you like little snapshots of life, where nothing of great import happens but you get to feel warm and gooey inside? Set in 1960s Buenos Aires, Valentin tells the tale of a small boy desperate to form a family out of his less-than-ideal situation. There is some genuine heart and soul, but Valentin’s über-sweetness…
Disinvited
Robert Bowman would seem a natural choice to address a group of veterans. A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, he flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. After that, according to his biography, he was director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the Air Force Space Division during the Ford and Carter administrations. That was back…
Baadasssss!
This indie biopic tells the tale of Melvin Van Peebles and the making of his groundbreaking, controversial and most famous movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song — considered the first Blaxploitation film. Baadasssss! is written, directed and stars Van Peebles’ son, Mario. The film often strays into stereotype but the underlying tale is about people…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): While living in Manhattan in the 1950s, avant-garde composer John Cage felt beleaguered by the omnipresence of radio sound. Rather than piss and moan, he wrote a musical piece that featured several radios tuned to different frequencies. After that, he was always able to respond to street radio noise with a…
Reprise
This story is the first story of our Century of Sound series, tracing Detroit’s musical heritage over the last hundred years. For more information on this undertaking, see this week’s Suckerpunch. It’s been more than 10 years since Wayne Kramer, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson took the stage together in Detroit at Rob…
Frisco folkways
“I don’t want to sound arrogant about San Francisco at all, but I do think there’s something really special about this city,” offers Joanna Newsom. “There’s a willingness here to pay attention to things that aren’t huge musically, that aren’t these enormous, broad artistic strokes. There’s a tendency to pay attention to delicate things.” Newsom,…
Abu Ghraib in the homeland
If the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees doesn’t get U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fired, as it well should, at least it may raise America’s awareness of our own troubled policies when it comes to prisoners here at home. Some journalists have devoted ink to this subject, including New York Times columnist Bob Herbert,…
Fish story
In the window of the Davison Fish Market on Seven Mile a few blocks east of I-75, a neon sign states, “GUMBO HEADQUARTERS.” My love of Cajun and Creole food is no secret. I consider Louisiana to be the culinary mecca. All kinds of fresh seafood — fish, shrimp, oysters and mudbugs, or crawfish —…
Alternative eulogy
Far be it from us to speak ill of the dead. We’d rather skewer the living. But we’re willing to make an exception to add some balance to the idolatry being heaped upon Ronald Reagan. To help keep the Reagan presidency in perspective, we offer this view from Jill Nelson, author of the book Straight,…
