Detroit & Cali rap for haiti
With all that’s going on in the Gulf — you know, with what could be up to one-million gallons of crude gushing from the center of the globe per day thanks to the assholes at BP and Haliburton — it seems the devastation in Haiti, a nation still left in shambles from the horrendous earthquake…
Detroit Does Bonnaroo Day 3-4
The two biggest acts from Detroit took the main What Stage yesterday back to back as Jack White’s The Dead Weather’s set was fueled by lead singer Alison Mosshart’s animalistic antics, but Stevie Wonder would easily prove to be the show of the entire weekend, lifting all witnesses a higher ground. Stevie started things off…
Detroit Does Bonnaroo – Days 1-2
With spotty wi-fi, hot mud, stinky hippies and a flow of overwhelming mediocrity from The Kings of Leon on the main stage, here are day 1 and 2 updates on Detroit’s brightest at Bonnaroo. As one of the trio of acts to start the festivities Thursday afternoon, rollicking folk act Frontier Ruckus pulled a surprisingly…
Detroit poet Henrietta Epstein dead at 80
Henrietta Epstein, Detroit poet and avid supporter of the literary arts in Michigan, died June 5, at the age of 80. Born in 1930, Epstein grew up on Normandy Street in the Martin Park neighborhood of Detroit, and attended Wayne State University in the late 1940s. She became involved in poetry and writing circles, and…
Detroit Does Bonnaroo 2010
New this week here at The Metro Times Music Blog, we’ll be bringing you the latest on all of the Detroit area’s finest who are making the trek down to Manchester, Tennessee’s annual Bonnaroo Music Festival. We’ll wade through the sea of the two hips–the patcholi stinking hippies and PBR schwilling hipsters–to bring updates on…
Streets completing
After party caucuses cut short the May 27 Michigan House Transportation Committee meeting and prevented some people from testifying about the Complete Streets bills, leaders are bringing them back in a second committee hearing this week, scheduled for Thursday. Chair Pam Byrnes (D-Chelsea) and one of the bills’ sponsors, has said she hopes to vote…
Luxury line
The Book Cadillac’s 24 Grille is a less formal, though no less expensive, alternative to the acclaimed meat-eaters’ paradise in the hotel’s opposite corner, Roast. It has a somewhat shorter, American menu, with just a couple of steaks and four seafood dishes. 24 Grille says that its ingredients are preservative-free and sourced locally when possible.…
Veggie choices
Aladdin Sweets 11945 Conant St., Hamtramck; 313-891-8050: You might see the name and think it’s a sweets shop, but it’s much more than that. If you’re cool with plastic cutlery and polystyrene plates, prepare yourself for some of the best Indian-influenced food you can buy with the coin under your car seat. It’s really that…
Mother and Child
When Karen (Annette Bening) was 14 years old, she got pregnant and gave up her child, leaving an open wound in place of her soul. Nearly 40 years later, she’s still punishing everyone around her, from her own ailing mother to her housekeeper to the friendly co-worker (Jimmy Smits) who makes gentle advances toward her.…
Three chords & the truth
It’s Dec. 10, 2006, in the secluded English coastal resort town of Minehead. Normally, the Butlins vacation complex would be closed down for winter; but on this particular weekend, fans of punk and alternative rock have invaded Minehead, because this week the town plays host to the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival, curated by Sonic Youth’s…
Marmaduke
Like an endless 1990’s Cheetos ad, Owen Wilson’s Marmaduke keeps blabbering cool-dude slang, and doing radical stuff like playing Dance Dance Revolution and hanging 20 on a surfboard. The “plot,” for lack of a better term, finds the title pooch and his human family moving from Kansas to L.A, so Marmaduke can run with a…
Van hailin’
There’s a group standing in a vacant field in a rough part of the city. Tough-looking guys with nicknames like Ghetto and Shonuff wear leather vests over their club’s colors and check out one another’s wheels. Their clubhouse, across the alley, has a sign by its door warning, "Private Club. Members only." It looks…
Can you do Greek?
Gadfly comic Russell Brand reprises his “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” role as pompous walking disaster Aldous Snow, a Brit rocker with Bono’s colossal ego and Keith Richards’ tolerance level. Snow’s life and career are slumping just as his former girlfriend’s career is taking off, on the heels of a preposterously awful album called “African Child.” Jason…
Stalkers & soakers
Q: My husband was 28 and a virgin when I met him. When we started having sex, he opened up about being "different." He wanted to wear panties, he wanted me to have sex with other men, he wanted me to make fun of his tiny penis. Didn’t love the stuff, but whatever. Now it’s…
Air Doll
Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s magical realist curio is about an enchanted life-sized sex toy who bops around Tokyo in tiny fetish outfits and lands a job as video store clerk. Air doll Nozomi, played by the frequently naked Korean actress Bae Du-na (The Host), parades through the film with an empty guileless half-grin. As she comes alive…
Food Stuff
Milkshake? — We got a chance to try some of the "adult milkshakes" now on offer at Pub 1281, made with Ray’s ice cream and enlivened with spirits. Notable is the "Fat Elvis" banana drink, with crème de Cacao, Frangelico and more. Drop in for a shake, stay for the live music, at 1281 S.…
Los Mutantes
At first glance, Splice looks like a stem-cell debate tarted up in monster-movie drag, but this is one seriously demented mutant, a polyglot of themes and ideas struggling among one other for dominance in a hostile environment. Ever-intriguing actors Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star as a pair of hipster scientists, named Clive and Elsa…
Thomas’ bombshell
Helen Thomas has been a journalism legend for decades, the tiny lady in red who started covering the White House when John F. Kennedy became president, and has been there ever since, making most of us look lazy, blazing a trail for women. She’s traveled the world, and asked tough questions of 10 presidents over…
Strolling the loop
After a rather depressing month of hearing about killings, assaults, Detroit Public Schools wars and general economic mayhem (let alone the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico), I decided it was time to focus on some of the good things going on in Detroit. It wasn’t that hard. As I once lived south of…
Watching the Detectives
While rain poured down on (but hardly slowed down) the proud homos at Motor City Pride, the Wonder Twins ducked into the Ringwald, Ferndale’s go-to spot for campy independent theater, to get an eyeful of some foxy ladies, specifically the ladies in Code Foxy: Man Down. Laura: I love the Ringwald Theater based on name…
What’s up, Holmes?
Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper Focus Home Interactive Xbox 360 (Review Copy), PC Nothing sucked worse than indoor recess. Remember that? Instead of playing basketball or chilling on the monkeybars, you were stuck inside playing fucking Candyland. Though you were redeemed if you were lucky enough to get on the computer to play Where…
Metro Retro
22 years ago in Metro Times: Canadian officials vow to appeal their lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, in an effort to guarantee that adequate pollution controls are in place for the city’s new incinerator project. James Bradley, Ontario’s minister of the environment, says that the Detroit incinerator is being built…
Night and Day
THURSDAY JUNE 10 Will Hoge TRUE BLUE Nashville singer-songwriter Will Hoge is the embodiment of a tried-and-true musician – indie and uncompromising. For a decade-plus, he has built a following with a relentless touring schedule that sees him playing his gritty Americana and heartfelt Southern rock at more than 200 gigs yearly. In 2008, he…
Letters to the Editor
Roads for all Thank you for your recent article: "Pedaling influence" (June 2). The article calls attention to walking and bicycling demands in society and how complete streets policies address it. I appreciate your interest in bringing these issues into the public debate. As demonstrated in the article, more and more people are enjoying the…
Credit check
You are deep in debt, out of work and in desperate need of a job when a prospective employer asks a question you weren’t expecting: "Can we look at your credit history?" Many people in this predicament face a lose-lose situation, experts say. Deny permission and that prospective employer might think you are hiding something…
Wait, wait – don’t shoot!
Wait, wait — don’t shoot! The video is harrowing. Shot last November, the event was captured by a film crew shooting a movie in Detroit. They were making a movie titled Vigilante, about militant activist Hayward Brown, who became a controversial cause celébre when he beat assault and murder charges in the aftermath of three…
Furs in Venus
One unfortunate hangover from the 1980s, that decade of overproduced bands, Reagan, MTV gloat, silly trousers and Haircut 100, was how the Psychedelic Furs got lumped into that ghastly pop nostalgia train of ’80s packages, flanking, say, the Bangles, or worse, Missing Persons in (pre-) boomer consciousness. Think about that: Here was a London band…
