Arroyo rock
Redefining the "Calexico sound."…
In case of war: Break
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That axiom is being employed by area peace groups as the invasion of Iraq appears more and more likely. And we’re not talking about stocking up on duct tape. Here’s the plan for Attack Day: Should news of the invasion break before noon Detroit time, peace advocates…
A folk imploded
“People say that to me all the time, ‘But Lou, you’ve made great music.’ That’s just it, I’ve made great music.” —Lou Barlow Lou Barlow is back. It’s an idea that bothers Barlow, especially as he’s likely to be lumped in with other returning alt-rock acts such as Evan Dando and the Throwing Muses.…
Salted peanuts
After last week’s story in Metro Times about Detroit Salt Co. and its operation beneath southwest Detroit, News Hits got word that the city, which is supposed to be getting 52 cents a ton for the salt mined beneath public land, has so far only been getting peanuts. The catch is that it will be…
Art: Stance or trance?
In a cultural vacuum, no one can hear you scream….
Lake orphan
Paddling upstream, so to speak, Doug Martz is nonetheless making progress in his effort to up the status of Lake St. Clair. The Macomb County Water Quality Board chairman says the lake is “like the orphan child,” forgotten by the government. “I’ve been trying for nine years to make it part of the family, if…
Relentless eyeballing
The Ann Arbor Film Festival cruises into its 41st year with a new director and 112 films in competition for a fistful of prize money and the prestige of taking an award in the nation’s premier experimental film fest. Boasting a slate of documentary, fiction, animation, live-action and cross-genre short and feature-length films, this year’s…
Couched in darkness
This week’s abandoned house, 5485 24th St., sits on a lonely block in a quiet neighborhood near the intersection of I-94 and I-96. Both the facing lot, across 24th, and the rest of the block on which the home stands are empty snowfields (at least they were last week), though on the other side of…
American idyll
It took Marvin Arnett six-plus decades to realize her true gift is writing….
Letters to the Editor
Respect your Diddy I recently read Khary Kimani Turner’s story about Kimberly “Mysterious” Bert, the Detroit-area rapper best known for her stint on MTV’s “Making the Band II” (Metro Times, March 5-11). It was an informative piece about Bert’s rough childhood and troubling adolescence. The story was also inspiring, as it revealed the heartbreak of…
How we lost the war
Everything has been decided now, and I’m afraid nothing any of us can do will change it. We are going to war. This nation, for the first time in its history, is going to launch a pre-emptive attack on a much smaller nation and smash it to smithereens. Doesn’t that make you all proud? By…
Prayer for peace, Shalom, Salaam, Shanti, Amani
“Cowardice asks the question–is it safe? Expediency asks the question–is it politic? Vanity asks the question–is it popular? But conscience asks the question–is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” –Dr. Martin…
Duggan’s new digs
$7.7 million renovation completed without funding….
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
This week’s abandoned house, 5485 24th St., sits on a lonely block in a quiet neighborhood near the intersection of I-94 and I-96. Both the facing lot, across 24th, and the rest of the block on which the home stands are empty snowfields (at least they were last week), though on the other side of…
March 12-18, 2003
14-15 FRI-SAT • MUSIC Europera — Avant-garde composer John Cage refused to judge sounds — he chose instead to welcome them into his compositions, many of which depended on chance events and intersections. In the score for "Europera 5," the last of a series that found Cage fascinated with continental opera traditions, the composer instructs…
Erin go drink up, Johnny!
Dead nuts in the middle of Corktown, the Lager House has perfected the marriage of old meets new. Even through its exodus from local lunchtime watering hole to rock ‘n’ roller’s safe haven, the Lager has maintained it’s homespun charm. Cozy and inviting, it is still one of the best joints to guzzle Guinness on…
Hardcourt hullabaloo
There is no such thing as a comfortable protest. Making someone — or a whole lot of someones — very uncomfortable is the point. For example, I may stand in front of my bathroom mirror, wave my fists in the air and make fiery speeches to no one but myself, but I call that venting…
Cloth that sings
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend Beardsley, Arnett, Arnett & Livingston Tinwood Books, $45, 190 pp. A quilt ain’t nothing but a sandwich — by definition, a bedcovering made of two layers of fabric with a layer in between and stitched together. Most often the top layer has a decorative design. The remarkable quilts pictured…
No Chachi here
I’ve avoided this topic my whole life. Well, not completely. There were those few times in high school with a tellingly named Michelle Burns, with which I had comical friction of the heterosexual variety. But for the most part, I’ve cowered from the all-powerful vagina. The word alone induces a pinch-faced gurgle. I wasn’t made…
Cleanup coup
While businessmen and executives slept, they came in unseen to clean the tall glass office buildings. Invisible, that is, to their employers — but not to their children, parents, friends, family and loved ones. In April 2000, about 8,000 janitors — predominately Latina and immigrant — went on strike in Los Angeles. Trading mops and…
Best Menu in Greektown
My first beer in Detroit was at the Music Menu. Since I’ve lived here, I’ve spent myriad nights at said bar rewarding my liver with heady toxins and witnessing some of Detroit’s finest — Thornetta Davis, Jim McCarty and Maggie’s Farm to name but a few. I’ve also witnessed some horrific acts. I dig the…
Mirror, mirror …
“If that was all I had to be proud of, I’d kill myself,” my father said as the punch line to one of his stories. This one began with my father sipping a drink and probably puffing his fair share of cigarette smoke into the hazy atmosphere of one of Detroit’s gone and all-but-forgotten jazz…
Hamtramck Blowout 2003
Aside from the two venues that suddenly bowed out (the Carbon Lounge, Shananigan’s) at the last minute, leaving a handful of bands and DJs without a venue (kudos to the Works for saving Carbon’s Saturday lineup), and the spilled-over toilets at the Holbrook on Friday night, the Blowout was a well-attended (6,000-plus) thing of beauty.…
Earthly hell
It’s some kind of accomplishment that director Fernando Meirelles has taken more than two hours of poverty, misery, random cruelty, dashed hopes and more murders than one could keep track of and made it not only tolerable but exciting — harsh and at times sad, but overall a wild ride.
Blessed are the peacemakers
Onward, Christian soldiers, Marching as to war With the cross of Jesus Going on before. Christ, the royal Master, Leads against the foe; Forward into battle See His banners go! Our president, George W. Bush, undoubtedly views the lyrics to this famous hymn as a call to arms. He claims to be a reborn…
Gerry
Think of director Gus Van Sant’s Gerry more as an experience than a movie, a virtual vacation gone awry. It’s a familiar, everyday, epic fuck-up that you’ll either love or hate as it breathes across the screen — with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I heard from a reader who calls himself Drek, Agent of the Future. His words are apropos to what you’ll be living through this week. “How come in the long list of human fears, ‘showing one’s true self’ is never included?" Drek mused. “Hell, compared to the frighteningly wonderful madness of…
Metro Times’ Everyone’s a Critic Contest
Yep. That’s right. It’s Metro Times’ music writing contest. It’s for all of you who fancy yourself the new Lester Bangs, Cameron Crowe, Richard Meltzer or Stanley Crouch, those who rant on music site message boards, or basically anyone who’s ever wanted to be a critic — or tell those big-head critics where to go.…
Tears of the Sun
Whenever the Nigerian jungle isn’t just a murkier stand-in for Apocalypse Now’s heart of darkness, the light of day exposes its killing fields. It’s an iconography that verges on racism in a film ironically shot by African-American director Antoine Fuqua, but that may just suit its neocolonial narrative — with Bruce Willis.
You da man — or are you?
Q: I am a straight male who just got back from Carnival in Rio. It may have been too much fun. One night I drank too much and ended up getting into a conversation with one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen … or so I thought. She/he … whatever I’m supposed…
Bushwhacked
Detroit’s own White House press corps luminary, Helen Thomas, 82, has apparently landed on the presidential shit list after telling a California newspaper in January that George Bush the younger “is the worst president in all of American history.” For the first time in memory, Thomas was relegated to the third row and wasn’t called…
The Safety of Objects
Director Rose Troche’s tiresome adaptation of A.M. Homes’ collection of short stories has a seemingly bottomless supply of suburban heartbreak, carefully doled out among four families with little to hide and nothing to lose — with Glenn Close.
Life in the ‘D’
While you’re reading this, I’m probably either A) sleeping off a long night out; or B) in the thick of one on the streets of Austin, Texas, where I’ll be chasing down as many of the 22 bands from the Detroit scene playing this year’s South By Southwest Festival as I can. Yup. 22. That…
Chickenhawks, chickenshits
On Saturday night at the Buck Dinner, an annual fundraiser for lefty causes that has been going on for 74 years now, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, showed that he could always earn a living as a stand-up comedian if this politics thing doesn’t work out. Suave and cool on the stage with his tuxedo…
Bringing Down the House
Academy Award-nominee Queen Latifah’s ability at selling even the sorriest script is evident in this white-meets-black comedy whose extreme blandness is made even more obvious by her healthy glow. Costar Steve Martin is positively loathsome as a workaholic lawyer with a constricted sphincter.
