Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Life, with all its evenings/religiously returns each morning like/a mountain opening up within the heart.” So writes poet Frank Lima. I’m pleased to offer you this image as your birthday present. It captures a sense of the wild immensity that’s just beginning to grow in you. Refrain from subjecting it to…
Healing the shame
Q: I am a male survivor of sexual abuse. From age 6-13 my stepfather would touch me in unwanted sexual ways; at times he required me to perform oral sex on him. This has created an incredible amount of anxiety and depression for me. For years I was an alcoholic. I have also had frequent…
Inner reaches: Talking with Carla Harryman
Metro Times: It’s interesting how this novel’s structure fits with its topic of utopia. Things perpetually shift, rove and transform. For you, is moving existing boundaries a different activity than constructing new ones? Carla Harryman: Yes. The reason the physical boundaries referenced in Gardener of Stars are two feet high is that the base is…
Ill wind
The huge smokestack from the nation’s largest trash incinerator burns big bucks and spews bad fumes, while Detroit residents cough and steam.
Austintatious
2002 South by Southwest in fits and starts….
Making the band
Tracy + the Plastics is a synthesizer-based indie-pop band disguised as a video art event — or is it the other way around?
March 20-26, 2002
20 Wed • Music: Da Camera of Houston: Epigraph for a Condemned Book "You would take the entire universe to your hole,/Sick woman! Ennui rends your cruel soul./You play a peculiar game with your teeth,/Requiring one heart each day to eat." Roughly translated, these are the kind of boldly modern (and at times downright twisted)…
Crap, glory and twee
A new Metro Times music column: This week, a roundup of recordings, from Detroit-born Paul K. to rock mistress Bebe Buell.
Recycle this
how to find Detroit’s recycling center (urban legend says drop-offs are sent straight to the trash incinerator, which operates the center).
Emission statement
The Detroit downtown facility’s emission statement for the year 2000….
No joke
Court-appointed defense lawyers will no longer work for free….
Letters to the Editor
Stop your whining I am writing in response to the “Sucker Punch” column written by Brian Smith (Metro Times, March 13-19). I like how he points out that music has no passion anymore. Our so-called “Detroit rock scene” seems nothing more than a popularity contest. I guess trying to befriend a new writer won’t get…
Green oddities
Only two gubernatorial candidates show for urban sprawl conference….
Profiles without courage
Don’t we all have to sacrifice a few freedoms for the duration of the war? The answer, as far as racial profiling is concerned, is … no.
Revenge of the indies: Michiganfest 2002
This year’s Michiganfest offers another incredible lineup of artists, spanning every badge-wearing subgenre of the independent music world with punk and indie, hardcore, pop and emo.
Gas bagged
Lawmakers fail to pass new fuel efficiency standards, maintaining our reliance on foreign oil….
Hidden fortresses
Lemberg Gallery offers wonderful examples from artists who know where the world ends and the art begins.
Justice delayed
After years of bitter court battles, U.S. Court of Appeals gives a Detroit newspaper printer gets his job back.
Green with Envy
With no VIP room, limited cover charges and a refreshingly diverse crowd, the lush and elegant Envy wins over this bitchy scribe … Lines too long for green beer this (and every) year … & A new recording studio in town.
Cut from the mold
Heather McGill’s one-woman show at Revolution utilizes industrial materials in a sensuous, organic style … & Roam Gallery exhibits photos and sculptures that’ll take you on an elegant trip to the dark side.
No answer
While roaming Detroit’s southwest side, News Hits happened upon a block of boarded-up homes along both sides of Ferdinand Street. It appears there may be plans to redevelop the area by either renovating the old homes or tearing them down and starting from scratch. Looking to learn more, News Hits contacted the Planning and Development…
Raps & votes
The ongoing and ever-shifting civil rights struggle needs long-term strategies and visions. Does the hip-hop community hold the key?
Michael & we
Rebellious, passionate and always swimming against the current, Michael Moore stops in Detroit to promote his new best seller, Stupid White Men.
Small Brown Bike
Given that its use of raspy vocal shouts and driven personal pop are obvious nods to groundbreakers like Jawbreaker or Hot Water Music, the Bike has held its own style of added heaviness and energy that’s somewhere between hardcore and emo. Added aggression is also accompanied by unpredictable chord progressions and a hoarse, dual-vocal structure…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
While roaming Detroit’s southwest side, News Hits happened upon a block of boarded-up homes along both sides of Ferdinand Street. It appears there may be plans to redevelop the area by either renovating the old homes or tearing them down and starting from scratch. Looking to learn more, News Hits contacted the Planning and Development…
Resident Evil
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson from a script inspired by the popular video game of the same name, the new speed-metal of action flicks doesn’t believe in calm, unless it’s that oh-so-brief pause before a storm of montage, or the minibreaths between outbreaks of splatter and dread — with Milla Jovovich.
Ah, sweet mystery …
Jagged plots, erotic detail and deviant grammar are all means for undermining the literary status quo, but Detroit-based experimental writer and playwright Carla Harryman understands that humor can function as the most subversive device of all. Her deft cobbling together of theory, vernacular speech, erudite language, unusual action and psychology prods us to re-examine the…
Cure
The first film by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to get a theatrical release in the United States is a nasty little number with a neat hook: a serial killer who murders by proxy, hypnotizing people who commit the foul deeds, and a wonderful central performance which helps the viewer ease past its many implausibilities.
Read ’em and eat
Next door to the Little Professor bookstore and newsstand, Little Café offers well-made salads of the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink variety, and decent sandwiches too. But coffee and dessert are where the café shines thus far. Coffees come from a microroaster near Seattle. There’s a long list of ice cream sundaes and sodas, including imported Italian confections and…
Matrix of loneliness
This may be a ghost story, or it may be a love story. Yet it’s strangely satisfying because it’s open-ended in so many ways. Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang, whose main strength is as a stylist, displays a deadpan whimsy embodied in shots of people being absurdly matter-of-fact in the midst of their bizarre compulsions. Bizarre,…
Kissing Jessica Stein
“Sometimes, I think I’m gonna be alone forever.” Jessica’s fear strikes at the sensitive core of single women everywhere, and so does this film with its natural, hip and aware perspective into the tragedies and unpredictable rewards of the search for love.
Festival in Cannes
Writer-director Henry Jaglom (Déjà Vu) observes the feeding and mating habits of the cinema set in this bestiary — ironically without a moral or much of a story — of Hollywood’s more-or-less luminaries and the predators of their circle.
Showtime
Reality TV is perhaps now overripe for parody. Showtime comes along late in the game to take another kick at a horse that may not be dead, but no longer occupies the winner’s circle of fickle popularity. But the kick misses and Showtime slips into self-parody — with Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro.
