Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s official portrait LEAKED!
Former Gov. Granholm’s official portrait isn’t supposed to be revealed until May 7th during a fancy ceremony marking the occasion, but leave it to the internet to spoil the surprise: Thanx for all your years of service, Gov. Cutielicious. (via Pillow Fights & Boxing Tumblr)
Kendrick Lamar at the Shelter April 4th
Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar is coming to the Shelter this Monday for a show that fans of new school West Coast hip-hop should definitely check out. Within the latest class of rappers worth getting excited about (Big K.R.I.T., Odd Future, Danny Brown, etc.), the name Kendrick Lamar consistently gets mentioned. His rapping style really could…
WATCH NOW: Emmy Award-winning filmmaker (and awesome dude) Stephen McGee Releases Art X Mini Movies
Since 2009, Kresge Arts in Detroit has poured more than a million bucks in the Detroit art community, and a good chunk of that change has gone straight to artists via the KAID Fellowship, which Metro Times has covered rather extensively. The Karmic suport has been leading up to Art X Detroit, a five-day arts experience that…
Dan Savage: America’s ethicist
There’s a fascinating article in the current issue of Washington Monthly arguing that “foul-mouthed” Dan Savage — who has been Metro Times’ sex advice columnist for a decade — has become one of the most important ethicists in America. It’s a well-written, 5,000-word-plus article showing how, even as American’s sexual mores change and become more…
Black Milk & Jack White Set To Collaborate On Single
From Black Milk’s website and ThirdManRecords.com So far in 2011, Black Milk has worked hard to balance a heavy tour schedule with the necessary long hours in the studio working on future releases. It was fitting to receive an invitation by none other than Jack White to both perform and record at his Third Man…
Insidious
Insidious GRADE: C- First, let’s applaud Saw co-creator James Wan for trying to break away from the geek trick violence of his debut (he isn’t responsible for the nastier, gorier and stupider Saw sequels) to deliver an old fashioned spook-house chiller. A huge improvement over Dead Silence, Wan’s dreadful sophomore effort, Insidious delivers some genuine…
Moroun’s big move
April 1, 2011 — The owners of Metro Times, Detroit’s oldest and largest alternative newsweekly, and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel Moroun have inked a deal that makes the bridge company president complete owner of the paper. Though the parties involved would not discuss the specifics of the deal, Moroun spokesman Dick Morris — political consultant,…
Win Win
Win Win GRADE: B Hollywood rarely gets the little guy any more. Once upon a time, when the studios hired playwrights who sought to capture (and often romanticize) the working class to pen scripts, the film industry at least acknowledged the woes of everyday Joes. Today, however, life on the big screen is shiny, happy…
Source Code
Source Code GRADE: B Welcome to the age of the mash-up, where ideas and concepts are wedged together into artistic Frankenstein concoctions. While movies — and all art forms for that matter — have always borrowed liberally from one another, the last few years have seen a particularly aggressive recycling and repurposing of creative content.…
Hop
Hop GRADE: C From a film perspective, Easter has traditionally been kind of a bummer; the exclusive provenance of somber biblical epics, forgettable third-rate Peter Cottontail cartoons, and one Technicolor Judy Garland musical not likely to captivate app’d-up kids these days. So in bounces Hop, a sprightly, amiable attempt to further commercialize a major holiday…
Apollo Brown “Time Passed Autumn” (video)
It’s not easy to shoot music videos for songs that are strictly instrumentals. The action of a song with words usually carries the music videos along but trying to keep things rolling with a tune that is strictly an instrumental typically requires far stronger visuals. With Apollo Brown’s latest video for the track “Time Passed…
D12 Feat. Trick Trick – “I Made It” Video (NSFW)
Here’s a freshly released video from local rap veterans D12 and Trick Trick for their song “I Made It.” It’s noticeable at times that within the conversations regarding who is most popular and most talented within Detroit hip-hop these days that D12 and Trick Trick don’t usually get mentioned. It sort of depends on who…
Detroit’s population = 714,000 + 2
Last year, we posted a blog written by Christine & Jacques Driscoll, who asked, “If you lived in San Diego, Calif., would you move to Detroit?” We helped them set up a survey asking our readers a number of questions. And we were heartened by the responses. Dozens of MT readers posted, sounding off mostly…
Seger in Saginaw
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band Dow Event Center, Saginaw Tuesday, March 29, 2011 Saginaw was originally supposed to be the opening show of Bob Seger’s current, relatively whim-of-the-moment tour, which concludes with three shows at the Palace in mid-May. A Toledo show was then added three days earlier, due to scheduling conflicts with…
No Safety Net: An Interview with Over the Rhine’s Linford Detweiler
The seminal Ohio folk rockers Over the Rhine released a fine new album, The Long Surrender, last month – check out the MT review here — and now the band will be making a stop at The Ark in Ann Arbor this Tuesday (April 5). After beginning life as a four-piece in 1991, Over…
Tuesday night in Saginaw: Bob Seger show
Live Review Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band Dow Event Center, Saginaw Tuesday, March 29, 2011 Saginaw was originally supposed to be the opening show of Bob Seger’s current, relatively whim-of-the-moment tour, which concludes with three shows at the Palace in mid-May. A Toledo show was then added three days earlier, due to scheduling…
New Danny Brown Video – “Guitar Solo”
DANNY BROWN ‘Guitar Solo’ from Stedfast Media on Vimeo. It finally looks like our former cover star Danny Brown has decided to shoot a real music video. When I chatted with him via phone a few weeks ago, he mentioned having recently finished shooting a video for the song “Guitar Solo” and said it wasn’t…
Sing it ain’t so!
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Auto-Tune was conceived by an oil industry engineer, not a musician. That’s right, the same seismic wave technology that helps oil companies locate drill sites is used to evaluate and manipulate pitch by moving a singer’s note to the nearest in-key semitone. Developed by Andy Hildebrand as something of…
Food Stuff
Deals in Detroit It’s that time of year again: Detroit Restaurant Week is offering diners excellent deals on meals at some of Detroit’s finest establishments — 18 in all. Expect each restaurant to offer spring-inspired three-course meals at $28 per person for 10 nights only. The restaurants will include 24Grille, Angelina Italian Bistro, Coach Insignia,…
The Dickens of Detroit
Novelist Elmore Leonard is a Detroiter and fiercely proud of it. Many of his stories are at least in part based here, and he’s always very careful to get his facts straight. Unlike, say, the TV show Detroit 1-8-7, there are no made-up newspapers, street names or colleges. Leonard has lived here for most of…
Spun
Fright from the Bins Sandler & Young Pretty Things Come in Twos (1969) Even in its hey-nonny-nonny heyday, Las Vegas was more than just the Rat Pack … what about the Mouse Pack? There were hundreds of meek yet punctilious entertainers willing to pay their dues up and down the Strip, sucking up to Sammy…
Caught in Qatar
Describing himself as an "economic hostage," Dearborn businessman and civic leader Nasser Beydoun says he tried working within the system for more than a year as he attempted to leave the country of Qatar and return home. Having failed at that, he is mounting a campaign to gain public and political support to help him…
Crunch time
Fresco Wood Oven Pizzeria 1218 Walton Blvd., Rochester Hills 248-841-1606 Pizza crust from common strip mall pizza joints isn’t generally all that crusty. Engendering sneers from foodies and low-carb fanatics alike, standard American pizzas are doughy, soggy and thick. Of course, that isn’t how most of the best pizzerias do it, that isn’t how it’s…
Motor City Five
The Black Lips Atlanta punkaroos the Black Lips have crafted a shimmy-yaw, shimmy-yay lo-fi sound. The band’s not serious about much, but the music is seriously good, like mid-’50s pop blown through a bloody nose. Detroit’s their home away from home. And I hate to say it, but this is absolutely one of those bands…
Egg-cellent starts
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Angelo’s 1100 E. Catherine St., Ann Arbor; 734-761-8996; angelosa2.com; $: Plenty of stuff for egg-heads to try here, including eggs Benedict, Florentine, lox Benedict and a standard three-egg breakfast plate with bacon, sausage, ham, breakfast potatoes and homemade toast for $7.75. Omelets include their standard (comes stuffed with your choice of…
Daily mail
Dear readers: Folks who have the Savage Love app get the Savage Love Letter of the Day (SLLOTD) delivered to their iPhones or Androids. This week, I’m running three recent SLLOTDs to give my print-only readers a taste of what they’re missing. I’m also giving myself a bit of a break: I’m currently dashing around…
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck Merge For two decades, the Mountain Goats have existed as the medium for John Darnielle and his bracingly literate moods and whims, an excitably bent American reality of alpha-couples, young drug dealers and bitter teenagers striking back against oppressors. This hasn’t entirely changed — you still must love…
New York Dolls – Dancing Backward in High Heels
New York Dolls – Dancing Backward in High Heels 429 Records The Dolls have released more albums since their 2004 reunion than in their ’70s run, and it’s clear they’re unwilling to live in the past. Dancing Backward explores soul and classic ’60s pop; undertones present then but mostly drowned in ironic, decadent rumble. The…
Ready to rumble
Occasionally, the doom and gloomers here at News Hits witness something that actually gives us hope. Friday evening at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Detroit was one of those times. What we saw was a room full of people ready to fight. Actually, most in the crowd have been engaged in the good fight…
Songs in the key of Kanye
It’s 9 p.m. on a Monday, and it’s damn cold outside the Garden Bowl in midtown Detroit. Inside, a few tables see punk rock types nurse beers and chew pizza slices. A larger group of adults and children wraps up a family dinner on pushed together tables, which are strewn with kids’ toys. Sports on…
Bloody hands
By day, Dr. Jamie Hall practices medicine at the Herman Kiefer Clinic in Detroit. As evening descends he’s MD2020, frontman for "bootycore originators" HafLife. Like Rob Zombie, Hall obsessions include B-movies, comic books, hot-rods and chicks, and his blood-and-gasoline-splattered lyrics reflect this with unrestrained glee. The "punk rock doctor" freely admits that he likes to…
Cheat Code
Top Spin 4 2K Sports I think all games have their positives and negatives, but the 2K franchise never impressed me with its visuals. So when I started up Top Spin 4, the character models far exceeded my expectations. You spend a lot of time here playing one-on-one with a CPU or a friend. With…
Grace Boggs, Detroit and the next revolution
Grace Lee Boggs says she would like the chapter titles of her new book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, written with Scott Kurashige, to become buzzwords for progressive activists. So I imagine "Detroit, Place and Space to Begin Anew" or "We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Looking For" on T-shirts,…
There’s something about Harry
Since the dawn of recorded TV time — that is, the days of I Love Lucy and The Steve Allen Show — quirky, kooky, distinctive characters have propelled successful prime-time series. While Vivian Vance still is regarded as one of history’s greatest second bananas and William Frawley cracked his share of wise as Fred Mertz,…
What the numbers mean
Nobody knows when Detroit will bottom out, though the census figures last week indicate things are even worse than we thought. Nobody knows how bleak things will get, in terms of poverty or population flight or urban devastation. Nor do we know what the worst-case scenario will look like when it arrives. Will Detroit eventually…
Lucinda Williams – Blessed
Lucinda Williams – Blessed Lost Highway/Mercury A shame the mainstream mostly knows Lucinda Williams via 1998’s Grammy-winning Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, if they know her at all, because her tenth studio release, co-produced by Don Was, is yet another in a decade-plus chain of equally great Americana albums. Kicking off with the pop-bluesy…
J Mascis – Several Shades of Why
J Mascis – Several Shades of Why Sup Pop J Mascis is the world’s loudest introvert. As his Dinosaur Jr. career attests, there are few frontmen who can sound so painfully confessional at such a painfully deafening volume — and here, on his first proper solo record, the feedback is gone and the feelings are…
Letters to the Editor
Recall time Re: Jack Lessenberry’s March 23 column, "Screwing the future," I am a retired school teacher concerned about all of the aspects of Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget, especially how schools are impacted. Citizens are rightly angry about being abused by this legislation, about the poor being short-changed, about schools suffering millions in cutbacks…
Certified Copy
Certified Copy GRADE: C Certified Copy is a long feature-length rumination on the blurry borders of memory and reality, of artistic authenticity vs. skilled emulation, and, form following function, it approximates an all-consuming cinematic experience without bothering to ever really engage the heart along with the mind. The ever-exquisite Juliette Binoche plays Elle, a French…
Lennon smoked too
The War on Drugs was still just a twinkle in Richard M. Nixon’s evil eye when the great John Lennon released his classic recording called "Imagine." That was in 1971, and Nixon launched his horribly misconceived attack on recreational drug users the following year as part of the re-election campaign headed by the aptly named…
The Strokes – Angles
The Strokes – Angles RCA The cynic surveying the fourth album by one-time NYC mavericks the Strokes will find plenty to carp about. There’s the garish cover design, halfway between a Cars LP and an Atari 2600 cartridge; the first single, "Under Cover of Darkness," an appeal at throwback glory for a band already generating…
Foul-mouthed beauty
A long and lovely brunette who looks more like a model than a court jester, Whitney Cummings is a pretty face with a very dirty mouth. She’s been touring the circuit for several years but has recently become white hot, based on her work on E!’s Chelsea Latley and her outrageous appearances on Comedy Central’s…
New Boog Brown Video — “U.P.S.”
Detroit via Atlanta emcee Boog Brown has a new music video out in support of her highly under-appreciated debut album Brown Study. We’ve hyped that album and the merits of her production partner, Apollo Brown, for awhile now and hopefully, with the release of this new music video more hip-hop fans will pay Boog Brown…
