Apocalypse not right now
Lately, with all of the fear-mongering being thrown our way by government officials and media hacks, it’s easy to get life’s priorities confused. In that spirit, perhaps it’s time we focused on what we can readily control (i.e., our immediate mood and environment) before collapsing under the weight of the exponentially growing cesspool of doomsday…
Blowout 2003
Bootsey X and the Lovemasters By Brian Smith Matters of the beat. DJ Graffiti By Hobey Echlin Mix-tape maestro blasts the bling-bling. Firewerk By Sarah Klein Resurrecting industrial days of yore. Kate O’Hara By Chris Handyside The triumph of the oddball. Mysterious By Khary Kimani Turner The ways to be wicked. Paris the Black Fu…
It’s a beautiful day in the passenger seat
Last Thursday morning, my 13-year-old daughter, who listens to the radio as she’s getting ready for school, padded into my room, put a hand on my shoulder and shook me awake. “Dad,” she said. “I just heard. Mr. Rogers died.” It wasn’t that she had some special affinity born of watching the kiddie-show host when…
Days of wine and neurosis
Seven gunshots were fired into a fleeing burglary suspect right outside my door last night. I wake up every morning just baffled by the war, the world, shell-shocked by the ease with which I’ve been betrayed by my only love. Here, where life is now cheap, each day just bleeds into the next. It’s a…
Bucking the trend
First they came for the Arab-Americans, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Arab. Then they came for the Muslims, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muslim. Then they came for those who opposed the president’s perpetual war, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t want the neighbors to know.…
Kielbasa Kings
Blowout’s a sausage sock hop with the tunes of the Kielbasa Kings…
Pain means game
Samuel Beckett’s severely absurd Play and Rockabye at Matrix Theatre….
Tres petite Hamtramck Blowout fun
By far, the smallest venue for this year’s Hamtramck Blowout, Whiskey in the Jar is a hidden little joint, with an even more-hidden history. The bar is tiny, and plays host to a roundtable of neighborhood regulars. But it’s small in a different way; it takes on the feel of somebody’s cozy and warm living…
Salt shaker
Residents worry that mine’s detonations damage property….
Naan on Nine Mile
West Nine Mile in Ferndale has added Indian to the mix of cuisines that stretches from Woodward to Livernois and from Japan to Italy to Ethiopia. Star of India offers a classic Indian menu that includes, among other dishes, two delicious variations on korma, a creamy, yogurt-based sauce with a mild blend of spices punctuated…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “It was the biggest mistake I ever made, yet it was the best thing that ever happened to me." That’s how my Aries friend Ron referred to his relationship with his ex-girlfriend. He got involved with her for all the wrong reasons, he said, and they stayed together only because he…
Bootsey X and the Lovemasters
Matters of the beat….
Ass Cobra
Apocalypse Dudes Epitaph/Burning Heart Equal parts hirsute, head-banger-stoner fuh, neo-’70s biker rawk and walk-on-the-wild-side leather-boy punk, Sweden’s Turbonegro disbanded in ’98, just a few months before their masterpiece Apocalypse Dudes saw release (in this country, jointly issued by Sympathy and the late, great Man’s Ruin). Apparently the flamboyantly unhinged vocalist Hank Von Helvete needed to…
DJ Graffiti
Mix-tape maestro blasts the bling-bling….
Boondoggled scaffold
Whenever News Hits passes the Wayne County Building in downtown Detroit, we can’t help but wonder why the historic structure has been flanked with scaffolding since last summer. It’s not surprising that the place needs repair. The former courthouse, built at the end of the 19th century, has certainly seen better days. (Like when it…
Up the Bracket
The Libertines do not waste your time. The infectious racket of Up the Bracket does not waste your time. The Libs, in fact, are the very model of an economical pop machine working in the klieg lights of hype-bathing bands whose names start with “the.” It’s tempting enough to put the Libertines in the context…
The junk food of love
Q: I am a 28-year-old straight female with a great boyfriend. I want to share all my fucked-up fantasies with him — and I have, so far, except for one. I have these bizarre fantasies about him overindulging in really bad food and gaining weight. I am not a chubby chaser — if he got…
Frankly speaking
News Hits always appreciates honesty and that’s just what U.S. Rep Barney Frank, D-Mass., shared with us the other day. Just as a matter of fairness, he’s pushing for a constitutional amendment to open the presidency to otherwise eligible candidates who happen to be foreign-born naturalized citizens — after 20 years of citizenship, that is.…
Souls for sale?
Set amid the German occupation of France during World War II, Bertrand Tavernier’s 20th feature film focuses on the French film industry and how it managed not only to function but also to produce quality cinema — including a few bona fide classics — while under the thumb of Nazi control and censorship.
Paris the Black Fu
A randy futhermucker inspects the jiggle….
Old Glory daze
The cowboy running this country, with his either your with us or your agin’ us mentality, would like us to believe that it is somehow treasonous to oppose sending a spring bouquet of daisy cutters Iraq’s way. But there are voices of reason in the wilderness of American media. One belongs to journalist Bill Moyers,…
Love Liza
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a man grieving for his wife in ways that might seem extreme to the untrained eye, but which, according to the codices of life and love, make perfect sense. He’s asked to anchor every scene while his character descends deeper and deeper into a tragicomic abyss.
Snowflakes of time
Yow, does anybody need a little break from presidential egomania and threats of mass-produced death on a global scale? Had enough orange and yellow alerts to last you three lifetimes? Well, there are two intimate galleries at the University of Michigan Museum of Art that can reboot the international dial tone in your head and…
From bad to verse
The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners is sponsoring a poetry contest designed to let college-bound high school seniors express their vision for the Police Department’s relationship with the youth of this city. “Super Care Packages” containing supplies designed to assist students during their first year of college and valued at $500 will be awarded to…
Cradle 2 the Grave
Even if he occasionally misses a melodramatic or comic beat, director Andrzej Bartkowiak scores highest with his action set pieces that often verge on the awesome and occasionally leap into the impossible. It’s his direction and Jet Li and Mark Dacasco’s action that rock Cradle 2 the Grave.
The Odessa files
Odessa Harris has a voice that sounds like whispers through silk, yet you can still hear and feel every expression, word and phrase. It’s absolutely beautiful. Be forewarned, though — her voice is one that requires attention, and a real appreciation for mastery of craft. But regardless of her remarkable vocal abilities, the 67-year-old Harris…
From ASS to a sale
Neighborhood organizations are good things. They reduce crime, encourage beautification and bring people together. Even though this home, located at 11375 Evanston, falls just outside the bounds of the Evanston Block Club, a neighborhood organization that serves a group of houses just a few hundred feet away, it still has to rankle the neighborhood. The…
Literal warfare
Heard about the latest drinking game? You turn on CNN, set up a bottle of tequila, and take a long pull every time a talking head utters the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” After 10 minutes, everyone is under the table. Great news for binge drinkers, maybe, but those who remain conscious in front of…
Kate O’Hara
The triumph of the oddball….
Restoring the roar
The majestic 1925-era Lee Plaza building on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit is a once-grand residential hotel which still figures prominently in the west side skyline. Upon closer inspection, however, the 17-story art deco structure reveals a fate all too common in Detroit, with gaping holes where decorative sculptures and artifacts once graced its elegant…
Eat this!
In the past year, Americans have been awakened to the fact that obesity is becoming the No. 1 health problem in the country. Surgeon General David Satcher stated in 2001 that obesity had reached epidemic proportions (almost 60 percent of adults, as well as nearly 13 percent of children, were overweight or obese.) As of…
March 5-11, 2003
7 FRI • THEATER A Streetcar Named Desire — He coined one of the saddest phrases in modern literature: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Yes, Tennessee Williams knew all about inner torture, which is why his work remains as popular as when it premiered. Mental imbalance, dilution, sexual aberration and power…
Dubya’s imperial designs
The fact that America’s opening fusillade of 400 cruise missiles has not yet rained down on Baghdad is testament to the rise of a new global populism unlike anything seen before. In all corners of the globe, people are taking to the streets to demand that the United States and Great Britain hold their fire…
Mary Star of the Sea
Zwan’s debut is a great Modern Rock™ album. That is, if you like that sort of thing. And — if you haven’t experienced radio lately — that’s, let’s be clear, damning with faint praise. One would’ve hoped after dismissing his Smashing Pumpkins compatriots (except drummer Jimmy Chamberlin), and adding indie-rock stalwart David Pajo (Slint, Will…
Firewerk
Resurrecting industrial days of yore….
Letters to the Editor
Some restoration The Ilitch gang has been given a free ride in Detroit for too long, from the $8 million in public funds used to clean up the Fox to the barrel of public money they now expect to use to knock down the first in a handful of critical historic buildings they’ve managed to…
Guitar
They might have called it Not a Word on It, this all-instrumental compilation from Jimmy Thackery that includes three previously unreleased tracks as well as samples from his Blind Pig catalog. The powerhouse guitar slinger appeared at Ferndale’s Anti-Freeze Blues Festival in January and wowed the crowd with six-string pyrotechnics, all right — but what’s…
Mystery man
At the root of the Nation of Islam, a cipher and a controversy….
Eat this!
Parallel opinions prove that Americans are carelessly caught up in calories….
African Magic
Pianist and South African jazz icon Abdullah Ibrahim made a name for himself playing the jazz of his native Cape Town, a style that takes elements from the Cape’s diverse musical traditions — Zulu, Khoi-San, Malay, South Asian, European, and South African-style spirituals — and combines them to the beat of American jazz. On African…
Mysterious
The ways to be wicked….
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Neighborhood organizations are good things. They reduce crime, encourage beautification and bring people together. Even though this home, located at 11375 Evanston, falls just outside the bounds of the Evanston Block Club, a neighborhood organization that serves a group of houses just a few hundred feet away, it still has to rankle the neighborhood. The…
Bitter compassion
Imagine artists — singers, authors, painters — who bring an intense, delinquent mystique to their craft. For me, the ones whose character escapes explanation always come to mind. Cats like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Prince were the self-contained shadows lurking in the public pop of Andy Warhol and Michael Jackson. While the work of their contemporaries…
