Idle hands are the activist’s tools
Where in Detroit can a radical go to find communion with brethren, to get involved in anti-war, environmental and community-improvement campaigns, to read about fighting sexism, capitalism, globalization and the use of Great Lakes aquifers to produce costly bottled water or simply to support unions fighting privatization and layoffs in Detroit? Why, to the lower…
Blow the horn
Sinatra once sang that if you could make it in New York, he could make it anywhere. The old crooner thug probably never felt the bitter slap of freezing Detroit River winds, or personally hustled the pavement that connects myriad blocks of ominous abandonment, or suffered the hard knocks of a Detroit winter with empty…
In the ring
Sports culture is as diverse as it is divergent. NHL hopefuls, competitive cheerleaders and freestyle BMX-icans can prosper and fail in states of mutual obliviousness. Still, it’s odd that a sport like rodeo should be considered marginal. W.K. Stratton’s Chasing the Rodeo is a memoir wrapped as a string of profiles and a travel narrative…
Design opportunities
The University of Michigan has just announced plans for a Detroit Center to be situated on the ground floor of Orchestra Place on Woodward Avenue this coming fall. Though the center will house offices for a number of different U-M departments, including the schools of social work, art and design, and public health, the Taubman…
To be young, gifted and black
Flint-born writer Christopher Paul Curtis knows about hard work. After high school, he spent 13 years hanging doors on Buicks on the assembly line at General Motors’ Fisher Body Plant No. 1. Curtis took college classes at night, and wrote during breaks at work to get away from the noise. The writing helped him escape…
Skin deep
Writer-director Paul Haggis delivers a star-studded series of elaborate and intertwined vignettes that explore the impenetrable barriers of class and race which incite intolerance and rage. Eloquent, raw and poignant, the film manages to avoid overheated rhetoric and simple polemics. Instead it presents thrilling, scary and thought-provoking stories with dramatic gusto. Though far from perfect,…
Nobel art in Detroit
What does Detroit’s inner city have in common with a remote and semi-arid village in India, and the Nobel Peace Center in Norway? Internationally known environmental artist Marjetica Potrc. Last year Potrc won a Nobel Peace Center contest for her plan to build a system of windmills and greenery on the Nobel Center’s roof. But…
Hush up
The fight comes on first,” Hush says. The 32-year-old Detroit-bred emcee-producer born Dan Carlisle is sitting on his bed in a schmancy West Hollywood hotel suite right off the Sunset Strip this cool spring Sunday night in Los Angeles. It’s just after 9 p.m. and Hush and his road manager Big Snik are glued to…
The Eternal Present
Written and directed by Otto Buj of Windsor, this surreal film examines a young man named Tim who moves to an anonymous city and takes a job processing obituaries at a newspaper. When the people Tim encounter start disappearing, it becomes unclear whether the events are reality, or simply fabrications of Tim’s paranoia.
American Life in Poetry
Rhyme has a way of lightening the spirit of a poem, and in this instance, the plural, “spirits,” is the appropriate word choice. Lots of readers can relate to “Sober Song,” which originally appeared in North Dakota Quarterly. Barton Sutter is a Minnesota poet, essayist and fiction writer who has won awards in all three…
A foodie’s shortlist
Making some of my usual food stops the other day, it occurred to me that some of them, and others, may not be very well known to you, if at all. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Trusting that you will, check these out: Hambone’s This is a new discovery, and a…
House of Wax
Gore-hounds take note: This remake of the classic 1953 B-horror movie may be callous, clichéd and overlong, but once it hits its stride, it’s brutal and unrelenting. The half-dozen nubile teen actors in the cast — including 24’s Elisha Cuthbert and celebrity irritant Paris Hilton — go through the usual shock-flick routines, but it’s the…
Backslash
Something awesome — The Internet is brimming with humor and satire sites — but the thing is, not many of them are all that funny. Some of them are downright torturously bad, especially the ones that rely predominantly on submissions from John Q. Public. Listen, John, just because your mom or your co-worker laughed at…
Art Bar
Calling all critics — In any given newspaper in the United States and Europe a century ago, a reader could find more than a few articles devoted to art reviews on a daily basis. This is no longer the case, at least in this country. That’s why it’s surprising that Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y.,…
Ladies In Lavender
Except for its awful title, this period piece is a perfectly respectable film where little happens, but what happens is done very well. Filled with so many tasteful and expertly acted moments, one is inclined to overlook its complete lack of drama and conflict. A pair of aging sisters (Maggie Smith and Judi Dench) discovers…
Meet my needs or meet the door
Q: I’ve been in a relationship with a wonderful man for four months. He treats me better than anyone I’ve ever been with. (I’m 29.) The problem? I’m very adventurous sexually. I’m a freaky girl. I like to be spanked, choked, fisted and I’m into anal sex. He’s a straight-laced officer in the armed forces,…
Night and Day
Thursday • 12 Monkey Rampant COMEDY Don’t avert your eyes. Monkey Rampant Sketch Company’s latest production, Full Frontal Comedy, is not quite as salacious as it sounds. The theatrical slideshow features scathing comedy about pop culture through the lens of surrealism, but there will be no pubic hair or dangling genitalia to distract you. Doors…
Kingdom of Heaven
In his blood-spilling epic Kingdom of Heaven, director Ridley Scott does not do for the Crusades what he did for ancient Rome in his blood-spilling epic Gladiator. Where Gladiator was a gripping drama set inside a history lesson, Kingdom feels more like a history lesson that should have been a gripping drama, sacrificing good storytelling…
Urban renewal
It’s always important to admit when you’re wrong. Well, not wrong, really. It’s just that while spinning the Doves’ third full-length, Some Cities, I kept returning to the song “Snowden,” a ringing, nervous track that seemed to arise from an aching loss, a sore sweet spot that singer Jimi Goodwin couldn’t leave alone: “When is…
Web tangling
News Hits has been watching with interest the growing number of Web sites that have their sights set on Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. So far, we’ve found at least five places on the Web dedicated to helping drive the Kwamster out of office. One of them, DetroitUncovered.com, is a spin-off from the site firejerryo.com, created…
Jiminy Glick in La La Wood
Martin Short takes his Primetime Glick alter ego — celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick — to the Toronto International Film Festival for this uneven but occasionally rip-roaring comedy. Glick interviews celebrities with the insight and tact of a Barbara Walters’ special if the late Chris Farley were running the show. The plot is as inconsequential as…
Let him work it
Akil Dasan is not your usual reality TV star — he won’t fade into oblivion now that his show has aired. You can trust us on that one. Some may know Dasan from this past winter’s UPN reality spectacle, The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliot. The show featured 11 ambitious artists living together in…
Juan more time
Ever since a story about him appeared in this paper, News Hits has been a frequent visitor to the blog produced by University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole. The site (juancole.com) provides a comprehensive wrap-up of reports from a multinational array of news sources with analysis by Cole, who adds his analysis of events,…
The delights of the vine
Patrons can learn from knowledgeable waiters, and they can relax as much as their party’s designated-driver policy will allow. The wine list is eclectic, well balanced among vineyards around the globe. Most of the bottles are less than $40, and many are priced between $20 and $30. Vinotecca has a good list of cheeses and…
KEMPossible
It’s hard to tell when Kem Owens is agitated. He wears a good poker face, and keeps his cool most of the time. He pauses and thinks before answering questions. By the time he does, his answers usually come in measured tones that seem to conceal his emotions. But today he has good reason to…
Darth the rat
Elsewhere on this week’s reading list, we direct your attention to the SF Weekly (sfweekly.com), an alternative paper in San Francisco. The paper has produced an in-depth feature on the new publisher of the daily San Francisco Chronicle. He’s a guy named Frank Vega. Yes, that Frank Vega, formerly the head of Detroit Newspapers and…
Island girl
Iceland is a verdant land of lichen and laptops where Müm and other ümlaut-poppers make music from blips and gnomic fables. See Müm’s Finally We Are No One. Emiliana Torrini is different. She has Icelandic blood too. But her songs on this are as plainspoken as the record’s title. “Nothing Brings Me Down” and “Sunny…
Bucking for change
From the time he was born in a refugee camp 20 years ago, Carmel Salhi has been touched by the plight of Palestinians. Although he and his family moved to Dearborn from Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp when he was 3, the injustice he says is being done to Palestinians continues to be a central focus…
Hindsight
In Oakland County last week, all of the various school board candidates backed by the 20/20 political action committees went down in defeat. After seeing the four candidates they backed get rejected by voters, the PACs, which were the subject of a recent Metro Times story (“Double vision,” Metro Times, April 20), were attempting to…
Hearing is Believing: The Jack Nitzsche Story
There’s a craft that has all but disappeared from pop music these days — the craft of the arranger. Nowadays, the producer (or some other ProTools-mouse-clicker responsible for reassembling last year’s hit into the next hit) has usurped that task. Gone, largely, are the people who, using pen-and-ink, wrote notes on paper, orchestrating what Brian…
Recalling Detroit’s hit factory
A bunch of super-talented teens shooby-doo-wopping and shaking their tail feathers to great Motown hits? No, this isn’t some kind of “dancing to the oldies” night courtesy of 104.3 WOMC-FM. It’s Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre’s new show, Now That I Can Dance – Motown, 1962, and it looks back to the days when singers were…
House afire
This historic firehouse at 1405 Taylor on Detroit’s West Side has ironically become a fire causality itself. Built in 1900, the station that once housed Engine Co. 43 has been out of commission since the ’70s. While the sturdy brick walls are largely intact, the roof is completely gone — a result of recent fires,…
Dimmer.
Dimmer. is a gorgeous arc of restrained pop shaded with burnt sienna guitars and subtle wisps of percussion, strings and soft electronics. A Brit living in Chicago, Elkington got assists from some of the city’s finest for Dimmer. The record was recorded with ex-Coctails Barry Phipps and Mark Greenberg; Nathaniel Braddock (guitars; Ancient Greeks), Nick…
Flowerings
To welcome a Michigan spring and all the folly it induces, Revolution Gallery presents So Beautiful, a superficially decorative exhibition of botanical works that represent beauty but subversively deal with preconceived notions of reality. Participating artists Thomas Rapai and Leopold Foulem play with traditional artistic values, such as the idea of what constitutes “good” art,…
Proactive
Give a hoot — It’s that time of year again. And what time, you might ask, would that be? Silly you. It’s SmogFest time, of course. Put on by the Citizens Environmental Alliance, a group that bridges the Detroit River with members in Ontario and southeast Michigan, SmogFest is “an annual series of events, including…
Gimme Fiction
Progression was Spoon’s Britt Daniels’ middle name for nearly eight years. Intense Pixies-aping led Spoon to a cup of coffee as a major label pop-punk act, and that wound down to a succession of laughably good pop albums. That notion of versatility supplies Gimme Fiction’s only downside, as the progress train stopped at the band’s…
The Human touch
The Human Eye is in the Totally Awesome House, a two-story, wood-framed beacon for the weird, the pretty and the trustfundafarians on Ann Arbor’s North Side. Around a small kitchen pass cans of American beer, Canadian weed, filtered cigarettes and bottled water. Bearded dudes walk barefoot and refer, unsolicited, to Jesus and Buddha; stylish girls…
Letters to the Editor
Education: Voters don’t care Mr. Lessenberry: Your “Choosing Michigan’s future, for dummies” (Metro Times, May 4) article was very interesting. But the article fails to mention that Michigan (like many other states) is struggling financially in part from a lack of federal funding thanks to our president and his “say one thing, do another” policies.…
Movements: 14 Deep Funk Pearls
With everyone hopping the vintage funk compilation bandwagon of late, will the vaults eventually run dry? Not, apparently, as long as there are obscure 45s still languishing in thrift stores and the attics of the aging, oftentimes forgotten, musicians themselves. Tobias Kirmayer, who pulls triple duty as collector, DJ and indie label operator (Germany’s Tramp…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): For all I know, you may someday author a book called *How To Attract Your Very Own Millionaire Spirit Guide*. If you do, you will begin writing it during an astrological phase much like the one you’re in now. In fact, it could even be this week. You’re more aligned with…
Media Blackout
Jimmy, it’s strange how Clark always disappears every time MB32 shows up! • VCR (Side One Dummy) :: Casio camp music so homofied it makes Xiu Xiu sound like Ted Nugent. • Ted Nugent — Unpublished Interview Excerpt (1978) :: “What was I doing on Miami Vice playing a drug dealer? Acting. I’d’ve played a…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
What’s in a Title?
Contemporary Michigan Sculpture, curated by sculptor and arts activist Sergio De Giusti for the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, is a show with a stellar cast but a singularly misleading title. Gathered here are 10 well-seasoned area sculptors of a certain age who, overall, embody an aesthetic that might be described as tidy and compact. No…
Head Cheese
“We’re the heaviest band in Omaha — by weight,” says singer-guitarist Jake Bellows of Neva Dinova, probably the only band in Omaha not signed to Saddle Creek. Yet they’ve been making music for more than a dozen years. Many are great ballads about dysfunction and bad attitude, such as “I’ve Got A Feeling,” which finds…
The bums’ rush
The late Leo Derderian, one of the last great Detroit characters — and one of its softest touches — owned the fabled and nefarious Anchor Bar. It had several incarnations, its latest now on Fort between First Street and Cass Avenue, and run by Leo’s son, Vaughn. Before that, it was the only thing open…
Guys in dolls
Not to name names but some guy in heaven has been lobbying for a complete set of New York Dolls since 1972. Frustrated in His efforts to locate the elusive Arthur “Killer” Kane (who, it turns out, was praying to a Mormon God), He turned His attention to collecting Ramones until a Morrissey-instigated U.K. reunion…
A mother worth honoring
Every year on Mother’s Day, I’m tempted to ask my mother whether she really did send, as family legend has it, a telegram to the U.S. Supreme Court the day the justices decided that women had the right to an abortion. According to usually unreliable sources, she asked simply, “Is it retroactive?” Somehow I always…
Do the hustle
Bucking the Sarge is Christopher Paul Curtis’ third novel for young readers, and like his Newberry Medal-winning Bud, Not Buddy and the outstanding The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963, it deals primarily with what it’s like to grow up bright and black in Flint, Michigan. But unlike his previous books, the setting and cast…
