May 22-28, 2002
22 WED • FUN FOR ALL Blues Clues Live! — A stage spin-off of the educational "Blue’s Clues" television series, Blue’s Birthday Party at the Fox Theatre will be one of the most lovingly crafted and thoughtful theater events for preschoolers coming through Detroit all year. The lovable pup Blue and her sleuthy pal Steve…
Free To Do What?
“You can’t slap a little electric fiddle on the top of your pop and call it country,” Cindy Wolfe complained in a recent phone interview from her home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Technically, she’s wrong — Shania Twain does it every day. But the Tennessee Twin singer-songwriter and twin sis of Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe is…
See and be scene
Sometimes you gotta take your independent cinema where you can get it — even if that means suffering earfuls of interview footage with musicians sporting heavy accents in a brew ’n’ view environment. Sometimes the material is just too good to miss. Such is certainly the case with the Sound Unseen Road Trip film festival,…
Long Shot Novena
Eileen Rose is a card-carrying member of the American expat’s union. From working-class Boston, she emigrated to the UK nine years ago, first to rural Essex and then on to North London. As a result, she wears her Americana on her sleeve as only an expat can, her grievous angels still by her side. Sometimes…
Enon of the above
Enon — “none” backward; one letter removed from Enron; a city in Ohio; a rock band — but not another precious indie-pop band. Enon is a torchbearer for a time when rock ’n’ roll was a bit more stylistically slippery, when roots and influences converged and found multiple voices — even within the same band.…
Meat Puppets Live
Dateline: 1984, somewhere in the Amerindie underground. An unruly crowd of Mohawks and shave-heads stand en masse gawking at the trio that took the stage a few minutes ago. Clearly, someone has made a grievous booking error. Black Flag is supposed to play tonight, so what the fug is up with this hairy-ass guitar-bass duo…
‘God’s event’
That’s how Carol Marvin describes DEMF. Her detractors say it’s she who plays god….
Growing up and loving
A self-proclaimed shallow London bachelor (Hugh Grant) looking for only the most low-maintenance love available meets a 12-year-old boy (Nicholas Hoult) below the bottom rung of cliques at school. The script, based on a Nick Hornby book, steals the show with dialogue and a story line that’s both pop and universally timeless.
Conga lion
Juma Santos, prof in the loft below….
Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones
Once again, in a cineplex near you, George Lucas has laden his version of the Buck Rodgers serials with everything from classic adventure to mythic profundities, wrapping gorgeous digital imagery around his mythic story.
Coming in your sleep
Q: I am a 24-year-old woman and have been in a relationship with another woman for four years. For many years I have been having dreams which wake me up with an orgasm. Sometimes they’re not even sexual dreams. This happens up to three times a week and is becoming a problem with my lover.…
Pennies and pounds
Driving home from work last week, News Hits had its radio tuned to WDET-FM 101.9 when the voice of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick came booming through the speakers. He was addressing Detroit City Council, which had looked at all the coin gambling halls are raking in and decided the city needs to capture a bigger share…
The Importance of Being Earnest
Watching director Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play, one could easily think that it was the forerunner of the modern sitcom, with its abundance of one-liners and its twisty plot built on a series of deceptions — with Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Rupert Everett and Judi Dench.
Free will astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Harvard Eating Disorders Center says that 40 percent of all 9-year-olds don’t like the way they look. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders asserts that “Eating disorders among teens and younger children have reached epidemic levels.” It cites kids’ dissatisfaction with their physical appearance as the primary…
Brain-damaged policy
Like Ricky Ricardo in an episode of “I Love Lucy,” News Hits is slapping its collective forehead and muttering, “I-yi-yi-yi-yi.” What set us off is the new format the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently implemented for public hearings regarding permit applications sought by potential polluters. Before the change, citizens gathered to ask questions…
Red, white and … true?
The selling of Detroit garage rock….
Judge not
When the Wayne County League of Women Voters surveyed local judges to determine if big campaign donations affect judicial independence, more than two-thirds of the robed ones said the cash held no sway. However, when attorneys appearing before those judges were asked that same question, more than 80 percent of those surveyed said large donations…
The smell of trouble
Gay porn, habitual wanking and a rancid case of panty smelling.
Dazed and confused
Public officials say they’re mystified that residents living along two St. Clair Shores canals contaminated with PCBs are upset with them for not providing more information. “We’re making every attempt to provide as much info as possible,” Jim Augustyn, on-site project director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told News Hits. “So we’re a little…
Predatorial comment
32nd floor It’s the kind of thing you wish you could have dreams about, but don’t — standing at God-view hundreds of feet above the twisting disorganization of downtown streets, birds and cars below moving in sluggish patterns, the monuments of the city little more than chintzy replicas of themselves. On a Friday night, just…
Welcome to the bird house
Abandoned house of the week – 5/22/02
Serotonin meltdown
An adventure guide to DEMF-related madness….
Letters to the Editor
Passing grade Thank you, W. Kim Heron, for your insightful article, "The kiss, the wall & other true tales" (Metro Times, May 15-21). I read Mr. Sugrue’s book about a year ago, and its powerful detail of how white Detroiters and other elitists kept blacks from fully integrating into proper housing and employment gave me…
A huge, well-lighted place
Susanne Hilberry finds renewal in a bigger, brighter gallery….
A simple feast
New Seoul Garden serves both Japanese and Korean food. We ordered the barbecue combination special ($22 per person, minimum of two), which comes with a simple soup of beef broth with scallions and green seaweed, an appetizer of gyoza (dumplings filled with ground beef, then pan-fried) and shumai (steamed dumplings, stuffed with minced shrimp), as…
Sacred and profane
Sharon McPhail has this month shown signs that she may be growing into the kind of leader some have long thought she could be. Since she burst on the scene nine years ago, McPhail, now a City Councilwoman, has been one of Detroit’s most intriguing politicians. She was unquestionably highly intelligent, educated and charismatic. But…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Neighbors say the house at 12720 Joann St., near Gratiot and McNichols, has been abandoned for about five years. Closer investigation proved the house is the dwelling for a family of pigeons. “I’ve been all around, but this is the place I call home,” said the eldest fowl. “There’s plenty of rubbish to eat and…
Bombs away
A hands-on guide to the DEMF….
Dogtown & Z-Boys
The Z-Boys revolutionized their lives with a skateboard, carving and grinding their harsh LA landscape into a playground and work of art. Director Stacey Peralta was one of them. The look of his film is calculated rawness, a visual punk jazz of adrenaline and improvisation. But the visuals are just icing on the cake of…
DEMF schedule
Saturday, May 25 MAIN STAGE Noon — The Sundiata O.M Ex-Spear-Re-Essence (live) 1:30 p.m. — Electric Indigo 3:30 p.m. — Defiant Presents The People’s Movement (live) 5:30 p.m. — Mike Grant 8 p.m. — Mike Dearborn 11 p.m. — Juan Atkins MILLER GENUINE DRAFT DJ TOWER Noon — Jay Langa 2 p.m. — DJ Zapp…
The New Guy
Just another pathetic and weak skinny-white boy-searching-for-soul flick that you can squeeze a few hearty laughs out of, but nicely equipped with a triple-whip-it-all-night, funk-it-to-the-floor, out-the-door sound track that’ll have you dancing down the aisle.
Two beats in one
The Newtonian equation is never simple. Any encounter with the art of Gordon Newton is a project, one that entails architectural, philosophical and psychological dimensions. Newton’s 62 small mixed-media drawings hanging in the back room/gallery of Book Beat in Oak Park is the occasion for a meditation on the structure of the world, on the…
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Subject: New Wilco!! Dude — I know, I know, you’ve prolly heard all about it a million times. But the new Wilco’s really, really good. I can’t stop listening to it (even though I downloaded the songs months ago and already knew most of them by heart). It’s so unlike anything else I’ve heard recently.…
