Stop The Madness!
Hip-hop shop talk Are you sick of seeing hip hop reduced to disposable soundbites and cheap consumerist trappings and hocked to the kids of America for huge capitol gain? Sick of lowest-common-denominator tactics in pop hip hop that uphold the honor of a greedy fuck like Donald Trump, as if he’s something to be? Tired…
How the Sights spend their time
Dig this: The Sights present the Stedman Filbun Hour. It’s no wonder the new record isn’t done, eh?
Is he putting me on?
Q: This formerly frustrated wife, separated after eight years of marriage, is acting on the stuff I fantasized about while I was with my straight-laced husband. I’ve done the sex-friends thing and the sex-in-a-hotel-with-a-stranger-during-a-business-trip thing, but I have yet to do the one thing I’m most interested in: a threesome with two men. I have…
‘Impeach the president? Is that all?’
Panel discussion in downtown Detroit weighs impeachment options.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Who’s the black award-winning rock ‘n’ roll columnist that’s a quote machine to all the publicist chicks? You’re damn right. Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #121 just said: “Up yours, baby!” Gordon Davis — Shaft (Warner Bros.) :: Can you dig it? Geoff Berner with Diona Davies and Wayne Adams – The Wedding Dance Of The…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Grumpy about gas
Now here’s something that may be of interest whether you are gay, straight or only perpetually grumpy, like a certain columnist with whom I sleep. You may not have noticed this, but gasoline prices are at an all-time high. That’s not much of a burden in Detroit, where the gleaming subways and efficient light rail…
Wellness on Woodward
Wednesday night is the busiest night at the Goldengate. That’s because it’s fire night, and because it’s drumming night. A fire rages or smolders in the stone fireplace on the patio, while bring-your-own drummers hypnotize themselves and the neighbors with free-form wallops and throbs. The eatery serves a mostly vegan menu, with some dairy, but…
Beatific DIY
Thanks to the chainification of America (venti crapuccino to wash down that TGI O’Fuddruckers, anyone?), a typical shopping trip is more likely to involve corporate logos, mega stores and malls than privately owned boutiques. How fittingly cool, then, that one of metro Detroit’s last remaining — and certainly one of the most irreplaceable — independent…
Bisexual healing
Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics Jennifer Baumgardner Farrar, Straus and Giroux 256 pp; $24 "Cringing is often a sign of unfinished political business," according to feminist author Jennifer Baumgardner. She should know. Since 2002, Baumgardner has been spearheading the confessional "I had an abortion" campaign — most recently captured in the documentary film Speak Out:…
Black Christian hate
When I was in high school, a small group of football players would brag about going out on Friday nights to beat up fags. I didn’t hang with that crowd, and I don’t know what standard they used to ascertain who was a fag. In retrospect they probably couldn’t even tell who among our fellow…
Tio Bitar
The immediate reaction to this record is that the precision and musicianship of the players is damn-near detrimental. Most songs on Tio Bitar sound like a mathematical calculation of what exactly a Dungen song should be. And the precision … these guys play with jazz-like proficiency. Guitarist Reine Fiske could just as easily be spouting…
The sun shines out of our behinds
In art as in life, you never forget your first time. At least that’s how the saying goes. There are no doubt countless gay men who would be more than happy to forget their first times, filled as they often are with testosterone-induced grappling, awkward probing and the acidic tang of post-coital doubt and self-loathing.…
TURBO TEEN
Japan’s Boris has proved several times that they can bend the sound of their instruments to their will. The end result will always fry your mind. Sometimes it’s guitars spewing layers of violent feedback or its MC5-emulating garage rawk. But on Rainbow, Boris unplugs the distortion pedals and delves headfirst into late ’60s psychedelia. And…
Fabulous footlights
In downtown Ferndale, near the corner of Nine Mile Road and Woodward Avenue, it’s the 1980s all over again. Anne Archer appears out of the darkness, re-enacting a scene she once helped burn into the public consciousness: She’s walking toward a pot of water that’s on a rolling boil. The moment she realizes that it…
Don’t Look Back (1965 Tour Deluxe Edition)
When Dylan headed out on his 1965 tour of England, he was ascending a dizzying peak of creativity. He hadn’t yet gone electric on stage, and was a year from being famously branded a Judas. He had a physical beauty and musical irresistibility that brings to mind the Hindu Lord Krishna (whose own flute stylings…
Motor City Cribs
Bad Thoughts skinsman Sam Consiglio’s soon-to-be former digs.
Cowboy or cowgirl?
Gretchen Wilson’s third album does a whole mess of window shopping before the cheesecake queen of New Nashville cuts the shit and makes it simple: She sings, “I’ll show you what a mother I can be” with the rapier wit of a Jeff Foxworthy punch line. With its straightforward gait, said tune (titled “If You…
Letters to the Editor
Rooting from afar Even with a diametrically opposed political persuasion, I couldn’t help but be a bit moved by Jack’s column (“Fund education — or die,” Metro Times, May 16). He and I share a love for the city of Detroit and wish to see it prosperous again. I spent my entire childhood plus eight…
Juggernaut down
World’s End picks up where Dead Man’s Chest left off. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and their motley crew have teamed up with Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) to rescue Captain Jack (Johnny Depp) from Davy Jones’ Locker after being eaten by the Kraken. Why? Because East India…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Though one of the closest stars to our sun, Teegarden’s star was unknown to astronomers until 2003. Located in the constellation of Aries, it’s a red dwarf with relatively modest heat and luminosity, and moves very fast compared to other stars. Let’s make Teegarden’s star your metaphor of the month for…
Night and Day
Thursday • 31 Nunsensations! The Nunsense Vegas Review THEATER Nun puns are fun. Try, “they’re really nun the wiser!” Or, “they’ve got such bad habits!” How about, “What Nunsense!” Well, writer Dan Goggin already thought of that last one, and many more, in his 1985 off-Broadway hit of the same name. Since then, the profitable…
Waitress
Actor-turned-filmmaker Adrienne Shelly was murdered last fall in her apartment in Manhattan — the victim of a homicidal building worker with a grudge — but she leaves behind one modest, bittersweet reminder of her candy-coated tomboy sensibility. A fairly typical small-town Cinderella story — that is, if Cinderella were knocked up and baking pies in…
Rock’s “gayest” moments?
Long before Americans deigned to view homosexuality in anything but a deviant light, rock stars were blurring the sexual-preference issue with what we can now safely say wasn’t homosexuality or even bisexuality at all. Try an overindulged rock star with a nagging need to get in touch with his inner Gabor sister. They wore gayness…
A gay issue?
When Michigan’s second-parent adoption bill reached the House Judiciary Committee this session, Rep. Bettie Cook Scott admits she was “on the fence” about it and wasn’t sure how she’d vote. So the east side Detroit Democrat studied the measure that would permit two unmarried adults to each legally adopt a child. It would change the…
Paris,
Even the most Francophobic Yank will find something to enjoy in Paris, Je T’aime, a collage of cinematic flash fiction that caters more to an audience’s taste for sample platters than its hunger for French fare. Featuring 18 vignettes directed by such filmmaking luminaries as Gus Van Sant, the Coen Brothers, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven,…
A couple cooks
Bill and Shanny Apodaca can help you make it better.
And the AFA plays on
Right-wing group takes aim at gay-friendly companies.
Jin
With Jindabyne, Australian filmmaker Ray Lawrence (the excellent Lantana) has put all the focus a Raymond Carver story, So Much Water So Close to Home but broadened the scope of its masterfully written 25 pages. A melancholy study of a household fractured by guilt and depression, Jindabyne also examines how family, community and the media…
Queer essentials
The Hunger Warner Brothers Home Video Long before Madonna got a gal-pal and Cindy Crawford’s photo shoot heralded “lesbian chic,” Susan Sarandon took the Sapphic plunge with French siren Catherine Deneuve in Tony Scott’s first feature, 1983’s The Hunger. It’s hard to believe that Scott, best known for actioners Top Gun and Man on Fire,…
Statistically speaking
Numbers on AIDS and African-Americans require a careful look.
Dinosaur’s Jurassic Heart
Dinosaur Jr.’s new album — the first since 1989 with its original lineup — is appropriately named Beyond because it’s largely a transcendental affair. The trio of guitarist J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph have risen above years of angst and drama to prove there’s an intact group gestalt none of them have…
Proud plans
FRIDAY, JUNE 1 Pride Kick-Off Party at the Rainbow Room, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. SATURDAY, JUNE 2 Commitment Ceremony at Ferndale City Hall, 11 a.m. Pride Movie Event: A Four Letter Word at Royal Oak Main Art Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Official Pre-Pride Party at Backstreet, 10 p.m.-2 a.m. SUNDAY, JUNE 3 Third Annual Motor City Pride…
Bisexual healing
Cringing is often a sign of unfinished political business,” according to feminist author Jennifer Baumgardner. She should know. Since 2002, Baumgardner has been spearheading the confessional “I had an abortion” campaign — most recently captured in the documentary film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion (speakoutfilms.com) — and in her new book, Look Both Ways:…
From the vaults
One night, an airplane’s jet engine crashes into Donnie’s bedroom. The teen survives, however, because he’s sleepwalking, following a voice inside his head. That voice belongs to Frank, a nightmarish re-imagining of Harvey. Frank tells Donnie that the end of the world will occur in “28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.” As…
Dinosaur’s Jurassic Heart
Dinosaur Jr. Beyond Fat Possum Dinosaur Jr. Live in the Middle East (DVD) Image Entertainment Dinosaur Jr.’s new album — the first since 1989 with its original lineup — is appropriately named Beyond because it’s largely a transcendental affair. The trio of guitarist J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph have risen above years…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
‘It’s all about sex’
It’s hard to pin down a band like Beach House. The Baltimore dream pop duo is so ethereal, so gauzy — yet, they’re as musty as cobwebbed cake and Miss Havisham’s lace bodice in Great Expectations. Even the lyrics seem irrelevant on their self-titled debut album, released by D.C.’s Carpark Records in the fall of…
Doing us proud
This weekend tens of thousands of people from all over metro Detroit will throng Ferndale for Pride Fest, which has been celebrated, in one fashion or another, for 35 years in this area. It’s a notable anniversary, a measure of how a movement that numbered in the mere hundreds of activists nationwide in the early…
