Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I suggest you enlist the help of a Jewish Fairy Godmother. If you can’t find a good candidate in your own neighborhood, check out the feisty saint at www.yourjewishfairygodmother.com. Though I can’t vouch for her services, I like how she says she "combines a New Age soul with old world wisdom,…
Zeitgeist swan song
Is it an accident that the final theatrical production put on by the folks at the Zeitgeist Theatre is all about endings? Did the thought of staging Eugene Ionesco’s eerie and revelatory drama The Chairs seem a proper epitaph for a stage that has tangled with the experimental and absurdist outer edge of modern theater…
Detroit visions
There exists in Detroit a hidden world known only to its residents and the most curious wanderers. It’s a wild land, overgrown with brush and tall grass and wildflowers, with makeshift graveyards here and there for all sorts of refuse — toys, old cars, furniture, rusted industrial parts, objects discarded like so many houses on…
Dead reckoning
The family of Artimus D. Brassfield, a 22-year-old soldier from Flint killed in Iraq, will be in Detroit on May 8 to lead a march honoring the dead and protesting the war. The event begins at noon at the intersection of Vernor and Clark avenues in southwest Detroit. For information, phone 248-761-9042. Contact News Hits…
Diamonds in the rough
Detroiter Greg Johnson is something of an anomaly — an African-American kid from Detroit who’s going to play college baseball. Johnson caught the baseball bug when he first stepped up to the T-ball plate at age 4. Baseball became a part of his life. The fruits of 13 years of practice on damp spring afternoons…
Asshole
Come home, Kid Rock, all is forgiven. E-mail Jeffrey Morgan at [email protected].
Visit Ecuadorian coast via Detroit
Most chowhounds at one time or another fantasize about opening a restaurant, either because we think our cooking is so good that people will beat the doors down for the opportunity to get a table or because we have this romantic notion that we can hang out with our (paying) friends, enjoying the accolades they…
But the kids understand
The cramped cellar “green room” enjoys the dank stench of countless drunken midnights, fueled not only by the promise of avoiding the old 9-to-5, but plenty of beer and smokes, judging from the mountainous accumulation of empties and butts. Fading, peeling stickers layer walls like old-forest bark, and the WWII-era Salvation Army furnishings stink of…
Hail the King
First, a few confessions. At 47 years old, I’ve never before been to a Broadway show. That’s an embarrassing admission to make, but it must be noted so that you know from the outset that this reviewer’s frame of reference isn’t exactly broad. Second, the only reason this reviewer now dons a critic’s mantle is…
7″ pop shots
The Sirens “Chez Maximes”/”Glycerine Queen”/”Gudbuy T’ Jane” Wiped Out Records (French import) The Mystery Girls “Turned On, Tuning In”/”Everybody’s Talkin’”/”Killing Floor” Bancroft Records The Hard Lessons “Feedback Loop”/”Love Gone Cold” Hard Lessons Records The Tough and Lovely “Tough and Lovely”/”The Lover’s Curse” Spoonful Records The Tranzistors and Princess Dragon Mom “Free Electrizity”/”Free ’Lectricity” Young Soul…
Confession of error
Vidale McDowell received great news last week. McDowell’s attorney filed a brief with the Michigan Court of Appeals contending that, among other things, an erroneous decision by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Ulysses W. Boykin resulted in McDowell being wrongfully convicted of murdering Janice Williams. The appeal relied in large part on a recent U.S.…
Art on the run
Inside a stodgy, gray warehouse in Ypsilanti, a 70-foot mural explodes across the wall, blasting out swirls of color that splash onto the concrete floor. A stroll through the airy building reveals more signs of artistic prowess: paper lanterns suspended from the ceiling, a jarring partition built of aluminum and wood, and a curved projection…
N&D center
6 THU • MUSIC Peaches — Say what you want about her, but Peaches’ pervy punk/electroclash album Fatherfucker is one of the ballsiest pieces of music to come out in a long, long while. Her latest release, "Kick it," guest starring Iggy Pop, proudly waves flags from feminism to porn and if you don’t like…
The art of noise
It’s a fascinating quirk of public sentiment that the term “fine art” is rarely applied to those disciplines that use sound as their primary means of communication. We gladly give up that term for anyone sloshing paint or punching clay or welding I-beams into twisted landscapes. The product blasting out of subwoofers and oozing out…
One man’s noise…
All that noise in Hamtramck last week over the Islamic call to prayer got me to thinking. … More than a decade ago when I visited Egypt for a two-week tour, I could hear the Islamic call to prayer being broadcast throughout the day every day. The somewhat high-pitched, plaintive sound reminded me that I…
Helping Osama win the war
Though I am a fairly hard-boiled cynic, I found it hard to believe that the shocking photos were real. There was a young female soldier (Pvt. Lynndie England) laughing, thumbs-up, cigarette dangling from her mouth, and pointing at the penis of a young Iraqi man who was being forced to masturbate. There were naked men…
Witness stand
When Lisa Page Brooks was a youngster, her mother was bound and determined that Lisa and her sister would be singers. But Lisa wasn’t all that comfortable with her voice. It was much deeper than other girls her age. She’d try to sing soprano by warbling along with Tramaine Hawkins records to no avail. “I…
Vanilla wants the scoop
Q: I’m a relatively inexperienced 26-year-old young lady. I have basically spent the last four years celibate, in a dead-end relationship that I’m finally out of. Recently, I met a much older man, 41, who is extremely experienced and has had a history of being totally freaky (golden showers, porn, etc.). He’s got a pretty…
Distaff squall
Swedish band Arch Enemy’s assaultive 2002 album Wages of Sin begins as any earnest death metal album should — pretty, plaintive doomsday piano notes, building guitar noise, a bone-shattering riff, a music-major thesis arpeggio, drums that kick like an Al Capone movie. After the 90 seconds or so of pounding that opens “Enemy Within,” a…
Sights retooled
From the We Don’t Hear a Single Department: The Sights, certainly Detroit’s most ace, industry-fuck-you rock ’n’ roll band (why they aren’t slurping up International Bright Young Thing juice is beyond us) headed back to Jim Diamond’s studio recently to mix three additional songs for their just-completed, self-titled follow-up to 2002’s Got What We Want.…
School of rock
Until one year ago, the three members of the Hard Lessons were just faces in the crowd. Flashback to April 2003. Location: Michigan State University. The Hard Lessons (together for about a week) are about to play their first gig. It’s MSU’s annual Battle of the Bands. Even though the trio has rehearsed a grand…
Lunar Amour
How do we find ourselves in love? After sifting through the twisted wreckage of human hang-ups and emotions, the answer isn’t always pretty; sometimes it’s downright ugly. But the search to feed the flames of the heart is a guaranteed hoot through the mind’s eye of New York playwright (and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Moonstuck) John…
Something we said?
Thankfully, no. Just after the Metro Times reported on the plight of a historic downtown Detroit church and its struggle to preserve aging stained-glass windows, we learned that one of those windows had been stolen. Our collective heart sank at the thought that the report published on April 21 had inspired thieves to snatch the…
Nader’s evaders
If one didn’t know his history, one might think Ralph Nader looks more like a candidate for involuntary commitment than a candidate for president. He’s clearly a savant. But aspects of his mien include vaguely frightened, furtive eyes and the kind of pinched brow I’ve always assigned to serial meltdown artists. His voice has diminished,…
No surprise
What the hell was Wayne County Circuit Court Judge William J. Giovan thinking? In 2002, Giovan tossed out a lawsuit that Justine Maldonado had filed against her former employer, Ford Motor Co., and former supervisor, Daniel Bennett (“Judicial Tantrum,” Metro Times, August 28, 2002). Her lawsuit claims that Bennett sexually harassed her, and that Ford…
Snap out of it
Our pal Doug Martz phoned last week to alert News Hits to a front-page story in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Martz, chairman of the Macomb County Water Quality Board, thought we’d be interested to know that male snapping turtles in the Detroit River and other Great Lakes waterways are experiencing — let’s see, how…
Country Favorites
In 2000, a Metro Times review of these sometimes underappreciated hometown heroes observed, “Since 1988, the Volebeats have been reaching into the recesses of cultural memory to breathe new life into old ideas, building new expectations in the midst of cliché-heavy musical forms.” Indeed, drop the laser needle down randomly on a Volebeats rec and…
Letters to the Editor
Kudos for teen passion I just wanted to commend you for your detailed discussion on the topic of children and sex (“Student Unions,” Metro Times, April 28). It was an insightful, thought-provoking and candid report. I am confident it will generate some much-needed and healthy discussion among young people and, hopefully, their parents. Keep up…
Night and Day
6 THU • MUSIC Peaches — Say what you want about her, but Peaches’ pervy punk/electroclash album Fatherfucker is one of the ballsiest pieces of music to come out in a long, long while. Her latest release, “Kick it,” guest starring Iggy Pop, proudly waves flags from feminism to porn and if you don’t like…
Von Trapp Trip and a Healthy Goat
A goat, a nun and a pudgy man in a wrinkled suit. Nazis and wiener schnitzel and messenger boys. A substantial throng of homosexuals and old ladies and children under the age of 3. A small plastic flower and a two-inch square of floral print cloth. A formal invitation to the “Captain’s Ball” and a…
Eatin’ good on the East Side
The restaurant is quite small, aiding the neighborhood feel, with an exposed brick wall, green upholstery and shaded lamps in the dark wood booths. Chef and owner Brandon Kahlich is serving a short but varied menu, with cuisines from England to Thailand represented. Mostly American fare, but with excellent seafood. That includes the fish-and-chips, the…
Spin The Bottle: Tribute to Kiss
If you only download one comedy album this year, make sure it’s Spin The Bottle because this new Kiss tribute album is the kind of laff riot that money just can’t buy. Actually, the word “tribute” is a bit of a misnomer; each song herein is an exact clone of an original Kiss album track,…
Inches
The best thing about NYC-via-Rhode Island School of Design’s Les Savy Fav is that they pull no punches with their pretension. (See, just that geographical pedigree sets you up right there, eh?) And Inches, the quartet’s latest slab is the ultimate exercise in indie-rock nrrd pretense. See, it seems that in 1996, before the band…
Bows and Arrows
At times soft and inviting and others cold and indifferent, the Walkmen manage musical polarization. The nucleus of the band (the guitar-organ-drum trifecta of Paul Maroon, Walter Martin and Matt Barrick, respectively) show roots in mid-’90s anti-heroes Jonathan Fire*Eater, a band that should’ve been as over-exposed as the Strokes are now. While the urgency of…
The Return
In director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s elusive but well-crafted fable, his feature debut, two adolescent brothers are confronted with the presence of a father who has been absent for 12 years. The Return is an effective rendering of a child’s view of the grown-up world as something randomly menacing and ultimately mystifying. In Russian with subtitles.
Envy
What happens when you take a plot that revolves around crap, a great cast whose talents are squandered and the world’s worst sound track? The answer: Barry Levinson’s latest flop, Envy. Even Ben Stiller and Christopher Walken can’t save this film about a guy who invents a spray to make pet poop disappear and his…
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
This 1941 film was director Yasujiro Ozu’s first popular success and an early example of the sort of bittersweet generational conflict, the clash between the old order and modernism, that preoccupied the classic director. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is essential viewing for those enamored of Ozu’s singular style. In Japanese with English…
Laws of Attraction
Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan play divorce lawyers in this predictable romantic comedy with some interesting plot twists. Moore and Bronson share some on-screen chemistry, but the script is a flop and this one is ripe for cable.
