A couple Dicks & a Dave
Last week I went to East Lansing, to see if Dick Cheney really does have horns and a tail. The vice president and first proconsul of our Great Patriotic Anti-Terrorism war was giving the commencement speech at Michigan State University; thanks to some fancy intelligence work, I had gotten myself invited to a private brunch…
Notable American Women
The title of this novel, Notable American Women, sounds like one of those encyclopedic works that stales on a library shelf without ever becoming obsolete or outdated. After all, once a person is considered notable, the mere passing of time cannot make her unnotable. This is one of the principles that makes history possible. One…
The kids are alright
The eager-faced kids are crowded to the front of the makeshift stage. Some stand on chairs a few rows back. Girls in Hot Topic garb and pre-faded hip-huggers snap bubble gum to the tempo of their hips. Boys with sculpted Sum 41 hair and bumpy complexions bounce heads in time. There are fleshy-faced dads wielding…
Water From a Bucket: A Diary 1948-1957
Poet, artist and editor Charles Henri Ford was born in 1908 in Hazlehurst, Miss., and now lives and works in New York City. In the 1930s he founded Blues, an experimental literary magazine and, with Parker Tyler, co-authored a classic of gay literature, The Young and the Evil. In the 1940s, Ford edited another publication,…
The price of Pinnacle
How Wayne County could lose prime property — and wind up with a $50 million bill.…
The Dirty Ones
Inhale. Hold it. Goooooaaaattt!! It’s kinda the only immediate, appropriate response to The Dirty Ones, the new, raging slab from San Francisco garage-heshers, Lost Goat. We’re not talking about rocket science, here. But if you were interested in rocket science, you prolly wouldn’t be reading about a band called Lost Goat. So here we are.…
Ground control
Wayne County Commission fights Engler and McNamara over unelected airport authority….
Cee-Lo Green & His Perfect Imperfections
As an MC in Atlanta’s gospel-cum-gangsta rap group Goodie Mob, Cee-Lo Green had one foot in the commercial rap world, with its thuggin’ boom and iced-out raps, and one in the not-quite-as-hip world of proclaiming his faith. On his solo debut, however, Cee-Lo fashions himself a hip-hop eccentric like his fellow Dungeon Family cohorts (and…
May 8-14, 2002
8 WED • MUSIC: Talib Kweli — Few hip-hop artists can match Talib Kweli’s socially conscious spiritually. The success of his early career was due in no small part to collaborations with Mos Def and DJ Hi-Tek, but what has always separated Kweli from the pack lies in his message. His 1998 release, Mos Def…
In The Afternoon
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of Chicago quartet L’altra. As with the album title itself, impermanent moods and emotional abstractions shift and refract while the sun’s rays focus, extend and wane over the course of a day. If that sounds precious, it’s not meant to be; rather, the 10 numbers comprising…
Reading the book of spectral projections
In preparation for Outrageous Cherry’s fifth album, bandleader Matthew Smith went out and bought each member both Nuggets box sets. This was actually a more efficient, less expensive strategy on Smith’s part than when in ’94 he treated the crew to rare vinyl by the Incredible String Band, Françoise Hardy, Scott Walker, the MC5, Brian…
Guitars, Guns and Gold
With so many rock and garage bands swinging from Detroit’s nut-sack these days, the city itself should be receiving royalty payments. And while a decent number of these bands claim all things Detroit as their roots, their soulless claim to some sort of authenticity misses the point of what really made Motor City’s musical bang…
Kwame, Kurt Vonnegut & Mom
Random ramblings, urban musings and a few insightful predictions on the Motor City.
Spider-man
Even with a great cast, director Sam Raimi’s adaptation is only adequate. Maybe having such a big budget and being able to afford so many computer effects (which aren’t so hot anyway) crippled his creativity — with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe.
Energy circus
News Hits is glad that city, state and federal cops swarmed the skies, waters and streets around the Renaissance Center last week. Why? Well, in addition to protecting us from the 50 peaceful protesters urging the Government of Eight representatives to implement renewable-energy policies and make other improvements to the world, someone could have laughed…
Pépé Le Moko
Julien Duvivier’s 1937 French gangster flick is a sumptuous wallow in melancholy machismo set against the backdrop of the Casbah. Its shadowy suggestiveness makes the film a minor classic, a seedy tone poem about foolish love and honorable death — with Jean Gabin.
MIA
News Hits can’t say for certain why John Nelson was AWOL when scheduled to appear before the Detroit City Council last week. But we suspect that it has something to do with the ongoing battle between the mayor’s office and council over the Housing Commission, which Nelson heads. Last year, when Dennis Archer was still…
Lola
French director Jacques Demy’s 1960 feature debut is graced by some Michel Legrand music and appealing natural-light cinematography by Raoul Coutard, but its charm is intermittent and its central character, as played by Anouk Aimée, a little annoying.
Online herpes hook-ups
• I wanted to share with you a Web site that has provided me the opportunity to date again without all the fretting and worries about “the talk” concerning my herpes that comes up inevitably when dating. The site is gotherpes.com. If you mention it in your column, then more people may join, perhaps finding…
Power of the press
News Hits would love to take credit for making state legislators reconsider a couple cockamamie laws passed last month. But the much-deserved praise goes to Oakland Press reporters John Wisely and Stephen W. Huber. Their stories — and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s threat to sue — prompted state legislators to reconsider two…
Triumph of Love
Like its main character, this film isn’t sure what it’s really trying to be. The script was adapted from an 18th century play by Marivaux (Le Triomphe de l’amour), but the writers forgot to release the shackles of the stage — with Mira Sorvino and Ben Kingsley.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): It’s not easy to distinguish rich clues from the misleading trivia. You’ll have to be a perceptive detective as well as a good listener. I’ve devised a test that will train your mind for the challenge. Of the following truths, only three can serve as metaphors to help you live a…
Red-tape nightmare
Things aren’t looking good — in more ways than one — for thousands of Detroit children with lead poisoning. Since 2000, City Council has allocated $5.5 million in federal money to remove hazards from homes with lead-sick children. To date, zero homes have been improved, and the money sits unspent, according to News Hits’ sources.…
Deuces Wild
The Deuces rule half of a Brooklyn neighborhood with a vow to protect their streets, especially from their heroin-peddling rivals, the Vipers. But director Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries) deals out a failed, ironic tragedy of revenge from a well-shuffled deck of melodramatic Hollywood clichés.
Nuts and bolts
As the front door opens, a bell jingles. The worn wood floor creaks with each customer’s footstep. An oily, metallic odor dominates M&M Hardware, a virtual paradise for the fix-it-yourself fool, on Detroit’s east side. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and a few loyal patrons wait their turn. An elderly woman has a plumbing question.…
Mystery home
Abandoned house of the week – 5/8/02
Hollywood Ending
It’s hard to imagine a more depressing waste of celluloid than Hollywood Ending. After a long career making some of the funniest, smartest movies in American history, Woody Allen finally seems to have hit the wall.
You call yourself straight?
Q: I’m a heterosexual male who wants to suck some cock. I don’t want anything else, just to suck someone else’s dick. I want this to be very discreet and absolutely safe. I don’t want anyone to know I did this; I also don’t want any diseases. Any suggestions? —Wannabe Cocksucker A: Like all straight…
Back to basics
Sometimes a return to fundamentals is a way of going forward. “Primary,” Maria Prainito’s show of new paintings at Detroit’s Tangent Gallery, makes a point of doing just that in more ways than one. The most obvious of Prainito’s strategies is her restricted palette — red, yellow, blue, white and black — in works that…
Letters to the Editor
Accident of birth Good articles on Detroit discs, however, I challenge the comment made about New York being too “haughty,” while at the same time including Madonna in your list of Detroit sounds (One girl’s material,” Metro Times, May 1-7). Madonna’s endeavor into music came a few years after moving to New York and eventually…
Way up North
There’s always an edge to our imagination where we’re on our own, where the facts of our concrete experience — what we’ve seen and touched — dissipate and we can only imagine or invent what’s possible. It’s a moment of raw and often embarrassing vulnerability. It’s a moment when we know who we really are…
In back of the real
Movements in art can often seem like excuses for inertia. Once an idea gets shared by enough minds — thus entering a kind of public domain — it often turns into a foregone conclusion, an effect to be reproduced, an aesthetic dead end. And the challenge to art’s long-distance runners has always been one of…
Ticket to rock
Monday, April 29, noon: The tickets and photo passes that were promised a month ago by Q magazine for their Detroitus Night with the White Stripes, Dirtbombs and the Von Bondies have failed to arrive. This show has been sold out for more than a month. I am beginning to worry. Monday, April 29, 9…
Heartbreak beat
Apoptygma Berzerk just wants to dance….
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
News Hits couldn’t resist calling attention to the haunting remains of this torched two-story that graces Grandy Street on Detroit’s east side. We would have attempted to track down the owner of the ramshackle shack, but to do that we would need the address, which appears to have disintegrated in a fire along with some…
