Bust it like a bubble, pop pop pop.
Partyline: Color the world with riot grrls. (Credit: Daisy Lacy.) By this time Monday afternoon, “It’s Nice!” will have replaced “I’m Rick James, bitch!” as the most oversaturated American catchphrase since “Schwing!” But there are a few things you might do this weekend when you’re not waiting in line to see Borat. It’s kid-tastic pop…
Baseball, ruin or grey skies?
From our pals at Popbitch — via our long lost UK correspondent Shireen Liane — whose uncanny predictions and wonderful insights have always had a way of, um, coming clean. UK pop chart prediction for No. 1 next week: Fedde Le Grande “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit” Don’t ask us, ’cause we’ve haven’t a…
Insane Clown Sandwich Shop
Insane Clown Posse 10/31/06 State Theatre “FAMILY! FAMILY! FAMILY!” The chant rang off the draped plastic sheeting. It rose into the State Theatre balcony, rode the chaotic, root beer and rock ‘n’ rye-smelling air down to the restrooms, and drifted out into the theater’s teeming smoking section. “Family! Family! Family!” — and the juggalos gave…
Pathe’s path
Jazz musician Pathe Jassi is one of Detroit’s best-kept secrets. Before moving to the United States three years ago, Jassi spent half of his career playing and recording alongside legendary West African singers Youssou N’Dour of Senegal and Cheikh Lo of Burkina Faso. He’s known among jazz musicians for his rare ability to combine hard…
Joy in the morning
The fragrance of cinnamon fills the air as patrons patiently await Sunday brunch. Long past noon, customers are asking for coffee refills as they mop up the last of their “International Scrambles” or “Breakfast of Champions.” Diners at Berkley’s Breakfast Café [as Berkley Bistro was known when this review came out] have clearly decided to…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 1 All-Fiber Art Show ART Often, fibers — whether natural or synthetic — are taken for granted. Sure, people notice the clothes, carpets and macramé plant hangers they form, but they don’t really see the full possibilities of the medium. Fiber artists seek to change that: Whether working in two or three dimensions,…
God on our side
With his wispy silver hair and soft features, Father Oliver O’Grady looks like a mild, grandfatherly man of god. Yet beneath his honeyed tones and pleasant smile, lies a coldly manipulative monster — one of the most prolific sexual predators in modern history. His crimes spanned two decades in the California clergy, where he systematically…
Devil may care
For a month now, 100 bright blue signs looming over boulevards and service drives in Detroit have become even more ubiquitous than Faygo’s “313” billboard campaign. The ads are glaring pieces of propaganda urging voters to consider a conservative choice in the upcoming gubernatorial election: “DeVos for Governor: Enough is Enough: Vote for Change.” But…
Catch a Fire
The film’s setting is early-1980’s South Africa, when Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress is gaining a foothold in the country through an often violent, underground resistance. Blithely unconcerned with politics is Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke), an oil-refinery worker. When he plays hooky one day to take his boys’ soccer team to a match, Patrick’s little…
Dreams come true
Ypsilanti’s Dreamland Theater is constantly evolving. Billed as “a small theater, gallery and curiosity shop,” it’s an art space where seemingly incongruous creative elements can get together and mingle. In November alone, the theater will host two separate art exhibitions, puppet shows, comedy and music ranging from folk to lounge rock to electronica. Dreamland’s eclectic…
Conversations with God
Author Neale Donald Walsch has claimed to be a conduit for the voice of god, humbly translating the infinite mysteries of the almighty into easy to digest platitudes suitable for use in a desktop calendar. With the film version, director Stephen Simon has translated Walsch’s mega-selling book into a tepid, insufferable feature suitable for basic…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 Poems of simple pleasure, poems of quiet celebration, well, they aren’t anything like those poems we were asked to wrestle with in high school, our teachers insisting that we get a headlock on the meaning. This one by Dale Ritterbusch of Wisconsin is more…
Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs dark sense of humor about his dysfunctional childhood has made his tale popular, enjoying 2 1/2 years as a New York Times bestseller. If the film (directed by Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy) doesn’t successfully tap into those same veins of humor and horror, it’s not for lack of material. In fact, there’s almost…
Tune in, drop out
The 2006 TV season hits the quarter pole this week with the November ratings sweeps battle — although the way shows are launched, yanked and shuffled around prime-time schedules these days, the term “fall season” has become mostly ceremonial. The new Taye Diggs series Daybreak, kind of a Groundhog Day meets 24, doesn’t premiere on…
Head Cheese
Erudite pop for white guys? That’s part of it. But Joe Pernice’s intimate tales of woe, booze and love have sustained their greatness through Scud Mountain Boys, solo records and the Pernice Brothers, his current band. The new Live a Little blends lush arrangements and a sturdy ’70s pop with turns of lyric like “She’s…
Death of A President
Range’s faux documentary traces the 2007 assassination of George W. Bush. Using doctored news footage, CGI effects, talking-head interviews and dramatically staged scenes, this What If account convincingly mimics the style and conventions of most investigative documentaries. Ultimately, however, fails to tell a compelling or insightful story. Simply put, Death of a President isn’t as…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When I was in my 20s, I refused to work for a living because I wanted to live for a living. As a result, I got an extended opportunity to perfect the art of cheerful poverty. One winter, while staying in a ramshackle cottage in North Carolina, my cash reserves got…
Peace of mind
For 19 years, the Cranbrook Peace Foundation has presented an annual award to someone of renown who’s been a “personal witness to peace.” Past recipients recognized by the group include economist John Kenneth Galbraith, South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu and folk singer Pete Seeger. Joining those and other luminaries this year is Howard Zinn, a…
Jane Says
In this, his fifth full-length book, Norman Lock paints the portrait of a lonely everywoman, a plain Jane who spends days pushing a mop and nights drinking tea, sitting her sadness on her elbow “by the window looking out. Out, where all is hurrying over the rainy streets.” Lock paints the portrait of an “old…
Taking the pain out of a big problem
Q: I’m a 24-year-old male with a 28-year-old girlfriend. We’ve been together for a year and I love her with all my heart. We get along, she makes me laugh, and she even plays video games with me. How awesome is that? But our sex life is less than great. I know there are guys…
Whale of a time
In an essay at Interspecies.com, author David Rothenberg touches on millennia of human-to-animal communication through music. From ancient petroglyphs that seem to show humans conversing with whales to Indonesian gamelan performances that leave insects singing in synchrony, from old English recorder tunes written for starlings to jazz musician Paul Winter playing sax to wolf howls,…
National breakout
Like most groups influenced by Radiohead, the Silent Years try to make atmosphere another instrument. The liners for the Detroit-area quartet’s full-length debut note six, 10 and 14 instruments for each member — things like shruti boxes and space echo appearing alongside the usual complement of guitars, bass, drums and keys. But while Radiohead often…
Kill or be killed
So this is the human condition in our new century: We are more wired than ever before, but — in ways that count the most — we are profoundly disconnected. This state of affairs was hammered home during Hurricane Katrina. Riveted to the screen, we watched in horror as bodies piled up near the convention…
Motor City Rides
Aran Ruth comes of a year of straphanging with new wheels.
Artist in Residence
There’s no sound too minute or unusual for Jason Moran to transform into music. It could be the squeaking of a door hinge, a kid rolling a toy car across a floor or two people having a casual conversation. The pianist simply improvises around those sounds, and the result is some really extraordinary music. Moran…
The new African-Americans
Kehinde Ayeni is working as the medical director of a Detroit community mental health center, writing books and running a nonprofit agency to raise money to educate children in her home country of Nigeria. Mulugetta Birru was recruited to direct the nonprofit Wayne County Economic Development Corp., where he hopes to foster widespread revitalization and…
Letters to the Editor
Appalled by Satan Re: “The kinder, gentler Satanist” (Metro Times, Oct. 25), I’m appalled that you would write about such garbage! Satan is very much alive and enjoys people like you speaking about him in a deceptive way. These individuals who you wrote about are going to hell in a hand basket. People are deceived…
Primordial Domination
Within the cesspool of loud riffs and caveman grunts that make up death metal, there aren’t many bands giving thought to forward-looking music. Incantation, after 16 years of headbanging, hasn’t created an album with new ideas since their underground club-slumming days. Still incoherently bashing Christ? Check. Still recycling muddy, down-tuned, blown-out guitar structures? Check. There’s…
The white African-Americans
Greta Lawrence sometimes introduces herself as an African-American. She was born near Johannesburg 60 years ago. She left home as a teenager to travel Europe and work in London. She later took a job in Canada. A transfer brought her here where she met and married a native Detroiter and took U.S. citizenship. She now…
Hit and miss
Memo about police problems ignored, but how ’bout them Tigers?
3.5MB Pop Shots
In a Fergalicious world, it’s good to know JoJo will always be around to save us. She’s a multilateral threat, a child actress turned millennial-gen terror who now both sings and acts. She conducts interviews with the unflappable aplomb of Tony Snow; she even tries to rap sometimes. “Too Little Too Late,” her current Hot…
Reasons enough to go to the polls
Political columnists normally don’t endorse candidates. Not formally, anyway. They prefer to stand delicately above the fray, and say something like “to be sure, judicial candidate Pimple Prick has never actually studied law and is, in fact, illiterate, while his opponent, Benjamin Cardozo, was selected by the bar review as the best state Supreme Court…
Strike two
Detroit’s dailies snooze while national magazine breaks local story.
Hood star
A spectacle took place last week in downtown Detroit. About 120 men, representatives of local indie record labels, marched through the streets to reaffirm the sense of unity that Detroit hip hop lost quite some time ago. And it was led by an artist named Al Nuke. The men chose Nuke (real name Curtis Franklin)…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Backslash
Dead links — Stop stuffing your face with Halloween candy, fatty: There are far more interesting and culturally enlightening things to be doing today, which is Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead. Every Nov. 1-2, people all over Mexico celebrate by donning skull masks, eating sugar skulls and…
Going to pot
Readers respond to advice on using pot to improve sex I loved your advice to PROP. I am a 25-year-old woman with a healthy sex life, thanks to pot. I have a hard time relaxing and being comfortable with my naked body (although I’m attractive), but smoking weed alleviates my anxiety so I can get…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Brothers and sisters! Brothers and sisters! Why are we MB93? Come on! Blood Brothers — Young Machetes (V2) :: Remember the end of “Draw the Line” when Steve Tyler jibber-jabbers out the lyrics in one big indecipherable scream stream like he had a big 10-inch toy in his attic? Well, that’s what this entire album…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Schools that keep sight of the Motherland
During the last 15 years, one of the more important movements to establish a greater link between African-American children and the continent of their heritage has been African-centered schools. The schools are among a group of similarly minded Detroit institutions, from the Shrine of the Black Madonna (whose full name is Shrine of the Black…
Do look back
It’s the law of strawberry jam that says the further you spread something, the thinner it gets, and that’s a law easily applied to 98 percent of contemporary music. Lazy? Dismissive? Yeah, maybe. But, fuck, if one more middling indie or major-label artist is trotted across these desks and hailed as a cross between the…
