BETTER ROCKIN’ THROUGH SCIENCE…
Frequent MT contributor and Wonder Twin Laura Witkowski is the brain behind this week’s “Science Rocks!” — an evening of live music, dancing and fun at the Detroit Science Center this Thursday, Nov. 19th, from 7 to 11 p.m. The special evening includes a screening of the Chrysler IMAX® Dome Theatre film, The Alps, with…
CAID NEEDS A CURATOR, TAKE A SHOT AT IT
We got word this morning that the Contemporary Art Institue of Detroit will be holding a curator’s exhibition at its Ladybug Gallery in South-West Detroit on December18. Curators who participate will be considered to curate a larger exhibition at a later date based on their prototype exhibition displayed on the 18th. “Curators are invited to…
City Bird spreads its wings
For the last four years, brother-and-sister team Andy and Emily Linn have been marketing Detroit-themed odds and ends under the City Bird name. Anybody who has seen their colorful soaps or plates or glasses emblazoned with a classic Detroit map (sans freeways, natch) knows the disarming appeal of their various tchotchkes, which they’ve successfully marketed…
Acorn fights back
If you are like me, you probably don’t know what a “bill of attainder” is. At least I didn’t know until I began looking at the lawsuit the Center for Constitutional Rights just filed against the U.S. Government on behalf of the group Acorn. Turns out a bill of attainder refers to a legislative act…
WE CAME AS ROMANS CRACK THE BILLBOARD TOP 200
This week’s Metro Times cover dudes We Came As Romans charted impressively high on several Billboard charts this week with their debut full-length, To Plant A Seed. Among the most impressive, the band has claimed the No. 2 spot on the New Alternative Artist chart, No. 6 on the Heatseekers chart, and even cracked the…
ONIONS & TANGOS: STEFANI’S REVEALING TESTIMONY
Think of the events that led to Kwame Kilpatrick’s undoing as an onion whose layers are still being peeled away. Last month, during proceedings before the Attorney Disciplinary Board, attorney Mike Stefani, who represented former cops Gary Brown, Harold Nelthrope and Walt Harris in their whistleblower lawsuit, disclosed that he provided the Detroit Free Press’…
HOW BADLY IS MICHIGAN SCREWED? READ THIS!
Here’s something the Pew Center on the States does not say in its new report on troubled state economies: Michigan, once a world technological leader, will settle slowly into the ooze. We will become Mississippi with ice storms, or maybe Haiti without sugar cane. That was from a 2007 Politics and Prejudices column in Metro…
Don’t change the basic channel
In the mid-1990s, a band of Berlin outsiders, centered around the record store Hard Wax and studio Dubplates & Mastering, began reducing sonic pressure to pure grayscale essence. The labels Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, Main Street, Burial Mix and Rhythm & Sound tossed Detroit techno, Chicago house and roots dub beats in a compression chamber…
Locking him up
Q: I am a 30-year-old woman, married for five years to a man eight years my senior. Lately I have become more aware that I am turned on by the idea of bondage, specifically men locked up in chastity devices. I am ashamed of myself because it seems, well, pretty perverse and disturbed. My husband…
Carving a niche
While pub-like in atmosphere, the food is a bit more up-to-date. Expect tofu cracklings, French fries flavored with rosemary and truffle salt, and a butcher’s snack board of cured meats and more. There is no real entrée menu as such. A small list of daily specials are offered, such as broiled walleye and mushroom risotto.…
Motor City Cribs
Technically, Black Milk’s home is in Wixom. But if you factor out sleep, the prolific hip-hop producer and emcee practically lives in Tommy Hoffman’s Studio 1 in Livonia. About a stone’s throw from the roar of I-96, tucked in a nondescript cinderblock industrial park, Milk’s beat lab strikes a perfect balance between functionality and comfort.…
Night and Day
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 12 Brad Felt Nu Quartet Plus LITTLE AND BIG HORNS One of the sublime treats of Brad Felt’s new disc is "Explode the Modular," which juxtaposes Steve Wood’s spry soprano lines against the weight of Felt’s euphonium lines, in a sort of Laurel and-Hardy dance of the horns that echoes Steve Lacy (and…
Don’t call it a comeback
Eddie Baranek shouts suddenly from inside the house: "Did you read it?" He hops up from the couch, steps through the open door and points with his Miller beer to a pumpkin that’s presiding over the front yard from its elevated perch on the porch. The singer is freshly shaved and Paul Weller dapper in…
Wax museum
The Beatles Revolver — It has everything: songs, songs and songs. Stevie Wonder Talking Book — Got this cassette the summer I was 16 and instantly became humbled like the little white dorky dude I was. Compulsive Gamblers Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing — Real music played with energy by four guys in a room without…
Education’s last chance
Suddenly, there’s a chance to do something to prevent many of our state’s school districts from being utterly ruined this year. Last week, I wrote an open letter to the governor, criticizing her for, among other things, making massive cuts to the schools. Her cuts mean that every Michigan school district will have at least…
The Music Issue
When we first began discussion of this year’s music issue, the original idea was to do something like "the state of the union, 2009." A lot has changed over the course of a decade. It’s been almost that long since the White Stripes exploded out of Detroit and hit international superstardom. It’s been a time…
Letters to the Editor
Saving a city from developers Re: Your recent News Hit, "The Royal ‘E’" (Nov. 4), Election Day was a sad day for democracy in Royal Oak. A third-term mayor ran unopposed, and, depending upon the precinct, from a low of 5 percent to a high of 14 percent of registered voters exercised their right to…
Burn, baby, burn!
As a member of one of Michigan’s most storied hip-hop crews, Roland "Ro Spit" Coit, 30, has been working on music for nearly a decade. But within the past two years, Coit and business partner Rick Williams have also established Burn Rubber, the most reputable sneaker boutique in the state, with rap stars such as…
Soak it in
News Hits doesn’t usually run announcements about upcoming TV shows, but we’re making an exception this week because there’s an exceptional documentary set to make its U.S. broadcast debut on Detroit’s public television station. We’re talking about The Water Front, a deeply moving and incisive film by Liz Miller that documents the struggle of Highland…
Tread lightly
A history professor at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole’s notoriety as a scholar focusing on Islam was largely confined to academic circles until 2002, when he began writing his Informed Comment blog. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States, Cole’s significant insights…
Goliath cuts a deal
Two months ago Belva Davis looked at 125 or so neighbors, activists and others outside of her endangered house and said she felt like David against Goliath. Goliath, in this case, was the tag team of Wachovia Bank (which had written her subprime mortgage in 2003) and Ocwen Financial (the mortgage servicer), which was trying…
Duped
Imitation can be unabashed or slickly hid, either way it’s flattery. That’s tired. What’s more gripping than a solid rip-off (of idea or design) is some conceptual take on duplication, an approach concocted to bastardize the source to the point that it can’t be (easily) recognized. Make art. And make a point, sure, but —…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Couch Trip
Bad Lieutenant Lionsgate Call them what you want — 5-0, fuzz, pigs or po-po — but the police get a bad rap. It’s an honorable calling that gets little respect and comes with a built-in set of jokes — usually involving donuts. And don’t look to Hollywood to dispel any stereotypes. Most cops are either…
String theory
"Violins up!" says the teacher, and the kids put their instruments against their chins. Some fidgeting ensues, of course, because they’re all barely 10 years old, but after a count-in they begin their song. They start with a single note, climb higher together, then split off at the end into a short burst of harmony.…
Afghan Star
Entertaining and eye-opening, Marking showcases four Afghan Star finalists as they exhibit their incredible talents, navigate the rocky waters of newfound expression, and challenge both our and their own nation’s assumptions about cultural identity. Yes, much like American Idol, there are craven displays of hunger for fame and fortune (minus the entitled sense of narcissism),…
Food Stuff
Season’s eatings — Want your holiday feasts to be a bit more … healthful? Husband-wife team Gregg and Angela Newsom are hosting a special cooking class on how to prepare a vegan DIY holiday meal. Their special holiday menu will include an appetizer, a side, a main dish and a dessert. Don’t have a processed…
The Fourth Kind
Like a camp counselor telling tall tales to scare kids shitless, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi pulls the carnival hokum out right away with actress Milla Jovovich addressing the camera, insisting that we’re seeing re-enactments of actual events mixed with video footage of real documented cases. Supposedly Nome, Alaska, has been plagued with a series of mysterious…
Night moves
I count myself extremely fortunate to have been writing about television, and working in Los Angeles for long stretches, during the late ’80s. I got wind that comedian Arsenio Hall was grooming his own syndicated late-night series, and since no other folks of color were hosting anything close to that back then, I wangled a…
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol in 3-D computer animation? With Jim Carrey, no less? Oh, man, that’s gonna KILL on Blu-ray! And thus we have director Robert Zemekis (Polar Express, Beowolf) mustering all the pixels and motion-capture technology he can find to breathe life into a classic tale that, frankly, didn’t need to be retold. The result?…
Bowled over
Yes, it’s that time of year. We’re moving away from the lighter stews, consommés and gazpachos of summer and into the thicker, heartier chowders, bisques, gumbos and chilis of the colder months. When it comes to soups, the addition of starchy ingredients and an extra hour of simmering is sometimes all it takes to thicken…
Men Who Stare At Goats
Apparently emulating the Coen Brothers, Grant Heslov’s effort sports two Oscar-winners (George Clooney and Kevin Spacey) and two nominees (Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor) as well as ace cinematographer Roger Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton). Despite all that talent, this film is a shapeless and visually unimpressive dud that never delivers on the…
When in Rome …
To paraphrase something an old former carny-turned-rock manager once came up with as a marketing gimmick: 1.5 million We Came As Romans fans can’t be wrong, can they? Well, maybe not fans, per se, but that’s how many, plus change, “visitors” had listened to the relatively young band’s “Dreams” track on MySpace when the group…
The Box
A mostly happy young couple receives a package on the porch early one morning; inside is a small black box with a glass dome, which holds a large red button. That afternoon, a creepy older gentleman with severe facial burns (Frank Langella) turns up at their door with a proposition: If they press the button…
Ducks in a row
At the risk of under-complicating things, the music industry works like any other business: You create things that people want and then you let them buy them from you. In an era when the bloated infrastructure of the music industry as we have known it for the last 50 years is imploding — and as…
Coco Before Chanel
Tatou stars as Gabrielle Chanel, who was abandoned along with her sister as a child, and forced to scrabble their way through the gutters of turn-of-the-century France. As young ladies they got by warbling in saloons, including a tune called “Coco,” though Gabrielle never really mastered the personal graces of a hospitality girl. Somehow her…
IGGY & THE STOOGES REUNION ON YOUTUBE!
SPOILER ALERT!!! Some folks don’t want to hear what the setlist is going to be before they attend a concert and we can respect that. So if you’re one of those people, please read no further. For the rest of you, the recently reunited Iggy & the Stooges (with the legendary James Williamson back on…
SECOND LIVE CD TO BENEFIT A2’S MICHIGAN THEATER
Speaking of benefit stuff, Ann Arbor’s 107one radio station has just released Live From Studio A2, Volume Two, the second compilation CD of live, locally recorded performances by top national touring artists. The CD is available exclusively at Borders stores in Ann Arbor, Brighton, Canton and Novi, with the introductory price of $12.99. Music lovers…
ART VAN STORES RECRUIT MOTOWNERS TO FEED THE HUNGRY
So it’s getting to be that season again — peace, goodwill and even more drunk drivers on the road than usual. Seriously, though, November and December bring more local charity events than can be listed in one blog post — and one of the season’s first is already scheduled to take place tomorrow night, Wednesday,…
