Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I myself have not played the fantasy role-playing game Nox. From the review of it in Fortean Times, though, I surmise you might want to check it out. It could prepare you well for the coming week — maybe teach you a few tricks that would come in handy. The reviewer…
Hell-bent on show
Zacky Vengeance, guitarist for Avenged Sevenfold, understands “the rock.” “When you see a band, you want to see characters,” he says. These California-based, heavy-metal demons are hell-bent on getting America’s collective heads banged. Characters, these boys are. Picture those voted least likely to succeed in high school. They’re by the book: black-clad, tattooed rockers with…
Retrofitted
Vintage shopping is tricky. Some people relish the hunt, the possibility of discovering the impossibly perfect discontinued Hermes scarf in a sale bin. Others despise the sorting, frustrated by unpredictable selections and bad luck. The Bloomfield Hills Antique Jewelry and Vintage Apparel Show is a happy compromise. It offers vintage — but it’s presorted. More…
Call in the Guerrilla Girls!
Drum roll, please: Fateful Encounter has just been unveiled at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Curators have conferred this melodramatic title on the museum’s current special exhibit of more than 100 sculptures by late 19th-century French sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin. From now through Feb. 5, romance-hungry visitors from throughout the metro area can…
Sound logic
Watch out, mystery chick, Quintron would like to take a piece out of your Detroit ass. The last time the New Orleans-based musician — who performs with his wife, puppeteer and percussionist, Miss Pussycat — was in Detroit, he got into a fight with a stranger in the crowd. The man enjoys a good fight…
The deity’s advocate
Richard Thompson — the former Oakland County prosecutor who gained notoriety through his repeated efforts to put Jack Kevorkian behind bars — has taken up a new crusade. As head of the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Ann Arbor, Thompson is in a Pennsylvania courtroom defending a school district’s…
Arnold’s lane
John Arnold admits he’s got a few bad habits. Like a lot of musicians who cut their teeth in Detroit music, he drinks, smokes, talks shit, and has a penchant for the word “motherfucker.” The 33-year-old guitarist, producer and part-time DJ has spent enough time gigging in bars and seedy nightclubs in the last 15…
Bush’s Watergate
Now let’s have a brief reality check. George W. Bush is not, repeat not, going to be impeached. No way, no how. Not unless, as the old saying goes, they find him in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. Why? The biggest reason is that his party solidly controls both houses of…
Letters to the Editor
Kind to the odd Re: “Every day is Halloween” (Metro Times, Oct. 26), thank you for covering live-action role playing (LARP). I belly dance and I buy a lot of gypsy type stuff that also works for Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) stuff. I have friends in the SCA and have considered joining myself —…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Spliff n’ groove
Detroit’s dancehall and reggae scene can be hard to find if you don’t know where to look. With zero media attention and few venues — save Trenchtown and Tropical Hut, which play reggae consistently — a person could assume that Detroit lacks a dancehall community. To some, the absence of dependable reggae might not mean…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry All of us have known tyrants, perhaps at the office, on the playground or, as in this poem, within a family. Here Long Island poet Gloria g. Murray portrays an authoritarian mother and her domain. Perhaps you’ve felt the tension in a scene like this. In My Mother’s House every wall…
Wild, Wild Life
Derailroaded documents the life and times of Wild Man Fischer.
No sugar for overweight spouse
Q: I’ve been with my guy for almost eight years. He wants sex way more often than I do, but I don’t want it because I’m not attracted to his 80-pounds-overweight body. The one time I gently broke it to him why my libido was low, he acted really hurt and didn’t sleep with me…
Beauty in motion
Valeria Montes sends the clear message to her students: Flamenco is not easy. If you want to learn the dance, expect it to challenge you, to command your respect. Then expect it to transform you. Montes’ aura is strong; her students, young and old, are rapt and try their best to emulate her every move:…
Growing a garden
In summer at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mark di Suvero’s large “Scarlatti” sculpture sits in a spectacular field of wildflowers. In spring and fall, the rusty horizontal I-beams contrast with the tender buds of new life and the final blaze of color. During winter, the snow makes a pristine…
Head cheese
Bob Mould played Minneapolis a while ago, and, arriving a day early, caught Neil Young there. He recounted Young’s show later: “I was ready to yell, ‘Hey, Neil, are you gonna buy that guitar?’” Mould is better fit to comment than most. With Sugar and Hüsker Dü, he authored one of the most emulated guitar…
Poetry with purpose
There are poets, such as Emily Dickinson, who write to feed the beast of their internal universe. And then there are those other poets — such as Whitman, Neruda, Ginsberg, Pound, and more recently Sam Hamill and the whole Poets Against the War movement — who write driven by a purpose larger than the self.…
Backslash
H.P. Lovecraft’s legendary monster Cthulhu has inspired fear and disgust for generations. Therefore, it’s only appropriate that the beast has extended its reign of terror into the 21st century, via the Internet. In his short story The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft described the beast as “an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature” with “a…
Roasting the indies
Chris Gore sends up indie tropes with My Big Fat Independent Movie.
Metro Retro
19 years ago this week in Metro Times: Ron Williams talks to Wayne County Executive and Michigan gubernatorial candidate William Lucas about such key issues as teen pregnancies, Medicaid and unemployment. Lucas says a decrease in high-paying manufacturing jobs is inevitable, and that workers must accept positions in the service industry: “We are now in…
Presidential woes
Is ABC so inherently screwed up that it doesn’t know how to handle a hit show? These surely are salad days in the rejuvenation of Disney’s American Broadcasting Company. Its surprise super hit, Lost, won this year’s Emmy as the best drama on TV. Women across the country are gathering like rowdy football fans on…
About face
It’s no secret we live in a “me” culture — the brisk trade in self-help books, active participation in talk radio and reality TV, and the birth of the blogosphere are just a few examples of the claim-staking we do. But the obsession with individual identity goes back to the Romantics, who in the mid-1700s…
Opening the prose gates
Lynn Crawford has written a series of prose vignettes that began formally as sestinas, a poetic form that demands the writer make use of six primary and recurring words (riff on this six-word keyboard, this recursive pallet of words) so that music (so that paint itself) is made visible through what might be seen as…
Subversive laughs
If going to see a 258-year-old Italian comedy sounds boring, you haven’t seen commedia dell’arte. This robust physical comedy, considered the mother of modern slapstick, has more in common with Abbot & Costello than The Two Gentlemen from Verona. In it, masked actors must express their emotions through body language, mustering the madcap performances that…
A civil matter
The body of Rosa Parks, showered with encomiums, goes this week to its eternal rest after a life well lived. We saw the press explode in a celebration of that life, recounting Parks’ moment of courage when she “stood up by sitting down.” Or, more accurately, stayed seated. Or, more to the point, stayed seated…
7″ pop shots
A-Frames “Police 1000” b/w “Traction” S-S Records Culled from some of their first recording sessions nearly five years ago, this A-Frames single captures them in all of their danceable dissonant glory. The A-side — about a friend’s motorcycle — bops along merrily with a bass groove that could’ve been an ice cream truck ditty in…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 2 Wedding Crashers FILM Mainstream moviemaking has reached hideously pedestrian proportions. But a saving grace in this mélange of crappy cinema has been the Owen Wilson-Vince Vaughn-Will Ferrell comedy mill. This summer’s Wedding Crashers (starring Wilson and Vaughn) was not only a nice change of pace; it was side-splittingly hilarious. Have a cold…
In The Flesh
Adult. Thursday Oct. 27 Chapel Hill, N.C., Local 506 In an insane world, the sane are often deemed daft. So it is that when Adult. singer Nicola Kuperus greets the audience several songs into the trio’s 70-minute bump, grind and frappé, with an amusingly off-hand, “So these are the freaks,” the silence she’s met with…
Proactive
Food for thought — If you’ve ever wanted to participate in a food fight, this could be your chance. But dump those visions of Animal House. The national food drive dubbed “Food Fight” kicks off Nov. 6 and runs through Nov. 13. The whole thing was started in 1997 by students at the University of…
Tanked
Judging from the price on one of the gas pumps, which reads $17.10 for 13 gallons of super unleaded, it’s clear that this former Marathon station at the corner of Garfield and McDougall hasn’t peddled petrol for a while. Neighbor Yolanda Johnson says the station was a mainstay that eventually became a tire repair joint…
Ad nauseam
PAC denies involvement with controversial ‘lynching’ ad.
If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry
Marah’s David and Serge Bielanko belong to the city. They write tumbledown tales of drinks and dreams, about spending what you don’t have and discovering love under the glare of a bare lightbulb. Don’t say it. They acknowledge their debt to Springsteen. Even got him to guest on a record once. But their albums are…
Currie-ing disfavor
Potential for voter fraud found with absentee ballot loophole.
Sweetness and spice
Bombay distinguishes itself with the word “grille.” You can watch the process through a window in the dining room. Grilled items are prepared in tandoors, deep clay ovens heated by charcoal fires. Most Indian restaurants use gas, which is cheaper, but can’t produce the flavor of a charcoal fire. Seekh kabob — minced lamb cooked…
The real thing
Once again, the annual Detroit Docs film festival has accumulated an astounding collection of documentaries from around the globe, and is serving them all up in a weeklong celebration of nonfiction cinema. For a complete schedule of films and panels and talkback sessions, visit detroitdocs.org.
Capote
Director Bennett Miller’s smart and absorbing film offers a discerning character study of the author as a ruthlessly manipulative but insightful writer. Vain, dishonest, and, at times, surprisingly sincere, Capote is a fascinating figure — but far from likeable. Films about famous writers tend to be dull affairs, concerned more with personal melodrama than artistic…
The Squid and the Whale
Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s acidic, bitterly smart and profoundly funny portrait of divorce is both brutally honest and humane, an intimate, small-scale masterpiece. It’s Brooklyn in 1986, and the cozy Park Slope home of the Berkman family is about to implode under the weight of its own dysfunction. Baumbach seems to be tapping a deeply personal…
The Weather Man
Cage’s David Spritz is a guy whose only success is in front of a green screen delivering the weather. When not churning out annoying TV news catchphrases, his off-camera life finds him socially inept, never getting it right, never kicking Lucy’s football, his every step a misstep. Director Gore Verbinski, in an attempt to channel…
The Legend of Zorro
It’s been over seven years since the last Zorro film, but absence has not made the heart grow fonder. Yet Legend of Zorro, while overlong and more than a little cheesy, is better than its predecessor in most ways. It’s not witty, sexy or cool, but it is a lot of fun.
Prime
Prime is either a serious romantic comedy or a drama with comedic interludes; Uma Thurman is Rafi, a thirtysomething fashion photographer who eagerly pours out the messy details of her recent divorce to her therapist, Lisa (Meryl Streep). Both patient and analyst are excited by Rafi’s passionate fling with the soulful but much younger painter,…
Saw II
This twisted sequel offers up multiple head traumas, electrocution, some chemical poisoning, severe self-mutilation, flame broiled corpses, and a horrific hypodermic needle scene that will make you squirm in your seat. If Saw I was the low-budget cousin of Seven then Saw II is sort of like the half-witted love child of Silence of the…
G
Just the very notion of a hip-hop retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s glitzy Jazz Age tragedy The Great Gatsby is enough to raise the eyebrows. G could have been brilliantly groundbreaking — but it’s not. Fitzgerald is surely rolling in his grave.
Dwele’s baby batter
Dwele’s about to become the latest poster child for stream-of-consciousness black soul. Some Kinda… diverges from the soul singer’s debut, Subject. Where the first was an eclectic flex, this is a one-mood party that goes from soul to soul and back. You may want more of a rollercoaster ride emotionally, but don’t get mad. The…
Many Hawtins coming at ya
About 10 minutes into Transitions, you reach an initial point of surrender. You’ve been brought to this place via carefully constructed rises of blended sounds and rhythms, and further teased by melodic circles, all bathed in a thickening meshwork of digital goo. At this moment in the mix, Hawtin is stitching six tracks together, each…
I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise
Detroit homegirl Bettye LaVette scored a ’62 R&B hit (“My Man — He’s a Lovin’ Man”) with her first record at age 16. Despite sporadic R&B success and performing “Bubbling Brown Sugar” on Broadway, she never charted pop. Spotted on the blues-soul festival circuit, Anti- Records paired her with fellow Michigander Joe Henry, who produced…
Z
This Louisville quintet’s fourth and finest album is a defining moment for both the band and indie-rock. Shoegazers take notice: Jim James & Co. have created a masterpiece (which should see them escaping jam-band affiliations) that services its songs; this eclectic and fearless 10-song gem moves seamlessly from one feel to another. Compared to past…
Weekly fecal
Song-by-song responses to Exile on Main Street would’ve been a career dead end, but I’d rather be lapping up Guys Head Soup than guessing what Sheryl Crow album this is an answer to. It’s not the stinging Judas kiss to old fans that her last album was, but no miracle either. The once soul-baring Liz…
