Swing and a miss
It seems the editorial staff at the Observer & Eccentric newspapers has started playing hardball during union contract negotiations. And by hardball, we mean softball. And by softball, we mean Wiffle Ball. And by Wiffle Ball, we mean no balls at all. OK, that’s too harsh. It’s not the lack of metaphorical balls as much…
Picking our fights
Everyone knows that Rosa Parks once refused to give her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white man, and that that simple action started a revolution as profound as anything that has ever occurred in this nation. That was almost half a century ago — Dec. 1, 1955. Schoolchildren in Detroit…
Toothless resolutions
Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel took a swipe at her colleagues last week, saying they have a habit of passing resolutions without properly studying the issues. Cockrel’s criticism came after she cast the lone vote against two resolutions, one declaring the council’s opposition to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s education reform plan, and another opposing a casino…
The Em-word
So Eminem gets tagged a racist. Are we surprised? This is the guy who put domestic violence into the Top 10, yes? Last week, The Source magazine, a monthly glossy widely regarded as the hip-hop bible, made public two tracks (allegedly recorded at least a decade ago) that find Em offering up racial slurs. Em…
The energy to oppose
Last week, the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group In Michigan (PIRGIM) sent out e-mails urging the state’s environmentalists to contact Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin and implore them to oppose the Bush administration’s energy bill. According to PIRGIM spokeswoman Megan Owens, the two Democratic senators were fence-sitting. The D.C. rumor mill had our senators…
Yoko’s train comes to DIA
When Yoko Ono first exhibited her art piece “Freight Train” — in Berlin on Oct. 1, 2000 — she expressed hope that the 21st century would bring better times to humanity than had the 20th. Almost four years in, it’s not looking so good. But no matter how futile world peace and justice for all…
Home for the holidays
Abandoned Shelter of the Week This festive white-and-green four-bedroom house is right for the coming holiday season. Although, the green trim of 15466 Lamphere is peeling, ASS thought it would be a nice holiday present for that pesky son who won’t move out of the house. According to city records, the property is valued at…
Paradise lost
The I-75 exit at Mack hardly looks like paradise, but until the 1960s it was just that, at least for some — the center of Detroit’s Paradise Valley, one of the pre-eminent hubs for African-American culture during the first half of the 20th century. Just two blocks away from what is now a drab stretch…
Rich and dumber
On my computer is the black-and-white world of a drunk Paris Hilton in full exhibitionist mode, QuickTiming across the screen in various stages of personal degradation. She’s very busy. Or at least she seems so, as she can’t even get off the cell phone long enough to respond to the ample plow of her pelvic…
Dead Heroes ride on
One of the first things you notice when talking with Kirk Morrison and Doug Etcher is the intense look of excitement in their eyes — especially when talking about the music that they both love, punk rock. “The Ramones and the Clash are really where all punk rock is rooted,” says Morrison, as we chat…
Try This
When you have a lantern-jawed puss that looks like Kevin Bacon in drag on a very bad day (see the back booklet photo) and you dress like a thrift-shop hooker shamelessly trolling in a Bavarian booze can on Melanie Griffith Appreciation Night (see the inner tray photo), then you’d better have a good voice to…
American imports: profit and loss
Von Bondies, Nov. 4 I love the 100 Club. It’s been a sweaty underground fleapit since 1928. It saw the cappuccinos and jazz, skiffle and punk. It could easily be turned into a Cavern Club-like museum of kitsch, but it’s still a sweatbox where your feet stick to the floor. Tonight, the 100 Club is…
Face To Face
In the 18th and 19th centuries, medical students robbed graves so they could practice surgery on someone who couldn’t complain if their operation got botched. In the 21st century, Eagle Records and John Lee Hooker’s daughter Zakiya are grave robbing to squeeze out a few more bucks from a rich blues legacy. The album will…
Sign me up!
Site: The Big Book of Sign Language Site Unseen is a new feature at www.metrotimes.com. It highlights any sites that provoke weird, enlightening, introspective, eerie or downright repugnant reactions. Happy thoughts also frequent the piece. If you have clicked on an amazing site and would like to share it with our readers, please email suggestions…
Jive turkeys and holiday jeer
Going out during the holidays can be dreadful. Everything’s a cliché (it seems cliché season and deer season intertwine), everyone you know becomes a nut-job stress machine, all the non-Detroit-Detroiters visit with inflated stories of their postcollegiate success, college kids gather like lemmings, the bars are nauseatingly packed, disingenuous banter abounds, and everyone starts talking…
My Life Without Me
The plot: A young, working-class mother of two is diagnosed with cancer and has two months to live. The movie: Anything but the predictable tearjerker it could have been. With Sarah Polley, Deborah Harry and Mark Ruffalo; produced by Pedro Almodovar and directed by his associate Isabel Coixet.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Three decades ago, outmoded concepts of God seemed ready for retirement. No thoughtful person could buy into the fossilized delusion that the Divine Intelligence resembled a stern, prudish old man inclined to favor some groups of humans over others. Since then we have regressed. Literalist interpretations of the Bible and Koran…
Cat in the Hat
Think Austin Powers in a cat suit. Think special-effects doo-dads. Think big. Think loud. Forget about the charm of the Dr. Seuss original. Not that the flick doesn’t get some things right, especially Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin as kids oscillating from trepidation to a sense of giddy adventure. With Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin and…
Not-so-good doctor
A few miles west of Ann Arbor, the town of Chelsea sits snuggled into the landscape with brick buildings and old-fashioned streetlights along its main drag. Even its industry seems picturesque, as the century-old Chelsea Milling Company — home of Jiffy mixes — greets passers-by with a giant blue-and-white corn cake box painted on the…
The Merchant of Four Seasons
A masterful bummer as directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a giant of the 1970s New German Cinema. Hans Hirscmuller plays an ex-cop reduced to fruit-peddling in a tale is so devoid of lightness as to be nearly comical.
Thorn of crowns
Top three reasons for starting a supergroup: 1) Collaborate with other known musicians for like-minded artistic pursuits. 2) Revive ailing careers with a time-tested publicity stunt. 3) Maximize the waning charm of aging rock stars over young girls. Matthew Sweet is quick to admit that the Thorns are about all three. “We have been trying…
Three’s no charm
A troubled cop’s tale is told through three feature-length film in styles from comedy to noir thriller. Separately uneven and even incoherent, taken as a whole this is an impressive achievement for French writer-director Lucas Belvaux.
20 years of underground
The lush ballroom of the Ramada Inn at Cass and Bagley was a glittering paradise for Detroit’s upper crust in the 1950s, hosting lavish social functions and Detroit’s venerable auto show. Today, the gleaming wooden dance floor is long gone, replaced by blackened concrete where a throng of black-clad revelers sway and stomp to pulsating…
Gothika
A taut, stylish, atmospheric funhouse ride with Robert Downey Jr., Charles Dutton, Penelope Cruz and Halle Berry as a no-nonsense psychiatrist being sucked into a horrible netherworld.
The left fights back
Drop a stone into a still pond and the water will ripple, concentric circles continuing to expand even as the rock disappears into the silt below. It is the same with a life well-lived. Touch people deeply with your passion and your spirit, create a legacy that others yearn to carry on, and the circles…
So Glad You Came
The Brothers Groove’s first disc, 2000’s Clamp It Down, was a funky assault on the reptilian brain. Bassist James Simonson’s kinetic plucking fibrillated the sternum while then-drummer Michael Caskey beat out a subliminal code that induced a zombie-link mantra: “Must dance … Must dance.” Savant keyboardist Chris Codish’s bouncing licks and clever, irreverent braying mainlined…
Meet the candidates
By the end of his second day at Camp Wellstone, Don Stechschulte is beginning to have doubts about running for office. It’s not that he is afraid of the commitment, although one trainer after another hammers home that a successful campaign requires a Herculean effort. The 25 people taking the candidate course heard Julie Matuzak,…
November 26-December 2, 2003
27 THU • FUN FOR ALL America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — There are two truths about Thanksgiving Day in Detroit. First, the Lions will play and probably lose; second, Woodward Avenue will be filled with the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Enjoyed by attendees and couch potatoes alike, this annual event (which is televised by WDIV…
D.A.M. baubles
The sport of shopping is a world unknown to me. Not being gay (or even metrosexual) or female, or particularly interested at looking at “things” for eight hours has always been a handicap this time of year. The only things I can successfully dawdle over are things that I want for myself: videotapes, books, fresh…
Letters to the Editor
More to the story In addition to what Michael Jackman reports in his piece about Borders in Ann Arbor (“Borders skirmish,” Metro Times, Nov. 19-25), readers should know that even if it’s not Borders’ policy to “debate negotiating points in the media,” management has no problem sending out a mass e-mail to its customers “explaining”…
Working points
Martyn Bouskila has been around the Detroit art scene for at least 20 years and yet, until now, not much of his work has been available for viewing. He’s had a somewhat mysterious career: Bouskila came to Cranbrook from London to get away from an ineffective conceptual art career that bordered on art terrorism. With…
Role reversal
Steve Wilson, veteran investigative reporter for WXYZ-TV Channel 7, put on quite a show a couple of weeks ago when he confronted Detroit’s top school official and accused him of failing to account for public funds. Wilson’s showdown with Dr. Kenneth Burnley occurred at Cobo Hall on Nov. 13. Burnley, the Detroit Public Schools’ CEO,…
S.U.N. shines hard; Blackman’s big guns
As a rapper with a conscience, S.U.N. — Scientific, Universal, Noncommercial — makes music at a time when MCs who seem to care about the world are easily typecast. Backpacker. Bohemian. Positive rapper. There is one title of which S.U.N. is particularly proud: Underground. At a ripened 34 — an age when most rappers are…
