To shave and shave not
Q: As a physician, I see lots of naked bodies. For several years I’ve noticed that many straight patients (men and women) in their 20s have trimmed and/or coiffed pubic hair. A lot of the men tell me that their girlfriends prefer it that way; some have said, “It makes me feel cooler and cleaner.”…
Sunken row house
Abandoned Shelter of the Week If you’re looking for affordable housing, the Abandoned Structure Squad (aka ASS) has just the place for you. According to the city’s records, the row house at 2002 Mullane has a “true cash value” of $400. Sure, there was an itty-bitty fire a few months ago, causing the roof to…
Leave Luck to Heaven
Matthew Dear’s confident full-length debut of abstract techno-pop is a slow grabber. After your head gets an interesting (if not understated) wake-up call in the John Cage-like opener “Nervous Laughter (Intro),” Dear gradually marches deeper into mysterious territory, searching for more ambitious treasures. What he finds comes back at us as a series of jolts:…
Human nurture
Detroit native Delbert McCoy remembers life milestones very well. The day he met his first wife, Yvonne: a Saturday in August of 1965. The first time he met his current finance, Renée: a family reunion in June of 1992. The day his mother passed away: Aug. 19, 1988. The most vivid date in McCoy’s mind,…
Reel to real
Chris Walny just loves film. For years she vigilantly attended movie festivals all over North America, growing increasingly irritated that Detroit didn’t have one. The freelance film producer from Royal Oak finally decided to start one herself, using her own money and her own time. “There’s like 12 film festivals in Chicago. There’s no reason…
Must I Paint You a Picture: The Essential Billy Bragg
It’s commonly regarded as fact that in addition to beer bonging and skipping class, college is a time for sexual experimentation. I never got in on any orgies or made out with many boys, but my jackleg sexual voyage involved a socialist crust punk named Jeannie. Sure, it’s hardly scandal, but for a Midwestern-bred classical…
Lion’s heart
March 15, 2000: Emo’s. Austin, Texas (SXSW Music Conference) Ted Leo stands alone at center stage. In front of him an ocean of gossiping industry hacks and Lone Star-guzzling punks have jammed the venue to see the roster of bands on pop-punk stalwart Lookout!, a breeding-ground label for the Donnas, Operation Ivy and Green…
Shine a Light
If you’ve logged quality time listening to Fugazi, Girls Against Boys, Slint or Six Finger Satellite, you’re likely to dig this new disc by Toronto’s Constantines. Lyrically intelligent, well-played and sometimes musically inventive, about half the record is reminiscent of the abundance of bands in the late ’80s/early ’90s that traded in this kind of…
Lightfooting the mighty Edmund Fitzgerald
I had the chills, the shivers. It was the fall of ’82. Ten years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my cozy bedroom in suburban Northville when I got the mortality scared into me by a simple song. Sure I had already thrilled to the illicit dope of the Sex Pistols and giggled like…
Letters to the Editor
Support real progressives Lessenberry tries to remind us that Kucinich “can’t win.” Well, if he can’t win, it’s only because progressives in America have been so bullied by the mass media they can’t even bring themselves to support a truly progressive candidate. Think about it: The only progressives running — Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun —…
Constantines
If you’ve logged quality time listening to Fugazi, Girls Against Boys, Slint or Six Finger Satellite, you’re likely to dig this new disc by Toronto’s Constantines. Lyrically intelligent, well-played and sometimes musically inventive, about half the record is reminiscent of the abundance of bands in the late ’80s/early ’90s that traded in this kind of stuff. Fans of…
Break!
We like to discover prodigies. When they rise, we are there, waiting for them. We marvel, cheer their talents and accomplishments, and live vicariously through them. They are regarded as proof of the American dream’s validity, these chosen ones. They emerge from some humble clay, somewhere, and use their gifts to build musical empires, like…
NRA Institute for Legislative Action
Site: National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies 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 to…
Your pad or mine?
Some dishes were good enough though not stellar, and others were not so hot — which is no indication of the fire levels. Medium will be hot enough for most. Most entrées can be ordered with chicken, beef, pork, tofu, shrimp, scallops or squid. The fried rice dishes are even more comfort-food-y than the Pad…
Exploiting immigrants
Trini Flores says she has helped illegal immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens or work in the country legally. But some in the legal community say Flores is anything but a friend to illegals. They claim she preys on vulnerable, hardworking people who don’t understand the system, speak little English and are loath to…
The melancholy ghost of Elliott Smith
My local fags-n-mags has been looking like a branch of the Detroit Chamber Of Commerce. Eminem’s giving me the eye from the cover of Bang! a rocking new magazine that’s aimed right between Mojo’s ’60s dadrock fixation and NME’s high-speed photography designed to capture every flash in the pan. Jack and Meg once again grace…
A Woman Is a Woman
The main character is something of a bubblehead and the plot is a piece of fluff. The humor is ham-fisted and the whimsy is brittle. But this is Godard’s first wide-screen color film and the documentary-like shots of Paris are sumptuous. It’s a definite curio that’s worth making up your own mind about.
Ween between the lines
“We’re better than all those bands … and also, we write real songs,” testifies frog-throated Mickey Melchiondo in reference to the plethora of “jam bands” to which his popular rock ’n’ roll outfit, Ween, is constantly compared. From his hotel room in Burlington, Vt., Melchiondo takes a minute to discuss the inner-workings of Ween —…
Pieces of April
Amid the lackluster holiday cinematic fare, this indie flick offers a breath of realism and fresh air. The "Thanksgiving in downtown New York City" story — a neurotic comedy as poignant as it is hilarious — contemplates the emotional bond between family members.
Night & Day Center
7-8 FRI-SAT • MUSIC Frank Morgan — "There are no second acts in American lives," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in one all-American blooper. Just to talk jazz, a raft of names come to mind, including the late Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Teddy Edwards and the very-much-alive Frank Morgan. He’d come up through L.A.’s fabled Central…
Sylvia
Poet Sylvia Plath is least famous for her poetry, somewhat more famous for having written the novel The Bell Jar, and most famous for having committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Gwyneth Paltrow is pitch-perfect as Plath, deftly capturing the troubled golden girl’s mercurial moods in this new biopic.
Hail to the chief
Whether or not Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver decided to resign on his own isn’t important. What may be more interesting is why he decided to commit job suicide. Even Forrest Gump would have had enough brains not to put a loaded weapon in his airport luggage in our post-9/11 world. Excuses about policemen finding…
Marooned In Iraq
Filmed two years ago and set during the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Marooned In Iraq is a Kurdish-language road movie, an odd combination of absurdist humor and stark tragedy that evokes Samuel Beckett as much as it does the neorealist sensibility of its Iranian writer/director.
Power play
This month, Planet Ant Theatre presents a dramatic, entertaining and often very funny collection of four “learning plays” by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The plays strip away the realistic frills of conventional theater and concentrate on delivering a message. Audiences can expect to be confronted with “the writing on the wall,” which is literally chalked…
The Human Stain
This film’s most conspicuous imperfection is the casting of a porcelain-perfect Nicole Kidman as a chain-smoking cleaning woman. The Human Stain explores issues of race, sexuality, assimilation and American society. Anthony Hopkins plays a black man who’s spent decades posing as a Jew.
Coulda been a contender
One of these days the Democrats will have an African-American presidential candidate who will provide more than the featured entertainment for the evening, and who won’t be patronizingly referred to by some as the “conscience” of his or her party. Personally, I’m a little sick of that. We’ve been the entertainment for America ever since…
Scrabylon
Meet G.I. Joe — Gastrointestinal, that is. He’s a world champion Scrabble player who urps, burbs and hiccups his way through a laundry list of ailments, sweating away in the battle to anagrammatize with the best of the best. Gastrointestinal is one of a handful of colorful characters to make his film debut on Scrabylon,…
Peoples is choice
As co-owners Lauren Bruyninga and Brad Hales wrote the check for the security deposit on their new Cass Corridor store, Peoples Records and Collectibles, the smell of smoke filled the room. At that exact moment, the building intended to house their first business (and where they happened to be standing) was on fire. “I ran…
Walk This Way
Ron Bachman was born a “freak” by 1950s standards, and that’s largely how people treated him. His little body stopped at his chest; his teensy legs folded behind his torso. With stunning grace and agility, and with normal happy-child-cheer, Bachman walked on his hands. When he was 4 years old, doctors amputated his legs, which…
High time for testimonial
The one-night-only, hometown debut showing of MC5 — A True Testimonial, the problematic, nine-year-long project headed by director David Thomas and producer Laurel Legler, was nothing short of triumphant. It was apparent that the sellout DFT crowd — mercifully short on garage glitterati, long on aging fans and friends of the MC5 — had waited…
Rockets Redglare
Minor cultural icon Rockets Redglare describes himself as a person with identities within identities. His most famous identity is a toothless, seedy bit player in films such as Desperately Seeking Susan, Drugstore Cowboy, Animal Factory and many Jim Jarmusch pictures. In the beginning he was Michael Morra, born (addicted to heroin) to a 15-year-old dope-shooting…
Moore’s Ypsi Dude launch
Michael Moore landed in Ypsi on Halloween night as he made the last stop on a nationwide tour to promote his best-selling book, Dude, Where’s my Country? What should be frightening, at least if you are a supporter of the beady-eyed gent sitting in the Oval Office, is that more than 6,000 people ventured to…
Lustron – The House America’s Been Waiting For
The Lustron home was a factory-built steel house screwed together onsite by the Lustron Corporation. From 1948 to 1950, ill-fated Lustron stamped out about two dozen houses a day on an assembly line and sent them out across the country. Behind it all was inventor Carl Strandlund, a brilliant “production man,” high-stakes gambler and upstart…
Healthy attitude
In a rare show of solidarity, the Detroit City Council has united to ask Gov. Jennifer Granholm to find a way to make health care affordable for everyone in Michigan. It is an issue of particular importance to Detroit. About 180,000 Detroiters, or 19 percent, of Detroit’s 925,000 residents currently have no health insurance, according…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Couvade" occurs in a variety of indigenous cultures. It’s a phenomenon in which a man experiences morning sickness, unusual appetites, and other symptoms similar to his pregnant mate. There’s no known physiological basis for it. He may even have labor pains during the birth, diminishing the mother’s distress as though mysteriously…
Higher (cost) education
The bad news for Michigan’s college students is that a higher education is costing about 10 percent more this year than it did last year. The good news is those tuition increases haven’t cut into enrollment. In fact, student numbers are actually rising, which is really good news. With the cash-strapped state cutting funding to…
