Hands-on heroines
Girls just wanna have it all in the new Charlie’s Angels….
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Many people who consult astrology columns want hardheaded advice about money, love, career and power. I hope I don’t disappoint you, then, when I predict that you’ll soon have a close brush with a religious conversion or spiritual epiphany. If it’s any consolation, please be assured that this will be no…
En garde, princess!
Barbie may have challengers to kick her anorexic butt….
Code breaker
A Detroit cop for 13 years, David Robinson saw but didn’t tell. Now he’s putting the department on trial.
Kitchen kitsch
One thing you can say about the new Retro Recipes series of cookbooks is that they’re fun. And they’ll look great on your mid-century modern kitchen table.
Incarcerated giving
Go to jail and help local arts programs….
Wiener wonderland
Q: I am a woman in my mid-30s. Intellectually, I understand that many people struggle with the concept of monogamy. I certainly am no angel. I have cheated and been cheated on in the past. My last boyfriend was an Olympic heartbreaker, but I was faithful to him for five years. My current boyfriend (of…
Victory in Milan?
Looks like GM won’t build in Milan…
This is a life?
There are some people who believe your soul chooses the situation it wants to be born into, so that it can learn the lessons it needs in order to move up to perfect enlightenment. If this theory is true, my soul was freebasing Black Flag, wearing a blindfold and listening to Motörhead when it nudged…
Now for the real election
After you’ve gone to the polls, you can set the national election aside … it’s time to talk about the race for mayor of Detroit a year from now.
Burning nights, salon stylin’
Disco-dancing Devil’s Night away … Primped, spiffed and spangled at Novi’s Insomnia … & Doorman Gerald Laming could teach Detroit’s bar staff a lesson in manners.
Bipolar Brit
Badly Drawn Boy’s international exchange program shares the roots of American songwriting while remaining wholly British.
Jeff Mills’ utopian dream
Jeff Mills records a modern score for the classic silent film Metropolis … Derrick May is back after an 8-year hiatus … Kid 606 returns to Detroit for an adventurous show with Maersk at detroit contemporary … & more.
Clean sweep
The Justice for Janitors drive wins a contract for suburban service employees – and may help workers in the rest of the country.
Givers of love
Local African-American culture loses three stalwart warriors…
Leak this
Clinton vetoes bill which would protect government secrets…
Breaking the blue code
A cop-turned-ethicist says it’s possible to do away with the “blue code of silence.”
Confidence shaker
Detroit Police Officer Eugene Brown shoots nine, remains uninvestigated…
Riot charge for leader?
Union local president Willie Hampton is charged with “inciting a riot” for protesting at the Ameritech building downtown.
Freep’s comic ethics
Free Press edits Doonesbury strip to avoid offending George W….
Hunt to kill
The deer hunter begins his yearly migration…
More than words
Will upstart publisher BlackWords become the Motown of black literature?…
Making it last
Q: I have a significant problem I hope you can help me with; premature ejaculation, which has already cost me my marriage. I started experiencing coitus at age 28 (I’m 36 now), and I can count on one hand the completed sexual experiences in my life. No sooner does my penis enter the vagina than…
Shop for art’s sake
Visit museum shops around the world…
Gonzo bingo
It’s not N-8 in all of us….
Letters to the Editor
Body of work Sarah Klein’s story on body modification ("Modified states," MT, Oct. 18-24) left me with an understanding of the culture that I never had before. She did an excellent job of comparing acceptable Western modification practices with those of the unaccepted subculture. It’s obvious that she isn’t some preppy newsperson following a story.…
Hot moves
Cook up a slammin’ sandwich…
Stopper that sinking feeling
A darling decorated drain…
Auto allegiance
Meet you at a quarter past Ford….
Rhymes to come
Seeing the overabundance of rap album and song titles containing 2000 or 2001 (props to Grand Puba for being ahead of his time), a trio of forward-minded thinkers has decided to take it to a whole new level. Dan the Automator, Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Kid Koala (via their respective alter egos Cantankerous Captain…
Never too late to swing
Now that her kids are grown, vocalist René Marie surprises herself by fulfilling a lifelong jazz dream.
Spare, with flair
Shiro attempts to balance the opposing cuisines of Japan and France — Japan with its stark simplicity, France with its rich excess. This is an ambitious restaurant, still striving for inner harmony.
Puzzle mania!
Strategically place a few dozen sticks of dynamite around any game’s digital base, detonate when at a safe distance and, as predicted, only a foundation will remain. The concept: puzzle bricks, puzzle blocks, puzzle drills, puzzle shots — but at their core, all puzzle games are basically the same, right? Well, there are a few…
Toggle this
At first glance, a videogame screen might just seem like a billion different pixels and polygons. But take another look. Gaming is art — a medium that combines a kaleidoscope of colors, textures, complex characters and enthralling story lines (well, in the good games, at least). The characters and their scenarios live, breathe and die…
Work Book
Gig takes a familiar approach to the ever-changing, enormous field of work, providing readers with more than 120 oral histories of jobs, gigs, careers and people. A generation ago, it was possible for one man, Studs Terkel, to collect a dictionary of these voices. The people who spoke through his book, Working, were well equipped…
Rev. Right-Time & the 1st Cuzins of Funk
Let your hair down and soak up the fresh funk from this motley crew of groove eccentrics. It would be hard not to, what with their don’t-hold-back scratches, horn wails, wah-wah guitar whines and slip-slop-slap, you-know-this-guy’s-dancin’ bass coming at you from every angle. Rev. Right-Time & the 1st Cuzins of Funk intertwine elements of rock,…
Young Dr. Freud
This black-and-white film, directed for Austrian TV in 1976 by Axel Corti, avoids the expected pitfalls of a period piece biopic. Young Freud’s story of intellectual blossoming is presented with a sense of urgency and importance.
Sound and Fury
A documentary about the continuing controversy over cochlear implants, a device which can allow deaf people to hear. Some see the implants as a threat to “deaf culture," that community bound together by sign language and a common perspective.
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The search for the meaning of life in golf drag — director Robert Redford’s film could be subtitled Zen Golf & the Art of Soul Maintenance: "You gotta let da ball go in da hole," Will Smith’s titular spiritual mechanic and caddy enlightens his reluctant disciple, Matt Damon — with Charlize Theron.
The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
Writer-director Greg Berlanti has made what amounts to a simplistic gay primer for the straight fans of "Will & Grace," where attractive men inhabit an insular, ritualized world and every detail of their lives is carefully explained for the homosexually impaired.
Puzzle mania!
Strategically place a few dozen sticks of dynamite around any game’s digital base, detonate when at a safe distance and, as predicted, only a foundation will remain. The concept: puzzle bricks, puzzle blocks, puzzle drills, puzzle shots — but at their core, all puzzle games are basically the same, right? Well, there are a few…
From silence to speech
Birthright, Oscar Micheaux’s film examining racially restrictive real-estate covenants, made its Baltimore debut during the winter of 1924. The Maryland State Board of Motion Picture Censors had agreed to allow the film to be shown only if Micheaux eliminated 23 scenes. As authors Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence relate in Writing Himself Into History: Oscar…
Puzzle mania!
Strategically place a few dozen sticks of dynamite around any game’s digital base, detonate when at a safe distance and, as predicted, only a foundation will remain. The concept: puzzle bricks, puzzle blocks, puzzle drills, puzzle shots — but at their core, all puzzle games are basically the same, right? Well, there are a few…
Saltwater wounds
PJ’s voice has always sat like a fidgety child somewhere between hair-pulling tantrums and remorseful bursts of tears. But when she positioned herself to record Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea in New York City — the heart of distraction — she found a purple, pulsing chamber for her songs. In recent albums,…
Itsy-bitsy frenzy
Mean Red Spider (n): any of numerous oscillating predatory arachnids, having a body divided into two parts; a monotone hum bearing multiple legs and an abdomen with silky, sound-secreting guitars. Its white-noise webs serve as comfortably subversive nests and traps for prey. Oh, and it sounds great too. STARSANDSONS, Mean Red Spiders’ latest endeavor, hurls…
The anti-Bizkit
After a three-year sabbatical, Chitown’s calm collective is back and ready to samba — or whatever one does to post-rock, electroacoustic bossa nova-ish music. There have been solo albums and side projects by Sam Prekop (vocals, guitar) and Archer Prewitt (guitars, keyboards). John McEntire (drums, percussion, vibes, marimba, keyboard, etc.) has been working behind the…
Baker’s diva
This is how good jazz is supposed to sound. Powerhouse vocalist Renee King-Jackson shows the stuff divas are made of with her independent debut release, Friends and Lovers, a six-song collection that puts that watered-down, commercial stuff found on the radio to utter shame. King-Jackson combines raw talent and megapipes with artistic heart and clearly…
Bullet train
Everything about Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek is understated. Everything. Kweli, a rather homely guy, fronts an innocent guise through a street getup. And the voice? Stricken soft. He looks like the kid at the back of the class who stayed after school to help teacher wash blackboards. Likewise, Hi-Tek seems small, even in pictures.…
Hecho a mondo
Like French dance floor kitsch maestros Air — the only group to which a comparison seems justified — Mexico City’s Titan maintains a supreme dual focus on both the fun and the funk. While other groove merchants trade on sloppy sonic references to the fat-bottom sound of the ’70s, Titan manages to conjure that certain…
