Damned if you do
Known as a class-A potty mouth, Liz Langley tries to curb her cursing. But it’s really fucking difficult!
Four-lane suburban highway
The future rock stars in Versus stops for pork chops on the way to stellar insanity.
Justice at any price?
Reform has to wait. There’s a nasty Supreme Court race to finish….
Audra Lynne Kubat
An enrapturing storyteller, Audra Lynne Kubat (of Stunning Amazon) offers a present-tense history lesson in her solo work, intertwining fantasy with reality all the while. Shadowed and ruggedly beautiful, her knowing voice fades into wind whipping across an empty beach and seeps through cracks in the pavement of an abandoned city. Aggressive yet subdued guitar…
The imperfect fit
Q: My new lover’s penis is longer than my vagina is deep. When we have intercourse some of the sensations feel unbelievably great, but some are painful. I am looking for advice on how to avoid the painful part so I can keep the great part. I think he’s pushing against the top of my…
Daddy dearest
Q: I’ve had a serious girlfriend for a year and a half. Early this fall, before she went away to her first year of college, she and I agreed that we’d spend every weekend and all school breaks together. Suddenly, she’s complaining that she isn’t social enough and is missing the college experience because of…
Bullets and bad moods
Police purchase hollow-point bullets in time for demonstrations…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): W.S. Merwyn has a poem in which he recounts the surprising counsel of his teacher John Berryman: “he suggested I pray to the Muse/get down on my knees and pray/right there in the corner and he/said he meant it literally.” This is perfect advice for you, Aries. Whether you’re an artist…
Suck on this
The long, strange party from "American Bandstand" to Taxi Driver.
The nuts in the middle
The Metro Times is 20 years old …. entering the age of adulthood. Which way will it go? The Jeromes look forward to the MT’s future perfect.
Acid vibes from the outer rings
A festival of Sun Ra reissues delivers the intergalactic jazz evidence.
Did somebody say boycott?
The Worldwide Anti-McDonald’s Day on October 16 offers a few opportunities to rethink the Golden Arches.
Madame candidate
A conversation with writer/director Rod Lurie, whose sensational new film The Contender takes on sexual McCarthyism in America.
Nader, the debates and you
Jack Lessenberry wishes Ralph Nader were in these debates, if for no other reason than to force the other candidates to focus on real issues.
Urban dub hits Detroit
Urban dub hits Detroit, with overloaded echoes of sound … Thursdays are free at the Temple (meet Carl Craig there this week) … Brand-new sounds at Motor … & more.
Art opens, sells, imitates life
Local artists hit the big time, including Niagra’s recent opening at C-Pop and Hobey Echlin’s stage production in NYC … plus, new nightclubs planned for downtown.
Letters to the Editor
Go blue, go green I would like to congratulate the students of the University of Michigan for earning a well-deserved place on Mother Jones magazine’s annual list of activist campuses (“News Hits,” MT, Sept 20-26). Our state can be proud indeed, since this isn’t the first time a local school has earned that distinction; Michigan…
On with the show
Rating the debates’ show biz factor…
Dumb and dumper
Contaminated soil dumped in local neighborhood…
Dig that dirt
U.S. security documents reveal big-time dirt…
Star whores
Protesters object to Star Wars funding…
Show them the money
Nonprofit agency short on crucial funds…
Only a movie
Crap-in-your-pants fare in IFC’s horror film fest…
Take me back to the ballpark
A stadium replica for true Tigers fans…
Aw, shoot
Michigan megastore for ardent outdoorsmen…
Fame and hot sauce
Cheech Marin’s spicy salsa is smokin’…
In case of angels
For those who can’t get enough of Charlie’s crime-busters…
Dusty treasures
The sound track companion piece to Cameron Crowe’s magnificent new rock ’n’ roll movie, Almost Famous, is like a delightful trip up and down the early ’70s AM-FM dial. Chock-full of material featured in the flick (this isn’t one of those “inspired” by the movie type of sound tracks), Almost Famous will have aficionados dusting…
Politricks as usual
Director Rod Lurie’s lesson in the use of smear tactics during political warfare shows that timing is everything. What gets captured in the public imagination, regardless of whether it’s true, fair or accurate, is what counts — with Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman.
From the vaults
As much as vinyl freaks complain about CD sound, the digital revolution has incited a riot of reissues, making available records previously worn out, mislaid, ignored or even never released. Three discs from the recent jazz crop illustrate a spectrum of second-chance possibilities. In drummer Chico Hamilton’s pianoless quintet of the ’50s and ’60s, the…
Into the Arms of Strangers
Although Mark Jonathan Harris’ documentary is about the mass rescue of children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain in 1938-9, it offers no easy happily-ever-afters. It’s a harrowing tale of tender innocence lost and bitter experience gained.
Germ bombs
Felt all right lately? Health fine, nothing to complain about? You’re ready for whatever flu and cold season might be holding just around the corner and you’ve got good medical coverage, just in case? Yeah, like that’s going to help. We hear about biological terrorism once in a while, usually in Hollywood films and television…
Meet the Parents
"First comes love. Then comes the interrogation," warns the tagline. Pam’s father is strictly old-fashioned. Before his first-born girl says"I do," he must give her suitor his blessing — and the once over. Parents’ casting fits like a bridesmaid’s glove, with Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller.
One
Basically the story of two old friends trying to drift apart without quite knowing how to pull it off, this seems more like a demonstration piece by first-time director Tony Barbieri, showing he can take very slight material and deepen it with interesting stylistic flourishes.
Solomon and Gaenor
The first feature by director Paul Morrison, set in a Welsh valley in 1911, is the kind of star-crossed lovers’ tale which you just know is going to come to a bad end. Although well acted and beautifully photographed, it’s a long, measured trek toward an end more inevitable than cathartic.
Once upon a time …
Mascott, the one-woman band of ex-Michigan resident Kendall Jane Meade, is at its best a nighttime affair. Like a favorite collection of storybook-bound fantasies, the 10 tracks on Follow the Sound come off more like fairy tales than pop songs. Meade’s wispy voice is lilting and hopeful, full of wide- and wild-eyed anticipation for knights…
Backward glance
The first proper record for the Band, after years of touring behind Ronnie Hawkins and then, famously, Bob Dylan himself, was Music From Big Pink. Opening with “Tears of Rage,” a song filled with the pain of a father who wonders — as so many fathers did during the ’60s — “why must I always…
Comics’ second childhood
Even the artsy-fartsiest of the alternative comics creators — especially them, actually — have great admiration for the children’s book illustrators and kids’ comics artists of days gone by. With the idea well established by now that comics can be made for adults, some cartoonists are trying to resurrect the all-ages comic book. One attempt…
Backward glance
The first proper record for the Band, after years of touring behind Ronnie Hawkins and then, famously, Bob Dylan himself, was Music From Big Pink. Opening with “Tears of Rage,” a song filled with the pain of a father who wonders — as so many fathers did during the ’60s — “why must I always…
Split pea soup
More than just some clever catchphrase, the title of Black Eyed Peas’ sophomore LP reflects their self-proclaimed mission to transcend rap and bring together musical styles as diverse as the trio’s ethnic backgrounds, as well as attracting fans outside traditional hip-hop circles. Judging by their summer spent opening for No Doubt and the lily-white crowd…
Backward glance
The first proper record for the Band, after years of touring behind Ronnie Hawkins and then, famously, Bob Dylan himself, was Music From Big Pink. Opening with “Tears of Rage,” a song filled with the pain of a father who wonders — as so many fathers did during the ’60s — “why must I always…
Stylin & Profylin
OK, OK, OK. You’ve seen enough of these R&B male formula groups in the past 10 years to last you a lifetime. All they do is whine and grind, and most of them can’t even really sing, you say. If the day of the sweaty, moaning and muscle-bound, sex-begging crooner ain’t over by now, you…
Things Come from Those Now Gone
As much as vinyl freaks complain about CD sound, the digital revolution has incited a riot of reissues, making available records previously worn out, mislaid, ignored or even never released. Three discs from the recent jazz crop illustrate a spectrum of second-chance possibilities. In drummer Chico Hamilton’s pianoless quintet of the ’50s and ’60s, the…
Captain Hook
It’s John Lee Hooker. To be honest, I don’t know what else needs to be said, especially if you’re a true fan of Detroit blues. What’s more — and this is directed straight at the Detroit blues community — this is the reissued stuff from way back in the Paradise Valley days before the Valley…
Blue Miles
As much as vinyl freaks complain about CD sound, the digital revolution has incited a riot of reissues, making available records previously worn out, mislaid, ignored or even never released. Three discs from the recent jazz crop illustrate a spectrum of second-chance possibilities. In drummer Chico Hamilton’s pianoless quintet of the ’50s and ’60s, the…
Dreams out of despair
Danish director Lars von Trier’s brilliant, absurdly dour fantasy is a melodramatic story of piled-on woe, as well as a musical with half a dozen production numbers. Its central character is miserably poor; the musical numbers are her elaborate daydreams — with Björk and Catherine Deneuve.
Feets of wonder
What’s this? A feminist tract on walking?! Oh, my. That it’s so good is a testament not only to the author’s creative powers but to the spirit of the times. The personal woman’s essay is back, though riding on the dubious wings of Oprah and psychobabble. Rebecca Solnit, however, has seen her opportunity and taken…
Backward glance
The first proper record for the Band, after years of touring behind Ronnie Hawkins and then, famously, Bob Dylan himself, was Music From Big Pink. Opening with “Tears of Rage,” a song filled with the pain of a father who wonders — as so many fathers did during the ’60s — “why must I always…
