Art Bar
American Life in Poetry Although this poem by North Carolina native Ron Rash may seem to be just about trout fishing, it is the first of several poems Rash has written about his cousin who died years ago. Indirectly, the poet gives us clues about this loss. By the end, we see that in passing…
Que Farrar Farrar
Over the years, the emergence of alt-country music has offered much to its devotees. To listeners, it has provided thousands of hours of solace, jubilation and innocent fun in a rock ’n’ roll world. To its creators, the genre has offered an opportunity to marry the old with the new. And for those performers who…
Cote d’Azur
In the groan-inducing French sex farce Cote d’Azur, an insufferably chipper family of four retreats to an idyllic summer beach home to lounge on the sand, sing little songs to each other and fuck whoever happens to be around, of whatever gender. It’s all meant to be very funny and open and liberating —but anyone…
Axl vs. Stevie
Last year, Brian Wilson delivered Smile after abandoning it 35 years ago. Even factoring in nervous breakdowns, weight gains (and losses), the two years he spent in bed, and a mind-controlling, power-crazy Svengali psychologist, Wilson still had new songs on each successive Beach Boys album well into the ’80s, and managed four studio albums on…
In The Flesh
Electric SixMonday, October 3 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, N.C. Electric Six singer Dick Valentine takes the stage and says, “We like to come to North Carolina and get progressively hammered as the night goes on.” Then the band launches into “Dance Epidemic” off the latest, Euro-only Senor Smoke. Within the first few songs, Valentine’s exaggerated bluster…
Waiting
Filled with mostly no-names and up-and-comers, Waiting does for crappy chain restaurant staffs what Office Space did for cubicle drones. First-time writer-director Rob McKittrick — a waiter in Orlando before he finagled a $3 million deal to make this movie — has nailed the finer points of the food service industry so astutely that anyone…
Backslash
The Internet is swimming in boobies — duh. But thanks to recent events, there’s a new kind of teat taking over: the charitable breast. In the right hands, porn can actually be humanitarian. That’s the idea behind boobs4bourbonst.com, a Katrina benefit Web site that takes a different approach to fund raising. Hundreds of gracious young…
Head Cheese
You know the Demolition Doll Rods, and here’s a DDR offshoot, a wonderfully chaotic pro-women, pro-soul, pro-ass rap-grind called Lil’ Miss Led and the Pussy Patrol. It features an afro-headed Danny Doll Rod rapping (?!), manning bass synth and beat-box, while comely Margaret Doll Rod raps, sings and shimmies ass. Here’s their pussy-powered bootymanias: 5)…
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
In a community obsessed with gardening, the annual Giant Vegetable Competition is the most important social event on the calendar. With marauding bunnies threatening to devour their prized veggies, the locals enlist the services of Wallace and Gromit, who run a humane pest control service called Anti Pesto. This irritates to no end Elvis-haired hunter…
Into the scratch
Techno is sick, dying, dead. Sort of. What died was the idea of a music that could separate itself from its human collaborators, the artists and the dancers. To that we say amen and good riddance. What smart, bored people around the world have done is feed personality — and lots of it — back…
PAC flak
Group funding Kilpatrick didn’t hew to the rules.
In Her Shoes
Based on Jennifer Weiner’s book of the same title, director Curtis Hanson (8 Mile, L.A. Confidential) and screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) add weight to Weiner’s prose — which is already smarter than your average girlie book. Hanson and company create a portrait of family ties that’s as much about siblinghood in general as it…
Waste not …
Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, kids had the following government-produced catchphrase repeatedly beaten into the pink pulpy flesh of their impressionable young minds: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” I remember being forced to draw the recycling pattern with my crayons in third grade. (The teacher, no doubt, later threw the cardboard crayon box in the trash.) Like…
Bashing the bashers
State Sen. Alan Cropsey grandstands against gays in benefits battle.
Two for the Money
McConaughey plays Brandon Lang, whose promising football career is cut short in college by injury, reducing him to providing inside tips to low-rent gamblers via a 1-900 line. His uncanny ability to predict winners attracts the notice of Walter Abrams (Pacino), the operator of a big-league betting consultation service in New York City. Abrams seduces…
Nerd herds
Imagine a place where the impossible is real, where you can shake hands with a wizard, hug a Wookie or cozy up to a warrior goddess … a place where you can say hello to Eddie Mekka. True TV fans don’t need to be reminded that Mekka played Carmine “The Big Ragu” Ragusa on the…
Call out
Group aims to drive Bush from office with demonstrations.
The Gospel
The Gospel is the story of gifted young gospel singer David, who leaves his family’s church after his father, Pastor Fred Taylor (Clifton Powell), gets so caught up in church business that he can’t make it to his wife’s bedside in time to see her die. Over the next 15 years, David becomes a superstar…
The Iron Hoodies
The loud crack signified the worst. The first victim is Jason Florence, whose street name is R. He knew the dangers going in, but R, 24, of Ann Arbor, still gamely ventured onto the crater-pocked streets of Detroit. With a bump and a bang, R’s moped — the kitschy ’70s relic, a motorized bicycle —…
Proactive
Down with the devil — It’s almost Halloween, which means that it’s almost time for what used to be known around these parts as Devil’s Night. At one time, not all that long ago, a fair portion of the city would be set ablaze the night before Halloween. That ugliness has been snuffed, but there’s…
MT-approved supergroup
Say hello to Szymanski, Shettler & Morris, the Motor City’s first post-garage supergroup. This limited-edition (500 pressed and numbered) album finds singer-keysman John Szymanski (Hentchmen, Paybacks), drummer Dave Shettler (Nathaniel Mayer and the Shanks, ex-Sights, etc.) and guitarist Marty Morris (Cyril Lords) determined to bring “quality music back to style,” in an “attempt to open…
How poverty becomes a trap
I don’t usually answer readers’ letters in my column, but a letter I received a couple of weeks ago warrants being one of the exceptions. It was in response to a column about Hurricane Katrina and how that ongoing catastrophe has disproportionately affected the area’s poor. A reader posed what I had to admit was…
Blue-ribbon boys make a mess of voting
Another one of those limp-dick, hoity-toity, bipartisan blue-ribbon panels has come through with another one of those sets of recommendations. This time it’s on election reform, if one uses the word “reform” very loosely. These kinds of reports serve one purpose, if nothing else: They tell us what the clubbable people — the moneyed, prestige…
Extraordinary Machine
Extraordinary Machine has to be Rory Gilmore’s internal sound track. The plucky young heroine of Gilmore Girls regularly engages in intellectual hopscotch, peppering her rapid-fire speech with references to everything from indie rock to Emily Brontë. But she’s also sweet, thoughtful, and available to everybody. This is why Rory needs Extraordinary. Fiona Apple’s third album…
Support shows
In all the spit and fire of a mayoral campaign that’s likely to get even uglier as Election Day approaches, it’s easy to become cynical about the candidates. Character flaws and shady dealings are put under the media’s microscope. The candidates hammer away at each other in debates. Attack ads cast aspersions and sully reputations. At…
Media Blackout
MB51 lifts its leg on more audio irritants! • The Populars — The Vindicator EP (Kindling) :: The singer steals from Roger Daltry and the guitarist steals from Pete Townshend. But when I hear an ignorant chorus like, “I wish you’d hurry up and die,” all I hear is the Who without a clue. Someone…
In Space
By now Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens, joined by the Posies’ Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer, make up the “official” second-gen Big Star, with a live album (1993’s Columbia) and a series of subsequent live dates on their résumé. In Space, the first studio album from the 12-year-old lineup, at first sounds a little tentative,…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 12 Arab American Women: Past, Present and Future ISSUES & LEARNING Since 1987, Alternatives For Girls (AFG), a nonprofit organization from southwest Detroit, has provided counseling, vocational guidance and support for high-risk girls and young women. This week, AFG teams up with the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) for…
Letters to the Editor
Limited appeal Jack Lessenberry’s recent column on term limits (“Repeal term limits now,” Metro Times, Sept. 28) illustrates well the arguments of those of us who have opposed term limits all along. We told you so. That doesn’t sound very good, but the term limits issue was a political trick from the beginning and the…
Apologies to the Queen Mary
This debut from the Montreal quartet merges Modest Mouse’s ramshackle folksy side with the lavish Arcade Fire. An easy enough task for a group that was produced by the frontman of the former and had their first gig with the latter. Call it your standard Garden State variety indie pop, a likely candidate for music…
Stem cells and supreme folly
Imagine for a moment that it’s 1905, and right-wing religious types are in control of the Michigan Legislature. Some of them, led by the Amish, have grave religious doubts about the morality of the newfangled horseless carriages. So they pass a law severely restricting research into these infernal combustion engines. Exasperated, Henry Ford, Willliam C.…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
In This Life Together
Maybe it’s just this married ass, ’cause this CD might not move the average college student. But if you’re a hitched, Ossie Davis-and-Ruby Dee lovin’ fan of good soul music, In This Life Together just hits you on yo insides ’n’ shit. It’s a steady set buoyed by easy bass grooves, and even steadier harmonies.…
The morning after
“You come to realize that you don’t need a lot materialistically when you’re doing what you love,” Jill Jack says, on a beautiful fall afternoon. She’s seated on the front porch of her cozy blue house — the one with the cozy picket fence just off the highway in the cozy suburban neighborhood. There’s a…
Heat of the moment
A few blocks west of Tiger Stadium, in a meticulously revamped 1880s building, Slows caters to a mix of hipsters, folks from area businesses, and suburban brewheads. Slows has excellent barbecue, a Mac and cheese that’s a satisfying combination of sharp and creamy, and potato salad that could have come straight out of an Alabama…
Cripple Crow
The comparisons are obvious on Devendra Banhart’s fourth, Cripple Crow. Sure, he’s a little like Van Morrison — everyone who sings with their mouths a little too closed during the quiet parts is. But Cripple Crow isn’t Astral Weeks, so the comparisons stop there. Barely less obvious than the author of “Brown Eyed Girl” are…
Drawing in the city
Christine Murdock moved to Detroit from Siegen, a small town near Cologne, Germany. She didn’t plan to stay. That was six years ago. After studying at a university where she says she learned how to be “arty” rather than skillful, Murdock, a young and beautiful blonde, met her husband, painter and sculptor Michael Murdock, a native…
Imported Volume 1.5
Detroit is a hotbed for noncommercial talent, so it’s timely that Cello — an unabashedly mainstream R&B singer from the Motor City via the Bahamas — is waving a radio-friendly flag, and is headed straight for Billboard’s R&B charts. This picks up where his 2004 debut, Imported, left off. It’s cleanly produced and slickly packaged,…
Weekly fecal
When you want to appear tormented, fucked-up, broken, desperate, disparate, whatever — you can’t do it half-assed. That’s the real problem for Cole Guerra. No matter how stamped on, walked over and beaten up he’s been, it’s just not enough. This guy wants to sound like David Gray and Keane and Neutral Milk Hotel all…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): California’s San Joaquin Valley has the worst air in the state. The terrible pollution stems largely from burned fossil fuels trapped between the mountain ranges that surround the valley. The smog often hides the mountains from view. Some environmentalists have made that a symbol of what they hope to accomplish as…
Metro Retro
19 years ago this week in Metro Times: Rosanne Less interviews Duncan Murphy, one of several veterans staging a hunger strike on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to oppose U.S. policies in Central America. A World War II veteran, Murphy says, “I’d spent three-and-a-half years of my life fighting Nazism, and I thought, ‘Well,…
Suck on this
Mike Mills’ new coming-of-age comedy is an impressive breakthrough for the former music-video director and his talented young lead, Lou Taylor Pucci. Alternately hilarious and melancholy, the film meanders through the senior-year existence of Justin Cobb (Pucci), a chronic underachiever who’s always trying to satisfy his oral fixation. Justin submits to both hypnosis and Ritalin,…
Made to disorder
In a devastated yet strangely beautiful neighborhood just northwest of downtown Detroit, among windowless brick buildings and overgrown fields, one wall on 4731 Gallery reads in large black letters: “Art in a Living Context.” This is the perfect sentiment to express what’s going on inside the space during Detroit Art Riot, an exhibition and series…
Peeling back the layers
The raw material for Cristin Richard’s art is a bit delicate, originally covered in salt. It’s rinsed, sorted, cut for assembly, pieced together and coated with a preservative. Normally, it would be used to make sausage. Richard uses pig intestines to make dresses. She and Mary Rousseaux are two recent art grads who are developing…
Masculine Feminine
A film made for the era of James Bond and Vietnam, it’s set in Paris in 1965, where a group of self-absorbed twentysomethings half-heartedly seek the unbearable weight of being, secretly wishing to be rid of the ennui that lingers from their bourgeois upbringings. As superficial as his characters seem, Godard stuns the audience with…
The case of the persistent pube
Q: What would you make of someone who intentionally leaves a pubic hair on your toilet seat every time he visits your home? This guy is ostensibly straight (married, even). I’m gay, and my boyfriend and I have known him since college. Anyway, I initially thought the pubic hair thing was just a coincidence, but…
Questioning identity
A friend spoke up recently, confident he had the Museum of New Art figured out. “It’s all him, isn’t it?” he said, in revelation and doubt. But that’s what’s interesting — it’s not always about him. Museum of New Art director Jef Bourgeau has a reputation that sometimes overshadows the impact of his exhibitions. Known…
Breaking News
A blend of nonstop action and cynical media critique, *Breaking News* examines the thin line between criminal life and corrupt law enforcement, illustrating how both are exploited by modern entertainment. The film opens with a mind-blowing eight-minute single-take tracking shot of a full-tilt action sequence. However, the breakneck pace also robs the film of substance.…
