The E is On
I was pleasantly surprised Monday night when I showed up at The Belmont in Hamtramck for Mademoiselle Mondays. I wasn’t there to get my nails did, but I was there to see Taylor Hollingsworth, the Alabama kid whose been putting out records over the last couple years that have a great sense of scraggly, sometimes…
Props to Mason
Motor City Rocks announces that loopy Ann Arbor pop kids Mason Proper have signed with Dovecote Records, a label I’ve never heard of but which has a really pretty Web site. Congratulations, dudes. JTL Read the Mason Proper Head Cheese.
Let him go to the dogs
Q: My background: I’m a gay man; I recently came out to my friends, mostly because I met someone with whom I wanted to pursue a relationship. I had never experienced this feeling before. After much courting and pursuing, we met enough times that he remembered my name — then came love. Eight months later,…
Letters to the Editor
Suds story In his review of Mt. Chalet (“Swiss bliss,” Metro Times, Sept. 20), Mel Small wrote: “Mt. Chalet is especially proud to purvey Celis white, a Belgian-style beer that dates from 1453 and is now brewed under the authority of the Celis family in Austin, Texas.” Mt. Chalet should be proud, not only because…
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
In the new documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, writer-directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld create a focused and seamless time capsule of the period from roughly 1966 to 1976 when the Nixon White House — convinced that one man could sway a youthful new voter demographic and change the outcome of the 1972 election…
The right man’s burden
A phone conversation with Ian MacKaye is more like being lectured by an oppressively intelligent university professor who happens to have been one of the guiding forces behind 25 years of American punk and hardcore. Of course, like most professors, he ends up making quite a bit of sense. In his feisty youth, MacKaye led…
You don’t know Dick
Even though he was under the gun, facing the pressure of an impending deadline, Russ Bellant agreed to meet for a talk about Dick DeVos. Bellant’s been tracking America’s arch-conservative movement for more than 30 years, producing three ground-breaking books that reveal how the leaders of the far right maneuvered this country’s political agenda in…
The Guardian
Any movie that can make Kevin Costner look heroic and Ashton Kutcher seem vulnerable is worthy of consideration, as in the new Hollywood water thrill ride with the woefully generic name, The Guardian. With this intriguing pairing of Costner and Kutcher as hard-bitten, mission-weary veteran versus brash young recruit, we have two generations of the…
Canoeing with Christ
Heidi Ewing doesn’t fit the standard image of a documentary filmmaker. Sharply dressed in a pin-striped blazer and skirt with sparkling accoutrements, she looks more like she walked out of an episode of Sex and the City than a film theory class. She’s much more likely to engage you in a discussion on Stephen Colbert’s…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Boynton Beach Club
The ladies of Boynton Beach are like the Sex and the City crew of the shuffleboard set — only the squeaky clean TBS-version, without all the HBO naughtiness. Boynton Beach Club is the sweet story of a group of widows and widowers who cope with loss and relearn the rules of romance as they mingle…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
MB89 presents Morgan’s Consumer Guide! Robert Christgau — Christgau’s Consumer Guide (RIP) :: Somewhere, George Harrison is smiling. A+ The C.R. Avery Band — Chainsmoking Blues (self-released) :: Tom Waits says: “Avery is terrific!” Jeffrey Morgan says: “It’s not every day you hear someone who can sing like Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed…
Winning ways
Metro Times won four editorial awards in the Michigan Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest for this year, and other departments of the paper took an additional 12 awards. In the Class A Weekly division — for papers with circulation of more than 25,001 copies — Metro Times was awarded first place for general excellence, first…
School for Scoundrels
Loosely based on a 1960 British film with the same name, School of Scoundrels takes a promising idea and turns it into a jumbled, one-dimensional comedy that occasionally finds laughs but mostly bores the audience and embarrasses its cast, particularly the talented Billy Bob Thornton. Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) plays Roger, an awkward and insecure…
Head cheese
Jiva hit all the modern rock hallmarks on its new, self-released EP, Masquerade — rhythms that shift between broody and beefy, capably weedly-weedly-weedly guitar solos and lyrics that read like a diary of mental anguish. But familiarity works when the alt-rock wallop is right, and the Detroit area outfit really nails it on such tracks…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Jimmy and Judy
Pampered, manic depressive loser Jimmy (Edward Furlong) is so detached from his parents, school and the world in general that he obsessively videotapes everything as if his life is just a movie he happens to be making. So everything we see is via Jimmy’s shaky camcorder shots. Seemingly normal teen Judy (Rachel Bella) falls for…
Action & reaction
One of the effects of last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan of painter Willem de Kooning is the renewed interest in the 10th Street art scene of Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Milton Resnick is an artist from that period who’s more than ready for re-evaluation. Fortunately for Detroiters, a…
Dublin your pleasure
Irish pubs, which have long been a feature of the American drinking scene, have become a worldwide phenomenon, flourishing in such unlikely venues as Moscow and Tokyo. And so it makes sense that the Blarney Stone’s everyday menu is all-American pub grub. The appetizers, which average around $6, are dominated by scores of familiar deep-fat…
Motor City Rides
Dirtbomber Mick Collins’ badass ride.
High fashion
These days, air travel is anything but glamorous. Exhausting, nerve-racking and frustrating, it’s an experience most people dread. Between color-coded terror alerts, being herded like human cattle and getting felt up by checkpoint personnel, it’s enough to make you take the train instead. Perhaps that’s why Elissa Stein chose now to release Stewardess, a photography…
Proof you can’t count on DPS
The final results of “Count Day” won’t be known for at least a week, but regardless of what they show — whether or not the majority of the missing 25,000 Detroit youngsters ultimately returned to Detroit Public Schools in time for the district to get the millions of dollars in state funds it needs to…
Baby’s (got) back
Miniature Michaels have been bringing the sexy back to the Billboard Hot 100 recently — Chris Brown, meet Mario — and there’s a consistent crop of baby Beyoncés too. But Cassie, Ciara and — oy! — the Pussycat Dolls are really only trickle-down versions of classic Ms. Jackson, and no one knows that better than…
What do we do now?
Last week, in a move that should have all Americans who still care about freedom screaming as loud as they can, Congress passed a bill that essentially gives the president’s bully boys the right to torture suspects. They just can’t call it that. Oh, and we can’t legally rape our victims. Of course, since detainees…
Urban Transport Live
Urban Transport’s 2004 debut Introducing Urban Transport wasn’t a solid representation of how good this jazz quintet really is, so it’s best to experience them live. Hence, this, the group’s sophomore offering, recorded last year at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor. Most upstart jazz bands wait years before they dare to record live. But,…
Night and Day
Thursday • 5 Day of Mass Resistance ISSUES & LEARNING From the Tune In, Walk Out Dep’t: For the increasing number of Americans too dissatisfied and disenchanted with the current administration to stand idly by, the ideal time to use one of those hard-earned sick days is Oct. 5. Organized by worldcantwait.org, this Thursday has…
The Outsider
It wasn’t unexpected that, for his next record, DJ Shadow would move away from the general leftfield sound of his first two releases. What is unexpected is just how far he’s migrated. From blues and Bay Area-specific hip-hop to Coldplay-esque rock, Shadow touches them all. But for the first time ever in reference to any…
Hot stuff
On turning a love of salsa into a hot-and-spicy empire.
Synchromy
Hometapes isn’t officially releasing Feathers’ Synchromy until Oct. 17. But you can and should get it right now from the Boulder, Colo., label’s Web site, because when you do you’ll be the coolest kid in your little indie rock circle. The second EP in a planned series of three, Synchromy is a dizzying mishmash of…
Backslash
Sing, sing, sing — Depending on your tolerance for cheese and camp (and your blood-alcohol level) there can be no worse torture endured than a night of karaoke at the bar. While we at Backslash must tip our hats to Dirty Show co-founder Jeremy Harvey’s special brand of drunk punk karaoke (see it for yourself…
War on the ground
Filmmaker Laura Poitras traveled to Iraq, with the goal of filming everyday Iraqis. While seeking interviews at Abu Ghraib prison, she ran into Dr. Riyadh, a Baghdad physician and Sunni party candidate. At the time, the January 2005 elections were six months away, and Riyadh became the perfect subject for her man-on-the-street project. Riyadh’s story…
Hale is for children
As a child — I mean the nerdy hyper-alert kind who spent long hours in the library getting willfully lost in words — I never could get straight the difference between the Newbery and the Caldecott medals. Turns out that the former is handed out by the American Library Association to distinguished works of children’s…
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
The Motion Picture Association of America: The way they award ratings to filmmakers is off-limits to filmmakers and the public. This de facto censorship has filmmaker Kirby Dick up in arms. He set out to expose the secret members and practices of the MPAA, and it wasn’t easy. The organization works inside a gated compound,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Dear Rob: When my wife got pregnant, she was warned that one side effect might be that her feet would grow a bit. She’s now a few months along, and while her feet remain a dainty size 7, my own feet have expanded from size 12 to 13! I’ve heard husbands…
American Life in Poetry
The news coverage of Hurricane Katrina gave America a vivid look at its poor and powerless. Here Alex Phillips of Massachusetts condenses his observations of our country’s underclass into a wise, tough little poem. Work Shy To be poor and raise skinny children. To own nothing but skinny clothing. Skinny food falls in between cracks.…
The Science of Sleep
Even those who’ve only seen Gondry’s dreamlike music video work will recognize his thrift-store aesthetic when they see it. Grown men dress up in fuzzy animal costumes; cops drive cardboard squad cars; felt boats sail away on seas of Saran Wrap. Using the most low-tech methods possible — stop-motion animation, blue-screen projection, 2-D optical effects…
Social intercourse
Patrick Marber’s Closer is a rare thing — a good play with lots of dirty talk. There are even shouting matches about sexual positions and human effluvia. There’s partial nudity. And there’s lots of unhappiness among the four main characters. A success in Britain, a hot ticket on Broadway and a well-received movie by Mike…
Frickin’ laws
Michigan pols say it’s time to retire outdated laws.
Half Nelson
Everyone knows a Dan Dunne. He’s the guy you knew in college, the one with super-liberal parents who got an education degree mainly because he couldn’t figure out what else to major in. He’s the guy who moved to New York to “find himself” as a writer and ended up getting swallowed whole by a…
Blood on the dance floor
These days, record-release parties have become commonplace, often ho-hum affairs. Which is why the quality of the event’s music and who’s playing it — especially in the DJ-driven techno world — makes all the difference. Hence, two upcoming events look to be anything but ho-hum. The D’s in D-Records This Saturday, Paxahau’s sub-label D-Records celebrates…
Stick it here, Detroit
Tell the city where to spend your taxes.
Jesus Camp
At the “Kids on Fire” summer camp, Pastor Becky Fischer doesn’t just preach the gospel, she inflicts it. Every year, she asks her preteen charges to pray for the sins of America until they shiver in fear, their eyes roll back into their heads and they start speaking in tongues. Jesus Camp documents a new…
