Earth to orbit
Each year in March, the Metro Times Blowout Festival is the perfect opportunity to check out bands who’ve been on the "buzz radar" for a while and to see old faves, but it’s also often the case that some of the best sets seen will be happy accidents — bands that you’ve never heard of…
Easy A
High school superhottie Olive, played by stone-cold fox Emma Stone (Zombieland), is a social pariah because she’s just a bit of a snarky wiseass. She considers herself an outcast because she only has a few pals, actually likes homework, and hasn’t been kissed, despite her best efforts. The pressure of this virginal burden is enough…
For the sake of the song
For 15 years, the Concert of Colors has celebrated much of the musical diversity that the Detroit area can offer, and it has become a highlight of the city’s summer schedule. In recent years, the climax of the event has been the Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue, which sees the Was (Not Was) man assemble…
The real thing
A main reason to eat a pupusa is the outsides — more than the filling. This Salvadoran national dish is a thick, handmade corn tortilla stuffed with cheese or more. A handmade tortilla is night-and-day different from the thin floppy kind from the factory. Options are any combinations of queso (cheese, the simplest and best),…
Food Stuff
Food as art — For years now, Cass Cafe has hosted art exhibitions in its big bistro space on Cass Avenue. This week, the work of renowned Detroit artist (and former Metro Times contributor) Jerome Ferretti goes on display, and much of it has a culinary theme. As Ferretti puts it, "It’s all about the…
Mavis does Tweedy
R&B legend Mavis Staples’ last album, 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back, was a stirring concept record about the civil rights movement. The follow-up is more direct, bringing the singer back to her gospel roots with a collection of songs (including a few remakes of tunes she originally recorded with her family’s group the Staple Singers)…
Cheat Code
Halo: Reach (single player campaign) Bungie; Xbox 360 Halo changed the face of gaming. Bungie’s game about a faceless and green space marine’s war against a fanatically religious alien race single-handedly made Microsoft’s Xbox a viable gaming system to own. Well, all good things must come to an end, as Bungie’s exclusivity contract with Microsoft…
Maximum Balloon
With the possible exception of LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening and Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III), the self-titled debut album by art-hag electro-popper Maximum Balloon — otherwise known as TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek — is the most fun you’ll have listening to any record this year. Sitek’s arrangements on Maximum Balloon may lack the rhythmic…
Telling tales
Every first Thursday of the month, a line of people in downtown Detroit — black, white, brown, young and old, professionals and the unemployed — stretches from the door of Cliff Bell’s out to the Park Bar and then east along Elizabeth Street toward Woodward Avenue. Through rain, snow and summer sun, they shuffle and…
Songs from the Road
Whether they know it or not, nearly every doom-fueled singer-songwriter owes a massive debt to Leonard Cohen. When many of his contemporaries were singing about times that were a-changin’, Cohen was offering downcast slices of sorrow and torment. His deep croon, which has all the warmth of a Louisville Slugger, only adds to the sentiment.…
Hope for the future
Q: I’m a gay male and have been seeing a terrific guy for a couple of months. Two years ago, during an uncharacteristically wild few months in my life, I had a threesome with a couple, and as it turns out, my boyfriend is very good friends with them. We see them socially and have even…
Wake Up!
As a hip-hop fan, John Legend favors intelligence over bravado. Dig his terrific collaborations with Lauryn Hill and André 3000 for proof. On the lovely Wake Up!, Legend hooks up with rap’s smartest ensemble for an all-star jam session — and what a jam session it is, with aching harmonies and tasteful grooves supplied by the…
Helping Detroit grow
Today, urban agriculture is suddenly a buzzword, both a bright hope for Detroit and a lightning rod for attacks on "right sizing." But it wasn’t always that way. When the Greening of Detroit was founded 20 years ago, the idea of ensuring plenty of greenery in the city was relatively obscure. Times have changed, and…
Nazi fetishes
The 1942 reels, an hour long in total, offer an unforgettable view of life for nearly a half-million Jews crammed into the Warsaw ghetto’s three square miles. Shot only months before the residents would be shipped off to concentration camps, the Nazi’s described it as “… a holding pen for the Final Solution.” It turns…
Courts and sparks
Next to the new fall series themselves — depending on the quality of the shows in question, maybe more than the programs — TV critics love discussing time slots. That’s because they know television history is littered with unique, cleverly written, well-acted productions that died a quick and unseen death against the juggernaut hit on…
Bought and paid for
State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop would have been regarded as an honest politician by at least one member of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Secretary of War Simon Cameron is now mostly remembered for saying, "an honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought." Cameron himself, incidentally, was a man so corrupt that…
Letters to the Editor
Class schooling Re: "The ambassador" (Sept. 15), I take great offense to Toby Barlow’s comment that "Detroit has no middle class of any substantial size and certainly has no real upper class." While it is admirable that Mr. Barlow is a fan of the city, being a resident for four years does not make him…
Pound-foolish
The Rev. Robert Blake sits in the office of his Highland Park church, leafing through a folder filled with stories of teenagers who have run afoul of the law. There’s a 17-year-old arrested for carjacking. A 14-year-old who was skipping school and hanging with gangs. Another who committed unarmed robbery. What these kids have in…
Sociopath? Wronged man? Both?
After 30 hours of testimony in an unusual two-day hearing, the Michigan Parole and Commutation Board is wrestling with deciding the fate of convicted murderer Frederick Freeman: Is he a dangerous man, rightfully locked up or the victim of a wrongful conviction in a 1986 shotgun slaying? Witnesses cried: some with grief for the murder…
Sean Blackman’s world music
Rain is pounding the roof of Sean Blackman’s Clawson bungalow. He and his main collaborator Pathe Jassi are in an open attic room; tapestries decorate the walls, a sword sits by the stairway, and instruments from around the world are strewn across the floor. Jassi hands Blackman back his nylon-string guitar and picks up the…
Night and Day
THURSDAY-SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 23-25 Harvest Moon Celebration THE SEASONS ARE A-CHANGING Farmington’s sixth annual autumnal festival welcomes the changing of the seasons with harvest-themed fun. The fest kicks off Thursday with a beer and wine tasting featuring craft beers from the Great Lakes region and more than 30 wines. Friday, the Harvest Moon Dance gives revelers…
Needle Rap
For some time, if you’d asked practically any Detroit rapper who they considered the most slept-on emcee here and almost universally they’d say Miz Korona, after citing themselves, of course. She’s outbattled and outhustled local lyricists for years and her songs sport more punchlines than a comedian’s routine. But despite a choice cameo in 8…
Metro Retro
16 years ago in Metro Times: Cathy McCormick writes on ways for struggling families in southeast Michigan to seek out help in the article "Helping families, helping kids." McCormick offers suggestions for struggling metro area families, including free immunizations, vision and hearing tests at local community centers, and information on how to take advantage of…
Backlot
Transformers 3 Director: Michael Bay Starring: Shia Lebeouf, Josh Duhamel The buzz: Every schoolboy knows that Detroit’s city motto is "If you seek a pleasant postindustrial apocalyptic wasteland, look around you." No one has taken this slogan more to heart than mega-budget schlock-master Michael Bay, who happens to adore Detroit’s mix of neo-gothic and art…
Cycles of change
One has a Heineken mini-keg behind the seat. This one has a TV on it. That one has a PlayStation affixed to the back end. Pastel colors glow, polished chrome sparkles. They’re among the dozens of custom bicycles lined along the curb in front of this one house that has no neighbors on either side…
The Town
As far as meat-and-potatoes genre flicks go, Ben Affleck’s bank-robber-seeking-redemption drama ain’t half bad. Pulling triple duty as director, co-writer and star, Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a former NHL rookie whose bad temper landed him back in the blue-collar neighborhood of Charlestown. Now the brains behind a posse of “townie” bank robbers, he’s pursued by…
