Cover Stories
The young adult lit dystopian timeline
Just as a fairytale imparts a moral through fantastic storytelling, young adult dystopian literature encourages social awareness through speculation about our future — where we as people are heading—and has done so to the delight of young readers for almost 60 years. So, whether a teen is curled up with The Giver or enthralled by…
Skin in the game
The blockbuster success of the book and the film version of The Hunger Games takes on a larger significance when you consider it’s not just the work of a female author, but a work featuring a strong female protagonist. Then just when we were feeling all warm and fuzzy about our national progress, a flurry…
Teenage Wasteland
One of the best ways to understand something foreign is by considering it in terms of what is familiar. On first taste, a grapefruit might be described as "like an orange, but bitter." On first sight, a glacier is like an ice cube, but bigger. In attempting to grasp something new, you extend your understanding…
City Slang: Movement dates announced
Sheesh, it’s just like Christmas. We’re not quite done with festival season 2012 (the Ferndale DIY Street Fair is coming up this weekend), and already the dates for next year’s Movement Festival have been announced. The festival will take place May 25-27 at Hart Plaza, Detroit. An opening reception will take place on Friday, May…
2012 Toronto Film Festival – DAY ONE.Part 1
The Toronto Film Festival – Day One Is it okay to start off by complaining about the wi-fi? Probably not. But it’s the reason I haven’t been blogging in real-ish time and why my tweets (follow me at JephM)appear in erratic spurts. Even Starbucks has been unreliable. And so, as South Park encourages…. Blame Canada.…
City Slang: Deadbeat Beat rocks the Alley
On Friday night, the weather was looking ominous enough that the DITA organizers were pushed to put a statement on the website saying that the festival would be going ahead, and that there would be no alternative rain day. However, when Saturday arrived there were no such worries. It was a beautiful day, suggesting that…
Tomorrow’s Parties
Dally… Morning After Things will inevitably get sloppy as the night goes on and the crowds grow (and imbibe)… and most of this will wind up not meaning as much to many as it did to some But oh to be there, sounds swirling around these tubular alleys like a grimed up wind tunnel, song…
TIFF ’12 Diary: Day 1
Ahh, Toronto, how I’ve missed you. I’m back again for my 3rd Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff). Cannes may have the prestige and the Riviera, Venice may have the history and the canals, and Sundance may have its Indie-cred, but as far as film festivals go, Toronto is best in breed. It’s the world’s largest…
City Slang: Is everybody ready to Dally?
At the time of writing, there are mere hours to go until it’s time for Dally in the Alley 2012, and the lineup is stellar, packed with awesome local talent. To tickle your fancy (so to speak), the bill in full is: Alley Stage 12:00 pm Ungrateful Daughter 1:00 pm The Cold Wave 2:00 pm…
Weekend Hit List
Friday 7th Geoff Johns Signing The DC Comics Universe (which includes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman et al. for the uninitiated) has undergone many changes (or crises, for the initiated), but one constant for years has been writer… [READ MORE] Dirty Dozen Brass Band Last weekend’s jazz fest celebrated traditional jazz out of New Orleans and modernist…
City Slang: Former Paper Street Saint prepares to rock the Bag
Matt Austin got himself a bit of attention around town as the guitarist with rockers the Paper Street Saints, but the man has now gone country, releasing a self-titled EP and preparing to plays those new songs alongside some covers at the Magic Bag on September 21. It promises to be a great night; the…
Cosmopolis
Some films wear the badge of "not for everyone" with pride. David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis takes that boast several steps further, and almost achieves the status of anti-entertainment. His film’s dialogue is stilted and intellectually cryptic, his direction is cold and calculated, his characters are dull-eyed and passionless, and the setting is, mostly, static. And yet,…
Want to survive college?
I am declaring war on "The College Experience." No, I am not talking in the vein of Rick Santorum, who apparently hates the idea of giving every child the opportunity to attend college. (You may recall this past May at a Tea Party rally in Troy, the then-presidential hopeful hurled an onslaught of words toward…
Ty Segall to land in Lager Parking Lot (9/27); hear “The Hill”
Ty Segall’s a busy tike: a singer/songwriter coming out of San Fran with an interesting take on psychedelic-sludge rock, wound-up with a bubblegummy-strut and high, keyed-up vocals, seems like he’s got something new coming out every seven months. His most recent was a harried fuzz-heavy rolllercoaster called Slaughterhouse, backed by the Ty Segall Band. He…
Beyond the Moth: The Secret Society Of Twisted Storytellers
The Moth Storytelling sessions sponsored by WDET and held at Cliff Bell’s have been one of the most successful additions to the cultural landscape hereabouts these last few years. Translation: It caught on almost immediately and keeps going strong. Don’t even try to get a seat if you’re not willing to stand in line for…
City Slang: Michael Mars and Zombie Jesus feel the Loving Touch
You’ve got to love Jeff, Laura and the guys in Duende!, well, for many reasons but the fact that they are hosting these Duendesday nights at the Loving Touch in Ferndale on the first Wednesday of every month just increases the affection levels. On the surface, they are just another local show. Thing is though,…
Get The Led Out-The American Led Zeppelin-FREE TICKETS
If you’re bored tonight with no place to go, come see an awesome Zeppelin cover band! The show is at the Majestic Theater at 8PM. Print out this post from the MOTORCITYBLOG and bring it to the show to get in for free! Have fun! http://motorcityblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/print-this-post-and-get-free-tickets.html
Some thoughts on the Detroit Jazz Festival
I don’t envy the artistic director of the Detroit Jazz Festival Chris Collins one bit. Collins, a working jazz saxophonist and an educator, put together one of the most awe-inspiring Detroit jazz fests in recent memory. What the hell, I’ll go one better. Collins put on the best jazz fest ever. Few, if any, longtime…
Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan (Domino)
For a band once heralded as indie saviors, David Longstreth’s proggy collective, Dirty Projectors, plays it safe here, hunkering down on established fixations designed to please big fans and baffle outsiders. That’s a pity, because there are moments on Swing Lo Magellan sublime enough to appeal to a broader contingent than they’ve ever reached. Sixties…
Duende pulls it together
Duende performs at the Loving Touch in Ferndale every first Wednesday, as part of their monthly "Duenseday" local music showcase. They play on Saturday at the Dally in the Alley at 5 p.m. on the "Alley Stage." Suddenly, Jeff Howitt realized they had to make sense of it all. The singer-songwriter’s band, Duende, was winding…
Happy together
The Marvins’ self-released Waves of Strange is available at themarvinsmuic.com and through iTunes. See the Marvins perform live at 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 8, at the Art & Apples Festival, in Rochester Park, Rochester; artandapples.com. Their record release show is scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct 2, at Callahan’s Music Hall, 2105 South Blvd., Auburn…
Advice is not a crime
When Steve Cooksey was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a registered dietician advised him to eat a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Rather than follow that advice blindly, Cooksey read the available scientific literature and decided to do roughly the opposite of what he’d been advised. He proceeded to lose 78 pounds on a high-fat, low-carb diet…
Drive-by Spins
Muddy Waters & the Rolling Stones: Live at the Checkerboard Lounge Chicago 1981 (Eagle Rock): The Stones spent an off night in Chicago during their Tattoo You tour by checking out a show by veteran bluesman Waters and his band. Before long, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood were onstage, jamming with the legend…
Who’s MItt?
Fidel Castro is old and sick and dying, but you have to think Mitt Romney’s convention speech gave the old bearded devil a boost. Mittney went out of his way to attack "Castro’s tyranny" and "Castro’s Cuba" twice. Who says the GOP has changed? They are still stoutly against Fidel, God love ’em. Talk about…
Lawless
Lawless| B- Watching the way director John Hillcoat takes nearly tactile pleasure in the Prohibition-era details of Lawless, you get the sense that real cinematic ambition is at work. With an assist from D.P. Benoit Delhomme, Hillcoat composes a rich palette of burnished yellows, smoky grays and arboreal greens. Mist snakes its way through lush…
Family values
Ungrateful Daughter opens the Alley Stage at Dally in the Alley this Saturday, September 8 at noon. The band then plays the Ferndale DIY Street Fair on Sunday, September 16, performing on the Metro Times Stage at 2:00 p.m. Take a look at the bill for both this Saturday’s Dally in the Alley festival in…
Dally in the Alley 2012
More highlights from this year’s bill Pink Lightning The sort of band you would expect to see dancing on tables at a Russian wedding, Pink Lightning is Detroit’s answer to Gogol Bordello. There really, truly ain’t no party like a Pink Lightning party. Lord Scrummage If an acid-soaked psychopath were commissioned to write music for…
Labor Day aftergloom
With Labor Day just passed, and the big parade behind us, News Hits is here to cast some dark shadows on any lingering afterglow you may be enjoying. No need for thanks. That’s what we’re here for. The news we bring has to do with Michigan’s unemployment rate, which has been in decline since peaking…
Drug-war booty
There are reasons why police smile when they trot out the booty from a drug bust. And it’s not just because they got a bunch of drugs off the street. In addition to drugs, they usually confiscate money, computers, jewelry, guns, cars, bank accounts, homes and more. What makes the police officers’ smiles so big…
360
360| C The globe-hopping drama 360 has an epic scope, a loaded, hugely talented cast and a terrific creative pedigree behind the camera; unfortunately, it’s devoid of excitement, passion or a real reason to care. Essentially a string of vignettes, knitted together by a number of those "only in the movies" coincidences intended to demonstrate…
Food Stuff
Cake rising For months, we’ve heard that L’s Cheescake Bistro is to open in the space that formerly was home to Sweet Georgia Brown, which closed in 2009. We’ve been walking by and seeing progress, and a chef outside the joint recently told us it is now scheduled to open Sept. 10. We even caught…
Hollow man
p class="p3">A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers McSweeney’s, 328 pp., $25 (hardcover) We are the holographic men "shape without form, shade without color/paralyzed force/gesture without motion," as T.S. Eliot put it in 1925, when America was on the upswing. Now, everyone seems to agree: America is in decline. We used to…
Boned at Burning Man?
Q: I have been in a long-term relationship with a wonderful woman who doesn’t have a lot of people she socializes with in her daily life. She is a Burning Man person and converses online with other "burners." I confronted her when I realized she was discussing the ups and downs of our relationship in…
Women who love the GOP
I know there is no monolithic voting bloc called "women" femaleness, like maleness, is cross-cut with race, education, class, income, ethnicity, religion, marital status, even geography. I also know we all make allowances for our own side, which usually boils down to forgiving men for sexual shenanigans and insulting "gaffes" (aka blurting out their true…
Letters to the Editor
Erratum: This sculpture was misidentified in the Aug. 29 Higher Ground column. It is "Earth and Sky Repose" by Tom Davies and Karen Sepanski. It is part of the College for Creative Studies Community Arts Partnership, and partially funded by the Kresge Foundation.
Street treats
Hut-K Chaats 3022 Packard Rd., Ann Arbor 734-786-8312 Handicap accessible Entrées: $5-$7 Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11-8 p.m. Sunday. To hear Swaroop Bhojani explain why he left radiation oncology at the University of Michigan to become a restaurateur is to listen to a man on a mission. After a brush with Type 2 diabetes,…
City Slang: Yet another new House Shoes video
Detroit hip-hop guru House Shoes has released another video (they seem to be never ending lately), this one featuring Danny Brown for the single “Sweet”. The video was “Directed, Edited & Fucked with” by RUFFMERCY for ruffmercy.com with animation by RUFFMERCY & EWEN RAFF for unfarr.com. Additional animation by JONATAN JONSSON for lowlands.se. The video…
Just Another Friday (Turn It Up To 11!)
In the whirl of five hours or so, this Friday, you could see (/hear) live performances from seven local bands (and two DJs, I’d add) -between the Yelp party at the Fillmore in the earlier part of the evening (7pm-10pm-ish) and then transitioning a few blocks north to the Magic Stick for a HandGrenades-curated concert…
