If a recent Coachella Festival appearance is anything go by, everybody loves the Nick Jr. TV show Yo Gabba Gabba! It doesn’t matter how old you are, the mere sight of exuberant host Lance Robertson in his furry orange hat getting silly with a tin robot, a furry green thing, a spiky red Cyclops, a blue cat and a pink girl with a Hershey’s Kiss for a head is enough to turn the most drained of parents into dancing loons, while hipster kids are getting attached too. Ahhh, post-modern irony – you love your games. It’s the Teletubbies with an anime twist, and Biz Markie doing beat-box. So we were offered the opportunity to present some questions to creator Christian Jacobs via email, and we promptly sent a bunch of questions over, in September. We received answers back a couple of months later, but they were to different questions. We don’t know if they muddled our questions with those from another publication, of if they just decided to interview themselves. It’s a bit bonkers, but then so is Yo Gabba Gabba!. Here it is anyway… Do you ever plan on introducing any new characters? Ha! Yes! Sure! We always have […]

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Yet another act of arson occurred at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit, destroying a fifth house, known as the “Clock House,” Click on Detroit reports. Since May, five of the seven installations have been completely destroyed by eight different fires. The project, which was started in 1986 by Detroiter Tyree Guyton and has transformed abandoned homes into giant works of art, has been both a destination for tourists from around the world as well as the target of city officials who deem it an eyesore. “It is difficult for us not to believe the arson fires are connected,” Heidelberg Project Marketing and Communications Coordinator Katie Hearn says to Metro Times via email. “The choice of targets seems very strategic, the timing of the attacks calculated.” The first in the string of fires occurred on May 3rd at the “Obstruction of Justice House,” also known as the “OJ House.” The house was again targeted on Oct. 5th, when it was completely destroyed. Two more fires followed days later, which caused minor damage to the “Penny House” and the “Number House.” The “House of Soul,” was the next victim, burning down on Nov. 12th, followed by another attack on the “Penny House”, which […]

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Guitar rock duo The Kills will make  a stop at the Majestic Theater on Tuesday as part of a very short string of 3 dates surrounding a pair of high-profile gigs opening for Queens of The Stone Age in New York and Boston. The band tacked on dates in Chicago and Toronto in addition to Detroit. The band, which splits its time between Nashville and London, have a notable Michigan connection: they’ve recorded their past three records in Benton Harbor’s Club Recording Company, and plan to finish recording their forthcoming album there as well. “It feels like home,” singer Alison Mosshart told the Detroit News, and also said she likes killing time at Benton Harbor’s Meijer at night between recording sessions. In 2014 Mosshart will also record with her band The Dead Weather, which features Jack White and Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita, both of Michigan.

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As described in a groundbreaking Metro Times story earlier this year, “A Highway Runs Through It,” a plan is moving ahead to spend $3.8 billion expanding sections of I-75 and I-94 in metro Detroit. Of particular interest to Detroiters is the part of the plan that calls for expanding a 6.7-mile stretch of I-94 between I-96 and Conner Avenue — at a cost of $1.8 billion. The plan would enlarge the gulfs separating Midtown — now experiencing a full-on resurgence — from the neighborhoods around it. In fact, the plan calls for removing several pedestrian and vehicular bridges connecting Midtown to Woodbridge and New Center. The staggering amount of money to be spent, the loss of the bridges, and the emphasis on speeding commuters through the city at its expense has new urbanists pissed. And the fact that the plan encroaches on the eclectic Fourth Street neighborhood, as well as threatening historic United Sound Studios, has preservationists questioning if this is really necessary. Then there is metro Detroit’s newfound interest in what rapid transit, specifically BRT and light rail, can do to revamp our fair city, all of which will likely cost a fraction of this multibillion-dollar roadbuilding spree. Add to this the fact […]

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Legislation in Michigan has passed the Senate that will set the phasing out of landlines in Michigan into motion, Click On Detroit reports. The bill, which heads to the House next, plans to eliminate landline service in Michigan by 2017. Traditionally, landline service has been subsidized by the government, viewed as an essential service. But the market in Michigan seems to indicate otherwise: landline customers have dropped by more than 60% in the last decade, from 6.5 million in 2002 to 2.6 million in 2012, according to the FCC. Meanwhile cell phone users have more than doubled from 4.5 million in 2002 to more than 9 million people in 2012. Senate bill 636 removes the requirement that at least two other providers offer comparable service in an area before a phone company can discontinue service there. Groups like the AARP have opposed the plan, citing concerns that affordable service and access to medical alert systems could be compromised. Another part of the country was forced to experiment with eliminating landlines when Hurricane Sandy destroyed the system on New York’s Fire Island. Initially, Verizon opted to not restore the system, instead installing a wireless system called Voice Link that connected house phones to […]

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His famous bombing raid on Japan was payback for Pearl Harbor Many American’s are aware of Doolittle’s Raiders and their demoralizing bombing of Japan. The raid has been immortalized in the film, “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.” It was also one of the turning points of the war. With the approach of December 7 and the anniversary of the, “day that will live in infamy,” we should note that Doolittle’s raid was a mere five months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor crippled our naval forces; that same day Japanese bombing destroyed almost half of the U.S. aircraft that were stationed in the Philippines. Japan enjoyed a series of victories as they spread out their front and easily conquered that island nation. Something had to be done to slow the Japanese juggernaut. That is when the U.S. decided we needed a plan to surprise the enemy and bomb Japan’s home islands, a seemingly impossible task. The man chosen to plan the attack was Lt. Col. James Harold Doolittle, and he devised a daring, some say foolhardy, plan. Sixteen stripped down B-26 bombers would take off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. With favorable weather conditions they should all reach their targets. […]

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