Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries actress Sarah Jessica Parker announced recently that she washes her hair with Mane ’N’ Tail shampoo, a product made for horses. I recommend that you consider switching to it, too. It’s time to please your inner thoroughbred, whose animal intelligence and wild vitality will be essential to you in the…
Working out the kinks
Q: I am a massage girl — wink, wink — who provides men with happy endings. I enjoy porn — especially guy-on-guy porn — and I like to think of myself as very open. I am also happily married. Until recently. My husband is 36, handsome, 6’2”, well-endowed, works out daily, and has an awesome…
The pimping of MLK Jr.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was alive he was a public servant, a freedom fighter, a civil rights leader and an activist. As we honor his Jan. 15th birthday a little more than 35 years after he was murdered, King is merchandise. His legacy, which has been perverted over the years by so many for…
Cobo haul
Check out more of the amazing North American International Auto Show 2004 photos taken by Cybelle Codish. It doesn’t take long to detect someone’s automobile IQ. Can they stand in front of an exposed engine and carry on a conversation about what they see for as long as three minutes? Do they become insufferable braggarts…
Lone star spirit
Josh Bramhall is sick. His fingers trickle down the bridge of his nose and squeeze between the cartilage and bone to loosen the liquid funk. “It’s headed down south,” he says, tapping on his chest. The 29-year-old Bramhall, who bears more than a slight resemblance to Gram Parsons, is a gifted guitarist and a modern-day…
Groom & board
Who can afford some of the stuff galleries present as “functional art” these days, like a $4,000 glass and steel shelf or a $2,400 wood table no bigger than a bench? I sure don’t have room in my budget or my house for such accoutrements; but, I suppose, for people who buy $10,000 paintings for…
Plot twist
Just where do you draw the line between I’m gay and I’m human? Ha! That’s a trick question, because of course there’s no such line. Unfortunately, the queer film genre sometimes gives I’m gay precedence over plot, character development and film quality. In other words, as with any festival of specialty films, you run the…
N&D Center
14 WED • ISSUES & LEARNING Detroit Agriculture Network Education Series — The vacant lot is to the urban neighborhood what the tumbleweed was to the ghost town. And for Detroit — a city that thrives on the notion of rebirth — what better way to heal abandoned areas than to give them life? Vegetable…
Tax backwards
A new law signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm at the end of December could garner the city as much as $60 million a year in property taxes that currently go uncollected. But not everyone in the land of tax laxity is pleased with the change. “I am concerned that there may be unintended consequences to…
Writing with a Y
Once known by men in need of shelter as a cheap place to lay one’s head, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) has come a long way. The local “Y,” as it became known in numerous urban centers, opened its doors to just about anyone looking to shoot hoops, practice gymnastics, take a swim or…
Django a go-go
Signs of the Django Reinhardt cult abound. His most famous band, the Hot Club of France, echoes decades later in names like the Hot Club of Toronto, the Hot Club of Cowtown, the Hot Club of the Rockies, the Hot Club of Philadelphia and more. His followers gather for festivals in his honor with the…
Conventional wisdom
What was especially striking about Mayor Earring’s announcement that he was planning a new convention center was that nobody even stopped to pretend this would help people in the rotting and dying neighborhoods of Detroit. Now we all have short memories, but it was barely two years ago that Kwame Kilpatrick was running for mayor,…
Another Dem named Lyndon
A group of Democrats — including two former state legislators from Detroit, a state rep from Kalamazoo, a handful of leaders from union locals and a few county-level party officials — wants to know why state party leaders aren’t allowing perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche onto the Michigan ballot. A better question might be: Why…
Leftover mess
After some debate, the Abandoned Structure Squad, (ASS) decided that this structure at 2719 E. Vernor is best described as an orphaned sidecar. Worth only $600 with no known birth date, its brown bricks hold up a sagging roof that looks as if it was stabbed seven times by an angry giant. Flanked with ghetto…
Two-wheeled road hogs
As MT pointed out when listing 2003’s dubious achievements (“Shame Game,” Dec. 31, 2003-Jan. 1, 2004), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last year that, among the nation’s largest cities, Detroit had the highest number of pedestrian fatalities. But it’s not just people on two feet who have to worry, and it’s not just…
Chasing Liberty
MTV singer Mandy Moore doesn’t emit the grace, elegance or maturity that Audrey Hepburn did as the lonely and sheltered princess/first daughter. In fact, Moore is disgustingly cute as the President of the United States’ rebellious kid. The ruggedly handsome newcomer Matthew Goode is a plus, but this is TV fare, maybe worth a rental.
Letters to the Editor
Body English Thanks to Metro Times for publishing Russell Trunk’s hilarious lambaste of Jane Slaughter’s comments on Brit cuisine (“Letters to the Editor,” Metro Times, Jan. 7-13). I’m still laughing even though I finally figured out it was for real and not some Monty Pythonesque parody of a brolly-toting, bowler-wearing, Union Jack-waving Tory. I agree…
Infinity & beyond
The advance buzz on David Foster Wallace’s new book was that it would be a biography of the 19th-century mathematician Georg Cantor. But instead of biography or even history, Everything and More chronicles the conceptual development of infinity from the Greeks to modern times, singling out Cantor’s contributions as the heady theoretical pinnacle. If you’re…
Sacred Love
Elvis Costello once mocked Sting for announcing to the world he had just written a subversive song, thereby violating the first law of subversion. About the only subversive thing you could say about the resulting “Invisible Sun” is that it ripped off its only hook from the “o-re-o” chant in The Wizard of Oz. But…
Hell Yeah!
Lewd, stewed and tattooed up the wazoo, these punky Euro-trashers consist of three greaser cowboys, a floozy chanteusie with a Siouxie Sioux sound and a butch brace of female prison guard go-go dancers. Of course, image being everything, the big punch line here is that despite looking like a buncha hell-bound heathens, they sound like…
I’m Goin’ Out and Get Hurt Tonight
Musicians have been writing songs about the imbibing, the celebration, the aftereffect and, sometimes, the tragic consequences of booze since at least medieval times. Even longer, probably, commencing when Piltdown man finally learned how to alternate between playing a ragged tune upon and hoisting a stone vessel to his lips. Pat Todd, of Los Angeles’…
Sweet and Downtown
Sweet Lorraine’s has been an area mainstay for years. Their long-awaited restaurant in the Courtyard by Marriott features food that is not quite as fabulous as in the ’burbs, but restauranteur Lorraine Platman has brought her customers’ veteran favorites downtown, such as maple-cured salmon, pecan chicken and other culinary delights. Open for breakfast, lunch and…
One from the Heart
After the chaos of Apocalypse Now, writer/director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather I & II) set out to create a light, romantic comedy. When it came out in 1982, it was bashed. Though Coppola is asking us to reconsider it through the reissue, it’s still pretty blah. As a purely visual experience — the DFT…
Monster
Charlize Theron submits the most riveting performance of her career in the role of Aileen "Lee" Wuornos, whose nightmarish life of abuse ends in her execution as a serial killer. As disturbing as it is riveting. Also starring Christina Ricci.
The return of ‘Amos ’n’ Andy’
Lonnie (Eddie Griffin) and his lifelong friends G (Anthony Anderson) and Dom (Michael Imperioli) face unexpected dilemmas when their girlfriends become pregnant and deliver children on the same day. Stereotypes abound, and a last-minute attempt at thoughtfulness may be the most laughable note in this juvenile cinematic mess.
Let It Be … Naked
OK, so he had to outlive two other fabs before becoming “the smart Beatle,” but look at all the eye-for-an-eye Paul’s extracted from two felonious foes (Phil Spector and Michael Jackson) with the release of this revisionist version of the band’s most contested album. First off, in a bit of perfect timing, this CD’s Top…
