Queen of the Waxwings
So we get the new Queens of the Stone Age disc in the mail. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, we were blowing cigarette ashes off the band’s ever-so-major-label, Jason Odell-shot glossy and notice something that gets the stale Folgers spewing through our clinched lips and expanded nostrils. There, amidst the rock-appropriate tuff-dude grimaces and fancy jackets, betwixt…
Hookers and blow for everyone!
By our accounts this corpulent dude Ty Stone is a rather jolly fellow. We wish him the best. In fact, the downriver-bred Stone did extensive touring playing the big rooms with confederate flag-waver Kid Rock, showcasing certain aptitude for the rock ‘n’ roll-hillbilly ditty. The guy can craft and sing ’em, to be sure. Fact:…
What we do is secret
Well, sorta. LA’s KROQ is spinning the shit out of their latest single “Forever Fades Away” — off this year’s lauded Music From Regions Beyond. But there ain’t much radio love for Tiger Army in old Detroit, tho. So what? Neck-inked dudes and punk-porn chicks are hipped to the band’s power-chord-meets-McCarthy-era rumpus, and MySpace is…
A capital time
Leather-clad bikers in chaps and precocious, four-eyed fourth-graders in school T-shirts may not share space too often, but somehow on the marble and limestone floors, it doesn’t seem too unusual. After all, this is their state Capitol — yours, too, and mine. There are plenty of reasons to visit it, and not just because you’re…
Maumee dearest
Straight down the rain-soaked I-75.We squint and make cathedrals of factory stacks rising from deep emerald green, and dream of far-off lands and Hitchcockian close-ups, only to be smacked into reality by a corporate behemoth. McDonald’s — those promoters of human chub, hasty deaths and environmental decimation — in its up-to-the-moment billboard features an image…
Passing through
The sheets are electric pink, sweaty, a little sandy; there’s a snoring, warm body to your left. Half awake and unwilling to think straight, you untangle yourself from the musty mess of covers, tiptoe to the next room, and then — And then you see it. You see the trail of shit. I’m not from…
Summer, set, go
We started our Summer Guide this year with a simple premise: Get out of town. We all needed to get a break, to get some space, to get some perspective. Of course, we don’t have a lot of time or a lot of money, so the trips had to be neither too long nor too…
Motor City Cribs
Dear darkens his door one last time.
Bridges falling down
Gregg Ward is a boyish-looking 46-year-old with an interesting and crucial job you’ve probably never heard of. He and his dad run the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry, which since 1990 has been the only approved system for taking trucks carrying hazardous materials across this part of the U.S.-Canada border. That doesn’t mean the Wards take all…
Responses to ‘hate’
My last column (“Black Christian hate”) touched off quite a few personal, thoughtful and emotional responses. This week I’ll let some of you write most of my column for me. And to start off, the first excerpt is from a letter taking me to task. What Mr. Gabriel says about black conservatives is tragically as…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Rule, Petrolia!
Sean Bieri is Metro Times design director. Send comments to [email protected]
Teen beat
The Stooges extracted profundity from the chaos of childlike destruction. Nirvana took the profundity of personal destruction and distilled it into childlike grace. The Ramones used three chords to decimate anything that stunk too much like grown-ups and intellectualism. In its finest, most savage moments, rock ‘n’ roll is an abandonment of those things that…
Love for sail
We were on Lake St. Clair and knew there was bad weather coming. We’d seen the forecast for afternoon storms before we left the dock in the morning. We were seeing the sky going gray and green in the distance. We were a few miles into the lake from the Detroit River but were close…
Holy hip hop!
The crowd of maybe 50 at Detroit’s New Galilee Baptist Church is restless. It’s the last day in May and they’re here to see the Rev. Kurtis Blow (yes, he’s a minister now), who’s set to perform for the Detroit-based organization SOAP (Stop Offensive and Abusive Language in hip-hop music through Personal Responsibility) as part…
Underground Rail Road by car
He’s had them imagine themselves in chains, and showed them a diagram of a slave ship they might have been crammed into. He’s made them think about the hell of slave life. The eighth-graders on a class trip from their Chicago-area school, listen more or less attentively as Bryan E. Walls takes them on a…
Head for the …
“What’s the antidote for au jus?” Joel asks quietly, desperately, at about 11 p.m. We’re trying to fall asleep several hours after eating at what was seemingly the fanciest restaurant in the Irish Hills. Unfortunately, there’s no simple solution for making a regrettable decision when you’re miles from home on a road trip. That morning,…
Migratory paths
I come out of the darkness in downtown Windsor all turned around. Traffic lights look different, lines on the road fatter. I keep thinking, “I’m less than a mile from work — and I’m hopelessly lost.” Luckily, Paul keeps cool behind the wheel and picks his way along the Detroit River toward the Ambassador Bridge,…
Speed Savage
Q: I am a 24-year-old male somnophiliac — that is, I’m turned on by the idea of having sex with a woman while she sleeps. So long as we have a healthy awake sex life, my wife says I can do whatever I like when she sleeps. The problem is that when I try to…
Prescription pot
Rochelle Lampkin knows she’s breaking the law when she lights a joint and takes a few tokes, but she doesn’t feel like a criminal. “Sometimes,” she says, “you have to do something that’s wrong for all the right reasons.” The 48-year-old Detroit grandmother has multiple sclerosis, and an associated condition called optic neuritis, an excruciatingly…
Not just cutting up
Bridgette comes home after a long day running her hair salon. Her man, Ty, welcomes her with a dinner fit for a queen. Last night’s sex makes for great conversation, until the subject of money comes up. Bridgette’s aspirations extend beyond running a hair shop; she’s trying to win a singing competition. If she wins,…
Rock for Joy
There are those who dread turning 30 and those who embrace it. Local artist, model, toy maker, jewelry creator and concessionista Gwen Joy is in the latter group. In fact, the fetching Gemini is making sure that the commemoration of her three decades on the planet is no mere party, art show, DJ night or…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Testing! Testing! Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #123! Marilyn Manson — Eat Me, Drink Me (Interscope) :: Marry Me, Dump Me is more like it. Paul McCartney — Memory Almost Full (Hear) :: Not only does he sound like Roger Daltrey on the baroque power ballads, he can still outyowl Little Richard on the too-few high-note…
Caging the cagers
Testimony points to electoral dirty tricks.
Night and Day
Wednesday-Saturday • 13-16 Planet Ant Film & Video Festival FILM A far cry from Hollywood’s rehashed summer fare (attack of the trilogies, egad!), this fifth installment of Planet Ant’s yearly film festival has quirks and originality in abundance, with more than 70 submissions from around the world — ranging from PBS documentaries to home-spliced indies…
Letters to the Editor
Schools worth saving I just saw the article on Whittier and Longfellow schools (“From school bells to doorbells,” Metro Times, June 6). I’ve been keeping tabs on this drama for some time now, as these schools share the same architect as a school in Rochester Hills that I worked on saving for nearly a year.…
Thank you, rec room! Good night!
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has joined ranks with Sony’s Playstation 2 welcoming the Guitar Hero series to its line-up. Guitar Hero II is the ultimate party game trumping other interactive games like Dance Dance Revolution and American Idol. Players clutch the mock Gibson Xplorer guitar — complete with whammy bar — and ham it up in…
TV Eye
According to the old counterculture adage, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Take the case of John Lennon: While he was somewhat aware that the government was interested in him in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it was only after his murder that it became clear just how much of…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Don’t take your time, Aries. Move double fast and strategize from many angles, always thinking 10 steps ahead. Don’t keep your hands clean, either. Play with the muck and roll in the mud and learn from the dirt. And don’t you dare be measured and balanced. Instead, be an intense and…
Living within questions
A prosperous year for a poet (if prosperity is even an option for poets) sees the publication of a book. For some poets, it might be years — even decades, if you’re Jack Gilbert — between books. What a bounty it must be for a poet to see two books come into print within the…
Burning desires
The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai Palm Pictures When call girl Sachiko Hanai gets shot in the head — and survives — her life is irrevocably altered. While this would be a poignant jump start for a drama about treating every day as a golden gift, director Meike Mitsuru has altogether different plans for the…
Market maker
Gwen Ross on the Royal Oak Farmers Market.
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Dear season
It’s hard to think of Matthew Dear as an accomplished elder, a weary participant in a techno ultra-world made up of slick club kids, grubby ravers and parties that go on for days. But in it he is, and in demand — mostly in his Audion guise for Ann Arbor-based Ghostly International’s Spectral Sounds sub-label…
Marinara on Michigan
Deliziosa features traditional Italian cuisine with a few unconventional twists. Considering the gargantuan portions, and that mains come with soup or salad, you might pass on the appetizers. The entrées include fillet portabella, salmon with lemon sauce, eggplant Parmesan, and chicken Marengo, Marsala, and piccata. There are no wildcards among the 13 diverse pasta dishes,…
Because of You
At 24, Ne-Yo is only slightly older than most of today’s interchangeable postpubescent R&B beefcake, but his songwriting and producing chops are already honed enough to push him beyond peers like hot-stepping but squeaky-voiced Chris Brown and the dancing-marionette erections of Pretty Ricky. (Ne-Yo penned Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable,” for instance, which would earn him a line…
In Glorious Times
As metal continues to get smarter and smarter, it seems that Sleepytime Gorilla Museum just keeps getting dumber and dumber. Perhaps encouraged by the affirmation that metalheads have given their more blatant heaviosity, the Gorillas are more than willing to indulge those impulses on their third album. Thudding detonations of power chords and cookie-monster vocals…
Minutes to Midnight
In 1982, Rolling Stone devoted a cover story to the popular emergence of faceless bands such as REO Speedwagon, Journey, Styx and Foreigner. The piece implied that the sales dominance of bands with no perceptible charisma was a signal that rock was in seriously bad health. A full generation later, Linkin Park wields its facelessness…
Cruel summer
It’s not exactly groundbreaking to decry the work of the current poster boy for the despicable and swiftly spreading torture porn craze, but the real problem is not that Roth toils in a loathsome, indefensible genre; it’s because he does it so well. Eli Roth makes really pretty horror pictures, his blood splatters are artful,…
Offside
Offside is kind of like a postcard from prison, and, though conditions are severe, the inmates are in good spirits and appear to be making the most of their bad situation. The action centers around a World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain at Tehran’s Azadi stadium, where a half-dozen young girls attempt to…
Severance
Slasher films are the ramen noodles of horror: Stick a group of characters in a remote location, toss in a knife-wielding maniac then just add blood. Voila! Instant B-movie. Lately, there’s been a return to the humorless brutality of early hack-and-stab movies. While the production values are much higher and torture has become the centerpiece,…
Ocean’s 13
The best con men have a way of overriding our deepest suspicions, smoothly charming us into buying whatever guff they’re selling; even if we sense deep down that we’re being scammed. So it is with director Steven Soderbergh and his ever- swelling glamour gang of celebrity buds, as they slyly bluff their way through the…
Day Watch
When last we left Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) of the “Night Watch,” his estranged son, Yegor, decided to join the forces of the Dark after discovering Dad had tried to have him magically aborted after learning his wife had been unfaithful. Now a member of the same army Anton has sworn to fight against, the vengeful…
Surf’s Up
What if penguins could surf? Wouldn’t that be like totally radical or something? Well, no, not so much, but try telling that to the boardroom full of clueless suits that green-lighted this dippy slab of CGI diversion about a big-time penguin surfing contest. Sure, surfing hasn’t really seized the pop zeitgeist since Brian Wilson put…
