Published: 4/7/2010
Types: News, Science & technology
Last week's sunshine and warmth had me out raking and picking up the yard in anticipation of getting my garden growing. I even started some seeds germinating indoors and wondered if it was too early to put lettuce seeds in the ground. Lettuce does well in cooler weather and is one of the first thing...[MORE]
Published: 2/24/2010
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Dave Graw and Derek Swanson are a couple of solid dudes. Living evidence that age 35 is the new 21 (which is the new 15), they drink beer faster and tell dick jokes better than sports bar swillers, and though these total BFFs are heterosexually hot for each other's guffaws, they're also husbands wi...[MORE]
Published: 12/23/2009
Types: News, Science & technology
In a piece recently posted on the Harvard Business Review's website, Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz, of a Massachusetts consulting firm named Innosight, pointed out that the greenest city on the planet is currently being constructed in an area surrounded by the world's largest supply of oil: Mas...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Video games
Ghostbusters: The Video Game Atari XBox 360, PS3, Wii, PC Ever sit around with your pals talking about classic movies, and there's a culturally illiterate dude who's never seen something? And you know those looks of incredulousness in the room when that dude says it's Star Wars? Well, this writ...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Everyone's a critic. Everybody's got a gavel. We've become a nation of self-promoting narcissists in love with the sound of our own fingers rattling the keyboard. Netflix, Amazon, eBay, YouTube and iTunes encourage us to review movies, books, videos and music — to break 'em down and give them ...[MORE]
Published: 6/10/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Video games
My first skateboard was a Christian Hosoi street board, Slimeball Hairball wheels, and some hand-me-down trucks; I was geeked to be the next king of the streets. One problem ... I couldn't ollie — which is the foundation trick of street skating — and my skateboard career went down in fla...[MORE]
Published: 4/15/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Seems like every week a new service claiming to revolutionize the online music space — or at least take another chunk of market share away from MySpace — appears. Whether it's RCRDLABL, Virb, SecretRemixes or one of the others on the Web, everyone's just one niche-play away from kicking some start-u...[MORE]
Published: 3/11/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Before the news blog sporting the adjectivally constructed URL version came online (and long before the current network of scene-adoring blogs), there was a site called, simply, motorcityrock.com. Dedicated to archiving the sights, sounds, ephemera and, yes, evidence of bad haircuts from Detroit roc...[MORE]
Published: 2/4/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Lost amid all the rightful praise and hullabaloo surrounding Randy Chabot's Deastro project is the fact that dude's got two other monikers under which he lets his freak flag fly. The first, Our Brother the Megazord, shared a CD release with Deastro proper, and makes the occasional public appea...[MORE]
Published: 1/28/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
I've been bummed out that last year's Pas/Cal record, I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke and Laura, didn't get the full-court promotional press it deserved, especially in print, so I'll take any opportunity to recommend checking it out on the Web ... or other means that I can't legally recomm...[MORE]
Published: 1/21/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
So, flacks are always trying to get you to write about their crazy-ass clients' new half-baked projects. Such it was that I got an e-mail about just such a ka-razee new scheme the other day called secretremixes.com. It's a site where member DJs can post their mash-ups, mixes, breaks and snippe...[MORE]
Published: 1/7/2009
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
There comes a time every year when "Best Of" lists lead to such exclamations as "Fuck! I totally forgot about that!" Or "Wow! I'm way less in touch with 'the kids' than I thought!" Or "Should I file this with the recipe cards or throw it right into the 'to be burned' folder with my Walgreens r...[MORE]
Published: 11/12/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Gardens — the newest project from the dudes who brought you the joys of the Genders — share a natty urban-underbelly garage savoir faire with '90s NYC heartthrobs Jonathan Fire*Eater, featuring thumping Velvets-y whomp and strum that sounds like a Bohemian amateur dance party night...[MORE]
Published: 10/29/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Man alive — times are strange! The skies are slate gray, we're on the verge of either falling into the abyss economically, politically, personally ... or not. Every day feels like a test of your will to simply persevere. The gales of November are starting to blow over the horizon, and th...[MORE]
By Metro Times editorial staff
Published: 10/22/2008
Types: News, Science & technology
It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Metro Times that we would endorse Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president over Sen. John McCain of Arizona. However, if you are tempted to view our support of Obama as knee-jerk progressive dogma, consider this: At least 25 news...[MORE]
Published: 10/22/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
When you're not bound by the laws of "physics" or "reality," you can do things like, oh, say, invent a teleportation device, fly so fast in space that you reverse the earth's rotation and thus time ... or, more ground-level, create a three-sided single. Thanks to the joys of the Internets, I'l...[MORE]
Published: 10/8/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
I'll take pretty much any opportunity available to further extol the glory of seminal Detroit blues-punk-minimalist-Back From the Grave-worshipping primitivist trio the Gories. Guitarists Mick Collins (Dirtbombs), Dan Kroha (Demolition Doll Rods, the Readies) and drummer Peg O'Neil ('68 Comeba...[MORE]
Published: 9/24/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Amid all the (relative, mind you) hubbub over maestro Troy Gregory's departure from the anarchic institution that is the Dirtbombs was the explanatory note that he's taking a leave to concentrate on other projects. When you're the bassman in a headlining, working, touring, commercially gregar...[MORE]
Published: 9/17/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
DAS Bootleg The untimely demise of the Bohemian National Home got me to thinking how fickle the world of performance venues can be. Anyone who's done any time knocking about the music scene in this town (hell, any town) has a tale or two that ends with a wistful "Man, that place was awesome. ...[MORE]
Published: 9/10/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Ah, Grand Rapids: the same city that birthed the mighty Whirlwind Heat and Amway is perpetually in a state of light college transition, capitalist-driven urban renewal and Republican ultra-conservatism and Midwest isolation that tends to birth goodness, weirdness and locally based experimentat...[MORE]
Published: 8/6/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Before disco-damaged "Dance Commander" days of the Electric Six — when the Wildbunch were still a wild bunch of high-octane surrealists — the band's sound was damn-near defined by the fuzzed-out roar of guitarist Joe Frezza's (aka Mojo Frezzato) arena-toned riffage. Well, that soun...[MORE]
Published: 7/30/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Summer seems never-ending right now. Its omnipresence, intense heatery and related stinkery still offer a vast horizon of both opportunity and ennui. So sometimes one goes crawling to the nearest air-conditioned space with a wireless connection and a yen for some sonic salve. In my surfing thi...[MORE]
Published: 7/23/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
When it comes to jams in "South Detroit" (aka Windsor, Ontario), as Steve Perry so arguably put it, Windsor exists in a weird sort of parallel universe: close enough to Detroit to claim "rock city" props when necessary, but certainly more attuned to the London-Hamilton-Toronto 401 circuit, aud...[MORE]
Published: 7/9/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
Prussia is a quartet of dudes with a penchant for both sweetly disarming and just as sweetly unnerving indie jams. Their take is an anachronistic one that backbends toward '60s pop while still sounding very modern, calmly composed ... and nervous. Fans of Saturday Looks Good to Me should eat t...[MORE]
Published: 6/25/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
A few years ago, guitarist-vocalists Dan Maister and Mike Walker joined together with drummer Matt Blake (later Bill Hafer took over the drums stool) and formed the powerful trio called Bogue. They were Detroit through and through. Irascible and funky; heartbroken but celebratory; prickly, noi...[MORE]
Published: 6/11/2008
Types: News, Science & technology
When Eve Mokotoff, HIV epidemiology manager with the Michigan Department of Community Health, discusses the results of the latest annual review of HIV trends in Michigan, she labels them "stunning."And by stunning, she doesn't mean a thing of beauty. It's more like the shock or a hammer blow t...[MORE]
Published: 6/4/2008
Types: Culture, Tech, Internet
A few years ago, I happened luckily on the recordings of two fine folks who call our fair city home and fed my itchy noise-loving side with their creations. I decided to check in with them online, found them in finely evolved form — and I'm all the happier for it. Do check out the advent...[MORE]
By Ann Mullen
Published: 3/8/2000
Types: News, Science & technology
After learning that the nation’s poor had the highest incidence of cancer and the lowest survival rate, Dr. Clarence Vaughn went to work in one of Detroit’s most impoverished neighborhoods. "I decided I needed to work in the city,&...[MORE]
Published: 3/8/2000
After a long winter of wild Web carousing, allow me to clear out my hard drive and unsort my bookmarks. In other words, it’s time for another cybersurvey edition of Netropolis. Here is my latest list of clickworthy pages, guaranteed to chase...[MORE]
Published: 2/23/2000
If you recently bought a DVD player, you might not be aware of the enormous legal drama your shiny new copy of The Matrix or Scream 2 has produced. There’s a battle over how people play back these disks. And the Internet’s independent programm...[MORE]
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