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Morgan & York’s landmark sign

It’s “the old Big Ten Party Store sign now in front of Morgan & York at 1928 Packard,” spies Tess Roth. “Way too easy for any townie!” writes Beth Berenter, voicing the disappointment of many....

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Coming Attraction: Cinetopia

“We’ve been wanting to launch an international film festival for over ten years,” says Russ Collins, executive director of the Michigan Theater.There are already 4,000 “international film festivals”...

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Natalie Bakopoulos

Ann Arborite Natalie Bakopoulos has done some wonderfully unexpected things in her debut novel, The Green Shore. In addition to the textured family drama we might expect in a first novel, she has taken on much larger themes of...

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Cinetopia begins

If you’re a film buff, you’re surely geeked about Cinetopia, the Michigan Theater’s new film festival. Spanning everything from the silent era to contemporary films and from box-office gold to indie cred,...

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Doug & Telisha Williams

The country genre has its own classical music: bluegrass, with its acoustic rural string band raised to startling virtuoso heights. But as the classic barroom country ensemble, with its electric guitar, steel guitar, and small,...

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Hana Malhas

Hana Malhas (say HEN-a) was raised in Amman, Jordan, and came to Ann Arbor to attend business school at the U-M. She graduated a few years back, and now she says she’d like to spend the rest of her life making music. Based...

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Gary Conrad

Exploiting hypnotism for its comic potential is at least as old as vaudeville, and when vaudeville died, it had a good second run as a sitcom subplot in the 50s and 60s. In vaudeville and sitcoms, the audience laughed at victims...

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The Moth StorySLAM

If you’re eager to hear or share a compelling story, the monthly Ann Arbor Moth ­StorySLAM at the Circus bar invites you to participate in an evening of “True Stories Told Live,” the motto of the NYC-based...

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Newspaper Diary

Joanne Leonard’s twenty-one photographs at the U-M Institute for the Humanities gallery are what the 71-year-old feminist calls “visual analogies.” In each are two images (one a news photo and the other a book...

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Three minutes, eight seconds

When I was invited to be one of the “stars” in a Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars benefit, I felt like someone invited to sing a duet with Renee Fleming at the Met after only ever singing in public in karaoke bars....

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Underground Jazz

You park in the big parking lot, past the sign that lists the parking lot rules: No cursing or loud talking. No sitting in cars. No hanging out. Go down the back stairs and enter the small door, bypassing the sign that says you...

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Etienne Charles

Jazz is a creole music, created out of a blend of different sources—African, ­African-American, Afro-Caribbean, French, Spanish, and who knows what else. As it has evolved, it has absorbed other traditions but has also...

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Nathaniel Tarn

Ever since Plato kicked the poets out of his Republic, it’s been said that the gulf between poetry and philosophy cannot be bridged. Luckily enough the people who actually practice these arts often don’t listen....

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The King of Cool

With its dark walls hung with exotic guitars and covered with concert posters and records, the inside of the Ann Arbor Music Center oozes cool. Coolest of all is its owner, Alex Johnson: teacher, guitarist, and prophet, his long...

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Jamie and Jordan

Jamie and Jordan, which returns on April 28 as part of the monthly Performance Network children’s theater series, is a charming musical about two boys born in the same hospital on the same day who become best friends until...

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Lyn Coffin reads Jiri Otren

Last November, Lyn Coffin read from her translations of Jiri [YEER-zhi] Orten’s poems, published last year under the title White Picture (Night Publishing). She was joined by the singer-songwriter, Laz Slomovits, of...

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Live at the Ravens

“We were taken by surprise by the PJ’s sale,” says Molly Motherwell, general manager of WEMU (89.1-FM).  For two years, the jazz and blues public-radio s­tation had been presenting the Jan Winkelman 5:01 Jazz...

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Jack Driscoll

Some folks say Jack Driscoll doesn’t get out much. The same people are inclined to say that this is the reason Driscoll remains “our best-kept literary secret.” If they mean that this fabulous writer...

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