It’s gonna be a dismal Christmas, Most of my old friends are dead, It looks like the mistletoe Was hung by Edgar Allan Poe, And ol’ Santa broke two runners Off his empty sled. Mom ain’t got a job, And Dad’s too big a slob To get one, The tiny apartment is cold and...
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Dennis Shea, our beloved and ever grumpy copy editor returns … The late-night oldies radio played Joan Osborne‘s “One of Us” (“What if God was one of us/A slob like one of us/Just a stranger on the bus”). It’s a silly song, but nothing compared to Washington, D.C.’s silliness right now. So a little...
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A Sketch from my Bike (which isn’t easy) of SW Detroit I rode my Schwinn eight miles through Southwest Detroit last week. Along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd were several low-cost medical facilities, playfields, schools and gardens that weren’t there when I rode the street 20-plus years ago. These indicate considerable funding put into...
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It’s a windy first day of spring. I’m doing my little job, picking up considerable trash outside my building. Two groups of squeaky-clean young whites are carrying armfuls of bag lunches up Second Avenue. They say “Want lunch?” to Sunday sidewalkers. People ten blocks down might want their charity. Oh — they must be...
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Welcome back to Shea’s Lounge. Here’s an old-time serious poem, commenting widely on the situation from my narrow perspective. DETROIT ∞∞∞ I remember five years ago riding my bike dwarfed through downtown. The machines at twilight were building up or destroying a building in yellow light like a filmy movie drinsed with piss. Now...
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A take on the vengeful play of one, and maybe all, teams in the NFL playoffs. DIRTY BEARS City of the dislocated shoulders, Penalties protested, Concussion discussion dismissed And cheered over. The violent game, Our time in obsession, A full expression, Phony and routine; A head-to-head mindless meeting. And the blind don’t notice the...
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CHRISTMAS, THE ECONOMY AND YOU I’m gonna stay in bed all day on Christmas, And pull my Three Wise Men comforter o’er my head, It’s not that I’m unhappy with a Saverer, But now I’d rather have a Spenderer instead.
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From our grumpy copy editor, a guy who’s known to actually venture out from time to time, and brave other human beings …. Went to see Gordon Lightfoot at the Fox Theatre Sunday evening. He mentioned his first concert in the States was in ’65 at Masonic Temple, with Oscar Peterson and Vaughn Meader...
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Words written on a smoke break by grumpy proofreader Dennis Shea: Standing at the entrance to the Metro Times office, four styles of architecture clang like a millennium bell before you. The Greektown casino and hotel are actually attractive blue vertical blurs. The Blue Cross building and the Monroe Street parking structure are modern...
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(This memory, written in 2006, is sort of a pre-companion piece to Brian Smith’s misery-in-baseball story, “Fly Ball,” Metro Times, April 7, 2010.) A young fellow on the bus, light mocha color, bald head shined, creaked open my file of memories. He wore a white knit football jersey. “D. THOMAS” on back with Thomas’...
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