I scene from the Immersive Klimt exhibition at Detroits former Ligthouse ArtSpace.
Between 2021 and 2023, the immersive art trend hit Detroit hard. It seemed like every few months there was another new “immersive” show: Immersive Van Gogh, Immersive Klimt, Immersive Disney, Immersive King Tut. We were typing “immersive” so much it stopped looking like a real word.
But it seems like the immersive trend has died down in Detroit, especially with news of the closing of Lighthouse ArtSpace, which hosted the Van Gogh, Klimt, Disney and King Tut experiences.
We suspected Lighthouse ArtSpace had shuttered back in December when we noticed no future exhibits had been announced for the space following the conclusion of Immersive Disney in October. The Lighthouse Artspace website had also been removed, and when we called to inquire, Detroit was no longer listed as an option. Crain’s Detroit Business confirmed Lighthouse ArtSpace’s closure on Wednesday.
“In 2023, two of Lighthouse Immersive’s companies went through corporate restructuring under the (Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act) process,” Lighthouse Immersive President Corey Ross told Crain’s. “Management decided to close several locations including Lighthouse Detroit and focus on touring productions. This refocus has been successful with touring shows currently running in Japan, Singapore, Mexico, USA and Canada.”
Lighthouse Immersive, the Canadian company that helmed Lighthouse ArtSpace, filed for bankruptcy in July and was forced to close several of its locations that summer after being locked out for not paying rent.
Ticketholders for Immersive Disney in Atlanta were met with a sign on the door that read, “Lighthouse Immersive, the producers of Immersive Disney Animation, has not made the payments necessary to keep this venue operational. We are saddened by this very unfortunate turn of events, and we are hopeful the producer will remedy the situation as quickly as possible.”
In addition to Detroit, Lighthouse Immersive had locations in Toronto, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and Las Vegas. Now the company’s website only lists Toronto, Chicago, and Las Vegas.
The Harmonie Club Building that Lighthouse ArtSpace occupied is owned by Detroit-based company Basco. Vice President of real estate for Basco Nevan Shokar told Crain’s Lighthouse Immersive owed them over $300,000 and they were only able to recover $50,000. According to Crain’s, the space is transitioning to a banquet hall facility.
We saw Lighthouse’s Immersive King Tut show, which paired an interesting concept (Egyptian mythology) with flat and uninspiring visuals.
We’ve always felt like immersive art was a bad trend for people who don’t appreciate real art that takes time and talent to produce. We’d much rather see an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts or any number of local galleries than pixelated images projected on the wall like a bad drive-in movie.
Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel partake in sensual delights.
The film season’s most exhilarating action sequence doesn’t feature bad guys and explosions but simmering sauce pans and delectably steaming plates of veal. In director Tran Ahn Hung’s sublime drama The Taste of Things, the long and elaborate preparation of an ornate meal on the fire stoves of a 19th century French kitchen proves to be as nourishing to watch as the food itself would be to eat.
The cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), who may be a genius, and her two young assistants move about the sun-dappled kitchen with the precision of a crack military team and the grace of Balanchine dancers. They are aided by the château’s owner, Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), a revered gourmand who declares, “The discovery of a new dish brings more joy to humanity than the discovery of a new star.”
The meal that opens the film is being prepared for Dodin’s best friends, four fellow gourmets, including a doctor, who appear to move from home to home, eating well and often, and bringing news to Dodin of trends and good cooks. They are in awe of Eugénie and after finishing the meal bring praises to her in the kitchen, not realizing that she has, mere moments before, nearly fainted, from exhaustion perhaps, or worse, an undiagnosed illness.
They entreat her to join them next time, but Eugénie begs off, insisting that her place is in the kitchen, preparing the next course. Besides, she says, “I converse with you in the dining room through what you eat.”
Later, with the moon providing an exquisite backlight, and cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg’s camera gliding gently back and forth between them, as if controlled by the breeze, Eugénie and Dodin sit in the garden, celebrating a successful dinner party, which feels like a tradition for them. Eugénie wants to invite her assistant’s niece, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), to become her protégé. The girl had astonished Dodin with her ability to name the individual ingredients in a complex sauce after only one taste. Dodin will visit the family and extend the invitation, but no, Eugénie wants to do it herself. Dodin does not argue. In this, as in most matters of import, they are equals.
The business of the day attended to, Dodin takes a breath and asks, “Eugénie, may I knock at your door tonight?”
The Taste of Things vividly portrays the pleasures of food.
A French Vietnamese filmmaker whose debut feature, The Scent of Green Papayas (1993) — the only Vietnamese film to be nominated for an Academy Award — is one of the most visually immersive films ever made, Hung has made a movie about gastronomy that is, at heart, a love story. Food and love (and France) — they’re inextricably linked. Eugénie has worked for Dodin for 20 years. They are together, but not yet fully so. He often asks her to marry him. She has always said no. For this 19th century woman, there is power, it would seem, in withholding “yes” and in a bedroom door that is sometimes locked to a lover’s knock and sometimes not.
When Dodin’s guests come to the kitchen that first night to thank Eugénie and urge her to dine with them, she describes what it’s like to taste the food as it’s being prepared for them. She’s flushed from having just been dizzy and flushed too with feeling. For a moment, Eugénie gets lost in her own reverie, as we do when talking of the thing we love most. This life, and its abundance, Binoche reveals, brings Eugénie joy.
That sense of delight will return when Dodin makes a grand gesture and prepares, all on his own, a multi-course dinner for Eugénie, capped by Champagne that’s been buried at the bottom of the sea for 50 years. Eugénie, who rarely sits for a formal dinner, dresses in a magnificent yellow gown and lets herself be served. The meal is delicious and witty, like Dodin himself — she loves his wit. The room is lit by candles, like a scene from Barry Lyndon, but the true light comes from Binoche’s face. This performance, so deeply felt, is her crowning achievement.
She is matched by Magimel, who was once Binoche’s partner in life (they share a child together), and here plays a cerebral man who’s only method for wooing a woman is to describe in detail the process of digestion, a marvelously absurd speech that might trip up a lesser actor. Magimel is well served by Hung’s generosity of spirit, which makes time for individual characters to have a private interior moment, right up to the anticipatory pleasure the cook’s assistant, Violette (Galatéa Bellugi), takes in walking from the kitchen to the dining room with a special dessert meant for Eugénie.
The Taste of Things was France’s entry into the Academy Awards, but it wasn’t nominated. A shame. It’s completely wonderful and is also that rare movie that you enter into fully. By the end, the vast stone kitchen is as familiar as home. The play of sunlight across that room is crazy beautiful and so peaceful you’d never want to leave. No wonder Eugénie felt such joy.
Chef Shinya Hirakawa appeals to local palates with his Detroit Sushi.
Did you know there’s Detroit-style sushi? Neither did I, but it’s a thing, as Detroit Sushi chef Shinya Hirakawa explained to me in a recent history lesson on our region’s rolls. Many of the first sushi chefs to immigrate to the Detroit area around 50 years ago were from Kyoto in western Japan, Hirakawa says. Fish have to be brought to the landlocked Kyoto from the coast about 30 miles away, so in the age before refrigeration and rapid transportation, the product wasn’t quite as fresh.
To account for this, Kyoto’s sushi chefs slightly sweetened their rolls, using a sweeter vinegar and soy sauce than what can be found in saltier counterparts in cities like Tokyo. The upper Midwest palate approves of this subtle-but-important difference, Hirakawa says, and he upholds that tradition at Detroit Sushi. And with a few notable exceptions, the rolls on the menu are fairly straightforward, and sushi to which local tastes are accustomed.
The restaurant is located inside Midtown’s Hammer & Nail, which is focused on craft cocktails, but the Roxbury Group ownership felt it needed a food component that didn’t require an exhaust system. Sushi is about the best one can do for ventless cooking, and it fills as a bit of a gap as there is a dearth of worthwhile sushi in the area.
Hirakawa is a strong pick to helm the operation as a veteran of Royal Oak’s Ronin and Noble Fish in Clawson. In his new position, he is a one-man show — chef, prepper, and dishwasher.
Hirakawa notes his use of higher-quality ingredients, like rice imported from Japan that he cooks in alkaline water to keep it moist. In his excellent Crab California roll, he uses real snow crab instead of the artificial crab meat most shops employ. His soy sauce is higher-end and gluten free, ditto for his sushi vinegar.
Among the most popular items at Detroit Sushi is the Roma Roll.
Among the best of Detroit Sushi’s roster is the Mexico City Roll with shrimp, pickled jalapeño, cilantro, and avocado, which Hirakawa says is a play on a more common version of the roll made with tuna. It works, with the acidic-salty-sweet components reminiscent of shrimp ceviche in sushi form.
The nigiri is also solid with luscious, full-flavored salmon, and bluefin tuna that is fatty and rich. Detroit Sushi sources fish from True World, which ships its seafood direct to Michigan instead of via Chicago, as is common with many other distributors.
Hirakawa likens his Rainbow Roll’s heft to a Detroit-style pizza one would get at Loui’s in Hazel Park, or a sandwich at Zingerman’s. It’s a big boy at a higher price point ($25) with four kinds of fish rolled with the package. Michiganders appreciate that kind of “fat stack” approach, Hirakawa says, and there’s bang for the buck.
Similarly, among the most popular items is the Roma Roll, which Hirakawa surmises owes to its inclusion of two sauces — mayo and teriyaki. Its hint of smokiness comes from seared tuna across the top, and the roll holds shrimp, avocado, and cucumber that provides some needed crunch. The roll, he notes, was invented at Troy’s Cafe Sushi, sold under a different name at Ronin, and he sees himself upholding a local tradition by including it at Detroit Sushi.
The most pleasant surprise is the Asparagus Truffle Roll, for which Hirakawa uses a truffle soy sauce and truffle powder, which packs a heavy umami punch. The Inside Out Tekka Roll is solid, and the Sunomono salad sings with bouncy wood ear mushrooms, cucumber, and ginger in a sweet sushi vinegar.
Hammer & Nail’s cocktails deserve their own full review, but each is excellent, and the restaurant is about to introduce a happy hour with $5 rolls and Valentine’s Day specials.
Marianne Williamson, the former Detroit-area spiritual leader and bestselling author who was the first Democrat to challenge President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary, has suspended her campaign.
Williamson announced the end of her White House bid in a YouTube video posted on Wednesday.
“Particularly those of you who are young, who felt that in this campaign you saw hope, I want you to remember that that which is most important does not end on this day,” Williamson said in the video. “The story itself is so long, the American story, the arc of history is what matters, and the ideas that we stood for … anytime we put out that ripple of hope, anytime we put out any good idea, any time we shed light on a darkened sky, that light will remain and that darkness shall be less.”
Williamson made the announcement after earning 2% of the vote in the South Carolina primary on Tuesday.
As she did in her 2020 campaign, Williamson enchanted many with her message of love and peace, this time aided by TikTok, where she amassed a large following. But it was always going to be an uphill battle for her campaign, with the Democratic National Committee declining to host any primary debates and Biden, polling high, declining to engage with his competitors.
Williamson’s campaign was also reportedly marred by dysfunction, including staff turnover and fundraising issues. (Williamson denied the claims.) Some former staffers accused Williamson of being more interested in building an audience to promote her upcoming book The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love.
The book is scheduled for release in May.
Williamson gained fame in the 1990s as a spiritual leader for celebrities in Los Angeles and New York. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, she led the Church of Today, a Macomb County megachurch.
The time has come for Oak Park to bear witness to the greatness that is Pie Sci pizza.
The company is officially opening the doors to its Oak Park location at 8140 W. Nine Mile Rd. on Saturday. This is the pizza joint’s second location following its original outpost on Trumbull in Detroit.
The Oak Park Pie Sci will be open five days a week with a limited menu for now. Vegan and gluten-free options will be available according to a post on Pie Sci’s Instagram page.
Pie Sci has made a name for itself with its DIY aesthetic and stoner-friendly pizzas with wacky topping combinations.
More than 30 southeast Michigan officials including Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud have pledged to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primary election on Feb. 27.
The officials signed a letter on Feb. 6 following the campaign announcement by Listen to Michigan urging Michiganders to “Vote Uncommitted” in order to send a message to President Joe Biden on his handling of the war in Gaza.
“We must hold our president accountable and ensure that we, the American taxpayers, are no longer forced to be accomplices in a genocide that is backed and funded by the United States government,” Listen to Michigan said in a statement.
The action is a result of Biden and his administration failing to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire more than four months after Israel launched its military campaign in response to the Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. The conflict has resulted in the loss of more than 30,000 lives and the displacement of over 2 million people in Gaza.
Today, I’m joining 30+ of my elected colleagues from across SE Michigan in pledging to cast an “Uncommitted” vote in the upcoming presidential primary election. pic.twitter.com/ltmhihOF2A
“Our government has failed to act in the best interests of the lives of innocent men, women, and children, and worse yet, have suggested that there is an exception to the rule when it comes to Palestinian lives,” Mayor Hammoud stated. “This matter has a direct impact on our Dearborn community, and more importantly, on each of us as human beings. We intend to make our voices heard in the presidential primary.”
This week, President Biden’s senior officials plan to meet with Arab and Muslim American communities in Michigan to discuss policy surrounding the conflict, reported The Detroit News. This was supposed to happen weeks ago, but many leaders, including Mayor Hammoud, refused to attend out of protest.
Many Muslim activists in metro Detroit have been pledging to “Abandon Biden” for months, but Listen to Michigan hopes the campaign pushes the president to shift policy. The coalition believes that Biden is not listening to what his voters want, and must earn the vote of Democrats through a dramatic change. And, according to recent surveys, most Detroit-area voters support a permanent ceasefire.
In the Michigan Democratic primary, there are five options: Joe Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, “Uncommitted,” and a blank line for write-ins. The Listen to Michigan campaign is urging voters to select “Uncommitted” in the election.
Eastern Market Brewing plans to offer delivery for its Detroit-style pizza to the entire city.
Eastern Market Brewing Co. is joining the Detroit-style pizza fold.
The brewery based out of Detroit’s Eastern Market is not only adding pizza to its offerings, it’s launching a pizza and beer delivery service to select areas of Detroit through a venture called Elephant & Co.
Eastern Market Brewing Co. began leasing the former Founders Brewing Company Detroit location in September and dubbed it Elephant & Co. The brewery is using the location’s kitchen to bake its pizzas while awaiting approval for a microbrewer’s permit.
Some of the available pizzas include a classic pepperoni with Wisconsin brick cheese and the “Funghi” with goat cheese pesto, roasted garlic clove, mozzarella, and lion’s mane and black pearl oyster mushrooms from Ferndale’s Stoney Creek Mushroom Co. Other specials include the “Elote” with a Mexican street corn blend, diced jalapeño, chorizo, and cotija cheese, garnished with fresh cilantro and lime wedges, and the “Spicy Meatball” with herb whipped ricotta, Calabrian chilis, caramelized onions, and meatballs. A limited dessert Pączki pizza to celebrate Fat Tuesday will be released this weekend.
“Starting in the beer business, we were already experts in fermentation, and we then took many of the same brand strategies that have allowed us to become one of the fastest-growing breweries in Michigan, and carried them over to pizza,” said Pauline Knighton-Prueter, VP of sales of marketing for Eastern Market Brewing Co. “Specifically, focusing on freshness above all of us, sourcing our ingredients as locally as possible, and releasing new varieties regularly.”
For now, the pizzas and Eastern Market Brewing beer can only be delivered within a 1.5 mile radius of the Detroit location at 456 Charlotte St. The company says it plans to expand the delivery area to include all of Detroit by the end of February. Pizzas can also be ordered for pick up at Eastern Market Co. at 2515 Riopelle St.
During the pandemic, Eastern Market Brewing Co. offered beer delivery via its sister location Ferndale Project, and briefly offered Detroit-style pizza but wasn’t able to keep up with demand in the location’s small convection oven.
“The success of PIZZA & BEER in the early pandemic days has always been in the back of my mind,” said Dayne Bartscht, founder of Eastern Market Brewing Co. “Over the last few years, we focused on scaling beer production and expanding our self-distribution footprint in Michigan. That set the stage for this phase of our business: reintroducing direct-to-consumer delivery.”
A mural of Wayne Kramer and the MC5 on Detroit’s former Grande Ballroom, where the band recorded its landmark Kick Out the Jams.
In his riveting memoir The Hard Stuff, guitarist Wayne Kramer cites the deaths of Rob Tyner, Michael Davis, and Fred Smith, his fellow musicians in Detroit’s legendary rock band, the MC5.
Tyner was the lead singer. Reflecting on his 1991 death, Kramer writes: “I never thought about Rob or any of the MC5 guys dying, just like I’d never thought about my own death.”
Kramer died at age 75 last week in Los Angeles of pancreatic cancer, more than 50 years after his “Motor City Five” musical group tried to reform — can you dig it? — the culture of the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan, the United States of America, the whole planet, and the entire universe, brothers and sisters, with loud, hard-core, revolutionary rock music, radical politics, free love and mind-altering drugs, man. Power to the people!
“I embraced many of the most extreme ideas and actions of my day,” Kramer wrote. “It was both frightening and exciting … I was a romantic anarchist.”
Kramer’s death jolted the popular music world all the way down to those of us who hung around the Grande Ballroom on Grand River Avenue on Detroit’s West Side in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when and where “The Five” were the house band and life was grand.
Personally, I was surprised to discover how many deep feelings were stored behind my memory doors. They were spurred by chats with old friends, by re-reading Kramer’s 2018 book, and by listening again to the band’s defining album (and song) called “Kick Out the Jams” and recorded in late 1968 live at the Grande.
The song touts “the sound that abounds and resounds and rebounds off the ceiling … ‘Cause it gets in your brain, it drives you insane … the wailin’ guitars, girl, the crash of the drums, makes you want to keep a-rockin’ ‘til morning comes …”
Although Kramer and the MC5 are not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they are curiously mythical icons in the collective consciousness of rock music as an art form. Some rock historians consider them prophets of the punk era, which followed them by a decade, when Kramer was imprisoned.
Even the Clash opened a song called “Jail Guitar Doors” with a reference to Kramer’s conviction for dealing cocaine. So a tribute to Kramer was wisely inserted into last Sunday’s Grammy awards during a segment honoring those who had died in the previous year.
The screen on the national telecast showed a misty photo of young Kramer, performing on stage, with long hair and long sideburns, wearing shades and wielding a guitar painted like the American flag.
“Wayne Kramer,” the words on the screen said. “Co-founder, Guitarist, Activist. MC5.”
I saw the MC5 at least a dozen times, mostly at the Grande, but sometimes at other venues. One of my favorite shows was in 1970 at Tartar Field at Wayne State University, a school I attended at the time to study journalism.
A friend had a Super 8 color movie camera so we bought a few rolls of film and stood close to the stage and got some good action shots of the Five flailing away. Sorry to say, the pictures still exist but the film is — and always was — silent.
To properly capture the essence of an MC5 show you had to both see and hear them. And I don’t think we had money at the time for sound film or a sound camera. No cellphones, then, either. Fortunately, other cameras were there and one of them recorded an excellent version of “Kick Out the Jams.”
The sound video on the internet looks to be a black-and-white recording that has been colorized.
Others interested in a longer crash course about the MC5 should listen to the entire album, which lasts about 40 minutes. Those of a certain age, upon honest reflection, might find the music much more mediocre than it is in our memories.
The best and most melodic cut on K.O.T.J. is “Motor City is Burning,” and that was written and first recorded by John Lee Hooker. At the end of it, Tyner ad-libs, “I may be a white boy, but I can be nasty.” Along with their manager, John Sinclair, the Five helped found the “White Panther Party.”
Kramer sings the lead in “Ramblin’ Rose,” his voice a high tenor, bordering on a cartoonish falsetto. Some lyrics of other songs reflect sexist rock tropes of the time, including “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I’m a born ass-pincher and I don’t give a damn.”
As for the psychedelic “Starship,” well, let’s just say you can’t dance to it and that the late 1960s featured the occasional blend of strange musical sounds influenced by controlled substances and space travel fantasies.
But music was just part of the package that came with the MC5. If you were a guy on the cusp of high school and college at the time, the draft and the war in Vietnam were daily worries. So was getting busted by cops for marijuana.
The Five took the left-wing, liberal side in those debates and also opposed police brutality after Detroit’s Riot and Rebellion of 1967. Importantly for the Motor City sensibility, they pushed a blue-collar, chip-on-the-shoulder style and attitude of what are sometimes called factory rats and working class.
They acted more streetwise than the draft-deferred college kids protesting, sometimes violently, on their pretty campuses in the countryside. They even posed bare-chested for photos with rifles and gun belts, a stance steered by the extremist politics of Sinclair, who later became Michigan’s marijuana martyr.
After Sinclair went to Jackson State Prison in 1969, the group began to falter. Despite his general bluntness, Kramer treads delicately over the break with Sinclair and their eventual reconciliation.
“John and I have never discussed what happened between us,” Kramer writes. “We both have our own perspectives. It was extremely painful … I’d always loved John and I was happy to have my old friend back.”
In some ways, the most gripping parts of Kramer’s book describe his life before the MC5’s success — when he was physically abused by his step-father — and his after-life following the demise of the band, when he became a home burglar in Oakland County, a drunk, a junkie, a drug dealer, and a federal prisoner.
He grew up in various places including Harsens Island, Detroit’s West Side, then the Downriver suburbs, sporting what he calls “greaser” style and moving from rental to rental with his mother, who fixed hair and worked in bars and drifted from man to man, one of whom abused both Kramer and his sister.
His real father was a “shell-shocked” World War II veteran who turned to alcohol and drifted away, leaving his son exposed and vulnerable.
“My mother called him a ‘rat’ and a ‘bum,’” Kramer writes of his real dad. ““My grandpa was a mean alcoholic … He was loud and a bully … Herschel abused me … I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. No one ever said anything about it afterward … It was family fun — if you lived in the ninth circle of hell … Fighting was part of boyhood then … There was power in stealing. It became my thing …”
Much of the writing is blunt and confessional, evoking the gritty style of Charles Bukowski, especially when the band breaks up and Kramer’s life turns into a tailspin of addiction and crime. He even mentions Bukowski as one of his heroes.
“Crime had an allure for me,” Kramer writes. “I have identified with and romanticized outsiders … I was desperate. A dope habit requires cash every day … Eventually, I ran out of things to sell …”
He writes of avoiding a possible execution during a shady drug deal in the Pick Fort Shelby hotel in downtown Detroit.
“No witnesses meant Leon and Barker were going to kill everyone in the room — Tim Shafe, the Bug, Tony and me, too,” Kramer writes. “… The Bug left Detroit and was never seen again. He was always a slippery dude …”
Especially when recounting the rock star life, Kramer comes off like a junior varsity Keith Richards, whose autobiography called Life — published in 2010 — also recounts the lifestyle of that era among that fast crowd.
“We were on the cover of Rolling Stone,” Kramer writes.
Importantly for the Motor City sensibility, the MC5 pushed a blue-collar, chip-on-the-shoulder style and attitude of what are sometimes called factory rats and working class.
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He tells of playing on the same bill with Janis Joplin on the West Coast and turning down her offer to meet up later at the hotel. As for the Velvet Underground: “They avoided us and our people completely. Not that I blame them, considering how deranged and aggressive we must have seemed.”
Some memories are pleasant. He dined in Berlin with Marianne Faithful. Some anecdotes are hilarious. At one show, “my super tight stage trousers ripped open at the crotch” when Kramer wore no underwear. Many other scenes in the book are just as visual and seem like parts of a movie script.
One that was serious came in Lower Manhattan, when a local street gang called “The East Village Motherfuckers” decided the Five were not real revolutionaries but mere sellouts to the exploitative and capitalist record companies.
So they protested an MC5 show at the Fillmore East.
“The Motherfuckers bum-rushed the stage and started trashing our equipment,” Kramer writes. “I watched as knives slashed through the fire curtain, while mayhem exploded out front. Cymbals were crashing, amps were knocked over and there was a lot of yelling and cursing.”
And those were the best of times.
Fast forward a bit, with Kramer out of prison after three years, still struggling, drinking and drugging, doing handyman work, scoring occasional musical gigs and drifting through cities like New York and Nashville, damaging personal relationships all the while.
“Eve had finally decided that being the girlfriend of a touring, drug-addicted, criminal musician wasn’t exactly what she had in mind,” he writes. “A group of small-time crooks and scam artists comprised my social circle. I was on a trajectory straight into the gutter.”
In what amounts to a happy ending, Kramer finishes The Hard Stuff with his account of sobering up, marrying, settling down, adopting a son, helping prisoners reform through music, and enjoying accolades from several generations during his various revival tours up through recent years as a senior citizen.
“The beats of my life break down pretty simply: childhood, the MC5, crime, prison, sobriety, service and family,” Kramer writes. “… I am at peace with my past … I still live in the tension between the angel and the beast … The struggle will continue until the day I depart.”
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at preventing politicians and their families from profiting from war.
The Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act would bar members of Congress and their spouses and dependent children from having any financial stakes in companies that do work with the U.S. Department of Defense. The legislation would also ban congressional members and their families from trading defense stocks.
Members of Congress are currently permitted to own and trade stocks, regardless of their committee assignments and access to insider information.
U.S. lawmakers made 96 transactions in defense stocks in 2023, and eight of those purchases occurred since October, when the war between Hamas and Israel broke out, according to Capitol Trades.
Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat, said the public’s faith in government has eroded because members of Congress have exploited their positions to line their pockets.
“My colleagues continue to funnel billions of American tax dollars to the very same defense contractors that many of them are invested in and taking campaign donations from,” Tlaib said in a statement. “The American people deserve representatives who vote in the best interest of our country and our families, not their stock portfolios. It is shameful that some of my colleagues are profiting financially when they vote to support wars and weapons manufacturing. Members of Congress should not be able to use their positions of power to get rich from defense contractors while voting to pass more funding to bomb innocent civilians. The American people deserve better. We are sick of politicians profiting from endless wars.”
“Elected officials owning defense contractor stocks while also controlling annual budget allocations is the opposite of a virtuous circle,” Savannah Wooten, who leads Public Citizen’sPeople Over Pentagon campaign, which is committed to reducing the Pentagon’s budget and spending more on domestic and human needs issues. “It’s an astonishing testament to the deep power of the military-industrial-Congressional complex that owning defense contractor stock while in office hasn’t yet been banned. Rep. Tlaib’s legislation is a long overdue and welcome proposal. The bill should be passed immediately.”
The Batmobiles on display at this year’s Autorama.
Just as the character Batman has been rebooted and reimagined over the years, so has his trusty Batmobile, which might be the ultimate expression of hot rod culture. That was certainly the case in 2022’s The Batman, whose scrappy superhero drove a retro-inspired, souped-up muscle car. Among the more than 800 hot rods and custom cars that will be showcased in this year’s Autorama in March are five generations of the Batmobile, including the rides from the playful 1966 TV series starring Adam West, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns starring Michael Keaton in 1992, 1995’s Batman Forever with Val Kilmer, the 2005 “Tumbler” from Batman Begins starring Christian Bale, and 2017’s Justice League with Ben Affleck. This year’s show will also feature vehicles owned by the real-life daredevil Evel Kneivel, including his famous X2 Skyrocket, the Snake River Rocket Concept Trike, and the Formula Dragster, as well as GM’s 50 millionth car, a gold-plated 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupe. There will also be celebrity guests including Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider and Noel G from the Fast & Furious series, as well as the Miss Autorama pin-up contest. And, as usual, the exhibitors will be competing for the Ridler Award — no, that Riddler!
Email was invented in 1971, and since then, it has completely changed how we communicate with people we know and those we may not know in person. With the introduction of social media in 1997 and the rapid rise and evolution of these channels, it was thought email would quickly become extinct.
However, as we know now, this couldn’t be further from the truth!
For those who may still believe email marketing is old and outdated and social media is the only way to go when it comes to connecting with people online, let’s highlight a significant stat provided by our friends at Litmus:
1.5 BILLION. And that is a message from you or your company being viewed in prime online real estate – a subscriber’s inbox. All over the internet, you can find posts and reminders about the impact email marketing can have on the connection with your audience — and your bottom line — but all the benefits stem from one thing: your email service provider.
Email service providers (ESPs), also known as bulk email service providers, newsletter providers, email marketing software, campaign generators, and so on, set the foundation for all of your email marketing efforts to come to fruition.
Choosing an ESP, however, can feel like an overwhelming task, as there are many to choose from – some long-established, and seemingly a new entrant every month! In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the key considerations to remember when choosing your first (or second, third, fourth, etc.) ESP to work with.
The goal of this guide is to help you create a set of guidelines for you to review and evaluate quickly and ESP to determine whether or not you want to start a trial and begin testing. We’ll do our best to keep our opinions out of things, but we are a little biased here at FeedBlitz HQ, so you may see some of that slip in below. (Not too much, though, promise!)
Without further delay, let’s get this ball rolling…
Four things to consider when choosing an ESP.
The first step in choosing an ESP? Recognizing you need to choose a new ESP. (WILL LINK TO BP)
The second step? Identifying the most essential pieces of the email marketing puzzle. Start by considering these four areas of focus:
Simple enough? Right. Let’s break down each consideration below with questions to ask yourself along the way.
1. The Strategy: Your email marketing needs and goals.
Ask yourself a series of questions focused on your goals, needs, and objectives with email marketing.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
Who are you, and who is your audience?
How does email marketing fit into your bigger communication or marketing strategy?
How much time can you dedicate to your email marketing efforts on an ongoing basis?
How will your email marketing grow?
What are your top 3 goals with your email marketing strategy? (grow your list, boost revenue, connect with people, etc.)
A clear picture of what your email marketing strategy will look like and what you hope to accomplish with your efforts is the foundation of your search. If you‘re interested in sharing your hobby or life updates, your email needs will be very different than if you’re running a small business or corporate enterprise.
Answering this round of questions first helps you focus on the features and capabilities to support your needs and goals best.
2. The Means: Your budget.
Establishing a budget before you begin looking for an ESP is essential, as there are vital details to pricing and costs to watch for when making your selection.
What determines your fee? Among the heavy hitters in email marketing, costs are determined by subscriber count, number of emails sent, or a set flat rate.
FeedBlitz, for example, charges solely by the number of active, unique email subscribers in your account, with zero limits on how many emails you can send each month. Other providers may charge by subscribers and still cap the number of emails you send, leaving you with surprise overages and bills at the end of the pay period.
How often do you want to be billed? Many ESPs offer both monthly and annual billing options. This allows for greater flexibility to meet your needs and budgeting preferences.
Pro-tip: If you’re considering annual fees, double-check if you’ll get dinged with an overage charge if your list grows higher than the current pricing tier at the time of signup. FeedBlitz doesn’t charge you for going over your tier mid-annual plan, so you’re free to grow your list to your heart’s content and not worry about an increase in pricing until your renewal comes around.
Are there any overages or hidden costs? This is the kicker. We touched on this in the two questions above, but always check if the ESP caps any of your capabilities on the pricing plan you’re considering. If you go over a certain number of emails per month, will you get charged an overage? Are you charged for more than one email list or a set number of funnel campaigns?
This is different from choosing a pricing plan based on available features. No matter your plan, these overages can be incurred, so it’s best to read the fine print when you see caps on the number of subscribers, emails per month, campaigns, etc., when evaluating providers.
Having a budget in mind will significantly help in your search. By taking the time to think about the above three questions, you’ll be well-prepared when comparing different providers and know what to look for when reviewing pricing and plan pages on their sites.
And here’s our plug: FeedBlitz doesn’t believe in capping or restricting your growth whatsoever! That’s why you’re only charged for active, unique email subscribers. Each plan offers unlimited emails, lists, forms, tags, and more.
3. The Who: The reputation of an ESP — both online and sending.
Not all ESPs are created the same (trust us, we’ve been in the business for nearly 20 years now), and that’s why the reputation of an ESP can hold its weight in gold. And not just word-of-mouth reputation and referrals. While those have a lot of weight regarding user-friendliness and first-person experiences, we’re talking about the reputation of an ESP in terms of deliverability.
Deliverability is the process of getting the emails you send to a subscriber’s inbox.
Receiving internet service providers (ISPs) such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Apple Mail review, judge, and estimate the safety of emails being sent by a particular email address. Based on an ISP’s top-secret set of rules and guidelines, this process ultimately determines whether your email will be allowed or denied.
They assign reputations to ESPs based on the quality of the emails they allow to be sent through their service. The higher the reputation, the higher the deliverability rate you’ll see ESPs talk about having.
Each ESP has its own set of in-house protocols and processes to safeguard and boost its deliverability and reputation. Keep a watchful eye for this information when conducting your search, and it’ll give you a good idea of how diligently the ESP will work to ensure your emails reach their intended destinations.
Pro Tip: If you’re having deliverability issues with your current ESP, consider starting a free trial with a different provider. Then, upload a sample of your email list and begin sending email. This will help you compare the deliverability metrics of each provider and shed light on what’s happening with your campaigns.
Because it doesn’t matter how great your emails are if they aren’t getting to your subscribers!
Deliverability can feel complicated and technical, but our team put together an in-depth guide breaking everything down, even highlighting some of the things we do for clients. Check out the guide and reach out if you have questions: Pulling Back the Curtain on Email Deliverability.
4. The What: The available features and services a newsletter service provider offers.
This is often the first item up for consideration when choosing an ESP. Still, if you walk through the first three listed above, you’ll be in an excellent place to evaluate the myriad of features, capabilities, and services each ESP offers!
The list below is incomplete, but it highlights critical elements you may be looking for when choosing a new provider. For specific capabilities of a feature, it’s best to reach out to a provider’s support team to inquire before starting a free trial or plan.
Email Campaigns – This seems basic, but what are the types of email campaigns offered? Single newsletters and broadcasts? RSS to email campaigns? How about funnel/drip/autoresponder campaigns? Not only do varied email campaign offerings meet various needs, but they also allow you to diversify your email efforts.
Subscription Forms – The first step in growing a list is gathering email addresses. Check to see what forms the ESP offers and how they will fit into your list growth strategy.
Email Automation – Watch for automation capabilities that allow you to send targeted, timely emails based on a subscriber’s actions and triggers. Key words to look for are funnels, workflows, journeys, drip campaigns, and autoresponders.
Email Templates and Design Tools – Does your ESP offer easily customizable email templates to help you in the design process? Is their email editor user-friendly? What about stock graphics and images? These are all things to consider when choosing an ESP, as these details can impact the time it takes for you to craft and send an email campaign.
List and Subscriber Management – How easy is it to view, move, manage, and work with your subscribers in an email list? Do you have access to tagging and custom fields? Are you able to move subscribers from one list to another, or duplicate lists? This flexibility allows you greater control over your audience and the email campaigns sent to them.
Audience Segmentation – A vital step in sending targeted email campaigns, how does the ESP offer the ability to shape and target your email list for specific campaigns? Can this process be automated and easily replicated in any way?
Analytics and Reporting – Robust, real-time analytics and reporting tools help you track the performance of your campaigns and make better education decisions. It can be as simple as seeing the open rate for your last email campaign or knowing the most popular email you sent in a given month.
Integrations and API – Before signing up with an ESP, confirm the service will integrate with any other tools and platforms you’re using, such as a CRM, third-party subscription forms, shopping carts, etc. Another helpful item to search for is API access and the availability of dev materials if needed.
Support and Training Materials – Learning a new app is hard, and you shouldn’t be left alone on an island to navigate it. How easy is it to find the answer if you have a question? Support goes beyond live person interactions to include knowledge base posts, tutorials, and even help text in the app itself. Ensure that the ESP you’re considering offers adequate support options (be aware that live support may be limited in some ESPs by the plan you sign up for), and remember to inquire about available training resources.
Scalability – Is the ESP designed to grow with your business? As your email strategy, needs, and goals expand, you’ll want a provider that can handle increasing volumes and complexity.
The above feature and capability list doesn’t cover every need you may have, but it’s a good starting point for your initial round of searches.
Also, when it comes to features, it’s important to be mindful when reviewing the features of different providers, as pricing plans may limit them.
Choosing the right ESP is a critical first step toward sending successful, engaging email campaigns. Having your strategy, means, providers, and features prioritized leaves you well-positioned to make a decision that aligns with your goals.
While social media channels and other forms of communication may come and go, email is here for the long haul. Be sure you’re hitting send confidently by choosing an email service provider you can rely on.
Are you interested in giving FeedBlitz a try for your email marketing? Head to this page to start your free trial. Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. Live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, and you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.
More than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant. But only slightly more than half of them are expected to receive an organ within five years.
Now, a congressional investigation is raising serious questions about whether non-profit groups meant to secure organs for transplants from deceased donors are doing enough.
The groups, called organ procurement organizations, or OPOs, are “failing” to secure many organs that could be recovered, according to a House subcommittee investigating the organ donation and transplant system.
“Seventeen to 20 people a day die on the wait list because they can’t get organs, and the OPOs are just not recovering enough organs and making sure they’re getting into people who need them,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who chairs the House subcommittee.
In August, the Senate Committee on Finance said a 2.5-year investigation found “from the top down, the U.S. transplant network is not working, putting Americans’ lives at risk.”
And in a letter sent to OPOs on Thursday, the House subcommittee raised questions about whether data provided by OPOs may be “inaccurate and incomplete.”
“If you don’t have proper data, then you don’t know what organs exist and are usable to go into people who need them,” said Krishnamoorthi.
Several OPOs told CBS News their data is “accurate,” and they’re committed to saving lives.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, UNOS, said its “systems are audited annually.”
“The data clearly demonstrates that year over year our transplant system continues to be more and more successful,” UNOS’ Dr. Matt Cooper told CBS News in May, when he was board president.
But not everyone in the system agrees.
Matt Wadsworth, who heads Life Connection, an OPO in Ohio, said he believes many OPOs nationwide are failing.
He became emotional during his interview with CBS News, breaking down in tears and leaving for a moment to compose himself.
“There’s people dying,” he said.
In Wadsworth’s first two years at his organization, they doubled the number of organ donors in his region, which meant many more lives saved. He told members of Congress at a House subcommittee’s hearing in 2021 that other OPOs should be doing better, too, and that OPOs are “grossly inefficient and unaccountable.”
They’re unaccountable, he said, because before this year, when the government changed the way OPOs are evaluated, some OPOs were able to make their numbers look better than they actually were.
In manipulating their data, OPOs made it look like “they were going after every opportunity every time, they were converting every possible patient to be a successful organ donor.”
“And that’s just not the truth,” he said. “And they’re the same bad players. If you look at the data, it’s the same people low performing year after year.”
The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations said its members are doing a good job and that OPOs have increased the number of deceased organ donors by 35% in the last five years. But it agreed “improvements are necessary” to advance care for patients.
One of those patients is LaQuayia Goldring, who has been waiting seven years for a kidney transplant to keep her alive.
For four hours a day, five days a week, she sits hooked up to a machine for home dialysis – the only way to clean her blood while she waits.
“I only have one shot at a transplant, and until I get that call, my life is dependent upon a machine,” she said. “A lot of dialysis patients are sitting around like me just wondering, ‘When will we get the call?’”
“I feel like the longer that I wait, the closer I am to death,” she said.
Anna Werner is the senior consumer investigative correspondent for CBS News. Since joining CBS News in 2011, she has covered and investigated a wide range of impactful stories, winning numerous awards. Contact her at: wernera@cbsnews.com
