A lot of people will accuse me of bias, but the evidence is overwhelming. Four consecutive issues of Spin each had a feature article referencing Detroit. October: cover story on The White Stripes. November: feature on bouncers at St. Andrew's Hall. December: cover story on Eminem. January 2003: The White Stripes' White Blood Cells named "album of the year" and Eminem named "artist of the year." At the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, Eminem got angry at a puppet and later walked away with "video of the year" for "Without Me," an honor that, in an ideal world, would have gone to The White Stripes' animated lego piece for "Fell in Love with a Girl." Anointed a star before he'd sold more than a few thousand records, Andrew W.K. inspired reams of press and a gargantuan backlash almost simultaneously. Meanwhile, The Insane Clown Posse released the sixth joker's card. While the apocalypse did not happen, Eminem dropped two number one albums in one year and became only the second person in history to have the number one album and number one movie in America at the same time (Jennifer Lopez did it last year). In addition, radio embraced a whopping seven Eminem tracks ("White America," "Business," "Cleaning Out My Closet," "Without Me," "Hailie's Song," "Lose Yourself," "8 Mile") with the single and video for "Superman" on the way. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter became ABC's highest-rated family sitcom set in suburban Detroit since Home Improvement. Of the four movies released this year filmed on location in Detroit, all four are strong award contenders: Bowling For Columbine, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, 8 Mile, and the upcoming cop thriller Narc. The HBO special City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers revisited happier days when the Tigers didn't suck and Marty Mornhinweg didn't have to deal with coin tosses. Luckily, Detroit still has the Red Wings, who basically swept the Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Finals. A few weeks later at the sold-out WWE Vengeance pay-per-view, The Rock returned to wrestling to show that Red Wings weren't the only ones who could win a title inside the Joe Louis Arena and Hulk Hogan wrestled his last PPV match. Oh and some washed up filmmaker and his buddies from metro Detroit made a little movie called Spider-Man. Supposed to be really good.

Funny how the only person who didn't put Detroit city back on the map this year was Kid Rock.