The graveyard shift: Last summer the third — and last — incarnation of Sanderson’s Lunch, 7907 State Line, was bulldozed to make way for a big new drugstore. The first Sanderson’s Lunch, the famous one at 104 E. 8th Street, was torn down in the early 1980s after a 67-year run of serving “600 to 1,000 people a day ……
To find the Woodswether Cafe, you have to know how to hop on the Woodswether Viaduct, a curvy little elevated road that begins right under the Broadway Bridge and winds down to the industrial wasteland of Kansas City’s West Bottoms. Romantic it isn’t. During the Depression, this stretch of parched land overlooking the Missouri River was headquarters to such…
14 Thursday If knowing all about what really went on in the White House over the past eight years has left anybody wanting more, today’s the day to get it. The debate about what happens behind Democrats’ closed doors versus Republicans’ peccadillos gets more ammunition when Carl Sferrazza Anthony discusses his book, America’s First Families: 200 Years of Private…
Having survived the 1990s when other bookstores hit the endangered-species list, Westport’s Reading Reptile might seem like a dinosaur to today’s average book customer. “People come in this store, and it’s so much like someone’s living room, it just freaks them out,” says Peter Cowdin, whose wife, Debbie Cowdin, owns the children’s bookstore. The store’s Oriental rugs are worn from…
Although it gave the world the quip “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” which lately has been used by political pundits and TV weather forecasters alike, the 1950 movie All About Eve isn’t merely quotable. This year’s book All About “All About Eve” puts it on its proper pedestal, providing “The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story…
A look of something like panic crosses Ron Megee’s face during his delightfully irreverent one-man performance of David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries at the Unicorn Theatre. Usually surrounded by his Late Night Theatre cronies in various states of cross-dress and often thought to be fearless, Megee has just himself and an hour’s worth of text to hang by. As…
The Robert Downey Jr. Award for Career Advancement To O.D.B, the Wu-Tang’s fugitive from justice who, while making a risky public appearance at one of his crew’s shows, declared he’d kick it hunter-and-gatherer style, “living off berries.” Alas, Big Baby Jesus could only rough it for so long, and the police nabbed him while cruising through a McDonald’s drive-thru. If…
Mike Warren Outkast Stankonia (Arista/LaFace) Shelby Lynne I Am Shelby Lynne (Island) Ryan Adams Heartbreaker (Bloodshot) P.J. Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (Island) Everclear Songs from an American Movie, Volume One: Learning How to Smile (Capitol) Rancid Rancid (Hellcat) Morphine The Night (Dreamworks) Fatboy Slim Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (EMD/Astralwerks) De La Soul…
Outkast Stankonia (Arista/LaFace) On this, Outkast’s fourth exquisite album, Andre “Dre 3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton make joyous, diverse hip-hop in the spirit of George Clinton’s free-flowing funk. At the Drive-In Relationship of Command (Virgin) This El Paso, Texas-based quintet might be the heir apparent to the noise-rock throne, but At the Drive-In is no Fugazi/Jawbox clone. Its…
Radiohead Kid A (Capitol) Radiohead replaced its guitars with machines that go “bleep,” creating a dance album to which listeners dare not dance. The disc’s overall woe-is-me-I’m-trapped-in-an-inhuman-machine-called-life vibe makes such lines as Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon seem profound. Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (Interscope/Aftermath) Eminem: homophobic, misogynistic culture-stealer — or the class clown who used to…
The Anniversary Designing a Nervous Breakdown (Vagrant/Heroes and Villains) Everything comes together on The Anniversary’s debut full-length. Set against a mix of new-wave Moog melodies, heavy power chords, and a forceful rhythm section, Joshua Berwanger, Justin Roelofs, and Adrienne Verhoeven’s vocals are consistently dramatic and appealing. Some might call it emo, but Designing a Nervous Breakdown is actually the rockingest…
Okie Rock Records of the Year Starlight Mints The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of (SeeThru Broadcasting) Chainsaw Kittens The All American (Four Alarm Records) Oh, Oklahoma — where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and bands capture this high and lonesome sound with peculiar soundscapes that appear simple at first glance but hide layers of strange and unique…
Records of the Year Outkast Stankonia (Arista/LaFace) Awhile back, in a galaxy not too far away, two aliens (Andre “Dre 3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton) from the planet ATL, pushing a Cadillac spacecraft, invaded Earth. They abducted hip-hop heads and alternative music fans and reprogrammed the way those people thought about rap. Lyrically, the duo, formed in Atlanta,…
Surrender, Dorothy: Anyone who thought the great and terrible Johnson County Commissioners wisely and mercifully killed the Wonderful World of Oz theme park in November can stand in line for a brain behind the Scarecrow. The Oz Entertainment Company announced last week that Richard Ferguson had been appointed new head wizard, replacing the cagey Robert Kory, who had failed to…
Girl, Interrupted Kid gloves: Tony Moton’s “Girls in the ‘Hood” (November 30) was a load of crap — the worse piece of journalism I have ever read in 30 years! What is the point of the story? Cherri West took drugs, lost her kid, still takes drugs. Do we care? Do we need to know this? If it were your…
What Women Want could be the first movie to win a Clio Award for Advertisement of the Year. No fewer than two dozen products receive prominent placement in the film, from Federal Express to Foster’s Lager to Cutty Sark to L’eggs panty hose to US Airways. After a while, you begin to wonder if Paramount Pictures actually spent a…
Much has changed for urban gays in the 21 years since William Friedkin’s Cruising. That controversial serial-killer thriller — set in the leather bars and after-hours sex clubs of New York’s West Village — was derided by gay rights activists as a piece of cheapjack sensationalism leading only to trouble, seemingly designed to exacerbate the perceived divide between straights…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme — which was nominated for 11 César Awards when it debuted in France two years ago — is yet another sign that the drop-off in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing: This is roughly the 15th French film to receive U.S. distribution this year,…
By many counts, it was a grim year for music. The law of diminishing returns produced inferior versions of the already lame boy bands and rap/metal crews that ruled the charts last year, and these polished pop products and corporate-packaged harbingers of rebellion again dominated MTV and the radio airwaves. Critically acclaimed acts, such as U2 and Outkast, enjoyed brief…
Rock and Roll Records of the Year The Murder City Devils In Name and Blood (Sub Pop) The Dwarves Come Clean (Epitaph) From the eerie organ strains of the opening track, “Press Gang,” The Murder City Devils’ noirish In Name and Blood transports listeners to an era when rebellious types poured out the contents of their tortured souls at dingy…
Best Concert (Small Venue) Get Up Kids/Ultimate Fakebook at El Torreon; Le Tigre at The Bottleneck; Beenie Man at the Beaumont Club; Yellowman at the Grand Emporium; Matt Wilson at Westport Coffee House; The Faint/Bright Eyes/Mini Bosses at El Torreon; Kid Koala/Amon Tobin at The Bottleneck; Kelly Hogan/Neko Case at Grand Emporium Best Concert (Large Venue) Bruce Springsteen at Kemper…
Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Matador) Indie rock’s let’s-stick-togetherest couple, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, have a quiet masterpiece on their hands with Inside Out. Though not short on the bursts of noise and laconic droning that keep Yo La Tengo easy to spot, songs such as “Cherry Chapstick” and “Our Way to Fall” come…
I recently stumbled upon an old Menu Guide of Kansas City — dating back to 1976 — that listed dozens of Kansas City’s most popular restaurants during the Ford administration. Back then, a juicy Kansas City strip never sold for more than $8, and that price always included a salad, a potato, and bread. A lot of the guide’s steak…
7 Thursday How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog sounds like a movie for the sardonic cinephile. However, it’s one of those films that could go either way, which may be all the more incentive to see it firsthand: A playwright (Kenneth Branagh) and his wife (Robin Wright Penn) are trying to have a baby, but the wife suspects that her…
