Chuck Byrd’s phone rang late February 6. It was the police. Could he come down to his auto body repair shop near 27th and Troost? A man had thrown a cinder block through Byrd’s plateglass window, the biggest, most expensive window in the whole building. Officers alerted by the burglar alarm had found the man standing in Byrd’s office, drunk….
Always fresh on Gary Davis’ mind is the image of a black man who was burned alive. It’s from an old photograph; judging from the thin black ties and fedoras on the white men — the ones standing over the corpse and smiling as if it were a trophy deer — the picture was taken four or five decades ago,…
Kansas City steakhouses run the gamut in style, from lovable but dated — such as Benton’s Steak & Chop House — to the masculine and clubby, such as Plaza III: The Steakhouse. But what’s opening on March 19 puts a new spin on the word “steakhouse.” It’s Hollywood, in more ways than one. When I paid a visit to The…
On a clear night, you can see forever — as well as Kansas City, Kansas — from a windowside table at Benton’s Steak & Chop House. The top-floor dining room at the Westin Crown Center Hotel isn’t just a room with a view, it’s one of the few places in town where all at once you can watch a…
15 Thursday One of the best ways to deal with “the absurdities of contemporary life” is to make art about it. Choreographer Jacques Heim knows this, and that’s one of the qualities that led Buzz Magazine to proclaim him one of the “100 Coolest People in L.A.” (The Los Angeles Times was a bit more cautious, calling him simply…
Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill grapples with “the biggies.” The 49-year-old poet (whose name is pronounced NOO-la Nee GO-nal) says life, children and death are among “the big ones, the all-time immortal themes, the parameters of human existence.” In her highly suggestive poem “Blodewedd,” for example, Ni Dhomhnaill takes on another, very American, biggie: sex. At the least touch…
The Scary Guy has been to Kansas City and nearby towns before. The “living comic book hero” comes to schools in peace — but that didn’t stop parents and officials in St. Joseph from canceling one of his 1999 appearances because, as they told Scary (his legal first name since 1998), “the messenger was wrong.” They might have been…
It’s been too long since phrases like “charm and vivacity” have rung out on a Kansas City stage. Now that they’re here, the whispers on the wind can mean only that Tennessee Williams is back in town. “Being a memory play,” Williams wrote long ago in production notes for The Glass Menagerie, ” can be presented with unusual freedom…
In 1981 the critic and poet Rene Ricard wrote, “When you first see a new picture you are very careful because you may be staring at van Gogh’s ear.” He meant that art doesn’t always look like art at first — not until someone (a critic, for example) comes along and says it does. As viewers, we cannot possibly…
Hundreds of groups vie for pop superstardom with the same homogenized sound developed by the same handful of quality producers. 3LW (Three Little Women) tries hard to establish a sliver of personality to distinguish itself from this pack. Simple and harmless, 3LW avoids both adult-oriented material and overly cute self-aware innocence. Adrienne, Kiely and Naturi have potential, as displayed on…
Finally, someone has stepped up to fill the void left by the cancellation of MTV Sports. Now we can see big rock stars, or at least The Offspring, alternate between bringing the rock and rocking the world of extreme sports. Huck It offers forty minutes of such tomfoolery, as the band members and assorted sportsmen and stunt guys skydive, soar…
Diamonds and Dirt transformed Rodney Crowell from one of Nashville’s most respected guitarists, songwriters and producers into, briefly, one of its biggest stars. Just reissued as part of Sony’s American Milestones series, the 1988 album gave Crowell five chart-topping country singles. It certainly didn’t hurt that the album’s lead single (“It’s Such a Small World”) was a duet with the…
Eleni Mandell Just months after a sultry performance in which she unveiled selections from her stellar sophomore effort, Thrill, Eleni Mandell returns to Davey’s Uptown as the middle act in one of the young year’s most solid top-to-bottom bills. Mandell’s slow-burning guitar and smoky voice, in addition to this L.A. woman’s proximity to the studios, make her a movie-music mainstay….
Conveniently, St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday this year, meaning that few motorists will be affected by an event that kicks off in the streets of downtown. However, once the parade wraps up in the early afternoon, the easy part of the day’s entertainment planning ends and the choices begin. Live bands will be as prevalent as green beer,…
Kansas City natives Marlon “Castor Troy” Hatcher, Keith “Casino” Murrell and Ernest “Bishop” Dixon have written several of today’s hottest R&B songs, but for now artists such as Joe and Koffee Brown reap the benefits while the trio known as Talent pays its bills and waits for its turn in the spotlight. That opportunity might come soon enough; Talent is…
Ever read the fine print on your CD sleeves? Most of them say something like, “Unauthorized duplication is a violation … blah blah blah … the FBI … blah blah blah … without express written consent from the commissioner of baseball.” The words “authorized” and “duplication” have never appeared next to each other in print, except in O-Town’s contract. But…
Militant organizations of all types frequent the political scene, generally engendering much debate on university campuses and the talk-radio airwaves, but how many know about militant deaf people? Apparently there are quite a lot of them, and they seem to dislike the idea that technology is rapidly progressing to a point where deafness can be cured, thereby driving “deaf culture”…
To keep it simple, Enemy at the Gates plays like a cross between the PlayStation game Medal of Honor (a World War II Nazi-shoot-’em-up viewed through a sniper’s scope) and a Harlequin Romance novel. It’s history lesson as videogame, videogame as soap opera, soap opera as highbrow drama, highbrow drama as softcore romance — so much of everything, so little…
“What do the Chiefs have to show for being $31 million over the salary cap? Where are the Super Bowl rings? To me, that’s the interesting thing. Somebody’s been making some mistakes. Thirty-one million dollars over the cap and you don’t have a Super Bowl ring or a championship ring to show for it?” — Bill Maas, WHB 810 “I…
The Dick Vermeil era is off to an ugly start. The man Lamar Hunt will pay $10 million over the next three years to get the Kansas City Chiefs back into the NFL playoffs appears to be less than advertised. The “Savior From St. Louis” has been acting as though the Chiefs’ problems with salary excesses are a big surprise…
Fair Game The beating goes on: What utter self-righteous crap in the March 1 issue! First, Greg Hall gushes about a kid who plays football — deliberate ritualized combat (“Tank Full”). Then the Pitch whines about the terrible, terrible NASCAR people and their discretion about injuries and accidents, and pretends to know something about crash barriers (Kansas City Strip). And…
Monkey business: The king of the Great Ape House back in 1968 was Big Man. The massive gorilla was a huge draw for carrot- and peanut-wielding youngsters and their kindergarten teachers, who fattened him up in the days before zoo nutritionists managed to hog all the fun. Those days are gone, and by fall the crumbling concrete Monkey Palace will…
Gil Cates takes a long, deep breath before answering the question: Is producing the Academy Awards show the ultimate no-win situation? Cates has produced nine of the past 11 Oscar telecasts, and he returns March 25 after a year’s layoff; for those scoring at home, Cates is not to blame for last year’s epic, four-hours-plus show, which ran so long…
When Catherine Stark-Corn was young, her mom was on the Kansas City school board. Back then, Catherine remembers, the board was as contentious as it is today, “but they were better about closed doors. They were more concerned about putting forward a united front.” Maybe that’s because in the early ’70s something more was at stake than the board’s internal…
