One can only imagine the pitch meeting at which comedian-turned-film actor Denis Leary told ABC programming execs he wanted to write and star in a show about a pill-popping, Scotch-swilling, chain-smoking, adulterous New York City cop who utters obscenities as casually as he exhales. It’ll be a 30-minute show, Leary probably told them, shot with hand-held cameras that make…
Carol Brehmer and her husband, Jay, have received some ninety interview requests since mid-February, when a well-kept secret got out: The Johnson County couple were among sixteen civilians aboard the USS Greeneville when the nuclear-powered submarine surged to the Pacific Ocean surface and collided with a Japanese research boat, killing several people. “We’re not talking about it right now to…
Tony Ragusa was 23 years old when his uncle handed him the keys to the B&C Party Shoppe. “Be there at 6 a.m. Have the door open, and they will come,” his uncle told him. Ragusa went, abandoning plans to become a fireman and taking on a job that his older brother had turned down, probably wisely. In 1990, the…
Although all seven Sutera brothers started working in the restaurant business when their father opened Sutera’s Old San Francisco Restaurant in 1976, only two brothers are still in the restaurant game: Charlie Sutera — who runs the restaurant with his wife, Sally — and Joe, who opened Sutera’s West Restaurant last year in Bonner Springs. Just a lap away from…
So few restaurants are left in the West Bottoms, it’s hard to imagine there ever was a vibrant restaurant scene on the district’s lonely streets. But in the days when the Bottoms were home to Kansas City’s busy stockyards, the now nearly barren stretch of Genessee Street that extends from the Livestock Exchange Building to Kemper Arena was packed…
1 Thursday The Kudzu Kings, in addition to being an alliterative bunch, play what they call “improvisational rock and roll.” That’s not just a euphemism for “band that doesn’t practice.” In fact, they’ve played in a number of prominent music venues and shared the stage with such big-name bands as Widespread Panic. Classified as progressive country rock, the Kudzu…
Life Is to Whistle (La Vida Es Silbar) presents a cinematic dream of Cuba in the year 2020. Director Fernando Perez isn’t so naive as to think his dream will come to fruition, though. Perez’s vision of the future in Cuba is illogical but nonetheless fascinating. As far as political movies go, this comes as a relief; instead of…
When author Lemony Snicket, who writes unwholesome and troubling children’s books, gets phone calls asking for Mr. Snicket, he replies with a fit of giggles. “You can call me Daniel,” he says, reverting to his alter ego, Daniel Handler. Between Lemony and Daniel, who exist in the same body but different sections of a library, eight books have been…
In Vito Russo’s authoritative analysis of homosexuality in the movies, The Celluloid Closet, the 1976 film version of Norman, Is That You? is described as “the first pro-gay fag joke.” Starring Redd Foxx in the role played by Don Knotts in the New Theatre Restaurant’s production, the movie was adapted from a short-lived Broadway play that “went on to become…
Dying is an art, like everything else. — Sylvia Plath, poet Face it: You’re going to die. No matter how much money you have or don’t have, how healthy your body or how sick, Death squats on the horizon, filing his teeth, waiting for the moment you stumble into his gaping maw. No amount of pleas, negotiations or threats…
In indie-pop circles, The Beatles and the Beach Boys get ripped off all the time, as do The Velvet Underground and Big Star. Perhaps someday a band will break that mold, but rest assured, Oranger is not that band. But unoriginal as it might be (and the list of truly original current pop bands is a short one), Oranger is…
One doctrine states that a meticulous effort should be easy to notice, sticking out and calling attention to itself as if to say, “Heed me, for I am meticulous,” the attention afforded it being a sweet reward. Another school of thought believes that instead, when practiced, meticulousness should sound random and scattershot, planned and plotted to sound as if it…
On Le Tigre’s 1999 debut, former Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna evolved from screeching along with jagged garage punk to cooing over sonically soothing tracks. Along with bandmates Johanna Fateman, JD and Sadie Benning, Hanna pieced together synthesized-and-sampled dance pop candy, then she buried her sour observations under the glossy shell. From the Desk of Mr. Lady sees Hanna bolstering…
Sade’s music is not timeless. The group (fronted by singer and lyricist Sade Adu) composes minimalist studies of thrall and the various forms taken by its aftermath — narrow turf that, despite the instrumentalists’ smooth precision, isn’t the stuff of standards. But neither is Sade’s music of its time. Her first three albums, built on satiny hooks and suggestive of…
Every once in a great while, an artist turns in a performance so mind-blowing and genre-bending that the members of the audience may not appreciate what they’ve seen. Think Bob Dylan going electric, Run-DMC doing “Walk This Way” or Split Lip Rayfield’s Kirk Rundstrom recording an album with a drum machine. Really, it happened. “Mishkin and I have been doing…
Gil Scott-Heron, founder of politically oriented hip-hop, once famously stated, “The revolution will not be televised.” Indeed, news of Scott-Heron’s appearance in Kansas City to perform his still-revolutionary material was not televised — or even advertised by way of fliers in record stores. His set at 18th & Vine’s Blue Room on Wednesday, February 21, marked the year’s first truly…
One of the most unfortunate tendencies of uncreative music writers is the need to describe (or more accurately, simplify) a band’s sound by slapping the suffix “-core” after some dubious adjective. “Emocore,” “grindcore,” “sadcore,” “mathcore,” “softcore” and “rapcore” are just a few of the many crimes against language this practice has produced. But to be fair, some bands don’t mind…
Visibly shaken, Myra Taylor struggles to recount the story of her career without bursting into tears of anger. Like many African-American artists, past and present, Taylor was a victim of coldhearted record companies that sold her songs without giving her “one cent” and publishing companies that gave credit to other artists for songs she wrote and allowed other musicians…
Was it Hallmark, or maybe Frank Zappa, who once called February 14 “this day of chocolates, milk, dark, bittersweet nougat, cherry-coated clitoris day”? If the front of the card depicts a split, bleeding pomegranate, you’re spending Valentine’s Day with Diana Darby. That vigorous portrayal of the biggest annual sales day for roses comes from Darby’s recent poem “Love Day,” which…
Leave it to Hollywood to sell us the insipid romance of a thoroughly irritating white couple as the solution to an archaic Latin American mystery. As pure bang-up adventure, The Mexican is certainly more user-friendly than childish junk like The Way of the Gun, but the attempt to weave adult relationship psychobabble and cultural significance into the action rings…
“We’re going to raise the bar on this show. When we go to the point of tastelessness and people yelling and screaming and shouting people down and the noises where it irritates people, that’s what bothers me. It’s a fine line I’m gonna ask people to walk, and I’m going to ask people to walk it.” — Jason Whitlock, WHB…
Gene Wier, the head football coach at Olathe North High School, has heard many a youngster state that he’ll be the next great running back at Olathe North, which has turned out some of the best ball carriers in Kansas. Years ago, when his daughter informed him that “Tank,” her third-grade classmate, had made such a boast, Coach Wier smiled,…
Swing Set Girl talk: I wanted to thank Deb Hipp for her article about Tootsie’s (“Body Snatchers,” February 22.) I don’t go to Tootsie’s often these days, but when I do, I am appalled at the number of hetero couples who have become fixtures. What bothers me is that Tootsie’s and its management deny any problems with them. In the…
Race relations: Stann Tate, spokesman for the Kansas Speedway, is in no mood to discuss his sport’s gratuitous bloodshed. While blowing a $225 million wad to build the redneck convention center in western Wyandotte County, developers forgot to send a few bucks to Cellofoam, the Georgia-based company that makes “soft walls” — racing barriers that afford pro racers even better…
