When I think of restaurants in museums, the obvious artistic choices come to mind: Rozelle Court at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and Cafe Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. But those restaurants, which are certainly lovely, are mere appendages — like the gift shops — to the museum’s spacious galleries and cultural exhibitions. At Chappell’s Restaurant and Sports…
24 Thursday Chuck Digby wants to talk about the weather, and not just as a desperate last resort while attempting to make conversation with a stranger. Digby serves as coordinator of emergency communications for KCTV Channel 5, where his duties include coordinating weather spotters and tracking storms. He’s also a member of the Dowsing Society of Kansas City, a…
With a launch party featuring DJ Vic Vapor and a name spun from a dream, The Evaporated Milk Society is Kansas City’s newest theater company pledging to shake things up a bit. Randall Cohn, founder and director of the company’s debut show, Sabbatai: A Dance Pseudepigrapha, even has a way of making the group’s eccentric name seem totally logical. “In…
When singer Queen Bey was born in 1938, the one-story brick storefront at 415 E. 18th Street was still an auto shop. In fact, this entire neighborhood a dozen blocks west of 18th and Vine — now evolving into an urban arts scene — was all about radiator repair for decades. Though the average onlooker wouldn’t have been able to…
A folder labeled “Airline Stuff,” shoved in my desk drawer, contains frequent-flier cards, tickets for future trips and several vouchers and coupons for free flights — the result of egregious consumer crimes. The coupons are stacking up like planes on the La Guardia tarmac: two free U.S. Airways vouchers for volunteering to be bumped and a series of $25 coupons…
A year after I moved back to Kansas City, I ran into one of my former art professors. He asked me what I was doing, was I still making art? I told him time had dictated that I choose between painting and writing and that I’d chosen the latter out of what I recognized as a more enduring love….
On Ginuwine … The Bachelor (1996) and 100% Ginuwine (1999), Elgin Baylor “Ginuwine” Lumpkins’ songs seemed like mere vehicles for him to film videos that showcased his pretty face and smooth steppin’ dance moves. But on his latest disc, The Life, Kansas City native Solé’s baby’s daddy finally demonstrates some lyrical depth and vocal range. On “Superhuman,” Ginuwine tricks out…
The Holmes Brothers make gospel that’s slinky, sultry and downright greasy, producing the sexiest church songs this side of Prince. On Speaking in Tongues, they hook up with noted philosopher Joan Osborne (she produces and sings back-up) for songs that groove like outtakes from the Family Stone’s heyday. Wendell Holmes provides the funky guitar, Sherman Holmes the Staples-esque bass lines…
For the guys in Swag, a Nashville-based five-piece that includes Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Todd Rundgren associate Doug Powell, longtime Maverick Robert Reynolds and one-time Maverick Jerry Dale McFadden, it must’ve been a real kick to mimic the pet sounds that had them falling in love with music in the first place. The idea was…
The title translates from Icelandic to “A Good Start,” but the still-youthful Sigur Ros has been together seven years. Still, the four-piece band’s album couldn’t be more aptly titled; Agoetis Byrjun has brought it acclaim (on the modest scale of an enamored music press) and the first real money it’s seen from its music. Until this week, the disc remained…
Tuesday evening presents several options for low-on-money music fans. There’s a 98-cent hard-rock show featuring three touring acts at El Torreon, while Davey’s Uptown hosts a free concert starring the brightest lights from the artist-run label India Records. Kitty Gordon, named in honor of a friend’s do-it-yourself porn-star moniker (first pet plus mother’s maiden name), backs vocalist Nina Singh’s…
Ah, Memorial Day weekend — a time for travel, canoe trips and tentative testing of still-too-cold public pools. Once known as the unofficial opening of Hollywood’s summer movie season (that date has crept into early spring), this weekend now signals the beginning of the equally important all-day music-festival season. The traveling behemoths, such as OZZfest and Warped Tour, wait…
It was a dark and stormy night. Seriously. It was a dark and stormy night, and appropriately so, last December when kill.pop. wrapped up work on its just-released debut disc, 1. “It had snowed a lot that week and was supposed to snow more that night,” singer/guitarist/bassist B. Kinder recalls. “I’m not really much into mixing or producing or…
The rap world is built on conflict, or the perception thereof. East Coast beats versus West Coast style, black versus white, street versus club — all of these competing factors have contributed to hip-hop’s complex culture over the past twenty years. This tension makes rap potent and pertinent as well as volatile and occasionally dangerous. But a combination of…
Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious and mean. But, hey, it’s all right; the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us, in the form of his truly ecstatic new film, Moulin Rouge. This industrial-strength antidepressant…
“After Gates, Megan and Truta drive Jason back to his home. Jason exits the car and starts toward his house. Suddenly, he stops, taps on the car and motions for Megan to roll down her window. ‘I’ve got a secret to tell you,’ he says. When Megan obliges, Jason thrusts his ample buttocks through the window, relieves himself of a…
Tony Muser isn’t the Royals’ problem. Don’t get me wrong; Muser has no business managing our Royals or any other team that wears long pants. Muser never should have been hired, let alone been allowed to fashion the worst won/lost record in Royals’ history over the past four years. The problem is the brain trust that picked Muser as the…
Flush to Judgment Potty time: It’s impossible not to respond to Michelle McElroy’s letter (May 17) regarding Joe Miller’s article “Dishonorable Discharge” (May 3). She seems more concerned with the editorial slant than the major point she expressed: “Runoff, trash and upstream pollutants have fouled to some extent or another all our metropolitan streamways. That’s the real story that should…
PTL and pass the ammo: The real reason George W. Bush is president today is that Jehovah has smiled on American Christian gun owners. Their prayers were heard, and “the very foundation of the United States has been shaken, as we’ve seen in the last election,” retired Georgia magistrate judge Richard Jordan declared on May 19 at the National Rifle…
The publicist asks if I’d like to speak to D.A. Pennebaker to commemorate the 60th birthday of Bob Dylan, which falls on May 24. She asks this because, during the spring of 1965, Pennebaker made a documentary about Dylan’s tour of England, Dont Look Back, which captured a drained, cagey Dylan as he transitioned, uncomfortably, from fame to legend. She…
The twelve-year-old girl could no longer scream. She had cried and cried but now could only sob as she lay helpless under the heavy knee of her attacker, who struggled to remove her pants. “You better stop moving,” he told her as he anchored his knee deeper into her stomach. Just a few feet outside the Ward Parkway Shopping Center,…
Jeff Miller has been fulfilling the American dream at an unusually rapid pace. During the late 1990s, Miller’s company, Miller Enterprises, regularly ranked as one of the metro area’s busiest homebuilders. From 1997 to 1999, he secured 155 single-family residential building permits in Independence, 90 in Lee’s Summit, 78 in Grandview and 28 in Overland Park. Each permit represented another…
Although The Oak Room isn’t one of the most expensive hotel restaurants in town, its Sunday brunch — priced at $32 per person — certainly is. Set up in the hotel’s bar, it’s an elaborate affair, complete with an ice carving, a cereal spread, an omelet station, eggs Benedict, peel-and-eat shrimp, oysters, salads and carved Kansas City strip. It’s a…
Most hotel restaurants seem to be simple conveniences, with food that isn’t much good and ambience that’s barely a notch above that of a coffee shop. But there was a time when hotel dining rooms were more than afterthoughts, more than mere amenities for the overnight guests. The Hotel Muehlebach’s Terrace Grill and Café Picardy were snazzy destination spots, much…
