Note to publicity-hungry young artists: When crafting a bio, be sure to include amusing, vaguely plausible tidbits about your past. If, for instance, you reminisce about growing up as a tap-dancing troubadour who flew colorful kites to break the sterile monotony of the frozen Canadian wasteland, many music writers will accept your words at face value. “Is any of this…
All histories — even personal ones — offer something to be learned. Ouida Touchón’s story is a lesson in art history. Lesson one: Life intervenes. As an art student in the 1960s, Touchón vowed to “live life as art.” By her definition, this meant not only doing art but also being art: “the way you cook, dress, write a…
Louis Colaianni is an associate professor in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s theater department and, as such, has been around theatrical people and things all of his professional life. But, perfectly manicured hands down, the most extreme of these acquaintances was Quentin Crisp, the late author, satirist, illustrator and, in Crisp’s own words, “professional failure.” Crisp was born with the…
Little boys aren’t supposed to play with dolls, but when Hasbro introduced G.I. Joe in 1964, 15,000 U.S. troops were already in Vietnam and tensions were escalating. What better time for an eleven-and-a-half-inch soldier doll with 21 moving parts and a macho scar on his face to “save the world, one backyard at a time”? The butch doll was a…
Having grown up with not one but two Partridges — mother Shirley Jones, who played Mrs., and brother David as teen idol Keith — Patrick Cassidy was probably never destined to pursue anything but show business. “I was surrounded by pop music and musical theater from the time I was born,” he says of the family that also included…
21 Thursday Tonight is a night of self-inflicted blackouts. Roll-your-own blackouts sweep the country as recipients of a widely circulated e-mail turn off their lights in protest of energy overconsumption and the Alaska drilling that’s going to make it all possible. Greenies everywhere will play board games by candlelight, or whatever else they see fit to do in the…
A kiss on the hand may be highly continental, but a piropos is a girl’s best friend. In Argentina, anyway — and in Parkville. “It’s the nicest thing you can say to a girl. It’s a way of flirting with a woman in the sexiest possible way,” says my friend Carmen, a native of Guatemala who has spent more…
The wraparound windows at Parkville’s new Piropos restaurant offer sweeping views of the Missouri River, the Park University spire poking out of the trees and the faraway office towers in downtown Kansas City. As the sky darkens, it’s even more romantic. Barely a handful of other restaurants have views that spectacular. Benton’s Chop House is one, as is Skies, the…
Several years had passed since someone died in Sally Needles’ lawn. But then it happened again, on April 30, when 22-year-old Christopher Mohammed Jr. crashed into a tree in Needles’ front yard and died on the spot. “It’s like the Bermuda Triangle,” Needles says of the downhill curve from 90th Street to 92st Street on Wornall Road. Homes along that…
There aren’t many A-list pop musicians less likely than Paul Simon (pictured) to become summer tour institutions. But for the second consecutive shed season, Simon is on the road with a venerable co-draw. Last year it was Bob Dylan. This year, Brian Wilson, the famously troubled Beach Boy, is his fellow warrior. Unlike the Dylan match-up, Simon isn’t expected to…
In some ways, local music lovers might see this summer’s concert schedule as a bit of a disappointment. With Chicago, New York and Seattle getting two to three times as many shows — and with big-name acts such as Radiohead, Dave Matthews Band, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and Moby all opting to bypass Missouri while playing Colorado (ouch!) —…
All the guys in Podstar are under 21, but keep that info on the down-low; this trio has decided to call its recently embarked-upon journey The High Life Tour. This despite the fact that the band hasn’t received a corporate sponsorship from Miller, and the company’s “often imitated, never replicated” beer is nothing Podstar’s members should know anything about, at…
Nickolas Perry’s film Speedway Junky belongs on the small but growing list of films that turn sexually ambiguous yet entrepreneurial teenage boys and the seedy streets upon which they pose into objects of fetishes. But Perry says he was deliberately striving to have this, his first full-length feature, look at this world in a different light than Gus Van…
“I find it interesting that a guy can set up his financial picture for life based on just his success in college or high school. Do they deserve that? No, they don’t deserve that. They should have to work their way to the big leagues like everybody else, not by where they got drafted. That is an issue that a…
More than 50 million fans have attended Royals games inside Kauffman Stadium since the Truman Sports Complex opened in 1973. Last season almost 1.8 million pushed through the turnstiles at the K. Some of these fans were baseball junkies, some merely curious tourists. One trait that nearly all these fans shared was that they were white. Mike Levy, the Royals’…
Religious Bodies God forsaken: Regarding Allie Johnson’s “Divine Debauchery” (June 7): Once again, the black community and I have been given proof of hell in the black church. What Saundra McFadden-Weaver had to endure at the hands of so-called men of God was deplorable. That those in charge of these men knew what was happening and really did nothing is…
Paper shredder: Rich Hood’s scowl darkened Thursday, June 14, when the Star editorial page editor and three other executives were fired. Knight Ridder and The Star are fish-wrapping 125 employees; 51 others took retirement buyouts earlier this year. Publisher Art Brisbane declined to comment to the Pitch. Obliged to decimate his paper, Brisbane has at least ensured that grunts won’t…
Alan Cumming is, in no particular order, the following: an actor, a pop icon, a Renaissance man, a sex symbol, a bon viveur and the boy next door. “I am a combination of all those things,” insists the 36-year-old Scot, who punctuates every other sentence with a sly giggle that suggests he knows something you don’t and never will. Then,…
On the morning of April 25 — two days after Superintendent Benjamin Demps Jr. resigned, calling the Kansas City School District’s governance “fatally flawed” — community leaders took turns before TV cameras on the front steps of the district’s main offices, declaring support for the elected board and calling on Kansas Citians to unite for the sake of the children….
For the next five days, Richard Lewis will seldom leave his North Dallas hotel room, hidden away at the far end of the top floor with a view of overpasses, office buildings and distant dark clouds. He will venture out only to visit a couple of radio and television stations, to plug his four-night stand at the Improv, and make…
The Kansas champ sits in the far corner of his middle-school cafeteria, a gold medal around his neck and a slight hunch to his posture. He is fairly inexpressive, which, as it turns out, may have helped him get this far. Two weeks earlier, he’d watched the two-time Kansas champion get knocked out of this year’s state competition. “Some people…
The ham-loving plainsman couldn’t sleep. Rustlers or martians were after his tasty pigs. So he called the leader of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia. Then he called the Osage County sheriff. It was late Monday, April 17, 1995, about 36 hours before the Oklahoma City bomb blew up. Near a pigpen south of Topeka, the deputies and the militiamen bumped…
Scrawny Stud has a neck full of dark purple hickeys. Leaning on his girl, whose belly bulges out from under her tube top, he proclaims his love in front of the downtown library. It’s true love inside too. That’s where the two adjourn, Stud trailing his woman (whose house slippers don’t flip-flip-flip too loudly) to the quiet tables near the…
Inmates win again: Patricia Kurtz does not intend to seek another term on the Kansas City School Board. The firing of former Superintendent Benjamin Demps Jr. (at a closed meeting where five members had seized “emergency” control) solidified her decision. “I’ve been on the board seven years now, and it takes a lot of time, and I am frustrated with…
