Restaurants specializing in Middle-Eastern food, like Iliki Café (see review) are scattered across the city. Among them is Nazeeh Hajeeh’s Ali Baba Café (7630 Wornall Road), which used to be the Promiseland Café. After I wrote about the Ali Baba Café, I received a phone call from parks board member and former city councilman Bob Lewellen, who took umbrage at…
I’m enough of a Midtown snob that I still roll my eyes when friends move out of the inner city and into some big, shiny subdivision on the plains north of the river. North of the river? To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: Is there any there there? The answer is yes, but it’s coming about slowly. The Northland has a…
23 Thursday Country singer Neko Case, who used to record as Neko Case & her Boyfriends, hooked up with a new band, The New Pornographers, for her most recent album, Mass Romantic. We hope her Boyfriends have been compassionate and understanding about her need to play the field — while The New Pornographers’ experimental rock is intriguing and fun…
Dave Attell, the host of Comedy Central’s ten-episode show Insomniac, has been going from city to city to figure out what keeps night owls scavenging. He hopes to provide stay-at-home insomniacs with a few laughs by showing them what people are out doing at night. But when we asked him about his experiences during last month’s trip to film…
In 1992, on board the space shuttle Endeavor, Mae C. Jemison, who was already a medical doctor, became the first African-American woman in space. Jemison’s also pretty, but, she notes matter-of-factly, “You’re more likely to see models on the cover of Newsweek and Time than you are to see women scientists. That tells girls what they’re valued for.” While…
Steve Tesich won an Oscar for his screenplay for Breaking Away, that kooky little movie about the blond bicyclist who thought himself an Italian opera star. But where that piece had charm to spare, his Speed of Darkness, which is being produced by Northland Actors Ensemble, is puny and ponderous. Set in 1991, the play centers on the strained…
If it’s still impossible for most Americans to imagine a world in which club DJs alter the face of music and not just its vinyl façade, then this quote from Brian Eno should be mind-blowing: “Now this is how the modern world feels to me.” Eno was describing his first impression of hearing 31-year-old German DJ and percussionist J. Peter…
For better or worse, Britney Spears is the standard by which all other sweet, fresh-faced divas-in-training will be judged. She’s got the look that drives Bob Dole — and, let’s be frank, every other red-blooded guy — nutty (though for gay guys it’s strictly her the camp value). She’s savvy enough to know when to undress publicly, and while the…
It’s been a while since anyone has buzzed about Pat Benatar, and her official Web site admits as much — its top entry in the “News” section boasts, “the song that everyone was singing as the L.A. Lakers won the championship on Monday night was none other than Pat Benatar’s hit ‘All Fired Up.’” But Benatar’s activities haven’t been limited…
It’s been a while since either Season to Risk or Kristie Stremel has released an album, but these artists haven’t faded from the local music scene. This year, Season to Risk, on the strength of its high-energy, higher-decibel live show, claimed the inaugural Best Metal/Hardcore award at the Klammies. And while in the process of assembling a band, Kristie Stremel…
As “She Don’t Care,” the first cut on Will Hoge’s debut studio album Carousel roars to life, it sounds a lot like ’80s rabble-rousers the Georgia Satellites — with a much better singer. Hoge’s sinus-headache-hangover verses give way to a full-throated Van Morrison-wail of a chorus, springing the one-liner I got a three-dollar shirt; she got fifty-five-dollar hair like…
In the mid-’90s, the infernal MTV Sports and its future-Burger-King-shill host Dan Cortese treated an unsuspecting MTV audience hoping to see actual videos to Rock and Jock specials instead: Talented but irritating athletes mixed it up on the basketball court or the baseball diamond with the likes of Coolio and Marky Mark. Pingpong was nowhere to be found on the…
Tech N9ne is hungry, in more ways than one. In a figurative sense, he’s starving for national attention after years as a celebrated regional hip-hop hero. He’s hoping his major-label debut AngHellic (in stores on Tuesday, August 28), which he’s been out all night promoting, will allow him to eat at the big boys’ table, next to the household names…
Woody Allen’s latest romp through Old New York combines (among other things) a skirt-chasing insurance investigator with the charm of a rodent, a wise-cracking Vassar grad who takes no guff and a nightclub hypnotist in a sequined turban who doubles as a major jewel thief. The year is 1940. The soundtrack warbles with nostalgic Duke Ellington and Harry James…
Beware the filmmaker who looks through the camera’s lens and sees only himself on the other side, blowing kisses. He’s the fool who confuses personal vision with jacking off, and he’ll try every time to convince you there’s something meaningful and imaginative in the shallow and hackneyed. He is so absorbed in a universe of his own creation that…
Forty-six states prohibit catching fish by hand, but one place where it’s legal is Oklahoma. The process is crude; the fish catcher (or noodler) reaches into nooks and crannies along creek and river banks and hopes a flathead takes the bait — his hand. It’s bloody and dangerous — especially when the groper finds a beaver or snake instead…
“It looked like you knocked the shit out of him, Mike.” — Bob Dutton, Kansas City Star Royals-beat writer, while interviewing Mike Sweeney in the postgame locker room, KMBZ 980 GH: KMBZ did not edit the Sweeney postgame interview, letting Dutton’s expletive fly over the airwaves. Very few fans at the game were aware of what instigated Sweeney’s rage, but…
The Royals were slumbering through another late-season home loss two weeks ago against the lowly Detroit Tigers when something odd happened at the old ballpark. Mike Sweeney, the churchgoing, cookie-and-milk swilling, all-American choirboy snapped. No, “snapped” doesn’t quite describe it. He went Bill Bixby: He transformed into the Hulk in seven quick strides from home plate to the mound. Forcing…
The Tinkle-Down Theory Streams of consciousness: Joe Miller’s article “The Whizzers of Oz” (August 9) brought home a number of salient points. Yes, we need to protect our waterways. Environmental rollbacks are detrimental to everyone’s quality of life. Agri-business pollutants have put all of us at risk. We must keep in mind our joint responsibility for the environment. It is…
Chew on this: Emanuel Cleaver tells us that recent polls show the former mayor would do pretty well if he were to run for the position again. But that doesn’t mean he’s thinking about a return to City Hall. “Absolutely not,” he says. “I can’t think of any circumstance in which I would run for mayor.” So why the polling?…
Far too often, those who work in the music industry are so concerned with making a living they often forget they’re capable, at their best, of making history as well. They sacrifice art and artists in the name of commerce, then sleep soundly wrapped in bedspreads made of silk and greenbacks. Musicians, be they legendary or unknown, sit at the…
Mayor Kay Barnes was radiant on August 14 as she stepped onto a platform in the middle of Baltimore Street. Her platinum pantsuit matched her silver-blonde hair, and a magnificent white rose bloomed from her shoulder. Under a glorious dry sun, the mayor proclaimed that it was a beautiful day in Kansas City — as if she’d created the day…
Paul and Chantill Truss frowned when elected officials declared that Kansas City should continue to push for light rail despite embarrassing losses at the polls. “We were mad,” says Chantill. “It would be a good idea, but they need to take care of the necessities first.” This sentiment abounds in the Southland neighborhood of Bannister Acres, where the Trusses recently…
Just after midnight on Saturday, April 28, someone found Charles Johnson sprawled on a bathroom floor at Western Missouri Mental Health Center. Three of his fingers were shoved in his mouth. He wasn’t breathing. Within seconds a panicked “Code blue on 6 Center!” blared over the hospital PA system. Nurses and doctors from four other acute-care units — wards for…
