The Kansas River is a filthy stepchild of its old self. Its water, once pure enough to sip from a settler’s cup, is tainted with carcinogenic chemicals and stomach-curdling pathogens. Yet Mike and Laura Calwell embrace it as a 170-mile-long natural treasure. For a peaceful escape, they only have to drive an hour upstream from their house in Johnson County….
The Eastern European cuisine served at Jennie’s (see review) is distinctive to Croatia and Bosnia, and Jennie’s is certainly the only place in the area to get it. Another style of Eastern European food is, however, more familiar and accessible. Delicatessen fare, which evolved from the culinary traditions of German, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian and Russian Jews, first made an impact…
Despite recent appearances, it’s only an illusion that a new restaurant opens in Kansas City every seven days. Two new places opened just last week on the Country Club Plaza — James Taylor’s trendy re:Verse at 618 Ward Parkway and the new Buca di Beppo at 310 West 47th Street. And the long-awaited Provençal bistro, Aixois, opens its doors at…
2 Thursday The immigrant experience can be divisive — many immigrants live with two homelands, two cultures and two languages. Cristina Garcia’s novel Dreaming in Cuban certainly does. The novel’s perspective shifts back and forth between Cuba, where Celia del Pino lives, and Brooklyn, where her daughter, Lourdes, and granddaughter, Pilar, have moved. Pilar shares neither her grandmother’s devotion to…
In Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, a mob of villagers drags a woman wearing a pointy hat to appear before a judge. In response to a chorus of “Burn her! Burn her!” the judge asks the villagers why they think she’s a witch. When one villager cries out, “She turned me into a newt,” the judge looks…
When couch potatoes roll over and find their remotes on August 5, their cable and DirecTV listings will have changed yet again. Missing will be the faith-and-values programming of Odyssey (“The Ozzie and Harriet stuff,” says one Time Warner staffer), and in its place will be the premiere of the “family-friendly” Hallmark Channel. “We’ve been adding new programming every…
Actors sometimes give performances they don’t even know they have in them. Scott Cordes gives such a performance in Theatre for Young America’s The Hobbit. In his first children’s theater job in more than a decade, Cordes seems plugged into some mysterious power source, electrically commanding the stage as if a movie star had stepped into TYA’s home at…
You can almost smell the dying. The spilled body fluids, the sweat, the last breath. Doesn’t matter how tidy the room looks, how scrubbed, how antiseptic. People are killed in these rooms. Killed. Not “put to death” — the euphemism preferred by a society unwilling to examine bare-bones reality: We kill. We will kill again. And the photographs at…
Ben Harper hand-picked Jack Johnson (moviemaker, surfer, singer/songwriter) as the opening act for his latest national tour for obvious reasons. Like Harper, Johnson cross-pollinates Dave Matthews’ groove with Jimi Hendrix’s relaxed acoustic soul. Johnson’s magnificent debut, Brushfire Fairytales, provides an open-hearted treasure chest of simple yet substantial songs that range from rootsy to rollicking, from straightforward folk to slow-simmering bluesy…
Missy Elliott has never been a great lyricist, but her inability to flow hasn’t prevented her from crafting such hits as “Get Ur Freak On” and “One Minute Man,” two tracks from her third disc, Miss E … So Addictive. Elliott succeeds because she’s a fantastic catch-phrase coiner who can string together gibberish in a uniquely appealing style. However, her…
Drowning Pool poses itself as a populist band, less interested in producing artistic statements than in creating no-frills, crowd-pleasing rock. And there’s nothing wrong with shutting up and giving the people what they want, but “no-frills” shouldn’t mean no melodies, no fun and no difference between one track and the next. The title track and the single “Bodies” (as in…
In the movie Songcatcher, a young woman heads into the Appalachian hills to record the folk songs of an early twentieth-century culture that critic Greil Marcus gets off on calling “the old, weird America.” On this set of film-inspired recordings, some of the best female singers on the planet wander back through the years to catch a few of these…
Rhonda Vincent spent much of the ’90s in Nashville struggling to make it as a mainstream country singer, but it wasn’t until she returned to her bluegrass roots, culminating in last year’s amazing Back Home Again, that she found her true voice. Today Vincent (who still resides in the Kirksville, Missouri, area) and her band, The Rage, are widely regarded…
There a few groups — Radiohead and The Flaming Lips immediately come to mind — whose work demands headphone-assisted listening for full absorption of its intricacies. The Lips have even gone so far as to supply headphones at their live shows, which capture a radio broadcast of the music as it plays. Though this experiment has gotten rave reviews,…
The weekend of July 13 to 15 was a mild one, with temperatures in the mid-80s and a steady summer breeze. And the week of July 23 to 27 was a mostly temperate one as well, dominated by cloud-covered skies and periodic showers. But the weekend of July 20 to 22 was Kansas City’s token scorcher, with an unobstructed…
Of all the adjectives with which a pop musician can be weighed down, maybe the least probable — certainly one of the least desired — is “endearing.” Mick Jagger, for instance, will be senile before he’s endearing, and that’s just the way he wants it. Even wizened, strangely effeminate-looking Paul McCartney fails to cause that immediate and inexplicable warmth: the…
It’s a good thing the folks who handle Will Oldham — the songwriting savant known as Bonnie Prince Billy and Palace and Palace Songs and Palace Brothers and The Palace Drawbridge Is Closing Let’s Storm the Castle (okay, just kidding about that one) — are on the ball about providing a copy of his most recent disc, Ease Down the…
The most telling scene in Rush Hour 2 comes during the closing-credits montage of outtakes that have become the most enjoyable part of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood outings. Chris Tucker, the poor man’s Eddie Murphy, who now pockets more than the real thing per picture, and Chan have just pushed one of the film’s myriad baddies out of a window;…
“Don’t embarrass yourself and ask for No. 5.” — Clint Hurdle, former Royal and the Rockies’ hitting coach, offering Neifi Perez advice for when he arrived in George Brett country, Rocky Mountain News “I realize it’s not a very popular trade, and I realize I’m not a very popular guy right now.” — Dan O’Dowd, Colorado Rockies general manager, after…
It’s August. David Glass once predicted that by now his Royals would be on their way to 87 wins and entrenched in a pennant race. Instead, Glass and the team are on their way to losing all credibility with fans. Don’t take my word for it; listen to what third baseman Joe Randa said on WHB 810 after outfielder Jermaine…
Trainsplatting Road scholar: Thank you for Casey Logan’s excellent article on light rail (“Dead in Its Tracks,” July 19). Kansas City needs good roads and bridges, more money for Truman Medical Center, more help for the inner city and help for its pathetic school system. I could go on, but we all get the point. Light rail, new stadiums, more…
Thanks Dave, back to you, Dave: When KCTV Channel 5 anointed Dave Helling to replace Wendall Anschutz as anchor of its 10 p.m. newscasts — allegedly a promotion — we worried that the Truthwatcher’s investigative skills would be wasted on blabber like “Sure was a hot one today, wasn’t it Katie Horner?” But Helling demanded that he be allowed time…
There is only one reason Jon Favreau’s new film is called Made. Not too long ago, his old friend and co-star Vince Vaughn called him up and told him, in no uncertain terms, “You gotta write something that can get made.” It was less a demand than it was a plea. Five years ago, Vaughn and Favreau had starred…
On a gloomy morning in an otherwise sweltering July, Jon Barnett and Michelle Haughey walk through their neighborhood and point to what they say is concrete evidence that Missouri Gas Energy doesn’t care about its customers. Since 1990, the utility company has been upgrading gas pipes throughout the city to comply with a state law requiring greater protection from corrosion…
