Mary Ryan is running late again. Her colleagues cringe as she swoops into the Kansas City, Kansas, meeting room of the city’s electric company wearing jeans and swinging a bulky purse. “What time is it?” Ryan demands, interrupting the Board of Public Utilities meeting. “Three minutes after six,” board President John Petty answers. Ryan jerks her chair from the table,…
Fallout from the September 11 bombings is taking its toll on at least two Middle-Eastern restaurants in Kansas City. Business has dropped off so dramatically at the Ali Baba Café (7630 Wornall Road) that owner Nazeeh Hajeeh is thinking of changing the restaurant’s name to The Little Italy Café and dropping the Middle-Eastern dishes altogether. “I’ve had to let my…
One balmy evening, I stepped out of the Baja 600 restaurant and crossed Ward Parkway to get to my parked car. Looking down into the muddy water of Brush Creek, I saw the floating Mark Cordes cow sculpture, “Cowdolier,” tipped over and nearly two-thirds underwater. It was a fine metaphor for my second surreal night in Baja 600. Brush…
27 Thursday About this time of year, the butterflies that have been hanging out in our region for what seems like only a little while decide to relocate. It’s so predictable: Every year they choose Mexico as their migration spot. Tonight at 7, Dr. O.R. Taylor, professor of entomology at KU, explains the role of citizen scientists — people…
Shifting demographics mean that Latin-American cultural events are no longer just splashes of exotic foreign color on the Anglo entertainment landscape. This week, two such events — one filled with legend and the other with lacerating wit — suggest why. Ballet Folklorico de Mexico is scheduled to appear Tuesday, October 2, at the Midland Theatre in a year that…
Since 1979, more than one hundred original 1940s pinups painted by Alberto Vargas for Esquire magazine have been stored in cabinets at the University of Kansas. The women in Vargas’ paintings — backs arched, legs extended in provocative poses, faces beaming wholesome smiles — are harmless by today’s standards. Still, something about these images has kept the collection from…
American Heartland Theatre’s high-tech Solitary Confinement is back after a mere eight years. The Rupert Holmes mystery contains now, as it did in its previous run, a robust performance from Mark Robbins as a Howard Hughes-like business titan who is, oddly, both paranoid and gregarious. Richard Jannings lives in a triplex atop a high-rise in Albuquerque, New Mexico, surrounded…
A week after the September 11 terrorist actions, Tha Dogg Pound’s Kurupt found no reason to remove references to the Pentagon and to being “da bomb” from his September 18, show at Hale Arena. Then again, both Kurupt and headliner Snoop Dogg chose not to revise lines that referred to 1993 in the present tense, suggesting that their lyrics, once…
Kansas City shaped the history of jazz, and now jazz is helping to shape the future of Kansas City. This year, it’ll boost efforts to solve some of Kansas City’s most pressing maladies, such as blighted properties in struggling neighborhoods, the dearth of high-quality grocery stores in the urban core and an out-of-control payday-loan industry that’s robbing poor people of…
The name Trump Dawgs has a definite rap feel to it, and, indeed, the quintet delivers low-key hip-hop, accented by wheezing guitars and mildly rumbling bass, on “The Last Straw.” However, that track isn’t really representative of the group’s freewheeling sound — in fact, it came together by accident. During one of Trump Dawgs’ epics-in-the-making (several songs on its album…
Last week, the entertainment and sports industries took baby steps toward restoring their dominance of America’s water-cooler conversations and leisure time. The NFL played its full schedule; Glitter debuted, providing a distracting dose of unintentional humor at movie theaters; and local venues offered Maxwell and Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, matchbox twenty and 311. But these happenings merely represented a return…
On September 11, 2001, hearts and time seemed to stop. Everything changed immediately, maybe forever, and the frustrations of the modern world slinked back to their proper place as people embraced concepts such as family and religion. But, as everyone’s been told countless times since, life must go on, as must work, no matter how meaningless the tasks might seem….
The cynic may notice only how Hearts in Atlantis plays like a Stephen King best-of, a reheating of familiar stories and favorite themes. At times, it feels so much like Stand by Me — with its nostalgic, flashback tale of cherubs and bullies accompanied by sad and weary narration — that you might mistake it for a remake. It…
Actor “Beat” Takeshi Kitano has built an international reputation over the past decade, primarily through a series of ultra-hard-boiled crime films in which he plays either a cop or a felon. With the exception of Gonin (1995; released in the U.S. in 1998), which was directed by Takeshi Ishii, all of these films were written and directed by Kitano himself….
“If you see Harvey and are struck by thoughts of optimism, then you’re made of stronger stuff than I. When I look at Harvey, what I see is another Dee Brown, a fat young singles hitter who’s only going to get fatter and slower. Brown’s a lousy left fielder; Harvey’s a lousy first baseman. Brown’s fat; Harvey is fat. Actually,…
The winding lane that leads up the hill from 162nd and Antioch Road to Blue Valley West High School culminates in a head-swiveling view of athletic decadence. Three softball fields — all maintained to standards that might make George Toma proud — sit to the left. Three full-sized baseball diamonds with painstakingly manicured infields sit to the right. A lighted…
Fight Clubs Sonic youth: I read C.J. Janovy’s “Bully Clubs” (September 13) with much delight. From what I witnessed “as one of the dozens of diverse citizens,” it was the KCPD’s cordoning of Westport Road that created the infamous sidewalk congestion there. Contrary to mainstream representations, it appears that the police carry a badge of fear and a utility belt…
The Twilight District, Episode 5: Elma Warrick fought mightily September 19 to uncover the diabolical plot behind Missouri’s finding that five Kansas City schools are academically deficient. The school board member unsheathed her favorite weapon — condescension — but found it had been dulled by overuse. “I’m just confused,” Warrick saccharinely declared time and again to Marilou Joyner, the state…
Rene Balcer, like you and everyone you know, can’t stop talking about what we now refer to simply as The Attack. We may resume our lives, fall back into our routine until it again feels mundane and comforting, but sooner or later, The Attack becomes the only topic of conversation. As we count the missing and bury the dead,…
Traffic school convenes on a clear, cool Monday evening in an old-folks’ home downtown. The room is grimy white, and Joe looks disgusted. His class is filled with speeders, crashers and license-losers. “Visit a junkyard sometime,” he says, beginning his sermon on seatbelts. “You’ll notice one thing. No matter how mangled the worst car looks, the seats are intact.”…
By Bill Grace’s clock, it was a few minutes after midnight. But from his perch at a restaurant aboard the St. Jo Frontier Casino “riverboat,” he noticed that security guards weren’t allowing customers in. So the casino owner decided to find out what was wrong. By the time he got his answer — eleven months later in a Missouri Gaming…
If you know anything about stamps, you know there is no better place for a crash course in American history than in the offerings from the dowdy old United States Postal Service. These gummy issues document our political leaders, our victories, the rise and fall of various technologies (some early express mail was carried by blimp, which briefly superseded trains,…
Not since the early ’50s, when a certain law student’s attention turned from pursuing a career as a professional baseball player to thoughts of revolution, has the public been this interested in all things Cuban. (American guitarist Ry Cooder’s 1997 Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club and the 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary of the same name deserve much of the credit for…
Bless their hearts, the members of the Swedish foursome Randy are in love with rock and roll. Granted, on the title track to its U.S. debut — a tribute to Little Richard — Randy mispronounces Macon, Georgia, as “Mason.” (From Falco to Shonen Knife, rock has never had its own Nabokov, who wrote far better in English — his third…
