Between Rhino’s amazingly comprehensive four-disc boxed set Crystal Days: 1979-1999 and Flowers, the third album since Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant reformed the band, fans of Echo and the Bunnymen have had an expensive summer. But while the box is unquestionably glorious, Flowers falls somewhere between 1984’s delicate and divine Ocean Rain and 1990’s pointless Reverberation, which the group recorded…
On September 11, I stared at the gallery postcards scattered in front of me. The paintings, sculptures, photographs or ceramics depicted on them seemed ridiculously self-indulgent in the context of the moment, like an ice cream cone in the hands of a train-wreck bystander. I craved quiet — in the world, certainly, but also inside, an inward silence that…
For nearly 30 years, the toast of New York was playwright Philip Barry — an astonishing 21 of Barry’s plays enjoyed prominent openings in that theater capitol. His most famous, The Philadelphia Story, was made into a durable Katharine Hepburn movie (as was the brisk and pleasing Holiday) in which a mischievous Cary Grant and a cynical James Stewart…
Capitol Steps, a comedy troupe made up of cynical former Congressional staffers, has long been scheduled to appear in Overland Park this weekend to “pull back the covers on elected officials’ scandals and gaffes.” Assuming that the performers are able to make it to town, they’re planning on letting the show go on. Laughter may be the best medicine, but…
During the Khmer Rouge occupation of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, dancers — like other artists — were targeted as enemies of the state. The Khmer Rouge “looked down on the ancien regime, feudalism, capitalism,” explains Proeung Chhien, former court dancer and artistic director of the Cambodian Royal Ballet. So dancers practiced their movements secretly. Because the traditional role of…
20 Thursday Missy Koonce, the outrageous madam of Late Night Theatre’s cast of women, shifts gears dramatically from her work at the Old Chelsea when she directs Theatre for Young America’s Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. However, Koonce may be just the person to take charge of this play about a flashy young mouse named Lilly who fends off bullies with…
This country has become such a culinary melting pot over the last few decades that a pizza or a burrito is as easy to find as a classic American cheeseburger. If the local supermarket has a deli, it probably sells kung pao chicken, sushi and bagels. With an array of ethnic foods assimilated into the American palate, “traditional” American…
Last week, crews of painters, woodworkers, tile-layers and electricians were still touching up the final details in the lobby, ballroom and mezzanine of the Hotel Phillips (12th and Baltimore). The seventy-year-old downtown hotel, newly restored by the Milwaukee-based Marcus Hotels and Resorts, is getting the kind of head-to-toe facelift that any dowager would dream about. The third-floor Crystal Ballroom now…
On September 13, at 11:30 a.m., Bryce Zabel was to have met with USA Network executives about a miniseries he was pitching to the cable outlet. Zabel, creator of such television shows as Dark Skies and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, had the conference on his calendar for weeks. But, like most who peddle entertainment in Los Angeles, Zabel…
In the middle of the night, bail bondsman Tim Gilio’s phone rang. It was Jason Sumptur, a friend of Gilio’s son. Sumptur was in a load of trouble. In a scene from the slapstick ’80s show The Dukes of Hazzard, the shaggy-haired twenty-year-old had fled two stunned Cass County sheriff’s deputies earlier that night — in their own cruiser. All…
The groups on the Plea for Peace/Take Action tour aren’t just concerned with making people dance to forget their sorrows. A joint effort between Asian Man Records, which organized the previous Plea for Peace tour, and Sub City, a label that donates a portion of each album’s proceeds to a charity of the artists’ choice, this event focuses attention…
On Tuesday, September 11, music — and entertainment as a whole — suddenly became the last thing on most people’s minds. Almost everyone sat transfixed by repeated images of destruction, tensely awaiting the latest updates and watching as their sense of invulnerability was shattered. The next day, thousands of Kansas Citians stumbled out of bed bleary-eyed and demoralized and headed…
It’s Tuesday, September 11. Outside Flagstaff, Arizona, just before noon PDT, Anders Parker is watching a dog cross the street and head toward him. “There’s a really cute puppy coming over here,” he says. Parker, who records under the band name Varnaline (rhymes with “gasoline”), doesn’t write warm, fuzzy, puppyish songs. Like his current tourmate, the intense song-poet Richard Buckner,…
Money Mark’s moniker might not be familiar, but you’ve probably heard the results of his nimble fingers’ grooving on vintage keyboards and organs. That’s him on the Beastie Boys’ “So What’cha Want” and on Beck’s “Where It’s At,” stapling hooks directly to the skulls of the kids that made both ditties radio and dorm-room staples. He’s worked with Deltron 3030…
Matthew Crouch is the rare film producer whose life did not come to a standstill the morning of September 11. When he saw balls of fire shooting from the World Trade Center, he thought only of how to capitalize on the moment when, this week, he puts into 400 theaters nationwide Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, the sequel to…
“I’ve said this before. I’d like to see Megan get in this competition because I think she could lick the competition. I’d be right behind her the whole way.” — Steven St. John, urging his female cohost to enter a local “fitness” swimsuit contest, WHB 810 GH: Since her first appearance on Jason Whitlock’s morning radio show in March, Megan…
Rockhurst High School required an act of God to stop Blue Springs’ Andrew Tuggle on the night of Friday, September 7. Lightning streaked across the southern sky as the Wildcats’ running back streaked through the Hawklets’ defenses. The storm interrupted the game, separating the national anthem from the final gun by three days. Blue Springs came to Rockhurst with ten…
Thrust for Life Dennis the menace: In response to Dennis Rogers’ letter about the Battle of the Bands (Letters, September 6): Could you (or the “cosponsors” you mention) please provide some proof that these comments were actually made? When you say “They said Bent got screwed!” you are putting a lot of pressure on the people who “supposedly” said it…
Go figure: The Reverend Fred Phelps was nearly killed in a hate crime last week by a “patriotic terrorist.” At least that’s what the self-pitying wannabe martyr claims. On Friday, as the nation observed a day of mourning for the deaths of thousands in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, Phelps took to the streets. “The rod of God hath…
AA man¹s voice booms out over several hundred invited guests at UMKC¹s Pierson Auditorium. ³At her inauguration on September 29, 2000, a new chancellor defined her vision for the University of Missouri-Kansas City,² the voice thunders.thunders Video clips of Chancellor Martha Gilliland draped in a black robe appear on screens at the front of the room. Another voice, this one…
The cold-bloodedness of some entertainment journalists is a thing to be admired; they’ve balls for brains, which gets you far in this profession. The Hollywood press corps’ cynicism is the source of its strength, and God bless the famous fool who plays along, answering every crooked question with the straightest of faces. It’s all in a day’s recreation for…
Lavell Webb sits facing a television in a large, drab room at the Boonville Correctional Facility. Surrounded by a few prison officials, a couple of visitors and an armed guard, he watches a videotape. He is the center of attention as the lawmen form a half circle around him, their eyes alternately focused on the television and stealing glances at…
Last spring, when the Wyandotte County jail began locking down all its female inmates in maximum-security cells for twenty hours a day, the change seemed to be an attempt to deal with staffing problems at the jail. Officials had already closed two “pods” of cells in December and shipped out the inmates because the sheriff’s department and jail had too…
Labor Day marks the end of summer everywhere else, but Kansas City celebrates the season’s melancholy demise by taking down its barricades. As of the annual Westport Art Fair, the city’s sodden entertainment district returns to some sense of maturity — but only after the police, spurred by the Westport Merchants Association and city hall overseers, roust out a few…
