No virgins in the whorehouse: Surprise, surprise — the coven that hastily fired Superintendent Benjamin Demps in a back-room school board meeting in April has something smelly to rub in the face of Patricia Kurtz, who has sued her colleagues over the legality of that meeting. On September 5, Kurtz was on a witness stand at the Jackson County Courthouse…
ince it was dedicated in October 1886, the Statue of Liberty has been officially greeting immigrants (and tourists) in New York’s harbor. Starting this October, a much smaller version of Auguste Bartholdi’s 151-foot monument — one molded in plastic — will be greeting visitors at Café New Yorker, a new nightspot in Overland Park. The real Statue of Liberty was…
I was wandering through Bloomsday Books the other day. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular — it’s my neighborhood bookshop — but since I had just eaten dinner at an Irish pub, I picked up a paperback copy of Dublin-born James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I held on to it…
13 Thursday The title of tonight’s installment of Rockhurst University’s Cinema Series — A Taxing Woman — is strikingly literal. This 1987 Japanese film is about a female tax collector who, frankly, kicks ass. In a country where personal incomes are taxed at rates up to 80 percent, it’s not just tax evaders who have to make an art…
When you say you’re going to see a gig by the TJ Dovebelly Ensemble, people either assume they’ve heard wrong and you actually said “DJ,” or they think TJ is somebody’s first name. TJ stands for “tape jockey.” Musician Mark Southerland unwittingly planted the seeds for the ensemble when he bought an old Cadillac outfitted with an eight-track tape player….
When Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis appear at Unity Temple on Thursday, September 13, the list of topics they might broach is endless. Members of the American Negro Theatre in their careers’ infancy, they met doing the Broadway play Jeb in 1945 and “married three years later on a rehearsal-free day,” they write in With Ossie and Ruby: In…
Because its themes of life, love and death don’t offend anyone and because it has sixteen speaking parts, a production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is staged at some point in nearly every high schooler’s academic career. There’s a juicy ingenue role in Emily, a role for the jock with acting chops in George, and a menagerie of townies from…
In one of the sharpest scenes from Terry Zwigoff’s amazing new film Ghost World, a clueless barfly sits in silence as Seymour, the endearingly geeky record collector played by Steve Buscemi, rambles about the differences between the chord structures of blues and ragtime compositions. “If you like traditional blues, you’ll love Blueshammer,” the barfly blurts with an unknowing smile when…
When John Cusack played The Beta Band’s “Dry the Rain” to his Championship Vinyl customers in the 2000 movie High Fidelity, he bragged that five people would buy the disc. In fact, a much higher number of impressed listeners ponied up to hear more. But potential fans who grabbed the wrong album — 1999’s self-titled disc rather than the previous…
Owls are nocturnal animals, so they should have no problem playing venues at which the headlining act starts rocking well after midnight. However, the type of music this quartet plays — jazz-tinged indie rock with plaintive vocals — tends to render listeners somnolent. Fortunately, Owls drop a potent pep pill into this glass of warm milk. Mike Kinsella’s skittering drumbeats…
This duo’s sole hit is currently gracing television screens across the country as part of an ad campaign. But that was then, and this is not your BMW’s Geggy Tah album. Even as “Whoever You Are” enjoys renewed success, Geggy Tah has given up trying to craft more feel-good party anthems. Instead, the group has evolved into a free-form collective…
As a Midwest-based rapper who doesn’t yet have a video, Tech N9ne faces an uphill climb to national recognition. However, he has a high-caliber secret weapon — a stage show that puts most hip-hop performers to shame. Unlike many of his peers, Tech doesn’t employ many time-wasting “Throw your hands in the air” call-and-response chants, and he doesn’t slice and…
Filling the shoes of a legend can be psychologically devastating. Such successors must meet daunting standards of excellence, and even if they do, some loyalists to the departed politician/musician/athlete will never acknowledge the newcomers’ achievements as equal. To succeed in such a situation requires enough talent to satiate those who demand instant perfection and a skin thick enough to ignore…
Listening to Pete Yorn explain his migration to California from New Jersey and his subsequent signing to Columbia Records, it’s hard to deny the urge to pack a bag and give it a shot. But then, Yorn benefited from having mastered the drums, guitar and bass and from nurturing a songwriting gift to near-maturity in the four years between landing…
What I’m trying to do with this new record is cut straight to the recorder like they did in the old days with no manipulation in between. You got to do it ’til you get it right. And we’re not tuning things up with some sort of mechanism. If there’s a glitch, if there’s room noise, we’re leaving it in…
Faced with yet another sports movie in which lovably troubled kids triumph over adversity, it’s easier to scoff and grumble than to feel even partially uplifted. So let’s do it — let’s scoff and grumble. At least for a moment. In Brian Robbins’ Hardball, a degenerate gambler who owes bent-nosed, bat-wielding Chicago bookies many thousands of bucks is coerced…
The somber figure of Ingmar Bergman no longer looms over the film world like a guilty conscience, but the great Swedish director has spawned enough artistic descendents to keep us supplied with thorny philosophical and ethical questions for decades to come. Faithless, the second film that actress Liv Ullmann has directed from a Bergman script, is a prime example: Its…
Ever since Quentin Tarantino came along, it’s been hard to predict what you’ll find playing at the art-house theater. Some of them don’t even play movies that feature foreign accents or frilly costumes! Let’s not even delve into the unspeakable horror of the movies that are set in … ugh! … America. However, salvation is at hand. Behold The…
“I think we’re seeing that Greg Robinson’s ability to defense the Raiders had a lot more to do with the talent he had in Denver than the talent he has here in Kansas City.” — Bob Gretz, assessing the Chiefs’ first-year defensive coordinator, KCFX 101.1 GH: Gretz’s postgame comments are more direct and pointed than anything he has to say…
The opposing sidelines at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday could not have looked more different. On one side stood Dick Vermeil, at 64 the second-oldest head coach in the NFL, clad in a knight-white golf shirt and khakis. Vermeil did not want to be there. Jon Gruden, the youngest head coach in the NFL, patrolled the other sideline. He wore a…
Spray Anything Tag team: Regarding Casey Logan’s “Spray Pains” (August 30): Once again, the age-old GRAFF argument. Good for all the writers, old and new, who said what they felt. You can’t blame the old writers for wanting the quality of the tags and pieces to improve. From experience, the newbies are far more cocky these days and should learn…
At most awards shows, a tension simmers among nominated acts, one that the artists can’t quite conceal with Joker-brand smiles and “it’s an honor just to be here” pleasantries. Given that Thrust and Bent recently tangled in the hotly contested Battle of the Bands at America’s Pub (Thrust edged out the former champs), hosting an awards ceremony that involves both…
As its name implies, Propagandhi combines clever comic relief with dead-serious politics. Its 1993 full-length debut, How To Clean Everything, tempered grim resistance anthems such as “Stick the Fucking Flag up Your Goddam Ass, You Sonofabitch” and “Middle Finger Response” (both of which it burdened with titles that belie the mature, intelligent lyrics the songs contain) with light-hearted larks like…
As the clock ticked past 8:45 at Chicago’s United Center last Tuesday evening, the lights finally dimmed and the bit the audience had been collectively chomping dropped out of sight, replaced by an expression of something approaching awe. It was almost surreal to see Madonna in three dimensions, so long has she been a part of the American mass media….
