The Royals invited the media to a party shortly after the New Year to see how much the team has changed for 2002. When you’ve dropped a franchise-record 97 games and finished last in the American League Central, change is a good thing. Unfortunately, the Royals didn’t change what most needs to be altered. There they were, not far behind…
“With this decision, we take on the responsibility to get involved in JaRon Rush’s success, just as he’s committed to his success as a professional basketball player and a person. We didn’t make this decision lightly.” — Jim Clark, owner of the Kansas City Knights ABA team, after signing Rush to the team’s practice squad last week, The Kansas City…
Michael is an artist and the father of three adult children. Stephen is a member of the San Francisco Police Department. Loren is a photographer and bodybuilder who calls himself a “queer heterosexual.” The screen time these men share in Bester Cram’s documentary You Don’t Know Dick, playing at the Lesbian and Gay Community Center this Wednesday, isn’t the…
The spider named Anansi pops up everywhere he shouldn’t be in African folk tales. He’s generally up to no good, setting a bad example and then getting his just desserts. But in “Anansi’s Hat-Shaking Dance” (also known as “How the Spider Lost His Hair”), part of Theatre for Young America’s African Tales of Anansi, the poor balding arachnid does…
Way back in the 1970s, I went to college with a toothy, dimpled guy who dressed with great flamboyance and spent hours blow-drying his wavy hair but vehemently denied he was gay. (He was a member of the Young Republicans, so I guess he had his reasons.) He claimed to have a girlfriend in some far-off state. “I’m not…
Breakfast, they say, is the day’s most important meal. And plenty of restaurants in Kansas City, including Sharp’s 63rd Street Grill (see review), give diners a solid way to kick-start the long day’s journey into night with hefty plates of eggs, bacon and toast — or some variation on that theme — for six bucks or less. But when Fedora…
Ever since his debut film, Cronos, Spanish director Guillermo del Toro has been the focus of much undue adulation among critics and the Internet community of self-professed horror geeks. Although it and its Miramax-produced follow up, Mimic, showed a visual flair, a taste for gore and a major affinity for run-down, shadowy interiors, only so much goodwill can be…
Estranged Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra once sang I like short songs, and here are 68 nuggets that might make the old crank smile. The Philistines Jr. offers 52(!) on an album that’s like an enormous assorted chocolates box with no scary fillings. After loading the first eighteen tracks with enchanting abstract instrumentals and pop ditties driven by cheery, quirky vocals,…
She should have been at high school. Instead, eighteen-year-old Angela Coffel had gotten into her dad’s cache of airline liquor bottles and was busy drinking shooters outside her parents’ trailer. This wasn’t the first time Angela — the girl nicknamed “Angel” by her grandmother — had decided to skip, and it wouldn’t be the last. Angel had moved back in…
The Reverend Sharon Garfield points to holes in the ceiling of an upstairs room in her church, where sunlight streams through. Then she moves to another room, and she points to rotted-out walls. By the time she reaches the end of her tour of Grace United Church, Garfield assesses the full damage caused by years of decay and unforgiving furry…
Kansas Senator Sam Brownback was happy to be home on January 14. “It’s much better here than in Washington,” he said, shaking hands with retirees at a community center in Mission. Even though Brownback promised that “you’ll see the war on terrorism expand to other nations: the Philippines, Somalia, the Sudan, Iraq,” this breaking news was of little interest to…
By hooker or by crook: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s “Lights Out” (December 6): The real reason Plaza residents do not get police protection is because they do not have important crimes. You know — hookers. If hookers worked on the Plaza, area residents would get police protection. Here is how it works: I witnessed an assault on 38th Street once. I…
There is nothing terribly wrong with Kevin Reynolds’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the eighteenth film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ tale of innocence betrayed and avenged. Neither a drag nor a gas, it is hardly the best (Rowland Lee’s 1934 version, with Robert Donat as the vengeful Edmond Dantes, stands high atop the decaying heap), worst (the 1975 TV version,…
In Kansas City, bands appear and vanish more frequently than plans to revitalize the urban core. So why should anyone care when a group that’s not even four years old decides to call it quits? Well, it’s not the quantity of time put in by the Go Generation that counts so much as the quality of the product that resulted…
At the Gem Theatre on January 17, the Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors hosted a panel discussion on the topic “Music After 9/11.” The timing seemed a little odd — after all, most of the dire predictions made in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks didn’t come true. People do care about fluffy escapist entertainment again, as evidenced by the…
Ever notice that when England’s lovably nitwitted music press wants to shag an American band — the White Stripes or the Strokes, for instance — its attention adds to that group’s mystique, but a British act similarly praised over there is written off here as mere hype? It’s easy to understand that hesitancy when you remember the heavy breathing that…
In reviewing local discs from A-J last week, Around Hear had little trouble finding a representative for each letter. A few gaps show up between K and T, but there’s still something for almost everyone, from fans of multicultural musicals about hermaphrodite chameleons to yoga enthusiasts looking for meditation soundtracks. The Clint K Band’s latest disc, Three Man Show, opens…
Police officers Paul Luster and Mike Eickman turn onto 55th street and see a flash of money. Two men on the sidewalk glance up at the white cop car and take off in separate directions. Luster hits the gas and wheels the car around. “Now we have to choose,” he says. “I hope we get the dealer.” The chosen one…
Homebuyers are so upset with Johnson County builder Jeff Miller that they’ve taken to vandalizing their property with graffiti. “Our home is a big blue lemon built Miller Enterprises,” Julia Barton’s house reads in red spray paint. “Dissatisfied homeowners … this house is falling apart!” echoes Ginger Hayes’ in fluorescent green across the street. HUD, the Missouri attorney general and…
A few days before Christmas, while Kansas Citians were toasting one another at office parties, news broke that the city’s liquor control chief, Eldon Audsley, was “taking retirement.” Audsley, it turned out, had been arrested on a DUI charge back in October. As director of the city’s Division of Regulated Industries, Audsley licensed cabs and kept his official eye on…
Former Republican Senator John Danforth, who is both an heir to a Missouri jackass-feed fortune and an Episcopalian preacher, hasn’t announced whether he’ll engage in the charade of explaining to Arthur Andersen’s learned accountants that they can’t just go ape-shit destroying audit documents when a client goes bankrupt. Andersen was the auditor of Enron, the $80 billion energy company that…
Sick to debt: Regarding Joe Miller’s “Jaws of Debt” (January 3): I am the branch manager of a payday loan office and a single mother formerly on the other side of the counter. When your credit is bad, you’ve exhausted all your resources and you can’t pay the rent, your options are severely limited. Bad credit equals high risk. Did…
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, based on reporter Mark Bowden’s factual account of a 1993 U.S. Army operation gone dreadfully awry in Somalia, doesn’t just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling. Once the premise and setting are established, this brutal combat adventure doesn’t catch its breath until about an hour and a half…
Photographer and occasional filmmaker Bruce Weber has a reputation that precedes him. His successful documentaries, Broken Noses and Let’s Get Lost, drew fans for their subject matter — boxing and troubled jazz artist Chet Baker, respectively. (Let’s Get Lost earned an Oscar nomination.) The films also lured hordes of gay men whose tastes in rough trade paralleled Weber’s own. And…
