You know it. I know it. ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports know it. Tony Muser knows it. Mike Sweeney and the innocent batboy who collects the wood after each Royals strikeout — they know it. The Royals won’t go all the way this year. Instead, they’re the butt of a baseball joke. Our “ace” pitcher, Jeff Suppan, won…
If driving to the East side for diner food at Niecie’s Restaurant (see review) seems too daunting for some Midtowners, a classic joint closer to home will open next month. Actually, reopen is the right word, because James Fulton and William Lafferty plan to keep the name Sidney’s Diner when they start serving burgers, malts, chicken-fried steak and veggie lasagna…
The stretch of Prospect Avenue between 57th and 60th streets might seem as different from the predominantly white neighborhood at 119th and Metcalf as the landscape of Kabul is from Paris. But there was a time when this area of Prospect was part of Kansas City’s southern suburbs and had many of the same amenities that crowd Johnson County’s…
The fowl around Mark McKinney’s neck isn’t an albatross. It’s a chicken. “It’s hard to put on the Chicken Lady stuff and get up to that psycho pitch,” says the Kids in the Hall comedian, who is also the creator of the horniest sketch character on two drumsticks. McKinney can’t explain the inspiration behind the overgrown hen who likes…
Dorothy Parker’s famous review of a play called The House Beautiful included a line as crisp as a well-pressed sheet: “The House Beautiful is the Play Lousy.” Sadly, a version of Parker’s statement could be taken out of storage and applied to many homes “beautified” by local interior designers for the annual Kansas City Symphony fund-raiser known as the…
Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend Larry McMurtry is saying nice, or not nice, things about him—Bogdanovich can’t tell which. “He’s kind of risen from the dead,” McMurtry was quoted as saying of the director who turned the author’s elegaic…
“Why not? They’re not really using their facility for football anyway.” — Tim Fitzgerald, publisher of Powercat Illustrated, on whether Kansas State should move its spring game to the University of Kansas’ Memorial Stadium while K-State’s stadium gets FieldTurf this spring, WHB 810 “Pictures of my kids have value. Pictures of athletes on trading cards have none — at least…
When Chase Verdoorn won the Missouri state wrestling championship as a Platte County High School sophomore two years ago, his future was bright. “Since he was a young kid, we all knew Chase was going to be a special athlete,” says athletic director Greg Jaros. Yet not long after a ref held Verdoorn’s hand high as the 171-pound 1A-2A state…
The actors in the Coterie’s The Wind in the Willows play animals without so much as a whisker. Dressed mostly as dandies who wouldn’t be out of place in a Merchant Ivory film about Oxford homosexuals in 1910, the cast members wear Georgianna Londre’s thoughtfully detailed costumes with style. They’re like Smurfs crossed with Oscar Wilde; you know Rat,…
Hot Hot Heat would be a stupid band name if it weren’t so appropriate. This British Columbia-based trio smolders in style, like neon-pink lava bubbling under listeners’ feet, imploring them to dance or be burned. A blur of spring-loaded rhythms, hyperventilating vocals, savagely catchy hooks and chilling keyboards that function like an ice cube floating in scalding soup, Knock Knock…
It’s far from damning to note that an album borrows from the Beatles and the Beach Boys’ crazed genius Brian Wilson, but that’s the worst that can be said about the Sunshine Fix’s Age of the Sun. Reining in the studio wankery (save a 20-minute vocal-looped final track) and sing-songy preciousness that mar many modern trippy-minded records, former Olivia Tremor…
There were three editions of the original Loaded in Lawrence, live compilations issued annually from 1993 to 1995 that featured a wealth of local talent. Stick, Frogpond, Kill Creek and the L.A. Ramblers were among the acts included on the discs, each of which was recorded over a trio of sweaty nights at the Bottleneck. “It was a lot of…
Here’s how you find Nappy Roots. Leave Atlanta, where Outkast reigns. Then head northwest through Tennessee, the state Arrested Development once employed as a metaphor for black (nee, human) tradition and transcendence. Keep going and eventually you’ll wind up in the presumably unlikely stomping grounds — western Kentucky! — of this six-MC collective. On their debut, an embracing of rural…
By his own count, dentist Vernon Rice had sexual contact with forty or fifty female patients in three decades. Some patients say they can only guess what happened while Rice had them sedated with laughing gas. But many of them remember unwanted sexual encounters. Circuit Court Judge David Shinn has declared these Kansas City women to be bad citizens for…
Don’t book that Northern California vacation just yet. Heck, you can see sequoia trees at Arrowhead Stadium. But get to the sports complex soon, before the 49 brand-new, fog-loving “redwoods” wilt away in spring winds, summer heat, fall drought or playoff-season bitterness. Whose idea was it to plant four dozen expensive and finicky coastal trees beside acres of asphalt in…
Power failure: I enjoyed Deb Hipp’s piece about John Felix (“Get to Work!” April 11). I am also in the throes of attempting to reach a settlement with an insurance company regarding my own workers’ compensation claim. In September of 2000, I was shot three times while waiting for a service vehicle to repair a company-owned vehicle. This was a…
Call it the art-house Ocean’s Eleven. If you’re in the mood for an all-star ensemble but prefer conversation and reminiscence to thievery, try Last Orders, a Fred Schepisi film that features the strongest lineup of English talent — Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Helen Mirren, Tom Courtenay and David Hemmings — this side of Robert Altman’s Gosford Park….
The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Life or Something Like It is a vain, actressy bleached blonde TV personality. To call her a “reporter” is to defame journalists. She’s a ruthless social climber who means to move up from Seattle’s inane morning news-and-talk show to a major network’s inane morning news-and-talk show. But before Lanie Kerrigan can become a national celebrity,…
Amsterdam may be a long way from Lawrence, Kansas, but Brent Berry — whose reggae-encrusted tribute to the Dutch capital offers a vivid description of its charms — is always there in spirit. “It was the best place in the world for music for me,” Berry recalls while preparing his “morning bread,” a fragrant blend of pot and tobacco. “I’m…
J Roland started spinning discs in the early ’90s, when the dance-music underground first began infiltrating scenes outside of urban centers such as Detroit, Chicago, and Manchester, England. His ascent has paralleled the rise of the dance DJ from a party facilitator or a hip-hop sidekick to a full-fledged center-stage performer. Though he started in Topeka, Roland first became known…
Guitarist DJ Clem and drummer John Bersuch still wear many hats, though not so much literally since their costume-crazy former outfit Big Jeter played its alleged last show at the Pitch Music Showcase on April 4. Now, both shuffle between playing rock-informed folk with Forrest Whitlow and the Crash and country-tinged rock in Trouble Junction. (On the side, the two…
“Anything looks cool if you have enough of it,” argues artist and junk peddler Shari Elf as she points to an aesthetically pleasing mound of colored plastic tabs from bread loaves. Under her studio window is wood she discovered on curbs in suburban neighborhoods, and cabinets display neatly arranged boxes of lids from old paint cans and tips of used-up…
One recent Wednesday night, Hitching Post owner Herman Fielder — an older gentleman with tired eyes — sat at the back of the bar, wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette. He watched politely as twentysomethings in dreadlocks and baggy pants danced and talked near the stage, waiting for the night’s live act — the Guild — to begin its…
On a Friday night in March, it was hard to tell where to look: at the flickering movie screen, where The Band was wrapping up a 16-year career with a farewell concert, or at a still Robbie Robertson, who was sitting in the audience at the Paramount Theater in Austin and watching his younger self turn a five-piece band into…
