Women should always go with their instincts. That’s Ruth Saint’s motto from now on. When her daughter Lindsey announced this past spring that she’d be spending her summer studying and traveling in Spain, Ruth’s gut turned a somersault. “I have a feeling something’s going to happen to you, and I won’t be able to get to you,” she told her…
The good news: The 35-year-old Pumpernik’s Restaurant and Deli (3820 West 95th Street) — a popular neighborhood joint serving breakfast, lunch and dinner in Leawood — has two new owners who are professional chefs. The bad news: The food still stinks. Yes, yes, I know that the cozy little brick-walled dining room is famous for its thick sandwiches, homemade potato…
I’ve been writing about food for seventeen years now, and I can’t think of any local restaurant that has opened with more anticipation than 40 Sardines. The two-month-old hot spot at 119th and Roe is the creation of former American Restaurant chefs Michael Smith and Debbie Gold. Could any new establishment live up to the hype surrounding 40 Sardines?…
“I was born just before Easter and I grew up getting a lot of rabbit-themed gifts,” says Ruth Dreher of Olathe, in an attempt to explain her baffling collection of rabbits dressed as humans. “As time goes on, you start weeding out certain things. After a while, I focused solely on rabbits wearing clothing.” After decades spent collecting, Dreher has…
A movie’s quality can usually be sniffed out during its first ten minutes. The 357 Caliber Film Festival tears that formula to shreds: The films in the festival run only three, five or seven minutes long. The festival, at the Fahrenheit Gallery on Saturday, is perfect for an attention-deficit-disordered populace. “We have documentaries, fictional pieces, animation — there are no…
Things you will learn from a forthcoming oral history of Saturday Night Live: Dan Aykroyd slept with, among others, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and writer Rosie Shuster, the latter of whom was, at the time, married to the show’s producer and creator, Lorne Michaels. To this day, Chevy Chase regrets leaving the show after its first season: “I still…
“I was nervous. I had fears of him maybe being gay. So I decided I would get him involved with every sport there was available.” — Margaret McGee, mother of Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Randal Williams, HBO GH: Ignorance is rarely more evident than when people discuss their fear of homosexuality. Signing junior up to chase balls in Little League…
The first mention of Darrell Porter’s death crackling over my car radio said he’d died while fishing at La Benite Park, in Sugar Creek. It sounded like a peaceful way to go. As I weaved through afternoon rush-hour traffic, I envisioned a well-fed fifty-year-old man making one last cast with his ultralight rod before clutching his heart and passing into…
The Rocky Horror Show sometimes gets lost in its own legend. Like a bookish grad student hiding behind a leather fetish mask, Richard O’Brien’s musical homage to cheesy sci-fi films of the 1950s is sometimes treated as a freak show, even though it’s really a pretty decent piece of musical theater. Scrape away the makeup, and songs like “Science…
After Cannibal Ox released The Cold Vein last year, hip-hop heads began clamoring for more stuff that mixes ambient noise with East Coast rhymin’. All hail the real kings of noise-drenched hip-hop: Dälek. This Newark, New Jersey, outfit has rejuvenated all the jaded, indie-rock, Public Enemy-lovin’ mofos with hard-hitting beats, brain-buzzing lyrics and emotion that crescendos higher with every song….
Too often, so-called enlightened hip-hop is like an educational program. Self-righteous, proudly derivative conscious rap (c-rap for short) MCs rhyme over tired breakbeats, pat themselves on the backpack for keeping it real and load so many hip-hop clichés into every chorus that there’s little room for the verses. Even lyricists who started out making heads say “damn” with every track…
It’s been a long time since Rasputina rocked and rolled — though not as long as its Victorian-era costumes might imply. But even after a lengthy hiatus, the all-female trio’s hard-corset blend of gothic imagery, black humor, stark strings and curiously modern industrial effects still seems fresh and charming. Never lapsing into Renaissance Festival-style self-parody, Rasputina jousts with state fair…
In many cases, decoding the general intent of a song performed in a different language isn’t too tough: Bleakly rendered ballads probably deal with death or lost love; perky, repetitive numbers usually call for motion or celebrate life. The most accomplished vocalists, though, make it easy to translate specifics. When Afro-Peruvian chanteuse Susana Baca lets her rich voice quiver with…
Namelessnumberheadman’s win in the 2002 Pitch Music Awards’ Best Dance/Electronic Act category was alternately apt and odd. Though unquestionably electronically informed (at its shows, nine keyboards line the floor of the stage amid a loosely woven tapestry of impossibly tangled cords), the trio’s airy compositions are all but dance-retardant. Programmed percussion and sampled loops, those staples of intelligent dance music,…
Warped Tour be damned, there are still three-chord-wonder bands out there who: 1. aren’t cute enough for MTV airplay; 2. care about politics; and 3. attempt humor that’s not scatologically based. Dillinger Four hails from Minneapolis, where you have to laugh at times just to keep your heart from freezing. This quartet delivers fat, sweaty, no-nonsense, all-American punk rock and…
Nickel Creek fans should get a big dose of new — and potentially surprising — music at this large-venue showcase. The trio’s recently released This Side kicks off with slinky newgrass, but just when you think they’ve gone Grisman, the next tune is a Pavement cover. Nickel Creek, still a young, not-quite-bluegrass group, is just throwing down the stuff that…
Well-worn thrift-store threads dominate indie fashion, so it’s not surprising that the music follows suit, staying with the familiar feel of simpler times. The Hot Snakes’ tunes might recall earlier outfits (such as Drive Like Jehu, which included singer/guitarist Rick Froberg and guitarist John “Speedo” Reis), but they’re too brutal to qualify as comfort food. Where Jehu used sheer noise…
History hasn’t been kind to Juliana Hatfield. In the early ’90s, the ex-Blake Baby appeared to be one of the decade’s most promising artists, but she was soon eclipsed by a femaelstrom of riot grrrls, Liz Phair, Lilith Fairs and the chick who sang that “Bitch” song. A decade later, however, it’s still hard to forget Hatfield’s damn-near-perfect 1992 debut,…
On September 15, 2001, Merle Haggard (pictured) played “Fightin’ Side of Me,” whipping a patriotically charged Ameristar casino crowd into a “U-S-A”-chanting frenzy. In interviews over the past few years, Haggard had distanced himself from the song’s jingoistic sentiments, but he knew what a grieving nation wanted to hear and responded in kind without adding any additional fuel to the…
The Anger Management tour, which comes to Verizon on Sunday, offers a mirror image of the Unlimited Sunshine extravaganza that stopped at the City Market earlier this month. That show featured several rock groups and one rap act (De La Soul, with a cameo by Black Sheep); Anger Management includes token rockers Papa Roach, alongside numerous hip-hop crews. But while…
Jilly’s is charming in its simplicity. The motif is Classic Neighborhood Bar — a room not much larger than some patrons might have in their homes. There are five small, square tables on the floor, two raised tables by picture windows and two booths (each decorated by a small vase and freshly cut flowers). Each corner has a different television,…
Don’t hate the Stretchmarxxx because its members are beautiful. Venus, by appearing nude and tattooed on the cover of the Last of the V8s’ debut full-length, became to local rockers what the Watson’s girl is to the hicks in the sticks. Camilla inspired unholy thoughts as a sinisterly seductive Pornhusker dancer before joining Drag Queen and Captain Howdy. We’ll give…
Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes simply in watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets Middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck & Buck, this one’s written by Mike White. Arteta’s range is…
Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again and dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek Hugo Boss charcoal of Gattaca, the Crayola-hued cotton of The Truman Show and now the silk-draped Hollywood resplendency of Simone. Writer and director Niccol is obsessed with two questions: Where does reality end and illusion begin? And does it…
