There’s an invigorating, inspiring film about a famous dead person opening in a couple of weeks: Julie Taymor’s Frida, which is loving (but never unconditionally so) and every bit as rousing as its subject matter, painter Frida Kahlo. Taymor is a visionary making movies through kaleidoscope eyes, whereas director Paul Schrader, the auteur of this week’s biopic, Auto Focus, is…
Bite the ballot: Except for one little problem, Allie Johnson’s article on the Jackson County Executive campaign is a must-read for every intelligent voter (“She Rules,” October 24). Unfortunately, the article omits any mention of the third candidate in the race: the experienced and well-qualified former city councilman and Yale graduate; recently elected 14th Ward Committeeman for the Democratic Party…
Over the past few weeks, Kansas Citians who scanned their radio dials hoping to hear a little Nelly or Missy Elliot got an earful. The Missouri GOP had tried to infiltrate the Democrats’ base with ads featuring characters who griped, “Baby, there are some real ugly Democrats that have hurt black people and not helped us at all.” As if…
Missouri is cursed. Every two years, we’re doomed to relive the plot of some gothic novel set against a backdrop of blood-red trees. Citizens in less godforsaken states might think the national affliction of the last two years started in Florida on November 7, 2000. But Missourians had already felt the evil on a stormy night three weeks earlier, when…
It’s a Saturday night at Wyandotte County Park, and dozens of women run plodding laps around a muddy soccer field. A panting assemblage of out-of-shape gals in jeans and baggy sweats straggles behind. “Double time, ladies, double time!” shouts Cheryl Fields, general manager of the Kansas City Krunch, the National Women’s Football League’s new local team. “You are all making…
The Main Street Morgue doesn’t open until 7:30 p.m., but hundreds of Juggalos are already in line. Though the temperature has dipped into the frigid zone, the clown-faced kids are content to wrestle, flirt and smoke, occasionally pausing to chant “ICP!” “ICP!” Stuck on a light pole near the front entrance of the haunted house, a hand-painted sign reads…
Early in her career, Lily Tomlin had a hilarious monologue about moving to New York to find fame and fortune — not as an actress but as the best-tipped waitress at Howard Johnson’s, where she’d be “clawing her way up the ladder” to the big time of the food-service world. The irony was that she had to begrudgingly accept a…
When it comes to Kansas City’s restaurant scene, 2002 is the year of the hype. That’s partly because more and more local restaurants are hiring publicists to bang their drums — Pat O’Neill for the ill-fated Lemongrass at Oldham and Platters at the Phillips Hotel; Parris Communications for the American Restaurant; Chicago-based Wagstaff Worldwide for 40 Sardines, to name a…
For Michelangelo Signorile, it was a remarkably short journey from writing about New York nightlife for small newspapers to the national TV talk-show circuit. In a controversial Outweek column he wrote in the 1980s, Signorile was the first openly gay reporter to out closeted celebrities. He certainly never planned to become a cause célèbre in his own right, mucking it…
Leila Cohoon wants to change the way people think about hair art. That, of course, presupposes that people think about hair art. Most people don’t even know it exists. Cohoon isn’t among these ignoramuses. At least she hasn’t been since 1957. One day that spring, she left her beauty salon and made a trip to the Plaza, where she…
CHARACTERS Russell Simmons: He is 45, wears a white baseball cap, a T-shirt with the words “40 Acres and a Bentley” on the back and a sweat suit manufactured by the $300 million clothing company, Phat Farm, he started a decade ago. Russell, teeth as white and big as freshly minted tombstones, is a man of extreme wealth, much…
“It’s not even Halloween, and we have nothing to look forward to, folks. K-State can’t beat anybody that’s any good. KU can’t beat anyone at all. Mizzou, just like the Chiefs’ defense, has absolutely no clue whatsoever in defending the forward pass. We’re only seven games into this NFL season, and our Chiefs — let’s admit it, folks — they…
One recent Saturday, a handful of University of Kansas alums sat at a table drinking cans of Miller Lite and chomping cheeseburgers and fries at the Wheel, one of KU’s most popular game-day college bars. They had returned to Lawrence to celebrate the Jayhawks’ homecoming. Half a mile away, at Memorial Stadium, the KU football team was battling Colorado. The…
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, there’s a scene in which Alice, Tweedledum and Tweedledee happen upon the Red King in his nightcap, asleep and snoring loudly. As they watch him doze, the brothers inform Alice matter-of-factly that His Majesty is dreaming of her and that she would cease to exist if he were to wake up. “Why,”…
When the world last heard from Beck, the self-made hipster was making an emphatic falsetto plea for more parties with robots who dig lesbians who tease playas who love all the pretty ladies and their fine sexy-bitch sisters. Gallactically hailed as the “party record of the year,” 1999’s Midnite Vultures took bombast to new heights as Beck revealed what an…
Turns out “John Walker’s Blues” was the least of it. Prerelease crossfire targeted Steve Earle’s brave and wondering — albeit inevitably incomplete and instantly notorious — attempt to figure out the so-called “American Taliban.” But Jerusalem, Earle’s impassioned post-9/11 plea to his fellow citizens, has much larger goals than empathy with a mixed-up teen. Faced with a political landscape increasingly…
Once you get past the unintentional connections to K.C.’s best-known adult superstore, Ray’s Vast Basement has one of those rare band names that actually describes the group’s music. With a penchant for storytelling, acoustic instruments, sultry grooves and moments of Beat clarity, On the Banks of Time, its latest, sounds like members of Soul Coughing and Widespread Panic setting a…
It’s hard to believe that stringed-instrument guru David Lindley began as the guitarist front-and-center on seemingly every ’70s California rock album, from Warren Zevon’s to Jackson Browne’s. That was then; he’s gone on to master every stringed instrument and style in the world — and perhaps a few other planets. Parody Hall veterans still rave about his legendary shows…
It’s one thing for a former rodeo cowboy to have a couple of bad breaks, but they’re usually the kind evinced by a few limping steps on a rainy day. Chris LeDoux has been through more than that, recovering from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a disease which led to a liver transplant two years ago. LeDoux is known as one of…
Fans of local heroes such as Freedy Johnston, Chad Rex and former Pedaljet Mike Allmayer will find a lot to like about Pete Minda, a Kansas City native who’s been working quietly in our midst since last year. After stints in New York and Austin, Texas, Minda is making music here in his home studio. Clearly moved by such damn…
Its scene blissfully defies music-industry conventions, but even the jam-band community can’t resist the temptation of a garish award show. Not missing the irony, Phish’s Trey Anastasio reaffirmed the band’s hiatus-breaking intentions by delivering the acceptance speech for one of his two Jammys in West Side Story “Gee, Officer Krupke” style: We’ve tested all your patience, if you’ll be tried…
On his latest recording, Dear Dorothy: The Oz Sessions, jazz pianist Chad Lawson offers a fresh take on the cultural myth born “in the midst of the great Kansas prairies.” Lawson’s delicate touch and thoughtful approach to the material give “Over the Rainbow” a fresh rhythmic lilt and transform “The Lollypop Guild” into a light, Lee Morgan-flavored groove. Though Dear…
Bob Dylan is not a prophet, nor is he a savior. However, he remains one of America’s most influential modern troubadours. Dylan’s tales, spanning from his eponymous 1962 debut to last year’s Love and Theft, make up a patchwork quilt of modern cultural mythology, one that drapes over much of the popular American musical and colloquial history of the past…
When Randy Travis debuted with Storms in Life in 1986, his Lefty Frizzell-inspired baritone was deployed atop quiet, down-home, twangy arrangements built upon little more than brushes and acoustic rhythm guitar. But here, as part of the Nightlights Pops series, Travis will front the decidedly uptown — even potentially bombastic — Kansas City Symphony. He’ll sing his hits (recently collected…
