Billy Ebeling is no James Brown, but he is one of the area’s hardest-working musicians: The Lawrence-based singer, songwriter and guitarist performs at under-the-radar venues nearly every night of the week, both as a solo artist and fronting his Late for Dinner Band. With his smoke-flavored vocals, world-weary humor and blues-drenched guitar phrases, Ebeling adds a voice of authenticity that…
In the seven months since the release of his solo debut, Duende, area jazz artist and former Malachy Papers bassist Bill McKemy has continued to grow. Whereas his previous effort was a moodily sentimental affair that featured a fistful of concise cuts, a sort of waking dream of ideas and notions shared among confidants in quiet conversation, his current Om…
My editor didn’t want me to write this column. She warned me: “Don’t write that story about New Noize, or you’ll get the what-for!” Fortunately, she’s out of the office at the moment, so I’m going to sneak it into print. Only because I love you so much, Kansas City readers, would I take this risk. Recognize the construction?…
Good Charlotte is the punk band named after a children’s book. Its young fans know Black Flag only as something that kills roaches. So it’s no wonder critics dismiss Good Charlotte’s anthemic pop as child’s play. In a number of ways, it is. This song is dedicated to every kid who got picked last in gym class/To every kid who…
Ross Hunter, dead seven years, hasn’t been this alive at the movies since the 1950s and ’60s, when he produced some of the weepiest melodramas and cheeriest romantic comedies ever to barely stick to the screen. Hunter produced virtually all of Douglas Sirk’s hanky-pankies in the ’50s, among them Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows — the templates…
Neil LaBute is back to his old self again, and the cinematic world is a better place for it. Honestly, what was he thinking when he made Possession? Did the charges of misogyny lingering from In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors get to him so much that he felt he had to do a weepy chick…
Talk about tough acts to follow. The original 1999 The Matrix, a critical and commercial smash, came as a revelation almost out of nowhere — if the combination of Joel Silver, Warner Bros., and roughly $60 million qualifies as nowhere. After more than four years, The Matrix Reloaded faces a level of expectation that probably can’t be met. Writer-director…
National geographic: Regarding Andrew Miller’s “Jayhawk Squawk” (Kansas City Strip, April 24): I don’t want to distort the symmetry, because it was really nice the way everything was so parallel with Roy Williams and Larry Brown, but I really don’t think Larry Brown was a North Carolina native. He played basketball there, but I’m sure he’s from New York City…
The metro hadn’t begun to recover from the May 4 tornadoes when more cyclones tore through on May 8, adding Lawrence to Mother Nature’s victims. You’d think people would learn. Instead, they’ll rebuild. More Plaza condos and downtown lofts. A beautiful performing-arts center and a fancy arena. Why not just put a gun to your head? The way the Reverend…
The Central High School debate team scored one victory and two losses last week, after the Pitch chronicled the team’s ongoing battle with the Missouri State High School Activities Association (“War of Words,” May 1, and “Word War 2,” May 8). Twice, debate teams from Central — an “academically deficient” inner-city school in the Kansas City, Missouri, district —…
Pitch staff writer Kendrick Blackwood first requested an interview with Bryan J. Brown in February of this year. Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline’s spokesman turned down that request (see “Born Again”). Undaunted, Blackwood wrote this week’s story, saw it through a final edit — and then left the country on vacation. But on May 8 — just days before…
Peggy Bowman’s fear lasted about a minute — from the time she answered the knock at her door until she reached for her boom box. She knew immediately what was happening. Her boss had been through the same thing, as had other people in Wichita — doctors who performed abortions, nurses who worked at the clinics, clinic staffers, too….
What constitutes a dive bar? Some drinkers are of the school that if there aren’t haggard regulars, PBR on tap and a jar of eggs, it’s not a dive. We think of The Simpsons’ esteemed Moe Syzlak, who, when asked to describe his own dive, put it quite amusingly: “Uhh … is crap hole one word?” Others contend that pickled…
If Mona Chase-Smith, proprietor of the Mona Lisa Deli (see review) wants her east side sandwich shop to last forever, she should take inspiration from two Kansas City stalwarts. The 41-year-old Humdinger Drive-In (2504 East Ninth Street) still serves the best cheeseburger in town — for just $2.39. The cheeseburgers are nearly as good as the classic breakfasts served at…
A dozen years ago, I met two cocky Kansas businessmen who decided to open a restaurant. They seemed to know what they were doing — they hired a talented chef and spared no expense in creating a stylish and elegant dining room. Even the menu, printed on glossy card stock, was a work of art. Still, hundreds of thousands of…
FRI 5/9 The movie industry hollowly boasted its “Year of the Woman” in 2002 just because more than three films offered decent female roles, but the theater has always prized its female artists. With A … My Name Will Always Be Alice, Quality Hill (303 W. 10th Street) packs its playhouse with estrogen through June 8. Abandoning his usual cabaret…
FRI 5/9-SAT 5/10 Paula Poundstone brings her jokes — and zany neckties — to Kansas City this weekend, her first visit since the summer 2001 fiasco that would have sent most people running as far from the spotlight as possible. Hers was a Nick Nolte scandal with a Michael Jackson twist: Arrested during a drunken ice-cream run with children in…
SAT 5/10 Even a perfect child could always use a little help in the etiquette department, which is why the staff at the Johnson County Museum (6305 Lackman in Shawnee) decided that a mother-daughter “Perfect Child Tea Party” could be more than a tasteful way of honoring Mother’s Day. It’s educational, too! Even in this high-tech age, the art of…
THUR 5/8 Give a green thumbs-up to the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens’ plant sale (a half-mile west of 179th and U.S. Highway 69). The sale highlights native plants but includes annuals, perennials and veggies. “You won’t find the normal Home Depot, Kmart varieties here,” says Collyn Peterson, chair of Friends of the Arboretum, the nonprofit group sponsoring the…
Daily Stepping into the Vaile Mansion in Independence isn’t so much like stepping back in time as it is like seeing time stacking up in front of you, layer upon layer. The restored Victorian house was built in 1881 for entrepreneur Harvey Vaile and his wife, Sophia. But after her death, it was used as a sanitarium — the doors…
Picture a sky as blue as the Fluent American sundress (sleeveless, 13-button front) advertised in this season’s J. Peterman catalog — “a blue that’s kind of aged and knows its way around.” Perhaps the maturity of the blue sky will guide you through the National Golf Club of Kansas City’s course, where you are likely to spot Rush Limbaugh, though…
Thursday, May 8, 2003 The first step in overcoming an addiction to talk radio is admitting you have a problem. Do you listen to Clark Howard on KCMO 710? Admit it. You love it when he plays that swelling and triumphant ’80s music, then erupts into a dramatic announcement that “you’re listening to The Clark Howard Show.” You picture him…
Give the average kid some pebbles, and she’s as likely to eat them as throw them at her brother. But not the kids in the new Children’s Dharma Program at the American Buddhist Center. These kids meditate on pebbles, using them to focus their concentration. Pebble meditation took a detour last month when one young lad brought dandelions he learned…
Two women, dressed in standard waitstaff uniforms, emerge from the bar and into the well-appointed lobby of the hotel built 90 years ago by beer magnate Adolphus Busch, who tried to bring the Jazz Age to what would become a Muzak town. About 50 feet away, an interviewer and his subject—a large man with a curly expanse of hair,…
