Thaaat’s my life!” So goes the catchphrase of one Neil Hamburger, or America’s Funnyman. He’s perhaps the last of the old-school comics, a man who still wears a tux when working the crowd. Never mind that it isn’t actually America that gave him that title or that the tux is secondhand. These are both facts he’s quick to concede, so…
Fox would have you think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the summer action movie with a brain. But the movie can’t take credit for smarts, having been considerably dumbed down for those who believe July is no time for school. “Based upon the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill,” reads the credit, as though the producers are…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, indeed — can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important to consider how far we’ve come in the twenty years…
Hook, line and sinker: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s Kansas City Strip (June 26): Don’t you guys have DANGEROUS criminals on your streets? What a waste of money entrapping escorts and their clients! Why not just go door to door and search people’s homes? Surely they’d find dangerous criminals that way, too, but Gestapo tactics are not the American way. Leaving consenting…
One week after forbidding entry to children younger than six and requiring that kids ages six to sixteen be accompanied by their parents, the Cinemark movie theater chain has announced further age restrictions. Its Palace location on the Plaza will admit only patrons ages sixteen through fifty; adults between forty and fifty must be accompanied by a teenager. Additionally, black…
Kansas City’s newest fountain has been a long time coming, but it’s been well worth the wait for a group of Westport denizens who say that the water monument finally recognizes their contributions to the larger community. Its backers wanted to make sure it was gushing before Westport kicked off its Saturday Night Live parties, where the streets are…
When most people in Kansas City think of Troost, they think blight. People who live around Troost think about Tom Wright. Greg Hooper moved to 4232 Troost in May 2002, lured by cheap property and one building’s Spanish-style architecture. He planned to refinish the old plumbing-supply house, making it a model he could show to potential clients for his building-renovation…
The importance of the college bar to one’s educational experience can’t be underestimated. Finding the best place to get cheap beer is practically a rite of passage. Personally, we didn’t really have our own college bar when we were at UMKC, though we did seem to end up at Harpo’s a lot. Well, we were dating a Beta at the…
The new Cheesecake Factory just opened at 6675 West 119th Street in Overland Park, and rival restaurateurs are cringing. “It’s definitely going to hurt my business,” says one of the most prominent chef-owners on 119th Street. “I’m predicting my business will be down 10 percent. But I’ll get it back.” Oh, I’m sure he will. But will everyone? Johnson County…
It’s funny how the childhood memories you cast off along your journey into adulthood can come back to haunt you at the most unexpected moments. I had barely dropped into a chair in the gold-and-tomato-red dining room of Scavuzzo’s in Overland Park when my friend Bob motioned me over to look at one of the framed vintage photographs on the…
FRI 7/4 This Fourth of July, we’d like to form a more perfect union. We’d also like to establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility, but we’re starting small. The pairing of classic-rock favorite George Thorogood with gospel/rockabilly/punk phenomenon The Reverend Horton Heat at the City Market (5th and Walnut) is a good place to start. The vastly entertaining Reverend spreads…
SUN 7/6 Freedom lovers whose knickers are in a twist over a more invasive, post-9/11 government can take a stand — and donate some knickers — at Liberty’s On the Line: A Festival Celebrating and Defending Our Civil Liberties. The alternative Independence Day event features no colorful explosions but will include a clothesline hung with delicates contributed by attendees. The…
DAILY Remember table arcade games? For two-person play, early-’80s games like Atari Football and Galaxian increased the element of metaphorical battle with face-to-face player positioning. This also meant that players could sit down while working the joysticks instead of having to break a sweat in the back of the pizza joint where they just ate. And don’t even get us…
UPCOMING Baseball players have the crack of wood against a hard leather ball. Basketball players have the swoosh of an uninterrupted shot. But few sounds in the athletic world rival the deep bwing created when a foot squarely strikes a rubbery, 10-inch kickball. Adult interest in the game once reserved for preadolescence has been growing for several years, and Kansas…
THU 7/3 If someone were to build a museum exhibit of instruments most people find strange, it would probably be filled from end to end with double-necked guitars. As for Mountain Music Shoppe owner and collector Jim Curley, he’d gladly put up his pianolin or bassoguitar — both of which are on display at the Bingham-Waggoner Historical Society’s Mountain Music…
Sometime this summer, you should travel east on Interstate 70 until the tentacles of Kansas City release you into that region called mid-Missouri. At that point, take notice of a phenomenon that exists throughout the country but perhaps nowhere else so perfectly as in Missouri. As the landscape begins to hint at the lush forests and display-worthy geology of…
Thursday, July 3, 2003 The Kemper’s exhibit Russell Crotty: Globe Drawings comes down Sunday, so if you want to catch Crotty’s drawings — part scientific observation, part emotion-laden artwork — now’s the time to get on it. Crotty lives in the Santa Monica Mountains, where he built the Solstice Peak Observatory. From there, he takes note of star clusters,…
Five Riffs begins with a distant view of the planet Earth, then zooms in on two NASA employees getting ready to launch the unmanned Voyager in 1977. One holds a golden record as though it were a newborn. The other touches it and stares in awe. This record is about to carry human voices to the outer reaches of the…
When Disney Studios wasn’t satisfied with the millions of dollars it had made from its animated film of Dodie Smith’s book The Hundred and One Dalmatians, it went back to the pound for a spotty live-action version and its dreadful sequel. That greed took away some of the story’s luster, and Glenn Close’s shrieking Cruella de Vil pretty much…
The winner of the Pitch Music Award for Best Rock Band won’t be revealed until late August, though perhaps once that happens we should work out some kind of exchange program with Minneapolis, seeing as how they’re already sending their Best Rock Band of 2003 here. Declared as such by the Minneapolis City Pages, the punk-garage outfit Midnight Evils released…
There are surely those who’ve heard Drops of Jupiter so many times it’s become drops of water torture, and it’s tough to back a band that drops the phrase soy latte into a hit song. Still, Train’s roots-pop is a few cuts above most bands working that track, and with My Private Nation, a band that at first seemed as…
Gaining a reputation as emo’s next great hope was both a blessing and a curse for Brand New. Tours with misfit poster children Good Charlotte and New Found Glory helped the quartet build a solid fanbase that embraced its fantastically bitter kiss-off single “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad” and 2001 debut disc, Your Favorite Weapon. Unfortunately, the Long Island…
Only a select few performers can sing the blues with as much soulful conviction as Bobby “Blue” Bland. A veteran of the Memphis blues scene, Bland made his mark in the late ’50s and early ’60s with a consistent run of R&B hits before succumbing to depression and alcoholism in the late ’60s, spurred by an equally consistent string of…
Legendary might be something of an overstatement, seeing as how the Legendary Shack Shakers have been playing together only since 2001, but word on the street suggests that someday that particular adjective will indeed be apt. The Nashville Scene deemed Colonel J.D. Wilkes the city’s best frontman in 2002, and both Wilkes and guitarist Joe Buck have bonded with…
