Though Kansas City is far from the bright lights and star-paved walks of Hollywood, mini film studios dot the sprawling metro. Filled with casting couches, video cameras and backdrops for screen tests, each is essentially the same. Nielsen Media Research ranks Kansas City as the country’s 31st-largest television market. The entertainment production industry here is small but self-sufficient, kept…
We don’t know about you, but over here at Night Ranger Headquarters, we were exhausted by all the end-of-October drinktivites that had us stumbling to bed in the wee hours and reduced us to hollow-eyed shells the next day. For example, there was the NR’s b-day, which fell on the Saturday before Halloween and led to excessive hangage-outage the entire…
Dinners come, dinners go. Jeff Fitzpatrick, the owner of Café Maison (408 East 63rd Street), is expanding the dinner hours at his Ebro (East of Brookside) boîte. A few blocks north, though, the owners of the Europa Café (323 East 55th Street) have stopped serving dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. “We simply had too many requests to book our…
People love an all-American success story. The best-seller lists are peppered with inspiring rags-to-riches stories — a friend of mine calls them “I pulled myself up from the gutter” memoirs. A loser is just a pathetic failure. But a loser who finally finds that pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow? Meet Dave Anderson, the founder and…
11/13-11/15 Depending on whether you have cable or network TV and whether you’re willing to watch either, you may recognize comedians Rich Vos and Dave Mordal from NBC’s reality series Last Comic Standing or Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn. Vos and Mordal, both divorced, single fathers in their forties, bonded on the sets of those shows. Now they’re…
11/13 & 11/15 Flamenco dancer Miel Castagna had never stomped and twirled in the midst of crème brûlées and rumtinis until she and guitarist Beau Bledsoe started performing at La Bodega for Flamenco Vivo.”It was the first time I had ever done a café gig,” she says. “Before, I was always in theaters. It’s fun — it’s like dancing in…
TUE 11/18 During Halloween season, we always think of Charles Schultz and his kid-cartoon masterpiece It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This is quite possibly the best Halloween TV show ever, a statement we’re willing to defend to the death. It’s not just any genius who can invent a character like the Great Pumpkin, who rewards not good behavior but…
SAT 11/15 In an Olympics-style battle pitting Wyandotte County against Johnson County, dry-cleaning competitions would go to JoCo. Ditto for Jones Store branch proliferation. But WyCo would kick ass in a triathlon involving NASCAR, hardcore vanning … and recycling.So Wyandotte County is a big winner as far as area activities honoring America Recycles Day are concerned. At the Children’s Museum…
WED 11/19 While the proportionally challenged population of our fast-food nation struggles with its self-image, the rest of us are guiltlessly looking forward to the upcoming visit by dessert expert and cookbook author Sherry Yard.The executive pastry chef for the über-chic Spago Hollywood has created gorgeous dessert dishes for famous fatties to gorge themselves on at the Grammys, the…
For the average preadolescent boy, a book of matches lying around the house would normally lead to mischief in the form of melted Barbie dolls or worse. For the young Gregory Curtis, an encounter with a book of Classicos offered an image that would become his lifelong muse. On the cover of the Mexican matchbook was a picture of…
Thursday, November 13, 2003 Tommy Chong and Arnold Schwarzenegger were both caught on film smoking funny-looking cigarettes in the ’70s. But that’s where the similarities end. Schwarzenegger glorified violence for more than twenty years, and Chong stuck with the funny stuff. Now, as Schwarzenegger gets ready to take over the governor’s mansion, Chong’s in the big house for selling…
Since becoming involved in the Revolution, Meredith Vacek’s party has been for the party. Better known around Lawrence as J8, Vacek and comrades Q3 and X9 were fed up with the lack of dance options in Jayhawk territory. Deciding about a year ago that ’80s nights were the opiates of the masses, the three set about freeing oppressed booty-shakers with…
The Empire Room on East 31st Street has a dark, swanky glamour. It’s a lava-lamped speakeasy with a high quotient of hip. It even has that standard feature of clubs in bigger cities: a VIP room, here called Dragon Skin. It’s not the first place that comes to mind when you think of staged readings of new or little-known…
Art viewers don’t have many more chances to enjoy the hospitality at Tom Deatherage’s quirky the Late Show. Located in Deatherage’s Hyde Park home, the gallery forgoes all the inherent pretentiousness of a furnitureless, white-walled, track-lit space. Instead, Deatherage offers drinks to his visitors and invites them into his kitchen to look at work hung above his stove and…
Unburdened by affiliation with PBS or Martin Scorsese or any fussy authoritativeness, this four-disc comp featuring a variety of Rounder artists is breezy fun and almost exactly what its title promises. It’s not the be-all box of blues, but it ain’t bad. Rounder follows the example of Rhino’s classic Beg, Scream & Shout ’60s soul set by limiting each artist…
Is MxPx peeved that its pop-punk pogo, perfected when many current emo heartthrobs still thought girls had cooties, became commercially viable thanks to bands it influenced? All signs point to yes on Everything, which oozes with “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude. The album includes slower tempos; slicker, Top 40 production; a big, dumb ode to fame (“Kings…
The proliferation of spiky-haired, spring-loaded, mall-bred baby bands who claim to keep the Class of ’76’s torch burning today might signal that punk rock — once again — has kicked the bucket. However, one listen to the Lookout! debut and third full-length from underground vets Small Brown Bike reveals that this fatalistic belief is sorely off base. Like their kindred…
Slowdive created some of the most intoxicating dream pop of the ’90s. When its members regrouped as Mojave 3 in 1996 after being dropped by Creation Records, they transformed into country-lite rockers. Though their three albums before Spoon and Rafter each proffered breezily melancholic melodies set within restrained, conventional song structures, the music couldn’t help seeming like a regression to…
Welcome to musical hell. So glad you could make it. Allow me to give you the tour. On your right, you’ll notice Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik. (We can’t seem to get rid of the guy.) Yep, he’s mangling “For Your Love,” a song that was so contrived when it was originally released that it caused Eric Clapton to…
Pop and punk go together like sugar and spikes. Seattle trio Visqueen exemplifies this maxim. Bassist Kim Warnick spent over two decades with the Fastbacks proving that speedy, hook-intensive punk can make you hum while flinging limbs and unloading adrenaline in the mosh pit. Her veteran smarts jell sparklingly with relative youngsters Rachel Flotard (guitars, vocals) and Ben Hooker (drums)…
The city of Amsterdam conjures images of Van Gogh, Anne Frank, hookers and hash bars. The New Amsterdams, on the other hand, is pure Americana — acoustic guitars jangle, melodies shimmer and the lyrics tread lightly. Somehow, it doesn’t suck. In fact, the Lawrence outfit (really a sideshow for Get Up Kids frontman Matt Pryor) is riding a wave of…
Looking for three signs you’ve been listening to classic-rock radio way too long? One, you don’t mind hearing the same three Zeppelin tunes over and over. Two, the opening sax line to Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” has you reaching for the volume dial. And three, Jackson Browne’s ode to life on the road, “The Load Out/Stay,” always has you…
Billed as an all-star DJ spectacular, the Scratch Tour lives up to the hype and then some. The X-ecutioners is a four-man wax-spinning machine whose commitment to roots rap is apparent in its furious sound. Q-Bert’s résumé is easily as lengthy as his record collection, but it was his 1998 turntable concept album Wave Twisters that cemented his status as…
Perhaps it’s because the Starlight Mints hail from Norman, Oklahoma, that the funtastic pop quintet is frequently compared to Norman homeboys the Flaming Lips. In any case, the Mints’ members are more like second or third cousins than siblings to the Lips’ psychedelic sound. We’d do better to compare them to a blippy, bleepy hybrid of Pavement, the Violent Femmes…
