One thing we’ve always liked about scientific theories is their versatility in applying them to everyday life. For example, when extrapolating from the Running Into Your Ex theorem (it always happens whenever you look like crap), you get the one rule that’s endemic to our big small town: the Law of Increasing Returns. If you grew up here, you will…
In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge gets whisked back to his past (among other places) in order to learn the meaning of Christmas spirit. The finale has the Cratchits enjoying a nice holiday dinner: a Christmas goose, applesauce, mashed potatoes, steamed pudding drenched in brandy, and chestnuts sputtering on the fire. The ghosts of meals past don’t just show up…
Last week, I got a call from a friend wondering where to have a “first rate” dinner in the Kansas suburbs over the holidays. There were caveats, though: “It can’t be trendy. It can’t be loud. It has to be fancy and take reservations.” His request might have been a puzzler; despite all of the growth in Johnson County’s…
WED 12/31 For those who have not yet rocked with Parlay, we warn you: There are two kinds of reactions you can expect from locals who find out that you haven’t seen the band. If you’re a recent arrival to Kansas City, you have a decent excuse and therefore should receive the more benign reaction. The local fans will react…
SAT 12/27 Until breaking up in 1999, Danger Bob played loud, fast and geeky power pop. Now, for one night only, the guys reunite — with a gaggle of real-life band geeks joining them — as the Mollyphonic Spree, so christened as a nod to Danger Bob’s penchant for referring to every woman as Molly. Fifteen-plus musicians join the band’s…
12/25-1/8 If you’re looking to teach your kids the meaning of the word irony, you have only about a week left to see the bug documentary presented by exterminators. Bugs! In 3-D, in its last two weeks at Union Station (30 West Pershing Road), follows Heirodula and Papilio — a caterpillar and a praying mantis — as they go…
ONGOING A lot about Christmas is unintentionally frightening. If the memory of getting plopped down on a stranger’s lap in a shopping mall makes you shudder, the house at 7611 Falmouth in Prairie Village will give you odd dreams for weeks. If you can’t see it from its electric glow, you’ll know it by the small crowd gathered outside…
WED 12/31 Why resolve to lose weight in the new year when you could instead reinvent yourself as a superspy? First step: Learn to tango. All the sexy superspies are doing it; if you don’t make an effort, they’re going to mock you at the superspy convention, and who needs that? The Kansas City tradition of Wednesday-night tango lessons…
Making snow fall on a sunny day is easier than we thought. “It’s not a big scientific thing,” explains Snow Creek’s manager, David Grenier. “You’re just taking plain old water, mixing it with compressed air and projecting it out into a frozen environment, where Mother Nature does the rest.” As long as the nights stay cold, that is. As…
Thursday, December 25, 2003 It’s Christmas. Everything is closed, damn it. Even your favorite bar has locked its doors for the night (don’t say we didn’t warn you about this last week, either) — unless your favorite bar happens to be Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main. While most bars close up shop so that employees can be with…
Although the seafood department at Whole Foods Market optimistically set up tables for two near the raw-fish-filled deli cases in the corner of the store, Oyster Happy Hour patrons tend not to sit and socialize over shellfish as they would over beer. But Seafood Team Leader Chris Beisser tried, and for that you have to commend him. “This is a…
The marriage of local actor Scott Cordes and playwright and performance artist Lisa Cordes may have fallen victim to the stresses of their chosen professions, but the assets of that merger are still paying dividends. Namely, their kids — fifteen-year-old twins Sam and Emma and fourteen-year-old Willa — who can be found on local stages from the Missouri Repertory Theatre…
Lawrence-based artist Roger Shimomura has a habit of trolling Ebay for World War II-era postcards and advertisements that use stereotypical depictions of Japanese people. Over the years, he’s amassed quite a collection, and that’s partly what inspires Stereotypes and Admonitions. The show consists of 24 recent paintings, accompanied by Shimomura’s short stories detailing incidents of racism against Asian-Americans. Half…
Good EPs leave you wanting more. Bad EPs leave you glad there wasn’t more. Whatever Makes You Happy falls somewhere in between. That’s not a slight, either. Even in its brevity, the album seems complete. Elevator Division does more with five songs than many bands do with twenty. Whatever was released when God was a boy (more than a year…
Avant’s mission: to boldly plow ladies like nobody’s plowed them before. His MO: 62 minutes of slow-burn come-on. At first spin, it’s indistinguishable from any other just-good-enough male R&B grooving up to the plate lately. It’s languid even when the breathing gets heavy — the nods to hip-hop and ’70s funk, though encouraging, fail to melt a central iciness. You…
Now this is more like it. Shelby Lynne’s 2000 release, I Am Shelby Lynne, announced that a talented artist had finally discovered herself. I Am was personal, smart, husky, soulful and unabashedly Southern. By contrast, her follow-up, Love, Shelby , sounded as if it were performed by a different person altogether. It was a rejection of all the complex qualities…
Originator of the obscure word-jazz genre, Ken Nordine possesses the greatest speaking voice in the history of the larynx. How great? I’d pay good money to hear him slander my entire family. Nordine’s resonant baritone articulates whimsy with stoic profundity. On Wink (which originally came out in 1967 as Twink), he reads from the 1957 Robert Shure literary oddity of…
Announced in a whirlwind of publicity as Jay-Z’s “retirement” disc, The Black Album was already a legend prior to its release. Like Prince’s Black Album, it had achieved prominence in music-trading circles long before it hit retail shelves. Said to be a prequel to his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, Jigga’s alleged swan song doesn’t deliver the promised rootsy return to…
How do you follow a debut record that caused a splash akin to a Fat Joe cannonball in a crowded pool? If you’re the Strokes, you make the same record again and call it Room on Fire. Strokes 2.0 follows to the letter the blueprint laid out on the New York quintet’s first album. That’s not necessarily a bad thing…
Being a blues guitar slinger from Austin, Texas, comes with more baggage than an ex-girlfriend convention. Anyone who dares tiptoe across the hallowed ground of Stevie Ray Vaughan is bound to draw comparisons, fair or not. In the case of Chris Duarte, those comparisons are wholly appropriate. From his weather-beaten Stratocaster licks to his bourbon-drunk and dope-smoked vocals, Duarte has…
Brad and Brett Warren are a pair of musical and genetic siblings whose harmony-laden pop hooks place them head and shoulders above the rest of the Stetson and Wranglers set. The Warren Brothers caused a minor stir with their 1998 debut, Beautiful Day in the Cold Cruel World, and gained a healthy following after a lengthy tour with beloved rural…
We’ve heard the titty-twisting debate over whether it’s better successwise to be really fucking talented or to work really fucking hard, and we really just don’t want to get into it. As long as somebody keeps on making music that will test the cassette player in our 1972 Gremlin, we don’t care how they get it made. Frosty beverage in…
The Paper Chase is either Little Red Riding Hood or the Big Bad Wolf. Your guess is as good as mine, but judging by the quirky Texas quartet’s latest effort, What Big Teeth You Have, I’m going to say both. There’s an innocence and a nastiness to the band’s “sound,” which is best classified “Baaaaaaaah?” On Teeth, the Paper Chase…
You can come home again. It’s not so hard. Just head south off Interstate 70, and you can’t miss it. But it’s still no small feat returning to Lawrence when you’re Kelley Hunt and you’ve spent the past two decades fighting for a spot in the “No Gerlz Aloud” clubhouse of American blues. She’s an independent firecracker who melds blues,…
