The history of Be/Non’s ever-evolving sound can be traced through its ever-changing wardrobe choices: tartan pajama pants in the early ’90s, flannel shirts and Tevas a few years later, trucker hats and geek glasses after that, ironic metal poses in 2001, and hip-hop headgear last year. Currently, the chameleonic act sports normal-guy rockwear and plays high-IQ melodipop with a dose…
The line snakes around the corner, down a long alley and into the parking lot behind the Blue Note in Columbia. Fans huddle three and four deep, shivering in the frigid night air as the clogged artery of humanity slowly filters through the security detail at the front door. Tech N9ne has filled the grand, peeling Blue Note to near-capacity…
Ten … nine…. Please, please tell us you’re not at home while the clock’s ticking. Not bidding adieu to the foul Year of Our Lord 2003 on the couch. Not munching stale popcorn. Not watching Dick Clark hyperventilate you into January 1. Eight … seven … six…. So that 2003 diet ended at 3 a.m. last New Year’s Day when…
Seems a little early for a remake of Minority Report, but when your movie’s all about seeing and forgetting the future, who’s gonna remember Paycheck, anyway? Like Steven Spielberg’s film of long-ago 2002, in which Tom Cruise sees the future and goes on the run to change it, John Woo’s latest Hollywood offering, in which Ben Affleck sees the future…
It has become a subject of much discussion and debate among film fetishists in recent weeks: Will Sean Penn win the Academy Award for Mystic River or for 21 Grams? On one side are those who find his performance in Mystic River too big, too bravura. As a father mourning a murdered daughter and exacting his revenge, Penn delivered each…
For those who pay no mind to Oprah and her book club, the dispute at the heart of House of Sand and Fog involves the occupancy of a rundown little bungalow just inland from the Northern California coast. It’s not much of a place, really; to get a glimpse of the Pacific, you’d have to stand tiptoe on the roof….
Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour — Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful pieces of china about to fall from a high…
Free speech impediment: Regarding Tony Ortega’s “An Idiot’s Guide to Protesting” (KC Strip, December 11): I’m wondering what purpose it serves to humiliate Bill Douglas. I don’t know Bill personally, but I have spent time with him in meetings and at the peace vigils, and anyone who has done so knows that his intentions are peaceful and honorable. He may…
The Strip was just a little medallion of sirloin when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. Growing up, this meat patty figured the moon shot was one of the greatest feats any group of human beings had ever accomplished, and it looked forward to living in a future filled with space stations, moon colonies and even orbiting…
The doors to the gym at Gardner’s Nike Intermediate School open, and 490 kids stream in, followed by their teachers. One teacher asks another what this assembly is about. The other teacher shrugs. The principal, an older woman in a blue wool skirt and blazer, walks to the center of the gym’s floor and shouts into a microphone. “Let’s give…
The Chiefs and Royals could choose to leave Kansas City in just a few years with no financial penalty unless Jackson County soon comes up with millions of dollars for stadium improvements. Both sports teams use stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex under leases that last through 2015. But only recently have public officials acknowledged that little-known clauses in those…
“Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I shall be also.”— Matthew 18:20 There’s a bittersweet quality when the Rev. Charlotte Main recites this verse at the Ethelaine Chapel’s Sunday evening service on November 30. It turns out that hardly more than two have gathered in the rustic church at 4317 State Line. After months of forced…
The holidays — the period between Thanksgiving and the end of the year when no work gets done — can be a stressful time, with the gift-buying, the card-sending and generally being on that slippery slope until those two most depression-inducing landmarks of the calendar: New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. Which is why we’re thankful for things like alcohol…
The Yukon Base Camp Grill at Cabela’s (see review) isn’t the only restaurant-within-a-store that’s serving Jell-O this month. The more-refined, less-harried Bloomsbury Bistro inside the Mission Road Antique Mall (4101 West 83rd Street in Prairie Village) is serving chef-owner Cari Jo Cavalcante’s Dreamy Jell-O Surprise through December. It’s a combination of orange gelatin, mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple and a tart…
The last time I went camping or fishing, I was a Boy Scout. And I was a lousy Boy Scout, completely uninterested in hiking through the woods or earning merit badges or even memorizing the Scout oath. I’m not proud to confess that I was the Eddie Haskell of Troop 80, practicing good manners in front of the scoutmaster and…
MON 12/22 Mark Stevenson doesn’t claim to understand how to sing harmony, but that won’t keep him from belting out close harmonies alongside Scott Gobber in the Kemps.”Some really anal white person has spelled it all out where, if you have four people, you have an alto, bass, tenor and baritone or whatever,” Stevenson says, explaining the difference between…
ONGOING ‘Tis the season to stay inside (unless you have a kick-ass sled). In a downtown that has historically shut its doors to the sober after about 9 p.m., we are pleased to announce that the new Coffee Girls (310 Southwest Boulevard, 816-221-2326) stays open until midnight on Friday and Saturday, giving more relaxed winter weekenders a way to enjoy…
SAT 12/20 “‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” — or a kangaroo. That is, of course, because kangaroos and mice are not welcome in your living room. Instead, they’re stirring up holiday excitement over at the Kansas City Zoo, where you are invited to join them from…
ONGOING Of all the myths about Midwestern living, perhaps the worst is that we have it easier than our coastal counterparts. No maddening hullabaloo of the Big City; no WASP-named hurricanes; no terminators, erasers or commandos elected to governorships; no conspicuous earthquakes.But less immediacy does not mean less stress. As opposed to the fast-paced, pinball-like effect of New York, the…
FRI 12/19 Remember back in the days before rap, when a DJ was a disc jockey and scratching records meant ruining them? Scott O’Kelley and Wendy Vit play records for other listeners, but they don’t have any tricks or fancy equipment with which to demonstrate them, which makes them DJs in the old-radio sense.You won’t see them juggling beats on…
It’s 1988. A Jewish girl plays Clara in the State Ballet of Missouri’s Nutcracker. After she’s spent thankless hours in front of that damn growing tree, extending one arm after another ever upward in feigned amazement, running from men in mouse suits and pretending to love a glorified wooden kitchen appliance, The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle all but laughs…
Thursday, December 18, 2003 How did Thursday night become so notorious for shameless drunken antics? This is the last Thursday you can call your own for a good few weeks. With Christmas next week and New Year’s the week after, you will have to stay far, far away from your dive bar of choice for quite a while. Sorry…
Kansas Citians know Terry Allen’s work. His controversial “Modern Communication,” a bronze sculpture of a man in a business suit with a tie wrapped around his eyes and a shoe stuck in his mouth, stands outside the Kansas City Police Department communications building at 11th Street and Locust. That piece was installed through a city program that devotes 1 percent…
OK, so this album came out nearly six months ago. Deal with it. Besides, it wasn’t until I happened upon a live Conner performance that I had the motivation to spelunk through a small mountain of local discs and dust off The White Cube. For all I know, the record has been sitting here for thirty years, enveloped as it…
