ONGOING Faithful local readers of Nylon magazine who have long dreamed of paying exorbitant prices for ironic silk-screened T-shirts in trendy Williamsburg boutiques need pine no longer. Kansas City reinvents the standard-issue New York T-shirt boutique with irony in the $12 to $30 range at Spool, which just opened in the space formerly occupied by Isabel’s (122 West 18th…
1/2-1/4 We missed the Old-Fashioned Cartoon Festival at the historic Englewood (10917 Winner Road in Independence) last summer, which was way sad. Because of … um … all the kids we wish we could have taken. Yeah. That’s why. Lucky for us — and for the kids — the theater brings back the event for the first weekend of the…
ONGOING Instead of joining a gym like last year’s attempt at a New Year’s resolution, how about getting in shape by trying something that’s fun and challenging rather than smelly and tedious? Capoeira, the form of fighting created by Afro-Brazilian slaves 400 years ago, is the perfect way to have fun while firming up. Experienced capoeiristas employ high kicks,…
THU 1/1 He found her in a box. On a stairwell. She was trash. “I think she was nude at the time,” says Tivoli Cinemas employee Jon Rollins, who found the Barbie who now stands behind the concession stand. But then he reconsiders. “Actually,” he says, “I think I would have been more disturbed if she hadn’t had any…
A hair of the same dog next morning/Is best to quench our fev’rish burning, Englishman Edward Ward wrote in 1717. After 287 years, that’s still good advice. But not every victim of a throbbing New Year’s Day hangover can confront a post-reverie Bloody Mary or pint of warm Guinness. Instead of the hair-raising hair of the dog, perhaps a more…
Thursday, January 1, 2003 When you did your holiday shopping at Wal-Mart, did you feel like you had gone to another planet — one where cheap diapers actually appeared to be a good gift idea? Apparently you aren’t the only one who sees Wal-Mart as an extraterrestrial destination. The Heartland Labor Forum dubbed one award-winning episode of its radio program…
Adults who think they’re sophisticated have been known to pee themselves laughing at the rude antics on Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers. To the uninitiated, the show’s premise sounds sophomoric and spiteful — which it is, unabashedly. A typical thirty-minute show contains about six prank phone calls, dialed by such hip comics as Denis Leary and Sarah Silverman. Puppets bring the…
It’s the beginning of 2004, and if you still haven’t heard about Friendster, the friendmeister, you are so uncool. You can’t play on the swing set. You never find out about any cool bands until they get big, when success goes to their heads and makes them suck. Here’s how Friendster works: One day, you get an e-mail notifying…
You can spot a bad play in the first ten minutes. The statistical probability that the show will redeem itself in the second act is so slim that a premature departure is always tempting, and in the past year of reviewing local plays, the temptation got the better of me a few times. That’s why there was nothing written…
First rule is, don’t mess with Texas. Second rule is, there’s gotta be more than one man in the band for it to be called the Conversation. But because the first rule is usually enforced by a barrelful of buckshot in the ass, and because we’re not picking shards out of our Fruit of the Looms again, El Paso…
If we had the kind of time it’d take to count the number of keyboardists we’ve seen bawling backstage just because the stinking harmonica player gets all the chicks, we would have had time to pay our taxes last year. And the seven years that came before last year. Agent Struthers, if you’re reading this, hope you’re enjoying garnisheeing…
Country’s the medicine cabinet of musical genres:Got yer uppers, got yer downers, got yer everything in between. And — as with all pharmaceuticals — there’s nothing like a nice jigger of granddaddy’s bourbon to make it all slide down sweet. Crying, laughing, whatever … but you damn well better be feeling something, and if you’re not, well, try another…
I can’t compete. I was going to dazzle you with wit and reverence. Stagger you with my flair for making Premonitions of War look completely and totally bad-motherfucking-ass. But any little quips I could zing would be repelled by the band’s press release, the sole purpose of which is to make me feel woefully inadequate when it comes to writing…
My mom could kick your dad’s ass. And without her hipstermeter, I would be getting the brunt of so many more noogies and wedgies in the Pitch office. So I couldn’t even think about putting together the year-in-review section that follows without asking her what songs were cool in 2003. Here’s what she said: Outkast: “Hey Ya!” “I like songs…
The was a foul little filly, 2003, filled with a little right and all kinds of wrong. We were going to be noble and somber and stoic and provide a comprehensive list of the year’s notable releases in every musical genre from electroclash to the native roots music of the sub-Saharan tribes. You would have nodded your head gravely at…
This year’s British assault on the Yank funny bone is a spirited farce called Calendar Girls. Plucked from a 1999 headline, it recounts the slightly naughty daring of a group of proper women who sought to raise a few pounds for their local hospital by posing nude for the annual women’s club calendar. This was not Hustler — or even…
The spooky beauty of Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s strange take on the Columbine massacre, arises not from the shock of sudden violence but from the filmmaker’s steady gaze at the numbing routines of life inside a suburban high school. With what first looks like cool detachment, Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting) and his longtime cinematographer,…
Patriot missile: I have difficulty grasping the degree of sarcasm, condescension and triviality expressed by Tony Ortega regarding the arrest of Bill Douglas (Kansas City Strip, December 11). Granted, Douglas was in custody only a short time, yet I believe the treatment and interrogation he experienced are symbolic of tactics of repression rooted in the Patriot Acts and Homeland Security…
The Strip can hardly wait for construction of the new downtown entertainment complex, which, city leaders recently announced, will be anchored by showbiz powerhouse and local boffo economy booster H&R Block! This sirloin slab guesses that in just a few years, folks will come from miles around to spend time in a downtown attraction starring our glitzy tax preparer. No…
Zach Wilson turns his blue Impala onto a short street near the Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Court building and scores a free parking space, a minor achievement at a time when every little success helps. It’s December 4, and Wilson has arrived at the courthouse to contest a charge of trespassing on public property. Back in October, police arrested the…
One bleak February afternoon a few years ago, a federal undercover agent sat listening to a surveillance radio in the parking lot of Rudy’s Tenampa Taqueria on Westport Road near State Line. With several kilograms of sham cocaine in the trunk of his black Ford Mustang, the agent was ready to bust a group of buyers. When they finally arrived,…
