The BFG As entertaining as it might be, The BFG isn’t about Badass Fearful Gangstas. The acronym stands for Big Friendly Ghost, the affable colossus who delivers dreams to children by blowing through their windows. In this children’s story by Roald Dahl, the BFG is a runt among the behemoths ruling the land, and if that doesn’t set him apart,…
Amy Cutler The fanciful costumes and absurd situations depicted in Amy Cutler’s gouache paintings on white paper often draw comparisons to fairy-tale illustrations, but Cutler finds inspiration in a wide variety of sources: Laura Ingalls Wilder, James Audubon, childhood memories of her father’s pet store. For example, in “Dinner Party,” young women in elaborate ball gowns use their long…
Legend has it that back in the late 1800s, London lyricist William S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) saw a decorative sword fall from a wall and was inspired to write The Mikado. The farcical operetta depicts several instances of near-decapitation. Although it is set in Japan, The Mikado spoofs Victorian-era English society. In Gilbert and partner Arthur Sullivan’s…
MON 5/3 Lots of bands embrace irony like they would a Velvet Underground test pressing, using it as muse for their lyrics and sound and as a defense for dipping into cock rock or acoustic love ballads. But the Supersuckers, who hit the stage at Davey’s (3402 Main, 816-753-1909) on Monday, proudly wear ’70s-inspired cretin rock on their sleeves. Their…
SAT 5/1 Sweatshops became an “it” cause in 1995, following the Kathie Lee Gifford debacle, but they returned to the back burner as soon as America found a new celebrity du jour to hate. The environmentally and politically active students of the KU Greens want to bring back that enthusiasm and prove that having a social conscience can be…
SAT 5/1 One of our town’s more benevolent traditions, the AIDS Walk/Run Kansas City, steps off Saturday at Mill Creek Park on the northeast end of the Country Club Plaza. Teams of at least ten walkers raise money by collecting pledges from sponsors prior to the walk; registration for runners is $25. All of the money stays in Kansas City…
FRI 4/30 Gallery owners can be funny about installations. When an artist has grand ideas about transforming the walls and floors of a space, the person in charge generally asks whether the show warrants all that mayhem. Not Mott-ly, the man behind the scenes at the MoMo Gallery (1830 Locust). His proof is in this Friday’s opening, the dual-titled…
You already know that there’s more music out there than you’ll ever hear — furious garage bands on one-man labels, anonymous DJs haunting the Internet with MP3 mash-ups, small reissue pressings of obscure vintage soul and reggae. But sit down. You’re forgetting the concert musicians — the ones who not only read music but also write it down. The…
Thursday, April 29 When we were telling our coworkers about long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox, we uttered the following inane statement: “She’s crazy and stupid … but also hardcore and awesome.” Everybody laughed, and we felt dumb. But deep down, we knew we spoke the truth about the woman who broke all English Channel swimming records at age 15 and again…
As Lewis Black prepared to go onstage for a Kansas City appearance a few years ago, he stood toward the back, fists clenched, engaged in a resentful kind of Lamaze breathing. He then strolled onstage calmly and did what the people had paid to see. Like a low-lying storm cloud, he exploded. Black’s lips blew inadvertent raspberries, and he choked…
If you were a college-aged East Berliner in October of 1989, chances are that your time was occupied by one of several things. Protesting comes to mind, as does hacking at long-reviled concrete. Perhaps you caroused, or lit fireworks, or sang with joy as you coursed through the newly open streets. Maybe you had some other, deeply personal way of…
Remember Omar Sharif? He’s been all but absent from the silver screen in recent years (though he has been seen — or at least heard — on television). According to the actor, he left the trade by choice: “Let us stop this nonsense, these meal-tickets that we do because it pays well. Unless I find a stupendous film that I…
Laws of Attraction is the kind of film you might mistake for cute or charming at first glance. Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore playing divorce lawyers on opposite sides of a case, bickering and bantering, guzzling booze and sucking face, falling in bed and in love, realizing that their relationship is bad for business but saying, “Dagnabit, who cares…
Mean Girls could have been unrelentingly terrible. It isn’t — it’s actually pretty fabulous on its own terms — but consider: a rush-job comedy (hastily lensed a few months ago) produced by Lorne Michaels and based on a nonfiction book (Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes) that concerns … ooh, girls sassing each other. Well, miracles occasionally happen. With…
As a trenchant bargoer, the Night Ranger has been the target of many a bad pickup line. Her most recent favorite, though, occurred recently at The Point, when she got “hey, baby”s from two puka-shell-necklaced frat boys. A bit of a cliché perhaps, but awesome in its unironic delivery. We’d made a pit stop at The Point over the course…
During one dark period in my life, I took a job as a bartender in a trashy strip-center tavern, where my duties included opening bottles of beer for the blue-collar crowd and frying up “snacks.” The menu was short and sweet: french fries, onion rings, fried cheese poppers and fried mushrooms. If somebody wanted a dipping sauce, I handed him…
Recently my friend Steve gave me a copy of the hard-to-find The Interiors Book of Restaurants. The book of black-and-white photography was very modern and up-to-date when it was published in 1960, but now its most interesting interiors — like those in the Playbill Restaurant in New York City’s Hotel Manhattan (with celebrity murals by Al Hirschfeld) and Bretton’s…
Boomstick’s impressive melodies come reinforced with pitch-perfect harmonies and pristine production, yet the band still sounds just a little too different to score many spins. Perhaps the hardcore-ready riffs are too robust or the rumbling bass lines too overpowering. But even though Shatter might sound like a throwback, it’s ahead of its time in terms of radio programming. “Dick” has…
Every roots fan copes both with the crippling demand for tradition and the venomous contempt for familiarity. Slaid Cleaves puts a cork in both. With a sound driven by exactly the kind of band you’d expect Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams’ old guitarist and producer) to assemble, Cleaves confidently treads familiar ground with songs about sinners prayers and drunken boxers with…
Finally, something worthwhile comes from Florida. Forget about the Backstreet Boys, Walt Disney World and Jeb Bush. The state has managed to produce a deeply stirring songwriter in Miami’s Sam Beam, who performs as Iron and Wine. Clearly, the eternal sunshine and factory-made fun have done little to spoil the autumnal hues of Beam’s daydreams. Our Endless Numbered Days is…
If you title your new album Start Something, you’d better actually do something. So it’s a good thing that Lostprophets can walk the walk. These Welsh boys hit the ground running with the radio hit “Last Train Home,” which may have laid the tracks for “Make a Move” and “Burn, Burn” to find their way to your car stereo. In…
Ice Cube is spending far more time these days onscreen than in the studio, so don’t expect any new music from the Barbershop 2 star on the soundtrack. Don’t expect much else, either — Shop 2 is the musical equivalent of a bad hair day. The 15 tunes here provide an unimaginative sampling of hip-hop’s B-list, including D12, Sean Paul…
Democrats blame Nader for our faux-Texan tyrant, but they may as well blame Prince. Without “Darling Nikki,” Tipper Gore would never have launched the Parents’ Music Resource Center indecency hearings, and then maybe Al Gore could have convinced 600 more Zappa fans in Florida to give his prim ass a chance. But that was back when Prince used our culture…
Legend has it that John Belushi modeled his “Joliet” Jake Blues character after the persona of a young Curtis Salgado. These days, however, Salgado’s whip-thin ponytail has been replaced by bottle-blond spikes, making his rough voice the only proof that he’s been torching songs for thirty years. From Salgado’s early stints with Robert Cray and Roomful of Blues to his…
