The Second Coming has arrived. There’s no hellfire. No boiling seas. But it is time. Time for the Only Begotten Son to grace the cover of Time and turn water to Cristal. Because Christianity is red-hot right now. God is wicked-cool. And everyone’s favorite homeboy from Nazareth is filling a lot of literal and spiritual bank accounts with, shall we…
Joey Jordison loves touring, but he hates the fans. Not all the fans, mind you. Just the completely deranged ones. And that’s the problem: dividing the everyday weirdos from the true freaks. It’s a tough task when you’re the drummer for Slipknot, one of the more psychotic bands around. With its ghoulish masks, Orwellian stage uniforms and spooktacular thrash metal,…
The Get Up Kids have played their share of all-ages shows and outdoor festivals, so they know something about taking the stage with sunlight still streaming through the windows. But the band’s February 27 gig at Mike’s Tavern took curfew-friendly scheduling to an extreme. Squinting through half-mast eyes, singer-guitarists Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic and keyboardist James Dewees (playing a…
I am going to give 13 Going on 30 credit, though it’s hardly worth the effort. Lord knows the filmmakers didn’t put much into it. It’s a shame, because what could have been an engaging story about the unfair price a woman pays for conducting herself like a man winds up as nothing more than worthless piffle. It might even…
If you were expecting the first film to emerge from Afghanistan since the defeat of the Taliban to be even remotely celebratory, you’ll have to adjust your expectations — radically. In Osama, filmed in 2002 and 2003 in a “suburb” of Kabul, writer-director Siddiq Barmak is not interested in showing us images of liberation or reconstruction. Instead, he turns…
Talking Heads KC at the bat: Regarding C.J. Janovy’ s “GI Boys and Bondage” (April 15): I found myself at Union Station on Sunday, taking my mom to the Easter brunch. (She was in town visiting me; she’s another “visiting Nebraskan,” actually. I’m among the throngs of Cornhusker transplants invading KC as of late, but at least I’m here to…
A couple of weeks ago, the Strip heard from a woman named Gabriele Otto, who works at the Kansas City Public Library’s Southeast Branch. She wanted this meat patty to know that on April 29, the poet Amiri Baraka would be coming to our fair city. Partly funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities, Baraka is…
It looks as if the DJ and the MC are preparing for a magic trick, the way they pull a tablecloth from one of the banquet hall’s round tables. Instead, someone spreads the white cloth on the dance floor as a crowd gathers. The MC, who goes by the name Frog and speaks in a coarse twang, coaxes three…
The lama is a white guy. With a mostly shaved head and translucent blue eyes, he looks imperturbable on a gold cushion in front of a shrine that holds a fat, gold Buddha, flickering candles and offerings of flowers and incense. He wears a sleeveless red silk vest over maroon robes. Twenty-five students sit around him, attentive. They have come…
Of the many hazards of making a living as a professional lush, a persistent one is the inability to decipher your drunken scrawls in your beer-sodden notebook after a night in a dark club. Then there’s the hazard that your coworkers who double as Research Assistants will take your notebook while you’re off sitting on the lap of your work…
I like the concept of getting up early and going out for breakfast — as opposed to actually doing it. The problem is that I’m impossibly slow-moving before 8 a.m. On some gray winter mornings, I’ve dragged myself out of bed, made a pot of coffee and then gone straight back to bed without even tasting the java. Sometimes the…
It’s no coincidence that the first “diner” was patented in 1891, the same year Thomas Edison applied to patent his motion-picture camera, the Kinetograph. Diners and movies both came into their golden ages in the 1930s. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship. Back when most urban areas had theaters that screened movies late, there was usually an all-night diner within walking…
FRI 4/16 Peanut Butter Wolf is the man. PB Wolf has more kickass records than you will ever have, and he knows where to find the breakbeats on all of them. Whereas most hip-hop DJs rely on technical skill, impressing crowds with scratches they’ve been practicing alone at home (see the writeup for Saturday, April 17), PB Wolf employs an…
4/18 & 4/22 Everybody’s a critic. But not everybody can express their opinions like The New York Times’ Roberta Smith. Smith’s writing style appeals to both artsy types and people who don’t know Christian Boltanski from Christian Jankowski; she gets across complex visual concepts in a way that’s easy to understand. Smith believes it’s an art critic’s job to record…
4/17-4/18 Step aside, kids. This week we found a few ways for our older friends to have some sporting fun. The Kansas City Metropolitan 50-Plus Softball League season starts this week, with men’s and women’s games at 8:15 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Saturday at Colman Park (59th Street and Lane Avenue in Raytown) and a men’s game 5 p.m. Sunday…
THU 4/15 Fans of NBC’s The Apprentice might be a little embarrassed by their addiction. But like other addicts, they won’t be able to keep from indulging themselves, sitting in front of the television every Thursday night rooting for their favorite tycoon-in-training. The rest of us are mostly bewildered at what the big deal is, but we also have a…
Even a cursory glance at the schedule of films and filmmakers descending on Kansas City this week for the 2004 KC Filmmakers Jubilee reveals that the gap between Hollywood fare and what’s being made by independent and modestly financed filmmakers is growing ever wider — thank heavens. Boasting a remarkable range encompassing everything from short student films to a Keith…
Thursday, April 15 Drama come to life: That’s one of the great benefits of Plays-in-Progress, a workshop held biannually at Rockhurst University. Following a reading of the script, the playwright discusses the play with the audience, director and actors. This is when the fun begins. If a member of the audience thinks the script is crap, he or she…
Two years ago, as F-16s were dropping bombs on Afghanistan, Ira Glass was wandering the decks of an aircraft carrier, interviewing pilots, garage bands and people whose sole job was to refill the vending machines. For his radio show, This American Life, Glass spent an hour exploring the city on water, getting into trouble with the higher-ups and waking in…
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…
George Catlin and His Indian Gallery Back in the 1830s, George Catlin made his first trip west from St. Louis, recording his observations of American Indian Plains tribes by sketching and painting their portraits, ceremonies and landscapes. During Catlin’s lifetime, representatives from the U.S. government (which was busy passing the Indian Removal Act) ignored his efforts to sell them his…
In the lingo of the theater, the tech is the first rehearsal when a show’s design elements are tested with the actors. It’s the point in a show’s birthing process that all previous rehearsals and design meetings have been leading to — as well as the point past which there’s little turning back. It is, in short, a bitch….
Jazz vocalist René Marie burst on the scene in 2000 with the enthusiasm of a twenty-year-old ingénue and the maturity of an established vocal veteran, though, in fact, the fortysomething singer’s career has been twenty years in the making. Her three most recent releases (2000’s How Can I Keep From Singing?, 2001’s Vertigo and 2003’s Live at Jazz Standard)…
American Idol is billed as the “Search for a Superstar,” but it’s not. No, it’s really the “Search for a Replacement Superstar.” This show reassures us during celebrity crises. When Christina Aquilera skanked out America, it was American Idol that brought Kelly Clarkson to the rescue. In 2003, After Barry White’s passing and Luther Vandross’ stroke, we needed Ruben Studdard….
