SAT 6/12 As flirty circle skirts and sweet flats adorned with tiny bows skipped down a number of New York City runways not too long ago, we imagined that the models were on their way to launch the summer season at a private Venetian escape. It seems style-appropriate, then, that Kansas City’s own 18th Street fashion show, organized by Birdies,…
SAT 6/12 Coming from a lifetime of competitive judo, Steve Scott’s first time at the Scottish Highland Games was a bit of culture shock. “The guy I was up against was standing there drinking a beer, and he says, ‘Here, hold this,’ and he goes, throws the hammer really far, comes back and takes another swig and says, ‘That’s a…
6/10-6/12 According to the theory of localism, surfers indigenous to an area (locals) or relocated to an area for a sufficient amount of time (transplants) have the right to smash the car windows of newbie surfers (kooks) who steal a great break. Gallery director Tim Brown isn’t saying Kansas Citians are going to destroy the vehicles of visiting artists, but…
This explains a lot: The desk at which Thomas Frank wrote What’s the Matter With Kansas? sits beneath a map of Johnson County and a print of John Stuart Curry’s mural of madman John Brown. Frank is no gun-toting lunatic, but he shares with Brown an understanding that place is well worth fighting for. Also, both have the smarts to…
Thursday, June 10 Jim Harrison is the good-old-boy author of the novella Legends of the Fall, which was turned into a film of the same name starring Brad Pitt as the irresistible protagonist, Tristan Ludlow. After a prolific but commercially unsuccessful writing career, Harrison turned to screenwriting in Hollywood, where he made, and then lost, millions of dollars, befriending Jack…
In 1933, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that James Joyce’s Ulysses wasn’t obscene. He actually read it and didn’t “detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist.” Woolsey wrote, “I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic.” Here’s what’s really obscene: Ulysses was assigned to English majors everywhere. Regardless of Joyce’s artistic use of language (all 783 pages’ worth),…
Curious George While actor Ry Kincaid plays screen icon James Dean at night at the Westport Coffee House in the June production of Little Bastard, he’s making a monkey of himself during the day for Theatre for Young America. Playing the title role in Curious George , Kincaid reprises the simian role and mannerisms he created for TYA’s hit Curious…
The African Art Experience It isn’t often that Kansas City audiences have a chance to see a collection of non-Western art as diverse as the one on display at the Belger Arts Center. The majority of the pieces in The African Art Experience are three-dimensional objects made of wood, clay, metal or natural materials such as woven and dyed textiles….
When Late Night Theatre veteran and pop-culture obsessive Philip blue owl Hooser first saw the 1939 film The Women, he fell in love. Among the swoonworthy cast: a wisecracking Rosalind Russell, a naive Joan Fontaine and, as the ultimate home wrecker, Kansas City native Joan Crawford. Hooser recalls experiencing an instant identification with the characters, especially the ladies’ way…
This past winter, New York City-based Dana Schutz put up a show in Paris called Self Eaters and the People Who Love Them. In the paintings, women ate their own limbs so they could reconstruct their body parts after shitting them out. Schutz had created an image of what she does as a painter: She digests real-life themes and…
A weirder, more self-deprecating sense of humor would serve Lost in the Zoo well. Or maybe a lute player. Or anything off-the-wall. The trio has the cool-guy retro look down pat, a faint air of mystery (the frontman’s name is, apparently, Chris B) and zany, cavity-crunching songcraft that betrays an affection for Fifteen, Weezer, Wheatus, Green Day and Cursive. The…
If you listen close enough, you can hear it. That distinct sucking sound emanating from the jam-band world as Phish exits stage right and the rest of the rabble jockeys to take its place — or at least move up in the pecking order. But Phish’s surprise disintegration will likely have little effect on the Columbia quartet Bockman’s Euphio. Judging…
Regular readers of Action Comics will remember the Fortress of Solitude as Superman’s home away from home, a remote arctic compound where the Man of Steel could take a break from world-saving and get some thinking done. But it seems Temple of Solitude bellower Jason Biggerstaff needs a vacation from his fortress. The guy apparently has internal issues that could…
When Lawrence indie label Datura issued Approach’s Ultra Proteus EP in the fall of 2002, the disc quickly earned rightful status as a local hip-hop classic. By utilizing live musicians in the studio (former Gadjits keyboardist Ehren Starks and journeyman guitarist Eric Johnson both did outstanding work), ‘Proli (as he’s known to friends) created something special to finally deliver on…
For former Kansas City jazz chanteuse Karrin Allyson, keeping up with the Norah Joneses can be hard work. Then there are the Kralls, the Connicks and the rest of the contemporary crop of vocalists busily injecting dusty jazz standards with fresh material. It’s not that Cole Porter or the Gershwins are passé, but artists like Allyson have found a welcome…
You’ve been slacking and you know it. But it’s OK. The first step toward recovery is admitting that you have a problem. You acknowledge that your money-maker is bursting at the seams with unspent collateral. You realize that you want to shake what your momma gave you, if only you had the opportunity to do so away from the…
Word-association test: What comes to mind when you think of banjos? If you said Hee-Haw, Deliverance or The Beverly Hillbillies, you’re probably not alone. But music aficionados who believe that banjos and good dental hygiene needn’t be mutually exclusive probably think of Bela Fleck. Fleck is to the five-string what Captain Kirk was to the Enterprise — a pioneer boldly…
Howard and David Bellamy are not your average country music shit kickers. As the Bellamy Brothers, they became one of the genre’s most revered and successful acts. But the duo has always taken a slightly left-of-center approach to boot-scootin’ boogie. The Charmin-soft radio staple “Let Your Love Flow” topped the U.S. pop charts in 1975 and helped popularize country rock….
Not so very long ago, Tortoise was the hottest ticket in post-rock. The Chicago quintet didn’t invent the genre — Slint got there first, then broke up before the hype hit — but Tortoise was left holding the bag and posing for scores of magazine covers. The band’s popularity peaked between the mothballed licks and kraut-rock kicks of 1996’s Millions…
Sneering hipsters who think that Rush is a little too gray around the temples to rock obviously haven’t kept up with the news. On New Year’s Eve, guitarist Alex Lifeson pulled a Tupac by brawling with a pack of Florida sheriff’s deputies before spitting his own blood on one of them. Lifeson was hit with a laundry list of charges,…
Perhaps the only interesting attraction at Science City is its hall of optical illusions, which combines vase-or-face-variety visuals with dizzying, surreal effects that could make it a druggie’s delight. One display proves that if a grotesquely deformed portrait hangs upside down, the brain views the facial features as normal because it’s too disoriented to perceive additional flaws. Similarly, when musicians…
Aretha Franklin hasn’t released a single within spitting distance of her own standards since “A Rose Is Still a Rose” in 1998 or a better-than-average pop album since Who’s Zoomin’ Who? in 1985. Last year’s So Damn Happy found Lady Soul in good voice, with decent material, but drowning in church-free arrangements and back-up singers. Ugh. Submerging Aretha under synth…
I hear Starship built its city on rock and roll. That’s super and all, but even the leathery, anemic bar whores who still request that song need to eat. Which is why we built this city on the desecrated (and delicious) carcasses of livestock. Toss in a little rock and roll and you have a concert event — the Kansas…
What would have happened if Jaws had been filmed on Lake Michigan instead of off New England, or if Gentle Ben had been based in Ann Arbor instead of the Everglades? Don’t bother trying to make sense out of why an intense quartet from Michigan named itself Bear vs. Shark. All you’ll get is a headache, when what you really…
