Whenever I run into people who say “hella,” I’ve always had an itch to sock them in the jaw with a pipe wrench. You know the people. Everything is hella cool. They always get hella drunk and talk hella shit. Then they tell you about the guy who was hella mad and how he hit them hella hard in the…
G: Where did you say you’re from? PD: Kansas City. You know, barbecue, Dorothy … Oh, that’s right. “Carry on Wayward Son” and all that. That’s us. Why are you in the studio on your vacation? I’m not real good with the time-off thing. At first, you think, Oh, fantastic! A vacation! And then, a couple days later, you can’t…
Gandhi had an indomitable spirit. Martin Luther King Jr. had steely resolve. Mother Teresa had otherworldly compassion. And C.E.S. Cru? With what divine gift — nay, calling — were these humble civil servants endowed to fight the inequities of the world? Two-for-one Miller High Life night. Shit, fool. Mahatma should have celebrated each fast with a raging kegger. MLK could…
It’s so easy to laugh at metalheads because it’s so hard for us metalheads to laugh at ourselves. You’d think a genre that came of age in a codpiece, that once rocked bangs high enough to imperil aircraft, would inherently have a well-developed sense of humor. But alas, headbangers are a terminally overserious bunch these days. And no band exposes…
Sam Beckett plays the organ at Kauffman Stadium. Nine innings a game. Eighty (or so) games a year. “Charge” and the Mexican hat dance and a little bit of Usher. When pitching coach John Cumberland is talking Brian Anderson down, maybe Beckett will play “With a Little Help From My Friends” with two-handed jazz chords. When first baseman Mike…
You’re a much-loved comedian who just did a low-budget, multi-award-winning film with an acclaimed up-and-coming director. In recent years, thanks in part to your work with the younger, edgier filmmaking set, you’re starting to be taken seriously as an actor. You even managed to score an Oscar nomination, something few might have predicted when you were on that late-night comedy…
The first time through, you might dismiss Coffee and Cigarettes as a filmmaker’s recess, playtime before the serious business of making a real feature. Jim Jarmusch never intended this new movie, a collection of 11 shorts made over the past couple of decades, to be a movie at all. It began as a one-off in 1986, when he filmed…
Off track: As a native Kansas Citian, I commend the Pitch on its honest and realistic coverage of the trouble with Union Station (C.J. Janovy’s “Move Over, Mary,” May 20; Tony Ortega’s ” Star Stuck,” May 27). One of the reasons I left my hometown for Minneapolis was the lack of a strong downtown community. My father, Robert Vollrath, had…
This pious porterhouse always gets a spiritual kick out of the liberal weenies at The Kansas City Star. Whether it’s pointy-headed Bill Tammeus in Saturday’s Faith section or bleeding heart Vern Barnet in his Wednesday column, our paper of record desperately wants to give the impression that the world is a big, wonderful place where all people of faith hold…
Kenneth Matzdorff, the president of Cass County Telephone, mingles easily among the locals at Pat’s Family Restaurant in Peculiar, where CassTel is based. “He comes down and eats breakfast with us and is just as common as an old shoe,” says George Lewis, the mayor of Peculiar. Despite ordinary appearances, Matzdorff lives in a gated community outside Belton. County appraisers…
Rebecca Beach had bad taste in men — and Jose Arevalo was no exception. Sweet-talking, brown-eyed and slender, he had a nice smile and he paid attention to her, which was something she craved. In the spring of 2000, 22-year-old Beach was feeling even more vulnerable than usual. Her brother had died a few months earlier, she was having…
So, since the Night Ranger’s boss recommended her to serve on Union Station’s board of directors (“Move Over Mary,” May 20), the NR thought it was her civic duty to check out the Young Friends of Union Station’s Kentucky Derby Party on May 22. This $30 themed party included an all-you-can-drinkfest, a Marching Cobras performance and a rebroadcast of the…
Even if I have a heart attack after writing this, I’m dead serious: Low-carb foods can go to hell! This weird national fad — which has already lasted longer than the Pet Rock, slap-on bracelets and Ricky Martin’s career — even showed its ugly face at the National Restaurant Association’s convention in Chicago two weeks ago. This annual carnival of…
One of the things I love about television soap operas is the way they both stretch and compress time: Murder trials can last for months, fatal illnesses can be healed in days, marriages implode immediately, children completely bypass puberty on their way from toddler to twentysomething. That’s what I love about restaurant soap operas, too. In the year since I…
6/3-6/19 Late Night Theatre’s first experiment with one-man shows was Ron Megee’s successful debunking of Christmas with his version of David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries. The venue embarks on a new one-man endeavor this week when Late Night veteran Philip “Blue Owl” Hooser performs a salute to the 1939 film adaptation of Clare Booth Luce’s play The Women. It’s called…
6/4-6/30 Jesse Small makes giant steel sculptures (which, obviously, is ironic given his name). Some of his works are detailed, mechanical-looking pieces: spokes, wheels and intricate curlicues. But he’s best known for the steel-plate stealth fighters that won him a grant from the Charlotte Street Fund and for his participation in the Avenue of the Arts waaaay back at…
SUN 6/6 A few years ago, Alex Torres of Kansas City, Kansas, found himself where no street racer wants to be: pursued by the cops and losing control of his car. “I was going over 115 and almost wrecked my car. I got away, but after that, I quit.” With 140 horsepower under the hood and nowhere else to…
SAT 6/5 Flamenco is a dance of rhythm and passion. Learning it in a second-floor studio downtown with an exotic instructor and the authentic music of live flamenco guitar sounds pretty steamy to us. We imagine those fabulous red, ruffly skirts flipping and flying through the air. And we imagine sweat — lots of sweat. Manos Rojas Escuela de Flamenco…
Bob Burnquist’s career consists of threatening his body with physical damage on a regular basis. So it’s surprising how seriously the pro skateboarder takes his — and everyone else’s — nutrition. “I’m Brazilian. I grew up there, and my diet’s totally different. I moved here and had to conform a little bit and change the way I ate,” Burnquist says…
Thursday, June 3 How much booze can one person consume in four hours? That’s what we asked ourselves after we opened the handsome, Hammerpress-designed invitations to Life’s a Dance. The benefit for Camp Quality Northwest Missouri, which lets children with cancer and their families get away from the hospital for a trip to camp, goes from 7 to 11 p.m….
What the KAN Film Festival lacks in its homophonous counterpart’s prestige, it makes up for in a lack of protesting French. The festival begins Thursday with the world premiere of Wamego: Making Movies Anywhere, a documentary by Steve Balderson, a filmmaker so ambitious that he shot a making-of documentary about his own film. The movie chronicles the creation of Balderson’s…
Forbidden Broadway The Theater League is resuscitating this sendup of Broadway with a mix of parodies old and new at Union’s Station’s City Stage. Lampooning stage icons from Ethel Merman to the dark, ambisexual revival of Cabaret are Forbidden Broadway veterans such as Cathy Barnett, Don Richards and Becky Barta. They’ve all done the show for many years but…
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…
Blue Ribbon Press could be a band. This seven-member artists’ collective, which specializes in T-shirts, posters, stickers and buttons, could set up one kick-ass merch table in the back of a bar somewhere. Does the fact that these kids don’t play music together mean that they should be denied the rock-and-roll lifestyle? Not according to Kyle Sears, who has gone…
