Sometimes second chances do exist. Just ask the Pixies. The Boston alt-rock revolutionaries famously split in 1993 with the fax heard ’round the world — i.e., when vocalist and guitarist Black Francis (Charles Thompson) decided to fax news of the breakup to the Pixies’ manager without alerting his bandmates first. But after 11 years of enduring groups aping their quiet-loud…
Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is an intentional oxymoron in this instance. Put simply, it has no life in it at all. Not even the kids roped into an afternoon preview screening seemed terribly interested. Of course, children are little bullshit detectors, incorruptible and wise when they sense…
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood capitalized on the sympathy and admiration that envel-oped the nation’s firefighters after 9/11, and here we are. Jay Russell’s action-packed, flame-broiled Ladder 49, an all-out valentine to the firehouse fraternity, might never have gotten to the screen were it not for the tragic sacrifice hundreds of New York City firefighters…
Will and grace: I do not read the Pitch regularly. However, almost every issue I pick up, there is at least one letter bashing Christians and our belief system. As a faithful Christian, I admit I’m a sinner and a hypocrite. Christianity isn’t about perfectionism; it is about grace. My past is far from pretty or perfect, but because of…
Threads Off the rack and on the town. Club EightOneFive in Lawrence, 10:50 p.m. Thursday Cigarette cherries blink like fireflies throughout the iron-gated beer garden. Since Lawrence banned smoking in bars, patrons have had to take their brands outside. In our continuing effort to understand why people do what they do, the Pitch’s fashion expert, a straight guy named Bud,…
Last week, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that earning a medical degree on the Internet does not necessarily mean you can market yourself as a doctor in Kansas. On September 17, judges ordered Overland Park dentist Steven L. Thomas, D.D.S., M.D., to extract the latter degree from his title. “Thomas’ continued use of the M.D. designation, without a license,…
Jacki Penny is dressed for battle. Or for a mug shot. It’s just after 9:30 on a Thursday night, and Penny, 42, stands at the farthest edge of her parking lot, aiming a black, clunky device at a building about 180 feet away. She’s not a law-enforcement officer, but she expects one to arrive any minute. Penny manages the Bunker,…
Kansas winemaker Michelle Meyer had only been in the business for about three years when she had to testify before state legislators. It was 1997, and the Kansas Department of Revenue’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control had mailed a warning to Meyer and her father and business partner, Les Meyer. The two operate Holyfield Vineyard and Winery about half…
On a recent Saturday night, we managed to drag ourselves to the grand opening of Club Evolution, the new bar in Westport that’s taken over XO’s space. We had to snicker at the name, because if there’s one building that hasn’t changed in, like, the past 20 years, it’s the one at 3954 Central, which has previously housed Atlantis and…
A reader named Beverly sent me an e-mail last week. “What is the rule on bringing your own wine to a restaurant?” she asked. “I live in Missouri, so I need information on that state.” Beverly isn’t the only one with questions about the law. Bluestem owner Colby Garrelts was briefly allowing certain regulars to bring their own bottles into…
As hard as it might be for some readers to believe, I was once a very picky eater. As a little kid, my parents used to resort to all kinds of ploys to encourage me to sample an unfamiliar vegetable, a hunk of beef cooked in a different manner from how my mother made it, a salad with a…
9/23-9/25 For every ten traditional theater companies staging familiar comedies and murder mysteries, there seems to be one troupe positioned outside the mainstream. The city’s newest addition calls itself Storizenmotion, and it respectfully promotes the idea that the art form doesn’t have to be welded to the page. Kansas City native Helena Cosentino, the group’s artistic director, recently spent the…
ONGOING Atchison, Kansas, once was known as the city that refused to die; apparently, many of its deceased residents are just as obstinate. The Haunted Atchison Trolley Tour, which runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Halloween, takes thrill seekers on narrated tours through the most active afterlife in all of Kansas. Along with tour standards such as Sallie, the young…
SAT 9/25 There’s a new arrival on Kansas City’s rack of recent fashion shows. Isabel’s Fashion Spectacle, a peripatetic carnival of couture now in its fourth year, takes place from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday in Zone Sculpture Park (18th and Locust). Artist Bill Drummond promises that his crew — “the outgoing, exuberant, crazy fringe element of the Crossroads”…
TUE 9/28 There’s an elemental thing folks learn from horror films: To kill a zombie, shoot it in the head. Lauren Burdolski, an aficionado of the undead who earned a master’s degree for studying the horror-film genre, suggests that Hollywood zombies, whose heads are ripe for the splaying, actually are a rotting, stiff-legged metaphor for rampant consumerism. (Which is…
Most Kansas Citians haven’t seen amazing rock-show posters for concerts they actually attended. Recycled Sounds’ walls showcase some of these vibrant creations, most of which include the names of faraway venues in their elaborate designs. Locally, concert promotion usually entails newspaper ads and billboards, bombastic radio spots and boring black letters on a blank marquee. Yawn. Fortunately for art-starved music…
Thursday, September 23 Who says women ain’t got balls? We know plenty of ballsy gals. The problem is that the female anatomy suggests no equally emphatic synonym for guts. Yet, when we consider the accomplishments of Hollywood stunt doubles Jeannie Epper and Zoe Bell, we think of big, brass balls. The recent documentary Double Dare, which follows their careers,…
Claudia Riley, a dignified Arkansas politico who was in her early 70s during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings, most certainly did not have sexual relations with the then-president. And she told the independent counsel as much, with a hint of sarcasm on top of her slight Southern drawl. That Ken Starr’s people showed up at her home asking questions about…
Avenue of the Arts “Silly” seems to be the overwhelming theme of this year’s Avenue of the Arts, a temporary installation of six public-art pieces along Central Avenue downtown. Kansas City Art Institute printmaking teacher Laura Berman’s “Cowboys and Indians” has a ‘zine-aesthetic-meets-the-USDA’s-latest-fruit-campaign feel, along with a 1950s-nostalgia twist: Large-scale, black-and-white, photocopy-quality images of children in cowboy and Indian costumes…
Camian Carrillo always knew he couldn’t spray graffiti forever. It started in seventh grade. “I was sneaking out, you know,” he says. “After a while, my mom caught on, like, 5 years later. She’s like, ‘If you go to jail, I’m not bailing you out!’” In the 17 years he spent painting walls under bridges and viaducts at 2 or…
Amelia Bedelia Over the course of thirty Amelia Bedelia books, author Peggy Parish put her titular housekeeper in the employ of various dotty families. The domestic’s most notable trait is her literal, concrete take on the world; she’s the kind of person who, when told to strike a match, hits one with a hammer. For Theatre for Young America’s production,…
As Late Night Theatre veteran David Wayne Reed tells it, growing up in Louisburg, Kansas, offered its share of corny clichés. He recently admitted that when he wasn’t raking hay or toting grain, his social calendar centered on tractor pulls and a country-and-western dance palace. Such a childhood might not seem conducive to the needs of a blossoming dramatist, but…
There was a time when the disciples of Bill Monroe believed in authenticity presented with the seriousness of a Kentucky preacher’s Sunday sermon. But it was in the hippie hollers of San Francisco that rock, blues, jazz and folk met and mingled with bluegrass in a crazy, tie-dyed, roadside revival of styles. Guitarist Peter Rowan is one of the…
Macha defies easy categorization with its mix of instruments and influences, which range from rock and postpunk to Indonesian folk. And that’s the way the band likes it. Macha refuses to seek easy shelter under the yawning indie-rock umbrella, opting instead to combine curious tools — hammered dulcimers, double-reed instruments, gongs, strings and synthesizers — to create a sound that…
