Read the Time-Life build-your-own-mansion-out-of-Popsicle-sticks series. Ask Martha Stewart — during visitation hours — for her advice in exchange for a carton of Pall Malls. Slip a roofie in Bob Vila’s mojito and have your way with his brain. They’ll tell you. The foundation is the most important thing. You dig the hole. Level the ground. Pour the cement. Let it…
Rosa Parks set it off. She wasn’t the first or the last freedom fighter, but when the Alabama seamstress refused to relinquish her public-transit perch, it was the ah, hell naw heard ’round the world. Fuse. Spark. Explosion. Then Martin Luther King marched on Washington. Malcolm X maligned Plymouth Rock. The Black Panthers threw a (Molotov) cocktail party. Attack dogs…
Let’s just get the term out of the way up front: fag hag. A thousand pardons, sensitive readers, but there is no P.C. equivalent. The new film Stage Beauty is an absolute fag-hag fiesta. Beneath its historical leanings and classical veneer, it’s utterly gaga for girls who love boys who love boys. However, it’s also marvelous entertainment: witty, wry, insightful…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It’s a bracing thrill served up before a word of dialogue has been delivered. (Hackford uses the original records, and Ray’s soundtrack plays like a…
Rank and vile: Thank you for covering the Phelps picket line at the Billy Graham Crusade ( Backwash, October 14 ). I am a born-again Christian and read the Pitch weekly for Charles Ferruzza’s columns and some incredible reporting. Saturday I was driving my 8-year-old son to a Bible quiz meet in Topeka and drove by what I can only…
Wesson in Hot Oil? From over here in newspaperland, this just doesn’t look good: According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, Emanuel Cleaver’s congressional campaign wrote two checks in June and July totaling $1,500 to something called “One Goal Consultants” for “media consulting.” According to the Missouri secretary of state’s records, One Goal Consultants is 100 percent owned…
The most annoying part of the last two weeks before Election Day is the constant news about polls. The Strip is sick of hearing the voting preferences of some small sample of anonymous voters who happened to be home when ABC News called. We decided we’d rather hear from folks whose opinions we really care about — the people who…
Her peeps are playing it cool, but Julia Irene Kauffman needs help. Kauffman, the daughter of Ewing and Muriel Kauffman, wants to build a breathtaking performing arts center for the symphony, ballet and opera. Foundations under her control have pledged $105 million toward the $304 million project. Her significant other, Ken Dworak, is the project manager. The dream has not…
On a recent Tuesday morning,the NPR broadcast is filled with Iraq news. The women of Fallujah have left town for their own safety, and a bomb has hit a Baghdad restaurant. But inside the Franklin County Visitor’s Center, about 50 miles southwest of Kansas City, the war seems a distant concern. The newish building, decorated with blown-up vintage postcards and…
In our humble estimation, Halloween = Best. Holiday. Ever. Says our friend Tracey, “What’s not to like? You get to wear costumes. You get to eat candy. And you get to drink beer.” Naturally, we jumped on the chance to get into Halloween mode early when we dressed in costume with the cast of Late Night Theatre for their pub…
What’s more deadly, cigarette smoking or obesity? I pondered this while I was buttering a warm roll (with real butter, mind you, not margarine) and looking around the tidy dining room at Harold’s Restaurant & Lounge (4071 N.E. Prather Road). Driving north of the river to Harold’s, I hadn’t thought much about the impending controversy sparked by City Councilman Chuck…
I hate to think of myself as a snob, but I do make a living as a professional critic, which requires me to be, in nicer terms, discriminating. I also have to be a bit of a voyeur, have a healthy dose of cynicism and exhibit just a hint of arrogance. Still, I am blown away by the snobbishness…
FRI 10/22 The United States has produced its share of outstanding female drummers: Sheila E. played with glamorous flair, Samantha Maloney made Mötley Crüe her home sweet home and, on the local landscape, Amy Farrand provided Sister Mary’s brutal backbeat. West Africa’s Amazones also have ascended to iconic status in their homeland, but first they had to prove they could…
SUN 10/24 In an effort to remind the city of its many services, the Lesbian and Gay Community Center is throwing its tenth annual festival and fund-raiser, Out in Westport. This fall has been a time of, um, renewal for the center, which reopened with regular hours this month after a summer of what center member Mitch Levine euphemistically calls…
10/22-10/23 There’s no reason us city folk can’t go to the SuperBull Tour Championship Bull Riding World Finals Friday and Saturday at Kemper Arena (1800 Genessee). We don’t need cans of Skoal in our pockets to enjoy watching a cowboy cling to a rope tied around a twisting, snorting 2-ton mass of enraged beef before catapulting off as a…
THU 10/21 Recently, Oprah Winfrey invited a pair of newly separated conjoined twins to appear on her show. Although Winfrey claimed to have lofty motives for the invitation, her segment arguably had roots in the sideshow business devoted to cashing in on human oddities. Filmmaker Jeff Krulik, however, makes no secret of his own attraction to such entertainment. “I’ve been…
How do you make an actor disappear onstage during a live performance? In staging The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells’ 1897 science-fiction novel, the Aquila Theatre Company faces the tough task of making the original Mr. Cellophane convincingly transparent. Aquila’s producing artistic director Peter Meineck confirms that the show’s star will actually vanish, though he emphasizes that the trick is not…
Thursday, October 21 Tom Deatherage’s Hyde Park gallery, the Late Show, was around way before art became such a hip hobby in Kansas City. Now that he’s gotten comfortable in his relatively new space at 1600 Cherry (816-474-1300), he’s tackling another project — the Anderson Law Group at 110 West Ninth Street. The office is nestled among buildings Deatherage…
Two months ago, community activist Patrick Sumner and his minister, the Rev. Alfred White of Community Missionary Baptist Church, were talking about how Wyandotte County had endured a violent summer, which was finally coming to a close. White wondered whether some symbolic show of force could inspire the community to stand together. Sumner, thinking back on his years of collective-action…
Five Locals, No Carbs, No Genomes, More Flavor In this show depicting work by five local artists — Jessica Johnson, Meredith Burton, Sean Semones, James Trotter and Pat Alexander — part of what you see is process. On the day of the opening, Johnson began drawing on the gallery wall as part of her installation. She was still at it…
Baba Yaga In a gesture of theatrical glasnost, the Lawrence Arts Center opens its Family Theatre Series with Ric Averill’s adaptation of the classic Russian fairy tale Baba Yaga: The Bony Legged Witch. Set in an archetypal fairy-tale world, complete with wicked stepmother and spindly crone, the musical features a cast of 25-plus, mixing students from the center’s youth program…
Forget weenie roasts, fireworks and the red-white-and-blue. For playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, America means loaded weapons, Crown Royal and crooked card games. Parks was all of 25 when The New York Times called her 1989’s “most promising playwright.” If that was a burden to her, you wouldn’t know it from her ascension to a place atop the list of black female…
Ming & FS live like green-conscious sci-fi superheroes. Yeah, their throbbing creations have scored them car commercials. But Ming, for one, not only pores over architectural designs for homes built out of renewable materials but also senses the needs of their inhabitants. Uh-huh. But these New York City DJs also epitomize musical progressiveness. Scouring inspirations scrapped by other DJs, the…
It wouldn’t be a complete surprise to find the latest effort from Human Cropcircles in heavy rotation at Michael Moore’s next house party. Tiananmen Square pepper-sprays the frustration of social unrest with samples of political poetry, anti-Bush speeches and conspiracy theories layered over dark, hypnotic beats. C.E.S. Cru rapper Ubiquitous joins the Cropcircles to break up the monotony of beats…
