This Christmas, Steve and Shayla King won’t be worshipping at Visitation Church. The Kings have been attending Mass at Visitation for 30 years. The couple were married in its sanctuary in 1969, and they officially joined the venerable Brookside parish in 1974. Their three kids went to grade school there before going on to Rockhurst. One of those kids married…
Terry Riley has gone to Blue Ridge Mall to shop and see movies since he was a kid. The mall has been dying a slow death over the past few years, so the 5th District City Councilman welcomes new business opportunities. He wonders, however, about the wisdom of making Wal-Mart the shopping center’s savior. Bernard Craig and his partners in…
The letter was from prison, and it wasn’t addressed to me. But it couldn’t have arrived on my desk at a more appropriate time. “Public Apology,” it began. Two pages of handwritten script followed, spelling out how sorry Farmington Corrections Center inmate No. 1069994 felt about the crimes he had committed three years earlier. Brandon Samuel Brooks was an Internet…
With Jen Chen on vacation, the Pitch staff figured it couldn’t let Event KC’s inaugural Bartender’s Ball go off at the Beaumont Club in Westport without the Night Ranger treatment. So, because I’d done duty as a Night Ranger Research Assistant in the past, I was dragged in to pitch relief. Finding RAs of my own was easy. RA Jonetta…
I usually growl at the increasingly aggressive panhandlers working the downtown streets, but I had to pull out a dollar the other day for the skinny guy in the tweedy coat who announced, “Hey, man, I’m not homeless. I just want a cheeseburger.” Yeah, yeah, he probably used the buck to booze it up, but what the hell. I liked…
Joseph Avelutto, Kansas City’s patriarch of Apulian pasta and pizza, is one tough biscotti. Since moving to Kansas City in 1977, the Italian-born entrepreneur has opened a couple of pizzerias, three fine-dining restaurants and an Italian delicatessen. A perfectionist by nature, even Avelutto admits he’s “a stubborn kind of fellow,” which is an understatement if you’ve spent any time with…
12/3-12/26 Convenience is an often unaffordable luxury when people have major bombs to drop on their loved ones. Case in point: In the Unicorn Theatre’s (3828 Main, 816-531-7529) new musical Convenience, a 26-year-old man faces the task of coming out to his estranged mother, who then must look for the right moment to inform her son that a stepfather is…
FRI 12/3 When Andy Byers was young, he fantasized about floating from his bedroom in Boonville, Missouri, to a winter wonderland at the North Pole. Upon his arrival, Byers would meet a polar bear who would give him sage advice. Instead of giving up his childhood dream, Byers (now a graduate student at Ohio State University) decided to create it,…
FRI 12/3 Space heaters are a must for outdoor holiday shopping. We’re not saying that the warming tents at the Kansas City World Holiday Market are more important than the handcrafted art, ethnic food, and imported crafts and clothing. But they sure don’t hurt. However, the City Market crowd might get a little dense wherever heat is radiating, risking a…
MON 12/6 Anyone who’s been stopped dead in her tracks by a heart-wrenching pair of heels instinctively knows the magnetism of a good window display. Rod Parks, however, is an expert; he knows the stopping power of the $15,000 Carlton bookcase, designed by Ettore Sottsass (Italian, natch), in the window of Retro Inferno. “It’s a postmodern, early-’80s response to the…
In the old-school Nintendo cartridge Excitebike, video bikers could craft their own courses. Gutless gamers charted easy rides, but most virtual pedalers created grueling gauntlets. Local Cyclocross trailblazers Chris Locke and Jeremy Haynes have mastered the much riskier real-life balance between daring design and renegade riding. Haynes first encountered Cyclocross, a breathtaking blend of road racing, mountain biking and stunt…
Thursday, December 2 The military draft may be unthinkable to our Republican leaders (so they say), but in Israel every citizen is drafted into the military at age 18. Itzhak Assour was no exception, and in the early ’80s, the army paratrooper found himself reevaluating life as he recovered from being shot out of the sky. Disillusioned by the sad…
For Charlie Murphy, the declaration “I’m Rick James, bitch!” has never sounded sweeter. As the breakout star of Comedy Central’s Chapelle’s Show, Murphy spun comic gold — including the catchphrase du jour — from the story of his friendship with the late superfreak. As a result, Murphy is finally getting a little cosmic justice in return for his stint as…
Christmas in Song Whether your holiday play list veers toward traditional carols or the pop of Bing Crosby and Eartha Kitt, you should be sated by Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual Christmas show. Joining pianist and master of ceremonies J. Kent Barnhart are Sylvia Stoner, Matt Leisy and, following a last-minute casting change, Toni Gates-Grantham. Last year’s audiences reportedly leapt…
Cross Stitch, Craft Medium Redefined Embroidery and other crafty practices are still considered pretty girly, in spite of efforts to the contrary (and a few male names on the price list). That’s OK. Just because some ladies now bond in locker rooms and others over superficially feminist TV shows such as Sex in the City does not mean that some…
Before David Sedaris’ last two books, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, I was convinced that his sister, Amy, was the Sedaris with all the talent. Earlier books, such as 1994’s Barrel Fever, were internal, calculated and self-conscious — they revealed nothing so much as the bones of a stranger. But something happened…
Shepard Fairey isn’t getting any younger. None of us are, and the legendary wheat-pasting-rebel-cum-international-design-guru is no exception. His joints don’t ache after he scales buildings to put up his enormous, cryptic “Obey Giant” posters, but he’s 34, and he can see that day coming. Being a street artist for nigh on two decades comes with its own particular conundrums. According…
In one classic hip-hop cut, Black Sheep rapped, You can get with this, or you can get with that. But when DJ P works the wheels of steel, listeners don’t have to make a choice. They can get Metallica and Slick Rick, Kansas and Run D.M.C., Black Sheep and Kiss. Springfield, Missouri, native P collaborated with DJ Z-Trip on Uneasy…
This is so much more than the average easy-listening crap you are forced to endure at your relatives’ wedding receptions. As an indicator of the incredible things you will find on All Roads Lead Here, the first track, “Wonderful You,” is also the last track on the album, only in “dance mix” form (because you just can’t get enough). Like…
The beauty of gospel is its ability to swim against the mainstream current by embracing maturity and experience as valued commodities. Yet traditionalist notions are precisely what make Ben Harper’s collaboration with the masterful Blind Boys of Alabama a mixed bag. Harper, a young, high-ranking acolyte in the Church of the Endless Jam, is supported by a healthy, faithful congregation,…
On the 1999 album So … How’s Your Girl?, the faux-stylish studs in Handsome Boy Modeling School (aka superproducers Prince Paul and Dan “the Automator” Nakamura) emptied their imaginations and Rolodexes, creating an alternate musical universe with room for everyone from Mike D to Father Guido Sarducci. The follow-up, White People, is even more diverse — RZA, meet the Mars…
Being at the fore of rap’s hottest trend comes with perks. Those perks can be found on Crunk Juice, Lil Jon’s fifth full-length, which features an A-list roster of rap superstars, including Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Nas and R Kelly. Lil Jon needs all the help he can get. His party-animal persona is 60-feet tall and falling, but his mike…
You know it’s the holidays in Kansas City when that man with the one-of-a-kind suit shows up. No, not that guy — Anson Funderburgh, the man who has single-handedly Bogarted all the finest vintage suits in North America. (If they’re too big for Funderburgh, they go to harpman and vocalist Sam Myers.) Funderburgh is famous as a subtle bluesman. No…
Thursday really fucked everything up when it released 2001’s Full Collapse. It wasn’t the first — or, some would argue, the best — album of its kind, but it did create a cookie-cutter formula that nearly every post-whatevercore band has copied. But whereas most of these acts scramble to sound indistinguishable, the members of A Static Lullaby have become the…
