By now, every music rag worth its hipster salt has trumpeted the Bay area quartet Rogue Wave as “the new Shins.” The label isn’t entirely implausible: Besides having toured with the Garden State poster children last summer, the two bands share a record label (Sub Pop) and an affinity for effortlessly crafted music indebted to melodic ’60s psych-pop and indie-rock…
It’s all so familiar: Keanu Reeves, shrouded in a black trench coat that flaps behind him like a superhero’s wings, moves between a netherworld and a real world used as battleground, breeding ground and playground for higher beings amused and appalled by mortals. Here he is once again, a savior tapping into unseen worlds in order to sort out this…
The Sea Inside, the new right-to-die drama from Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), is a flawed film worth seeing. Based on Letters From Hell, a book by quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro about his 30-year quest to kill himself, the movie favors the emotional over the legal, keeping Sampedro’s personal relationships front and center rather than following his struggle with…
Jerry rig: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s “Open Wide!” (February 10): Jerry Johnston certainly picks the parts of the Bible that support his prejudices and ignores the others. I hope he doesn’t discover the part where it says disobedient children should be killed or the part where it says the proper punishment for rape is to have the rapist pay the victim’s…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everyone see that what we learned in Sunday school really does matter. Dear Jimmy: I’ve had kind of a weird experience. I started dating this guy because he seemed really normal, but it turns out he’s got several kinks. Mostly, he likes…
The new year began with a story that didn’t bode well for 2005. The city’s first killing involved assailants shooting a man who had been a simple bystander during an argument early on the morning of January 1 outside the Empire Room near 31st Street and Gillham Road. Jeffrey Dunham, a 24-year-old former Marine with a 6-year-old son, had…
The Strip is outraged by the intelligent-design squabble going on in the Kansas public schools. So far, the local media have done a pathetic job of explaining the ideas behind “ID,” giving us no real clue what’s actually at stake in the effort to change science teaching standards. Well, this meat patty will clue you in to the awful truth:…
Troy Helming looks good for a guy who’s been losing sleep. Microphone in hand, he gazes out from a small stage at the Overland Park Convention Center. Beside him is a plug-in model of a futuristic white windmill. “Kansas City is known for a few things,” Helming begins in a strong, clear voice. “Great jazz, famous barbecue and, soon, as…
On a recent Thursday night, we found ourselves at a south Johnson County bar for the usual reasons: boredom, intrigue and a chance to get some ass. Actually, we’re just kidding on that last item. Earlier in the week, we had received an e-mail from avid reader John, who proposed meeting up. Naturally, we try to be pretty cautious in…
Many international cuisines lend themselves to outright snobbery — French, Italian and Indian, for example. But Mexican? “Home-style” or not, the fare at the new Blue Agave (see review) won’t come as any surprise to devotees of the long-established cantinas up and down Southwest Boulevard. A burrito is a burrito, right? But to reduce Mexican cuisine — both classic and…
It’s been years since I worked in a restaurant, but I still have nightmares about waiting tables. They usually involve the same scenario: I’m in the middle of an unfamiliar dining room in the middle of a busy dinner shift, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t know what’s on the menu or where…
2/11-2/20 The theory holds that, when a sitting administration veers sharply to the right and uptight, arts groups compensate by migrating the other direction. Performance artist Karen Finley, for example, enjoyed much more fame when the embattled National Endowment for the Arts was under the thumb of the Republicans than as just another struggling artist in the Clinton era. Lawrence’s…
SAT 2/12 Valentine’s Day can be hard on everyone — the lovers, the lonely and the lost. It always reminds us of the one of those nights with high expectations that are hard to live up to. Fortunately, a group of raconteurs has come to save us from the bittersweet sentimentality of this insidiously invasive holiday of sweet nothings, boxed…
SUN 2/13 Except for the casinos, Kansas City has few places to drink in a good view of the Mighty Mo. Talk about a failure in urban planning — we sometimes forget the damned creek is even there! This weekend, Lawrence earns the right to call itself River City when some KU Greeks toast their local trickle at the Kaw…
SAT 2/12 Old-school proms in movies always look more fun than the modern variety. In the ’50s, local bands played their own slow-dance ballads and high-energy rock. Today, DJs handle most of the musical duties, and the few remaining live bands are usually soulless cover acts. Back then, creative choreography ruled, as depicted in shots of saddle-shoed lasses going airborne….
In the mid-1980s, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles was on the cusp of acquiring an ancient Greek kouros statue. Scientists with stereomicroscopes certified the rare statue’s authenticity. Without anything more than a cold stare, however, art experts the world over knew it was a fraud. Controversy raged for years, until the Getty’s lawyers determined through inconsistencies in its documentation…
Thursday, February 10 In the world of raw-food consumption, David Wolfe is God. The author of Eating for Beauty and The Sunfood Diet Success System recently spread the gospel of uncooked vegetables on the SciFi Channel’s reality show Mad Mad House, revealing his tastes for nonconstricting clothing and nude yoga to fellow hosts Don the Vampire and Fiona the Witch….
The summer we turned 15, our parents bestowed what they said was a generous 11 p.m. curfew. With our first taste of freedom, we pushed the boundaries, of course — coming home a little late the first night, a little later the next, seeing just how far we could go without getting in trouble. That lasted about four days….
Affluenza! High praise goes to director Mark Ciglar and the bountifully gifted cast of James Sherman’s smart, tart comedy about the poisonous effects of having too much money. Sherman’s choice to write the show in rhyming couplets, à la Moliere, is distracting only until the ear gets used to it — then it becomes damned clever. Of the uniformly winning…
From Bingham to Benton, Midwest as Muse Those of us who grew up around here have seen paintings by Thomas Hart Benton and company from such an early age, and on such abysmally boring field trips, that the artists’ work constitutes — for us — the visual equivalent of white noise. Incredibly, this exhibit could change that. George Caleb…
If Victoria has a secret, I’d love to hear it. I’m simply dying to know what sort of information might be considered private by someone who doesn’t mind displaying her collection of G-strings for window shoppers. Other questions I have for her: Why does the blue pajama shirt with green lettering say “PINK”? And for whose benefit are the framed…
It’s a mixed blessing when Vanilla Ice immortalizes you in song. On “Too Cold,” an “Ice Ice Baby” metal makeover on the alarmingly Korny 1998 album Hard to Swallow, Vanilla bellows, Swamp plays on the fade, slice like a ninja/Cut like a razor blade/So fast, other DJs say, “Damn.” Damn, indeed. DJ Swamp took home turntablism’s top prize in 1996…
Few record labels can forecast the future of emo and postpunk quite like Deep Elm. There may be other indie-rock artists using emo to go to more radical creative depths, but Deep Elm acts such as Minnesota’s Clair De Lune manage to keep one foot in the present and one in the future. Clair De Lune’s cerebral cross-rhythms borrow from…
Judging a band by its name is easy to do. Rest assured, monikers such as As I Lay Dying and Bleed the Dream don’t point to groups one can safely take home to mom. The Jazz Mandolin Project, on the other hand, is mother-approved, with (surprise!) jazz played on a mandolin. Jamie Masefield formed the JMP as a solo, one-night-a-month…
