Xiu Xiu (say it like shoe-shoe) attracts hecklers when it plays bars, mainly because Jamie Stewart is one of the most emotive frontmen in modern music. A typical Xiu Xiu show feels like a reverse intervention for a morbidly depressed musician, with the at-risk singer inviting fans to an ostensible concert, then shocking them by baring his darkest impulses. He…
Emo fans may have heavy hearts as the Get Up Kids play their final, sold-out shows this weekend in Lawrence and Kansas City, but the band hasn’t shed any genre-appropriate tears during a farewell tour that’s been one of its most enjoyable. “We get to go play these big shows and just play and have fun, which should be the…
The week after Blackpool Lights’ inaugural gig, its drummer, Billy Brimblecom, got a biopsy on a fist-sized tumor in his left leg. Shortly after that, and two weeks after his first chemotherapy treatment for Ewing’s sarcoma, Brimblecom hit the studio with his bandmates, hammering down 14 tracks in two days. His hair was just beginning to fall out. Now, nearly…
It’s only 20 feet. A few steps, a moment of courage, and that gap would be gone. Yet no one in the sidelined audience shuffles toward the stage when the band begins warming up. There are some obvious clues as to why. Setting up on the other side of the long, lonesome floor of the Hurricane, In the Pines is…
An epileptic bulldog in the home of the world’s most famous wine critic. A snarling Boston terrier on the streets of Tuscany. A loping Labrador gobbling grapes in Burgundy. In every location of Mondovino — a rich, savory documentary addressing the globalization of the wine industry — there is a dog with personality, whose presence is meant to inform our…
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned inside-out. The aliens are still out there, but this time they’re out for our blood. The young filmmaker who wrote and directed Close Encounters, which awed and dazzled like an exquisitely illustrated bedtime tale, has grown nastier in his middle age, making…
Right was wrong: As a recent transplant to the Midwest, I tend to regard life and culture here as “monochromatic.” The area’s many right-wing dolts finally succeeded in stomping out one of the few points of color on local radio: Russ Johnson (Backwash, June 23). Now that he’s gone, we can safely eat our ribs and drink our Kool-Aid without…
The Strip wonders: Is it really possible for a Pitch writer to convince the people of Kansas City: * That its new downtown arena will be redesigned as a memorial to Confederate war dead, complete with a Confederacy Hall of Fame and a new façade in the style of a Southern plantation? * That Confederate heritage groups plan to re-enact…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everybody see that what we learned in Sunday school really matters. Dear Jimmy: My mom wasn’t thrilled, but it didn’t take me too long to get over the fact that my new boyfriend doesn’t go to church. In fact, he pretty much…
The first thing I did after last November’s election — after taking my staff out for stiff drinks at the bar down the block, that is — was to write out a check to the American Civil Liberties Union. This wasn’t a radical act; I’d been a card-carrying member for years. It’s the least a journalist can do. We couldn’t…
The legend of the patch dates back to the late 1940s, when a pack of motorcycle riders terrorized a California town by getting drunk and drag racing down its main streets. Then, in 1960, another pack was said to have burned down a town in Mexico. The publicity that followed hurt motorcycle sales, so the American Motorcycle Association ran an…
After enduring a 20-plus-hour journey back from our recent vacation in Taiwan and Japan, we desperately needed a nap and a drink (in that order) after landing in KC. As we groggily rode down Interstate 29 from KCI, a sign caught our attention: Final Approach. The name of that bar made us giggle because it reminded us of that episode…
Once upon a time, there were two kinds of restaurants: fancy places and joints. The latter category included diners, dinettes, lunch counters, saloons, barbecue pits, chili shacks and so on. Now there are so many different categories and subcategories for dining establishments, I can barely keep them all straight. Like the difference between “fast food” — McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco…
Officially, there’s no such thing as dinner theater on the Country Club Plaza. But anyone lucky enough to score a sidewalk table at the Classic Cup Café can sit back and enjoy a never-ending show. The other night, my friend Bob and I barely exchanged a word through an entire meal, we were so mesmerized watching a series of…
6/24-7/30 Wave a magnet in front of a television, and the picture spins and scrambles — a cathode fuck-up that can be hysterical and beautiful. Ron Megee is like that magnet, his Late Night Theatre the TV screen fragmenting culture as we know it. After recent tales of glam-rock vampires and the great sex dwarf known as Prince, the…
FRI 6/24 During the Holocaust, Nazi doctors tried to change eye colors and test the effectiveness of chemicals and poisons using Jews, gays and other “undesirables” as guinea pigs. These experiments are the subject of Lester Goldman’s sculpture exhibit Issachar’s Surveillance, which opens Friday with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the KCAI Crossroads Gallery (1908 Main)….
SAT 6/25 After the recent Midwestern monsoon season, area rivers are high, fast and furious. All the better for the Lecompton Access Float Trip on the Kansas River. The float trip, along 10 river miles from Lecompton to Lawrence, commemorates the newest public boat access point along the Kaw River corridor. The river now has more than 20 such points…
THU 6/23 The Black Chippendales better be damned sexy to warrant the $25 admission to their ladies-only show Thursday at Bodyworks Phase II, 8625 Troost. After all, we can see beefcake in Mi Cocina’s VIP room for free. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 8. Call 816-363-6910 for tickets. — Annie Fischer Totally Sketch The…
Hip-hop thrived during the late ’80s, when Public Enemy, N.W.A., Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte, Salt ‘n Pepa and scores of other artists released their most important work. Back in the day, creativity trumped commerce, and idealism and innovation merged. Mainstream media outlets started noticing its stars, but the genre, with its house parties and mike battles, still felt like…
Thursday, June 23 Wanna go to the moon? Matt Thomas can teach you how. An active civilian airplane pilot and certified flight instructor — who’s a little bit obsessed with Burt Rutan — Thomas has extensively researched SpaceShipOne, Rutan’s commercial space-flight program. From 7:30 to 9:30 tonight in room 311 of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Royall Hall (800 East…
After a snowstorm hit Washington, D.C., in 2002, the ensuing melt and rainfall sent 2 feet of water into Louisa Jaggar’s basement, destroying her children’s memory boxes and countless other keepsakes. Her son’s waterlogged christening gown was the only salvageable item; other artwork disintegrated in her hands. “It’s freezing cold, there’s no light, we’re using flashlights, and I’m sobbing as…
Ghada Amer Barbie clothes always have some kind of ridiculous waistband tailored to the fashionable doll’s strangely shaped torso. Ken’s midsection is no less bizarre. Nothing highlights this more clearly than seeing Barbie and Ken clothes enlarged to fit real people. One of Ghada Amer’s most well-known early pieces — “Barbie Aime Ken, Ken Aime Barbie (Barbie Loves Ken, Ken…
I’m probably alone in this, but I believe a high-water mark of recent American culture was the first season of Big Brother, when a Dutch producer shoved a dozen goobers into an Ikea house and gave us the best study of idiot groupthink since the Milgram experiment. These were regular folks, not the semipro hoochies typically populating this kind…
It’s not as if anyone expects billboards to dazzle with their beauty. Then again, we could do better. Nike has started sponsoring artist-made billboards that don’t advertise shoes at all; as a result, some beautiful work by the Brazilian street-art team known as Os Gemeos floats above the Los Angeles skyline. Panama City sponsored a public art program in which…
