Pissed about Gov. Baby Blunt’s decision to make strippers put on pasties in Missouri? We’ve got three words for you: wet T-shirt contest. We recently visited Rum Runners for its regular Wednesday-night tit-tacular, hoping to find Kansans who could set a good example of anti-puritanical behavior for their neighbors. We found ourselves heading over to Interstate 35 and Merriam Drive,…
I’m still waiting for some enterprising restaurant owner to revive one of my favorite Chinese restaurant names, one dating back to 1916: the provocative Hung Far Lo, long-vanished from its former location at 704 East 12th Street. Back during World War I, most local Chinese restaurants — such as Shin Tong, Shing Mow, Wong Sing — were named for their…
I can’t decide what was more disappointing about the finale to my first meal at NCK Restaurant, the seven-month-old Chinese place in the Watts Mill Shopping Center: the ridiculously stale fortune cookie (I could stretch it like Silly Putty) or the idiotic message that fell out of it. I’ve had strange fortunes before, but “There is a gradual improvement”…
THU 7/28 Mastering the art of coffee roasting takes years of trial and error, hundreds of thousands of little brown mistakes mixed, for those who are patient, with rare treasures that will give birth to a fine cup of coffee. For the past 12 years, the Roasterie has pitched the beans it deems not up to snuff and harvested the…
7/29-7/31 This weekend, Lawrence’s E.M.U. Theatre restages the tragic tale of Cyrus Futz, a farm boy who falls in love with his pig and carries that love to its carnal conclusion. (The troupe premiered the show back in February.) Rochelle Owens wrote the Obie-winning play more than 40 years ago, but society has only stiffened since the ’60s, and…
SAT 7/30 Most of the basketball players in AND1’s lineup are as good as their NBA peers but lack the size and strength to make it in the big time. Nevertheless, the AND1 Mix Tape Tour is a noteworthy alternative to the NBA, which has fallen out of favor with many fans thanks to on-court violence and mediocre play…
Psychic Friends Network An unusual benefit helps an ailing artist. 7/30-7/31 Many psychic fairs involve folding chairs, dingy hotel conference rooms and an unavoidable aura of capitalism. Not this weekend’s Benefit Psychic Fair for Joe Palace. Although there’s no cost to enter the fair, the money everyone spends there goes directly to Palace, an area artist recovering from leukemia who’s…
For some folks, visiting the Crossroads District galleries for First Friday feels like a daring adventure. There are unfamiliar downtown blocks to explore and provocative art to peruse. But for all that intellectual stimulation, we don’t often see work that we think might truly disturb people. Kansas City’s first Fringe Festival, on the other hand, takes sightseers to uncharted…
Thursday, July 28 In case you haven’t heard, there’s a little-known annual celebration ’round these parts known as the Renaissance Festival. Each fall, a fake 16th-century village in Bonner Springs welcomes men in tights and women in wigs, and everyone — truly, everyone — devours repulsive turkey legs. It’s such a draw, in fact, that some fans simply can’t…
May 20, 2005, came and went for most of us without much fanfare. But that day’s episode of Oprah, “The Bra and Swimsuit Intervention,” had immediate repercussions for Terry Levine, the owner of Leawood’s Clair de Lune lingerie boutique. “In the industry we’re calling it ‘O Day’” Levine tells us. “Any specialty store, any department store that sells lingerie, has…
The Bad Seedling Late Night gives its standard treatment to ’50s horror flick The Bad Seed, the tale of a homicidal 8-year-old girl, here played by a 6-foot-tall man. Expect cross-dressing, sight-gags and lots of raunchy (and sometimes groaningly obvious) double entendres. But the show offers more than that. Ron Megee’s script rises above the schtick, and both Megee and…
Bend Debra Di Blasi’s abstract paintings are about math and communication — superstring theory, to be specific. Anne Austin Pearce’s ink-on-vellum creations — called Rhetorical Black Holes — look like cells under a microscope, only prettier, with a pink-dominated color scheme that says “spring” in a way that nothing you observed in your 10th-grade chemistry class ever could have. But…
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was just last month. That was when a bunch of Kansas City artists went to New York City to put on a show called What’s the Matter With Kansas? Hosted by the Chelsea gallery Rare, this would be an attempt to show the city — one…
All I’ve ever wanted is to have Debbie Reynolds jump out of my cake. And though I’d never turn down the later versions — say, the crazy Debbie who did such a number on Carrie Fisher — my dream is the Singin’ in the Rain Debbie. Debbie done up in that fetching pink bathing suit and yarmulke, lip-synching “All…
In the history of music, there aren’t too many DJs who have actually influenced artists and producers worldwide, much less pioneered their own style of electronic music. Brian Transeau — or BT, as he’s more commonly known — is one such artist. Transeau studied classical piano from a very young age but dropped out of college and wound up working…
Lead singer and songwriter Thom Hoskins says the title track from the Buffalo Saints’ debut EP, Walking the Dead, is about an experiment he undertook with a friend that involved staying up for two days without sleep just for the hell of it. Well, if Hoskins and the Saints keep recording songs like these, he’ll likely build up a career’s…
It’s always tough for a frontman of a beloved local act to delicately usher in his new project without protest. But Allen Epley, formerly of the sonically adventurous Shiner, has such an intent with the Life and Times. Suburban Hymns, the band’s first full-length, clearly demonstrates each member’s talent, but overall, the sound can’t get away from conveying a stoned,…
One of the great wonders of the Internet is that it can be a fantastic tool for separating fact from fiction. Fact: Outre Mer is the latest album from the progressive jazz-funk trio-plus-one Garage A Trois. Fiction: The film on which this soundtrack is based actually exists. Known for their wicked sense of humor, guitarist Charlie Hunter, drummer Stanton Moore,…
Bad Boy CEO Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is no less than a rap mogul. On the surface, he may be all style, complete with Armani suits, Versace shades and a dapper persona. Underneath, however, the Harlem World hitmaker is as gangster — in the slick mafioso sense — as they come in New York City, and the latest project from…
Abigail Washburn wields two instruments of stark astonishment. The first is her banjo, an 1889 S.S. Stewart open-back model, which she plays in the claw-hammer style. The second is her voice — weariness, empathy, sorrow and defiance flooding the edges of its beauty, even when she’s singing in Chinese. Washburn’s mix of old-time music and big-time emotion makes Song the…
Morning Kills the Dark, Biirdie’s impressive debut, is a comforting collection of call-and-response ditties, travelogues and testaments of devotion. The album tells of the yearlong journey that leader Jared Flamm, his lover and co-vocalist, Kala Lynne Savage, and drummer Richard Gowen shared when they left Jacksonville, Florida, for Southern California. Channeling the Jesus and Mary Chain, girl-group doo-wop and…
We’ll be completely honest. A big part of the reason we like Tegan and Sara is because they’re twins, they’re hot and they have great hair. It’s not like we’re alone. Their sneering, androgynous, rocking sex vibe draws sold-out crowds from both sides of the gender fence, despite the fact that they play decidedly poppy tunes for indie-centric crowds….
Which do you think was more upsetting to zealous followers of unwavering feminist, radical lefty, DIY champion and riot-grrl matriarch Kathleen Hanna last November — the fact that George W. Bush won re-election, or that the former Bikini Kill frontwoman’s current trio, Le Tigre, had just put out a shockingly slick-sounding third album, This Island, on one of those…
Armed with a sultry voice, a vintage six-string and a purring, Catwomanesque presence, Holly Golightly is the hottest British export since Earl Grey tea. But — Madonna aside — good looks and killer style aren’t the only components of musical legend, and it’s Golightly’s way with a song that makes her such a treasure. After years of grinding it…
