As inventive as it is original, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (auteur and work are now inseparable) figures to delight the middle school set because, at its most basic level, it’s a candy-colored Halloween party awash in play-gore and mock-ghastly ghouls. But Burton’s multilayered forays into the macabre are never entirely child’s play. In just 78 eye-popping minutes, Corpse Bride…
Laying it bare: I am writing in response to Howard Carson’s letter to the editor in the September 15 issue of the Pitch. There are two issues that I would like to address concerning this letter as well as David Martin’s article “The Big Coverup” (August 25). First, I am an adult entertainer who’s been employed in the “sexually oriented…
Ask the Boss Bitch Hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds describes herself as a “boss bitch” who grew up boosting clothes and turning the occasional trick. She swears that she’s leading a straighter life now, but we figure she’s still learned lots of good life lessons. So listen up, y’all. We’ve been listening to the new Kanye West album, and “Diamonds From…
The Strip remembers all that cryin’ back when the Grand Emporium’s owners sold their club last summer. After all, the place was legendary. Twice it had been honored as the best blues bar in the country by the Blues Foundation of America. Esquire called it the best place to see live music in Missouri. It was a gritty, grimy place…
The roughhousers of the Kansas City Rugby Football Club love the sound of a brutal hit. And this fall, the team’s newest recruit, 18-year-old Danny Clarke, intends to deliver it. Sprinting across the field during a drill at Gillham Park, Clarke breathes in short, staccato bursts. His cleated feet pound the turf, growing louder as he lowers his head and…
It’s a Friday night in the West Bottoms, and Larry Johnson is late arriving at Club Vital. The four lanes of James Street are busy during the day, but at midnight, only an occasional truck rumbles through, drowning out the sound of crickets. Once in a while, cars cruise by. Drivers and passengers study the bouncer standing beneath the awning…
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (Buena Vista) Anthrax Anthrology: No Hit Wonders (Sanctuary) The Batman: Season 1, Volume 2 (Warner Bros.) Battlestar Galactica: Season One (Universal) Born Into Brothels (ThinkFilm) Brothers (Universal) Cowards Bend the Knee (Zeitgeist) Divan (Zeitgeist) Inside Deep Throat (Universal) It’s All Gone Pete Tong (Columbia/Tristar) James Dean: Forever Young (Warner Bros.) The Longest…
Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season (Buena Vista) ABC’s juggernaut drama is made up mostly of elements that have trickled down from HBO: black humor, self-awareness, the radical notion that women older than 30 can arouse the national libido. The bonus deleted scenes don’t add much to the story, and behind-the-scenes features on costume design and the like hold only…
When we first heard about NV’s Wet Underwear Contest, we thought: Finally — equal opportunity in the wet-garment contest genre! Despite the fact that seeing peni wasn’t much of a turn-on for us (there’s a reason Playgirl didn’t catch on with the female demographic), this event sounded so sordidly terrific that we had to check it out. As an added…
Now that I’ve gotten hooked on the new HBO series Rome, I’m eager to see if the program will show the lusty Titus Pullo (played by actor Ray Stevenson) biting into a slab of cheesecake, which apparently was a delicacy even in Julius Caesar’s time. Silly me, I thought it was strictly a New York invention (as do most New…
At first glance, you would say that the Overland Park Cheesecake Factory — like its sister restaurant on the Country Club Plaza — is no more a factory than the General Motors Fairfax plant is a sushi bar. For one thing, no cheesecakes are actually baked in either restaurant; the 33 cheesecakes listed on the menu are baked and frozen…
THU 9/15 As a kid, Leo Kottke lost much of the hearing in his left ear in a firecracker mishap. In later years, the acoustic-guitar virtuoso’s right ear suffered permanent damage during firing practice with the Naval Reserve. And then there was that painful bout of tendonitis brought on by his signature fingerpicking style. None of that, however, has deterred…
9/15-9/17 Moviemaking went digital years ago, but we’ve only been getting half the picture. (Breakthrough innovations such as surround sound, e-tickets and adjustable cup-holder armrests barely scratch the surface.) Here’s our dilemma: Why should we settle for another less-than-stellar big-screen image of Naomi Watts when we can get a much better view on DVD? That’s why we’ll be there to…
Leaf Blowout We give this sale a green thumb’s up. 9/17-9/18 Fall is famous for its kaleidoscopic leaves. Around here, it’s also the last chance to appreciate verdant plains and parkways before winter turns trees into skeletons. Some professional gardeners rotate their displays to showcase hearty yet beautiful breeds during snow season, but most green thumbs use winter to concentrate…
FRI 9/16 After you’re finished with all your gallery hopping, wrap up the evening right. The Urban Culture Project continues its monthly Third Friday presentations with a Hip-Hop Showcase at Boley (at the northwest corner of 12th and Walnut streets). Though it’s being held in conjunction with all the other UCP openings that night, the party will last two hours…
Putting on a big weekend concert with multiple acts isn’t exactly groundbreaking (Woodstock, anyone?). Still, the trail blazed a few years back by Manchester, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music Festival (and followed by the local Wakarusa organizers) has become a template. The formula’s pretty simple: Head out of the city, find a plot of land, build a stage and recruit exciting bands…
Thursday, September 15 We know that our colleague David Martin’s cover story a few weeks ago (“The Big Coverup,” August 25, featuring interviews and topless photos of strippers) made many appearances on tavern tables around town. Whether bargoers were discussing the women’s career aspirations or checking out their racks, we’ll never know. But we were pleasantly surprised to see…
Beauty Slays the Beast was omnipresent last fall, with members of the mostly female activist group parading in politically charged masks, organizing a multipronged music and performance-art festival and urging voter registration at local nightclubs. After the election, the collective disappeared from public view, surfacing only for a lone car wash-slash-garage sale. Behind the scenes, though, Beauty Slays the Beast…
Blink Twice for Her The buddies who formed the Borogrove Theatre Company keep on keeping on with their love-of-the-art-fueled ways. Now they’re moving on up to a fancy-pants berth at Union Station, which hosts an awful lot of inspired art for a so-called boondoggle. As is its mandate, Borogrove is premiering a new play, Blink Twice for Her, a comedy…
America the Beautiful Brandon Friend gets American culture. His mixed-media works include cow-riding Olsen twins, their ever-smiling faces affixed to naked, surgically enhanced bodies. Other pieces prominently feature creepy baby-doll heads, school photos of awkward teenagers, and boy-on-boy action, and all are rendered in a recognizable style of collage, with photography and paint successfully working in tension throughout the canvases….
The gallery in the basement of 1924 Main — a new Kansas City restaurant in a storied old building — is one of the city’s few art venues that has the sense to put the overhead lights on a dimmer. Now, this particular basement, known as “the dungeon” when it was home to the raucous Dixie Bell, has a history…
We don’t get many chances to make an acquaintance as fascinating as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the German transvestite who not only survived the Nazis while decked out in dresses but also made it her mission during East Berlin’s occupation to preserve what she could of a culture ravaged by war and the Soviets. Plus, she ran a gay cabaret in…
What country music needs is a few more young guys like elder statesman David Allan Coe, one of the last of the last dangerous men in C&W. A couple of weeks ago, rerelease specialists Shout Factory dusted off Penitentiary Blues, the 30-years-out-of-print debut Coe penned while in the joint in the early 1970s. Songs such as the rave-up “Cell No….
Right this moment, and probably for weeks and months to come, Kanye West is the biggest figure in hip-hop, if not pop music, period. His second album, Late Registration, which West has been hyping as the requisite follow-up masterpiece to his lauded debut, The College Dropout, has been slurped up like gravy by almost every critic writing today, old and…
