Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You’ve just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside drinking coffee. Should you take the time to carefully hide the body and wash up? Or do…
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” That’s what Walt Whitman wrote in the preface to Leaves of Grass, his quintessential ode to the American experience. After its publication in July 1855, the work was criticized for its passionate eroticism, its frank sensuality and its celebration of self-love as much as for its atypical form and unconventional use…
10/6-10/8 Opening-night notices don’t get much worse than “After us, the savage God,” which was W.B. Yeats’ summation of Ubu Roi, one of two plays CinnamonEye Productions is staging at the Westport Coffee House Theatre (4010 Pennsylvania, 816-756-3222). With its then-shocking obscenity, Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play assaults language, theater and art itself using avant-garde scat and Brechtian sign-speak. Similarly, Good…
SAT 10/8 Cider pressing, corn shelling and 1870s baseball — how else would we spend our weekend? Join us — and some re-enactors — for Fall on the Farm at 11 a.m. Saturday at Watkins Woolen Mill State Park (northeast of KC on U.S. Highway 69 in Lawson, 816-580-3387). — Annie Fischer Wornall Ode The Wornall House parties with a…
THU 10/6 Poet Marianne Moore was a blonde (but she considered herself a redhead) who was quite fond of animals — small animals. In fact, Moore’s famous advice to aspiring poets was to craft “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” (Apparently, she especially liked toads.) When not palling around with her mother, who was her closest friend, or fellow…
Jen Fridy didn’t grow up in a old, dilapidated house. Nor did she have a best friend named Casper, a pet spider or any of the other usual creepy-kid trappings. She was “just kind of naturally morbid,” she cheerfully explains. “I self-identified with Wednesday Addams, got called ‘Wednesday’ at school — which wasn’t helped by the fact that my name…
Thursday, October 6 Jeopardy played an important part in our coming of age — possibly even more than Dawson’s Creek. Correct answers in the final round often resulted in smug self-satisfaction that could last for hours. Family bouts of Trivial Pursuit were also popular. But live trivia nights in a town of 2,406 (last time we went home, the…
Myla Goldberg has written just two novels, but she’s already afraid of falling into a rut. It’s not a fear caused by critics, she says; it’s self-inflicted. Goldberg says she feels compelled to experiment with form and content, to try things out. “The younger you are, the more you should push yourself,” the author tells the Pitch from her Brooklyn…
Picture this: You’re in a bar, when a bunch of drunk, giggly chicks huddle around the jukebox and start selecting songs while their boyfriends play pool. Eventually, the Black Crowes’ cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle,” from their debut, Shake Your Money Maker, starts blaring. The women shriek with excitement. The bartender smiles and starts to bop in place…
So there’s this Irish band that forms while its members are still rosy-cheeked adolescents, signs to Island Records and begins recording smart, politically aware songs. But the year is 1993, not 1980 — U2 and the Cranberries have America’s ears for Eire, thank you very much. The Frames, led by class-conscious songwriter Glen Hansard (whose face remains familiar, thanks to…
Even his most die-hard fans must concede that a lot of Dwight Yoakam’s stuff sounds the same. Still, working with such a great formula — honky-tonk trash meets alt-country irreverence — Yoakam has never suffered much at the hands of his own redundancy. But with Blame the Vain, the cowpunk’s 18th record in 21 years, the formula has changed. Having…
The son of acclaimed Texan author Larry McMurtry, rootsy-rock songwriter James McMurtry never envisioned himself penning songs about politics. In 1997 he told The Austin Chronicle that he considered politically charged songwriting best left to “hippies on a soapbox trying to save the world.” Fortunately, that perspective changed forever with the 2000 election. Angered by what he believed to be…
Ask them how they spent their summer vacation, and the members of the High Strung can truthfully say they spent it in the library. As the only act on the Michigan Library Tour, the trio brought loud amps and the spectacle of grown men leaping around in matching white jumpsuits to conference rooms and reference desks in front of confused…
Dave Matthews is a tool — the plaintive horse-mouthed moan, the fruity woodwind and violin solos, the brainless sincerity and world awareness alongside the Forget about your problems and just spin, man! bullshit. Well, now that that’s out of the way, let’s give the man some props for his taste in music. Matthews’ ATO (are those fraternity letters?) label houses…
In 1983, Milwaukee’s Violent Femmes released their eponymous debut, an album of well-crafted, defiant anthems for jaded youth. These embittered odes were embraced by factions of misunderstood young Americans — that quirky girl with the crooked smile who glowered in the corner of the classroom, those too-skinny skater boys with their affected sneers and torn-up Vision Streetwear sneakers. Mix tapes…
Halloween reeks of charity, so what better way to get into the spirit than with a UNICEF-posse cut produced by some of rock’s biggest trick-or-treaters? We’re talking Beck, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Arcade Fire, Sonic Youth, Malcolm McLaren, Sum 41, an Inuit throat singer named Tagaq — along with Elvira Mistress of the Dark and David Cross. OK, so…
Psychedelic noise-rock bands push the limits of perception, and not only for the pharmacologically enhanced — though the right pairing of substance and sound can make the listening experience one hell of a trip. Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth serve as the genre’s luminaries, but the past three decades also produced revelatory acts that never…
Fearless is no compliment. There’s probably nothing more dangerous, in fact. Believing your recklessness a virtue, confusing what you want to do with what the world secretly anticipates, not giving a shit whether you take others down with you: Fearlessness is the way of death and madness, the way of Bush and Batman villains. Adulthood lies in recognizing what is…
Ah, Wallace and Gromit. Who doesn’t get a little lift at the sound of those names? Who doesn’t feel his or her heart grow warmer at the thought of the love between a (Plasticine) man and his (Plasticine) dog? Perhaps you’re not among the considerable fanbase surrounding this lovable couple — the mild-mannered, cheese-loving inventor and the beleaguered canine genius…
About once a year — twice, if we’re lucky — a first-time director shows up with something original, electrifying and humane, a film that shows us a new way to see, that presents complex and memorable people in whom we recognize ourselves. Last year, it was Joshua Marston and Maria Full of Grace. This year, it’s writer-director Mike Mills…
The Amityville Horror: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Beyond the Gates of Splendor (Fox) The Black Keys Live (Fat Possum) Christmas With SCTV (Sony Music) Count Duckula: The Complete First Season (Koch Vision) Cream: Royal Albert Hall (Warner Strategic Marketing) Drawn Together Uncensored: Season One (Paramount) The Fly and The Fly II: Collector’s Edition (Fox) The Fog: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Happy Holidays…
Last year’s Katamari Damacy was so quirky, it should have been subtitled “Marketed to Stoners.” Its star, a little green prince, was forced to roll a giant gravity ball to atone for the sins of his father, the King of the Cosmos, who had gotten drunk one day and knocked all the stars out of the sky. Insane storyline…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Universal Studios) Alfred Hitchcock may be the best pop filmmaker in our history, and this gorgeous 14-film set is certainly worthy of the master. Licensing issues kept it from being as “definitive” as the box claims — missing, most notably, are Hitchcock’s classic Cary Grant collaborations To Catch a Thief, Notorious, and North by…
