Ad Astra Per Aspera It seems that while I was judging the Band Scramble last night, one of the best bands in the area might have been getting screwed. The following is an excerpt from an email I received from frequent Pitch contributor and Lawrence dweller April Fleming. The author would like you to remember that this was written late…
Today, I’m handing the wheel over to co-worker Nadia Pflaum, who, this morning, produced a report on a pretty amazing hip-hop event last night in Lawrence. What follows may be one of the best essays on the current state of the art form you’ve ever read. Seriously. So twirl your thumb counterclockwise around the clickwheel of your iPod and listen…
Last summer, KC was given quite a scare when word spread that the Westport Flea Market’s owner, Mel Kleb, was in talks to sell the midtown landmark’s property to none other than the implant-and-nylon-shorts-lovin’ Hooters chain (C.J. Janovy’s Nip It, July 21, 2005). The negotiations for the sale moved at a snail’s pace before Hooters decided in December to take…
Somewhere between the time DJ Kool Herc got the party started in the 1970s and LL Cool J’s star turn on MTV Unplugged in 1991, hip-hop went mainstream. First it conquered the ‘burbs. Then it went global. Before long, kids in Tokyo were rapping. Along the way, hip-hop also muscled in on videogames, influencing everything from sports titles to…
Wonder Showzen: Season One (MTV) On the surface, the way this MTV2 puppetfest explores adult concepts through a kiddie-show format seems fresh as a Nantucket limerick. But Wonder Showzen’s execution is so bold and frankly hilarious that it feels wholly new. Whether it’s exploring diversity with a forbidden homosexual love between an Arab numeral and a Jewish letter, or…
The Andy Milonakis Show: The Complete First Season (MTV) Another Public Enemy (Tartan) A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Paramount) Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (Sony) Doctor Who: The Beginning Collection (BBC Warner) Don’t Deliver Us From Evil (Mondo Macabre) Godzilla: The Series (Sony) Hot Wheels (Warner Bros.) I Love Your Work (ThinkFilm) The Keeper (Showtime) Knots Landing: The Complete First…
The American Songbook: Your Hit Parade J. Kent Barnhart’s tart treatment of standards continues to make Quality Hill Playhouse’s cabarets real events. Joined by bass, drums and four singers decked out in what-decade-is-this formalwear, Barnhart (himself a crisp, exacting pianist) ushers us through hits from Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Rosemary Clooney and other prerock stars with witty arrangements and those…
Blood Work When she was 7 months old, the daughter of Taiwanese artist Jawshing Arthur Liou was diagnosed with leukemia. Liou went on to document her struggle with the disease through the impressionistic images in these three video and sound installations. In “CBC” (an acronym for “complete blood count”), dreamy, soft-focus snowflakes fall while tiny people appear to run…
Great art gives back what you put into it. Such is certainly the case with The Odyssey, the epic Illiad spinoff in which Odysseus rides the Grecian rails for a decade, watching his friends die, nailing sea goddesses and, presumably, filching pies off window sills. Once he finally wanders home, he dresses as a swineherd for God knows how…
The Bunker The Bunker, in Westport, is Kansas City’s hippest independent boutique. It carries more than 1,000 styles of shoes, including Puma, Adidas, John Madden and Vans. Clothing lines include Ben Sherman, Penguin and 555 Soul. The store’s fashion-forward approach is maintained by regular trips to New York and Los Angeles to keep up with recent trends. Recently, The Bunker’s…
Describing Peggy Noland’s outfit is a challenge: On a rainy afternoon, the spunky designer is clad in a pair of navy-blue sweatpants tucked into weathered cowboy boots. (“The Salvation Army’s half-off on Wednesdays!” she says cheerfully.) On top, she wears an old red T-shirt with a stylized portrait of a woman whose accessories — sunglasses, a pair of gigantic fish-shaped…
As Shakespeare has it, a flimsy masquerade mask cocked across your eyes will fool the world. Anyone so disguised won’t just confound friends, enemies and cousins; he or she will leave even the closest servants and family members unsure about — well — him or her. In real life, it’s not that easy. Just ask costume designer Georgianna Londre, a…
Andrea Flamini’s studio on 18th Street is cluttered in much the same way that his films are — the stark visual imagery and dark theatrics may seem nearly insurmountable, but it doesn’t take long to notice a line of cohesion. In one of his newer offerings, ashortmovieaboutnothing, the magazines and books and compact discs that clutter everyone’s lives resurrect themselves…
Real-world, authentic experiences reveal themselves in Sike Style’s graffiti-inspired, spray-painted lines and figures, enveloped by city-street motifs. His predilection is for urban scenes — wide cars, streetlights, elements of DJ culture, and the young denizens inhabiting these settings. The staccato rhythms of hip-hop punctuate his designs, which blend effortlessly into the hum of Kansas City, all of it somehow expanding…
The Kansas City area is full of artists, innovators and entrepreneurs who are changing our cultural landscape, often doing so with little recognition — much less financial reward. With our first annual MasterMind Awards, the Pitch set out to change that by identifying and honoring a few of this town’s creative geniuses. And so, on Saturday, April 1, aesthetic…
We are in the middle of a B-movie renaissance, if you haven’t noticed. For years now, the politics of the multiplex have forced films to be either big-budget, Burger King-cup blockbusters or tiny “indie” projects about college-educated Caucasians with emotional problems (to be viewed by college-educated Caucasians with emotional problems). But between these slices of fluffy white bread and dry…
It’s a movie about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history, it’s directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, and it stars … Vin Diesel in a wig? In a role originally intended for Joe Pesci? Can Lumet be serious? Actually, no. The characters may be based on real people, with much of the dialogue culled directly from court transcripts,…
I through all of my high school geography classes and totally missed out on the whole Pangea theory. In fact, until I saw the word Pangea as the answer to a Jeopardy question, I would have told you that it was a new drug for acid reflux disease. Pangea, according to my dictionary, is the name for a hypothetical supercontinent…
One of my favorite classic Saturday Night Live commercial parodies has two housewives arguing over a new consumer product called Shimmer. One woman insists that it’s a floor wax; the other screams that it’s a whipped dessert topping. Suddenly Dan Aykroyd appears as the product pitchman and answers the question by explaining, “Shimmer is a floor wax and a…
If you’ve ever wondered what drinking in an Office Depot would be like (and who hasn’t?), we highly recommend a visit to Rosedale’s Redwood Inn. Thanks to its office-chairs-as-bar-furniture motif, drinking is now ergonomically sound and lumbar-ific! Located near 47th Street and Mission in the strip mall just east of Oklahoma Joe’s (mmm … crack fries … ), the divey…
We at the Pitch recently heard of an APB from one of Kabal’s leading wax captains, DJ Ataxic, calling out to all crew members that things would be changing on his watch down in the River Market. On March 20, Ataxic posted the following statements on his MySpace blog: “We at Kabal are changing things up for a bit…
Rumors of the Appleseed Cast’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. If anything, the Lawrence foursome’s latest release, Peregrine, proves that the band is far more relevant, emotive and thought-provoking than ever before. Although more than a few fans wondered if the album would ever see the light of day, the brooding opening strains of the first track, “Ceremony,” set the…
Before Karen O strutted, spit and cooed her way to indie-rock icon status, the last dynamic female to front a rock band was arguably Courtney Love. The grunge widow propelled Hole to stardom in the ’90s with her inimitable martyr poses and baby-doll fashion. But Love lost her cathartic bellow on 1998’s overly glossy Celebrity Skin — a parallel that…
If theories of DNA as a living entity and the existence of hidden connections between the Manding culture of West Africa and the ancient Olmec civilization of Mexico are up your alley, this is the album for you. If that sounds like some far-out, esoteric stuff, then this is also the album for you. As Hidden’s liner notes clearly show,…
