Televangelist Jim Bakker’s been scarin’ the hell out of us God-fearin’ Missourians lately with talk of Judgment Day. Bakker now broadcasts his apocalypse-heavy show from Branson, the headquarters of second-chance careers. Among the products Bakker pushes on his show is a $150 emergency backpack that was put together by his wife, Lori. The idea is to slip the padded…
Dear Gabachos: Bienvenidos to the world’s foremost authority on America’s favorite beaners! The Mexican can answer any and every question on his race, from why Mexicans stick the Virgin of Guadalupe everywhere to our obsession with dwarves and transvestites. Awright, cabrones: laugh and comprende! Dear Mexican: I’m a culturally sensitive, PC Asian-American who laughed my head off at Jack…
The Strip doesn’t know whether it’s male or female, but because it’s a big red hunk of bone-in meat, it feels pretty macho. And its latest man crush is on Kansas Rep. Eric Carter, who’s running for state insurance commissioner. Don’t try to tell the Strip that’s not a sexy job. The official mission of the Kansas Department of Insurance…
Donald Matthews got the news while standing at a urinal. Matthews is director of the black studies program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The way he tells the story, he was in a men’s room on campus in late May when a colleague standing beside him told him about a new black professor who would be starting in…
This week, I’m piling on y’all some of the concert reviews I got from friends and colleagues before I went on my little road adventure (proving in the process that everyone writes better than I do). Here’s a great one from a show that took place at a club somewhere on Main Street sometime in early July. It’s by hard-boiled…
Chris Packham is a direct descendant of Pliny the Younger (no, not Pliny the Elder — man, fuck that guy). He used to work at the Cup and Saucer before it closed, and during his tenure there, he authored The Cup and Saucer Action News, which was by far my favorite independent and largely unknown local publication. He has a…
Friday, July 14 I’m finally back in my office, and let me tell ya, it’s not nearly as much fun as the Werewolves’ van. I mean, you can’t even smoke in here. There’s no one here asleep who I can bother by cranking Dungen on the stereo. There are no empty bottles of gin or Hustler magazines on the floor…
Christmas on Mars, Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne’s directorial debut, remains unavailable for public screening. But that film’s cinematographer, Bradley Beesley, realized that the band’s own story was just as interesting as Coyne’s perennially unfinished sci-fi saga. In 2005’s Fearless Freaks, Beesley unveils Coyne’s humble home base: A $20,000 house in Oklahoma City, with Christmas on Mars props dotting the…
Basic Instinct 2 (Sony) Bill Maher: New Rules (HBO) Bridezillas: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (Weinstein) Care Bears: Hearts at Sea (Family Home Ent.) Dennis Miller: All In (HBO) Dolla Morte (Grimoire) The Dudesons Movie (Rhino) The Ellen Show: The Complete Series (Sony) ER: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) Grilled (New Line) My Dog Skip (Warner Bros.) Perry…
From Pokemon to Dragon Ball Z, Japanese pop culture has captured the imagination of American kids. The latest import craze is Naruto. Anyone hip to Harry Potter will find the story familiar: A bunch of otherwise ordinary kids, including titular hero Naruto Uzumaki, study ninjitsu (rather than wizardry) in a secret training camp called the Village Hidden in the Leaves…
Grand Prix (Warner Bros.) John Frankenheimer, as underrated as he was brilliant, made a racing picture in 1966 that’s yet to be topped 40 years later. James Garner suffered through the director’s churlish demands (which Frankenheimer reveals and owns up to, in archival footage on one of the documentaries here) to provide the cool heart at the center of…
Fiddler on the Roof We’ve heard great things about Neal Benari’s Tevye in this New Theatre import of the Broadway revival. The show that brought the shtetl to American pop, Fiddler deserves to be reclaimed from high schools and kitsch; it’s the rare musical that means something to people who don’t care about theater. I’ve heard “Sunrise, Sunset” reduce everyone…
Elissa Armstrong: Objects of Innocence and Experience Lawrence artist Elissa Armstrong takes the lighthearted concept of “sit-arounds” (or “set-arounds,” depending on how rural your accent is) —decorative objects, including porcelain unicorns, free-standing arrangements of dried flowers and Precious Moments figurines — and flips it on its innocent little head. For this show, the Alfred University-educated ceramist (and University of Kansas…
So last weekend, I was at Crown Center, that Hall family shopping palace once so regal in its bearing that Mom always had to deck me out in church clothes before I could warm the lap of its Santa. There, I watched a kid skipping up and down the stairs of the American Heartland, hawking “Hot Flash Fans” to…
Perhaps no one can pinpoint the exact moment when vaudeville died, but there’s a moment early in Strangers With Candy that plays like the death of visual comedy. En route to her first day of high school, a tarty middle-aged jailbird — this is not a Disney Channel joint — tosses a half-eaten banana out a car window and takes…
Slipped into the summer movie season like acid in your Happy Meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counterprogramming. No matter that the dude from The Matrix is its star — or would be, if he weren’t half-hidden under a thick swath of digital paint. Linklater’s return to Waking Life’s pulsing, surreal world of rotoscope animation…
When it comes to food, I have a lot of guilty pleasures, although I wouldn’t include the bland fried catfish fillets served at The Jumpin’ Catfish (see review). On the other hand, I have been practically giddy while eating the crispier — and greasier — whole catfish at The Gaf Pub & Grill (7116 Wornall) or a flaky blackened fillet…
My pretty friend Loretta is always getting crabs. She claims to be a vegetarian, but once in a while she gets a yen for those long, smooth-shell snow-crab legs, freshly steamed, with drawn butter, and a cocktail sauce that’s not skimpy on the horseradish. If she’s really hungry, she can polish off a couple of plates, so she’s fond…
So there she was at the Drum Room, in the newly refurbished President Hotel. Her research assistants were nearly an hour late, so the Night Ranger sat alone. On that Friday night around sixish, the bar was fairly packed — almost every seat in the house was ocupado. We had come to conduct a sociology experiment: Would the concept of…
Phocas.net founder Todd Comer sponsors a new monthly gig at the Grand Emporium that brings in some of the brightest and most highly demanded DJs around. It’s in conjunction with the prodigious New Orleans-based Disco Productions. The first show Friday night launches at 10 in the hands of Tactic, one of the better DJ duos in the city, consisting of…
It’d be fascinating to see the CDs sitting around Aubrey’s rehearsal space. Several songs from the Lawrence band’s latest, Honey and the Shame, suggest Style Council records under open guitar cases, a well-loved copy of ELO’s Greatest Hits sitting neglected, an autographed copy of an Of Montreal EP sitting by the sizzle cymbal — stuff from bands that like their…
Just try penetrating any music genre down to its vast layer of coulda-beens; you’ll get back problems, half a ton of unresellable vinyl and, if you’re lucky, a gem of an unknown track or two. Better to leave that adventure to the professionals. For the two-disc Kings of Diggin’, Japanese breakbeat doctor Muro and Brooklyn DJs Kon and Amir have…
First, the good news: The Eraser, the first solo effort from Radiohead frontman and existential hood ornament Thom Yorke, does not in any way signify the demise of the band he’s called home for more than a decade. The bad news is … well, there is no bad news, really. Like almost everything he touches, Eraser is another pitch-perfect example…
Two years ago, the Futureheads were easy to write off. The UK quartet was catchy but forgettable among the new wave of postpunk. The band’s only saving grace was a bouncy rendition of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love.” Nothing on News and Tributes offers that kind of instant gratification, but the Futureheads have learned to refine their greatest asset: the…
