It won’t overtake the place of the ridiculously longstanding “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” in club rotation, and it won’t be found on even the most discerning pub’s jukebox. But Symbol Heavy’s Vol. 1 will change the way every producer and DJ within earshot thinks about his or her craft. Luke Rocha, who works under the moniker Topp Boom,…
Kansas City Strip, August 10 I recently read your article about Mayor Kay Barnes signing and enforcing an environmental resolution. I am a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists. I am a die-hard liberal through and through. I understand your frustration about this environment resolution. However, we must…
When we were in college, we would occasionally poke fun at Gary Lezak during his televised weather reports. Without fail, our roommate would say, “Annie … he had cancer.” We would sigh, roll our eyes and feel totally guilty. It’s just that he makes such an easy target for Kansas City’s jaded, cynical types. He’s cheerful. He’s from California. He’s…
On a recent cross-country road trip, we cruised past several billboards on Interstate 70 in western Kansas that touted “The Largest Prairie Dog in the World.” We couldn’t pass up such a brilliant MySpace photo-op. Our imaginations ran wild as we parked in the dirt lot outside Prairie Dog Town in Oakley, Kansas. We pictured an overfed, 8-foot-tall prairie…
Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck’s immortal line “Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less.” Yet if you visit any taquería on a Saturday…
This baseball-lovin’ brisket had the distinct pleasure of being present for one of the best innings in the history of Royals baseball. In the top of the first last Wednesday against the Cleveland Indians, the boys in blue managed 10 runs on 11 hits, just one run short of the dozen needed for everybody to get free doughnuts. There wasn’t…
Gangsta rap thumps from the speakers as the 16-year-old in the yellow bikini steps up to the stripper pole. She’s standing about 10 feet from me, on the front deck of a two-story, 40-foot-long houseboat. In every direction, boats tie together in what’s known as “The Gauntlet,” a floating party rippling across the dirty bathwater of the Lake of…
If there’s a record store in heaven, Ron Rooks is probably swapping tales with the angel at the counter about procuring rare 7″ singles from all around the world, maybe even the universe. Today’s late-breaking news on the music scene is that the legendary gonzo owner of the Music Exchange has died. The Pitch has received confirmation from Rooks’ family….
I caught the Overstep/Giants Chair show Friday at the Record Bar. For non-melodic, unhooky, riff-and-time-change heavy ’90s rock, it was pretty damn good. I don’t mean to discredit that whole post-hardcore (or whatever it is) genre, but, you know, sometimes it’s kinda boring. These guys weren’t. Strangest for me as a foreigner was seeing Giants Chair frontman and current honky…
Tonight’s Overstep Show and Other Stuff, Too It’s at the Record Bar. If you’d read this, you wouldn’t have known that because we accidentally left the concert info off. I’m sorry for whatever trouble this caused the band, the venue, my parents, the nuns at the Catholic church down the street, the guy I bought fried chicken from at the…
According to the handy savings calculator on the Mid-America Regional Council’s Web site, we could be saving $4,200 a year if we rode to work with a buddy. Hey, we’d share gas if we could, but everyone we know lives across town. MARC’s Carpool Connection aims to end our obstacles by matching drivers and riders in the metro area and…
The Apartment (Lions Gate) The Bill Cosby Show: Season One (Shout! Factory) The Blue Light (Pathfinder) Conviction: The Complete Series (Universal) Dances With Wolves: Extended Cut (MGM) Film Geek (First Run) House, M.D.: Season Two (Universal) Invasion: The Complete Series (Warner Bros.) Just My Luck (Fox) The Maid (Tartan) On Native Soil (Lions Gate) Phat Girlz (Fox) Poseidon (Warner Bros.)…
For most people, the words “role-playing game” conjure images of sweaty Dungeons & Dragons-obsessed weirdos, wearing cloaks and screaming “Lightning bolt!” at each other. But even non-RPG players gave the genre a try when Final Fantasy VII debuted back in 1997. The beautiful graphics and heart-tugging story made it an instant classic and helped launched a tiny new system…
Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Any concept along the lines of “high school hottie solves crimes” is bound to make for watchable TV, but who would have expected this? Equal parts 90210 teen soap, murder mystery, and comedy, Veronica Mars pulls you in with its sharp writing, but even more so with acting that’s well above…
Come Back to the 9 to 5, Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton With one show left to go in a 10th-anniversary season that at times has seemed too celebratory, Late Night Theatre seems hungry again. Writer-director David Wayne Reed has marshaled everything that Late Night does well: the glorious get-ups, the bawdy puns, the dizzy set pieces that fizz as if…
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…
Last Friday night, I found myself tempted to flee and forget the series of one-act plays that were lumbering out and expiring before me. I’m not the type to relish watching sacks of kittens being chucked into a river. In a Lawrence basement thick with sweat and hubris, I suffered through Junkyard Dogma, EMU Theatre’s seventh-annual festival of new…
Low expectations can be a wonderful thing. Expect nothing, and maybe you’ll get that little outta-nowhere sumpin’-sumpin’ that turns an otherwise unfulfilling occurrence into a vaguely rewarding experience. It’s not as though Invincible boasts the most promising of credentials: a first-time filmmaker (Ericson Core, cinematographer for the impossible-to-watch Daredevil), a first-time screenwriter (Brad Gann), a based-on-a-true-story script that more…
One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. Without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, the modern entertainment media often seem poached in a neurotic teenage brainpan, entranced with their own ignorant tunnel vision. A quick-fix solution is simply to reach back and engage with yesteryear, and few recent Hollywood films…
Now that Starbucks is as familiar a brand name to most consumers as McDonald’s, competition for the local java business is even tougher for independent coffeehouse owners such as Ryan Maybee of J.P. Wine Bar & Coffee House ( see review). Maybee is building his clientele from downtown loft dwellers in downtown office workers. For other caffeine vendors, developing customer…
A friend of mine flatly refuses to go to the many sleek, highfalutin coffeehouses around the city for his morning cup of java, even though he admits that he’d rather have a double espresso or a frothy cappuccino than the less classy brew served at a pancake joint. “It’s not that I have anything against those fancy coffee places,” he…
After trekking out to Grain Valley to visit Whiskey Tango — or Whisko Tangy, as we like to call it after a few drinks — all we have to say is, if you haven’t been, what’s stopping you from making the 26-mile trek from downtown KC? Oh, wait … never mind. Now, we’ll go anywhere for work-reimbursed drinks, and we’ve…
Free shots every Saturday — need we say more? Of course we do; it¹s our job. So let it be known that DJs Ruckus and That Man Dan (both of AR Productions) are taking over a new Saturday night weekly at the Sake Bar in Overland Park. Ruckus says his forte is ³soulful house² music, and in recent years he¹s…
When El Guapo added Orthrelm drummer Josh Blair to its lineup, changed its name to Supersystem and released Always Never Again in 2005, many deemed it an act of rock alchemy. Here was an oft-maligned D.C. art-punk band teaming up with a New York noise-rock drummer to make, naturally, dance punk. Crazy as it was, the results kicked ass. Groovy,…
