Thank you so much for your translations. Now I feel I can communicate with almost every Mexican I come across! Seriously, I had to forward it to my brother because the literal meanings cracked me up! Who knew?! Melita White, via the internet Kansas City Strip, July 13 Siren Song I purchased the Shut Your Black Ass Up manual. The…
When a girl shows up to her own birthday celebration, a nighttime garden party, and meets an intriguing stranger … well, that just makes the day that much more special. In our case, that stranger was Sam Witt, a visiting writer at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Even after hours of wine and cigarettes, we still remember a few things:…
Kansas City, Missouri, officials got to rip up the city’s 81-year-old charter last week — thanks in part to the generous ways of developers. It turns out that development interests lined up behind the effort to rewrite the charter. The Better Government Committee, which sent out mailers urging voters to pass Question 2 on last week’s primary ballot, received tens…
Dear Readers: Last week’s column advising Enamorada Gabacha to improve her relationship with the Mexican who invaded her heart by giving him “an old-school blow job” drew many letters — starting with a reply from Gabacha in Love herself. Dear Mexican: Well, of course I thought of a good old-school blow job, silly. How do you think I calmed…
Attorney Tim Kristl wore a tan suit and a badge to the Kansas City, Missouri, Council meeting on July 20. The badge identified Kristl as a city official: He sits on the Parks and Recreation Department board. But on this day, Kristl was not tending to the public’s business. Instead, he represented a developer seeking incentives for a proposed…
Long before the Strip was dry-cured to its current shoe-leather state, it dreamed of being the first meat patty in space. That’s why this curious cutlet’s juices started flowing when it heard about a rocket ship landing soon in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. On September 1, a 35-foot rocket is scheduled to take a ride on a flatbed truck…
While downtown Kansas City enjoys a redevelopment boom, the neighborhood that kicked it off is starting to crumble. City officials estimate that downtown’s building boom has grown to a $4 billion effort that includes a $220 million payout for the new Sprint Center and nearly $300 million for the Power and Light District. By most accounts, the successful first…
The weeds that grow in the vacant lot at 5311 Bellefontaine Avenue aren’t slowed by this summer’s 100-degree days. They are mammoth. Like a mini rainforest, they trap humid air, each leaf like a shower curtain, belching hot mist and bugs. It’s impressive how quickly nature moves back in after people move out. The Kansas City, Missouri, Dangerous Buildings Demolition…
Another Pitch Music Awards ritual has come and gone, and to me, it’s like the death of a romance, a time to look at that empty seat across the breakfast table, sigh, and look hopefully at the days ahead. But you probably just want to know who won. So here you go. Best Avant/Experimental: Onemilliontinytinyjesuses. Best Blues/Soul: Ida McBeth. Best…
Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Brodie Rush. Tonight at the Uptown Theater on Broadway and Valentine, $5 will admit you not only view the fugly-ass Blues Brothers mannequins in the smoking lounge but also to find out which bands are winning a Pitch Music Award this year. Lauded and loathed karaoke host and erstwhile bandleader Brodie Rush will perfor songs…
Now that the most popular show on television is essentially a glorified karaoke competition, it seems more important than ever to stress that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do karaoke. The right way is to go with friends, get drunk and choose the funniest songs you are capable of singing. The wrong way is to lurk…
Adam and Steve (TLA) Back Woods (Terror Vision) Beautiful People: The Complete Series (Sony) Clone (Image) Damon Wayans’ Last Stand (Fox) Frat Boy Collection (Fox) Gilles’ Wife (Koch Lorber) Ghost in a Teeny Bikini (Image) Grounded for Life: Season 3 (Anchor Bay) The Hidden Blade (Tartan) Inside Man (Universal) Jayne Mansfield Collection (Fox) Laguna Beach: The Complete Second Season (MTV/Paramount)…
In 2004, Jason Hall, the head of Warner Bros.’ new videogame division, did something remarkable: He promised to end bad movie tie-ins. By then, gamers had become well acquainted with the suckiness of movie-based games. Ever since Atari’s E.T. — a game so bad, tons of unsold copies were buried in the desert — publishers of “licensed” games had been…
Brick (Universal) Rian Johnson’s feature debut as writer-director will wind up as one of the year’s best films. A film noir set in a modern-day high school, it’s Sam Spade roaming Ridgemont High; kids get doped up and knocked up and even rubbed out while speaking pulp-novel slang, but the gimmick never distracts. No doubt the performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt…
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…
University of California-Berkeley gymnast Dan Millman (Scott Mechlowicz) is one of the best at what he does, and he has it all: perfect abs, a big bulge in his crotch (the camera focuses on it early on), beautiful girlfriends and the ability to balance full glasses of beer on his feet. There’s just one small problem … he has bad…
World Trade Center is about just that—the attacks on, and the collapse of, the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. But 45 minutes in, a viewer might easily forget the movie is set during that nightmarish day. There is little talk of terrorism and scant suggestion that a mighty nation felt suddenly vulnerable and besieged. The filmmaker does not cut…
It’s been four years since restaurateur Steve Cole hung up his apron and sold Café Allegro, the boutique bistro in a space at 1815 West 39th Street that’s now occupied by Thomas Restaurant (see review, page 35). When Cole opened Café Allegro in 1984, that western stretch of 39th Street was hardly a culinary destination point. Judy and Rudy Ross’s…
When it comes to a sensual dining experience, sound is as important as taste and sight. That’s why I love a quote attributed to celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower: “The only thing worse than a restaurant that’s too noisy is one that’s too quiet.” I prefer restaurants that don’t pump up the volume, but if a restaurant is too solemn, it…
We were asking a woman in a “Life is better as a blonde” T-shirt whether life really was better as a blonde when the fight broke out at Revolver. OK, fisticuffs weren’t involved. When we heard the commotion, we spun around to see two medium-sized guys — Green Shirt and White Shirt — facing off. Words were exchanged, but before…
Whatever crazy stories you’ve heard about the 3 a.m. bar on Grand known as Balanca’s are probably true. But with the upstairs newly remodeled, Tuesday night crawlers have been relieved of the former lounge atmosphere in favor of a new, dimly lit, valid club setting. Inhabitant DJ O.E. and DJ Fool (pictured) cooperate on house and retro spins (respectively) from…
Get these motherfucking emo bands off this motherfucking album. No, really — get these motherfucking emo bands off this motherfucking album! The soundtrack accompanying what’s arguably the year’s most-anticipated cheese-horror flick is a giant mess — namely because it’s full of pounding, stuttering dance remixes of songs by new-punk kingpins such as Panic! At the Disco, the Academy Is and…
Compilations like Juke Joint II are the DiGiorno of mixes, culled with such impeccable taste and inspiring breadth that they sound like your music-obsessive friend could be mixing them live in your living room. Normally, buying such mixes seems like a lazy shortcut; if the groups are good, you buy the albums. But the duo of Boozoo Bajou — German…
