If you spend your afternoons listening to the chatter on KRBZ 96.5, Fox’s new show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader should feel familiar to you. A similar idea spent more than three years in rotation on The Buzz’s drive-time program The Church of Lazlo — until Lazlo himself realized it was too lame. Lazlo’s version was just different…
Ever wonder what Kansas should smell like? Now you can find out for the low, low price of just $22.83, plus tax. About a month ago, Perfume Pizazz at Zona Rosa began carrying 3-ounce bottles of Kansas, the cologne. The stuff’s actually made in Paris, so it appears the French have finally decided to bottle that KCK smell. Kansas comes…
In July 2000, Kansas City Councilman Troy Nash led a six-day vigil at 39th Street and Prospect. Nash and members of the crime-fighting group MoveUp camped out in tents and an RV in an effort to interrupt the drug and prostitution trades, if only for a week. The event drew attention to one of Kansas City’s most desperate corners. Afterward,…
On the night of January 27, 2003, Danny Holmes and Shawn Hamre stood outside a prostitute’s door at an apartment building at 16 West 37th Street. The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department officers were searching for a missing person, a 25-year-old tourist named Guy Coombs. The last trace of the missing man was his ATM withdrawal at a gas station…
credit: wick The Life and Times lives it up in Japan. In the latest issue of modern-rock glossy The Alternative Press, three hometown bands were written up in the Top 100 Bands You Need to Know in ’07 piece. (You can’t tell from the site; I saw it in the magazine itself while waiting for my flight out of Austin.)…
Tonight, Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots is playing at VooDoo Lounge at Harrah’s. I really, really wanted to get a preview in print, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Instead, I give you a great write-up by the music editor at sister paper the Dallas Observer. And the YT of my favorite Roots song: I love that mumbled bit…
Not that there was a “mystery,” per se, but no sooner had I posted the last entry than Megan Metzger walked into my office. I told her the news of Anvil Chorus becoming MJ & the Bear, and she identified the source of the new band’s name. Behold! Megan took this picture of a bear, Dave Gaume and MJ with…
The band, or, more likely, singer/keyboardist Anna Cole, posted this MySpace bulletin this morning: Hi All- Anvil Chorus will be no more very soon. While this news could be taken as sad news…do not fret…it was just time for this to happen and actually, I am quite excited. We are playing this Friday at The Hurricane with David Gaume on…
TV On the Radio. Saturday, March 17, at VooDoo Lounge Review by Megan Metzger This year, I decided to forgo getting up at the buttcrack o’ dawn to partake in St. Pat’s Day revelry and pretended like it was any other day, mostly because I was saving myself for that night’s festivites: TV on the Radio at the VooDoo Lounge…
I’m back home now, but my head’s still in Austin. One of the coolest moments of the whole trip was seeing Ad Astra Per Aspera play the back patio of a divey Latino bar east of I-35, which forms a clear and definite boundary between commercially rich downtown Austin and the poor part of east Austin. So that’s where the…
Well, Kansas City, I hope you’re enjoying your weekend. Holy fuck, it’s St. Patrick’s Day! I’d forgotten. You’re probably already out drinking. Pace yourself. Westport revelers should head down to the big blowout at the Record Bar. If you like feel good soul music, get there around 3, for the Diplomats of Solid Sound — they got horns, keys, nice…
I might as well hang it up. Our Village Voice SXSW group blog rocks. It’s on the Dallas Observer’s site, here. I could contribute to it, but I’m having some computer woes. So, for now, I’m just going to throw some pictures atcha. That redhead is Piney Gir. Her real name is Angela. She was born in KC, but she…
South by Southwest is massive. It starts early with free day parties hosted by independent labels, magazines, publicity houses, blogs, brothels (not really, but should be) and the like. Music blasts out open windows and doorways and sounds from street corners all around 6th Street, just north of the Colorado River in downtown Austin. The streets are a pageantry of…
If Alekhine’s Gun, Ruy Lopez, Blitzkreig, Backward Pawn or King Hunt mean anything to you — or if you just want to try your hand at the world’s oldest board game — you’ll fit right in amid the soft couches and tiny wooden tables at Aimee’s Coffee Shop (1035 Massachusetts in Lawrence). Each Monday night at 7, chess champs duel…
American Cousins (BFS) Appetite for Deconstruction: A Punk Rockumentary (MVD) Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (Universal) Bloody Reunion (Tartan) Blood Trails (Lions Gate) The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (Passport) Favela Rising (Netflix) Fires on the Plain: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Gene Autry 100th Anniversary Collection (Passport) Ghost: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) The Holiday (Sony) Horror…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the list, and its popularity spawned endless clones, some fair (Saints…
Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best — yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best — film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character — a bruised, fallible, cold-blooded bastard whose mixed triumph is to…
The American Songbook: Music of the 1950s The latest Quality Hill Playhouse cabaret revue might sound like the same old same old, but that’s probably true only for those with a grudge against consistent excellence. This time, J. Kent Barnhart’s crooning quartet revels in the last decade in which their beloved American songbook was steadily adding new chapters. Expect highlights…
Jenn Deirdorf: Push The last resort for an artist before a caustic critic or a bored gallerygoer is “You just don’t get it.” For Jenn Dierdorf, this phrase actually comes first. According to her statement, her show is about exploring “what happens when we cannot apply our typical meaning system to structures that we recognize.” We do recognize the dozens…
So there the president was, in 2004, accepting the nomination a second time, bullshit plopping out of his mouth like candy from a Pez dispenser. As an example of what he’d just called “expanding liberty,” he boasted: “In one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms also work outside the home.” A swell…
Look, to be honest, Hung Liu breathes the rarefied air of the almost perfect. She is the entire package: a brilliant painter who has the experience and intelligence to layer her paintings with historical depth and perspective. She has an encyclopedic understanding of her own truth, which allows her to re-examine herself and her complex history. That history is…
The space-time continuum smacks the shit out of Sandra Bullock in Premonition, but the fun really gets going when she starts to smack back. As humdrum mom Linda Hanson, Bullock sets things up by doing her thing, effortlessly establishing the girl next door (to the loony bin, as we shall see). With a pair of adorable daughters and her…
Have you ever dreamed of operating your very own 1960s-style drive-in? Me neither, but if I change my mind, I’ll call the number on the “For Lease” sign in the window of Clem’s Drive-In (10802 East 23rd Street) in Independence. After 40 years serving loose-meat sandwiches, cherry milkshakes and batter-fried pork-loin sandwiches, the latest owners of Clem’s — Brett Gilbert…
I haven’t decided whether I really believe that Kansas City’s downtown is on the verge of a renaissance, despite the assurances of Mayor Kay Barnes and her minions. And yet, I can look out my office window to see earth movers digging out the foundation for the new Performing Arts Center, and I pass the shiny shell of the…
