Uh, hey, sprechen ze talk? I’m Harry Ellis, and I’m in charge of international acquisitions at the Nakatomi Corporation. Hey, I read the papers, I watch 60 Minutes. I say to myself, These guys are professionals, they’re motivated, they’re happening — i.e., they wanna do something fun this weekend. Am I right? To put it in my terms, you’re…
Pro wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his family and then offed himself last weekend. The gruesome details keep coming: bibles placed next to his victims’ bodies, a prophetic Wikipedia post and cryptic text messages sent by Benoit in his final hours. After hearing all of this, I couldn’t help remembering the last major wrestling misfortune and Benoit’s history in Kansas…
Pitch reporter Justin Kendall received several angry phone messages following last week’s cover story, “The Dimwit D.A.,” which detailed Phill Kline’s performance as Johnson County district attorney. Most of the callers claimed the story had an anti-Christian and pro-choice bias, despite the story mentioning abortion only once in passing. Here’s a couple of the messages: Categories: News
I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks, and since Kraske had Tim Finn from the Star and Steve Wilson from Kief’s in Lawrence on his show to talk about the year’s best music so far, I’m thinking it’s time for me to come forward. Here’s a bevy of YouTube videos of the kind of stuff that’s been rocking my…
It’s been a long four years. So long, in fact, that not a single Royal who played in the last game that clinched a winning month is on the 2007 team.The Kansas City Royals stand triumphant. By beating the Angels on Wednesday, the men in blue guaranteed their first winning month since July 2003. Categories: News
Last month, civic leader and Republican consigliere Warren Erdman told me that Gov. Matt Blunt is the state’s “leading advocate for stem-cell research.” Erdman tried to pass this line of crap after the boy governor elevated a foe of stem-cell research. Blunt put state Rep. Rob Onder on the Life Sciences Research Board, even though Onder had fought the…
No, he’s not in jail or anything. But Mac Lethal just sent out a MySpace bulletin announcing that his first album is downloadable for free, track by track, via the Snocap player on his page. If you can figure out how it works, you can get yourself some free Mac Lethal. You’re welcome. Categories: Music
The latest broadcast from my apartment is up. Right- or option-click here to download the latest Wayward Cast, sonic dispatch and musical bastard child of the Pitchcast. Click here for an RSS with all of our available podcasts. Thank you and a happy Thursday to ye. Categories: Music Tags: wayward cast
Sure, its tap water Categories: News
The Associated Press reports this morning that “Prisons and jails added more than 42,000 inmates last year, the largest increase since 2000.” Predictably, almost six out of every 10 prisoners was a minority. That might explain Jason Whitlock’s recent obsession with what he calls “prison culture” seeping out into the mainstream. Categories: News
The Pitch’s sister paper, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, shadowed the fag-hating flock of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church as they picketed the supposed sinners of an Opa-locka megachurch. Writer Brandon K. Thorp focuses on the vitriolic reactions the family elicits. Check it here. – Justin Kendall Categories: News
The opening theme of John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” has inspired countless musicians, but the song’s impact was especially meaningful to Martel Chapman. The melody was an awakening to Chapman, who heard it as a sign to quit his day job and devote himself to painting. Ten years on, jazz is still the primary muse for the artist from Madison,…
Before Westport’s security was beefed up on weekends with menacing barriers, ID checking and charging a buck for entry, minors were free to roam the streets, even though they weren’t allowed in the clubs. KC has never offered a cool, viable nightlife option for its restless youth. Luckily, hip-hoppers Joc Max and Miles Bonny, known collaboratively as Lindquist and…
Tai chi, or t’ai chi ch’uan, translates literally as “boundless fist.” Known as a “soft martial art,” it aims to internalize energy for health, as opposed to externalizing energy in violence. Ed Waldman, an artist and furniture designer, has taught tai chi for nine years and is now offering an open, drop-in class at 9:30 a.m. Saturdays in Huron…
As the summer movies clang and sputter and the summer musicals tra-la-la to no great effect, there are just two choices this summer for those seeking fun with their brains still on. There’s Knocked Up, of course, a love story whose odd particulars still make more sense than all that pretending-to-kill-myself-is-the-answer stuff in Romeo and Juliet. And then there’s…
Today marks one month since the Quindaro Market Place, a new weekend farmers market, opened at 1801 Quindaro in Kansas City, Kansas. Event organizer Richard Mabion says his main concern is to put healthy food in the neighborhood. To do that, he has recruited local farmers to peddle their fresh tomatoes, sweet potatoes, lettuce and more in the lot across…
In this week’s Pitchcast, the Pitch’s Jason Harper and Scott Wilson spin and riff on tunes by Spoon, Conner, Black Tie Dynasty, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Bob Dylan, Radio Birdman and Jackie Carol. Get it through iTunes by clicking here, download it on the Web by clicking here or click the bar below to listen: Categories: News Tags: bob…
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series (Shout!) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Anchor Bay) Dead Silence (Universal) Echo & the Bunnymen: Dancing Horses (MVD) Film School (Docurama) Frankenstein Conquers the World (Tokyo Shock) Going Under: Unrated Version (Blue Underground) High School Musical: The Concert — Extreme Access Pass (Disney) Jack Nicholson Collection (St….
Everyone’s got a different sense of what makes a killer party. For kids, maybe it’s whacking a piñata and overdosing on cake. For adults, it could be sticking a beer bong down your gullet and declaring yourself Mayor of Schlitz City. But since 1999, the Mario Party series has served up its own version of fun: board games. Lots…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law by reel three. Since Americans like their blood-and-guts in…
I’m sure something happened in the 1950s besides Hula-Hoops and Marilyn and white kids sucking Coke through straws, but our digitized, collective memory seems to offer little else. Fifty years from now, what images will evoke today? Starbucks and SUVs? American Idol and rampant obesity? Men, alone, slumped before computers with their hands in their pants? One thing that…
Over their 10-year partnership, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler produced a body of work that will always seem tender, ferocious, penetrating and witty. Former Kansas City Art Institute students, Ericson and Ziegler patiently examined arcane stories of places and buildings, reviving what seemed to have been lost or destined for nothingness. Sadly, Ericson died of cancer in 1995, but here,…
“We’re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to. It’s tricky, but it works.” So declares Michael Moore in the midst of his new documentary, Sicko. Moore may be riffing on the war in Iraq, to name only our most recent intervention, but he’s actually referring to U.S. citizens crossing the border into Canada for cheap meds and…
Still an all-American bloodhound after all these years, Bruce Willis’ Det. John McClane begins Live Free or Die Hard sniffing around a Rutgers-Camden parking lot and busting the frat boy who’s been trying to cop a feel off his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Oh, Dad! Much of the ol’ action hero’s aging core audience is presumably tied down…
