Anti-illegal immigration activists rallied at the Kansas capitol on Saturday morning in a demonstration organized by the Heart of America chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. But the chapter’s most controversial member – Frances Semler — didn’t make the trip to Topeka. Categories: News
real Rall.” /> It’s not unusual to hear about people impersonating celebrities. A decade or so, a young blond woman was having a grand old time going to restaurants in Kansas City and whispering to the servers not to tell anyone that she was Tori Spelling. She wasn’t, but a lot of star-struck waiters went overboard fawning over the chick….
Tortoise and Hot Chip. Saturday, June 16, at The Granada Reviewed by Andy Vihstadt Hot Chip and Tortoise seemed like an unlikely combination, but a very welcome one when faced with the sweltering heat on Saturday night. Instrumental-rock requires very little movement from its listeners. To be honest, I’ve never quite acquired a taste for Tortoise, although I did…
We were curious just what would go down at this year’s National Right to Life Convention, held right in our backyard at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center. So I spent a few hours Friday afternoon chatting up attendees, listening to presentations and rifling through some questionable merchandise. Among the things I learned: Tiny brass fetuses can be functional and…
It’s fitting, then, that Eagle reporters have written a definitive account about the case. Bind, Torture, Kill, by Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, L. Kelly and Hurst Laviana, tells the story of Dennis Rader’s crimes and the police’s effort to apprehend him. Investigators determined Rader’s identity after a computer disk he sent to a TV station was traced to a…
Heads up: Like a man with three testicles, and also like a woman with three testicles, June is swingin’ low with more Fridays and Saturdays than the average month. Dude, look at your June calendar right now: regular number of weekdays, 25 percent more fun days. Sure, today is Third Friday and not Fifth Friday. But the point is,…
My podcast has been up for a few days. It features: 1. My usual brilliance 2. Songs by the Comas, the Veils, All Smiles, the Roman Numerals remixed by Onemilliontinytinyjesuses, Destroyer, As Tall As Lions and Dank Nity 3. Incidental/background music by Sugar Minnot (covering Radiohead) and Diplo and TripleDouble 4. Incidental/background farts Here’s the direct linkazoid: Here’s the RSS…
After five years off the air, HBO is bringing back its football training camp reality show Hard Knocks – with the Kansas City Chiefs as the stars. Knowing that certain reality show clichés are as inevitable as the Chiefs breaking down in the postseason, we made a few predictions about what the cameras might catch at Arrowhead. Categories: News
Jesse Malin. Wednesday, June 13, at the Bottleneck. Dispatch by Crystal K. Wiebe While underappreciated by the masses, Jesse Malin can inspire fierce loyalty in the folks lucky enough to see him perform. I’ve been something of a Malin fangirl since I saw him perform in 2003 at the Double Door in Chicago. But I’ve got nothing on the…
A gossipy politico tells the Pitch that Sen. Claire McCaskill intends to endorse Barak Obama for president. The senator’s press secretary, Maria Speiser, tells us McCaskill “has no immediate plans to endorse any of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary.” Whatever. A nod from Claire won’t make a difference in Barak’s race. But it’d make some sense, because…
Live weekly jazz performance at Cafe Trio. Fridays, Saturdays, 2006 Tags: 2817, Night & Day
Three cool Brazilian things are capoeira, churrascaria and caipirinhas. Tonight, weather permitting, you can enjoy them all at Em Chamas Brazilian Grill (6101 Northwest 63rd Terrace). At 7:30 p.m. on the third Friday of each month (through September), local martial-arts troupe Grupo Axe Capoeira entertains diners on the restaurant’s Tuileries Plaza with a fight-dance incorporating subterfuge, kicks and headbutts. The…
In this week’s Pitchcast, the Wayward Son introduces you to songs by the Comas, the Veils, All Smiles, Onemilliontinytinyjesuses, Destroyer and Dank Nity. Get it through iTunes by clicking here, download it on the Web by clicking here here or click the bar below to listen: Categories: News Tags: Apple iTunes, Columns
Blood & Chocolate (Sony) Breach (Universal) The Cecil B. DeMille Classics Collection (Passport) Deadwood: The Complete Third Season (HBO) 52 Pick-Up (MGM) Ghost Rider (Sony) The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: Season Two (Universal) Hellboy: Blood & Iron (Anchor Bay) James Stewart: Screen Legend Collection (Universal) Jesse Stone: Night Passage and Death in Paradise (Sony) John Wayne: Screen Legend Collection…
%{}% I was driving home from work the other day when it occurred to me that, despite being college-educated and reasonably intelligent, I have no idea how my car works. I know the gas goes in, because I do that part. But after that it gets fuzzy. When the mechanic’s telling me what’s wrong with the car, I just stand…
%{}% Glastonbury (THINKFilm) Only a Julien Temple concert doc would get the R rating — for nudity (male, mostly, and not terribly flattering at that), drug use (weed, mostly — yawn), language, and sexual content. Also dig the overwrought BBC narration, in which Glastonbury is described as a former refuge for “saints, mystics, and holy men,” where now it’s just…
The American Songbook: Music of the 1980 to the Present Cue something sentimental, since this latest chapter in Quality Hill Playhouse’s decade-by-decade tribute to the American songbook is also the last. Next season, J. Kent Barnhart and his handpicked group of cabaret stars will ditch the time capsules in favor of show-length tributes to Berlin, Mercer and Gershwin. For now,…
Phantasmania The Kemper’s Phantasmania brings together works exploring the element of fear and morbidity in the collective conscious of 17 emerging artists. Wendell Gladstone’s shiny textures and candy colors seem like the packaging on a new toy, but his cyclical scenes betray something much deeper — in “Resurrection Ritual,” skeleton sailors and monkeys involved in urgent activities illustrate themes of…
There is a moment early on in “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers,” the 14th episode of the brilliant but canceled television series Freaks and Geeks, in which gangly, bespectacled, picked-last-in-gym-class high school freshman Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) arrives home from school, makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sits down to watch an up-and-coming comic named Garry Shandling perform on…
“I think the public doesn’t care about reviews,” says Eli Roth, writer-director of Hostel Part II, which — surprise! — isn’t being shown to the press before it opens Friday on more than 2,500 screens. Still, the 35-year-old perpetrator of high-grossing “torture porn” does appreciate critical kindness when he sees it. “When Artforum called Hostel one of the smartest comments…
So lame it’s … cool? Nancy Drew, writer-director Andrew Fleming’s attempt to jump-start a new Warner Bros. franchise, is a movie flaunting a most obvious demographic strategy — a teen flick with a sensibility, or at least sense of humor, that’s most definitely parental. Invented in 1930 by the same Stratemeyer syndicate that gave the world Tom Swift and the…
%{}% Once, written and directed by John Carney, is a deceptively simple movie. The narrative is strung together by pop songs, but without the sheen or arrogance of most cinematic musicals. By day, a Dublin busker (The Frames’ Glen Hansard) sings Van Morrison on a street corner for spare change, which, on occasion, is swiped by old friends in far…
I’m sort of ashamed to admit that the same week I bit into a plump piece of deep-fried chicken at the Skillet at Café Cedar (see review), I also tasted a different fried treat at a new barbecue joint in town. Fried corn on the cob! I couldn’t resist the very idea of it. Fried corn is one of the…
%{}% God knows I’m not a fussy eater — it would be impossible to do this job if I were. But there are certain food combinations that even I won’t touch. Peanut butter on hamburgers, for example. I can’t go there. Once, I did hesitantly take a bite of a chocolate-chip pancake (hated it), and there was that time I…
