Why You Should Have a Good Weekend
‘CAUSE I SAID SO! (Thanks, Robert.) Categories: Music Tags: YouTube
Archives: September 2007
Crankytown: Week in Review
Tonight’s installment of KCPT Channel 19’s Week in Review involves yours truly, along with my media colleagues Micheal Mahoney from KMBC Channel 9, Dave Helling from the Star and Jim Davis from the Business Journal. Host Nick Haines had a lot for us to talk about, and we blew through quick punditry on the Sprint Center ticket madness (i.e., Kansas…
Who Butchered Barbecuelooza? We’re Looking At You, Lenexa.
With the American Royal Barbecue competition on next week at Kemper Arena’s parking lot, around 150 teams from across the country are looking for an edge as they battle over smokers in the parking lot. So it’s suspicious timing for the American Royal’s mascot – Barbecuelooza – to be beheaded. Sure, the official story sounds plausible. Susan Fox, sponsorship manager…
Weekend Events, Suggested by David Foster Wallace
The weekend’s loud and sponsorially christened Nextel Cup Kansas 4001 comes thundering into the Kansas Speedway (400 Speedway Boulevard) preinstalled with unexpected narrative twists of a type that in decades past would have induced, inter alia, fedora-wearing sportswriters to dive toward phone booths, the stopping of presses, and preadolescent cries of “EXTRY! EXTRY!” Rousch-Fenway racer Carl Edwards – he of…
Number of Coming Acts, 3. Average age, 52.
Our shiny new radial tire in downtown, the Sprint Center, is set to open for some seriously aging stars. And no, we’re not talking the Chiefs. The headliners include Van Halen, Elton John and, now, Garth Brooks. To help put some perspective on these aging showmen, here’s a look at their careers: Elton John Age: 60 First hit: “Your…
Growing Pains
In 1969, a teenage girl named Pokie learns that she’s won a scholarship that could take her to Ohio, far away from the poverty-stricken part of rural Louisiana where she was born. However, the aging and ailing aunt and uncle who raised her would prefer that she not go poking around up North. That’s the conflict in A Star Ain’t…
Conservation Campout
Since 2005, the U.S. Park Service, under the universally beloved Bush administration, has reversed federal protections for roadless wilderness areas, exposing untouched ecosystems to mining, logging and energy development. In a healthy spirit of devil’s advocacy, the Sierra Club has been questioning the soundness and wisdom of prevailing land-management policy. Besides mounting public challenges to the development of public lands,…
Almost Top Model
Diversity — of shape, age and gender — is a theme for tonight’s Girls and Guys on the Runway Fall Fashion Show, which features tweens to 40-something models, at Penn Valley Community College Theater (3200 Southwest Trafficway). “People tend to believe that models can’t be but a certain size, and that isn’t true,” says the event’s organizer, who goes by…
Guitar Geek-Out
Kansas City offers a plethora of big-box music retailers, but it’s a bit out of tune with the vintage side of things. This weekend, however, an eBay’s worth of lovingly used instruments will be for sale at the Kansas City Guitar and String Show. The first-time event boasts 50 retailers from across the country selling guitars, amps, violins, mandolins and…
Great Garbo
Don Music was too pompous, the Yip-Yips were too avant-garde, Count von Count was too annoying, and Bert and Ernie’s relationship was too … complex. But Barkley the Dog was always hangin’ out on Sesame Street and keepin’ it real. The man behind (or inside) Barkley during the ’80s was the multitalented acrobat, juggler and mime Fred Garbo. These days,…
She’s Alive
Revived corpses and murderous dolls need love, too, which explains the “Bride of” sequels for Frankenstein, Re-Animator and Child’s Play. Director Terence Fisher, having demonstrated his mastery of the monster-needs-mate genre with 1960’s Brides of Dracula, twisted the template with 1967’s Frankenstein Created Woman. Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing, who played the mad scientist in six films) transfuses the brain…
Find Your Marbles
In Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin foiled two intruders with the aid of marbles and introduced a new generation to the antiquated toy in the process. Though injuring thieves is one way to use them, you can also employ marbles to help break a Guinness world record. Today, the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City (5235 Oak) invites players to…
Teachers Read
Tonight, a free event at the Writers Place (3607 Pennsylvania, 816-753-1090) showcases work by two new members of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Department of English. Taking the mic at the UMKC New Faculty Reading: assistant professors Hadara Bar-Nadav, a poet, and Christie Hodgen, a novelist. Bar-Nadav reads from her latest collection, A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight. As…
Kid Rock
Pity music-snob parents. Sure, they do stuff to make their babies hip. Style that fuzzy baby hair into a mohawk. Dress the bundle of joy in Stooges onesies and miniature Doc Martens. But tots usually discover music on their own. Saccharine-sweet, contrived music, perhaps sung by a purple dinosaur. Well, maybe not. Barney was, like, 20 years ago, right?…
Retro Rides
Urban rebels like their fashion and their bicycles vintage. So says Sam Owen, who started a weekly bike ride in Lawrence, à la the late 1800s. Fixed-gear bikes were the first generation of the now-common two-wheelers. Back then, the wheels moved forward when the pedals did and backward when the pedals moved backward. No gears, shifters or brakes. In recent…
Text Exhibitionism
The Creative Writers’ Reading Series at Henry’s (11 East Eighth Street in Lawrence, 785-331-3511) is an opportunity for normally cloistered writers to emerge into the light and present their work in front of an audience. Chloe Jones, an MFA fiction student at the University of Kansas, has been organizing the series for the past two years. “It’s a collection of…
Gutter and Stars
People at midtown watering hole D.B. Cooper’s (1804 West 39th Street, 816-753-9800) drink like it’s their job. The bar is named after the mysterious man who, in 1971, hijacked a Boeing 727, collected 200 G’s in ransom and parachuted somewhere over the southern Cascades, never to be seen again. The comfy, wood-paneled dive is open from 6 a.m. to 1…
What a Lady
Lady Pauline Trevelyan, a 19th-century spitfire whose diaries offer a glimpse into the early days of photography, is the subject of a discussion tonight at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (4525 Oak). And she probably wouldn’t have had it any other way. Known as a free spirit and a correspondent of art critic John Ruskin, Trevelyan was so captivated by…
So Sentimental
San Francisco singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson is one of those lo-fi guys with an infinite supply of tunes about being lovestruck, lovesick or loveless. All the soul-baring could put off less sensitive types, but it should serve as an aphrodisiac for a few young couples in the crowd tonight at the Bottleneck (737 New Hampshire in Lawrence, 785-841-5483). Nathanson performs with…
Across the Universe
In light-polluted Kansas City, the Gottlieb Planetarium at Union Station (30 West Pershing Road) is like ice water in hell. “I’ve heard astronomers describe ground-based observation as being like standing at the bottom of a swimming pool and trying to see the sky through the water,” says planetarium specialist Damon Bradshaw. That changed with the orbiting Hubble space telescope. One…
Damn It, Mamet
Two unlikely endeavors: first, the plan of three bickering, sad-sack friends to steal back a valuable coin that one accidentally sold; second, an attempt to mount high-quality, economically sound productions of serious plays in the Crossroads, where spiraling rents and property taxes are chasing out the very people who gave the district some life beyond Town Topic. These plots…
Global Twelve
Hotly debated effects of globalization — free trade, culture erosion, social injustices — inspire uncomfortable levels of stress and anxiety. But consider that the relatively recent phenomenon of worldwide film festivals is also an aspect of globalization. Rather than resorting to finger-pointing or name-calling, try forgetting the sometimes painful consequences of globalization with a trip to the movies — 12…
By the Numbers: the Kansas Speedway
With the Kansas Speedway the site of the Banquet 400 on Sunday, we crunched the numbers on the race’s environmental impact. Here’s the damage, on average, which may just make you want to slap that No. 3 decal on a Prius. 100 — Gallons of gas used per car 1,956 — Pounds of greenhouse gases released by each car 217—…
Our top DVD picks scheduled for release this week:
As You Like It (HBO) Babel: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (Paramount Vantage) Broken (Weinstein) The Bronx Is Burning (ESPN) Building Bombs (New Video Group) Chalk (Arts Alliance America) Cinema 16: European Short Films (Warp) Cujo: 25th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate) Davey and Goliath: The Lost Episodes (Starlight) Drawn Together: Season Two (Paramount) 11:59 (Tartan) George Carlin: All My Stuff (MPI) I Like…
Find The Pitch
