If love can give birth to children, it can also produce good art. Such is the premise behind Cohabitation at the Green Door Gallery (1229 1/2 Union Avenue).The show, on view from 1 to 5 p.m., ends today. Cohabitation is the combined effort of installation artists Lauren Winnen and Joe Devine, a married couple who have kept separate professional lives…
Amid the loading docks and truck terminals of the West Bottoms, Kansas City’s haunted-house district continues its spooky expansion with two new attractions. This year, Full Moon Productions debuts the Macabre Cinema (1222 West 12th Street) and disinters an old haunt called The Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe (1100 Santa Fe). Full Moon Vice President Amber Arnett-Bequeaith says, “The concept…
If you caught Interpol’s recent appearance at the Uptown Theater, you may think there’s no point in lining up with the goth kids for She Wants Revenge tonight in Lawrence. Both bands owe too much to Joy Division. And as far as monotone warbles go, Interpol’s Paul Banks is a better substitute for Ian Curtis than SWR’s Justin Warfield. Yet,…
Want to stink-bomb an academic cocktail party? Harrumph loudly and ask, “Neil LaBute: genuine talent, craven misogynist or both?” By the time the heated opining dies down, the following facts should make it into evidence: The KU grad’s first feature film, The Company of Men, features a pair of guys who are really, really mean to women. The Shape of…
This weekend marks the 941st anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Armed with stone missiles and arrows, the Normans and the Saxons duked it out for the English crown. Tonight, in a less violent fashion, local bands at Mike’s Tavern (5424 Troost, 816-444-3399) will utilize sticks (of the drum variety) and axes (of the guitar variety) in a Battle of…
Maybe it’s her bejeweled cat’s-eye glasses, her schoolmarm gentility or her nostalgic sensibilities, but something about Donna Foulk attracts little old ladies. Foulk has been peddling vintage clothing and accessories for years, and she often receives calls about estate sales and collections from women who’ve long since traded their peep-toe pumps for orthopedic sneakers. She has finally set up a…
Janey Mack! Remember the last Irish Fest you went to? The one where you got bloody fluthered and ended up bringing that cheap brasser back to your hotel room? You said you were acting the maggot, but I think you’re just a chancer. Better to be a bowsie than a dry shite, I guess. Anyway, we’ll really be suckin’ diesel…
In 1957, Tatiana Dokoudovska wanted to expose the grace and sophistication of choreographed dance to audiences beyond typical Vaganova-heads. She formed the Kansas City Ballet Company as an offshoot of the recital program put on by the Conservatory of Music. Over the next two decades, the company became an honest-to-God American professional ballet company.After 1980, the organization reached new heights…
It’s not often that the word science springs to mind in conjunction with powwows. A powwow, after all, is a time-honored American Indian tradition that involves singing, elaborate dancing and beautiful costumes. Bunsen burners, lab coats and nerd glasses don’t usually fit into the mix. But scientists will definitely be in attendance tonight when the Society for Advancement of Chicanos…
Reading and writing not only educate, empower and entertain but also allow English and journalism students to pay their monthly gas bills. Celebrate the written word today at the River City Reading Festival at the Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire) with more than 40 Kansas-connected authors, illustrators and performers participating in readings, workshops and children’s activities. Jim Lehrer, anchor…
The end of a shitty week calls for immediate gratification and cathartic release. Consider a rock-and-roll flush-out at the feet of Kansas City’s Whiskey Boots. Drummer Amy Farrand likens the riff-and-rhythm-heavy female duo’s music to “a kick in the nuts from behind.” Two years of experimentation and the release of a self-titled EP have shined the Boots’ ability to deliver…
Television cameras and newspaper photographers crowd the front row for a packed mid-September meeting of the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board of Commissioners. But they aren’t aiming their lenses at Frances Semler. Today, the controversy is over a proposed dog park in Waldo. Outside, reporters interview supporters of the off-leash play space and opponents who don’t want dogs overrunning…
Speaking of trying to get around while going green, the metro’s been getting some shit lately from the smog police. Thanks to all our cars coughing up smog, the Environmental Protection Agency has demanded that the metro come up with a plan to clean up its act. And driving slower in your Escalade won’t cut it. With power plants and…
Bryner and Wood told us that they once tried to bicycle to a Wizards match at Arrowhead Stadium. But when they got to the gates, the guard told them, “Rolling stock isn’t allowed.” We’ve never heard a bike described in such Wall Street-soundin’ jargon, but a spokesman for the Chiefs confirmed that bikes aren’t allowed into the parking area on…
Cave drinking isn’t really a new idea in the metro. There used to be a restaurant in Lamar Hunt’s SubTropolis complex in the Northland. But according to a 1998 Wall Street Journal article, “After a lot of food and drink, departing patrons tended to get lost; one man was shaken but unharmed after he accidentally drove off a 4-foot-high loading…
“Testify” by The Federation of Horsepower, from Stay Down (Kafka the Dog Records): The Federation of Horsepower is the crunkest band you ever dreamed of, brother. It’s got the Killa City attitude, the low-slung rock and roll, the beats to shake ass to, the noise, the punk, the blues, the metal — and, now, an endorsement deal from Lil Jon’s…
Whats left to say about Halo 3? How about this: All the pomp and circumstance surrounding its launch sure have been distracting. Commercials that look like clips from a Hollywood movie, extravagant collectors sets that sell for $130, limited-edition Xbox 360s with a green-and-gold Halo-inspired color scheme, and a midnight release that spawned lines snaking all the way around…
“River” by Whiskey Boots : The end of a shitty week calls for immediate gratification and cathartic release. Consider a rock-and-roll flush-out at the feet of Kansas City’s Whiskey Boots. Drummer Amy Farrand likens the riff-and-rhythm-heavy female duo’s music to “a kick in the nuts from behind.” Two years of experimentation and the release of a self-titled EP have…
It’s a baffling caprice of the zeitgeist to have two studio Westerns released just weeks apart. James Mangold’s better-than-competent and highly crowd-pleasing 3:10 to Yuma has provided a harmonica fanfare for something more ambitious. Written and directed by 40-year-old, New Zealand-born Andrew Dominik, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a deeply, unsentimentally nostalgic movie…
It will no doubt be said of Michael Clayton: best John Grisham adaptation ever. Only, of course, it did not spring from the billion-dollar mind of the lawyer turned franchise. Instead, it’s from Tony Gilroy, who made his big-screen bow 15 years ago as the screenwriter of the ice-skating melodrama The Cutting Edge. Since then, Gilroy has shored up…
Funny thing seeing Philip Baker Hall in You Kill Me, as hes already played the role of a drunken hit mans boss in The Matador, to which this feels like a slapshtick-noir sequel. Its also the photonegative of Sexy Beast: Once more Ben Kingsley plays a killer killer, only now hes too drunk to think straight or shoot straight…
I got a call last week from that beloved little Hungarian dumpling, George Detsios, best-known for serving chicken paprikash and stuffed cabbage at his namesake cheese-and-sausage shop at 45th Street and Main in the 1980s. Detsios is now a peripatetic chef who cooks one night a week at Grinders (417 East 18th Street) and at least once a month at…
Will you leave your kingdom to a heretic?” That was the question posed to a dying Queen Mary in 1998’s Elizabeth. Director Shekhar Kapur’s grim and dingy film can now be viewed in retrospect as the origin story of a superhero: the Armored Virgin Queen, faster than a speeding lead pellet, more powerful than a Spanish Armada, able to leap…
Money lines the path of each crane and dirt mover that’s transforming Kansas City. Perhaps no other business in town has benefited from the building boom as much as the J.E. Dunn Construction Group. As I write this, J.E. Dunn’s blue signs grace the construction sites of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Federal Reserve Bank and the…
