Beef up the LGBT section of your personal library by checking out the book sale happening today at the Lesbian & Gay Community Center (207 Westport Road, Suite 218). The center is selling cheap donated books that it doesn’t have room to keep. There are gently used novels with LGBT plots, as well as nonfiction volumes and mainstream titles. The…
Films such as Saw and Hostel, dubbed “torture porn” because of their graphic violence, have drawn criticism for desensitizing viewers to depravity. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib serves as an antidote to such glib receptions of aberrant ultra-violence, establishing not only that these dehumanizing tactics really exist but also that Americans engage in them. Director Rory Kennedy re-creates the 2003 incidents…
“I hate Republicans!” a young woman screamed out the window of a sedan as she turned left onto 12th Street from Broadway. The targets of her vitriol seemed indifferent; they shifted their focus to the next car approaching the traffic light. “Don’t listen to George Stephanopoulos! Vote for freedom! Vote for Ron Paul!” yelled one member of the sign-waving pack….
A humble Kansas City trio of indie-pop engineers, Namelessnumberheadman has never really needed much encouragement or recognition to keep recording awesome songs. Nor does the band need a professional studio, label support or product endorsements. These guys didn’t even need a new keyboard for the drummer to make this year’s wonderful Wires Reply — multitasker Andrew Sallee still plunks the…
Between the Buried and Me’s latest release, Colors, flows like a single 65-minute composition, but the group isn’t playing the album sequentially during this tour. Instead, the band’s current set list includes “White Walls,” a 14-minute panoramic survey of Colors’ psychedelic melodies, high-speed solos, thrash outbursts and sublime guitar harmonies. It’s the most exquisitely artistic track metalcore has ever produced,…
The commercial success of Modest Mouse may have something to do with the fact that Pinback is finally reaching a smidgen of the adoring audience that it has toiled for a decade to find. Twin cogs Rob Crow and Zach Smith share Isaac Brock’s penchant for toe-tapping compositions that incorporate singsong melodies and cleverly assimilated hip-hop beats, but the San…
Using just drums, guitar and a microphone, the two members who make up San Francisco’s Black Cobra crank out colossally monolithic riffs that are every bit as punishing as any of the group’s bronto-stomping peers. In trimming the fat, Black Cobra displays a nimble dexterity not always shared in the often overcrowded revival of doom metal. Rather than simply detuning…
Twenty-six-year-old Robert Hardiman, otherwise known as Realla Rezob, stands outside the Walgreens at 39th Street and Broadway in a plain white T-shirt, the straps of a backpack looped loosely over his slim shoulders. Inside the bag are dozens of CDs tucked into yellow envelopes with slips of white paper detailing the contents. Hardiman sells these mixes for $5 each and…
December has always been M.J. L’Donna’s favorite time of year on the Plaza. For a long time, though, she didn’t get to see the holiday lights. L’Donna was the owner of a horse-carriage business called M.J. Surreys LTD until 1998, when she was accused of plotting murder and hiring a hit man. According to court records, L’Donna initially spoke to…
There are two momentous performances in the Darwinian horror fable I Am Legend. One is by the movie’s star, Will Smith — but more about him in a minute. The other is by the movie’s visual effects — not the ones that bring to life a nocturnal army of shrieking, carnivorous beasties (though those are plenty impressive) but rather…
So appealing as a candidate, Mark Funkhouser as mayor is too stubborn, too obtuse and too unilateral (witness Monday’s sacking of City Manager Wayne Cauthen) to lead. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Here’s an alternative view: If anything, Funkhouser is too much like an off-the-rack politician. No, he’s not slick. Ask him a question and you’re apt to…
Looking at Babyteardrops.com, you might think the site is some bizarre joke. Clip-art roses and butterflies reminiscent of some mall chick’s “tramp stamp,” curlicues against a painfully carmine backdrop, text that flashes: Welcome. Baby Teardrops. Please Enjoy Some Music. A blond-haired man’s face hangs center, drenched in high-contrast coloring, his pink lips pursed. Although his possessed brown eyes focus slightly…
At a Guitar Hero tournament a few months back, one kid complained to me that Expert Mode is “too easy.” Then he demonstrated the game’s secret Hyper Speed mode. My pupils nearly ruptured at the sight of him as he navigated the light-speed stream of colored notes; it looked like the trippy ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The…
The Bourne Ultimatum The final installment in the Bourne-again trilogy is the one in which the CIA assassin’s true identity is revealed. It’s the origin story in reverse — how brilliant. But solving the mystery (and misery, as Jason Bourne’s among the most tormented action heroes of all time) is only half the kick. Paul Greengrass, back for his…
What were the odds? The likelihood of this indie-rock touchstone’s original lineup ever reuniting — guitarist and singer J. Mascis, drummer Murph, bassist and singer Lou Barlow — appeared as nil as the Beatles ever regrouping. Still more astounding: The trio went on to record a new album that easily holds its own against the band’s pre-Nirvanamania output. A roiling, through-a-prism folk-punk…
At the end of 2006, I sat down and wrote a list of resolutions. But instead of making it a wish list of the things I hoped I would do this year (eat less, exercise more, pray for world peace, blah, blah, blah), I assembled all the things I had already done and never wanted to do again: act…
Some things are best in small doses, including synth-laden dance-punk. That may be why Professor Murder sticks to EPs rather than full-length albums. Despite the critical acclaim that followed last year’s five-track debut, the New York City quartet has opted to give away Professor Murder on a Desert Island. You can find the opener, “Flex-It Formula,” along with the rest…
Years before he was a filmmaker, Vincent Gallo was into music. He joined his first band at age 9, and by 16, he’d moved from Buffalo to New York City, where he played in Gray, an art-noise act, with Jean-Michel Basquiat. More than two decades later, he scored his film Buffalo ’66 and formed an outfit called Bunny with…
Like most bands, Kansas City’s Five Defy appreciates a little free publicity — even if it’s on a past-due electric bill. “We were playing this Earth Day show sponsored by KCP&L, and there was an advertisement on my disconnect notice,” recalls drummer Justin Skinner. “You know, that did go out to a lot of people. It’s more handbills than we’ve…
Lawrence Gipe’s heady work emerges from propaganda, advertising, commercial and historical photography, newspapers and other ephemera. The Santa Barbara, California, artist understands the pervasiveness of any large political or ideological movement, from the Hudson River Valley painters’ romantic fascination with the land to the oppressive totalitarian imagery found in Nazi photographs and posters. Gipe knows that such images attempt to…
How do birds and other small creatures survive the winter? Not all birds migrate and not all animals hibernate. We’ll study local “winter friends” and make pine cone feeders. (Ages 6 and up) Registration is required. Fri., Dec. 14, 3 p.m., 2007 Tags: 33, Night & Day
For three days in December, beginning Saturday, December 15, the National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC) will team up with the Kansas City Cancer Center, US Oncology Network, the American Cancer Society, the Kansas City Chiefs, and others to provide free prostate cancer screenings in spots across the region. Sun., Dec. 16, 8 a.m.-4 p.m., 2007 Tags: afc west, American…
There are comedies of discomfort, and then there’s Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s scalding follow-up to The Squid and the Whale. An immersion in sibling malice and simmering resentment, with one of the most infuriating characters in recent movies holding us under, Margot trumps the commandment that only the pure of heart and noble of deed are worth a…
In his dusty Gladstone workshop, Bill Cardwell, founder of C&C Drum Company, has a half-finished Christmas present for the girlfriend of someone named Isaac. There’s also a sample of the burnt-orange abalone wrap he created for Chris’s drums. And tonight, at the Uptown Theater, he’ll be hanging out backstage with Claud’s girlfriend. That is, Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse; Chris…
