Clutch, with Murder By Death and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster Thursday, February 28 The Beaumont Club, Kansas City, MO By JASON HARPER First of all, Cancun Fiesta Fresh is fucking good. Being wary of its placement in a doomed location — across from the Westport Coffee House, set back from the street by a half-acre of concrete in…
By CHRIS PACKHAM Y’know, this has to be the toughest part of being a prosecutor. “Take somebody from the court, the prosecuting attorney, raise the dress and take a look. That’s all they got to do,” says Mishell Blomenkamp, who lives as a woman but never had sex-reassignment surgery. Blomenkamp is being prosecuted for perjury by the state of Missouri…
By NADIA PFLAUM Debra Higgs watched with relief as men wearing masks removed pile after pile of belongings and random debris from her neighbor’s house at 1806 East 36th Street. For years, she’d been asking City Hall to make her neighbors mow the lawn and stop using the property as a dumping ground for car parts and scraps of wood…
By PETER RUGG Photos by NADIA PFLAUM On your way out of the Bodies Revealed exhibit at Union Station, as they spill you into the gift shop, a sign implores you to use what you’ve learned to make better health choices. The sign seems to reinforce what supporters, when faced with criticism about the source of the cadavers, have…
Rooney Wednesday, February 27 The Sprint Center By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE I’m going to be deaf one day and rock and roll will be to blame. But whatever damage I did to my ears last night at the Sprint Center was in no way the fault of any musician. I barely wore my bright orange earplugs while Rooney performed. Even…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM High, Hard and Inside: Yael T. Abouhalkah, who does not approve of higher water rates or new sales taxes to pay for the estimated $3 billion cost of an upgraded sewer system, is surprised to see polls reflecting support for a half-cent sales tax to pay for the fix. Also: Is Yael phasing out his old…
By JEN CHEN I’ve long been obsessed with Celsius Tannery’s catchy radio jingles. You know, that easily-stuck-in-your-head refrain, “Oooh, that Celsius Tannery/Love the way they flatter me.” So, when I heard that a new version recently made its debut, I had to track it down. Like the others, it has a Caribbean-reggae-hip-hop sound and includes such classic lines as “For…
Since before Deep Blue’s victory over chess legend Garry Kasparov, the technophobes among us have lived in fear of a robotic uprising. Luckily, area high school students have no such qualms. You can bear witness to their embrace of technological progress and the man-over-machine ethos at the Greater Kansas City FIRST Robotics Competition, where 47 area teams will vie to…
Tonight, DJ Bill Pile is gonna “Michaelize and Prince” the dance floor at Blonde (100 Ward Parkway, 816-931-2525). Yes, Pile just turned Michael Jackson’s and Prince’s names into verbs. Michael v. Prince is “a night dedicated to music from Prince and the Prince camp and Michael Jackson and family,” Pile says. Starting at 9 p.m., expect Pile and DJ Mike…
Lyn Hejinian, a fellow of the Academy of American Poets, pioneered “language poetry,” which began in the early 1970s as a fusion of literary techniques. The movement emphasizes the elemental structure of language itself. Joseph Harrington, an associate professor of English at the University of Kansas, notes that even if language poetry has a clear subject, it’s still obviously a…
New pet accessory store and bakery. Thursdays, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 2007 Tags: 2817, Night & Day
Have you ever noticed that the most joyous music often comes from the most troubled places? Such is the case with Uganda, where musicians spread a message of hope that flies directly in the face of the country’s longstanding civil war. That sense of pride informs the performance at 7 tonight of Spirit of Africa, a touring ensemble of…
Clutch has been the quintessential hard-touring American rock band for the better part of two decades. Counterparts such as Queens of the Stone Age may have more hits, but Clutch’s discography is just as solid and all-encompassing. From the group’s early days channeling Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath (yet somehow earning comparisons to the Deftones and Korn) to its recent…
Musician Fred Mascherino’s more famous band, Taking Back Sunday, evinces plenty of sensitivity. That is the root of romantic angst, after all. But with his side project, the Color Fred, Mascherino gets to do more of a stripped-down-troubadour thing than a screaming emo one. The less abrasive love-gone-wrong songs should blend well tonight with the similar themes performed by sister…
Today is the final day of Black History Month, lengthened this year to 29 days by that quadrennial idiosyncrasy of the calendar known as leap year. Before slipping into the rainy, Celtic-swamped days of March, you can use your last day of February to mark one more celebration of black history — at a local event with a proudly expository…
Talk about meta. Nearly a decade into E.M.U. Theatre’s existence, the workaholic troupe has found a new muse: itself. David Butterfield Must Not Die tells the star-crossed tale of E.M.U. actor David Butterfield, who portrays himself. Playwright Andy Stowers says of his latest farce: “Basically it’s him talking about getting all his characters killed off, and people try to assassinate…
A correction to every other piece you’re likely to read about Steven Eubank, the young director, choreographer, actor and all-around musical-theater life force: He’s not a wunderkind anymore. Or a prodigy. Or a child genius. Sure, he mustered his production of Rocky Horror just seconds after sperm met egg. But he’s well into his 20s now, for God’s sake,…
Not since Bill Murray crooned about “that nutty Star Wars bar” on Saturday Night Live has a musical act paid such lovingly hilarious tribute to moviedom’s holiest space saga. Darkside of the Force, the Star Wars tribute act from Pittsburg, Kansas, dons the costume of villains, including a Jango Fett who unleashes razor-eating riffs, a stormtrooper who keeps the imperial-march…
Frogs are dropping like flies. An infectious fungal disease known as chytrid, combined with the usual suspects of pollution, deforestation and climate change, is threatening to wipe out an estimated one-third of the world’s frogs, toads, newts and salamanders, according to the World Conservation Union. Face it: Frogs need some love.Learn how to aid amphibians today at the Leap…
Relics from wars past take center stage today at a venue that’s no stranger to military history. Twenty local collectors will show off their treasures at the fourth-annual Militaria Collectors Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial (100 West 26th Street). In years past, the free event has drawn between…
Midwesterners normally have an inferiority complex concerning the East. But even among Kansas college graduates, a significant inferiority complex exists. Kansas State, an agricultural, more rural school, is the smaller, poorer cousin to the University of Kansas, its wealthier, occasionally haughty neighbor to the east. The disparity between the schools’ basketball teams has been stark. The Jayhawks rarely miss…
In 2002, a group of book-loving African-American women began meeting in a Westport coffeehouse to talk about the novels they were reading. Over time, the original members of the Girlfriends Book Club — including its founder — moved on and were replaced by new faces, and the club’s name morphed into the KC Girlfriends Book Club. Currently, about 23 women…
As a stop-loss combat vet in Afghanistan, author Johnny Rico paid thousands of dollars of his own money to outfit himself with equipment that the Army had trouble providing. In his memoir on the war against the Taliban, Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America, he writes, “My night-vision goggles keep slipping. I…
Sure, hugging is popular now, thanks to the smarmy, cocksure gents of Entourage, who triggered a resurgence of hugging chic. But where were these guys 30 years ago, when Amma — the renowned “Hugging Saint” — began her now-legendary mission of peace via embrace? Amma has been hugging since Turtle and Drama were merely gleams in a hopeful producer’s eye.Tonight…
