Everyone could benefit from living a little bit healthier. And there’s no better way to improve one’s health than through diet (beer is totally vegetarian) and exercise (table tennis is an Olympic sport). Eat, drink and paddle tonight at the Nice Café, which is located in the back of the Casbah Market (803 Massachusetts, Lawrence).The Casbah Market and its Nice…
Campaign season has brought with it a flurry of globalization-related pandering, with candidates questioning the wisdom of trade deals they once supported and making promises (or lies) to restore lost factory jobs. As we struggle to define the economy in the global information age, it’s worth wondering exactly what the new parameters should be. Such will be the conversation at…
Peter Greenaway started his career behind the camera as a London bureaucrat in the mid-1960s. The onetime painter edited and directed short films for England’s Central Office of Information, where he developed a deep suspicion of narrative’s dominance over images. He also developed a style that runs through much of his work: an obsession with framing. The restless architect of…
Like NPR favorites the Ditty Bops, Vermillion Lies combines dual female vocals with unusual instrumentation (gas can, flour sifter, typewriter) and perky, variety-show banter. But whereas Vermillion Lies occasionally echoes the Bops’ vintage jazz sound, this sister act (Zoe and Kim Boekbinder) delves deeper into the vaudevillian performance tradition. During “Global Warming,” the Boekbinders engage in verbal slapstick and punctuate…
Nothing says summer like a float down the Fury of the Nile. That old wet-and-wild float ride is one of the classic amusements at Worlds of Fun (4545 Worlds of Fun Avenue), which begins its 35th season of roller coasters and other stomach-twisting excitement today. The park opens at 10 a.m. Admission costs $38.99. The park is open Saturdays…
There isn’t one meek or mild thing about the fiery color red. Red has long symbolized strength and power in addition to two seemingly contradictory emotions: full-blown rage and red-hot love. And strong color inspires strong artistic performances, such as tonight’s “Red Dances” at the Gem Theater (1615 East 18th Street, 816-842-1414). City In Motion Dance Theater’s presentation, the choreographed…
Coming into the 2008 season, the Kansas City Brigade had plenty of reasons to be optimistic. An on-the-ropes Chiefs franchise did nothing in the offseason to appease its ornery nation of face-painted blowhards, opening the door for KC’s arena-football franchise to steal the Chiefs’ proverbial thunder sticks. Toss in a move to the Sprint Center (1407 Grand), $9 upper-balcony…
Springtime is here again, and these days, eating local is as hip as the latest iPod. The Tuesday Lawrence Farmers Market is fertile ground for even the most uninitiated foodie. Now in its 32nd year, the market begins this season with a range of meat and veggie offerings. Market coordinator Mercedes Taylor-Puckett reminds folks to be aware of what’s…
Here’s a gut check: Our collective crap could cost us more than $3.5 billion. After years of paving, flushing and letting problems fester underground, Kansas City’s sewer system needs a massive overhaul. Get a glimpse of what kind of pollution is oozing through those pipes and what happens when those toxins aren’t properly contained during a free screening of…
When Bob Berkebile rushed to the chaotic scene of the Hyatt Regency disaster, his first thought was, Did I kill these people? It was the night of July 17, 1981. Berkebile and his wife, Libby, were on their way to a dinner party in the Lakewood neighborhood. As they rounded the southern edge of downtown Kansas City, the couple…
I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you’re into, how much you sulk or how hardcore you front. Last month, at the final qualifying round of Jared Brustad and Ed Dorris’ Improv Thunderdome, you would have laughed. Hard. Often. Maybe embarrassingly, spitting out your drink, needing a Kleenex once in a while. When Trish Berrong, of…
Firing off a deluge of immigrant-hardship vignettes with the thudding consistency of a tennis-ball machine, Under the Same Moon presents a genre somewhat at odds with itself: the gritty fable. Last year’s The Italian, another story of a small boy’s picaresque search for his mother, struck a balance between the awful and the wondrous by surrounding the hero with a…
Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid, under a greasy moptop and a brushy beard) is a misanthropic college professor who, when he’s not willfully forgetting his students’ names or altering clocks to duck office hours, is out peddling a pissed-off rant to publishers totally uninterested in his treatise on how he’s right and every other literary critic in history is wrong,…
When an Austrian filmmaker who makes no secret of the fact that his grandparents were Nazi sympathizers makes a fact-based movie (and wins the Academy Award for best foreign film) about a Jewish forger who survived the concentration camps by printing money for the German war effort, is he a brave boy or a rotten apple falling unpleasantly close to…
For a movie built around questions of failed ethics and duplicitous behavior, Street Kings is just as dishonest as its characters. Though conceived as yet another sobering front-line report on law enforcement’s ever-expanding gray area, director David Ayer’s grim cop thriller mostly plays as a biggest-dick contest. You sense that an infinitely more complex drama exists within the film’s…
Dear Mexican: Sitting on my desk is a levy from the Internal Revenue Service for more than $12,000 in unpaid taxes. Turns out some dude used my Social Security number for two years in Albuquerque to get paid and didn’t bother to pay taxes. It has taken me plenty of time and attorney fees to figure it out, and we’re…
Upon taking office last year, Missouri State Rep. Jeff Grisamore went to work for the vulnerable. The first bill he sponsored would have expanded the number of families eligible to receive child-care assistance. Grisamore, a Lee’s Summit Republican, didn’t let party politics stand in the way of what he likes to call “responsible compassion.” More than half of the…
“Middle of the Map” by Les Izmore, from Vital (self-released): Both halves of KC duo Izmore are among those who’d love to see hip-hop’s reigning moneygrubbers overthrown and conscious rap return to its early ’90s glory. Rapper Les Izmore makes his case for mainstream malaise with the plainspoken enthusiasm of fellow Midwesterner Rhymefest, and Rich Izmore has a knack for…
“Pills” by the Architects, from Vice (Anodyne): Hardworking, broken-backed, sweaty-headed, scruffy-looking Kansas Citians the Architects have never tried to win folks over with much more than relentless punk-drenched rock-and-roll honesty. Now, with Vice, the group amps up its sound to arena-rocking levels, throwing in plenty of gang vocals and melodic hooks to make sure it reaches the proles in the…
Feature, “The People vs. Erotic City,” March 27 Dear Shorty I wanted to commend Justin Kendall on his sensitive and touching portrayal of “Shorty” during the Jesse Herd trial. It’s refreshing to know that justice is being served, regardless of the fact that Herd deserves so many more years in prison. I have to wonder if (and hope that) those…
“Happy That Way” by the Wilders, from Someone’s Got to Pay (Free Dirt Records): If there’s one band in Kansas City you don’t want to summon for jury duty, it’s the Wilders. For one thing, the workaholic roots-music quartet is out on the road half the year. Then there’s the matter of that crazy look Ike Sheldon gets in…
It’s nice when a game comes along that pleasantly surprises you. I admit, I judged Viking: Battle for Asgard by the screenshots, writing it off as yet another one of those grimy, violent games so plentiful that they’re almost their own category: the “Bloodletting in Brown Clothes on a Cloudy Day” genre. Viking is a little more than that….
“Hangin’ On” by Suzannah Johannes (Range Life Records): Lawrence resident Suzannah Johannes picked up the guitar a couple years ago during a trip to El Salvador, hoping to use its powers of elocution to better communicate with strangers. Funny thing is, it worked just as well in her native country, where tastemakers such as Range Life Records and daytrotter.com…
“Ghostwriter” by RJD2, from Deadringer (Definitive Jux): We weren’t surprised when RJD2 strapped on a guitar and started singing for his third solo LP. The Ohio DJ and producer concluded his 2004 visit to the area doing just that, and though last year’s The Third Hand didn’t receive the critical acclaim of its sample-based predecessors, the change has done…
