By OWEN MORRIS I knew the dating scene in KC was bad but this is ridiculous. (M. Toast Hivemind) A Chicago roaster stops serving large coffees and believes other coffee stores will soon follow its lead. Don’t bet the farm on it. (Chicago Tribune) You know times are grim when even the NYT food critic is complaining he can’t afford…
By OWEN MORRIS The ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri’s board is meeting tonight to discuss representing Jonathan Justus, owner of Justus Drugstore in the case brought against him by the Missouri Board of Pharmacy. Justus received a cease and desist letter for the use of the word drugstore in his restaurant name, and the ACLU recently contacted him to…
By NADIA PFLAUM Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline might have lost his opportunity to stick Edwin Hall with the death penalty if Hall is found guilty of Kelsey Smith’s slaying. During a hearing today in front of Johnson County District Court Judge Peter Ruddick, Hall’s defense attorney, Paul Cramm, contended that Kline has screwed up his petition for the…
By DAVID MARTIN Does it count if the Royals win and nobody sees it? Nielsen ratings validate the name of this blog: The Royals have the second smallest TV audience in baseball. In a story about the astonishingly low ratings of the hometown Nationals, The Washington Post, quoting from an analysis of Nielsen research published in SportsBusiness Journal, says the…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN Big Tony shows little Tony how not to hit. It isn’t Tony Peña Jr.’s ineptitude that offends me. It is the Royals’ television broadcast team hyping his talents. On Saturday, FSN Kansas City ran a graphic comparing his batting statistics to Frank White’s, neglecting to mention that it was a different era and that White was four…
By CHRIS PACKHAM Until today, I didn’t know that the imaginary deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that political reporters are always sleepily invoking included an “abortion card,” %{}%but according to Fred Logan’s Campaign Blog at KCTV Channel 5, Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline is “playing” one. I know “playing the race card” is a lazy, assy-smelling metaphor for the deployment…
By CHARLES FERRUZZA Tony Glamcevski was one of the most familiar faces at Le Fou Frog restaurant, where he was the longtime general manager of the iconoclastic French bistro. After eight years working at the restaurant, Glamcevski (who moved to Kansas City to open Lidia’s restaurant in 1997) resigned on June 19. In an e-mail announcing his departure from the…
By JASON HARPER What: Great World of Sound, directed by Craig Zorbel Why: Because IT could happen to you. Also, the movie’s hilarious, deeply touching, and has both fantastic and fantastically awful music. The movie opens with an LP being spraypainted gold. Shortly after, a car pulls up to an empty strip mall. A guy gets out and breaks his…
By ANDY VIHSTADT Toronto’s Fucked Up is going with Matador for its sophomore LP, most likely leaving the label’s marketing department scratching their heads. The hardcore punk outfit (whose members go by 10,000 Marbles, Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas, Concentration Camp, Mr. Joe, along with a handful of aliases for their aliases) will be releasing The Chemistry of Common Life on…
Mewithoutyou July 8, 2008 The Bottleneck Better than: Watching a televangelist from the comfort of your air-conditioned living room. By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE One guy on the left side of the room undulated, shirtless, last night for the entirety of Mewithoutyou’s experimental-spiritual indie rock set. I don’t really like it when dudes strip down at shows, but this time I…
By OWEN MORRIS University of Kansas Provost Richard Lariviere rejects a proposal to sell 3.2 beer in the Kansas Union, leaving KU students only the thousand or so off-campus bars to choose from. (LJ World) Roadfood authors Jane and Michael Stern put together a list of the twelve best barbecue places in the country. Yes, a Kansas City locale is…
By FLANNERY CASHILL Elvin folk chanteuse Feist enchants this Saturday when she sprinkles pixie dust all over Starlight. MP3: “1234” by Feist, from The Reminder (Polydor) Ad Astra Per Aspera celebrate the release of their new 7” with triumphant, high-five jams at the Replay this Saturday. MP3: “Danger Bird Blues” by Ad Astra Per Aspera, from Danger Bird Blues EP…
By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI There’s a new energy fight heating up in Missouri and it has nothing to do with coal. This year, Kansas became a bell-weather state for the rising opposition to coal-fired power plants, as the battle over a controversial new project in Holcomb paralyzed progress on virtually all fronts during the 2008 legislative session. Now that dirty coal…
By JASON HARPER Guilt certainly is one kind of motivator. That may explain much of why Beck’s 12th album is how it is, and not just in the choice of title. Modern Guilt finds the once-nimble, weirdo wordsmith dropping the rap style that has figured prominently on most of his albums — save Sea Change, Mutations and some of the…
By OWEN MORRIS A couple of weeks ago, taste-testers at The New York Times sampled 25 root beers. They included a lot of root beers that aren’t available in the Kansas City area and, while I trust the Times that Abita is a good root beer, I’m not driving all the way to Louisiana just to find out. So I…
By DAVID MARTIN I joked in last week’s column that the Cordish Co.’s only regret might be that the ACLU hasn’t joined those criticizing the dress code in place at the Power & Light District. Turns out, the ACLU is getting involved. Lisa Watson, an ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri board member, says she has been monitoring complaints and…
By CHARLES FERRUZZA Earlier this year, I wrote a Cafe column about cafeterias because this unique form of dining out is vanishing. In fact, it’s vanishing a lot faster than I suspected in March, when I paid my last visit to the legendary Jerre Ann’s Cafeteria in St. Joseph – a place that had hardly changed over seven decades of…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM I’m sorry that sombrero-wearing Mexican banditos broke into your office and stole your job. As a symbol of manufactured sympathy, I bought you this condolence card designed by illegal Mexican immigrants at Hallmark: Now that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has signed an immigration bill into law requiring proof of citizenship for public benefits, including food stamps…
By ANDY VIHSTADT On the heels of their recently released Bake Sale EP, Cool Kids’ Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish have finally dropped the mixtape they’ve been promising for the past couple of months. Twist your bass knob to the right and download “That’s Stupid” for free at their MySpace page. The six-track mix comes in at under twenty minutes,…
James Christos is intense and bad ass and totally underrated in the Kansas City hip-hop scene. It’s not for lack of hustling — the guy plays a ton of shows, drops a ton of CDs, and stickers up the town (to name a few of his tactics). More likely, it’s because Christos’ music floats between gangsta hardness and indie ideology:…
