You don’t have to be a financial wiz to know that our economy isn’t doing so hot. In fact, there’s a real chance that some of that old cheer could get sapped right out of holiday shopping this year. But never fear: The season of sales is upon us — in particular, the Everything Art on Sale for Less Than…
Educator, writer and former Missouri House Rep. Lloyd Daniel has had a long and noteworthy career. Today he honors Leon Jordan, another African-American Kansas Citian with a storied legacy. Jordan was a police detective, teacher and political leader. In 1955, he bought the Green Duck Tavern on Prospect. He also served for three years in Liberia, helping that country develop…
(31st Street and Oak, martinicorner.com). The Velvet Dog, Mint, the Drop, Sol Cantina and Tower Tavern are participating in the annual Halloween on the Hill party, with drink and shot specials at each location from 8 p.m. till close. Dust off that sexy-cop outfit or dick-in-a-box package for the midnight contest at Mint. Fri., Oct. 31, 2008 Tags: halloween, Night…
(3402 Main, 816-753-1909). Pay the $10 cover and get down to the Afro-beat stylings of 16-piece band Hearts of Darkness, the raw funk and deep soul of DJ Fat Sal and the acid-house jazz of Mr. Marco’s V7 while paying respects to Maximon, Mayan patron of sinners and prostitutes. Dress accordingly for the costume contest at midnight. Fri., Oct. 31,…
(4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179). After the Danzig show at the Uptown, head south on Broadway and see the Haunted Creepies bring the noise on the patio while Hammerlord and Fiend Club, a Misfits tribute band, rock balls inside. Devil horns encouraged. Fri., Oct. 31, 2008 Tags: Danzig (Band), Misfits (Band), Night & Day
Extravagant costumes and armies of roaming suburban children are fine Halloween traditions, but let’s be honest: It wouldn’t be Allhallows without thousands of area residents lining up to enjoy a few of Kansas City’s haunted houses. Start the evening with a Halloween trek to Excelsior Springs for the Cavern of Terror (14500 Old Quarry Road), which proudly utilizes the planet’s…
“You wouldn’t know that I’m a freak to look at me,” Kaya Hewitt says. “You’d think I was just another Johnson County mom.” She is pleasantly unconventional, though, as evidenced by her Halloween party tonight, a throwback to medieval Gaelic Samhain celebrations, often referred to as the Celtic New Year.”A lot of people are missing a connection to Earth, the…
Relax. That’s a little advice for Unicorn Theatre audiences as Ron Simonian — local playwright, stand-up comic and strip-club host — preps Liquid Morality (his one-two-three punch of one-act plays) for a trip to Chicago. When his men start their scabrous talk and his women flounce onstage as cartoon strippers or polyamorous lesbians, and you worry whether you can laugh…
In Mexican culture, death is a lover; a friend; a playful huckster who throws on a tux, grabs his skeleton bride and clip-clops over to the church to get hitched. Passing into the next world is an act to be embraced, not feared, and on the first two days of November, Mexico celebrates the Day of the Dead in honor…
(5400 Martway, 913-384-0986). Take your mind off the election results (or celebrate them) with a game of Silver Strike and $2 Bud, Bud Light and Miller Lite drafts. Mondays-Fridays, 2008 Categories: Beer & Spirits Tags: Bud-light, miller lite, Night & Day
(5902 Woodson, 913-262-9881). Pack in, hunker down and talk about the next four years with the locals in this tiny bar, with $2 PBR draws and Miller High Life bottles. Mondays-Fridays, 2008 Tags: Miller High Life, Night & Day
(5399 Martway, 913-432-7000). Pretend the past eight years never happened by bowling a few frames fueled by $3 tequila sunrises and $15 domestic buckets. Mondays-Fridays, 2008 Tags: 548, Night & Day
Kansas City’s two reigning film festivals — FilmFest KC and the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee — are joining forces in 2009. The resulting Kansas City FilmFest will combine the resources of both events into a hulking superfestival that showcases local, regional and international films. Think of the new fest as an extension of the shorts-dominated Jubilees of yore, with higher-profile…
Historically, cage fighters and exotic dancers have provided Election Day counterprogramming, diverting the politically apathetic from exit polls and projections. David Ford has enlisted more than a dozen representatives of these disciplines, along with hip-hop artist Tommy Lift, for a performance he calls I Love This Country, tonight from 7:30 to 10 at the Mercy Seat Gallery (210 East 16th…
Yes, we can … watch the election-night results together! For Obama fans, tonight’s the night to be around other like-minded people to either celebrate a victory or begin four years of collective depression. In Kansas, starting at 7:30 p.m., a whole host of Obama groups will hold a watch party at Nick & Jake’s in Overland Park (6830 West 135th…
The next five days of dressing up, drinking, socializing and learning are things that Trisha Lynn of Hays, Kansas, looks forward to every year. She calls it “living the dream.” For transgender folks and cross-dressers, the annual Fall Harvest conference can be like a sparkling oasis in an otherwise drab existence. “A lot of these people will come back year…
Replete with preacher speak, Let the Sin Begin, from local rockers Them Damned Young Livers, is a Pabst-and-ditchweed-scented piece of urban honky-tonk. Frontman Jody Hendrix delivers greasy hellfire and shitstorms that turn the Livers’ songs about stabbing girlfriends, popping pills and drinking at Davey’s Uptown into present-day, working-class narratives. Swinging between the cautionary “Stranger Danger” (With love and murder on…
Like many married couples, Kelly Crisp and Ivan Howard pre-empted the dreaded seven-year itch by experimenting. Last year’s Night of the Furies found them trying out synth-heavy, dance-floor beats with mixed results, but the Rosebuds have fallen back on old habits for their fourth LP. Life Like opens with the dark, surfy title track that introduces a man-versus-beast theme, which…
Stephen Malkmus’ post-Pavement career has found the lanky, indie poster boy communing more with his guitar than his notepad. Wringing alternately crisp and spritely riffs from his ax, Malkmus is happily tapping his inner Grateful Dead fan, writing songs that are less literate than shred-tastic. He wouldn’t have been as free to mine this vein with sloppy, shambolic Pavement, an…
All summer, the Power & Light District has been giving us free concerts of bands we totally don’t want to see — sans a few of our favorite local bands that we’d rather catch in a district with better parking and fewer meatheads. Now they up and get TV On The Radio, which last played in Kansas City at the…
After a box-office-catastrophic two-movie run, Guy Ritchie takes another mulligan and returns to “form.” A new pack of capering yobs, including a Pete Doherty–esque crackhead savant, run off with one another’s loot, their various storylines cut together and the scenes temporally shuffled with enough sleight-of-editing to keep up a semblance of kineticism. Brick-shithouse-built rough boys are given “unexpected colors,” such…
Barry Levinson’s tedious excuse for a Hollywood caper asks us to pity the poor movie producer — in this case, Art Linson, adapting his own memoir about trying to get good movies made in bad old Hollywood. To hear him tell it, Linson (nicely played under the radar by Robert De Niro) is just another harmlessly uxorious Everyman trying to…
Pals make a porn to pay the bills and, in the process of gettin’ it on for the video cam, realize that their years-in-the-making friendship is really a love affair. Awwwww, how sweet. Hard-up meets hard-on in a movie that’s all heart once you get past the shot that’ll shock only those for whom the donkey show in Clerks II…
On a double bill with L.A. Confidential or Chinatown or almost any post-1970 film made about institutional corruption in Los Angeles, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (a period drama based on a 1928 Los Angeles missing-child case) would come off as faintly geezerish noir lite. As LAPD scandals went, the case of Christine Collins was a ripe one. In 1928, Collins, a…
