By OWEN MORRIS My goal is to have this series wrapped up by Halloween, which means I’ve got a lot of writing ahead of me. Fortunately, the response has been great, and I’m trying to link to any and all lists I find other people doing. Today’s pick will surprise people, either for being listed as low as it is…
By OWEN MORRIS When it comes to wine, there aren’t many more knowledgeable people than the staff Ryan Sciara has put together at Cellar Rat. Which is why it is so great to see Sciara and crew turn their immense talent toward the great cause of breast cancer prevention and awareness. Since the beginning of the month (October is National…
By JUSTIN KENDALL I called Bill Walker a dick about a week ago. I’d watched this You Tube video of the Boston Celtics rookie and former Kansas State Wildcat getting handsy (but not Reggie Evans handsy) with Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming. I called out Walker’s moves because he was nearly inciting a brawl in the first freaking quarter. I…
Ben Folds October 22, 2008 Uptown Theater Better than: Being dumped. By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE It smelled like a wet sock inside the Uptown Theater last night, but legions of Ben Folds fans didn’t seem to mind. Most of them had waited in a long, rainy line to see the quirky and clever piano rocker who’s been crafting catchy dork…
%{}% By OWEN MORRIS Sometimes I link to another blog with links, which is what I am doing today with this post on finding good deals on groceries — and then you click those links and go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. (Just Me) I was going to make the obligatory masturbating joke to this post about sausage…
By ALAN SCHERSTUHL Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. My Vision of the Destruction of America Atop Empire State Building Author: A. A. Allen Publisher: A. A. Allen Date: 1954 Discovered at:…
Few writers have more street cred on the question of the direction of American storytelling than Michael Chabon. It’s a frequent subject — of speeches and even whole books — for the man who crashed the literary scene with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys and blew away readers and critics alike with his sprawling epic The Amazing Adventures…
Most people steer clear of prickly desert succulents, but not Paul Rudy. Rudy, an award-winning composer and music professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, is well-known among aficionados for, among other things, his cactus playing. Yes, Paul Rudy coaxes music from cacti. The specifics aren’t important here; suffice to say that the man has no shortage of imagination when…
Kurt Andersen has been a keen observer of American cultural history since 1848. Not that he was alive then. While researching his historical novel Heyday, he began noticing how facets of our modern life were sprouting up as far back as the 19th century. Andersen, host of the Public Radio International show Studio 360 (Thursdays at 8 p.m. on KCUR…
Painting, Abstraction and Image, a collection of 10 paintings by New York artist Clay Deutsch, opens today at Rockhurst University’s Greenlease Gallery (between Van Ackeren Hall and Sedgwick Hall, 1100 Rockhurst Road). The centerpiece is “Digital Seoul,” in which Deutsch plays with the South Korean capital’s mathematical grid to form an abstract landscape of the city. “There’s a sense of…
Since 1899, husbandry enthusiasts, cattle breeders and horse people have gathered in the West Bottoms for the American Royal. Kansas City’s largest livestock-agriculture-barbecue blowout draws more than 250,000 visitors every year. A highlight of our cowtown’s celebration is the 32nd-Annual American Royal Pro Rodeo (Kemper Arena, 1800 Genessee, 816-513-4000) today and Saturday. Competing in seven traditional events in the Roughstock…
There’s something novel in attempting to write 50,000 words in a month. At least, that’s the goal. Through the month of November, NaNoWriMo, the organization responsible for National Novel Writing Month, encourages writers of all levels — from literary soccer moms to prosodic professionals — to unite in the goal of writing 50,000 words of fiction.The aim is to get…
Clever physicist Albert Einstein famously said that if all the world’s bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left.” But life-giving crop pollination aside, there are lots of reasons to learn how to run your own apiary: cultivating delicious honey; disappearing inside a cloud of your own tiny minions, like a supervillain; sporting a fashionable beard of…
Talking about transportation is not as much fun as riding a train or dedicating a bridge. But no one gets to wear a conductor’s hat without some planning. The Mid-America Regional Council is beginning an 18-month process to update the region’s long-range transportation plan. Citizens get a chance to say how they would spend billions in transportation dollars that Washington…
What good are words stripped of their context? The organizers of the Free Form Film Festival asked the same of film and found the answer in fringe media. The traveling showcase of film and music blends moving pictures with live musical and multimedia performances. Enter the fest’s laissez-faire school of art — where anything is accepted and everything finds a…
For an unfortunate majority of young moviegoers, “the Thing” means the boulder-looking dude from The Shield shouting, “It’s clobbering time!” But long before the Fantastic Four movies celebrated that wisecracking rock pile, a different Thing terrorized scientists at an Antarctic research station. In 1982’s The Thing, a shape-shifting alien impersonates people and animals, leading to virulent suspicion and gory deaths….
Cellar Rat (1701 Baltimore, 816-221-9463) is pouring wine for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Crossroads store is donating a dollar to charity for every rosé wine sold in October and has teamed up with two world-class wineries to offer free tastings. The first tasting is of Cline Cellars stock, offered today from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Then, from 5:30…
The Necronomicon, an evil text written by “the Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, contains the means for summoning “the old ones,” tentacled, fishy-smelling ancient beings whose names are unpronounceable strings of consonants and apostrophes in the short fiction of pulp author H.P. Lovecraft. The Book of Lists: Horror is an evil book of horror trivia written by such authors and auteurs…
Whenever North Korea is in the headlines, the news is usually disturbing. Last week, there was the announcement that it was restarting its plutonium reprocessing plant and barring U.N. inspectors. And there’s the ongoing drama surrounding the ailing health of the mysterious Kim Jong-il — the vain dictator fond of wearing sunglasses, platform heels and a bouffant hairdo. I confess…
From the abandoned Eastern Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia to the prison yards of Abu Ghraib, Richard Ross photographs areas of containment that governments use to imprison, teach, restrain, question and even execute their people. Ross is perhaps best known for his Museology series of mounted animals at natural history museums and from the famous Deyrolle Taxidermy Shop in Paris….
Saddle up ‘n’ head on down to the American Royal Center for the 11:30 a.m. Invitational Youth Rodeo, to see some of the the roughest, toughest he-man stuffest, rootinest-tootinest young hombres that’s ever crossed the Rio Grande, a-ridin’ on 900 buckin’ pounds of heifer. Buckle-bunnies take note: Cowchildren can’t go on dates without the express written permission of a parent…
If you’ve been ordered by a physician to avoid terrifying shocks because of a cardiac or nervous disorder, but you still enjoy vaguely spooky Halloween fun, Spirits From the Past, a luminary-lit walk through Missouri Town 1855, should sate your autumnal desire for twilight atmosphere. Old-timey storytelling and old-timey trick-or-treating are the prelude to an old-timey moonlit hayride. Reservations required;…
Before you shell out $12 to go to the Psychical Research Society’s Psychic Fair today, let’s check the group’s 2008 predictions and make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. According to the organization’s Web site, Sen. Clinton was due to win the Democratic nomination, Mitt Romney would be elected president, the economy should be in the toilet, and the war…
In one of his sunnier moments, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Art is the proper task of life.” Seek and enjoy the power of art this weekend with the Lawrence ArtWalk. More than 50 Douglas County artists will exhibit their works in 24 spaces in and around Lawrence. Slated for showcase are such standbys as paintings, sculptures and photographs, plus mixed media…
