When the word bazaar pops up, it’s easy to think of the market scenes from Disney’s Aladdin. But area shoppers don’t have to travel to the fictional land of Agrabah to experience the bountiful and diverse offerings of bazaar merchants and artisans. Discover an out-of-the-ordinary shopping experience today at Bizarre Bazaar at the Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire). BizBaz…
You probably know just enough about Tennessee Williams to get you through the average game of Trivial Pursuit. Remember him as the force behind A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, and you should be golden, right? But if you’re interested in learning a bit more about one of the greatest American playwrights, check out Five by Tenn (+…
University of Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated after leading the Tigers past the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2007 edition of the Border Showdown. Saturday’s tilt takes place at Arrowhead Stadium (Interstate 70 and the Blue Ridge Cutoff), as it did last year, but not nearly as much is on the line. Mizzou already has…
In 11 years, Prospero’s Books (1800 West 39th Street, 816-531-9673) has logged two locations, three owners, more than 700 in-store musical performances, countless poetry open mics, 200 readings, nine self-published books and one very public book burning. To toast Prospero’s survival in a tough business, owners Will Leathem and Tom Wayne are celebrating with a month of discounts and activities…
(20238 West 151st Street, 913-254-1307). After stops at Hickory Farms and Lids for Less, refresh with $2 domestic bottles, $2.75 wells and half-price burgers at this bar in the Great Mall of the Great Plains. First Monday of every month, 2008 Tags: Hickory Farms Inc., Night & Day
(1100 West Santa Fe Street, 913-390-5955). Boulevard and Blue Moon pints for $2.75 and tacos for 75 cents provide cheap fortification at this outpost of the KC chain named for Thomas Edison’s assistant. First Monday of every month, 2008 Tags: Night & Day, Thomas Edison
Ally Sheedy, as the fringe-dwelling loner in John Hughes’ 1985 opus, The Breakfast Club, expresses her dread of adulthood with this sad assertion: “When you grow up, your heart dies.” That’s not necessarily true, but some Johnson County teens aren’t taking chances. Elementia, a literary magazine written, illustrated and edited by area kids and sponsored by the Johnson County Library…
The old adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” applies to rock and roll, too, you know. A band like Kansas City’s Mr. History gets its shits and giggles out tweaking the lessons laid down by its predecessors: Broken Social Scene, Death Cab for Cutie, the Pixies, Coldplay and Minus the Bear, to name just…
If there’s one guy who knows how to make you dance off all of Turkey Day’s gravy, it’s DJ Joc Max. So it’s a relief that he’s the one spinning funk and soul in between the acts playing the Riot Room’s after-Thanksgiving party on Friday. (The show’s true title is the Middle of the Map Music Fest.) Spoken-word artists Stephen…
I hear the first cheers around 10 or 11 in the morning, before anybody on the bus besides the driver is awake. From inside my capsulelike bunk, behind blackout curtains, the burst of screams and applause sounds otherworldly. It is Saturday, November 22, and the two trailer-dragging buses and the equipment truck have just pulled into the parking lot of…
Jason Statham — super-ripped, bullet-headed, and expression-adjusted to Perma-Scowl — reprises his role as the world’s studliest deliveryman. The package, this time, is a Ukrainian diplomat’s kidnapped daughter, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a bargaining chip played by corporate thugs to thwart environmental reforms. The gimmick is a liquid-bomb bracelet set to go boom if Statham strays more than 75 feet from…
This story of couple Kate and Brad (Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn) — not married, might as well be — who, fogged in on December 25, put their planned Fiji frolic on hold to visit their four divorced parents in the course of a single day, doesn’t offer a single surprise within its scant 82 minutes, which feel like at least…
Grant Hart’s solo career will probably never eclipse the legend of his former band Hüsker Dü, but that hasn’t stopped the drummer turned frontman from pursuing a long and fruitful solo path with enthusiastic support from friends and fans. The Dü cranked its amps and purveyed a scorched-earth approach to melodic punk music, whereas Hart’s solo catalog has been decidedly…
It’s been 18 years since the release of Lights … Camera … Revolution!, the funk-tinged thrash classic that nearly pushed L.A. hardcore band Suicidal Tendencies through to the mainstream. Rising above rumors of gang affiliations and several lineup changes in its early years, the band adopted a more accessible style and appeared on Headbanger’s Ball. Since then, fierce live performances…
We’re not going to lie to you. Al Green ’76 created miracles that Al Green ’08 can’t. The classic model slipped into falsetto with a smooth, melty ease. The current one scrapes up into it, sparingly and with effort, like his voice box is a clutch about to drop to the pavement. The old one wrote “Belle” and wore rope-belted…
Dubstep, the kissing cousin of London garage music and the distant progeny of Jamaican dub, has started to make synthesized waves throughout the club scene in the United States. Electronic music that is characterized by the absence of DJ participation and vocals, dubstep has heavy, syncopated bass lines that hit listeners with the concentrated strength and balletic rhythm of a heavyweight boxer…
“Hair Trigger,” by the Dead Girls: The very first booth on the left at Quinton’s Bar & Deli in Lawrence has a special place in Eric Melin’s heart. Surprisingly, Melin’s feelings have nothing to do with the amazing soup in a bread bowl, which is set before him, or with the restaurant’s notoriously hot waitresses, who keep checking in every…
Last week I was complaining that I just don’t like Thanksgiving food. Turkey is bland and makes me sleepy. I’m allergic to sweet potatoes and resistant to the charms of that blob of bread cubes and chopped vegetables known to the world as “stuffing.” “There’s something un-American about not liking those foods,” a friend of mine said, sounding slightly McCarthy-like….
You don’t have to have been raised on colonial Brit lit, classic melodramas, Westerns or war movies to figure out, within 15 minutes, the likely outcome of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, but any or all of the above will help. Tightly wound and corseted posh English stiff finds herself unwillingly parked in a dusty corner of scenic Commonwealth country, on the…
A gallery owes its personality to the preoccupations of its owners and its artists. At Byron C. Cohen, the story on the walls is technique — the more spectacular and labor-intensive, the better. When I view exhibitions there, I sometimes expect to learn that an artist dips his brush in poison, paints while blindfolded or holds broken glass in her…
They had me when they dressed Ron Megee as a nun. With such a potent comic actor in the penguin suit, the Unicorn Theatre’s revival of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You could screw up almost everything and still be worth your time. Fortunately, as directed by the indefatigable Jeff Church, it’s a sour treat to savor in…
The first volley of shots in Westport rings out around 11:30 in the morning. At the Harris-Kearney House, a group of Union soldiers notices a border ruffian amid the crowd that has gathered on the lawn. It’s a sunny but chilly Saturday in late October, and a ceremony has just designated the oldest remaining brick house in Kansas City as…
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We were a Ford family. My mother’s father was a mechanic at the dealership in El Reno, Oklahoma, a rusty prison town that my grandfather always described as a good place to be a workingman. He smelled of grease and cherry pipe tobacco, and he would let me sip from his Schlitz, which he drank with salt around the rim….
