With the cuteness avalanche of December rumbling above our heads, it’s worth your time to toast the Unicorn Theatre (3828 Main, 816-531-7529), which tonight performs a holiday staging of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, the satire detailing how dogma messes up those who are dogged by it — a welcome burst of bitter before the…
Sherry Leedy, of Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art (2004 Baltimore, 816-221-2626), is the first person to tell you that Third Friday isn’t First Friday in terms of gallery attendance. “It’s much more intimate. Some of the artists might be there, and others may decide to come on December’s First Friday opening instead,” she says. She’s talking about this month’s Sense of…
Dry-witted siblings Amy and David Sedaris have made separate marks on the landscape of American pop culture, she with cult-classic Strangers With Candy and he with his droll memoirs. Often lost in the shuffle are their collaborations as playwrights, including Stitches, One Woman Shoe and The Book of Liz. At 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday, you can see a performance…
The new Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the meteoric rise of First Fridays in the Crossroads District have redefined Kansas City as a cowtown that grazes on well-hued pastorals as much as on pastures. The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College (12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park), is a wide-open, minimalist space that…
Thank God or Pan or Olivia Newton-John (or whatever god you believe in) at Code Red, tonight’s Millennial League HIV/AIDS fundraiser to benefit local AIDS service organizations. For one night only at the Ron Berg Event Space (1525 Grand), Kansas City’s cabaret community will fill the hole left by Bar Natasha. Benefiting the AIDS Service Foundation of Greater Kansas City,…
(4057 Pennsylvania, 816-960-0866). It’s cold in Westport, so get cozy in a big booth with $3 Bloody Marys and $7 pitchers of McCoy’s own crafted beers. From 10 p.m. to midnight, pints are $2.50. Starts: Nov. 23. Daily, 2008 Tags: Night & Day, westport
(608 Ward Parkway, 816-753-7850). The Plaza’s self-proclaimed casual gathering spot has 18 huge high-def screens, perfect for watching a possible Kansas City victory over Buffalo. After 9 p.m., domestic draws are $1.50, wells are $2 and appetizers are $4.50. Mondays-Fridays, 2008 Tags: Kansas City, Night & Day
What’s not to love about a city with an unofficial motto that promotes hanging on to its own weirdness? Austin, Texas, is an oasis of artistic cool in an otherwise conventional desert, and there’s a lot more going on than just music. So, in the spirit of cross-cultural exploration, Urban Culture Project opens two shows tonight featuring Austin artists. Texposé:…
(6330 Brookside Plaza, 816-363-4070). Sports jerseys are still discouraged late at night, but domestic bottles are only $2.50 after 7 p.m. And a dozen wings go for $5.99 all day. Starts: Nov. 23. Daily, 2008 Tags: Night & Day
With the exception of Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, Hollywood no longer makes ensemble blockbusters, the type in which stars inhabit almost every role. These days, it’s cost-prohibitive to accumulate so many big salaries. But when ’70s directors adapted Agatha Christie’s mystery novels, often populated by at least 10 shady characters with compelling motives, they used an A-list actor for…
Drew Corrigan typically does his good deeds one massage client or yoga class at a time. But earlier this year, the Australian native felt the urge to help struggling communities far beyond the yoga studios and massage tables of Kansas City. How can a body worker of meager financial means fight global poverty? Starting this month, Corrigan is teaching an…
If the names David Robert Jones and John Simon Richie mean anything to you, it’s probably time to ditch your typical trivia night and head on over to Bob’s Yer Uncle Music Trivia at the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207). David Bowie and Sid Vicious would be pleased as punch that you remembered their given names, and trivia host…
Forget the tired cliché that progressive ideas always start on the coasts. When it comes to environmental initiative, this cowtown isn’t flyover country. Kansas City is home to not-so-mad scientists who are tinkering with new ways to produce biofuels, to efficiency gurus who are retooling their homes with energy-saving tactics, and to guerrilla gardeners who are turning lawns into organic…
If the freak-folk craze had done justice to brilliant eccentrics toiling in far-out rustic sounds, then Vic Chesnutt would be on the tip of the iPod generation’s tongue. But Chesnutt’s underdog reputation has followed him through most of his career, beginning in the early ’90s with friendly prodding from fellow Athens, Georgia, comrade Michael Stipe. Thankfully, Athenian love isn’t merely…
Nashville, Tennessee: Music City. Though Nashville isn’t as buzzed about these days as Austin or Brooklyn or Portland, Oregon, it still boasts a reputation as one of the few places in America where people go and try to break big in music. Kansas City, conversely, has successfully maintained its status as a place where talented musicians get born, get their…
During World War II, a Nazi officer (David Thewlis) receives a promotion and moves his wife (Vera Farmiga), teenage daughter, Gretel (Amber Beattie), and 8-year-old son, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), to a remote country house. Almost immediately, Bruno sees through his bedroom window a nearby “farm,” where the workers wear “striped pajamas.” Curious and bored, Bruno sneaks out, makes his way…
Oh, we do cherish the memory of the early- ’90s alt-rock boom. For those who witnessed it and are keen on reliving it 16 years later, the thought of a bald, slender, disco-space-vampire Billy Corgan fronting a nine-piece version of Smashing Pumpkins can incite trepidation. But consider this: Corgan has always been a fan of the the overblown, which is…
When artists rerecord songs from their back catalogs, it’s usually a sign that they’re running short on ideas. Although singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey admits that he’s not exactly prolific, his latest album, Notes From Elsewhere, isn’t just a stopgap to hold fans over while he slowly cultivates his next batch of new material. Instead, Elsewhere captures the Wisconsin native in much…
It’s been nearly three years since the Strokes released a record; in the meantime, we’ve learned just how much talent is hidden behind Julian Casablancas’ yalp. Hot on the heels of Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.’s second solo LP comes Little Joy, a project showcasing the songwriting crafts of Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti alongside Los Hermanos singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante. The…
While some may snicker at “graphic novel” as a term for comic books that take themselves too seriously, the French analogue — bande dessinée (or “drawn strip”) — denotes a medium sophisticated enough to be hailed as the ninth art. Embracing the cult spirit of 1981’s sci-fantasy omnibus Heavy Metal (coincidentally adapted from a magazine with French roots), this animated…
It’s been a decade since Kansas City’s Expassionates put out a record, and it’s safe to say the band is champing at the bit to atone for those lost years. As fast as Scott Easterday rekindled his muse with a stellar lineup featuring guitarist Marco Pascolini, bassist Richard Burgess and drummer Sam Platt, he’s been even more efficient with the…
Tech N9ne’s recent work — like the much-marketed July release, Killer — has seen Kansas City’s most famous rapper moving further and further afield of the gangster-leaning prescription of his own genre. (Imagine the occult yawp of Marilyn Manson whipped through the roadrunning flow of Twista.) Call Tech N9ne what you want — there’s a lot of that going around…
The Flaming Lips – Christmas on Mars trailer Kliph Scurlock still remembers the first time that Wayne Coyne bought him dinner. “I almost didn’t eat it,” recalls Scurlock, now the drummer for Coyne’s band, the Flaming Lips. “Wayne for so many years was this kind of mystic godhead figure to me,” Scurlock, who lives in Lawrence, explains. “I almost wanted…
I have friends who prefer to eat their dinners while sitting at a bar instead of in a restaurant’s dining room. While I agree that the bar is a terrific spot for a single diner — one never feels so obviously solo while perched on a bar stool — I’m more of a table-and-chair guy myself. Still, I must confess…
