I hope you’ve all been enjoying Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood over the last couple of days! We don’t know what’s going on there. It’s kind of like the Pitch blog is haunted by juicy, but very spoo-oooky Hollywood scoopage. Consequently, I wasn’t going to write anything this morning. “Let Nikki Finke do it,” %{}%I said to Justin, lazily scratching my…
%{}% If it seems like only yesterday that I wrote about the forthcoming FDA ruling on stevia, and today the FDA made its decision. Ladies and gentleman, stevia is safe. Not that it mattered much for Coke — which released its stevia-based drinks think week — but the ruling did have an impact on Pepsi, which was holding off on…
Uwe Schmidt is a man who’s taken on many aliases over his musical career (about 65 according to his Wikipedia page). The German DJ/Producer throws a little Latin flair into his Senor Coconut releases, including his most recent LP, Around the World. The album was finally made available in the States last month and includes reworkings of Prince, the Eurythmics…
%{}% You know, what this economy needs is more $20,000 bottles of champagne like this one sold at a club this week. I’m not an economist but even Bernard Madoff would call that a bad investment. I’ve been on a champagne kick of late (not $20,000 bottles though) and so this list from Forbes on 12 bubblies that are affordable…
Laurel Nakadate’s film could show the world what downtown KC has to offer. Next month, audiences at the Sundance Film Festival will gaze on downtown Kansas City, thanks to scenes in filmmaker Laurel Nakadate’s Stay the Same Never Change. Writer-director Nakadate shot the film in Kansas City last summer. There’s a Fourth of July-themed trailer on Nakadate’s Web site, but…
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. He does this for one reason: Knowledge is power. The Way of the Ronin: A Guide to Career Strategy Author: Beverly A Potter, PHD Publisher: American Management Associations Date: 1984 Discovered at: DAV Thrift Store,…
After scrounging for holiday bargains, nothing beats a relaxing ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Traditionally, the Plaza has been the place to go for that. But if you want to stay in the burbs, try Town Center Plaza (5000 West 119th Street in Leawood). Today from 1 to 5 p.m. is your last chance this season to pretend that it’s…
Stand-up comic Frank Albritten will open up this night of fun with the Felt Show, Lawrence’s adult-oriented puppet entertainers. Vaudeville, dircuses, and poltical causes will all be lampooned by the Felt Show. During the intermisson ventriloquist Diana Rockwell and radical political spoken word artist Sara Glass will perform. Rock band the Marmots will play at the end of the night….
The thing about the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s annual urchins-and-turkeys holiday spook show, A Christmas Carol? It’s always more potent than you expect, especially because its core story — four ghosts in a tag-team, time-bending haunt — is one told so often, and so shoddily, that many find it corny. The Rep usually does the Dickens tale right, though, with…
When a jazz band showcases tunes such as “Better Get to Higher Ground” and “Hold the Water,” it doesn’t take long to figure out that they hail from the Big Easy — er, the Big Difficult. Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra were among the first acts to perform in the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,…
“Part of the magic of Create Your Own Reality is that you don’t have to be an artist or even artistic. You just have to have the intention to create,” says Darcy Bloss, the mind behind tonight’s free event at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (4420 Warwick, 816-753-5784). Bloss sees tonight as an opportunity to bring creative people together…
Perhaps no one could have predicted the timeless popularity of a ballet in which a “mouse king” is stabbed by a larger-than-life nutcracker. But few can deny that it doesn’t truly feel like the holidays until those first few notes of “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies” hit your ears. Tonight, get your annual fix of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece at the Music…
After scrounging for holiday bargains, nothing beats a relaxing ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Traditionally, the Plaza has been the place to go for that. But if you want to stay in the burbs, try Town Center Plaza (5000 West 119th Street in Leawood). Today from 1 to 5 p.m. is your last chance this season to pretend that it’s…
Jonathan Moller has looked into pits scattered with the skeletal remains of indigenous Guatemalans unceremoniously buried during a campaign of genocide in the 1980s and 1990s. For more than a decade, the photographer blended visual journalism and social activism as he traveled through Central America capturing the challenged lives of populations uprooted by civil war. Moller’s arresting, intimate images are…
Fire Carl Peterson! Buy out David Glass! The front office is an ideal scapegoat for the sad performance of any professional sports team — especially ours. But then the blame gets handed down and the results explained away in vague terms. Bad team chemistry? Penny-pinching budgets? Who cares about that? Much better would be a sport in which wins and…
When you buy designer merchandise directly from the artist, you eliminate the greedy middleman and ease the new depression burden from the broken back of your pocketbook. Such is the case with the Sikenomics Pop-Up Shop, local designer Sike Style’s temporary installation at the now-vacant Revue Boutique space (1415 West 39th Street). “Very temporary, actually,” Sike says. “Since all those…
Modeled on the star-studded prime-time Christmas specials of Judy Garland and her ilk, George Harter and Musical Theatre Heritage’s Spectacular Christmas looks like just the thing to jolt this town from its seasonal affective disorder. Tonight’s event is the latest in a series of witty, high-concept shows with great songs, great singers and great playfulness. (MTH’s tribute to Leonard Bernstein…
When a Wal-Mart greeter is trampled to death by overzealous shoppers stampeding toward hi-def TVs, it’s time to examine the spending mentality of the holidays. Long before the advent of the cash register, people filled their homes with simpler forms of holiday cheer. For centuries, Lithuanian families threaded the stalks of wheat and rye into intricate patterns of snowflakes and…
The Fresh Produce Art Collective, a group of primarily Lawrence-based artists, bills itself as a community of creators engaged in aesthetic cross-pollination. Member artist Jeremy Rockwell’s multimedia works evince a corresponding openness to a range of styles, techniques and subjects; ghostly drawings of birds and rooms occupy wall space with vivid organic abstractions and cleanly rendered geometric configurations. Rockwell opens…
