(1220 McGee, 816-842-6060). Get jolly in this bar just north of the Sprint Center. Belly up to bail bondsmen and assorted City Hall folk with $2.25 domestic cans and $4.50 calls all night. Mondays-Fridays, 2008 Tags: Night & Day, Sprint Center
(5000 Main, 816-753-9499). The South Plaza will be receiving a lot of presents. If Santa is smart, he’ll take a load off afterward with some hot wings and $2.75 Red Stripes. Wed., Dec. 24, 2008 Tags: Night & Day
(316 Westport Road, 816-561-2492). Perfect for holiday sweaters and empty wallets, the Stagecoach has $1 Bud and Bud Light draws from 7 to 8 p.m., $2 domestic bottles from 8 to 9 p.m., and $2 wells from 9 to 10 p.m. Wed., Dec. 24, 2008 Categories: Beer & Spirits Tags: Bud-light, Night & Day
(3809 Broadway, 816-753-9247). If Jesus ever came to Kansas City and did a birthday shot at midnight, he would do it here and would slam a $2.75 shot of J.T.S. Brown bourbon. Wed., Dec. 24, 2008 Tags: Kansas City, Night & Day
On Christmas Eve, when some little children are snug in their beds, listening for the sounds of jingling bells on rooftops, some Kansas City Jews will be having a party. December 24 is Bagel Bash, an annual get-together thrown by the Jewish Federation’s Young People’s Initiative (YPI). This year, it kicks off at 8 p.m. at Vinino in the Power…
Last year, Every Picture Tells a Story tweaked its short-film-about-visual-art format, changing its name to Every Song Tells a Story. “It turned into more of a music-video contest,” says event coordinator Brian Boye. “So we’re returning to our roots.” However, those roots can stretch. “If it can be considered art and has a story to tell, let’s hear it,” Boye…
In high-school sports, the rivalry game is the big cheese. Win the game against the punks down the block and you’ll have bragging rights all year. The 2008 High School Hoops Rivalry Showdown gives local basketball squads the chance to upend their bitter rivals on the neutral courts of Municipal Auditorium (301 West 13th Street, 816-513-5000). The border wars begin…
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Not the Liar Liar sequel it looks to be in the trailer, but close enough: Jim Carrey plays self-absorbed Carl Allen, who green-lights every bad decision in an effort to reinvent his sorry life. And, hey, it works! His first terrible decision — to give a homeless man all his money — turns out to be a stroke of good…
Kate DiCamillo’s 2003 children’s novel about a big-eared mouse with an inspiring case of shining-knight envy is one of the finest expositions for kids of loss, grief, reactive vengeance, and forgiveness. I was looking forward to seeing what Sylvain Chomet, who made the fabulously weird The Triplets of Belleville, would bring to this great yarn, which trusts small children to…
The Louvins, the Allmans, the Followills of Leon — the South has a long history of brother bands. Wielders of cold, droning trance rock that churns like the river in Deliverance, brothers Van, Jennings, and Lain Carney (guitar and vocals, bass, and drums, respectively) aren’t likely to be admitted into the Southern brother fraternity without first undergoing some kind of…
Though the holiday season is typically shits for live music, it does afford an opportunity for impromptu band reunions. Mongol Beach Party’s two-night stand at the Record Bar comes as an unexpected yuletide blessing for anyone who reveled in the local band’s early ’90s-vintage bizarro blend of Elvis Costello, Trip Shakespeare, XTC and Captain Beefheart. Billing themselves as an “inappropriately…
Stillwater, Oklahoma’s Colourmusic combines over-the-top absurdity, science obsession as pyschedelia, inspirational DIY arena rock, and fun-loving ramshackle updates on ’60s pop. Sound like a pilot for Flaming Lips: The Next Generation? Well, who doesn’t like the Flaming Lips? Fact is, Oklahoma has a foot in the indie-rock door when it comes to music to eat mushrooms by, and Colourmusic is…
Justin Lake Whedon doesn’t get out on the scene much these days. He and his wife, Melinda Anne Whedon, who perform together in the duo Ebon, have traveled and schmoozed with barflies enough over the years. Justin, who grew up in Overland Park, spent a good part of the ’90s throwing and promoting raves in Kansas City. A believable 33,…
The power trio is a test of mettle for its participants: One fuckup, and you’re blushing like a schoolgirl. Perhaps because Lawrence band the Armory got its start in the even more revealing, naked-baby-photo format of a guitar-and-drums duo, the group has since developed into one of the more potent threesomes on the local scene. Co-songwriters Tyler Snell and Thadd…
While their tag-team moniker doesn’t connote easygoing ways, local DJs Dublow 7 and Mythik aren’t nearly as brutish as the name Barbaric Merits suggests. Some bass-heavy tracks from Barbaric’s most recent project, New Mutations, do offer swift-kicking violence to mainstream ideas of musical coherence. But others, like “Dollar Bill Gem,” an unexpected and lighthearted meeting between tango and hip-hop, assure…
At age 10, Max Spransy gave MC Hammer an awesome gift. It was at the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois, where Spransy had scored a backstage pass. “I wrote ‘Jesus Loves You’ on a rock and put hearts all over it,” recalls Spransy, a Kansas City musician who records under the moniker Max Justus. “He was like, ‘Hey, cool —…
Over a month ago, someone called in to the Food Critics panel on KCUR 89.3’s Walt Bodine Show, raving about a place out in Belton called the Country Keepsakes Tea Room. I absent-mindedly wrote down the name and address of the place, thinking that I might want to check it out someday. A couple of days later, my friends Truman,…
Two years ago, nearly to the day, Will Smith and Italian director Gabriele Muccino released The Pursuit of Happyness, one of the most underrated of recent Hollywood movies, which starred Smith as a single father navigating a hand-to-mouth existence on the streets of San Francisco. Writing at the time, I praised the film for Smith’s superb performance and for its…
Toys are never just toys. The playroom remnants of childhood embody the cultural and social mores from which they emerge and suggest a multitude of meanings. Far from benign objects, they function as stand-ins for experiences and memories and retain their symbolic power. The pieces in Toy Stories: Souvenirs From Korean Childhood, now at the Spencer Museum of Art on…
Rain pelts Chuck Mabie’s Lexus ES300 as he zooms through the gaudy, hot-pink gates of Warehouse 1. More than a decade ago, Mabie worked inside these gates, in an industrial park near Interstate 435 and Truman Road, selling pallet racks — steel beams and uprights used to make shelving in warehouses. He learned the business from Warehouse 1 owner Mary…
Yellow snow and a nonfunctioning fire hydrant mark one of the best parks in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It isn’t officially a park. It’s a patch of gravel and grass, no more than 20 feet wide, between the sidewalk and the Central Library’s parking garage. Dog owners who live in surrounding buildings claimed the spot soon after the garage opened…
When you think about it, the first science-fiction story you ever hear is the legend of Santa Claus. He’s an immortal humanoid of uncertain origin with far-reaching powers of omniscience (he knows if you’ve been bad or good) and mind control (to you, he’s a cherubic puppet with the voice of Mickey Rooney; in the mind’s eye of the fella…
Dear Readers: A couple of columnas ago, I published a short list of my favorite books regarding Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and urged ustedes to submit better choices so that gabachos can have a Christmas shopping list for their favorite Mexicans or to understand nosotros better. Muchos responded, and below is a list of the most-recommended tomes, along with my brief…
