at the Buttonwood Art Space (3013 Main, 816-285-9000) gives serious consideration to an often-dismissed American genre, revisiting impressions of the country’s expanse, the people who settled it and the people who still live in its more unsettled regions. The exhibit includes paintings, photography, sculpture and multimedia pieces. Award-winning artist Don Dane is a traditional realist whose keen eye for detail…
Owner and curator Tom Deatherage of the Late Show Gallery (1600 Cherry, 816-474-1300) opens his annual Valentine’s Day show with an all-star lineup of up-and-coming area artists. “It’s called Be My Valentine,” Deatherage says. “It’s a group show featuring Linda Sackin, Jesse Christopher, Lori Erickson, Doug Schwietert, Travis Pratt (who got four nominations for the Charlotte Street awards), Asheer Akram…
It’s difficult for many metro residents to imagine thriving in a biome harsher than the unpredictable Midwest, but for thousands of years, our neighbors to the extreme north and south have lived well, despite the cold. Celebrate the adaptive human spirit at the Climate Change at the Poles exhibit at the north and south balcony galleries of the Spencer Museum…
Hailing from Iowa and looking rather like Where’s Waldo? without the cap and scarf, Jake Johannsen arrived on the club scene in the early 1980s with a hesitating delivery and a wryly observant take on everyday life (including one hilarious early tale of profuse bleeding after nicking the edge of his nostril while shaving). Over three decades, Johannsen has remained…
Looking for a reason to break out your ascot or your (fake) mink? Attend “Red Carpet Affair,” the 54th-annual Bacchus Ball. The Bacchus Foundation aims at getting young Kansas City professionals involved in philanthropy and the downtown community by throwing massive parties — a cause that’s pretty easy to get behind. This year’s ball features dinner, drinks and a silent…
In the market for some new old things? Head to Westport, where three retailers are participating in a Valentine Vintage Open House today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. First, get your shop on at Bon Bon Atelier (314 Westport Road, 816-756-0855). Browse the tiny boutique’s selection of vintage jewelry, clothing and houseware conversation pieces while sipping complimentary cocktails and…
Unlike actors and hairstylists, who traditionally get Mondays off, most service-industry employees — waitstaff, bartenders, managers, cooks and door-security folks — work varied schedules. But because Sunday nights are relatively slow in the restaurant business, that evening is an obvious pick for Service Industry Night at the Power & Light District’s Lucky Strike Lanes & Lounge (1370 Grand, 816-471-2316). The…
The latest installment of ArtSounds, a creative partnership between the Kansas City Art Institute and the UMKC Conservatory of Music, carries the largely self-explanatory title “4 Musicians, 3 Writers, 2 Girls and 1 Animator in Search of a Lyric.” The writers and the animator have written, selected and designed text to go with vocalises. That’s not a typo: Vocalises are…
Drinking Liberally began in 2004 as a place for pissed-off liberals to commiserate over pitchers of cheap beer in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Five years and 318 nationwide chapters later, the attendees of the once not-so-happy hour finally have a reason to celebrate. Share in the revelry, discuss local politics and maybe find your next politically active plaything at…
(13223 Shawnee Mission Parkway, 913-268-3565). At the Kansas outlet of this Arizona bar, score $2 domestic pints and wells and $3 Rock Lobster shots. Mon., Feb. 9, 2009 Tags: Night & Day
13410 West 62nd Terrace, 913-962-5777). The Shawnee location of this Lawrence institution opened in 1996. The Jayhawk-friendly bar serves up $1.75 domestic pints, $6 domestic pitchers and $3.50 Long Islands today and tonight. Mondays, 2009 Tags: Lawrence (New York), Night & Day, Shawnee
(10320 Shawnee Mission Parkway, 913-268-4006). This huge spot holds 645 people and has pool, darts, foosball, poker and $2.25 domestic drafts from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Mondays, 11-2 a.m., 2009 Tags: Night & Day
In the mountains of Afghanistan’s Kunar province on June 28, 2005, four Navy SEALs embarked on a mission to capture a high-value target: Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, the head of a group of insurgents called the Mountain Tigers. The mission was called Operation Red Wing. Two Afghan men and a boy discovered the SEALs and reported the commandos’ position to…
Watersports, the debut LP from San Francisco band Mi Ami — due out February 17 on Touch and Go/Quarterstick Records — is no day at the beach. Unless one of the aquatic activities implied in the title involves hanging out in a shark cage with a meat necklace and a waterproof Walkman loaded up with Can. Like that influential ’70s…
If the Replacements are the guys who sang about Alex Chilton, then the Dead Girls are the guys who sang about the Replacements singing about Alex Chilton. She likes ‘Alex Chilton’ more than anything I’ve ever written, sings Dead Girl JoJo Longbottom, shouting out the seminal song on the ‘Mats Pleased to Meet Me album. There are plenty of third-generation…
The smirky, overbearing and subliminally hostile romantic primer He’s Just Not That Into You, which sold only 2 million copies when it was published in 2004, seizes on some partial truths about the gender wars and blows them up into evolutionary gospel about the crossed wires of male-female dating behavior. The book’s title is taken from a scene in Sex…
If the recent glut of paint-by-numbers psychedelic bands has left anyone in a state of permanent no, thanks, there’s hope on the horizon in the form of the Boxing Lesson. Even though the group’s name implies a sonic pummeling, listeners won’t be greeted by the sort of pounding drums and chugging guitars that are standard among many neo-psychedelic bands. Instead…
On a Thursday night, a band from Springfield, Missouri, rocks the Jackpot Music Hall in Lawrence, but it sure feels like a hometown show. Warmth and familiarity radiate between the clump of college kids down front and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. The band, which itself hails from a college town, prefaces about half of its songs with shout-outs…
The son of James Taylor and Carly Simon doesn’t seem to mind being in the shadow of his famous parents — last year, he went on the road in support of his mom. Nor does Ben Taylor avoid acknowledging his genes — in a recent interview posted on YouTube, Taylor says his music takes after both parents equally. There’s no…
Hip-hop is in love with hatred — the way members of Opus Dei, say, are in love with self-flagellation. It’s an odd, pathological fixation. (Freud would undoubtedly love hip-hop for the way hip-hop loves hate.) Hating, in the mouths of hip-hop artists, has all sorts of uses. On “Hate Me Now,” Nas and P. Diddy invite people to hate them….
Some people,” Galactic bassist Robert Mercurio says, “think we’re just a bunch of college kids playing old New Orleans music.” That may have been so at one point. But the funk-based, mostly instrumental quintet has garnered plenty of respect over its nearly 15-year existence. Thanks to crossover success with younger listeners as well as its high visibility in the jam-band…
I don’t pretend to be a linguistics expert, so I’m confused about an accent over the letter t in the logo of Zest, the lively Leawood bistro created by Joe DiGiovanni and Mike Schreiber. Is it just an affectation or does it have a deeper meaning? “I think it’s just a way to be cool,” one of the waitresses guessed…
If Alice in Wonderland were retold by the Mad Hatter, it might look something like the 3-D, stop-motion Coraline, in which the bored, blue-haired 11-year-old of the title (voiced by Dakota Fanning) travels through the looking glass and ends up in a world that strangely resembles her own — except that everyone has buttons for eyes. There, life is a…
There are a number of reasons to catch the Coterie Theatre’s rich, inventive staging of that read-in-high-school classic Our Town, the second superior production of a canonical American play to shake up local audiences this month. Like the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s extraordinary production of The Glass Menagerie (now extended through February 15), this Our Town leaves you, by the…
