Archives: March 2009

Utah makes Kansas look like a party pooper

No state is more anti-drinking than Utah. The idiosyncrasies of the Beehive State’s liquor laws are enough to fill a book, like this one. You can’t sell beer or spirits on an election day. There’s no such things as bars, just private clubs with membership fees. One person can’t order a pitcher of beer due to the “slammin’ law,” which…

Now Open: Pizza Fusion

Organic pizza has finally arrived in Leawood. Pizza Fusion is a chain that’s semi-big on the coasts and really big into organic food and green thinking. It opened Monday at 4800 West 135th, in the same shopping center as Mandarinism. Owner Ted Kramm says he and his wife were “looking for something environmentally friendly” and found it with Pizza Fusion….

Breakfast Buffet: Wednesday, 3/04

%{}% Another entry on the list of the world’s most annoying commercials — or is this Billy the Talking Mouth Bass spot a good way to sell filet-o-fish? A month ago, Fat City featured 93-year-old Clara and her uplifting Great Depression recipes. Now, KC Meesha looks at Clara’s recipes and asks what’s the big deal? He also says that, “a…

All the dog breeding you can buy with $1.50

A couple days ago, Justin and I visited the Kansas City Star’s Star store. We didn’t do this on purpose. We just wanted to see how far we could get into the bowels of the Star before anyone noticed. But the security guards put a cigarette out on that plan in a hurry. Justin quickly asked where the Star Store…

Pitch DJ Spinoff (unofficial but cool) party tonight at Blonde.

Two of our DJ contest finalists, Scott Carpenter and Shaun Duval, are inviting one and all to come out to Blonde tonight (Wednesday) for a little pre-party featuring beats from the two DJs plus two-for-one drinks and no charge to get in. Enjoy the good will while it lasts, because this Friday, Duval and Carpenter will face off against each…

Last night’s protest: sixth anniversary of Ward Parkway protest

More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed. At least 90,000 Iraqis dead. Nearly $602 billion spent. As the human and social costs of the war in Iraq have piled up these past six years, commuters on Ward Parkway can count on one thing: Every Tuesday night they encounter a small band of peace advocates waving signs with the latest statistics and…

Tonight! Brett Dennen at the Bottleneck

Listen up, Lawrence. Brett Dennen must be pretty cool if he can get Femi Kuti to sing on his new single and be in his video. And Mandy Moore, too. (I mean, she’s in the video, too, not, um, Femi … the dirty thing.) Oh, just watch. (Pretty cool how you can put borders around YouTube videos now, innit?) So,…

Kansas’ first journos: Indians?

For a minute, this looked like a thrilling journalistic discovery: two surviving pages of the Shawnee Sun, which had a sporadic run between 1835 and 1844, making it the first periodical published in Kansas (before Kansas was even Kansas) and — wow — the first in the United States written entirely in an American Indian language! As I stared at…

Brownback in Operation Rescue’s doghouse

Yesterday, I wondered what Operation Rescue thought of U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback congratulating Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on her nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services. Looks like Brownback officially made the Wichita anti-abortion group’s shit list. Operation Rescue President Troy Newman sent out a typo-filled e-mail today. Here’s an excerpt: “It is unimaginable that a Catholic pro-lifer such…

Diagnosis State-Sponsored Murder

We told you about local dentist Ed Kendrick a couple years ago, when former Pitch staff writer Ben Paynter wrote about the metro’s 9/11 conspiracy theorists (“Bush Blew Up the Twin Towers,” November 23, 2006). Some of those theorists were sure the attack was Biblically-ordained. Others didn’t mind if people called them “retards” as long as the theories were getting out. Kendrick’s thing was…

Bluesday Tuesday Report: Bluesin’ Across the Metro

This week, we check in on two different blues clubs in KC. The Power & Light District location of the Minneapolis-based barbeque chain, Famous Dave’s has reopened after six weeks and will begin featuring live music for the first time this Saturday with Salty Dawg. Famous Dave’s Area Director Mat Eastlack says that the Power & Light location will be…

Kansas: Home of the oldest fossilized brain

Cool fossil find from Kansas. Paleontologists discovered the oldest fossilized brain in a 300-million-year-old fish fossil. The American Museum of Natural History’s release says: “Fossilized brains are unusual and this is by far the oldest known example,” said John Maisey, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “There is nothing like this known today; it…

Missouri: Your State Auditor’s son has a rock band.

Hot Bot is a noisy mess of synth and drums that features Austin Montee, son of Missouri State Auditor Susan Montee. I met the family back in 2006, when I was living in St. Joseph, which the local convention and visitor’s bureau insists is the place where “the West officially started to get wild.” Although a wildness in the historical…

God hates whores and waitresses with cleavage

Andi with her “tip” The following dispatch comes from Pitch writer Nadia Pflaum: I was sitting with a friend at Nara last Friday night when my favorite server, Andi, came up and showed us the tip that a neighboring table left her. Enclosed in the folder with the check and an 18 percent gratuity, there was a little booklet about…

Don’t Call Us Nazi-mystium

Corporations and black-metal bands make strange bedfellows, and last week Toyota/Scion panicked when it woke up next to Nachtmystium’s corpse-painted face. Scion booted the Chicago-based band from last weekend’s Scion Rock Fest in Atlanta, after the event’s promoters and sponsors received an anonymous tip characterizing Nachtmystium as Nazism-affiliated. “For the LAST TIME, we ARE NOT a Nazi band, ARE NOT…

Somehow, Ronald McDonald used to be even creepier

If there’s one thing I love almost as much as food, it’s advertising. For better or worse, the two are intertwined in people’s minds. When you say McDonald’s I think of the Hamburglar, who was the clown-de-jour for McDonald’s commercials when I was growing up. Likewise, when you say Wendy’s my first thought is Dave Thomas; next is “Where’s the…