This past Friday, Congress smacked down the cigarette industry. Having raised taxes on tobacco earlier this year, a new bill allows the FDA to regulate tobacco advertising, banning terms such as “lite” and “low tar” along with ads that may “suggest” that certain cigarettes are not as bad as other ones. It bans sponsorship of sporting and entertaining events and…
Crime Scene KC lays out the stats on the KCPD’s officer-involved shooting fatalities. Saturday night’s shooting was the fourth person fatally shot by police this year. Kansas City police officers fatally shot 26-year-old Alfran Gant Saturday after he allegedly pointed a gun on them. This followed chasing Gant in a stolen vehicle, a wreck and the later, the discovery of…
When Claire Askew was a freshman in high school, she made a decision that’s had a profound affect on the rest of her life — she decided to give up meat. Six months after her initial decision she went further and became a vegan, a transition she describes as a “natural step.” Askew, who just graduated from Shawnee Mission South…
Sunday’s Kansas City Star featured a really lame story about the art of the “slumpbuster,” devoting only a couple of paragraphs to the real meaning of the baseball slang, burying them deep in the story and even calling the ritual “disgusting” and “reprehensible.” This is how you make a story about slumpbusting boring. The daily wasn’t about to mention s-e-x…
I am completely unable to walk past any store selling vinyl without popping in “just to check it out,” to the chagrin of both my wife and my checking account. This extends as far as the clearance racks at Hot Topic (I found Scream’s Still Screaming for five bucks, so it’s worth looking, right?), but is usually confined to Goodwills,…
Two-man band Audiovox celebrated the release of its debut EP with a concert at the Riot Room last Friday night. Band members Brad Chancellor and Martin Bush set up on stage side by side. Chancellor drums; Bush sings, strums guitar and plays the laptop computer. Both musicians have backgrounds in much heavier bands, which has made the Audiovox indie-pop experiment…
There’s a reason why Kansas is called the bread basket of America. It’s the top-wheat producing state — nearly double the total of runner-up North Dakota — in the top-producing wheat country in the world. The Kansas Wheat Commission estimates that the annual wheat crop “pumps some $2.5 billion into the Kansas economy.” But scientists fear that if the fungus…
%{}% A first try at brewing doesn’t go quite as planned. Though Fail Whale Pale Ale is too good a name for the beer to be completely crappy. A former greeting card writer explains how rhyming words is similar to baking — people mainly want the sweet stuff. What happens when a bunch of beer brewers/beer bloggers get together to…
Pity this poor demon. His days of haunting the West Bottoms spook houses formerly known as Catacombs and Fear are over. Full Moon Productions is putting him and the everything gory corpse from the Catacombs and Fear up for auction June 24. The highest bidder — bidding starts at $35,000 — takes the whole creepy lot. The Craigslist ad promises:…
They’re here, they’re Mexican and lawmakers aren’t doing anyone any good by scapegoating their new residents. That was the take-home message last week, when Chicago-based researcher Rob Paral visited Kansas City to present his new study about Mexican immigration in the Midwest. Bottom line: Our neighbors from the South are coming to Missouri and surrounding states in record numbers and…
Plog’s two sisters took the home the Gold and Silver awards in the Blog category at the Kansas City Press Club’s Heart of America Awards banquet on Saturday night. Journalists in the Los Angeles Press Club, who judged our local contest, deemed Jason Harper’s Wayward Blog the best in Kansas City, followed by Charles Ferruzza and Owen Morris’ Fat City….
REVIEW & PHOTOS BY ELKE MERMIS As Canadian electro-rockers Metric broke into their first song of the night at the Granada on Friday, all eyes were on Emily Haines, whose girlish vocals hovered lightly on the thick layers of blue-tinged synths swirling over the audience. The crowd was smitten. They were slain. And they should’ve been. After taking a three…
%{}% Plog’s two sisters took the home the Gold and Silver awards in the Blog category at the Kansas City Press Club’s Heart of America Awards banquet on Saturday night. Journalists in the Los Angeles Press Club, who judged our local contest, deemed Jason Harper’s Wayward Blog the best in Kansas City, followed by Charles Ferruzza and Owen Morris’ Fat…
Still haven’t seen the film that makes KC in the early ’70s look like the place to be? You still have a chance, as the excellent homespun hippie-rock-doc is continuing its local run, screening tonight through Thursday, June 18, at Screenland Armour, just north of the river. It’s showing alongside the Terence O’Malley KC mafia doc Black Hand Strawman, also…
After almost 50 years, a memorial is close to being dedicated to the murdered farm family that was the subject of Truman Capote’s stark true-crime book In Cold Blood. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock murdered the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, on November 15, 1959. Now, the Clutter Memorial committee is only $3,000 short of the $18,000 needed to put…
The Air Sex World Championships are struggling to find competitors for this Monday’s showdown at the Record Bar. This is shocking news given Kansas City’s clear lack of shame displayed earlier this week during the U.S. Air Guitar World Championships’ Kansas City regional. Air Sex’s master of ceremonies, the multi-talented Chris Trew, would love any fake fornicators interested in pantomiming…
They can’t hurt you no more, Trent. Concussion-prone former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Trent Green is finally calling it a career after 15 seasons and way too many stretcher rides to count. Green’s career actually ended three seasons ago, but he played on (and not very well). Farewell, Trent. And watch your head on the way out. Categories: News Tags:…
Remember those 20,000-plus signatures (no one can agree exactly how many there were) to recall oversized novelty Mayor Mark Funkhouser? Uh, yeah, turns out some of the signatures on the petition were (gasp!) bogus. The Kansas City Star spoke with one woman, Vera Smith, who said that even though her name is on the petition, she didn’t sign it and…
