Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. A school year’s worth of My Weekly Readers Date: 1936 – 1937 Publisher: American Education Press Discovered at: Prairie Village estate sale The Cover Promises: In…
For some of you, middies is a bit of drug vernacular, not a soccer player’s position. Some of you need to get out more. May we suggest tonight’s Wizards game against the Colorado Rapids? Soccer games tend to be low-scoring affairs, which sound less thrilling than basketball and football. But think of it this way: The lead hangs in the…
The first album by Mr. Show co-founder and Arrested Development co-star David Cross, 2002’s Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, might turn out to be the iTunes generation’s Lenny Bruce: The Carnegie Hall Concert. Like Bruce, Cross mines his best material from frustration and disbelief, and like Bruce’s recording, Shut Up may puzzle future listeners with references to people and ideas…
In journalism, when a reporter can’t get an interview with a principal subject, she might do a “write around,” compiling open-source information about that figure and then drawing a few conclusions. Similarly, poets grappling with an inexpressible emotion, for which there is no vocabulary, have to write around their subject and attempt to depict it. Thus, poets are kind of…
It may be a singularly American phenomenon, but there’s no way a museum opens a photo exhibit exploring the complexity of youth and innocence without considering who’s gonna cry pedophilia. Particularly when the lead image is the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), a brilliant and gifted artist but one whose surviving portfolio is nearly 50 percent images…
All’s fair in love and war. Which is a stupid saying. But the 18th-annual UnPlaza Art Fair is making a smart difference by selling affordable art while donating to the cause of peace. The fair is on the grounds of the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church (4501 Walnut) from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and from noon to 5…
For this 12th annual fundraising event for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, participants raise a minimum of $25 and carry illuminated balloons: red for supporters, white for survivors and gold for those walking in memory of a loved one. Join us for a family-friendly night of fun, including bounce houses, Jim Cosgrove as Mr. Stinky Feet and other live entertainment,…
The Unicorn Theatre (3828 Main), 36 years in, still has the air of the frisky upstart, that theater that dares to take on the new, the challenging, the political — and brings its subscriber base along with it. My First Time, the celebratory premiere show of the new season, doesn’t look to break new ground; it does promise to revel…
Lewis Carroll’s famous literary heroine, Alice, gets a steampunk makeover in writer-director Alex Espy’s production of Alice in Wonderland, which continues at 7 and 10 p.m. tonight (and at 2 and 4 p.m. September 26-27) at the Off Center Theatre in Crown Center (2450 Grand). “Steampunk,” Espy explains, “is an amalgamation of Victorian style with a very contemporary feel —…
North of North Kansas City and south of the northern edge of Kansas City, Gladstone is one of the 2008 All-America City Award winners. This distinction was bestowed upon the nine-square-mile community because of its first-rate neighborhood revitalization, not because of the killer drink specials. • The Hideout (6948 North Oak Trafficway, 816-468-0550). You might miss this bluesy bar that’s…
Each year, Park University honors outstanding poets through its Ethnic Voices Poetry Series. The new round kicks off at 6:30 tonight, when Heid E. Erdrich reads at the Central Branch of the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library (14 West 10th Street). Erdrich belongs to the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, one of the largest groups of American Indians, and has…
Show-and-tell takes me back. In fourth grade, this kid named Ryan Carroll brought in a hyper-inflated pig bladder, spray-painted gold. An odd-looking thing for sure. That was the “show” part. But then he “told” us that people used to carry these bladders around before latex balloons! Kansas City, it’s your turn to one-up the pig bladder. Tonight from 8 to…
Name a critically acclaimed rock band formed in Scotland in the mid-1990s. You are totally thinking of Belle and Sebastian, you music snob. But don’t forget Snow Patrol, which once shared a label and fans with those mega-darlings of the ironically unironic fitted-sweater-and-argyle-socks crowd. Earlier in their careers, both bands earned high marks from music aficionados yet didn’t exactly move…
Comedian Jennie McNulty was named “One of the premiere female comedians in the country” by the New England Blade. Tonight, the funny gal from California performs at a fundraiser for area women’s sports teams including the Kansas City Storm football, Kansas City Jazz rugby and Kansas City Roller Warriors. A Texas Hold “Her” match will be held after the show….
Fresh from the farm, find fall yard decorations including pumpkins in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes, as well as gourds, mums, Indian corn, cornstalks and hay bales at the City Market Pumpkin Patch. Prices vary. Saturdays and Sundays through October 26. Saturdays, Sundays, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Starts: Sept. 26. Continues through Oct. 26, 2009 Tags: Night & Day
The First World War in Color: International Treasures from the National World War I Museum presents newly acquired historical objects from countries around the world. Black and white photography which captured the gray images of the Great War failed to show the flashes of color seen by the soldier. The special exhibition shows the stark contrast between these black and…
A music-and-dance event in Johnson County that showcases sounds as diverse as Mexican folk, Led Zeppelin and Bach? Yes! Sones de México Ensemble opens the 2009-10 Performing Arts Series tonight at Johnson County Community College’s Yardley Hall, in the school’s Carlsen Center (12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park). The Chicago-based Mexican folk group combines a double-digit array of string, percussion and…
For one weekend only, the Lawrence Arts Center is reviving Dangerous Damsels, an original melodrama written by Ric and Jeanne Averill for the Apple Valley Farm Theatre in the 1990s. Fri., Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., 2009 Tags: Apple Valley, Jeanne Averill, Lawrence Arts Center, Night & Day
Roger Beebe, a professor of film and media studies at the University of Florida and some kind of crazy genius, mounts multi-projector screenings of his film projects. Each individual screen adds to the perceptual whole of the work, while Beebe runs back and forth between projectors, syncing the images and building an experience he calls “expanded cinema.” He deploys multiple…
This completely interactive festival is designed to immerse those attending in many forms of the arts including visual, musical, literary, and performing arts by engaging the audiences with the activities. The festival events include painting, pottery, jewelry making, making art with recyclables, drumming, storytelling, puppetry, music-making, murals,nature, food, a special section of arts for very young children, and an art…
Man – and woman’s – best friend will be served a special three-course meal of breadstick appetizers, pizzas and gelato made by Three Dog Bakery. People will order their food from the SPIN! Neapolitan Pizza menu. This event is a fundraiser for Wayside Waifs. Registration required. Wed., Sept. 30, 5:30 p.m., 2009 Tags: 2817, Night & Day
All-Star games resolve questions for fans of sports. Hypothetical matchups between stars of sports become real, answering who is the best of the best. That leaves room to ask other questions today, during the KC Magic Third-Annual All-Star Basketball Game with Clay Johnson, featuring celebrities Dean Cain, Bill Bellamy and hip-hop artist Tank. Can Bellamy’s quick wit defuse the powerful…
Influential instro-rocker Tortoise dons a moniker fittingly relative to the rabbit-speed attention span of indie rock. Things have changed since the group’s late-’90s heyday as a post-rock-kingpin act, when its cerebral, vibes-and-drum-heavy stew tastefully steered underground rock into the unprotected waters of jazz, dub, electronica, worldy rhythms — all with top-notch musicianship. Fortunately or not, modern-day hipsters want to dance,…
