For holiday shoppers who want to spend this Black Friday supporting their hometown economy, we offer these suggestions. And for holiday shoppers who hate Black Friday: You can order most of these gifts from the safety of your own home. SHINY AND SPARKLY Rural-landscape-inspired bracelets, rings, necklaces (such as the one at right) and earrings by Lawrence artist Kylie…
This is Sebastian. He and his friends were taking a smoke break outside the Midland Theater during the Widespread Panic show last Wednesday night. His shirt says “Menstration Station” (sic … and sick) on the front. The back reads, “Blood on your face, you big disgrace.” Replying to the question, “Does he dress like that all the time?” Sebastian’s friend…
Ian the Human Turkey has giblets, all right. Not everyone has the nerve to dress up like a turkey — a nice plump turkey, we might note — on the day before Thanksgiving in this economy. He might have been bird-napped and roasted over an open pit! What’s even more frightening about the feathered ensemble is that it resembles the…
Outside, it’s rainy and there are puddles that will splash on them. Inside the Midland Theater, all manner of liquids will be spilled on them — beer, liquor, spit, sweat. On the dance floor, these boots will be stepped on by hordes of flopping Panic heads. So it is for her bravery in the face of sure boot ruination that…
Experience an evening of poetry centered on love, sex and romance. The poet lineup features popular Kansas City Native Natasha Ria El-Scari and Cincinnati poet Kimberly DuWaup Bryant along with several other poets. Fri., Nov. 27, 7 p.m., 2009 Tags: cincinnati, Kansas City, Night & Day
Every 15 minutes, the Legends will come alive with dancing lights synchronized to holiday music. This is the region’s first display of animated lights synchronized to music. The musical show in the center courtyard will take place at the top and bottom of every hour. A second show will be featured at a quarter after and a quarter till the…
In the lower level of the Ecumenical Christian Ministries church, sit back and learn about the fair trade movement. A different documentary will be shown on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The screenings are free. Tue., Dec. 1, 5:15-7 p.m.; Wed., Dec. 2, 5:15-7 p.m., 2009 Tags: 670, Night & Day
When Danny Pound releases a record, it’s a bit like the Olympics or a lunar eclipse, minus the need for binoculars. The Lawrence songwriter has been on a steady two-record-a-decade pace since the early ’90s (during which he played for indie-rockers Vitreous Humor and the Regrets) despite his reputation for penning songs by the dozen. His craft is impeccable, schooled…
Talk about influence. For a time there in the ’90s, it seemed that people in the Midwest were even sneezing differently — louder, more dissonant, more staccato — because of bands such as the Jesus Lizard, Shiner and Molly McGuire. Classrooms were disrupted, and relationships were destroyed. Now, more than a decade later, bands such as the Life and Times…
It’s been two decades since Boston-born guitarist Gary Hoey left his hometown for Los Angeles in a U-Haul truck to pursue a full-time musical career — a move, strangely enough, motivated by an unsuccessful audition for Ozzy Osbourne. (Zakk Wylde got the part.) After embracing the surf-rock genre, Hoey scored a hit in 1993 with a cover of Focus’ “Hocus…
The challenge is less about having success than managing to repeat it. Even though the Cranberries topped their 1993 debut, and its hit single, “Linger,” with an even bigger album and hit single (No Need to Argue and “Zombie,” respectively), the well had run dry by 1996’s To the Faithful Departed. The Irish pop rockers’ attempt to move beyond dreamy…
Spilling over with teen-rock honesty and ambitious musical ideas, this debut from Salina, Kansas, quartet the Liquid Kids is worthy of an A — for effort. Things are bold and brassy on opener “Choke, Heimlich, Cough,” which begins with a raspy giggle from singer Jessica Lewis, followed by a dose of introspective wordplay that will prove to be her signature…
Through the ups and the downs, one thing remains a constant in Kansas City’s music scene: We listen to each other. The first touchstones that come to mind when spinning Waiting for Signal’s new The Division EP are right in our backyard: Roman Numerals, Audiovox, Shots Fired, Paper Cities, and Season to Risk, to name just a handful. Call it…
Make It Quake, the fourth album from Kansas City rap group Deep Thinkers, doesn’t live up to its title. And for local fans of conscious rap music, that’s a good thing. Nothing much jars listeners or breaks apart baseball stadiums in the album’s 15 tracks. The production features looping beats and record scratching with occasional beams of sound that send…
The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Oprah-endorsed post-apocalyptic survivalist prose poem — in which a father and his 10-year-old son traverse a despoiled landscape of unspeakable horror — was a quick, lacerating read. Director John Hillcoat’s literal adaptation, which arrives one Thanksgiving past its original release date, is a long, dull slog. The Road has a certain pragmatic integrity. (While…
When an ensemble film works, the shifts between characters are welcomed, and viewers are intrigued to catch up with each in turn. Paris’ rounds feel like obligatory visits. Romain Duris does his preset clenched forehead as a dancer facing a possibly fatal illness. Fabrice Luchini’s professor of Parisian history gets the lone funny business, sending dirty text messages to a…
Robin Williams and John Travolta play lifelong BFFs who are the namesakes of a sports-marketing firm trying to land a Japanese account that’ll set them for life. Into this walk two cherubic 7-year-olds (Conner Rayburn and Ella Bleu Travolta as fraternal twins), the result of a drunken South Beach one-nighter that Williams’ Dan spent with a woman named Vicki (Kelly…
Both ninja and assassin? Redundancy aside, having braved zombies in 28 Days Later, Naomie Harris now faces a centuries-old clan of ninjas who have been hiring themselves out, Blackwater style, as government mercenaries. Sad to say, the undead were more fun. Directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), Ninja Assassin is a hard-R bloodfest with much CG and many severed…
Screenwriter Oren Moverman makes his directorial debut with The Messenger, a moving and nuanced drama about the home-front readjustment period for decorated Iraq War hero Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) who, after surviving a roadside blast, has been reassigned as a casualty notification officer. He’s partnered with self-proclaimed lunatic Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a dogged Army lifer and semi-recovering alcoholic…
Film-studies majors, cultural anthropologists and Sunday arts-section editors will surely have their hands full comparing and contrasting Anderson’s fast-paced, visually majestic Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is based on the 1970 book by Roald Dahl, with the season’s other high-art kiddie-lit adaptation, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Questions to look out for: Is this sudden renaissance of auteur-driven children’s…
As Tim Scott knows from his job as emcee at Royals games, the talented too often leave this town. The good news is that Scott isn’t following Mark Teahen anywhere. As he demonstrates in the American Heartland Theatre’s It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Scott the actor is every bit as intense as Scott the between-innings superfan. That…
Indie bands du jour: You do not want to follow Rooftop Vigilantes. Should your overhyped Brooklyn ass ever arrive in Lawrence and see the pale, young, weathered Vigilantes dragging their equipment through the doors of the Replay Lounge ahead of you, you might as well head for your van. It would be easy to mistake the band’s male members for…
In their skinny jeans and fitted tees, the longhaired, Sharpie-toting members of the dance-rock band Queens Club don’t look like sports nuts. But ask them about Zack Greinke, and they’re apt to get downright giddy discussing the possibility that the Cy Young Award-winning Royals pitcher might hear the Queens Club song about him. Bassist Tyler Bottles is optimistic: “I had…
