Archives: November 2009

Relic Tray: Lord Help Me! The Desperate Dieter

Pray away the temptation to eat ​Thanksgiving week is difficult for someone on a diet. Who can resist the sinful temptation to fill a plate with roasted turkey drenched in gravy, mashed potatoes, candied yams all sticky with molten marshmallows, yeasty buttered rolls and all those fabulous desserts? This is when Beth Hammond’s book of 57 devotions, Lord Help Me! The Desperate Dieter…

More Thanksgiving Day possibilities

Not everyone wants home cooking, y’all ​Last week, we suggested several possible restaurant choices for Fat City residents who prefer the ease and comfort of going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner instead of preparing it at home. Well, today we have more! The Kansas City Marriott Downtown has a buffet dinner from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. priced at…

Hearne Christopher Jr. charged with DUI

Former Kansas City Star gossip columnist Hearne Christopher Jr. has been charged with driving under the influence, according to police in Prairie Village. Christopher was arrested in the 3100 block of West 79th Street at 2:38 a.m. today. Christopher first reported his arrest on his blog, filing his report at 5:42 a.m. Christopher wrote that he was returning home from…

A crock pot in every kitchen?

A recent post by Cooking With Carrie has a recipe for Crock-Pot Chicken. As she notes, “this is by far one of the easiest dinners ever! It takes 10 minutes in the morning to throw everything in and by dinner time it’s ready to go.” Her post strikes me as just the latest sign that one-pot meals are the perfect…

New Mac Lethal Video: “Speak Low”

More sexy fruit from the marriage-made-in-Craigslist-heaven collabo of Black Clover Records and Kyle Harbaugh — the team that brought us these classic gems, not to mention XV’s latest — but this time with fewer theatrics than usual and heaps of coldly beautiful shots of Kansas City. Indeed, the direction taken for “Speak Low” (off Mac’s Love Potion Collection 5 Deluxe…

Waterboy Watch, week 11: Funk’s Footballers suck

Like a turd floating to the bottom of the toilet bowl, so sinks Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s fantasy football team. Another week. Another loss — this time 80-69, to OMG it’s OKC. And another week of inexplicably playing a guy who didn’t even fucking play. Philadelphia running back Brian Westbrook was out again with a concussion (his second), but Funk left…

A guide to smoking a Thanksgiving turkey: Part 1

Fat City decided to take advantage of having an American Royal Grand Champion in our backyard and turned to Bob Denner — who with his brother Don makes up the Boondoggle BBQ team — and knows a thing or two about the process of smoking. Denner agreed to walk us through the steps of preparing and smoking a turkey on…

Concert Review: Minus the Bear, As Tall As Lions at the Granada

Attention Kings of Leon fans: If you still haven’t heard of Minus the Bear, do yourself a favor. There’s no hint of Southern rock in the Seattle quintet’s brand of indie rock, however — Minus the Bear is a West Coast band through and through, whose complex, angular songs often reflect the ocean in shape and content, as well as…

Mark Mangino and Lew Perkins just don’t talk like they used to

%{}% Kansas Jayhawks football coach Mark Mangino and athletic director Lew Perkins don’t talk much anymore. That was the news out of Mangino’s weekly press conference yesterday. Mangino told the press that his communication with Perkins has been “practically none” since the university launched an internal investigation into the way Mangino treats his players. “I don’t know if there should…

The future of farming is … vertical

If you take the old axiom about how they’re not making any more land and apply it to farming, you realize that, if you can’t expand out, you have to go up. During a lecture at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, last Friday, Dickson Despommier, director of The Vertical Farm Project, explained how vertical…

The coffee-dispenser version of a suicide

When you were a kid, you’d tilt your glass up beneath every soda fountain flavor and create the ultimate combination drink: the suicide. Old habits die hard, as I’ve learned from most people’s inability to pick one flavor of hot drink from the convenience store. Some would argue that there’s very little difference between the cappuccino or the flavored coffee,…

Shawnee Mission’s penis-shaped Florida controversy continues

%{}% The fight to reinstate a now notorious artist of phallic Florida and ex-teacher keeps going and going and not getting anywhere. KCTV 5 reports that parents and students demanded last night that the Shawnee Mission School Board re-vote on whether to fire Mission Valley Middle School teacher Ryan Haraughty. Haraughty drew a map of the United States with a…

Breakfast Buffet: Tuesday, November 24

%{}% If fanboys had a favorite chef it would probably be Nigella Lawson. She’ll be in town on December 7 to promote her new cookbook, Nigella Christmas. A tour of the Boulevard Brewery provokes thoughts on what’s aging in the oak barrels and an experimental amber beer. This guide for transforming fast food items into a Thanksgiving spread starts with…

KC trims list of downtown convention hotel sites

The list of sites for a downtown convention hotel is down to four, and Barney Allis Plaza is among the finalists. Fox 4 reports that the city cut its list of sites in half on Monday, and although the 1,000-room convention hotel isn’t a certainty, it’s inching toward becoming one. Oh, and you’re going to subsidize it. Here’s the final…

Tonight: Cursive at the Bottleneck (new video)

Authors of one of the most unpleasant album titles ever, Mama, I’m Swollen, Nebraskan rock expressionists Cursive come to the Bottleneck in support of said album, which came out last March on Saddle Creek. The latest video from the album is fresh, though — and kind of awesomely insane. To the jarring, guitar-chestral strains of “Let Me Up,” frontman Tim…

And the top bartender in Kansas City is?

They came, we saw, they mixed. And then, Arturo A. Vera-Felicie of the R Bar & Restaurant and 1924 Main was named the winner of the 2009 Greater Kansas City Bartending Competition at the Uptown Theater on Sunday night. The “West Bottoms Social Club” was the original cocktail — based on pickled fig syrup — that helped Vera-Felicie win. Pitch…

Adopt a piece of Troost Avenue

A few days each fall, dozens of volunteers give up their Saturday morning to help Tulips on Troost plant thousands of bulbs along the East Side artery. So far that sporadic engagement has served the effort well: more than 200,000 flowers have brightened the Avenue over the past three years. But Maureen Lunn, the group’s organizer, is looking for a…

Stop trying to buy a six pack one beer at a time at Valero

On a recent stop at the Valero on 17th and Grand, I noticed this sign on the beer cooler. I’ve never thought about taking one bottle of Miller High Life and trying to barter for it, but that happens so often at this gas station they needed to write declarations. “All the time,” said the woman at the cash register….

Another ex-Kline deputy faces ethics complaint

%{}% Eric Rucker, the former chief of staff for Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, faces a complaint from Kansas’ disciplinary administrator for his involvement in an alleged scheme to identify clients who sought services at a Wichita abortion clinic run by the late George Tiller. A similar ethics complaint is pending against Steven D. Maxwell, another former Kline deputy. A…

Holiday cocktails for your consideration

​Anybody can bring a bottle of wine to a Thanksgiving dinner. It is an easy way to say thank you to the host without having to get anywhere near the oven. However, if you want to be a better guest and make sure there’s something to talk about when the conversation inevitably hits a lull, consider bringing the ingredients for…

Video: Jason Segel with the Swell Season

Actor Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, How I Met Your Mother) appeared on stage with the Swell Season at a show in L.A. last week. Here’s how it happened: The band was at a restaurant in Los Angeles; drinking tea, when they were offered a bottle of wine by two celebrities. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. Now The Swell Season…