The vital news in William Inge’s Bus Stop has reached you already. You understand that young women can still be innocent without being virgins and that young men might act brutish to compensate for sexual inexperience. Meanwhile, lonely grown-ups who nip off to bed together sometimes find warmth and relief rather than damnation. Inge’s three-act, four-square drama, now 55 years…
K2 synthetic marijuana is officially illegal in the state of Kansas — Gov. Mark Parkinson signed the ban into law March 10 — so Sunflower State business owners better get to destroying their supplies (or smoking what’s left). The laws criminalizing active compounds JWH-018 and JWH-073 were officially published last Thursday, making them Schedule 1 drugs in Kansas. The Johnson…
Imagine revamping a fiery activist anthem into a mindless, rump-shaking jam. That’s exactly what Ludacris has done in his latest hit, “How Low,” which features Chipmunk-style vocal effects and young girls being seduced out of pajamas. (It should be noted that How low can you go? in Public Enemy’s original version of “Bring the Noise” referred to the American criminal-justice…
Dear Mexican: I just read that Speedy Gonzales is getting his own feature film and will be voiced by George Lopez. I read in The Hollywood Reporter that Lopez said he gave Speedy his “Latino seal of approval.” Who grants this seal? What does it look like? And how did Lopez get it? Hija of the MiscegeNation Dear Wabette: Isn’t…
Feature: “Room at the Bottom,” March 18 Sad but True I’m a native Kansas Citian, a big fan and supporter of The Pitch, and a longtime admirer of the strong reportage that Nadia Pflaum and her colleagues provide. Stories like this one distinguish The Pitch from the likes of Ink and keep me reading your paper every Wednesday. The story…
Animals and people are all jumbled up in this hyperactive Belgian puppet animation. The filmmakers, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, show little regard for scale and less for convention. Cowboy (Aubier) is a screeching hysteric, and Horse (Patar) is a slow-moving romantic hero who longs to play the piano and carries a torch for the local music teacher, a mare…
The 3-D wasn’t working at the screening I attended, but, honestly, it would take several more dimensions to craft something special out of this adequate but unremarkable animated tale of a skinny Viking nerd boy (voiced by Jay Baruchel) named Hiccup who befriends fire-breathing dragons, hoping to impress his father (Gerard Butler), a beefy Norseman with a Glasgow accent and…
A fundamentally lazy comedy that will probably make you laugh like an idiot, Hot Tub Time Machine was ostensibly directed by Steve Pink. But it was really born from the collective unconscious of those in the 34-45 demographic — the viewers for whom the movie will deliver the most reliable pleasure as they tease out the embedded references to Sixteen…
Atom Egoyan’s Chloe is posh, cool and never less than obvious. Work for hire, the movie was adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from Anne Fontaine’s marital thriller Nathalie … , a sophisticated Gallic shrugfest hailed by some for featuring an adulterous triangle unimaginable in an American movie. Successful gynecologist Catherine (Julianne Moore) suspects, not without reason, that her husband, the…
Age may have faded her shell, but Wanda Jackson’s heart is still spry. Somewhere inside her remains the fiery teen who played alongside Hank Thompson and Elvis Presley. (She briefly dated the King.) The 72-year-old Okie is known as the Queen of Rockabilly, but she’s also the true first lady of rock and roll. Her vibrant alto shook, rattled and…
The Cave Singers aren’t as dark and echoey as the name suggests. The folk trio also doesn’t sound like a band spearheaded by the former garage-punk (of the Murder City Devils) and chaotic indie-rocker (Pretty Girls Make Graves) Derek Fudesco. He spent the better part of the late ’90s and early ’00s rocking out but sounds utterly at home in…
Patty Griffin works outside the brightest part of the spotlight, but her songs are center stage and her following is loyal. Among the acts who have covered her material: the Dixie Chicks, Kelly Clarkson and Bette Midler. Her own new record — the gospel-driven, Nashville-recorded Downtown Church — is packed with luminaries, including Raul Malo, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin and…
With his warbling voice and visceral lyrics, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart is the crown prince of uncomfortable music. Xiu Xiu’s experimental electro-pop songs come laced with themes of despair, self-flagellation and abuse, with a tone seemingly tailored to disturb Red State America. Yet it’s Stewart’s unflinching honesty about taboo subjects that makes him so thrilling. His masterfully composed albums overlay…
I know that serving a gyro sandwich does not make a restaurant a Greek restaurant. But I realized that in Raymore, where I passed a Waffle House, a Ryan’s, a Culver’s and a Dairy Queen on my way to the Missouri Mud Company, just having some feta cheese in the kitchen set this little family-owned deli and coffeehouse apart from…
Los Angeles rapper 2Mex inhales and exhales verse. The Latino MC has been content to dig his way through Southern California’s hip-hop underground for 15 years, earning quiet recognition for his handful of solo records and work with his crew, the Visionaries. 2Mex (real name: Alejandro Ocana) deploys a complex, self-deprecating lyrical style that frolics in intelligent wordplay and lovable…
New York painter Ian Davis articulates his ideas about technology, authority and individual human agency with such a succinct visual vocabulary that critics have often focused on the artist’s cleverness without approaching the real and sometimes creepy depths of his work. “They are funny and fun to look at and they make you think,” Roberta Smith wrote in The New…
The Pitch has learned that Kansas City, Missouri, police and the Platte County Prosecutor’s Office investigated Missouri Rep. Roman L. LeBlanc after an 18-year-old college student accused him of sexually assaulting her last fall. Staff writer Peter Rugg first broke this story Monday, March 22, on Plog, The Pitch’s news blog. To read that story and updates to it, click…
Hector Olivas-Villegas was found wounded behind a business at 1263 Kansas Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, around 2:37 p.m. Wednesday. View Larger Map Olivas-Villegas, 18, was taken to a local hospital where he later died. If you have a tip about Olivas-Villegas’ death, call 913-573-6020 or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477 Categories: News Tags: Hector Olivas-Villegas, homicide, Kill City
Shooting a cop will get you 30 years without parole. Ali Akbar Walker, 24, was sentenced today in federal court to 30 years in prison without parole. Walker, who legally changed his name from Bryan Walker, Kansas City police arrested Walker and 26-year-old Kyle A. Gardenhire following a traffic stop near 71st Street and Myrtle Avenue on August 7, 2007….
Gogol Bordello’s new album, Trans-Continental Hustle, comes out on April 27. Thus, it’s time for the band’s new label, American, to start pimping the hell out of the release. The band’s been playing the song for ages (it was the song they played with Madonna at Live Earth back in 2007), so it’s not brand new, but it’s new to…
You can’t make this shit up, and it’s all too familiar. Danny Duffy, a big-time pitching prospect for the Royals, is taking a break from baseball. The 21-year-old left-hander is reportedly told J.J. Picollo, the Royals’ assistant general manager of scouting and player development, yesterday that he was taking off to “reassess his life priorities.” Reassess his life priorities? Heard…
Bouncy folk-rockers Blitzen Trapper may be taking a turn towards a more somber aesthetic. (They’re also taking a turn towards our hometown, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) The Portland, Oregon sextet is venturing into new territory with their forthcoming release, the weirdly-metal-titled Destroyer of the Void. From what we hear, it’s a far cry (or howl, rather) from…
