The legacy of Troost Avenue is common knowledge to most Kansas Citians. Once highly respected as an artery of culture and business, the street crumbled into poverty and danger over years of social dysfunction. But those who know Troost as it is now know it as a dynamic corridor that is, yes, spotted with blight, but which is again emerging…
The effects of chronic loneliness can include depression, poor sleep quality, alcoholism and heart disease. Like smoking, it might make you look like a really cool lone wolf, but according to doctors, it’s eventually going to kill you dead. Alleviate lethal, unwanted solitude at the Paragraph Gallery (23 East 12th Street) during the opening of Community + Loneliness, an artistic…
What will Locke/Smoke Monster pull out for the final episode of Lost? Will Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest of the gang finally get off the island for good? And will the writers give us a satisfying (and coherent) ending to the show, or will they introduce us to more plot twists, like a flash-diagonal? The editors of LostInReview.com host…
Ten years ago, West Bottoms resident Michael Morales, an Indonesian martial artist and dreadlocked trendsetter, organized freak shows. With a network of killer clowns, fire-eaters and burlesque dancers a phone call away, Morales took what he calls the “little bit of carny” he had in him and entertained the masses. A motorcycle accident at the end of 2004 switched his…
The Kansas City Public Library’s increasingly ambitious Off the Wall film series aims to top last summer’s cult bill with EbertfestKC, a slate of movies curated by Roger Ebert. The Chicago film critic, already a Pulitzer Prize-winning household name, has in recent months been anointed in Esquire and sainted by Oprah. The attention stems from Ebert’s loss of speech to…
Social mores might discourage the overconsumption of alcohol. But if you’re indulging in the name of charity, does that mean you get a free pass for any ridiculousness that ensues if the hops go to your head? To the well-intentioned drinkers we’ve seen this happen to, we say no. Fortunately, Westport — the site of KC BeerFest — offers plenty…
John Kolvenbach’s intense and surprising fraternal comedy On an Average Day enjoys its Kansas City opening at the Living Room, the new Crossroads performance space at 1818 McGee that scored with its debut show, The Oil Boiler, a couple of weeks back. Kolvenbach’s boozy tale of brothers named Bobby and Joe (not the Kennedys), having it out in the run-down…
You can choose from among 12 different red and white wines for $6, nine martinis for $5, $4 wells, $3 drafts and imports, and $2 domestic bottles from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the lounge, off Interstate 435 and State Line Road. Tue., May 25, 4:30-6:30 p.m., 2010 Tags: 548, Night & Day
• Pierpont’s at Union Station (30 West Pershing Road, 816-221-5111). So many bottles are behind this bar that bartenders need a ladder to reach some of them. From 11 a.m. to close (in the bar area only), get $4.50 appletinis, cosmos and frozen margaritas as well as $3.50 Boulevard drafts and $3.50 domestic bottles. Tue., May 25, 11 a.m., 2010…
• 12 Baltimore at Hotel Phillips (106 West 12th Street, 816-221-7000). From 2 to 7 p.m., drink like it’s 1931 (the year the 20-floor hotel opened) with $4 Jim Beam and Bombora, $3 domestic bottles, $4 imports, $2 domestic drafts, and half off wine bottles priced over $90. Tue., May 25, 2-7 p.m., 2010 Tags: Baltimore, Hotel Phillips, Jim Beam…
No, Barkley Square isn’t in London (the setting of Berkeley Square, which is pronounced Barkley, as every Nat King Cole fan knows). It’s in Leawood. More precisely, it’s in the Park Place Center at 117th Street and Nall. The grassy area is where, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays, KC Organics holds its Fresh Market. The featured vendors sell…
The bosoms-heaving Kansas farm girl in the blue-gingham dress and sensible ruby reds announces: “1939.” Dirty Dorothy says it with a throaty reverence, taking us back, certain we all know her 1939 like we do Elvis’ 1957 or the Beatles’ 1964. “Topeka Civic Center,” she continues, lording over a red-and-gold-swirl center stage — the first curl in the yellow-brick road….
A cover song is an education. Musicians learn their craft by playing other people’s songs. The best cover songs reveal a turn of phrase or obscure chords that can be drawn out only by the right set of ears and fingers. But artists, beware. To paraphrase the Chinese diplomat Wu-Ting Fang, who once warned about education, a cover song is…
Dear Readers: Over the past couple of weeks, the Know-Nothing nation has invaded my inbox, questioning why the United States can’t follow the stringent immigration laws of Mexico. They’re merely parroting a recent column by the reprehensible Michelle Malkin, who thought that bringing up the issue was an original angle to rankle Reconquistas. ¡Que pendeja! The Mexican covered this question…
U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran of Kansas loves to complain about government spending. One day he’s railing about “wasteful and egregious earmarks.” The next, he’s suggesting that Obamacare will burden people who have low and middle incomes — the very people the bill is designed to help. In any event, the message seldom changes. “annot spend our kids’ $!,” Moran exclaimed…
Last fall saw the release of the documentary Walt & el Grupo, about Walt Disney and a team of his most talented animators trekking to Latin America in 1941 for artistic inspiration and to act as cultural ambassadors for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was enjoyable hagiography. Waking Sleeping Beauty is something else entirely. A documentary about the lucrative rebirth…
In this fourth and final installment of the Shrek franchise, our green hero feels emasculated by the grind of domesticity (marriage, fatherhood) and worn down by the demands of celebrity. His failure to realize that his is, indeed, a wonderful life leads him to utter a wish to cavort for just one day in his old life of swampy bachelorhood….
Opening as tumultuous slapstick, this tale of a 27-year-old village idiot, Do-joon, and the local madwoman who is his single parent, Hye-ja, quickly darkens once someone bludgeons a schoolgirl. Do-joon is accused of her murder and easily confused into signing a confession. With the simpleton packed off to prison, Hye-ja’s hyper-aroused maternal instincts drive the movie. She campaigns for her…
Indian-made and trilingual in Hindi, Spanish and English, Kites is set — and was mostly shot — in the American Southwest, although in its backlit visual overkill, complete with neon reflected in rain-drenched streets, it more closely resembles the more overwrought Hong Kong gangster romances of the late 1980s. Jay (Hrithik Roshan) rolls off a freight train with a gaping…
MacGruber (Will Forte), a highly decorated soldier of fortune known for “making lifesaving inventions out of household materials,” faked his death and went into hiding after his fiancée (Maya Rudolph) was killed at their wedding, likely by wealthy industrialist Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), MacGruber’s arch enemy. Years later, when the feds suspect Von Cunth (the h is silent) of…
Even as Arizona spirals into a mess following passage of its shady immigration legislation, Phoenix trio Kinch keeps pumping out summertime indie jams, delivering jaunty, piano-driven songs with a lighthearted, energetic lilt. In a world where young bands have a hard time breaking out, Kinch has subverted the accepted “buy our CD” method by offering a full-length and three EPs…
Rising from the dust of her native Oklahoma, Samantha Crain’s smoky soprano infuses her dreamy songs with a freak-folk quaver. This translates to floor-thumping, bluegrass-inspired romps in a live setting (as when Crain opened for Langhorne Slim last summer at the Jackpot). Crain’s songs, such as “Rising Sun” off last year’s Songs in the Night, still border on the beautiful…
Bet you a sixer that there won’t be a better show all year for old-fashioned country fans. Ray Price is a legend. Though the 84-year-old Texan is best-known for his honky-tonk shuffles, he rode the string-laden countrypolitan sound to hits in the late ’60s and ’70s, and he has remained active since. A close friend of Hank Williams’, Price took…
When singer-songwriters go for understatement in the pursuit of intimacy, it’s often at the cost of flair. That’s not Mark Mallman’s style. The Minneapolis musician’s love of glam flamboyance announced itself with his late-’90s band, the Odd, and has persevered through his solo career the past dozen years. His brassy vocals are abetted by the canny, supple lyricism of his…
