You might have to think of how you got started in your little room, Jack White sings in the White Stripes’ song “Little Room,” referring to a return to roots, but maybe also calling for some restricting rules to enable a creative project. The rules of tennis (or any other game) might seem restrictive. But while they constrain play, they…
Sure, Royals tickets are cheap, but we’re in a recession, honey. For all the overpriced beer you chugged in the nosebleed section during the weekend series against the New York Yankees, you might as well have sprung for the box seats in the first place. The big-screen TVs at 810 Zone (4686 Broadway, 816-268-9663) offer their own fine view for…
See photos of Kansas City chefs’ ink at pitch.com/slideshow. Chef Patrice Welcher smiles as she makes a knuckle sandwich. No, that’s not the name of a special on the menu of Sharp’s 63rd Street Grill, the Brookside restaurant where she works. Welcher balls her hands into fists that look as ready to punch as to prepare a meal. Above each…
With a voice sounding like Tom Waits gargling broken glass and with the meanest picking skills this side of Deliverance, William Elliott Whitmore is known in some circles as the hillbilly Ray Charles. Pigeonholing aside, this bluesy troubadour is taking his one-man revival show of murder ballads and redemption songs back on the road. Performing with little more than a…
Let’s take We Are Scientists at their word and assume that, in addition to being musicians who have spent the past decade rocking slicked-up and sly postpunk dance, they are scientists. Considering that the band is on the American Barbarian Tour, let’s go ahead and also grant that We Are Scientists’ members really are barbarians. That is, they are scientist-barbarians….
Chandra and Leigh Watson — better known as the Watson Twins — got their big break in 2006 by adding soulful embroidery to Jenny Lewis’ barbed ballads on Rabbit Fur Coat. But these singers are more than country dressing to Lewis’ Laurel Canyon-influenced folk-rock. The duo stepped out from behind Lewis in 2008 with Fire Songs, and they’re back with…
Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is every bit as faithful to its source material (Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume series about a 22-year-old, go-nowhere man-boy fending off his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes) as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was to his (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ brooding comic-hero deconstruction). Both treat the comic-book panels as storyboards and the dialogue as…
Dear Mexican: As a proud New Yorker, I gotta ask: What the fuck is up with Mexican food in this city? Sure, we’re used to getting owned by California and Texas and even Chicago when it comes to getting kick-ass, cheap, regional Mexican food. But I just got back from Philadelphia, where I was able to score some mighty fine…
“If the money’s right, we don’t care where the job is.” So explains Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), the leader of hired-gun task force the Expendables. This credo lands Ross and his team (Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Randy Couture and Terry Crews) in the Gulf of Aden as the story begins Somali pirates, staging a videotaped decapitation, are pinned…
The title of Lucy Walker’s pro-nuclear-disarmament documentary, Countdown to Zero, has two meanings: (1) a paranoiac ticking off the last moments until the bomb goes off, and (2) an exhortation to work for the cause until zero missiles and weapons remain. Synthesizing both fear and optimism requires Walker to be incredibly ambitious in scope, and she offers up a history…
Boris is from Japan, but that’s the least interesting thing about the band. Within the broad category of heavy metal, the band is a shape-shifting force of creative spontaneity that marries the physicality of hard rock with the intellectuality of the avant-garde. Boris’ frequent collaborations — with Sunn O))) and Merzbow, for example — and ever-changing modes produce albums that,…
LeBron James could use some guidance from Tech N9ne. When the now-deposed king of the NBA took his ball and ditched Cleveland for Miami, he left more than his effigy burning in his home state; the departure charred his legacy, too. Unlike James’ slam to his hometown, Tech N9ne’s newest release, Collabos: The Gates Mixed Plate, once again reaffirms Tech’s…
I have an admission to make: The Pitch Music Showcase this year was my first rodeo. Was I prepared to catch all 35-plus acts that we’d packed into Westport for a single night? Maybe. Duly caffeinated, laced into weathered Chucks and armed with notebook, pen and camera, I believed I was ready to take whatever some of the finest musicians…
In all the years that I’ve been reviewing restaurants, I don’t remember ever visiting a venue and tasting everything on the menu at one sitting. That was before I discovered Shields Manor Bistro. Four entrées typically are on the menu, which changes (but not dramatically) once a month. After one visit, I felt that I knew the place. Intimately. I’d…
It’s idiomatic that familiarity breeds contempt, or at least boredom, and that seven-year marriages are “itchy,” necessitating premeditated date nights, sexy coupon books and wigs in the bedroom. What if the crisis of imagination, though, is creative rather than conjugal? When writers get bored or repetitive, they sometimes come up with new rules that constrain their processes in order to…
The headline blared from The Kansas City Star in December: “KC ethics commission faces busy year.” But of all the adjectives that could describe the watchdog’s 2010, “busy” reads like a dark joke. Designed to keep watch over city government, the ethics commission in Kansas City, Missouri, has yet to meet in 2010. Its first meeting is scheduled for August…
Tonight is the season finale of Bravo’s reality show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, and our own Peregrine Honig is among the three finalists. When we called, she’d just deplaned in New York City, where she’ll attend a finale-viewing party tonight with cast members and producers at the Brooklyn Museum. So is she gonna win this thing, or…
Now that the building formerly occupied by the old New York Delicatessen & Bakery is now a flea market — and listed for sale — we can’t help wondering what will happen to a very different deli space. Until last Sunday, the storefront at 8931 Metcalf in Overland Park was a location of the Texas-based Jason’s Deli chain. Two days after…
The Latino Advocacy Taskforce will hold a prayer service in support of the family of John Paul Garcia — also known as JP (Tha Mex) — tonight, at 8:30PM at the corner of Mercier and Avenida Cesar E Chavez, where the local rapper was murdered in the early hours of Sunday morning. The rapper was 28 years old. For questions,…
A 3,000-square-foot ode to Kellogg’s Pop Tarts opened in Times Square yesterday. The Pop Tarts World Cafe is tucked in among the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and Applebee’s, adding to the world of food-based tourism in New York City’s iconic shopping district. According to Eater NY, the flagship store allows shoppers to create their own T-shirts, boxes of Pop Tarts…
Two years ago, after 40 years coaching elsewhere, Dan Stanley returned to the site of his first job coaching high school football. Then 72, the Westport High team he inherited didn’t look much like the one he’d coached in 1964; like the coach himself, the school he knew had long ago fled to the suburbs. But he coached them anyway,…
The local jazz ensemble is releasing its newest record, Pools That Swell With Rain, on September 24 at the Folly Theater. For the band’s last performance before the CD release concert, they’re giving away one pair of tickets to the release concert at their performances at Jardine’s. Details after the jump. Categories: Music Tags: Barclay Martin Ensemble
If what prosecutors are saying is true, you wouldn’t want to be the godfather of Matthew and Joseph Hendrix. The brothers are accused of plotting to rob Kansas City businessman Michael J. Tutera. The robbery turned into a homicide, and charging documents released today allege that 16-year-old Joseph Hendrix paid his older brother extra for pulling the trigger, saying: “Well…
