Categories: Music Tags: avett brothers, Matt and Kim, School of Seven Bells, Ted Leo, The National
The Big 12 will be rid of the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Colorado Buffaloes sooner than later. There’d been some question as to whether Colorado would have to stay in the Big 12 next year. Nope. The Big 12 struck a deal with the schools yesterday to be officially done with them by July 1, 2011, and the league is getting…
Some guys just shouldn’t be fathers. Judging by charges filed last week against Carlos L. Phillips, he’s one of them. The loving dad is accused of allowing his two-month-old son to roll off a counter while Phillips rolled a joint, squeezing the boy and throwing him across the living room. The baby’s mother told police that the alleged abuse-fest happened…
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings September 21, 2010 Midland Theater Better than: any British white chick could do it. (Amy Winehouse, cough, cough.) There was no better venue in town to host Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: the Midland’s sumptuous, velveteen interior only brought more glamor to the Daptone Records ’70s soul throwback act. The only thing that seemed a…
Since we will now all be on the Twinkie Diet, this week’s battle was about determining which doughnut should get top billing in the pastry case (and your stomach). In the past four hours, I have consumed close to 20 inches of doughnuts — all in the name of science. I’m starting to believe we could power a car on…
NPR’s First Listen feature gets it done on a consistent basis. Every week, the site serves up a new batch of early streams of upcoming albums, and they’re usually good ones. This week, they’re streaming Le Noise, the new Neil Young album. It’s just Young’s voice and an acoustic guitar, and it’s produced by Daniel Lanois. You can also…
Cue the Boyz II Men. This could be the end of the road for former Kansas City Chief Larry Johnson. On Tuesday, the Washington Redskins released LJ, sending him to the unemployment line with millions of jobless Americans. Pro Football Talk wonders if this is it for Johnson. After rushing for just two yards on five carries — and getting…
Morgan Spurlock had McDonald’s, Mark Haub has Twinkies. The nutrition professor at Kansas State University is challenging conventional wisdom about junk food, one fat-laden day at a time. Haub kicked off a 30-day junk-food odyssey, dubbed the Twinkie Diet, on August 25, to question perceptions about how we view processed goods in relation to our overall health. And so far…
The cameras are finally rolling on Red State, Kevin Smith’s long talked about film inspired by homophobic Topeka preacher, Fred Phelps. Not only is Smith finally shooting, but he’s also added a significant name to the cast. Slash Film reports that John Goodman has signed on. So there you go, Big Lebowski fans. Categories: News Tags: Fred Phelps, kevin smith,…
Arguably, the National is the biggest American rock band that most of America has never heard of. The band’s latest album, High Violet, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart earlier this year, it invariably makes every “Best Of” list and, and its music was put into heavy rotation by the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Yet,…
It’s not a tuber. It’s a super tuber. Scientists at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in New Delhi, India, and the Central Potato Research Institute have managed to genetically modify a potato to increase the protein content by 160 percent (via io9). The researchers have also managed to boost the number of amino acids in the potatoes. So…
Eddie Conley admitted stabbing a man with a box cutter. Don’t look at Eddie Conley. Seriously, he doesn’t like it. Conley was riding on an KCATA bus with his brother when they started arguing with another passenger. The problem: the passenger was supposedly looking at Conley, according to the Star. The argument heated up and the men started fighting….
Jonathan Whitworth is suing Columbia police over a raid at his home. You may have been able to black out the horrific police raid in which a pit bull was shot to death and a 7-year-old boy was held at gunpoint, but Jonathan Whitworth and his family apparently can’t. It doesn’t help that the frightening video is on YouTube….
Did you forget to RSVP for Scion Garage Fest? You know, the ridiculously fabulous festival that’s going down in Lawrence next week with King Khan and the Shrines and Best Coast and the Raveonettes and the Gories and the Oblivians and all sorts of other awesome acts? Well, lucky for you, we’ve got your back. We have several pairs tickets…
If Frank Hicks weren’t a God-fearing man, you might wonder if he’d sold his soul to the devil to build Knuckleheads Saloon. It’s a sultry summer night in the East Bottoms. Guy Forsyth’s lonesome harmonica echoes over sheet metal and evaporates into the neon glow that envelops Rochester Street. Old dudes with ponytails bring icy domestics to Birkenstock-shod women. Biker…
Dear Mexican: What punishment could America give that would finally make crossing America’s borders — repeatedly — unpalatable to Mexicans? Even Mexican natives admit that it is at least as harmful to Mexico as it is to America. The “needless paperwork” in our immigration process is to try to filter out habitual criminals and recidivism and to slant the incoming…
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn’t have the clean, fablelike arc of its predecessor, the tale about Charlie Sheen’s upstart-broker Bud Fox and Michael Douglas’ Wall Street-player Gordon Gekko). Only the buccaneer charisma of Douglas’ signature role obscured the “clean business, clean soul” moral of Wall Street, released two months after 1987’s Black Monday. But everything is so…
Buried beneath The Virginity Hit’s determinedly crude gags about diarrhea, incest and frat-house debauchery is giggly but unfocused commentary on the role and prevalence of the Internet — specifically YouTube — in the sex lives and rituals of humiliation (often intertwined) of 21st-century teens. Matt (a charmingly geeky Matt Bennett) is the last of his crew to lose his virginity;…
Animal Logic, the digital-effects studio responsible for both dancing penguin phenomenon Happy Feet and Zack Snyder phenomenon 300, creates more anatomically accurate, anthropomorphic protagonists and expressionistic landscape panoramas in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Directed by Snyder and based on Kathryn Lasky’s children’s books, Legend of the Guardians involves the coming of age of a young bird…
Catfish comes in at 89 minutes, just long enough to sustain the suspense in a setup that starts to play out like pure vérité horror (or “reality thriller,” as it’s being billed). And it’s just short enough to retreat from the squirmy destination it arrives at without going further than an ogle and the meaningless non-explanation of the title metaphor….
Dorky and earnest, aboriginal teen Willie (Rocky McKenzie) proves a dissident when he escapes Catholic boarding school in 1969 Perth, extinguishing the fire and brimstone of Father Benedictus (a hammy, German-inflected Geoffrey Rush) through cheeky song: There’s nothing I would rather be/Than to be an Aborigine/And watch you take my precious land away. Hooking up with a rascally drunken hobo…
Happily sampling nasty beats and riffs from the Scorsese catalog, the new Aussie crime saga Animal Kingdom begins with a hushed but breath-holding set piece: A gawky lad watches TV on the couch next to his dozing mum, until the already-summoned EMTs arrive and the boy calmly tells them that she OD’d on smack. As it becomes clear that she’s…
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s season opener seems to embark on an ambitious mission with its first words: “Do you have any idea how amazing it is to have faith?” A musical addressing that question with daring, imagination and probing intelligence would have made fascinating and vital theater. Unfortunately, Saved! is not that musical. Though its exploration of the topic…
