Archives: October 2010
Kris Kobach donors pay whopper legal bill
Say what you want about zealous anti-immigration folks, but they are nothing if not generous when it comes to funding their cause. Just ask Kansas Secretary of State candidate Kris Kobach, who’s about to deposit a big check donated by strangers. The UMKC professor and author of a Hazleton, Pennsylvania, law that aims to make life difficult for illegal immigrants…
KC’s Peggy Noland has been to New York, L.A. and back
Outside a grand baby-blue house on Garfield, just before the block is clipped by Pendleton Avenue, yelling children ensure that their last few days of summer break will be the noisiest. They cheer as boys push a car tire through the parking lot of the apartment building next to the house. Inside the house, an all-woman punk band called Cuntalope rehearses…
Waiting for Superman
Davis Guggenheim’s call-to-arms documentary on the failures of the U.S. public-education system — thoroughly laudable in intention if maddening in its logic and omissions — originated with his own guilty conscience. An Academy Award winner for 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim made his debut doc, The First Year, in 2001, featuring the dedication of five public-school teachers. He now drives…
Red
Classiest. Comic book movie. Ever. Not the best. Not the worst. Just the classiest — Helen Mirren (and Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich and Brian Cox and Richard Dreyfuss) can spruce up any pulp. Based on a Warren Ellis three-issue toss-off, Red barely acknowledges its roots. The original was bloody and humorless — a straight-ahead tale about a retired Company…
Sufjan Stevens
Following 2000’s manic-depressive A Sun Came and the experimental drone of Enjoy Your Rabbit, Sufjan Stevens’ 2003 album, Michigan, catapulted him onto the radar of the emerging indie-folk movement. The album, a portrait of Stevens’ home state, was an ambitious smorgasbord of history, memory and human narrative. Two years later, Illinois expanded Stevens’ state project: more tracks, more history, more…
Portugal. The Man
It’s hard to imagine Bristol Palin and Portugal the Man occupying the same sphere of reality. Then again, we’ve come to expect weirdness from Wasilla, Alaska. Both the newly minted Dancing With the Stars contestant and the richly imaginative indie band hail from the same town. The difference? Whereas Palin’s clan is known for its small-minded politicking, Portugal the Man…
The Mexican: Body-parts worship and the meaning of “blond”
Dear Mexican: What is it with the Mexican hang-up on body parts? When General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was struck in the knee by a cannonball in one of his 8,000 wars, his right leg was removed from the knee down. When he returned to Mexico City, he ordered that a state funeral be held for his leg. Everyone…
Kid Cudi
Kid Cudi might be the only self-respecting artist in popular hip-hop who can rap about taking ‘shrooms with a woman without even trying to bang her. So why does this self-described reclusive stoner have two massive radio hits? Blame Cudi’s incredibly catchy hooks and his unabashed vulnerability. The lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night, he narrates on…
Pearl Jam’s guitarist talks about his “other” band
Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard is quick to tell you that his longtime side project — the soulful, melancholy foursome Brad — isn’t actually a side project. Moments after putting his 3-year-old daughter, Vivian, to bed, Gossard talked to The Pitch from his Seattle home about his more famous other band and Brad’s latest album, Best Friends? The Pitch: Brad…
The art of album making, Walkmen-style
Kansas Citians have heard the Walkmen but may not know it. The city’s latest exposure was on top of a parking garage at the Standard Social fashion show two weeks ago, when the New York band’s sprawling anthems echoed over the Plaza. Now the Walkmen are back in support of a new album, Lisbon. Bassist and organist Peter Bauer talked…
B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ celebrates 20 years of blues and rib tips
An oversized truck hauling asphalt rolls past the deck of B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ on a clear, quiet afternoon. “That’s actually a street, believe it or not,” Jo Shannon says, pointing to the route. It leads to a production plant built in the 1930s, which is located just east of the nationally recognized blues-and-barbecue operation that she runs with her husband,…
The Brookside institution Carmen’s sings in Leawood
In this economy, it should be no surprise that a good reputation is worth its weight in American Express receipts. That’s why the developers of upscale suburban shopping centers in the metro are eager to recruit local restaurants with identifiable brand names to either move out to the burbs or open satellite locations. Several restaurateurs have confessed to me that…
Zombies in Evil Dead dance their hearts, guts and brains out
Evil Dead: The Musical takes everything you love about the horror genre — graphic violence, gratuitous sex, senseless mayhem, paranormal panic and epically bad decision making — and sets it to music the way a pyromaniac sets a warehouse on fire. Coming after its audience, Evil Dead: The Musical is determined to mercilessly entertain. But comedy, like horror, is a…
Sugar Creek turned residents into exiles in order to build a development that hasn’t happened
Over the years, whenever Eleanor Miller hosted a family meal, her neighbors wondered if somebody had died. Miller, a retired nurse, raised eight children in the tidy Sugar Creek home that she and her late husband bought in 1959. The kids grew up and out of the house, but anytime they visited, Miller’s crowded driveway suggested a wake. Miller is…
Fake it ’til you make it at the Air Sex Championships
Slut Truffle demonstrates perfect air sex form. Chris Trew knows how to fake it. And yes, the “it” is sex. But when Trew fakes it, he fakes it onstage as the host of the Air Sex Championships, which return to Kansas City 7 p.m. Tuesday at Crosstown Station. Trew is looking for Kansas Citians who also know how to…
Lisa Simpson knows when it’s good to be Kansas City Royal Zack Greinke
British graffiti artist Bansky created an amazingly ballsy opening for last night’s episode of The Simpsons that shows the sweatshop where the show is created. It’s an awesome sight (watch the video after the jump) with sad pandas and dying unicorns. In last night’s episode, Lisa Simpson becomes the manager of her older brother Bart’s baseball team. She knows nothing…
Celina Tio cooks her way through the competition on The Next Iron Chef
The garage doors with knives have sealed for a second time and chef Celina Tio is among the eight chefs who get to continue to compete to become The Next Iron Chef. She garnered high praise for her entries in the coffee-and-doughnuts challenge and the reinvention of a diner classic challenge on last night’s episode. The theme was innovation, and…
LeBron James and the Miami Heat victorious at Sprint Center (slideshow)
Kevin Durant blew past LeBron James early in Friday night’s sold-out preseason NBA match up between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat. It had me wondering if James shouldn’t have partied at The Midland the night before. But the Durantula couldn’t contain King James and company for long, who threw down two sick dunks (watch video of one…
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