Kansas City police believe they have the man who started a gunfight outside of Jay’s Bigger Jigger bar last month that killed 21-year-old Stephanie N. Roberts. Jackson County prosecutors charged 22-year-old Bryant L. Green with felony murder and armed criminal in the October 10 homicide, the Star reported. Witnesses told police that a fight inside Jay’s Bigger Jigger led to…
It was fun, er, gross while it lasted, but the party’s over for Four Loko. The FDA ruled yesterday that caffeine is an “unsafe food additive” for alcoholic beverages and sent warning letters to four companies that manufacture caffeinated booze drinks, telling them to cut it out and pull the “blackout in a can” out of circulation. Categories: News Tags:…
This year’s Heaven Is Whenever is probably the worst of the five albums that the Hold Steady has released, but who cares? It’s brimming with monster rock hooks and smartest-guy-in-the-room lyrics that have made the Brooklyn — by way of Twin Cities — band one of the most exciting acts of the past decade. Frontman Craig Finn is writing more…
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. Am I Normal? Author: Jeanne Betancourt, but based on a film by Debra Franc and David Shepard Date: 1983 Publisher: Avon Flare The Back Cover Promises: “All…
The Missouri Mavericks puck around with the Bloomington Prairie Thunder in this hockey match at the Independence Events Center. Sat., Oct. 16, 7:05 p.m.; Wed., Nov. 24, 7:05 p.m., 2010 Tags: Bloomington Prairie Thunder, independence events center, Night & Day
Of course, you know that the old miser’s heart will melt, he’ll regret his cruel ways and turn into generous boss in time for Christmas. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go see the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol. In fact, not going would be downright Scrooge-y. Nov. 19-26, 2010 Categories: Theater Tags: christmas, Kansas City…
The season of college basketball — God’s game, at least around these parts — is finally upon us. And Kansas City fans get a rare treat when four powerhouses play at Sprint Center (1407 Grand) in the O’Reilly Auto Parts College Basketball Experience Classic. In the first game, defending national champion Duke faces rebuilding Marquette, allowing ESPN announcers yet another…
If all of November gets to be National Novel Writing Month, then surely this can be Kansas City Poetry Reading Day, right? With two highly acclaimed poets in town – Libyan-American Khaled Mattawa, and the justly lauded Gjertrud Schnackenberg – there isn’t going to be a better day for meter and rhyme in the area for a while. Schnackenberg is…
Was he blindsided by the momentum of Team Coco or coerced by the bottom-line–minded Powers That Be? Hard to know. But it’s nicer to imagine that seasoned showbiz vet George Lopez was truly magnanimous, and savvy and shrewd enough to voluntarily push his own late-night talk show back an hour, knowing that he’d reap a ratings boost by welcoming Conan…
In Quicksilver, the overdramatic 1986 film starring heartthrob Kevin Bacon, big-city bike messengers face harrowing obstacles as they weave their way through the city delivering packages (Swatches and fax-machine ink cartridges — this was the ’80s). A similar feat takes place in Kansas City from 1 to 3 p.m. but with food banks in mind as cyclists ride their fifth…
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre follows Hot l Baltimore with another drama that speaks to our cash-strapped, jobless times: Clifford Odets’ Depression-era classic Awake and Sing! A smash hit at its 1935 New York premiere by Lee Strasberg’s Group Theater (starring Stella Adler), Awake and Sing! is sometimes dismissed as an innocent relic — a portrait of a working-class Jewish family when…
Poptopia presents a competitive custom toy show. Artists in three age categories inflict their ideas onto a blank vinyl figures. The results are displayed for at Californos. Thu., Nov. 18, 6-8 p.m., 2010 Tags: Night & Day
The late, great Billy Wilder related the following story, so naturally we believe it: Upon completing the final shot of 1934’s It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert — an arrestingly beautiful woman, a magnificent screen presence and, apparently, a lousy judge of artistic merit — politely instructed director Frank Capra to engage in sexual congress with himself, so convinced was…
Saving the animal kingdom never seemed so saucy. From 7 p.m. to midnight, a dozen classy lasses compete at the Miss Vixen 2011 Pin-Up Pageant, hosted by Artemis Vulgaris and Annie Cherry at Knuckleheads Saloon (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456). In talent and swimsuit contests, contestants parade before a panel of judges who have the enviable job of choosing one vivacious vixen…
If November gets to be National Novel Writing Month, then surely this can be Kansas City Poetry Reading Day, right? With two acclaimed poets in town — Libyan-American Khaled Mattawa and the justly lauded Gjertrud Schnackenberg — there won’t be a better day for it in a while. Schnackenberg is something of a heavyweight in contemporary American poetry — read…
The metro’s outdoor water parks have dried out for the season, but those seeking a chlorine fix can get one year-round at Holiday Inn SE – CoCo Key Water Resort (9103 East 39th Street, 816-737-0200). Three water slides and a lazy river wind around inside the hotel, where it’s always 84 degrees, and you can swim up to the Wet…
After two weeks of pounding Southern pavement, Making Movies has come home. The Latin rock group’s Tormenta Tour took the band on a journey through big, sunny cities in Texas and the lower stretches of California. Now, the band plays its final KC show of the year with Cowboy Indian Bear and Poison Control Center. Hear the last fiery licks…
For those in KC who are now of a certain age, the name Kansas City Comets provides as much nostalgia as the Zambezi Zinger at Worlds of Fun. In the 1980s, the Major Indoor Soccer League team was a hot ticket at Kemper Arena, drawing audiences of mostly children through fast-paced action and such exotically named players as Gino Schiraldi…
Night World was a never-realized project by architect Bertrand Goldberg, an entertainment complex that incorporated music, theater, shopping and disco. Kind of like the Power & Light District, only Night World 2010: Alive in the Afterlife, the fourth-annual tribute to Goldberg’s dream, is as creatively organic as it gets. The evening at the Foundation (1221 Union, 816-283-8990) involves the original…
Classical music isn’t for everyone. But perhaps the folks who prefer the thrashing of electric guitars and keyboards could get into the badass-ery of Brahms and Ravel if the first taste was free, and if it was performed by an internationally renowned musician. Well, would-be Rachmaninoff aficionados, the organizers of the Harriman-Jewell Series have your empty wallet in mind for…
Ever dream of dancing backup for Britney? Busting a move in the next Beyoncé video? Here’s your chance — sort of. OK, probably not, but the Monsters of HipHop tour rolls into Kansas City for a two-day dance instruction workshop at the Westin Crown Center (1 East Pershing Road). Professional choreographers lead seminars for everyone from beginning students to advanced…
The Unicorn’s newest fresh drama is Distracted, Lisa Loomer’s topical 2007 comedy about attention-deficit disorder. A thoughtful contemplation of ADD as diagnosis du jour (and of the medications prescribed as antidote), Distracted is told from the viewpoint of the worried mother of Jesse, a 9-year-old boy with behavioral issues. But Loomer, best known as a screenwriter of Girl, Interrupted, is…
The Kansas City Wizards announced today (to fans that somehow missed a week’s worth of online reports) that the club is changing its name to Sporting Kansas City. Team officials assure us that this is, in fact, a name. The moniker doesn’t come with a mascot or a nickname, but “Sporting” team names have a long history in Europe and…
A lot of conspiracy theories come out of the Midwest — at least for Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s TruTV show. There’s the missile silos turned into condos for rich people for the coming Armageddon. There’s the plan to move the Plum Island research facility to the middle of Kansas. Now, there’s the fusion centers — and one Parkville native is…
