Archives: November 2010

News

A hallucinogen called ibogaine has helped addicts kick heroin, meth and everything in between. Is it the trip that does the trick?

Keegan Hamilton,

Ron Price needs his milkshake. It’s 10 o’clock on a Monday morning, and the baldheaded, barrel-chested former bodybuilder is shuffling around the kitchen of a posh rehab clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, wearing slippers and a blue Gold’s Gym T-shirt. Price is a stockbroker in New Mexico, but his training regimen has left him with debilitating injuries, causing him to undergo…
News

Port Authority Chairman Trey Runnion is taking on some hazardous Kansas City projects – but no one’s cleaning up more than the Port Authority’s lawyer

David Martin,

One Saturday last July, a lawyer named William T. Session settled into a late lunch at Jack Gage, the upscale tavern at 50th Street and Main. Joined by a political strategist, he noshed on fried green tomatoes and crab and washed them down with beer, public records show. Besides expensing appetizers, Session and the politico, Kevin Smith, shared another thing…
Movies

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Dan Kois,

Youth fled early for Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, the trio at the center of the Harry Potter franchise. No longer really a children’s story, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 plucks its young heroes from the comfy Hogwarts and makes them refugees, fleeing — and, eventually, waging — war. David Yates’ handsome film begins with…

Movies

Fair Game

Nick Pinkerton,

Adapted from Valerie Plame’s and Joseph C. Wilson’s memoirs, the unsurprisingly validating Fair Game begins as a timeline-hopping, international thriller of the countdown months to the Iraq War. Covert CIA operative Plame (Naomi Watts) and ex-ambassador husband Wilson (Sean Penn) are proverbial ships passing in the night, shuttling from Niger to Amman to Cleveland on fact-finding missions concerning Saddam Hussein’s…

Movies

Cool It

Nicolas Rapold,

The science of global warming is tough enough to evaluate without the sort of hard sell that Ondi Timoner pushes on behalf of her subject, Bjorn Lomborg. Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (the movie’s sourcebook), the Danish adjunct professor of statistics has become, over the past decade, a thorn in the side of the environmentalist consensus on climate meltdown. Given…
Movies

The Next Three Days

Melissa Anderson,

During a discussion of Don Quixote, community-college lit professor John Brennan (Russell Crowe) rhetorically asks, “What if we choose to exist solely in a reality of our own making?” Like his protagonist, director Paul Haggis, who also scripted this remake of the 2008 French thriller Pour Elle (never released stateside), too confidently assumes that viewers are as quick to abandon…
Music

Backyard Tire Fire

Elke Mermis,

On top of having one of the best trailer-trash band names, Backyard Tire Fire wins points for a ridiculous biography. “Okay, here’s the skinny,” writes No Depression’s Jim Musser, who tells the Georgia band’s story. “The scheming corporate vampires and piggy-bankers have waddled away in a silent-but-deadly cloud after gobbling their fills at the public trough, leaving the rest of…
Music

Wolf Parade

Elke Mermis,

Seattle Weekly writer Hannah Levin recently asserted that if Neutral Milk Hotel had continued making music after 1998’s masterpiece, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea, the group would sound a bit like Wolf Parade now. It’s an argument that might raise eyebrows (and heckles) from many of Jeff Mangum’s dedicated followers, but it’s a thought-provoking one. After all, Wolf Parade’s…
Music

The Hold Steady

David Hudnall,

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…
Music

Shearwater

Elke Mermis,

The first 10,000 copies of the latest album from Shearwater, The Golden Archipelago, came with an accompanying 50-page book. If that isn’t daunting enough, the album itself is. The quiet, understated music builds to an apex of euphoria — that is, if you stick around long enough to listen. In the beginning, Shearwater was Okkervil River’s quiet little brother, formed…

Music

John Velghe

Elke Mermis,

The first lines of John Velghe’s EP entreat: Lump me in with little teamsters/I’ll be all right. There’s no need. The local singer and songwriter’s first solo effort is more than capable of differentiating itself from thousands of other warm, acoustic EPs. Velghe’s songs aren’t draped in a multitude of flattering accoutrements, save for trombone from Michael Walker and accordion…
Music

Barclay Martin Ensemble

Berry Anderson,

Barclay Martin has the voice of an angel and resembles the Aryan depiction of Jesus. He also leads the most evolved band in Kansas City. Those who invest in the 13 tracks of the ensemble’s latest endeavor, Pools That Swell With the Rain, will be a part of the foursome’s effort to help fund health education and sanitation infrastructure in…
A&E, Stage

The Coterie Theatre has a blast, and the Lyric Opera sings

Grace Suh,

Youth isn’t the only thing wasted on the young. So is excellence. Children in this city have no idea how good they have it with the reliably excellent shows at the Coterie Theatre. Kids aren’t discriminating. They watch any old crap and like it, as long as it’s entertaining. But Jeff Church, the Coterie’s longtime producing artistic director, consistently mounts…
Dining, Food & Drink

Don’s Steakhouse in Lawrence still looking for a buyer

Charles Ferruzza,

Looking to open a new restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas? Lawrence realtor Kelvin Heck — with Grubb & Ellis — is looking for you. Heck is listing the location at 2176 East 23rd Street that was formerly occupied by Don’s Steakhouse. The building is now being rented out to antique dealers, but when the restaurant was in its heyday, in the…
News

Connie J. Searing’s body found buried during missing persons investigation (updated)

Justin Kendall,

UPDATE: The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office has released the name of the person whose body was found buried in a yard on Saturday. The body belonged to 62-year-old Connie J. Searing, who lived at the address where her body was buried. The Jackson County Medical Examiner is still investigating. Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies and dogs with Missouri Search and Rescue…
News

PR firm couldn’t save GSA from embarrassment, but they spent tax money on it anyway

Nadia Pflaum,

One month before The Pitch ran this blog about the General Service Administration’s terrible PR skills regarding the tainted Bannister Federal Complex, the GSA spent a quarter of a million dollars with a public relations firm, NBC Action News’ Russ Ptacek reports. Jane Mobley Associates (Motto: “Communication builds community!”) won the contract at the height of Ptacek’s investigation into toxic…
News

High school students remain obnoxiously optimistic about journalism’s future

Peter Rugg,

For four days this weekend, the 4,500 visiting students at the Journalism Education Association’s national conference turned downtown into the biggest spectacle of naive hope in Kansas City outside of opening day at Kauffman Stadium. As a professional journalist, I considered this a call to assemble the Pitch Action News Team. If left to the daily newsmen, these impressionable children…
Music

Making Movies on AOL’s homepage today!

Elke Mermis,

Even if you don’t hablo the espanol, Making Movies should be on your radar by now. The local Latin rock band is making waves outside of KC, too. They’re featured on AOL’s homepage today, in a nice lil’ music video that you can peep here. (It’s a live performance, and the band’s performance is about halfway through. Most of the…
Dining, Food & Drink

America should prepare for stuffed burgers in 2011

Jonathan Bender,

Cheeseburgers have always been a bit backward. Because once you put a slice of cheese inside your hamburger patty, you’ll wonder why you ever thought it made sense to put the cheese on top at the last minute. BurgerBusiness believes that that nationwide rollout of Burger King’s Jalapeno Cheddar Stuffed XT Burger could be responsible for a burger paradigm shift…