Kansas City’s Christine Barbour’s Facebook page has yet again proven two timeless truths. One: Nobody wants little kids to have cancer. They’re kids. Two: We all regard Oprah as a benevolent and unknowable deity. Barbour is sharing this knowledge with the 44,550 people who’ve clicked the Like button on her page, “Oprah Please Do a Show on Childhood Cancer —…
Even though they share the same food and drink menu, Avenue Bistro-Leawood trumps its older sister in Brookside. Read Charles’ review here and check out some more pictures of the restaurant in this slideshow. All photos by Angela C. Bond
%{}% They really love them some burgers down in Texas. It’s not enough to have a vanity plate with “BRGR FAN,” on it and the steer horns are so over done. Now, you can actually have a picture of a two-hander cheeseburger on your license plate. The Austin American-Statesman reports that Mighty Fine Burgers’ logo is now available on novelty…
The third act of Harley-Davidson’s yearlong effort to muscle unions at manufacturing plants is upon us. In an almost comically transparent cycle, the hog builder bullied employees at its York, Pennsylvania, plant into wage and staff cuts late last year by claiming it would move jobs to Kansas City. Then, earlier this year, Harley got employees in Wisconsin — the…
Bret Michaels canceled his show at the Uptown back in August so he could host the Miss USA contest. That rascal! But it was no bigs — he promptly scheduled another Uptown date for November 18. Well, looks like you can tell the sitter she’s got next Thursday off after all, because Michaels has canceled on Kansas City AGAIN. And…
%{}% Combative lawyer Michael Fletcher has filed a defamation lawsuit against Sharon Sanders Brooks, the woman he hopes to replace on the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council. Fletcher, an enthusiastic filer of discrimination lawsuits before his license was suspended, says Sanders Brooks falsely accused him of assaulting and threatening her after the two interacted on Election Day. Categories: News, Politics…
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. Miscellaneous clown and circus-related ephemera Discovered at: Crap shops across this great nation Representative Quote: “The clowns are funny men. They do funny tricks. The people laugh….
Malevolent intergalactic critters swoop down to harvest our citizens and ravage yet another postcard-perfect horizon in Skyline, a generic war-of-the-worlds imitation featuring noisy H.R. Giger–ish battleships, squid-gorillas with brain-sucking tentacles, and other mismatched monsters who hypnotize and infect people with blue LEDs. In this technically spectacular but otherwise unremarkable B-movie by F/X pros turned filmmakers Colin and Greg Strause, the…
You know how it goes — first you stub your toe on your way out of bed, then you slip in the shower, and then your boss yells at you. Bad days weren’t any more fun as a kid, either. But in the case of the play Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, a rotten day…
Arrowhead Stadium (1 Arrowhead Drive) never used to host anything but Chiefs games and the occasional concert. Now it’s a regional destination for college programs, providing athletes a world-class facility. At 2 p.m., the Northwest Missouri State Bearcats and Pittsburg State Gorillas face off in the best-attended and most eagerly anticipated game of the NCAA Division II regular-season schedule, the…
They can’t take credit for the guy on the horse, but Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim did direct other oddball Old Spice commercials earlier this year. Three spots featuring a hyper pec-twitching man in a shower, who proselytizes about the odor-blocking power of body wash with the conviction of a drill sergeant, hit the Internet in March. The concept is…
Though John “Buck” O’Neil, the Kansas City Monarchs All-Star and manager (and Negro Leagues Hall of Famer), had a successful career outside Kansas City — semipro with the Miami Giants, scout and then manager for the Chicago Cubs — it was his time here that cemented the Buck folklore. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum celebrates the legend with Buck’s Bash…
When the United States won the race to develop a nuclear bomb in the final days of World War II, it seemed a miraculous solution. But, of course, it was the beginning of one of humankind’s most dire problems. The Real Dr. Strangelove: Edward Teller and the Battle for the H-Bomb, based on Peter Goodchild’s docudrama, recounts the early days…
Bad news, buddy: Nicola Granillo is going to steal your girlfriend. That unshaven, sensitive-looking guy with the open collar and the $45,000 violin is from Venice. He plays with Interpreti Veneziani — chamber music. And it’s Italian chamber music, the best kind. Geminiani, Vivaldi, Handel, Halvorsen, Paganini. Those are the composers. They’re all dead, so they’re not stealing her. But…
Mention the name of Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour to a group of die-hard fashionistas and you get a wide variety of responses: outright worship, leather-boot-shaking fear and, of course, burning hatred. But who is the real woman behind Meryl Streep’s mega-bitch in The Devil Wears Prada? Find out at Tivoli Cinemas (4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-5222) when the KC Design Alliance, along…
Many cultural phenomena become tired and played out over time. One notable exception is the 5,000-year-old art form of belly dancing, which has survived and thrived, thanks in no small part to its seamless fusion of dance, culture and sexuality, as well as the continual innovations of its modern interpreters. Midwestern belly dancers from Belly Dance United use their hypnotizing…
In this 125th anniversary year for the Kansas City Art Institute, many exhibitions of work by alums have been displayed on campus and at other metro galleries. Currently, paintings by KCAI alumnus Robert Blunk are on exhibition at the campus. Mondays-Fridays, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: Nov. 1. Continues through Nov. 30, 2010 Tags: Kansas City Art Institute, Night & Day,…
Question: What is Geeks Who Drink? Answer: Beer-lovin’ eggheads who host free trivia games at Irish pubs throughout our fine nation (established 1776). Based in Denver, Colorado (a state admitted to the union in 1876; state flower is the Rocky Mountain columbine), the Geeks drink and question patrons at Raglan Road (170 East 14th Street, 816-994-9700) on Wednesdays. The game…
Jean-Luc Godard famously said, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” And 50 years ago, he defended that thesis with the movie that Roger Ebert says changed cinema forever, cementing the French New Wave and influencing generations of filmmakers, from his own contemporaries to Quentin Tarantino and beyond. An exercise in style about a…
WorkArtOut is a multimedia performance focusing on the nature of sports culture. Fri., Nov. 12, 8 p.m., 2010 Tags: Night & Day
Part of the fun of talking about music is all that onomatopoeia: the bang of a drum, the twang of a banjo, the clang of a cowbell. From the People’s Republic of China comes the term “jigu” (pronounced jee-GOO), which literally means “to beat or touch the drum.” Jigu! Thunder Drums of China, a 28-member troupe, brings together thousands of years…
This stage production is based on the popular “If You Give a…” children’s book series presented by the Omaha Stage Company. Purchase tickets online or by phone. Tue., Nov. 16, 9:45 a.m. & noon, 2010 Tags: Night & Day, Omaha Stage Company
When pondering the struggle for civil rights in America, many minds go right to the 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr. led the cause for peace and equality. But the fight, obviously, goes back further — and it continues today. Documented Rights, an exhibit on display through March 19 at the National Archives (400 West Pershing Road, 816-268-8000), traces this…
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly upon the tongue. — Hamlet Think Shakespeare and what come to mind are Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and the orotund deliveries of the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the English of 16th-century England was a vastly different language from the current British version — rougher and more varied…
