Archives: February 2011
January openings and closings in the Kansas City restaurant scene
Neighbor’s Cafe in Lee’s Summit ended a long run in January. The first month of 2011 will be remembered as bitterly cold, both in climate and in the fortunes of some iconic restaurant names in Kansas City. The famous names that didn’t survive into January include the seven-year-old Lee’s Summit outpost of Dixon’s Chili Parlor; the Prime Rib Grill by…
Ana Popovic’s show at Knuckleheads tonight is rescheduled
Ana Popovic, the Serbian blues player who was going to play at Knuckleheads tonight, has a rescheduled date of February 8. You can find more information at Knuckleheads’ Facebook page. Here’s the skinny on the artist, courtesy of our writer Chris Parker: Ana Popovic looks like the blues-busting kin of the Alien franchise’s leather-clad Ripley. The throaty swagger of her…
The Melodians bring Jamaican warmth to Crosstown Station tonight
If you’ve heard of the Melodians, it’s most likely because — like most members of Generation Y who enjoy smoking weed — you’ve heard “Rivers of Babylon.” (It’s the closing track on Sublime’s 40 Oz. to Freedom.) The Melodians, though, were jamming a long time before the members of Sublime toked their first joints. The Jamaican reggae act has been…
In airline museum drama, a lawsuit took a sneaky turn
What the Airline History Museum lacks in profile it makes up for in drama. Last fall, former Executive Director Paul Sloan admitted to stealing from the museum, which displays vintage aircraft in a hangar at the airport in downtown Kansas City. At around the time that Sloan was being charged, a court case involving past and present museum members came…
Men don’t cook just to get laid
The ongoing mythical search for the reason that men cook unveiled another chapter this week with The New York Post’s assertion that single men are hoping to become more desirable (and get women into bed) by showing off their cooking prowess. The article contends that there is an “entire contingent of Top Chef-watching Romeos to woo you with their own…
It’s time we got KC involved in Meat Week
Until yesterday, I never even knew that Meat Week existed. And I call myself a carnivore. But Meat Week is very real. That’s why the domain name is meatweekisreal.com. The annual celebration of meat runs from January 31 to February 6 and, just like Fight Club, has spread under the radar to 15 cities in six years. Founders Chris Cantey…
Kansas official rips EPA, apparently forgets that EPA is reviewing Holcomb permit
Anybody who has ever tried to get license plates knows that dealing with government entities can be a frustrating and laborious task. However, when it’s your job as a state official, it’s probably best to shut up, smile and play the bureaucratic game. Apparently Tom Gross with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Bureau of Air doesn’t care for…
Barclay Martin, Sara Swenson, Mark Lowrey and more at 2011’s edition of the Love Hangover
The Love Hangover has been a morning-after musical remedy to Valentine’s saccharine sweetness for several years in Kansas City — but 2011’s will have a strictly jazzy swing to it. The self-described “post-Valentine’s night of music for lovers and losers” will happen at Jardine’s, and it will feature duets from the following artists: instrumental jazz duo Kim Sivils and Steve…
Kansas City Royals hire Willie Mays Aikens as minor league coach
Stories like this make me sad that there’s no Plog news category called “Whaaaaa?!” As the rest of us barricaded ourselves against snowpacogeddonalypsomg, or whatever cute name you want to use for it, the Kansas City Royals were busy getting one of the most notorious first basemen ever back on the company payroll. Tuesday, the organization announced it had hired…
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. brings its racing gimmick to the skinny-jeans crowd in Lawrence
NASCAR isn’t exactly something that people associate with the skinny-jeans-wearin’ hipster crowd. But when Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., an electronic pop and folk outfit from Detriot, Michigan, started popping up on buzz feeds last year, the industry was intrigued by their obsession with all things car- and racing-related. Donning racing suits and helmets onstage with a neon American flag glowing…
Toybox of terror: 12 homemade toys sure to frighten kids and anger God
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. Look, I totally understand the modern hankering for the handmade and the pre-industiral, for children’s toys that look like they might have been crafted by elves in…
The Roommate
It’s exactly what you thought it would be: a plagiarized, campus-set Single White Female pitched to teens. The Roommate traces over scenes from Barbet Schroeder’s sleepover classic with no notable improvement. Midwesterner Sara (Minka Kelly) arrives at SoCal “ULA” campus where she meets her new roommate, Rebecca (Leighton Meester). Sara is at first flattered by the attention of clingy Rebecca,…
Sanctum
Producer James Cameron lends his marketable screen credit and the 3-D cameras he developed for Avatar to director Alister Grierson’s modestly budgeted Australian disaster thriller, about a spelunking expedition gone awry in the underwater bowels of Papua New Guinea. “Trust the cave; follow the river,” warns grizzled diver extraordinaire Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) after a tropical cyclone collapses the joint,…
Not the Tom Hanks Movie
The latest in the Kansas City Art Institute’s ArtSounds performance series explores the interplay of positive and negative forces and Eastern and Western artistic traditions. The poetry of avant-big-band leader Sun Ra and his song “Angels and Demons at Play” influenced the title and story of the 7:30 p.m. mixed-media presentation Angels and Demons at Play at Epperson Auditorium (4415…
Foreign Bodies
For the month of February, the walls of Westside Local feature the art of Erick Warner. An exhibit titled Foreign Bodies opens on February 4. Feb. 4-28, 2011 Tags: Erick Warner, Night & Day
Chris Bohjalian
Bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian visits Kansas City to sign copies of his books and to talk about his newest work, Secrets of Eden. Wed., Feb. 9, 6:30 p.m., 2011 Tags: Chris Bohjalian, Kansas City, Night & Day
Cold Blood Stain
Kansans have mixed feelings about their state’s connection to In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s 1965 book about a perplexing 1959 quadruple homicide in Holcomb. The case came way out of left field for small-town western Kansas. And the collision of that parochial world with Capote, the eccentric New York homosexual author, offers further fascination. Kansas Citians can consider the strangeness…
Video Kills Ignorance
Is globalization a good thing? Mangoes in midwinter Kansas City — or in Kansas City at all — are pleasant, but should they really be only a dollar? Do clothing companies aid developing nations by paying sweatshop laborers 15 cents an hour so hipsters can wear skinny jeans? Has the opening of worldwide markets made capitalism’s exploitation of the poor…
Supersized Challenge
The Chiefs won’t make it to the Super Bowl until at least 2012, but that doesn’t mean you’re done with football this year. If you feel the urge to compete, the Brooksider (6330 Brookside Plaza, 816-363-4070) is holding its second annual Bellybuster Challenge. Contestants get 17 minutes to down a burger of six quarter-pound patties (with cheese), a pound of…
Le Jazz Hot
Eighty years ago, half a world away and between world wars, two emergent art forms continued to evolve, innovate and fire the creative imaginations of their practitioners amid the Paris of the Lost Generation. That moment comes alive again for an evening when the Hot Club of San Francisco performs at 8 p.m. in the Carlsen Center’s Polsky Theatre at…
Modern Moves
Dance is a loaded word that encompasses the movements of toddlers in tutus, the trained leaps of professional artists, and the highly regulated undulations of strippers. With little girls who imitate pop stars who imitate strippers, the slope gets slippery enough that the premise of Footloose can actually become plausible. The Rev. Shaw Moores of Kansas City needn’t worry about…
Find The Pitch
