Samantha Fish, Kansas City’s own blue-eyed, blond-haired blues prodigy, is returning from Europe, where she recently signed with RUF Records in Lindewerra, Germany. (It’s the same label that handles Walter Trout, Robin Trower and Ana Popovic.) Fish has been overseas recording her first album and touring with British soul musician Dani Wilde and Otis Taylor’s daughter, Cassie Taylor. (Did we…
This, folks, is how some Kansas Citians disagree on the Internet: This morning, the Star’s Sam Mellinger wrote a gutsy little column about how the Baseball Hall of Fame screwed up its first choice for the Buck O’Neil Award, which will honor the former Kansas City Monarch and baseball pioneer. Joe Posnanski — former Star columnist, current Sports Illustrated scribe…
Chances are, you’re not quite who you set out to be when you were in high school. Making it as a professional athlete takes more dedication and genetic predisposition than most people have, and those dreams of touring the country with your band are long gone. But this is America: land of the free, home of the brave. A place…
Alt-country chanteuse Neko Case is raffling off her 1967 Mercury Cougar — the one that’s featured on her album cover for Middle Cyclone — for charity. The proceeds from Cougar-Rama Muscle Car ‘Splosion benefits 826 National, which provides free tutoring and literacy programs to more than 24,000 students in eight cities nationwide. God, Neko Case is hot. Ahem. What? Categories:…
%{}% If you’re a postal worker whose tax filing got, uh, lost in the mail, or if you’re a Capitol Hill staffer who is just too busy making democracy happen to fill out a W-2, the time to call Uncle Sam to settle up might soon be here. U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Tom Coburn…
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. The New England Home Magazine Date: April 2, 1898, and September 4, 1898 Publisher: Boston Sunday Journal Discovered at: Whately Antiquarian Book Center, Whately, MA The Cover…
Photojournalism’s mandates are objectivity and timeliness. The photographer has to make choices and apply his or her own sensibilities to the moment. But once the shutter release is pressed, aesthetics take a back seat to reporting. Richard Mosse’s travel itinerary and career history closely resemble those of a photojournalist, but his approach is that of an artist. Mosse, an Annenberg…
Hardcore punk emerged from what unimaginative rock critics always call “the smoldering ashes of punk.” Faster and heavier than punk music, it accompanied an underground of disaffected 1980s youth, and its importance was inversely proportional to its commercial success. Hardcore Painting: Confessions and Premonitions, an exhibit at the Greenlease Gallery at Rockhurst University (1100 Rockhurst Road, 816-501-4407), is not particularly…
It must suck to be Vanna White. Despite turning 54 this year, Wheel of Fortune’s elegant co-host and letter turner still has to work to resemble a blond, half-starved 23-year-old, which American popular culture seems to insist is the epitome of female beauty. Though cosmetic procedures have become common, how does the media’s often impossible representation of female attractiveness affect…
Perhaps there’s no narrative in American sports as compelling as the self-imposed, decades-long segregation of baseball. It ended up being, at least in the eyes of Ken Burns, a metaphorically rich example of America’s triumph over racism. And while the major leagues now send scouts to Cuba and Japan, one wonders how racism — or at least the perception of…
Burned microwave popcorn, and no one but the cat to share predictions with, may explain why you’re not amped up for the 83rd annual Academy Awards. Well, climb out of the recliner and hit a local Oscar watch party, where the screen is bound to be bigger and where lucky guesses could yield an award on Hollywood’s biggest night of…
A tango performance by the Bach Aria Soloists might seem far-fetched, but it makes perfect sense when one learns that Argentinian tango-music legend Astor Piazzolla studied Bach intensively as a young man and acknowledged him as a primary influence. In particular, Piazzolla fused the dissonant harmonies, density and complex constructions of Bach’s fugues with traditional tango forms to create the…
What does it say about a culture when people eagerly line up, pony up and even dress up to delight in a movie that’s universally agreed upon as bad, possibly the worst ever? That there’s no such thing as too much irony? Oh, well — late-night moviegoers needed an alternative to Rocky Horror Picture Show, and so there is The…
Do you roll your eyes when a friend asks about your spiritual well-being? Are you forced to stifle cynical chuckles when an acquaintance enthusiastically shows you a photo of her aura? Perhaps your perception of otherworldly practices and communication will change after attending Kansas City’s Spirit Fair. Cyndy, full-time spiritual reader, counselor and Spirit Fair promoter, travels the Midwest to…
During World War II, Roger Shimomura’s family, along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans, was forced into internment camps by the U.S. government. A renowned painter and KU professor, Shimomura revisits the experience with Shadows of Minidoka at the Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire). The show examines the camps’ toll on the Japanese-American psyche through Shimomura’s blend of ukiyo-e and…
Arts-funding cuts in Kansas got you down? Show your support at the flurry of art openings at Final Fridays in downtown Lawrence. Start the evening at the Percolator, showing Memories, Myth, Nostalgia by Brandon and Jennifer Larsen. Grab a drink at the Bourgeois Pig and sneak a peek at Contention, a set of eerie new paintings by Josh Adams. The whimsical Wonder…
This Chamber Music Theatre work for actress and trio (cello, piano, percussion) performance celebrates the life and times of four African American women: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist Sojouner Truth, renowned novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, exuberant folk artist Clementine Hunter, and fervent civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. Wed., March 2, 10 & 11 a.m., 2011 Tags: Clementine Hunter,…
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, reportedly joked that where there are two Jews, there are three opinions. So it is in Seth Rozin’s joke-titled comedy, Two Jews Walk Into a War … , based on the true story of the last two Jews in Taliban-ruled Kabul. One would suppose that a common enemy (the Taliban, under which they…
Artists often depict the wealth of Western culture in terms of the sheer acreage of junked cars, waste, pollution, and the neglect of the poor and homeless. The more pernicious effects of wealth concentration are easy to find and communicate. Embarrassment of Riches: Picturing Global Wealth 2000-2010, a photography exhibit at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County…
Final Friday marks opening day for an exhibition of new black and white paintings by artist Josh Adams. From the artist’s statement: “These paintings examine the spatial and emotional relationships between facial features and expressions of multiple stacked portraits. Each work is an amalgamation of two or more images of one person.Thoughtfully positioned, the faces dissolve into one another. Their…
Although 500 years old, the world’s most famous boys choir maintains its clear, soprano voices and remains perpetually young. The choir is divided into four touring groups, all of equal standing, ranging from ages 10 to 14. There are around 100 choristers in the four groups, each of which spends nine to 11 weeks of the school year on tour….
Can’t decide between Oscar nominees Winter’s Bone and True Grit? Watch ’em again — or for the first time — on the big screen at the AMC Best Picture Showcase, which brings all 10 Academy Award nominees to five metro theaters over two consecutive Saturdays. The first half of the festival starts today at 10 a.m. with Toy Story 3,…
Local theater fans who saw last year’s phenomenal 1776 fell hard for Karen Errington’s incredible pipes and direct, bighearted charm. Now, as Errington fights her second round of breast cancer, two dozen of the city’s top musical-theater performers unite for a benefit titled “Everybody’s Girl.” (The Kander and Ebb number is an Errington specialty.) The congregation of talent includes Nathan…
The Book Doctors, aka, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, will be making a house call in Kansas City, at the Kansas City Public Library, with Rainy Day Books. They want YOU to pitch your book at their acclaimed event, Pitchapalooza, which was recently featured in The New York Times,…
