If you don’t follow former Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s Twitter handle — @MayorFunk — nobody would blame you. After all, the first Kansas City mayor since the 1920s to not survive a primary to run for re-election, blew town for D.C. last year. From time to time, Funk had been tweeting from his old account. It was mostly uninteresting stuff directed…
Due to a “major construction project at Kansas Speedway,” plans for a 2012 Kanrocksas have been abandoned, according to the festival’s website. “Festival organizers have decided to spend 2012 working with local and national music communities to plan the second Kanrocksas Music Festival for summer 2013. To amplify the momentum created by the first-year festival, organizers will continue to grow…
Chef Giada De Laurentiis is talking her home act on the road. The popular host of the Food Network’s Giada at Home will be coming to the Midland (1228 Main) on Thursday, April 5. Conversations with Giada, put on by Rainy Day Books, is part of a multicity book-signing tour that begins for De Laurentiis on March 27, the same…
The semifinalists for the 2012 James Beard Awards were announced yesterday. Two Kansas City chefs are among the contenders for the Best Chef: Midwest. Bluestem’s Colby Garrelts and Room 39’s Ted Habiger are among the field of 20 regional chefs who are hoping to hear their name called at the awards dinner in New York City on May 7. “I…
Shon Pernice faces up to 15 years in prison. // Police photo Shon Pernice pleaded guilty yesterday to voluntary manslaughter in the death of his wife, Renee Pernice, who has been missing since January 2009. Shon Pernice admitted that he hit Renee in the head, and she fell down some steps, KCTV Channel 5 reported. She was mortally wounded. Shon…
Ameen Belbahri Kevin Allison at SF Sketchfest 2011 Comedian Kevin Allison is best-known for his work on the seminal ’90s sketch show, The State. While many of those involved in the show went on to other projects, such as Viva Variety!, Reno 911, Wet Hot American Summer, and Stella — among many others — Allison spent the intervening decade attempting…
Pinguino Panda burgers could be in our future. The idea of building meat in a lab was a long running joke on at least one sitcom — Better Off Ted — but like all humor, this one seems to have been grounded in a bit of truth. The Guardian has an eye-opening piece on just how close humankind is to…
After the December 5, 2010, Chiefs game, Frank J. Ross III drove his BMW while drunk and blew through a stop sign at 35th Street and Euclid. He T-boned a car. The car was a Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department cruiser. Both officers were injured in the collision, which mangled the cop car into a shell of twisted metal. The…
Photo by Sabrina Staires Name: Ryan Sciara Occupation: Managing partner, Cellar Rat Wine Merchants Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri Current neighborhood: Crestwood Who or what is your sidekick? My wifey and two daughters, Lola and Luca. I am totally outnumbered! What career would you choose in an alternate reality? I think it would be really cool to be one of the…
Billy Bishop Goes to War is just that: a story of one man’s journey into, and through, World War I. Though it delves some into the brutal realities of war, it’s more about the man. Like generations before him and since, he is caught up in the politics of his day and asked to take up arms — in his…
Quixotic Fusion — the locally based performance group that incorporates acrobatics, multimedia, music and dance into its dazzling aerial stage shows — was selected last month to be a featured performer at the TED2012 conference, in Long Beach, California. That’s kind of a big deal. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences, and the performances and “talks” given by the guests, are…
Easy Virtues, the upcoming, second EP from locals the Latenight Callers, turned up at The Pitch offices the other day inside a clear evidence bag – the kind with a pink seal at the top and entry spaces for case numbers and crime-lab information. The cover of the CD is black-and-white, and there’s an old typewriter on it. The red…
Goth, noise and dark pop are appropriate genre labels for Nika Roza Danilova’s body of work, but Zola Jesus, Danilova’s current project, has a way of dodging musical pigeonholes. It ventures into difficult-to-digest tonal territories, but buried amid the droning industrial atmospherics is something resembling catchy pop hooks. Danilova studied opera in her youth, which adds a heady beauty to…
In a former soybean field in southern Kansas City, Missouri, the nation’s first privately owned facility for building nuclear-bomb components is under construction. Within the year, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies plans to move its operation from the aging Bannister Federal Complex to the new Kansas City Responsive Infrastructure, Manufacturing & Sourcing campus at 14500 Botts Road. Ground was broken…
The B’Dinas, with Empty Spaces, Deadringers, and I Hate You Just Kidding Blues, funk and classic rock are the primary touchstones for the predominantly female B’Dinas (four girls, one boy). But they have a tendency to throw jarring, arty curveballs into the middle of their songs, which is something I’ll usually swing at. The locals are celebrating their second release,…
I never imagined that the best part of a restaurant experience could be paying the bill. But Gram & Dun, the new “gastropub” on the Country Club Plaza, makes forking over a credit card kind of fun, even for a hefty tab. As at this restaurant’s sister venue, Urban Table in Prairie Village, the bill arrives in a vintage book…
The dress code for the inaugural speaker of Subterranean Gallery’s new lecture series: stringy denim cutoffs. Greeted with alcohol-fueled guffaws and catcalls (“Jorts!”) from audience members crammed into narrow rows of plastic folding chairs, Hesse McGraw dropped his white spa robe on the concrete floor and swung a leg into the hot tub. “I forgot my bathing suit,” McGraw explained…
Lawrence’s Italian-horror-movie-soundtrack-influenced, creepy instrumental act Black Christmas hasn’t put out anything since 2008’s By Way of Decay. The band first teased Piece Now back in May 2010, with a preview of the first six minutes. Then on Monday night, with no warning whatsoever, they put the entire work up on SoundCloud. Featuring Muscle Worship’s Sean Bergman, it’s beautiful and unnerving…
Facebook: B.B.’s B.B.’s regularly serves Cajun cuisine. Today is Fat Tuesday — the chance to forget all your troubles in good music, spicy food and new friends. It’s not quite Bourbon Street, but we do have bourbon here in Kansas City, and the folks in the Old West were right: It cures a lot of ills. A big old plate…
The Chieftains recently collaborated with some impressive artists for their soon-to-be-released (as in tomorrow) album, Voice of Ages. Kinda curious? You’ll hear the musical artistry of Bon Iver, the Civil Wars, the Decemberists, etc. Wow! Categories: Music Tags: The Chieftains
Hyvee: A Helpful Smile Fact: Pickles make people happy. Pickles are mostly an afterthought — the free side with a sandwich — as likely to end up in the trash with the plate as in your stomach. Since coming to Kansas City, I miss only a few foods, and the forgotten pickle is definitely one of them. I took it…
Terrell Daily Missouri barns are fading back into the land. While the market suggests it’s a great time to own farmland in Missouri, fate and the elements have not been so kind to the ancient barns that dot that same land. Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City announced that farmland prices in parts of seven central…
Ashford Stamper Missy Roe wants you to eat … perfectly Someone needs to give Melissa “Missy” Roe her own reality show. Missy has what most of those babes on the various Real Housewives shows don’t have: a real life. She has a real job (Roe serves as chief of staff and legislative director for U.S. Congressman Sam Graves), a real…
