Major Planetary Note (MPN) Since May 15, Venus (love and relationships) has been in retrograde. On June 27, this goddess of beauty, pleasure and friendship has begun to move again. If you haven’t looked within for love denied, deferred or derailed, then you’ve missed her salient point. You cannot even think to give something to someone else that you do…
Super-underrated indie-rap crew Why? just announced a new EP (Sod in the Seed, out August 14) and some fall tour dates. They’re in Columbia at the Blue Note on Friday, August 24. A couple of weeks later, they’re at the Granada in Lawrence, on September 7, also a Friday. Check out the title track from the EP below. Categories: Music…
A rendering of Memorial Stadium’s future. On Tuesday, the University of Missouri revealed the details of its planned $200 million face-lift for its athletics department. The university also announced that the Kansas City Sports Trust has kicked in $30 million gift to get the upgrade started. The school officially joins the SEC on Sunday. According to a release from Mizzou,…
Kansas Citians can literally taste what the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has to offer this weekend. The theater chain from Austin, Texas, which created a fair amount of local buzz when it announced that it would be taking over the Mainstreet Theatre (1400 Main) from AMC Entertainment, is preparing to debut its cocktail menu at the Chesterfield, the rebranded bar that…
KC Rag Kemper Arena faces an uncertain future. Kemper Arena is sitting in the West Bottoms like a doddering uncle who you just don’t have the heart to tell that his buttons aren’t buttoned right on his shirt. We all acknowledge something is going on, just nobody is willing to have the conversation about getting the old guy some help….
Sugo’s Spaghetteria Sugo’s spaghetti and meatballs are now being served. A bit of St. Louis sugo has landed in Overland Park. Restaurateur Michael Del Pietro’s Sugo’s Spaghetteria has opened in Overland Park (13386 Metcalf). Sugo’s draws on Northern Italian and Sicilian influences for its freshly made pastas, risottos and four daily entrees. The bread and Neopolitan-style pizzas (Del Pietro recommends…
Country punks Lucero are like a bunch of chameleons. They can play shows with poppy alt-country acts such as Old 97’s, hop on the Warped Tour, or open for a rockabilly road warrior like the Reverend Horton Heat, as they do this Saturday, June 30. Their latest album, Women & Work, was released by ATO Records back in March, and…
It doesn’t look like much now, but the former heating and plumbing business will become a hip new restaurant soon. Every new restaurant needs a good back story, right? The one-story building at 20th Street and Central (currently housing Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop on the northern end) has long been subdivided (the office of a nonprofit organization is in another…
Jase Wilson’s Neighbor.ly hopes to fund some of the streetcar through donations. Kansas City’s streetcar plan needs a savior. Last Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected the city’s application for a $25 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant that would have paid for a quarter of the planned 2.2-mile Main Street line. Coincidentally, it was the same…
Lynn Shelton doesn’t expect you to like her characters right away. In her fourth feature, Your Sister’s Sister, the Seattle writer-director introduces her protagonist, Jack (played by Mark Duplass, star of her 2009 movie, Humpday), by giving him an angry diatribe to deliver — one that sours a party held in honor of his late brother. “In general, I like…
Poor Lola. Her fiancé flees, her girl best friend outshines her enough to bag her boy best friend, and the uneven movie that traces her woeful Saturn-return story is being dumped (a week later than originally planned) onto one local screen against an array of better-reviewed indie quirk-coms. Poor Greta Gerwig. As the title lonely heart in the uneven Lola…
There are already reports that someone wants to put Magic Mike — Steven Soderbergh’s flaccid Top Gun-ification of Floridian male-stripper life — on Broadway. So spins the circle of multiplex life in a summer when Foreigner keeps turning up, cockroachlike, on soundtracks. The stage hit Rock of Ages just punched Mick Jones’ big-screen ticket, and Magic Mike goes out on…
If Wes Anderson is the corduroy Michael Bay, then Moonrise Kingdom is his Transformers: Dark of the Moon. That’s meant as high praise, even if it makes The Life Aquatic Anderson’s … Bad Boys II, right? Like Bay, Anderson is a polarizing director who runs at one speed: super-wonky insistence. And like Bay, Anderson doesn’t want to full-frame immerse you…
For two summers, Central Avenue looked empty. Anyone who’d gotten used to being charmed anew each year by the temporary sculptural installations, curated by the Municipal Art Commission, found nothing new to see in 2010 and 2011. While the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts was taking shape to the south, and conventions and performances pressed on inside Bartle Hall…
One of these days, I’m going to get on Facebook and nobody I’m friends with will have posted or tagged or liked anything related to Port Fonda, and on that day, I will put on my coat and hat, get into my 1998 Nissan Altima, drive to Westport, and eat what will undoubtedly be a delicious meal of upscale Mexican…
St. Joseph, Missouri, is burning to the ground, according to recent concerns voiced by the city’s police and fire departments. A mysterious rash of fires has blazed through the city this year — 19 unsolved arsons in cars, Dumpsters and vacant structures — and nobody seems to know who is starting them, or why. Arguably eerier is the surplus of…
Russian Circles I respect the intensity and precision, but brutal, growling Cookie Monster metal has never really been my thing. I wish I were more into terrifying music, but alas, we can’t control what we love. The closest I come to getting down with that sound is with a band like Russian Circles, which cuts its car-crash riffs and jagged…
Shanita McAfee, the chef and owner of the two-month-old Magnolia’s Contemporary Southern Bistro, was recently called out of the kitchen by one of her customers. “These are not grits,” the patron said, pointing at her plate. “I know grits, and this is not the way to make them.” McAfee tried to explain that she uses stone-ground cornmeal, which she blends…
Magnolia’s Contemporary Southern Bistro shows off chef Shanita McAfee’s ability to put a modern spin on Southern classics. Photos by Angela C. Bond.
Kansas City drivers looking for a parking space swing through downtown like uncertain dance partners, interrupting the flow of traffic and just hoping to not careen into something that leaves a mark. Hope, and parking advice, could come from ‘Where Da Spot’ a hypothetical application created by Sporting Innovations for the Hack the Midwest conference that needs a champion and…
KCMO’s homicide total is now at 48 for 2012. Two joggers found the body of Hazel Chinn near Cliff Drive and the Paseo on Sunday morning. Around 7:15 a.m., authorities were called to the scene where they found Chinn’s body. Chinn, 57, was from Kansas City, Missouri. Police say they have not yet determined Chinn’s cause of death. They also…
Ryan Maybee’s cocktails are headed to the Power & Light District. One of the city’s premier cocktailians is about to be turned loose on the Power & Light District. The Kansas City Business Journal reports that the Cordish Co. is collaborating with Ryan Maybee (of Manifesto and the Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange) on a new jazz club called The…
