What kind of porn are your neighbors into? A very important study of porn website PornHub gives us icky insight into what kind of porn Americans are looking at and how long they’re watching . The results show that porn viewers in the South are more likely to watch longer. Mississippians top the list with an average of almost 12…
Texas Governor Rick Perry is on his way to Missouri in a cynical effort to pick off companies from the Show-Me State. The erstwhile presidential candidate is presumably looking to boost his 2016 credentials by luring companies to Texas so he can tell voters he “created jobs” when he, in fact, merely moved them from one place to another. Before…
Mark Lowrey The cocktail-culture festival Paris of the Plains is in full swing this week. It continues tonight at the Kill Devil Club. Recent Pitch Music Award winner Mark Lowrey leads a 12-piece swing band through big-band standards with an emphasis on the Kansas City jazz sounds of yore. Forty dollars gets you in the door, plus three drink tickets…
So Cray. Robert Cray is best-known for his 1986 album, Strong Persuader, which fused smooth ’80s production values with Cray’s soulful, Otis Redding-like delivery. His latest, last year’s mellow but inspired Nothin But Love, is another quiet, convincing argument for Cray’s place in the American blues-soul canon. He’s at the VooDoo Lounge tonight, August 23. Categories: Music
Flickr: Robert S. Donovan Pig out this weekend. You need to make sure you get your daily dose of B vitamins. And at Bacon-Fest, the “B” can stand for beer, bands or bacon. The annual fundraiser for the Rehabilitation Institute of Kansas City (3010 Main) returns Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. Admission is $40, which includes bacon in dishes…
Twitter Kraske will be teaching at UMKC full time. Steve Kraske, the face of The Kansas City Star’s political coverage and host of the daily news program Up to Date on KCUR 89.3, is leaving his daily post with the newspaper to teach in UMKC’s Communication Studies Department. He will continue to write a weekly column for the paper and…
William Lounsbury The bust that changed the system. Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones announced today that he’s changing the way people get enshrined in the Hall of Famous Missourians at the Missouri State Capitol. Last year, members of the Missouri House and then-Speaker Steven Tilley took weeks of flack and generated heaps of negative press when talk-radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh…
Facebook: Perennial Artisan Ales It’s blackberry ale and it’s going to be served with ice cream. We are in the golden age of the beer float. The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange (1924 Main) is hosting a Perennial Ice Cream Social next Tuesday, August 27, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. For $17, you get three brews from the well-regarded St….
A busker busking. Do any of our local buskers belong on a stage instead of a street corner? Should some be receiving cash from club owners instead of pocket change from passers-by? Find out at the gathering of minstrels, street performers, troubadours – whatever you want to call them – in Lawrence this weekend. The Busker Ball, a meet-and-greet for…
Pellet Envy Gray will once again be cooking on your TV. Could someone other than a Kansas Citian walk away with $50,000 and the title on a show called BBQ Pitmasters? That’s the question that will be answered Sunday night on the Discovery Network at 8 p.m. Pellet Envy’s Rod Gray (who has been advising would-be pitmasters on the Fast…
In a season in which women have been practically invisible at the megaplex, director Sebastián Silva and Gaby Hoffmann have created a female character in stoner comedy Crystal Fairy who is as obnoxious as her male counterparts. And they don’t stop at a one-dimensional caricature; Crystal is a would-be flower child, born more than a few decades too late, traveling…
Back in 2004, before horror romantic comedies became cliché, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead offered up hip pop-cultural references, Gen X romantic angst, and personal redemption through hilariously gory violence. It even delivered some social commentary: that humans had already become zombies, living dreary and regimented lives. That movie’s sly digs at the zombification of ordinary life find full…
Woody Allen’s annual talent show is this year a Wizard of Oz-ing of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, with the writer-director jumbling that play’s characters, motivations and outcomes and laying them around star Cate Blanchett in an uneven mosaic. As usual the past couple of decades, the cinematography (by Javier Aguirresarobe) is lush, the screenplay awkwardly tin-eared and thin….
So we know where we stand, let’s get this out of the way: (500) Days of Summer is the worst U.S. movie ever made without the participation of Dan Aykroyd or Tara Reid. It is so howlingly smug and emotionally undignified that you can watch it as a freshly heartbroken heterosexual male and still not feel all that sorry for…
A film about Big Star would have seemed far-fetched even to the band’s staunchest fans 30 years ago. Big Star records were hard to find and even harder to explain when you tried to put your finger on what was so wonderful about them. Was it the crystalline sound of Chris Bell’s and Alex Chilton’s chiming guitars? Was it the…
Mesh soul with jazz and throw in a little funk, late-’60s and early ’70s style — think Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Lonnie Smith. This group calls the sound boogaloo. Others might call it good ol’ booty-shakin’ jazz. Chris Hazelton’s Boogaloo 7 starts with Hazelton and his Hammond B-3 organ, then adds Nick Howell on trumpet, Nick Roland on alto and…
A friend and I have been talking recently about writing our own country songs to sell in Nashville. Neither of us is what you would technically call a “musician” or “songwriter.” But we both know some guitar chords, and I can write words OK. The way we figure it, it’s mostly a matter of thinking up a gimmicky chorus that…
Even before he became one of South by Southwest’s four founders, Louis Meyers knew how things worked. In 1987, the first year of the Austin, Texas, music conference, Meyers was working in that city as a promoter, manager, agent and talent booker. (He ran the 1,000-seat venue Liberty Lunch, which is now defunct.) Over the next seven years, the born-and-raised…
Robert Cray Robert Cray is best-known for his 1986 album, Strong Persuader, which fused smooth ’80s production values with Cray’s soulful, Otis Redding–like delivery. His latest, last year’s mellow but inspired Nothin But Love, is another quiet, convincing argument for Cray’s place in the American blues-soul canon. Friday, August 23, at VooDoo Lounge (Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Drive, North Kansas…
“It’s crazy.” Adam Roberts sounds almost short of breath as he says this and then disappears behind the bar at Screenland Armour. Keeping up with him on this Sunday night behind the movie house’s bar is Brent Miller, his new brother-in-law and business partner. The room is choked with 20- and 30-somethings, here for tonight’s Breaking Bad season premiere, which…
I realize that enthusiasm for sweet barbecue sauce runs high around here. But unless you’re a big fan of that kind of thing, you’ll want to order your Applewood BBQ meats naked. Here, the sauce is best considered on the side. The meat is good at this little family-owned barbecue shack on East 23rd Street, in Independence. I’ve tried tender,…
Ayla Rexroth never did figure out exactly how much her landlord knew. Some renters leave behind shabby paint jobs or fatally scuffed hardwoods. But a move-out inspection of Rexroth’s apartment would reveal something different: an ambitious, under-the-radar showcase for local art (as well as for Rexroth’s own projects). Until this month, the artist and her partner, Clayton Skidmore, were using…
Local fast-food workers took up their protest signs at a job walkout in late July. A national strike – in the form of a one-day job walkout – of fast-food workers is scheduled for August 29, according to the hospitality trade magazine Nation’s Restaurant News . The publication reported yesterday that “labor organizers are calling…to stage a day of strikes…
The former Napoleon Bakery will reopen as Baked in Kansas City by Thanksgiving. Restaurateur Frank Sebree’s newest culinary concept, Baked in Kansas City, a combination bakery and restaurant located in the former Napoleon Bakery building at 706 Westport Road, will be open before Thanksgiving, he said, to get a start on holiday business. Sebree has also hired the high-profile pastry…
