‘Tis the season for bad sweaters, and there’s no better time to show yours off than at the Record Machine’s annual holiday party. The local label is giving out prizes for the worst sweaters, so don’t be shy. For this year’s event, the Record Machine has lined up entertainment to stamp out your inner Grinch. Singer-songwriter Katlyn Conroy performs dreamy…
Boulevard Brewing Co.’s tribute to the 2014 Kansas City Royals, Crown Town Ale, has an official release date: Tuesday, December 16. Boulevard announced the date today on social media: “We’re very excited to share that Crown Town Ale will begin hitting shelves in the Greater Kansas City Area starting on Tuesday, December 16th. Please note that we do not have…
Thursday, December 11 Meet Sporting Kansas City players and sample Championship Ale and Pale Ale, at the Boulevard Dry Goods Store (412 Nichols Road), 5–7 p.m. Mikkeller Black tapping, at Flying Saucer (101 East 13th Street), 7 p.m. Friday, December 12Meet the Brewers, featuring Defiance Brewing Co. with Willy Nilly, Thrasher, and Gutch, at Flying Saucer (101 East 13th Street),…
Pretty much the only thing motivating us to go to the gym these days is listening to Serial, the offshoot podcast of This American Life that tells one story over the course of multiple episodes; it’s like a nonfiction, audio version of a premium cable-TV drama. This inaugural season, which takes a closer look at the 1999 murder of a Baltimore high school…
Nick Malgieri, the former pastry chef for Windows on the World and the author of 12 popular cookbooks (including this year’s Nick Malgieri’s Pastry), is the featured guest at a cookbook signing and dinner tomorrow at Jasper’s Restaurant (1201 West 103rd Street, 816-941-6600). Reservations are still available for the event, which begins at 7 p.m. Malgieri, director of baking at…
With a debut feature that was little seen in her native Australia, writer-director Jennifer Kent became a Sundance Film Festival darling, and she has begun racking up serious year-end critical kudos. Can a movie in which a mysterious figure hides in a children’s pop-up book rejuvenate the horror genre? The Babadook seems poised to do just that. Kent’s film centers…
When Chipotle brought its burrito assembly line to Kansas City, I was just discovering the indignities of being a vegetarian in a carnivore’s world. The Tex-Mex fast-food restaurant offered four kinds of meat — chicken, steak, barbacoa, carnitas — but no centerpiece ingredient for vegetarians, unless you think it’s cool to pay seven bucks for beans, rice and grilled veggies…
Name: Larry Hovick Occupation: General manager, the Midland; writer Hometown: Hayward, California Current neighborhood: Olathe What I do: I generally manage the Midland. I’m not an expert at anything. I have people who are. I know just enough about each department at a venue to be dangerous–slash–make suggestions. I asked for a manual or a job description while I generally…
The Tiger Tail Saloon is nestled among eyesore parking lots and tall, bland buildings in the gray corner of downtown that is sometimes referred to as the financial district. The sleepy and cute River Market neighborhood, the corporate and shiny Power & Light District, and the artsy and gentrifying Crossroads District are close by. The Tiger Tail Saloon, at 813…
We give a lot of love to Kansas City’s jazz musicians, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t also proud of our exceptional composers. Take, for example, bassist Tyrone Clark. The opening track of his new album, Music in the Grain, densely layers piano, bass, drums and guitar with Bobby Watson’s alto sax. The result is a fun, intelligent homage to…
Big Band Christmas It’s about this time of year when we’re all jamming to Christmas tunes around the clock. For those who take joy in these seasonal gems, Kansas Public Radio’s annual Big Band Christmas is here to get you into the spirit of the holidays. Saturday at Liberty Hall, the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra — led by trumpeter Clint…
Lawrence garage-pop group the Dead Girls celebrated a decade together in April. There was no hint then that the Girls were headed to their graves. Then in November, weeks after releasing a new album, the band announced that it was calling it quits. But the split is amicable. Lead singer and guitarist Cameron Hawk plans to be out of the…
Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club contains eight people, including longtime owner-bartender Michele Markowitz and me. Burnie Booth, who performs here every first Wednesday of the month as Folkicide, judges this to be a fair-sized crowd. He stands in front of the microphone at the back of the room, striking the strings on his beat-up acoustic guitar like it’s a custom Gibson…
Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, a biblical epic for a secular age, has no faith that its audience grasps the old story it retells. That would be too simplistic a charge to lob at it. Scott and his team of screenwriters (led by Schindler’s List scribe Steven Zaillian) posit the calling of Moses (Christian Bale) and the flight from…
In the basement of a bar in north Lawrence, several dozen 20-somethings clutch cans of cheap domestic beer and watch a man from Nebraska. He is in the middle of what used to be the dance floor, wearing the loudest print shirt ever made and talking about smoking weed with an 80-year-old woman. He is tonight’s draw at Comedy Freakout,…
If you weren’t aware of the many holiday shows going on in town this time of year, you’d think that all the many talented singers our city contains were onstage in Musical Theater Heritage’s Oliver, a show nearly overflowing with its considerable, abundantly able cast. The musical Oliver, a version of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was first staged in London’s…
Hunters and haunters share the stage in Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, the latest co-production between the Unicorn Theatre and UMKC Theatre. As the play opens, it’s 2003, and U.S. Marines Kev and Tom guard a caged Bengal tiger at Baghdad’s zoo. It’s a disorienting scene, full of pingpong talk. While the soldiers spar over a gold-plated…
Sean Wheelock remembers where he was November 12, 1993. Wheelock, then a 19-year-old fan of all things fighting, had seen a poster at the Westport Gold’s Gym, advertising the first Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view. And he persuaded his mother to pay $14.95 so that he could watch. “This was a huge unknown,” Wheelock says now. “I didn’t know one name…
Unless you’ve stopped in for a double cheeseburger, a pig-snoot sandwich or a chicken-wing dinner at Jim’s Diner, at 6901 Prospect, you’ve probably never heard of Gertrude Ramsey. Miss Ramsey, as everyone here knows her, raised 11 children just around the corner from this restaurant, which Dave Crane purchased seven years ago. Once or twice a week, she takes her…
Misterwives, the New York-based synth-pop trio that has been buzzing on the Internet for the past year, has just announced a new concert date in Kansas City. The band stops at RecordBar on Saturday, March 7. This is a smaller venue compared to the last two times the band was in town – performing at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade…
As everybody knows by now, the wild, sweeping tax cuts implemented in Kansas by Gov. Sam Brownback have turned the state into an economic powerhouse, the envy of the country. People from all across the United States are pouring into the Sunflower State, drawn by all the high-paying jobs, cultural amenities and excellent public education. It’s a great time to…
Allotment Letters Plan 12-09-2014
