The Pitch: April 26, 2012 by FW Publishing

APRIL 26–MAY 2, 2012 | FREE | VOL. 31 NO. 43 | PITCH.COM

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T S A E H T R O N

A P R I L 2 6 – M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2 | V O L . 3 1 N O . 4 3 E D I T O R I A L

Editor Scott Wilson Managing Editor Justin Kendall Music Editor David Hudnall Staff Writers Charles Ferruzza, Ben Palosaari Editorial Operations Manager Deborah Hirsch Proofreader Brent Shepherd Calendar Editor Berry Anderson Clubs Editor Abbie Stutzer Food Blogger, Web Editor Jonathan Bender Contributing Writers Tracy Abeln, Danny Alexander, Theresa Bembnister, Aaron Carnes, Kyle Eustice, April Fleming, Micah Gutweiler, Ian Hrabe, Megan Metzger, Chris Parker, Nadia Pﬂaum, Nancy Hull Rigdon, Dan Savage, Brent Shepherd, Nick Spacek, Abbie Stutzer, Crystal K. Wiebe Editorial Intern Micah Gutweiler

A R T

Art Director Ashford Stamper Contributing Photographers Angela C. Bond, William Lounsbury, Chris Mullins, Lauren Phillips, Sabrina Staires, Brooke Vandever

P R O D U C T I O N

Production Manager Jaime Albers Senior Multimedia Designer Amber Williams Multimedia Designer Christina Riddle

A D V E R T I S I N G

Advertising Director Dawn Jordan Retail House Account Manager Eric Persson Senior Classified Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Classified Multimedia Specialist Andrew Disper Multimedia Specialists Michelle Acevedo, Erin Carey, Payton Hatﬁeld, Laura Newell Sales Associate Kirin Arnold Director of Marketing & Operations Jason Dockery Advertising Coordinator Keli Sweetland

PO I NTS NO R THEAST Artists and bargain hunters are reviving a historic neighborhood. BY C H A R L E S F E R R U Z Z A

C I R C U L A T I O N

Circulation Director Mike Ryan

B U S I N E S S

Accounts Receivable Christina Riddle Front Desk Coordinator Jodi Waldsmith Publisher Joel Hornbostel

LAST C ALL See these artworks

S O U T H C O M M

Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Chief Operating Officer Rob Jiranek Director of Accounting Todd Patton Director of Operations Susan Torregrossa Creative Director Heather Pierce Director of Content/Online Development Patrick Rains Director of Digital Products Andy Sperry

N A T I O N A L

before their exhibitions close. BY T R AC Y A B E L N A N D THERESA BEMBNISTER

A D V E R T I S I N G

Voice Media Group 888-278-9866, voicemediagroup.com Senior Vice President Sales Susan Belair Senior Vice President Sales Operations Joe Larkin National Sales Director Ronni Gaun

B A C K P A G E . C O M

Vice President Sales & Marketing Carl Ferrer Business Manager Jess Adams Accountant David Roberts

THE GAGS O F B R I XTO N A KU instructor looks at

D I S T R I B U T I O N

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humor in British rock music. BY N I C K S PAC E K

C O P Y R I G H T

The contents of The Pitch are Copyright 2012 by KC Communications, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without the express written permission of the publisher. The Pitch address: 1701 Main, Kansas City, MO 64108 For The Pitch information, call: 816-561-6061 To report a story, call: 816-218-6915 Editorial fax: 816-756-0502 For classifieds, call: 816-218-6721 For retail advertising, call: 816-218-6702

ON T HE COVE R

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MEANWHI LE AT PI TC H. C O M ROYALS Manager Ned Yost can't get comfortable. THE WEST PLAZA gets a pizzeria. R BAR: This time it's really closed. DESIGN BY ASHFORD STAMPER

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Who or what is your sidekick? I have 16 nieces and nephews who range in age from 4 to 21. All so wonderful and fun! What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Actress on Broadway or backup singer for Tina Turner — those girls are so awesome.

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farmers market, on fresh, organic homegrown food. I try not to miss Friday nights at the BadSeed and Laura Little’s fudge shop.

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“Kansas City screwed up when …” I don’t want to call it a screw-up because I know that many good people have tried to create change, but I am so concerned about the Kansas City, Missouri, E R MO School District. The struggles have been going on for decades now, and it AT E N I ONL .COM aff ects all of us. Ensuring PITCH that everyone gets a good education across the metro needs to be something we all care about. That’s why the programs are so important at Literacy Kansas City; 225,000 adults in our area can’t read. We match them with tutors and help them learn.

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“Kansas City needs ...” To get a light-rail system! Not just for downtown through the Plaza but for all areas of the metro. Downtown, midtown, up to the airport, out to Wyandotte County, Overland Park, Lee’s Summit, Independence … what are we waiting for?

“People might be surprised to know that I ...” Once thought about becoming a nun. It sounded fun, great education, travel the world, and you get to help people. “If I were in charge I would ...” Make one day a week where everyone either walked, ran or rode their bike everywhere they went. I’d like a four-day workweek, and everyone gets a month off once a year.

take up a lot of space in my iTunes:

Barry Manilow, John Denver, Bee Gees, Adele, Shinedown, Sevendust, and anything Motown

What movie do you watch at least once a year? I don’t have one, but the best movie I have seen this year is The Muppets. You have to go see it! What local tradition do you take part in every year? Kansas City Half Marathon, Hospital Hill

Run Half Marathon, and the Trolley Run

Celebrity you’d like to ride the Mamba with at Worlds of Fun: George Clooney Favorite person or thing to follow on Twitter: Oprah and Johnny Dare

What subscription — print, digital, etc. — do you value most? Netflix Last book you read: A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield. It may sound corny, but this book encourages you to live your life by following what your heart tells you to do instead of your head. Favorite day trip: Driving across Kansas to Colo-

rado. Yes, I said that! There are parts of Kansas that are so gorgeous. How can you not smile when you see field after field of sunflowers, tall, bright and proud? To find out how to be a Literacy Kansas City tutor, e-mail volunteer@literacykc.org or call 816-333-9332.

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THE PITCH

y Rob Schamberger’s count, pro wrestling has crowned 208 world heavyweight champions. And by the time he finishes painting all 208 — and there will likely be more champions by the time he’s done — he’ll probably wish there were fewer. “When Colt Cabana beat Adam Pearce, I was like, Oh, Jesus — 209,” Schamberger says. “Then I saw that he’d held it before, so that was good.” The idea came, says the 32-year-old Kansas Citian, in a temporary “moment of insanity.” His vision: Paint every world champion in prowrestling history, from Hulk Hogan to Georg Hackenschmidt to … David Arquette? (The actor won World Championship Wrestling’s world title in 2000.) “When I announced the project, one of the first questions I got … was, ‘Are you actually going to do David Arquette?’ And I’m like, ‘I said I’m doing all of ’em.’ ” In a Twitter message to Schamberger, Arquette committed to buying his painting. “You are a sick artist man,” the actor wrote. “I’m ordering a painting of myself as the Champ.” “He [Arquette] said that he’s going to have that hanging up in his house,” Schamberger says. “I’ve been talking with his assistant since then.” Arquette was in the main part of the first wrestling event Schamberger ever attended: Slamboree 2000, at Kemper Arena. Arquette lost the belt that night, becoming a bad guy by smashing a guitar over the head of Diamond Dallas Page in a cage match. To pay for his project, Schamberger is hoping to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter. He says he’d like to use the money to get a studio space that would double as a gallery. He’s almost a quarter of the way there: 62 backers had pledged $5,023, with 17 days to go, as of press time. Each painting takes up to three days to complete because Schamberger works a day job (as social-media director for a few companies). So far, Schamberger has fi nished nine paintings: Ric Flair, Bruiser Brody, CM Punk, Brock Lesnar, Ultimate Warrior, Frank Gotch, Nigel McGuinness, Adam Pearce and Kansas City’s own Harley Race. His painting of Race has already brought back memories of Thursday nights at Memorial Hall — for someone else. Schamberger says a woman saw his project on Facebook and contacted him to ask about buying his painting of “Handsome” Harley. “She started crying because it put her back to going to the matches at Memorial Hall and brought back all of those memories to her,” he says. The 2-foot-by-2-foot paintings sell for $400 each; the 2-foot-by-4-foot portraits go for $600–$1,000. “I would like to sell them to people who

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S A B R I N A S TA I R E S

Schamberger's wall of champions are as passionate about wrestling, and would probably display them in their home,” he says. “I’m selling more of these than any other painting that I’ve ever done.” Schamberger hasn’t forgotten where he was the day he fell in love with wrestling. He was 18 and doing laundry at his parents’ house. His stepfather was flipping channels and stopped on “Nature Boy” Ric Flair giving an interview. “I was just transfi xed by how sincere he came across,” Schamberger says. “If there’s anyone’s promo that’s going to suck you into watching this for the rest of your life, it’s a Ric Flair one. I was just totally hooked after that.” The paintings have grabbed the wrestling world’s attention. World Wrestling Entertainment announcer Jim Ross retweeted a link to Schamberger’s Kickstarter page. Ring of Honor, a major independent wrestling organization, retweeted Schamberger’s link to a painting of former ROH champion Nigel McGuinness. Schamberger calls himself a self-taught artist. He learned his craft while in high school in Lee’s Summit. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions, including the 2010 Gallery and a public-art display at the University of Kansas. He says he always wanted to draw comic books — a dream he achieved in 2001 when Image Comics put out The Believer, a comic that he wrote and Thom Thurman drew, a neo-noir about a secret society in Kansas City. The Promotion, a comic-book series that he wrote and drew, was based on pro wrestling in Kansas City in the ’70s, and he has carried the idea over to his fine art. “Most art done for wrestling is not really gallery-worthy stuff,” Schamberger says. “A lot of ‘serious artists’ would consider this subject matter to be beneath them. Luckily, I have

no standards. I think it’s cool. I think these guys do so much to entertain total strangers that I kind of like the idea of memorializing them with the paintings.” Schamberger says his wife, Katy Ryan Schamberger, is supporting the project. She, too, has become a fan. “When we first started dating, I told her straight up: I’m a wrestling fan. I don’t hide it,” he says. “She’s like, ‘I’m a boy-band fan.’ When we started living together, we only had one TV, so she couldn’t hide from it. When John Cena came out, she was into it right away. When the Undertaker came out, it hit her that she loved watching wrestling as a kid with her dad, too. So she loved watching it.” He says they traveled to Orlando for WrestleMania XXIV in 2008 to see Ric Flair’s “retirement match.” (In wrestling, retirement never lasts.) “During the match with Flair and [Shawn] Michaels, someone started yelling something negative about Flair, and Katy, my wife, just about flew out of her chair,” Schamberger says. “My friend and I had to hold her back. My friend leaned over to me and goes, ‘She knows this is fake, right?’ She’s really passionate about it.” Schamberger doesn’t want to stop with paintings. He wants to do something much bigger. “I’m hoping soon to do a Harley Race mural here,” he says. “I think everyone would think it’s totally awesome, right?” Schamberger is scheduled to show off the project at the next Metro Pro Wrestling show at the Turner Rec Center (831 South 55th Street, Kansas City, Kansas) Saturday, May 5. He’ll also be selling prints of local wrestlers Jeremy Wyatt and Michael Strider, as well as former NWA champion Adam Pearce, for $25. Go for gold at pitch.com/plog pitch.com

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Actor Ron Megee and his partner, Jon Fulton Adams, went from loft life to this 1884 ﬁxer-upper, which they call Chestnut House.

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real suburb, a once-exclusive neighborhood that has, over the past 100 years, seen more highs and lows than the Prowler at Worlds of Fun. The gossip and news shared by a couple of people sitting in rocking chairs on Poertner’s front porch fit somehow into this century-long timeline, informed by history. Have you heard? they ask. One of the three Heim mansions on Benton Boulevard — once home to the beerbrewing Heim brothers, who built Electric Park, at 46th Street and the Paseo, in 1907 — has been sold. “It’s one of the prettiest mansions in the Northeast,” answers Linda Fleischman, the

flame-tressed massage therapist and former concert promoter. She’s an unofficial cheerleader for the Northeast, an area bounded roughly by Truman Road and Cliff Drive, from the Paseo to Blue River. She loves this neighborhood in particular, and she’s thrilled when she sees new faces. Seeing new faces is the point of these monthly cocktail parties, which Fleischman organizes with other residents of Pendleton Heights. “The parties started as a way for neighbors just to get together and talk, but it’s sort of evolved into a way of introducing people to this part of Kansas City,” says Kristen

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eana Poertner’s dining table is ready for company: meatballs from Garozzo’s, Roma bread, cheese, an array of sweets. The two dozen or so people she has invited will juggle small plates with their wineglasses as they wander through Poertner’s threestory home or gather on the front porch for cigarettes. On this cool March evening, they’ve come together for a reason. Yes, there’s something of a sales pitch in play, but not for culinary gadgets or plastic containers or Jesus. Poertner is pushing her neighborhood. Pendleton Heights was Kansas City’s first

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Johnson, a marketing manager at H&R Block. “You would be surprised by the number of Kansas City natives who have never even heard of the Historic Northeast.” That was true of Christy Maddux, a 30-something audiologist who grew up in the south Kansas City suburbs and had rarely ventured this far north in the metro. “I didn’t even know that neighborhoods like this even existed,” she says. Tonight, the young doctor is on Poertner’s porch, one of the converted, still learning about her adopted neighborhood. A few minutes later, Maddux gives four of the party guests a continued on page 10

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Points Northeast

continued from page 9 tour of the home, a few doors down from Poertner’s, that she bought in December 2010. In the dark, the 127-year-old house looks a little like the Bates home in Psycho. And once Maddux unlocks the heavy front doors, things don’t get much better. The Queen Anne, which sat empty for two years before Maddux purchased it, has been gutted to its 19th-century brick walls. It’s a dusty mess, but through it you can see the structure’s spectacular bones. Maddux and her boyfriend, Adam Lopez, saw the possibilities right away. “I think it’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen,” she says, pointing out the distinctive, hand-laid tiles surrounding the fireplaces, the 12-foot ceilings, and the intact butler’s pantry. A sunflower motif runs through the house: on a stained-glass window, carved into the frames surrounding the pocket doors, in a few of those handsome fireplace tiles, on the woodwork leading to the second floor. During the building boom of the 1880s, someone (the name is lost to history) spent a lot of cash building this house in the 500 block of Garfield. Maddux’s house isn’t nearly as extravagant as R.A. Long’s million-dollar Corinthian Hall — built several blocks east and 27 years later — but it’s one of the few homes left in this area with the original porte cochere still standing. Maddux heard from neighbors that a mechanism buried in her backyard once lifted up buggies and turned them around. Before Maddux inked the deal to buy the house, concerned friends (and, she says, her own realtor) advised against the purchase. She found out later that this is a common hazard for people shopping for property in the historic neighborhood. It’s dangerous, people say, and way too close to crime-riddled Independence Avenue, that fabled boulevard of hookers and handguns. But she did her homework. “I went to neighborhood meetings,” she says. “I spoke with the beat cops. I couldn’t find anything on my own as bad as I was being told.” Johnson believes that those who don’t have preconceived ideas about the Northeast as a dangerous place — people like her, for instance, who aren’t native Kansas Citians — are will-

ing to take more chances. Johnson says she “stalked” her neighborhood (Fleischman uses the same word) for weeks, driving through it at all hours of the day. “One summer night, I watched kids riding their bicycles up and down the streets at 9 p.m.,” she says. “You don’t see that anymore. That’s when I knew that I had to live in Pendleton Heights.”

here really are some bad things about living in the old Northeast, says Michael Bushnell, publisher of Northeast News. He has covered the area’s crimes and misdemeanors for 14 years, including running mug shots of the Northeast’s “Most Wanted” and, for years, a weekly “Heap of the Week” feature that showcased photos of trash left behind by the latest tenant evictions. “But things really are changing here,” Bushnell says. “The first wave of young professionals was from 1988 to 1991. I really started seeing the artistic people move here around six or seven years ago. It started after the Crossroads became priced and taxed out of existence. “The Urban Farming Guys have built a neighborhood farm in the Lykins neighborhood, which was once one of the roughest areas in the Northeast,” he adds. “If they can succeed, there’s hope for us all.” More optimistic still is Eric Bellamaganya, the former graphic designer who fell so hard for the historic district that he not only moved here but also built a business around his passion. He helps find homes in the Northeast for the young professionals suddenly discovering the big houses at low prices. Bellamaganya says he and his wife were living in a spacious downtown loft when his building was sold. “We looked at different downtown lofts,” he says, “but they looked like suburban apartments: charmless. We had several friends who were moving to the Northeast, so we went looking and fell in love with the first house we saw.” For many of the newer residents of Pendleton Heights (and the nearby Scarritt and Independence Plaza neighborhoods), settling in a suburb is the last stop in an urban odyssey. Johnson was living the beige life in southern

Indiana before a St. Patrick’s Day visit to Kansas City drew her toward an impulsive decision. “The downtown was so alive and vibrant, and the streets were filled with people,” she says. “I liked the idea of living in an urban area, so I moved here three weeks later.” Fleischman was raised in Lee’s Summit. Local actor and Independence Plaza homeowner Ron Megee grew up in Olathe. Like Johnson, they’ve outgrown their apartment years, their loft daydreams. But they still want to be close to the city center, not kept away by long highway commutes. They and their neighbors can walk to the City Market on Saturday mornings or drive five minutes to shop at the Power & Light District’s Cosentino’s Market. In the years following the Civil War, neighborhoods like Pendleton Heights were developed to be as far away from the heart of the city as possible. By the 1880s, the exclusive enclave — appropriately named Quality Hill — on bluffs overlooking the West Bottoms was choked by fumes and foul odors rising from the stockyards and the fast-growing, noisy metropolis. So the well-heeled moved east, building elaborate mansions on Inde-

A party at Jeana Poertner's house introduces potential residents to the Old Northeast. pendence Avenue and bourgeois Victorians in the adjacent neighborhoods. It remained a solidly upper-middle-class quarter of the city until World War I. “When the power elite started moving to Hyde Park and even further south,” Bushnell says, “it became an exodus. That’s where the money went. And when the Blue River Valley and the East Bottoms became more industrialized, this area quickly transitioned into a working-class neighborhood. There were suddenly steel mills, breweries, grain elevators. Factory workers could walk to work or grab a streetcar.” For decades, the population of the Northeast was made up of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants. It’s still multicultural, with an ethnic palette that includes Mexicans, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Vietnamese and Central Americans. There also are immigrants here from KC’s gay and arts communities — a couple of overlapping groups among the Northeast’s creative-class transplants. Megee and his partner, costume designer Jon Fulton Adams, live in an 1884 Italianate

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house with a prominent turret. They’re the social leaders of their neighborhood. After a couple of their fellow Northeasters — the artists Hector Casanova Cinderhouse and Renée Laferriere Cinderhouse — were married, Megee and Adams hosted a reception for them at their three-story home, which they call Chestnut House. “We’ve never experienced any anti-gay hostility from any of our neighbors,” Adams says. “It’s been a very welcoming experience. And because of that, many of our friends have also moved into the Northeast.” Adams and Megee convinced fellow local-theater brand names Kimberly Queen and Cody Wyoming to move close by. (A short roll call of other Northeast creatives includes restaurateur Patrick Ryan, photographer Nicole Cawlfield, and married artists Bryan Clark and Jenn Johnson-Clark. There’s sculptor David Daleo and artist Jill Daleo, another couple. There’s the fiber artist Taylor Triano.) In 1976, another gay couple — Jim Miller and Joe Cecil — purchased a Pendleton Heights duplex. At the time, Miller worked the night desk at one of the hotels on the Paseo. (When a man wielding a lead pipe tried to rob Miller on the job, the petite, boyish-looking clerk shot the would-be robber, hitting him in the ass as he fled.) “Everything was fine for the first five years,” recalls Miller, who now lives in Texas. “Then, in 1980, we rented the second floor to a young

African-American. He worked four blocks away and wanted to walk to work. What we didn’t know — couldn’t know — is that at the time, there was an unwritten rule that blacks were not supposed to live north of Independence Avenue. “I lived in old Northeast back in the 1970s,” says Judy Ancel, director of the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, “and I finally had to get out of there. There was no diversity in those days. It was all white. I had African-American friends who wouldn’t come and visit me. The neighborhood scared them.” “After our tenant moved in, the hostility kicked in,” Miller continues. “The young man didn’t even stay a month. We had eggs and rotten meat thrown at our house, car tires slit, rocks thrown through our front window, the windshield smashed in our car. And then the angry phone calls started. It started as a racial thing, and it morphed into an anti-gay attack. The harassment continued for a year until it finally wore us down. We sold the house and moved to Brookside.” “That was over 30 years ago,” Adams says. “The world has changed since then. And the Northeast definitely has.”

es and no. “You can’t deny that Independence Avenue went through a long, long period of

Left to right: Kristen Johnson, Linda and Noah Fleischman, Ron Megee and Jon Fulton Adams decline,” Bellamaganya says. “But I believe that Kansas City is finally coming to its senses and realizing that the Northeast is a valuable asset that they have allowed to decay — by benign neglect — for decades. But crime statistics are down. Prostitution, too.” “Ron used to live in the Northeast, about 10 years before we bought our house, and he swears that the hooker population has dropped 90 percent,” Adams says. And then there are the schools. “The Kansas City schools have challenges no matter what side of town you’re living in,” Bellamaganya says. One of his two children is being homeschooled; the other attends a Catholic school in midtown. “There are a lot of carpools among the neighbors,” he says. “It is a quiet neighborhood,” says Johnson, who spent two years restoring her 120-year-old house, which was filled “with years of trash and feces.” She adds: “I loaded 10 Dumpsters with all the stuff we hauled out of here.” Johnson bought her home for less than $30,000 (a bargain helped by the fact that all the structure’s plumbing had long since been ripped out). Today, it looks ready to be photographed for some glossy magazine. Adams and Megee put their house on two credit cards. It was another Northeast bargain, meaning another fixer-upper. The home

had been split up, in the 1980s, into five ugly apartments. Three years after they closed the deal, Megee and Adams are still working on the house; they’ve already restored it to its original, single-family layout. “It’s the value that’s attracting younger homeowners,” Bellamaganya says. “You can still find bargains if you’re willing to look and willing to do the work. Pendleton Heights is the most desired location right now, but it has the most aggressively active neighborhood association and is well-positioned geographically. What people don’t understand is that there are multiple neighborhoods in the Northeast, and each neighborhood is totally different. There’s exceptional diversity at every price point.” “I fell in love with the area because it reminded me so much of the neighborhood where I lived in Brooklyn," Fleischman says. "Very diverse, very community-minded, very urban.” Poertner, who hosted the March gathering in her solidly constructed home (“The same Italian family lived in it for over 80 years,” she says), moved from Brooklyn with her boyfriend several years ago. “We were visiting friends in Kansas City and we realized that, for the money we were spending on a tiny apartment, we could own our own big house. Bigger than anything we could ever afford in New York. So we moved to Kansas City and bought a house in the Northeast.” Bellamaganya knows right away when a potential client is wrong for the Northeast. “You have to have a passion for this area,” he says. “If you don’t, you shouldn’t come here. There are still a lot of lifelong residents living here, and I tell people, ‘Don’t come here if you’re on the five-year plan. If you want to fix up a house and move on, don’t move here.' "

ack on Poertner’s front porch, Fleischman leans back in her rocking chair and whispers conspiratorially: “Come on, don’t you want to move here and live near all these wonderful people?” It’s a tempting pitch, and she is a masterful saleswoman. “Linda is one of the best things that ever happened to the old Northeast,” Bushnell says. “She’s convinced a lot of people to move here.” “It’s not a sales thing,” Fleischman says. “I’m a promoter. I’m just a conduit. I shine the light on anything fantastic.”

E-mail charles.ferruzza@pitch.com

No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. You must be a legal U.S. resident of KS or MO, 18 years of age or older. See complete details and contest rules at KCWE.COM

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WEEK OF APRIL 26-MAY 2

PAG E

SATUR

DAY

4 . 28

FILM

ice cky tw Get Lu d. n eeke this w

Rachel Weisz goes down in The Deep Blue Sea.

PAG E

LUCKY TOWN

CAFÉ How to make a filling trip to Independence.

24 PAG E

MUSIC Go go, Peelander-Z!

A pioneer of KC’s burlesque scene, Susanna Lee (better known as Lucky DeLuxe) has crossed over into stand-up. She’s back in town for a Saturday-night appearance at the Kansas City Burlesque Festival at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665), as well as an 8 p.m. performance Sunday of her one-woman comedy show, Getting Lucky, at the Brick (1727 McGee, 816-421-1634). The Pitch chatted with Lee by e-mail to ask about life on the West Coast. (Read the full interview Friday at pitch.com/wayward.) The Pitch: How did you know that it was time to leave KC?

T H U R S D AY | 4 . 2 6 | SPELL THIS

Excoriate: 1. to strip, scratch or rub off the skin of; 2. to

denounce harshly. That was the word spelled correctly by members of the Assurant Employee Benefits team in the 15th round of last year’s

Literacy Kansas City Corporate Spelling Bee. Help Literacy KC (The Pitch’s 2011 award recipient for

Best Nonprofit) teach thousands of adult Kansas Citians to read and improve math skills by buying a ticket to the 18th annual Literacy KC fundraiser at Union Station (30 West Pershing Road), beginning at 5:30 p.m. Tickets cost $65 and include a buffet dinner, a silent auction, beer, wine and hot spelling action. See literacykc.org or call 816-333-9332. — BERRY ANDERSON continued on page 14

Lee: I felt that I had reached a level of operation that was too easy to maintain without having to push myself — the familiarity had created a little bit of stagnant water in my inspiration. I’ve never been motivated to be a big fish in a small pond. Popularity is fleeting. It’s hard to be in L.A., it’s lonely, but I believe that it was necessary to jar myself out of a creative rut. Are the crowds tougher in L.A. than they are here? I find that the L.A. comedy audiences are more open to different styles of comedy. They tend to give more leeway to the art of it. I believe that many comedy clubs feel so desperate to get asses in seats that they

downplay the artists and train audiences to disrespect the reason they’re there. Comedy is an art. One of the responsibilities of art is to provoke an emotional reaction in the observer, and one of the responsibilities of the curator of art is to defend the artist’s creation. If you are too afraid of pissing off a tiny minority of close-minded assholes to present something entertaining and fresh, convert your chuckle shack into a sports bar and save everyone from the pain of further mediocrity. I’m just saying. It’s 2012. Can we please have a little less Jimmie “J.J.” Walker and a little more James Adomian? Shit hasn’t been “Dy-No-Mite” for over 30 years. — BERRY ANDERSON

F R I D AY | 4 . 2 7 |

BOOM, ZOOM, POW

oungsters today may never use a pay phone or buy a CD, but it’s not too late for them to experience a drive-in movie theater. Boulevard Drive-In (1051 Merriam Lane, Kansas City, Kansas, 913-262-2414) offers a day at the movies with a superhero triple feature on its new projector of 4,096 by 2,160 pixels (meaning higher resolution than Blu-ray or HD). Flickage for Superheroes on the Boulevard begins at 7:45 p.m. and includes Thor, Iron Man and Captain America — a primer for Marvel’s brand-new extravaganza, The Avengers. Family-friendly activities start at 3 p.m. and include laser tag, inflatables and a giant human hamster ball. Admission costs $25 a carful. For more information, see boulevarddrivein.com.

See Thor and Captain America pre-team.

— A PRIL FLEMING

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continued from page 13

F R I D AY | 4 . 2 7 |

FRIDAY

URBAN LOCAL

4 . 27

The urban art on display at City Arts Project (2015 Campbell, 816-820-4105) won’t be there long. The point of the free show — the first in a series of Gorilla Events curated by Ashley Anders — is its brevity. “We’re having the show really quick,” she says. “We put it up and then take it down.” A Kansas City Art Institute grad now working on her MBA, Anders recruited four of her former art-school classmates — Jaclyn Dalbey, Allegra Foley, Danny Staton and Osciel Ramos — to contribute their woodburnings, prints and animations for the show. She describes a standout piece as a map “of all the hidden treasures of Kansas City.” See the art from 6 to 9 p.m. Then head outside for musical performances from Wandering Mayor, Dan Matic, Casey & the Necks, and Jesse Thompson. Refreshments from Amigoni Urban Winery and Boulevard Brewing Co. will be available. For more information, search City Arts Project on Facebook. — CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

t has Bucke . Daisy a r f B ss Balls o

WHAT A DRAG

STREET TEAM

P ARTOPIA

RUKUS RUN

Each week, Pitch Street Team cruises around to the hottest clubs, bars and concerts. You name it, we will be there. While we are out, we hand out tons of cool stuff. So look for the Street Team... We will be looking for you!

Spencer Brown, aka Daisy Bucket (pronounced bouquet), describes tonight’s onewoman show as a love child conceived in the throes of Mexico’s drag scene. The burly blond bimbo, who has performed in the Unicorn Theatre’s La Cage aux Folles and internationally with the Kinsey Sicks: America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, created Balls of Brass. “The show,” Bucket says, “has a little something for everyone: political satire, raunch, camp, rock and roll, Broadway, pop, and one or two surprising tearjerkers.” Bucket aims to provoke extreme — possibly messy — reactions in the audience. “I like to take my audience on a roller coaster. It doesn’t matter what kind of roller coaster you get on. In the end, you get off and feel exhausted, exhilarated or ready to puke.” The show starts at 9 p.m. at Hamburger Mary’s (101 Southwest Boulevard, 816-842-1919). Get dragged through the mud some more at missdaisybucketkc.com. — NANCY HULL RIGDON

Life is grand in the Historic Northeast! Find pleasure in the ‘hood Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Concourse in Kessler Park (200 Benton Boulevard) during the 2012 Chalk Walk, with its art, live music, lawn chairs, families, dogs and more, rain or shine. See chalkwalk.org for more information. — BERRY ANDERSON

SMOOTH AND CREAMY

Several years ago, KKFI 90.1 Eclectics host and self-described chocoholic Rebecca Roche came up with a new way to support the allvolunteer nonprofit radio station. Chocolate Fantasy Night comes back for a fifth time with auctions, raffles, psychic readings, a performance by Shannon & the Rhythm Kings and, of course, a dessert bar continued on page 16

MMA’S X FACTOR

RUKUS RUN

4.26-28 KC Burlesque Fest @ Uptown 4.28 Westport Food Truck Fest @ Back Yard at Beaumont 4.28 AIDS Walk & Theiss Park 4.29 Trolley Run @ The Country Club Plaza

See more on the “promotions” link on the p THE PITCH

THE BIG DUST-UP

S U N D AY | 4 . 2 9 |

S AT U R D AY | 4 . 2 8 |

Upcoming Events

S AT U R D AY | 4 . 2 8 |

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Meghan Wright pitch.com

atural-born fighter Shannon Knapp wanted to be a ninja. She eventually became a self-defense instructor (close enough), and she has taken it upon herself to populate the pool of athletes in women’s mixed martial arts. “I spent my entire career working with the male athletes in the sport, and I always felt I was successful at it because I was female and not fueled by testosterone when communicating with them,” she says. At 7 p.m. (alongside her business partner, Janet Martin), she debuts Invicta Fighting Championships, an all-pro women’s MMA campaign at Memorial Hall (600 North Seventh Street Trafficway, Kansas City, Kansas, 913-371-7560). “This was an easy task,” she says. “Women in the sport are longing for opportunities to compete and to have a platform that they can compete on.” Eleven bouts are scheduled; look for Meghan Wright and Cassie Rodish in the first of the night. Tickets cost $35–$100. Buy them at cagetix.com and direct — BERRY ANDERSON 20 percent to the woman fighter of your choice.

Cassie Rodish

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The Moscow Festival Ballet dances The Sleeping Beauty at 8 p.m. at Yardley Hall. See jccc.edu for information and tickets. continued from page 14 stocked with chocolate. “Without fundraisers like this, we wouldn’t exist,” Roche says. “The night ends up being quite a party.” Chocolate contributions come from Whole Foods, Andre’s, Panache, Great Harvest Bread Co. and others. The event at Californos (4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878) begins at 7:30 p.m. An advance ticket costs $15 (or $20 at the door); see kkfi.org. — NANCY HULL RIGDON

Z-MBA, F-CK YEAH!

Zumba is a trademark, people. You aren’t supposed to use it as a noun or a verb (“I heart Zumba!” is not allowed, according to the trademark-usage guide), and you definitely can’t just slap the word onto your — or your company’s — name. So when you see that magical, legally actionable brand name attached to an event, you know that it’s a big deal or someone is going to get sued. As part of their Rock the Stage Tour, two of the exercise monolith’s leading specialists, Gina Grant and Tanya Beardsley, lead their Zumba Fitness Mega Master Class at the Johnson County Community College Fieldhouse (12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, 913-469-8500). Work that body from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tickets cost $40 and can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com/232274; find Gina and Tanya on Twitter, @ginandtonictour. — BERRY ANDERSON

Tanya (left) and Gina are Zumba.

T H U R S D AY M AY 3 AT 8 P. M

Drag Queen Bingo

$5 Cards! Bring your friends!

S AT U R D AY M AY 12 AT 9 A . M

Motorcycle Poker Run

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SPICY NOTES

Despite its complexity and multitude of flavors, Thai cuisine usually isn’t featured at wine tastings. Yet Brandon Harris, bar manager of Lenexa’s Sweet Siam Thai Bistro (7809 Quivira, 913-322-7285), didn’t shy from a customer’s suggestion to offer such an event. “They do go really well together and complement E R MO each other,” he says. Thai It Together, beginning at 6 p.m., is a certified T A INE American Institute of ONL .COM PITCH Wine & Food event and features six food and wine pairings, including a dessert course (spoiler: chocolate wontons with an Australian port), matched by a sommelier. Proceeds benefit local culinary students. Tickets cost $43 for members of AIWF and $48 for nonmembers. See aiwf.org/kansascity for more information. — APRIL FLEMING

EVENTS

TEARS, BEERS, ETC.

Shawn Sweeney believes that sad or angry music brings people together. “There are always the sad-bastard classics, like Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb,” he says. “But for newer artists, I would probably go with Dax Riggs, Lonesome Wyatt and Rachel Brooke.” Expect covers of songs by those last three during Sweeney’s latest Sad Bastard Monday at the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179). Alongside players from such bands as the Fall Down Drunks, the Blue Boot Heelers and the Calamity Cubes, Sweeney and his peeps throw down bitter beer tunes every Monday at 10 p.m. on the patio. The usual $3 wells and PBR tallboys are in effect, and there’s no cover. — BERRY ANDERSON

T U E S D AY | 5 . 1 |

$20 pre-registred | $30 Day of For info or register email sarahdevault@gmail.com

M O N D AY | 4 . 3 0 |

PROLETARIANS, UNITE!

Forget Titanic — been there, done that. Spoiler alert: The ship sinks in a sea of schmaltz and CGI, in 3-D or not. The real action is aboard Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent masterwork,

pitch.com

— B.A.

Battleship Potemkin

(a film to which the visual language of cinema is indebted), which dramatizes a 1905 mutiny and the popular uprising that prefigured the Bolshevik Revolution. Better still, we see your Celine Dion and raise you Kansas City’s own People’s Liberation Big Band, which accompanies the film with a live performance of an ambitious original score composed by its members (and first heard in 2009). The film screens at 6:30 p.m. at the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza Branch (4801 Main, 816-701-3481), preceded by a 6 p.m. reception. Reservations are required for this free event; see kclibrary.org/ rsvp/16494. — BRENT SHEPHERD

W E D N E S D AY | 5 . 2 RETRO MIXER

If you’re still trying to wrap your head around dubstep, you can stop. Moombahton is the latest electro-nerd obsession, and Gusto Lounge (504 Westport Road, 816-974-8786) is its best showcase in town. Every Wednesday night, DJ Sheppa hosts Midweek Moombah, rattling the bar’s glassware with the tropical, salsalike twist on Dutch house. Last month, Sheppa’s rotating DJ cast included club veteran Bill Pile, local Moombah producer ZSonic, and DJ Du Lait. For a break from the dance floor, retreat to Gusto’s new bar, tucked away in the far recesses of the first floor. It has no official name yet (we’re hoping that the Lodge catches on), but the log-cabin walls and retro beer yard signs suggest that you’ve wandered into a ’70s Old Spice ad. All that’s missing is a naked Burt Reynolds splayed out on a bearskin rug. Keep up with the events on Sheppa’s Facebook page (under “Sheppa Peppa”), which has posted this month’s lineup. The no-cover party starts at 9:30 p.m. — NADIA PFLAUM E-mail submissions to Filter editor Berry Anderson at calendar@pitch.com. Search our complete listings guide online at pitch.com.

S TA G E

IN A NUTSHELL

Austen and Sondheim get just enough time and space.

D E BO R A H HIRS CH

STAGE

BOB PA ISL E Y

note to fans of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Jon Jory’s 2006 stage adaptation, onstage at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, is the SparkNotes version. And to those unfamiliar with the 1813 novel? You might read the SparkNotes summary before attending. I fit in the first category, so I wasn’t helped by rewatching the six-hour (also condensed) BBC version (Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth) and rereading the book — yes, both — in the past year. This production of the romantic saga is told quickly (in MORE 130 minutes, not including the intermission). I tried to T A INE watch from the perspective ONL .COM PITCH of viewers less familiar with the details — would they follow everything? — but I’d already eaten the apple. With its many characters and plot threads, when he dances with Elizabeth). And Bingley Pride and Prejudice is an ambitious undersweeps in to claim Jane (Liz Clark Golson). taking for any dramatist, and Jory wastes no Likewise, benches form a carriage, and Elizatime touring country estates. The MET show beth and the Gardiners (Karen Paisley and Alan includes 19 actors playing 27 characters, some Tilson) are suddenly traipsing onto the Pembermaking such brief appearances (the role of ley estate. The scenes with the housekeeper and Georgiana Darcy, for instance) that I nearly Darcy at Pemberley are just as eye-blink brief. forgot they were in it. Sometimes characters remain onstage when On director Karen Paisley’s mostly bare they’re separated by geography, but lighting stage (the audience sits on rising rows of seats (by Greg Casparian) helps connect them. Afon each side), with a portico at one end and a ter Darcy delivers his letter gazebolike structure at the to Elizabeth on her walk, he other, actors enter and exit Pride and Prejudice remains in a dimmer light quickly — movement is virThrough May 6 at Metropolitan because he isn’t really there. tually constant — to move Ensemble Theatre, 3614 Main, Peterson is an opinionscenes along. A bench is 816-569-3226, metkc.org ated, headstrong and, in this brought in, and Elizabeth interpretation, emotive Eliz(Emily Peterson) and Mr. Sweeney Todd abeth. She and Todd Carlton Wickham (Matt Leonard, Through April 29, at Musical Lanker (as the detached, giving off just enough of Theater Heritage, Off Center sexy, arrogant Darcy) rethe bad boy) are talking in Theatre, 2450 Grand, main strongly central amid the garden. The bench is re816-842-9999, mthkc.com the musical-chairs composimoved, and Elizabeth is back tion. Both actors were in The in the house at Longbourn. Importance of Being Earnest, at the American Mr. Bingley (Taylor St. John, refined and Heartland Theatre, until April 15 (this play guileless and clumsy) and his sister, Caroline opened April 19), but they’ve completely left (Stefanie Wienecke, scornful and snobby), apbehind the shallow Cecily and the dandy Alpear at the portico to hand off an invitation to gernon. Cathy Wood, too, held a small role in Mr. Collins. Mere seconds later, dancers take that production, yet here becomes the ditzy, the floor at the Netherfield ball (where TJ Chasnervous, graceless Mrs. Bennet. teen, as the pompous Collins, is at his funniest

SHARON HARTER

The Bennets stand to receive Lady Catherine de Bourgh (left), and Richard's Sweeney Todd lies in wait. Marilyn Lynch makes a big impression in her small appearances as the haughty Lady Catherine de Bourgh. And Robert Gibby Brand nearly upstages the stars as the lovingly sarcastic Mr. Bennet. When Mrs. Bennet says, “I can hardly explain to you, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy,” he replies simply: “Then how wise not to try.” Jory might have heeded that advice. His play’s biggest drawback — the time, or lack of it — means that much (probably too much, even with the script's use of narration) is left out. The two protagonists’ ultimate hookup, though, is one of the reasons that we’re drawn back to this romance, no matter what the form, over and over again. Even this version has the power to elicit the usual teary-eyed joy — as long as you stay alert and keep up.

tephen Sondheim claims that his Tony Award-winning Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street isn’t about cannibalism. Musical Theater Heritage’s George Harter told an audience last weekend that the story of the murderous barber, whose customers become key ingredients in a meat-pie recipe, is Sondheim’s “horror movie for the stage.” (It’s also, Harter added, Sondheim’s homage to Bernard Herrmann, who composed the score for Taxi

N OW P L AY I N G UMKC A Winter’s Tale

UMKC’s Theatre Department closes its 2011–12 season with Shakespeare’s romantic story of love, passion and jealousy involving King Leontes; his wife, Hermione; his friend, King Polixenes; and, as always with Shakespeare, many supporting characters. Faculty member Barry Kyle directs the classic with a more contemporary take. It plays April 26-28 at 7:30 p.m. and April 29 at 2 p.m. Call 816-235-6222 for tickets, which cost $15. The play is performed at the Spencer Theatre’s Olson PAC (4949 Cherry).

Johnson County Community College The Spitﬁre Grill

Based on a film by Lee David Zlotoff, this musical played off-Broadway and has seen hundreds of regional productions. A folk and bluegrass score infuses the story of a young woman beginning a new life in a depressed rural town in Wisconsin, at Hannah’s Spitfire Grill. The student production is free and open to the public, with seats first-come, first-served in the Carlsen Center’s Polsky Theater (12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park) April 27–28 at 7:30 p.m. or at 2 p.m. April 28–29. It also plays next weekend.

Driver and numerous Alfred Hitchcock films, including Psycho.) Sarah Crawford directs an 18-member cast and a seven-piece orchestra (Jeremy Watson plays piano and conducts), and Don Richard stars as the title character, a man who has turned into a bitter, vengeful monster seeking a misguided salvation. Sondheim’s songs drive this story with force and excitement (and with sentiment in the ballads). Without a set, Richard and co-star, Cathy Barnett (as Mrs. Lovett), both outstanding, lead an expanded reading. Cast members sit upstage, in front of the orchestra, performing at a row of microphones when their parts are in play. Half make up the chorus, lending support to a strong cast that includes Brittanie Bagby Baker, Nathan Bovos, Jacob Aaron Cullum, Katie Karel, Bryan LaFave, Mark Poppleton and Julie Shaw. There are costumes (including a clever use of red ties to depict blood), choreography and dramatic use of lighting (designed by Shane Rowse), but — unlike the overstuffed 2007 Tim Burton screen adaptation — the sanguinary aesthetic isn’t the whole point. As usual, MTH focuses on the music and words, and even at this scale the show is lively, engaging — and suspenseful. And you have till Sunday to see it.

E-mail deborah.hirsch@pitch.com

AU D I T I O N Lyric Opera of Kansas City The Barber of Seville

Unlike the deranged Sweeney Todd, this barber is sociable. And he’s into helping — not hurting — his cohorts. (He’s way less damaged.) You have just two more opportunities to see this popular light opera at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (1601 Broadway): April 27 at 7:30 p.m. and April 29 at 2 p.m. It’s sung in Italian with English subtitles. But you’ll keep track of the story just fine — just listen to the beautiful music and follow the action. For tickets, call 816-471-7344 or see kcopera.org.

The Western Playhouse Summer Theater

A new professional summer-theater company, hosted by Missouri Western State University’s Western Institute, is holding auditions for its fi rst season Saturday, April 28, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Fishtank Performance Studio (1715 Wyandotte). Those auditioning must prepare a one-minute comedic monologue and/or a selection from a traditional musical-theater song. See westernplayhouse.com for more information and to reserve a time slot.

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n Acid Wash: Playing With Consequences, Lynn Benson fashions cut-up, acidwashed denim into collages. "Cloud Stew," above, is the best of the bunch. It’s good design, pure and simple: Benson accomplishes much, using very little, with repurposed materials. The artist keeps them identifiable (note the Levi’s patch), which contributes to the visual wit. Cartoonish shapes (the puffy clouds), a whimsical situation (puffy clouds in a stew pot) and the retro fabric add up to an image that's satisfying as both visual joke and art. —THERESA BEMBNISTER Lynn Benson Acid Wash: Playing With Consequences Through April 28 at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center (2012 Baltimore, 816-474-1919), open 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

he Todd Weiner Gallery presents strong, typical examples of work by some of Kansas City’s better-known artists in What Makes You, You … . Works by Tom Sciacca, Hugh Merrill and Kevin McGraw balance well with others. A new “So . . . What Holds Up Your Sky” canvas by Robert Quackenbush complements a classic steel-and-glass sculpture by Stretch. Lenticular room views by Mary Ann Strandell play off the benchlike “Fragment,” in which John Northington has embedded concrete with shattered tempered glass, as if a car’s windshield and a chunk of sidewalk had fused together in a physics experiment. A large, glitter-decked canvas by Mike Xenos stands out, as does Barry Osbourn’s 7-foot-square “How,” for their bold deployment of color and pattern. But if there’s just one reason to see this exhibition before it closes, it might be Steve Pistone. Building on E R MO his Wired show back in December, this Navy veteran and self-taught artist T seems able to take on any medium A E IN ONL .COM with ease. Here, his series of loopedPITCH wire guns gets a wall of its own, where nine pieces are balanced in groups of three, including meticulous pen-and-ink drawings of guns filled with precise patterns. The effect is playful rather than violent, with the arrangement of threes repeated in each drawing: one rendition of the gun on the transparent paper’s surface; one drawn in reverse on the back; and one underneath, showing through the vellum. It’s a clever peek into an imaginary realm and a hint of things to come from this relatively unknown artist. — TRACY ABELN

A RT

What Makes You, You … Through April 30 at the Todd Weiner Gallery (115 West 18th Street, 816-984-8538), open 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Wednesday–Friday and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Saturday 18

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n Mélange, Emily Connell dips pages taken from thick, heavy volumes (such as dictionaries, a Bible or an encyclopedia) into liquid clay before firing them in a kiln. The process transforms the paper and binding into flaky, ashen specters of their previous forms, as in "Dante's The Divine Comedy (Telephase)," above. Connell provides a lot to ponder — connotations of book burning and censorship or memorializing print material in the digital age, for example — but her beautiful, delicate works captivate on a purely visual level as well. —THERESA BEMBNISTER Mélange Through April 28 at the Late Show Gallery (1600 Cherry, 816-474-1300), open 11 a.m.–6 p.m. pitch.com

MONTH

FILM

THE ERR AFFAIR

STEVE ERICKSON

The Dee p Blue Sea feels a l it t le sha l low.

erence Davies is one of Britain’s best living filmmakers — his work resembles no one else’s. But he’s had the kind of cursed career suffered by the likes of Carl Dreyer and Andrei Tarkovsky. For reasons that remain obscure, The Deep Blue Sea is his first narrative film since 2000’s The House of Mirth. The two features that made Davies’ reputation — Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes — drew mostly on the pop culture of his childhood, particularly Hollywood musicals, but pushed that influence toward something resembling an avant-garde meditation on the past. (When he dealt MORE even more directly with his childhood, in his documentary Of Time T A E IN ONL .COM and the City, he was less PITCH successful than when he fi ltered it through fiction.) So The Deep Blue Sea, a period drama driven by flashbacks, should be a smart match of director and material. The Deep Blue Sea, adapted from the 1952 Terence Rattigan play (filmed in 1955 by Anatole Litvak), opens in the apartment of Hester (Rachel Weisz), whose voice we hear say, “This time I really do want to die.” The fi lm begins with her suicide attempt, then indulges the first of many flashbacks. Hester hangs out at home with her older husband, Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale), a judge. Then she takes a younger lover, a former RAF pilot named Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). As Hester comes back to life after her suicide attempt, cared for by neighbors, the film offers up flashbacks of her love life, as she abandons William for Freddie. The openly gay Davies claims to have been celibate since 1980. Rattigan was a closeted gay man. One senses in Hester the

FILM

Less talking, more affair, with Tom Hiddleston as Freddie and Rachel Weisz as Hester reflection of their reticence about desire. She’s torn between two men, yet her passion seems more intellectual than emotional. This is a fi lm about people afraid of showing their feelings, a stereotypically English position. Even when Hester and Freddie conduct their affair, they speak very little. There’s space in these silences to convey emotion, but The Deep Blue Sea doesn’t quite manage it. This isn’t Ozu. Weisz’s performance is perfectly accomplished, yet she seems miscast. Her beauty and glamour are appropriate for Hester’s more youthful years — Weisz, who was 40 when the fi lm was made, looks like she’s in her early 30s — but work against the more beaten-down woman Hester becomes. Davies seems to have made no effort to age the actress convincingly. But everything here, not just Weisz, is attractively framed and lighted. Davies’ direction lacks the stunning sound-andimage combinations that powered his early fi lms, relying too heavily on classical music to force emotion from the visuals. He does manage an amazing set piece: a lengthy scene in London’s subway during the blitz. Otherwise, The Deep Blue Sea is impressive mostly as an actor’s showcase. Compared with most contemporary cinema, The Deep Blue Sea is well worthwhile. But when you know what Davies is capable of, it disappoints. The long gaps in his fi lmography have raised expectations that go unfulfi lled here. Davies is now in his 60s; one hopes that it isn’t another dozen years until his next feature.

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CAFÉ

FILLING STAZIONE

Michaelangelos Grill is a neighbor worth having.

CHARLES FERRUZZA

Michaelangelos Grill • 17104 East U.S. Highway 24, Independence, 816-257-1122. • Hours: 11 a.m.–8 p.m. Tuesday–Thursday, 11 a.m.–9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. • Price: $$–$$$

or nearly a decade, the narrow building at 17104 East U.S. Highway 24 sat empty. The underground gas tanks outside the former filling station and convenience store had been ripped out. The pumps were history, the roof on the adjoining building was leaking, and everything that could have been stolen from inside had been looted long ago. Something in this eyesore inspired a vision. As Michael Spero drove that stretch of Highway 24 over and over, passing the forlorn building with the dissolving roof, he saw an answer to something else he’d noticed from his car: There was no Italian restaurant in the area. With a little work, Spero thought, he could fill two voids at once. But turning a ghost-town gas-and-go into a cozy Italian joint required a lot more work than Spero figured. It took him and his family two years, but they eventually doubled the size of the building. They poured concrete, built walls, replaced the roof and the flooring and all of the wiring. They installed bathrooms and a tiny kitchen, of course, and they added a deck. Their labor hasn’t resulted in a flashy property; it’s pretty easy to pass by the place as you steer toward Interstate 70. But Michaelangelos Grill, which opened last summer, gives off a big friendliness that’s happily out of proportion to its small size. There are no strangers at Michaelangelos, ever. Not as long as Spero is in the kitchen, or his daytime waitress, Anjelica, is holding court in the narrow dining room. Anjelica clearly missed her calling. She should be the star of E R O M a reality show. During a single lunch at the restaurant, I learned that AT E N I ONL .COM she has six young chilH PITC dren, and she was once a professional landscaper. She’s also very funny. I watched her do a hilarious, full-body parody of the raucously drunken visitors who descend on Independence’s annual Santa-Cali-Gon Days. You wouldn’t find a character like Anjelica at a more mainstream restaurant — a Lidia’s or even an Anthony’s on Grand. But a place like Michaelangelos needs larger-than-life personalities, organisms of the genus most often found in old-fashioned diners. That’s what Michaelangelos is, as you can see with a look at its hefty sandwiches, served in plastic baskets, and their accompanying fries (regular, sweetpotato or peppery-spiced). The limited entrée list includes four pasta dinners, a country-fried steak smothered in gravy, and fried meatballs draped with translucent grilled onions. “We call our pasta basta,” says Spero, who was born and raised in Kansas City’s historic Italian neighborhood. “Because that’s what they call it in the old North End.” His sugo is a family recipe, but unlike a lot of traditional Sicilian marinaras, this sauce isn’t especially

CAFÉ

ANGELA C. BOND

The basics at Michaelangelos are the best. sweet. It actually has a robust herbal note, predominantly oregano, and it’s tasty atop the noodles (which aren’t house-made). The only entrée costing more than $10 is the tortellini, which can be ordered with tomato sauce or a creamy, Parmesan-heavy Alfredo. But wait — back to those fried meatballs. I confess that I loved them, even after I discovered they weren’t Spero’s creations. Like the mildly spiced sausage here, the meatballs are from Scimeca’s — still local, still very good, and a satisfying and cheap dinner on their own. A plate of six meatballs (handball-sized but somehow still supple) comes with a basket of bread and a side of sauce. As at any good diner, the signature dishes at Michaelangelos are the sandwiches. (And, no, there’s no apostrophe in the name — that’s what Spero wanted, and he’s too big a guy for a typographer to argue with.) Spero says the best-sellers are the hand-breaded Italian steak and the pork tenderloin. I didn’t order either of those, though. I went with Anjelica’s fervent advice, having heard her rave about Spero’s Reuben. “The corned beef is so tender,” she said. “It’s the real thing.” I was game, and I found that Spero does make the sandwich with local Boyle’s corned beef. Anjelica wasn’t wrong: It was a first-

noli. But a pastry chef, who is a pal of Spero’s, class version of the sandwich, served on marbrings in different specialty items during the ble rye, beautifully grilled and sided with a week. “Look at this,” Spero said one recent heap of crinkle-cut fries — which Spero needs night, holding up a plastic-wrapped hunk. to overcook a bit because it’s a fry that’s prone “Strawberry streusel cake!” I told him that to easy sogginess. Fortunately, I’d ordered I never buy a dessert that a side of fettuccine Alfredo. looks as if I could have made The cream sauce was tasty Michaelangelos Grill it myself. If he brings in some but began to thicken before I Mozzarella sticks ..........$5.99 cheesecake, we’ll talk. did. Get it but eat it fast. Reuben sandwich .......... $7.99 For now, it’s easy to be I was a little afraid of the Meatball sub ...................$6.99 patient with the idiosynmeatball sub, not because Six fried meatballs crasies here. Spero is jugof its size (it was plenty big) and onion ......................$8.99 gling two jobs: serving as but because I was wearing Rachel’s ravioli ...............$9.99 Fettuccine Alfredo ........$9.99 cook and manager of his a white shirt — I’m a notorirestaurant and running ously sloppy eater. It looked his liquor store, also called good, though, and what’s Michaelangelos, on 23rd Street in Indepena little extra laundry when a meatball sub beckons? I took a fierce bite and dropped my dence. “I’m really burning the candles at both ends these days,” he says. “I didn’t shirt at the dry cleaner later that night. think it would be this hard.” Spero’s primary audience seems to be famiWell, that’s why labors of love are labors: lies with kids, and that’s fine for a place that They’re hard. But Spero isn’t complaining, and closes at 8 p.m. during the week. There’s a tiny bar in the front, but this isn’t where the neither are his patrons. You can eat heartily drinking crowd hangs out. (“The drinkers,” for very little money at Spero’s place, and he’d whispered one of the waitresses, “all go to Dr. love to see you. Besides, there aren’t many Pikl’s up the street. That place is wild!”) Spero places on Highway 24 ready to make you this pleased to have stopped. was hesitant about putting in a bar at all. “I thought it might scare some families off,” he says. “But it hasn’t. People like a little glass of Have a suggestion for a restaurant wine with their pasta.” The Pitch should review? There’s only one dessert on the menu: canE-mail charles.ferruzza@pitch.com

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he tiny Independence shopping district called Englewood could pass for downtown Mayberry on most days — one with 21stcentury problems that Barney Fife wouldn’t recognize. The movie theater is closed for repair. The five-and-dime has been holding a “going out of business” sale for weeks. But there’s still a diner, still a coffee shop, and still a convenience store that doubles as a cantina. The Englewood Theatre — which turns 63 this summer — was once the neighborhood’s primary draw. But the boiler shot craps in January, so owner Wade Williams closed the venue for the season. The winter turned out to be mild, and spring began hot, but Williams hasn’t unlocked the doors yet. Now it’s about programming, not climate. “We just haven’t decided if we’re going to show classic films or first-run movies,” he says. No contest: Classic is the way to go. Englewood, a kind of miniature downtown within the boundaries of Independence, looks like something from an old movie. Its three fine little restaurants (plus an antique store that serves tea and pastries) help make this one of the metro’s most charming little secrets. (It’s not a hard secret for your GPS: Englewood is between Truman Road and 23rd Street, just west of Sterling Avenue.) And how can anyone not love — really love — Mugs Up Root Beer Drive-In (700 East 23rd Street)? The joint turns 56 years old, and Ann and Bill Kendall have owned it for 53 of those years. In the basement of the prefab building, they make the best root beer in the city. Williams planned to open a coffee shop in the space adjacent to his theater three or four years ago but postponed to focus on some family issues. “And then Ann Kendall came to me and wanted to run the coffee shop, so we worked out a deal,” he says. The result: the Detour Coffee Shop (10921 East Winner Road). Williams had owned the eight-stool counter

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and backdrop — which dates to the 1930s — since he bought it to use as a set for a movie he made himself in 1992, a remake of the ’40s filmnoir favorite Detour. (Wichita’s now-defunct Valentine Manufacturing, which created that neat little dinette, also manufactured the structure that still houses Mugs Up.) The coffee shop is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. There are a couple of breakfast dishes, including a hamand-cheese croissant and a pretty good cinnamon roll, but most people stop in for a cup of java and lunch. That menu includes a couple of signature Mugs Up sandwiches: the loosemeat Zip Burger and the Whiz Burger, a Zip with cheese (cheddar here, unlike the American at Mugs Up). But there’s no root beer yet. (“We’re working on that,” Ann Kendall says.) There’s not much in the way of desserts at Detour, but if you’re craving a luscious slab of homemade pie, you can walk across the street to the Englewood Café (10904 East Winner Road). The waitresses at this diner still call you “baby doll” as they hand over a list of oldfashioned, crazily satisfying pies. The menu includes hard-to-find varieties — gooseberry, pineapple cream — but start with the glorious blueberry. And you won’t find a better cream pie on the East Side of town. A little more modern is La Plaza Market y Restaurant (11000 East Winner Road). Macario Contreras and his wife, Olga, run the little 12-table café in the storefront adjacent to their neighborhood convenience store. A native of Durango, Mexico, “Mac” Contreras was a cook at the former Majestic Steakhouse for five years before launching his own business in 2010. The cantaloupe-colored dining room opens each morning at 9 and serves an array of hearty Mexican-style breakfasts, including huevos rancheros, huevos con chorizo, huevos en torta and huevos revueltos (Mexican scrambled eggs) served with frijoles, queso crema, and either flour or freshly made corn tortillas.

Take a Detour to Independence. They also make South American-style pupusas: the thick Salvadoran corn tortillas that are baked with a variety of stuffings. Here they come with the tangy slaw curtido: a combination of chopped carrots, onion, cabbage and red-pepper flakes. The prices are cheap here, and the portions are grande. The restaurant closes at 9 p.m. That’s almost past bedtime in this neighborhood, but people here know that their favorite walking-distance places will be there in the morning, and maybe forever.

Go back in time at pitch.com/fatcity

MOBILE FOOD ALERT

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ifteen-plus food trucks (including Los Tules, pictured), clothing and jewelry vendors, upscale junkers and recordmongers gather from 3 to 10 p.m. Saturday, April 28, in the Back Yard at the Beaumont Club (4050 Pennsylvania). Yes, it's the return of the Westport Food Truck Festival and Marketplace. Admission costs $5 (free for kids 10 or younger).

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MUSIC

THE GAGS OF BRIXTON

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ANGELA C. BOND

lil ed & the imperiAlS

ow does a classroom of students at the tude focuses on concepts such as humor in University of Kansas respond when their the music of Chuck Berry (whom Ellis ties to the tradition of the trickster in African English instructor plays Jim Carroll Band’s folklore), Brit Wits looks to present sly, un“People Who Died”? “Well, you see, most of the people in my dercutting drollness as part of the British class, their idea of punk is that SoCal ’90s national identity. "I went into this wanting it to be a culturalthing,” Iain Ellis says. “It’s kind of a strange studies book, rather than just a book about world to them, and I think they think it’s kind music, so I connect the music a lot more of cheap and badly produced.” Those sounds are a world away from the intimately with British history in all of the American punk culture of the ’80s that sections,” Ellis explains. “Particularly, the Ellis wrote about in his doctoral dissertation, humor that is going on in all of these differand which he lectures about in KU English ent periods in Britain, and how intimately tied a lot of the humor in the music is to the courses like “Expressions in Youth Rebelhumorous expression, especially the rebel lion.” Rock and punk are topics of deep interest to Ellis; he has written numerous articles humor that’s going on in the history of Britain for the online magazine PopMatters and two in general.” Those ideas take many different forms. books on the role of humor in rock music: 2008’s Rebels Wit Attitude and, now, Brit While humor in music is traditionally thought of in more of a novelty or Wits, which was recently parody sense — think Dr. published by Intellect Ltd. Demento — Ellis’ concept of Ellis explains that Brit Wits Iain Ellis, author of Brit Wits: A History of humor is more far-ranging. aims a little higher. British Rock Humor Whether it’s the influence "I’m more happy with it Friday, April 27, of the The Goon Show on the [this book] than the fi rst,” at the Raven Book Store Beatles’ sense of whimsy or he says. “The fi rst started the anarchic pranks of the out dealing just with subKLF (which once burned versive humorists. It didn’t have the national context, and it wasn’t until 1 million British pounds as an art-protest later on, when it was too long, that I actually project), Ellis sees subversive humor as more took all of the British stuff out and it became than just jokes. It is, as Ellis states in the introduction to Brit Wits, “an outlet for ventan American book.” Using music as a through-line in Brit Wits, ing” and “an alternative means to protest.” "It may sound really ambitious,” Ellis Ellis traces the history of British rebellion through humor. Whereas Rebels Wit Atti- says, “but I really think humorists are the

A P R I L 2 6 - M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2

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Ellis: another white man in Hammersmith paisley truth-tellers in society. I think, historically, they’ve always been.” It’s a theory that holds real merit in the age of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. But even going back to the Middle Ages, the court jesters were the only ones who could speak freely with the king or queen about the quality of their decisions. Being told you’re a genocidal maniac with a penchant for incest is always easier to take when the person telling you wears greasepaint and bells. "You can trace an alternative vision of British history through not only its humorists but its youth culture,” Ellis says. “Most history is great-men theory and adult theory — lots of big political figures. And I was thinking, ‘What about culture at the level of rebellion? of resistance?’ ” Ellis’ book certainly is ambitious, but it also has quite a bit of broad appeal. It may be the only book ever published to establish the Spice Girls and the Sex Pistols as part of one canon. For those wishing to get a taste of what Brit Wits has to offer, the author appears Friday at the Raven Book Store in Lawrence. At 7 p.m., Ellis not only reads excerpts from the book but also performs acoustic renditions of some of the musicians featured within. Are you into the Macc Lads? This is the show for you.

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MONTH

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MUSIC | STREETSIDE

ROCKIN' THE SUBURBS

am a fan of both ambitious ideas and country music and so, last Thursday, I corralled a few pals and drove out to Overland Park for the grand opening of Kanza Hall, a new, countryoriented live-music venue at 119th Street and Metcalf. Kanza Hall is phase one of One Block South, club owner Shawn McClennon’s plan to reimagine a JoCo strip mall as a south Kansas City nightlife epicenter. The concept also includes annexing half of Fuel (the sports bar and nightclub next door to Kanza Hall) and converting it into an upscale, by-the-hour billiards hall to be called Red 8. Once Red 8 is up and running (it’s expected to open midsummer), Raoul’s Velvet Room, down the strip and currently closed, will reopen as a casual French bistro called Milieu. “Kanza Hall? It sounds like a rotary club or something,” Jason said as we made our way out to the suburbs. “Oh, hall,” Mike said. “I thought it was a mashing up of the words Kansas and alcohol, like Kansahol.” “No, no,” Berry said. “Is it kan-za or kawn-za?” I asked. Nobody said anything. I pulled into the parking lot, and my air-starved tires let out a cartoonlike screeching sound. It’s getting to the point where I feel bad for the people who have to show up to things with me. Inside, the air conditioning was pumping, and old rodeo clips were playing on a projector on the stage and on various plasma TVs. Hot chicks in cowboy hats were slinging drinks behind a 40-foot bar (total guess; it was long). Tumblers of Jim Beam on the rocks were going for zero dollars early in the evening; later, after the free-booze window closed, they were a very reasonable

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An upscale honky-tonk debuts in Overland Park.

$5. “Those are Brick prices, dog,” Berry said. Waitresses roamed the room offering up plates of finger food. I politely took one mini cornbread muffin, which I was delighted to discover contained a juicy pulled-pork center. “Actually ...” I said as the waitress began to move along, and I grabbed three more without looking her in the eye. There weren’t any bands performing — Outlaw Jim and the Whiskey Benders and Drew Six are among the acts booked in the next month — so I couldn’t get an accurate sense of the acoustics. But in terms of layout, I’d liken Kanza Hall to a slightly smaller Beaumont Club. There’s wide-open floor space in front of the stage, flanked on one side by the bar and some high tables, and on the other by six lush circle booths. Clearly, cash was spent making the place look good, and it shows. There’s a lodge feel to the interior: Stuffed deer heads line the wall above the bar, and the DJ booth and soundboard are encased in wood. Near the entrance are a shuffleboard table and two pool tables. Hanging above the shuffleboard table is a huge buffalo hide with the Red Bull logo emblazoned on it, a softball metaphor for Kanza Hall: A boot-stomping roadhouse aesthetic with all the pleasures of 2012 suburban living. “If you watch the Grammys or look at who’s selling out Arrowhead, it’s country artists,” McClennon told me. “Country is making a huge resurgence, and not just in the outer sketches of Kansas City. It’s very big right in the heart of Johnson County. And by being out south, Kanza Hall can also pull people in from places like Lee’s Summit, Gardner, Stilwell.” He’s 100 percent right about all of that, and I think Kanza Hall (for the record, McClennon pronounced it like Tony Danza, not Kwanzaa) could make a killing by catering exclusively

D AV ID HUDN A L L

Kanza's oldest dance-a at its grand opening. to the cowboy crowd. But McClennon wants Kanza Hall to be more eclectic in terms of the acts it brings in. “We’ve spent a lot of time and energy into not pigeonholing ourselves into being a country bar,” he said. “We want to be able to host blues, alternative rock, pop, a lot of genres. The primary focus is country from Wednesday through Saturday. That gives us Sunday through Tuesday to book different kinds of regional and national acts.” The DJ Thursday night was hardly a country purist. All the selections were country songs, but most were mixed with deep, bass-heavy dance beats. “It sounds like Travis Tritt if his backing band was the Baha Men,” Jason noted. The crowd came around to it. Out on the floor, there was some square dancing and some regular dancing, and a very old man dancing the way one might dance if one were doing an impression of a very old man dancing. The ladies ate it up. I worried about his health. But I had to respect his stamina. I walked out of Kanza Hall convinced that the venue, and the entire One Block South concept, could be a pretty huge hit, particularly if McClennon and his people book some highprofile country acts. Even if they don’t, I still think it might work, in the same way PBR Big Sky in the Power & Light District works. What they seem to be building out there is essentially a miniature version of the P&L: themed bars conducive to wild parties. And a lot of the folks who hang out at the P&L are from the suburbs anyway. Why not build something for them a little closer to home?

E-mail david.hudnall@pitch.com or call 816-218-6774 pitch.com

MONTH

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A P R I L 2 6 - M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2

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MUSIC

RADAR

M U S I C F O R E CAST

Other shows worth seeing this week.

D AV ID HUDN A L L

T H U R S D AY, A P R I L 2 6 Moot Davis Living Room Sessions in the Retro Lounge: 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. KC Burlesque Festival: Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. Overkill, God Forbid, Suidakara, Diamond Plate, Marasmus: The Beaumont Club, 4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560.

F R I D AY, A P R I L 2 7 Anti-Crew, Sage N Sour, Atilla, Louiz Rip: The Beaumont Club, 4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560. DJ Clinton Sparks: 9 p.m. KC Live! Block at the Power & Light District, 14th St. and Grand. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Hayes Carll: Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. KC Burlesque Festival: Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. Talib Kweli: The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

S AT U R D AY, A P R I L 2 8 Anthony Gomes, Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials: 8 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. KC Burlesque Festival: Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. The Smithereens, Dead Sara, A Silent Film, Now Now Sleepyhead: 7 p.m., free. The Midland, 1228 Main, 816-283-9900.

Out to pasture: Real Estate (left) and Glen Campbell

Real Estate, with Twerps and Ghosty

There were more progressive and dangerous records in 2011, but none as endlessly listenable as Days, the sophomore album from Real Estate. Midtempo rock songs about trees and streets have rarely sounded so compelling. That’s owing to the New Jersey band’s freakish gift for melody and the fuzzy melancholy lurking beneath the songs: How can I feel free/When all I want to be/Is by your side in a municipality, goes “Municipality.” Aussie outfit Twerps hit on some of the same mellow tones. Saturday, April 28, at the Bottleneck (737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483)

Caveman, with Lotus Plaza

Like Real Estate, Caveman advances a calm, reverb-y, rock agenda that calls to mind an overcast day at the beach. The Brooklyn band adds synths and kinky percussion to the equation, though, which feels very of-the-now. Lockett Pundt, guitarist of the acclaimed dream-rock act Deerhunter, recently released his second solo album, Spooky Action at a Distance. Pundt wrote “Desire Lines,” the best song on Deerhunter’s most recent album, Halcyon Digest, and the smart, sprawling guitar-pop on Spooky Action confirms that he’s really starting to hit his stride as a songwriter. Tuesday, May 1, at RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 753-5207)

Glen Campbell

Country legend Glen Campbell announced last year that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Rather than taking a bow, he followed up that news with a new album, Ghost on the Canvas, which includes collaborations with ’90s rock icons Chris Isaak, Paul Westerberg, Jakob Dylan and Robert Pollard. Somewhat incredibly, he decided to embark on a goodbye tour, on which he’s been accompanied by family members (some of whom play in his backing band) and lyric prompters. I suspect there won’t be many dry eyes in the house by the end of this show. Thursday, April 26, at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665)

Electric Guest

If we’re taking bets on this year’s indie-rock crossover summer jam (past winners include Foster the People and MGMT), I’d give good odds on Los Angeles duo Electric Guest. The band’s falsetto-heavy funk is charming, but its connections are why I think we might have a radio hit on our hands. One of the members is Asa Taccone, brother of the Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone and co-writer of “Dick in a Box.” Danger Mouse has produced Electric Guest’s debut, Mondo, and imbued it with the lazy, acoustic psychedelia that he brought to Broken Bells (“American Daydream”) and the oddball soul of Gnarls Barkley (“This Head I Hold”). Thursday, April 26, at the Granada (1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390)

Peelander-Z, with Drop a Grand and Radkey

The Japanese members of New York-based Peelander-Z (I’m pretty sure the name is a reference to some sort of imaginary urine planet) couch kindergarten lyrics inside Ramonesstyle punk blasters and dress up in colorful outfits, like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The band thusly appeals in equal measure to anime nerds, punk geeks and the alienated youth of today. That makes Radkey, a band of teenage brothers from St. Joseph, Missouri, also playing Ramones-style punk blasters, a fitting opener on this bill. Monday, April 30, at RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 753-5207)

F O R E C A S T

Shooter Jennings, with Cody Canada and the Departed, and Uncle Lucius

The season at Crossroads KC at Grinders kicks off with an evening of Southern blues and rock. Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon, dabbled in conceptual prog on 2010’s Black Ribbons, but his latest, Family Man, is a more conventional down-home country record. Opener Cody Canada is the frontman of hardtouring Skynyrd acolytes Cross Canadian Ragweed (currently on hiatus). Uncle Lucius, an Austin quartet, owes more than a little debt to the Black Crowes. Saturday, April 28, at Crossroads KC at Grinders (417 East 18th Street, 816-472-5454)

K E Y

.................................................. Pick of the Week

............................................................Weird Vibe

.................................. Possible Confederate Flags

..................................................................Breezy

.............................................................Nerd Alert

.............................................Concealed Weapons

................................................................... Buzzy

................................................Showbiz Nepotism

.......................................................Living Legend

................................................. Punks Screaming

...... Young White Man Sounds Like Old Black Woman

..................................Here Come the Waterworks

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A P R I L 2 6 - M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2

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S U N D AY, A P R I L 2 9 The Gipsy Kings: The Midland, 1228 Main, 816-283-9900. Lovedrug, the Atlantic, Modern Arsonists: The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390. Los Lonely Boys: VooDoo Lounge, Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City, 816-472-7777. The Lumineers, David George, A Crooked Mile: The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179.

M O N D AY, A P R I L 3 0 Portugal the Man, the Lonely Forest: 7 p.m. The Beaumont Club, 4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560.

T U E S D AY, M AY 1 Green River Ordinance, Graham Colton: 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Hot Chelle Rae, Electric Touch: 7 p.m. The Midland, 1228 Main, 816-283-9900. M83, I Break Horses: (Sold out) 8 p.m., $15. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

W E D N E S D AY, M AY 2 Augustana, Greylag, Tanner Walle (CD release): The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390. Cold Forty Three, Last Chance Casanova, 200 West: 9:30 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. The Wombats, Static Jacks, Flagship: The Beaumont Club, 4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560.

FUTURECAST Hearts of Darkness, the Good Foot, the Grisly Hand: Sat., May 5, Crossroads KC at Grinders Aziz Ansari: Thu., May 10, the Midland Miranda Lambert, Chris Young, Jerrod Neimann: Fri., May 11, Sprint Center Polyphonic Spree: Sat., May 12, the Granada George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic: Fri., May 18, Crossroads KC at Grinders Creed: Mon., May 21, Tue., May 22, the Midland Van Halen: Tue., May 22, Sprint Center Xiu Xiu, Dirty Beaches: Tue., May 22, Jackpot Music Hall Best Coast, Jeff the Brotherhood: Sun., May 27, the Granada Heartless Bastards: Tue., May 29, the Granada Buzz Beach Ball: Sat., June 2, Livestrong Sporting Park KC Music Festival: Fri., June 1, Sat., June 2, Berkley Riverfront Park

M O N T H X X–X X , 2 0 0 X

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NIGHTLIFE T H U R S D AY 2 6 ROCK/POP/INDIE RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. High Diving Ponies, Til Willis, Knifecrime, 9 p.m. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676. Oberhofer, Young Man, 10 p.m. The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Panda Circus, Monster, Quirk and Rukus, 7 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909. Filthy 13, 8 p.m. The Hideout: 6948 N. Oak Tfwy., 816-468-0550. Stone Cutters Union. Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. Samantha Fish, 8 p.m. Quasimodo: 12056 W. 135th St., Overland Park, 913-239-9666. Blue 88, 7 p.m.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Bob Reeder.

DJ Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Soul Café on the patio, 10 p.m.

ACOUSTIC The Phoenix Jazz Club: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Acoustic with Drew Freeland.

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909. David Burchﬁeld and the Great Stop, Loaded Goat, Betse Ellis, 8:30 p.m. Jerry’s Bait Shop: 13412 Santa Fe Trail Dr., Lenexa, 913-894-9676. Art MORE Bentley. The Landing: 1189 W. Kansas St., Liberty. Outlaw Jim & the Whiskey S G IN Benders, 9 p.m. LIST E AT Replay Lounge: 946 MassachuIN ONL M setts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676. PITCH.CO The Kansas City Bear Fighters, Hello Biplane, Sunﬂower Colonels, 6 p.m. Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Ben Miller Band.

C LU B

DJ Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Cyrus D with the Impala Champions, 10 p.m.

The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483. Irv Da Phenom, Approach, Rich Brown, Chase Compton, Tekneek. The Cabaret Room at the Uptown Theater: 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. Fringe Friday Hip-Hop Edition, 6-8 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS

M E TA L / P U N K The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Killfest Afterparty with Vanlade, Hellevate, Meatshank, 11 p.m., free with Killfest ticket stub.

SINGER-SONGWRITER The Eighth Street Taproom: 801 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-6918. Lonnie Fisher.

VA R I E T Y 77 South: 5041 W. 135th St., Leawood, 913-742-7727. The 9th Street Incline Band.

F R I D AY 2 7

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ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS

The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Mambo DeLeon and Carte Blanc.

Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. Bi-Annual Free Form, Freefor-All Open Mic Night with Teague Hayes, 8 p.m.

A P R I L 2 6 - M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2

The Bunkhouse: 17965 Hwy. 45, Weston, 816-640-0000. Weston Blues Festival. Californos: 4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878. Soltri, 9 p.m. Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. The Dirt Kings, the Devil’s Marmalade, 9:30 p.m. Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Lonnie Ray Blues Band. The Phoenix Jazz Club: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Lonnie McFadden, 4:30 p.m.; JLove Band, 9 p.m.

HIP-HOP

Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Ladies’ Night. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. National Showcase. Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785832-1085. Glitz: Pride Night. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Trivia Clash, 7 p.m. The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. Bottoms Up sketch comedy, 8 p.m.

THE PITCH

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL

JAZZ

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES

The Well: 7421 Broadway, 816-361-1700. Liverpool, “a Tribute to the Beatles.”

ACOUSTIC Bar West: 7174 Renner Rd., Shawnee, 913-248-9378. Dan Brockert.

JAZZ The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Eclipse. Lucky Brewgrille: 5401 Johnson Dr., Mission, 913-403-8571. Ron Carlson Trio. Take Five Coffee + Bar: 5336 W. 151st St., Overland Park, 913948-5550. The Stan Kessler Trio with Joe Cartwright. Thai Place: 9359 W. 87th St., Overland Park, 913-649-5420. Jerry Hahn.

WORLD The Eighth Street Taproom: 801 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-6918. Rincon Tropical.

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES Cronin’s Bar and Grill: 12227 W. 87th St. Pkwy., Lenexa, 913322-1000. Karaoke with Jim Bob, 9 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. John Witherspoon, 7:30 & 9:45 p.m. Retro Downtown Drinks & Dance: 1518 McGee, 816-4214201. Trivia Riot, 7 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Great Day Café: 7921 Santa Fe Dr., Overland Park, 913-6429090. Open Mic.

ROCK/POP/INDIE

REGGAE

The Brooksider: 6330 Brookside Plz., 816-363-4070. Rock Cove. Clarette Club: 5400 Martway, Mission, 913-384-0986. Albert Flasher. FOKL Center: 556 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kan., 913-2079549. Jorge Arana Trio, Ambulants, Battle Royale, Kachina Doll, Tazer Tot, 7:30 p.m. Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-832-1085. Spirit is the Spirit, Hefty Second Helping, Everyday/Everynight, Fake Natives. Jerry’s Bait Shop: 302 S.W. Main, Lee’s Summit, 816-525-1871. On the Fly. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Drunkard’s Dream, 6 p.m.; Band Droidz, Yam, Camilla Camille + Jason McKee, 9:30 p.m. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Terry Malts, Black on Black, 10 p.m. The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Antennas Up, the HipNecks, Flashbulb Fires, 8 p.m.

Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. 77 Jefferson, Vibenhai, Arm the Poor, 8 p.m.

S AT U R D AY 2 8 ROCK/POP/INDIE Danny’s Bar and Grill: 13350 College Blvd., Lenexa, 913-3459717. Hear Kitty Kitty. Jerry’s Bait Shop: 302 S.W. Main, Lee’s Summit, 816-525-1871. Flashback. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Hope Care Center Fundraiser with Black Ribbon Sky, and more, 9 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL The Bunkhouse: 17965 Hwy. 45, Weston, 816-640-0000. Weston Blues Festival.

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Sights, Sounds, Imperial Flavor

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The Hideout: 6948 N. Oak Tfwy., 816-468-0550. Connie Hawkins and the Blues Wreckers. Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Lonesome Hank & the Heartaches.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. Mr. Marco’s V7, the Blessed Broke. Harling’s Upstairs: 3941-A Main, 816-531-0303. The Vine Brothers. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. The Steel Show with John McKenna Band, Sara Swenson and the Pearl Snaps, Blackbird Revue, Dead Voices, 5 p.m. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676. Arthur Dodge and the Horse Feathers, the Magentlemen, 10 p.m.

FOOD BY

Food, Drinks Live Art & Fun

The Eighth Street Taproom: 801 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-6918. Bump & Hustle with Cyrus D. The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Cosmic with Jason Kidd, Pat Nice, PK, 11 p.m., free. VooDoo Lounge: Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City, 816-472-7777. DJ Benzi.

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES

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Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. Dirty Dorothy on the main ﬂoor, 10 p.m. Power & Light District: 14th Street and Main, 816-842-1045. 14th Street Wine Walk, 3 p.m. Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986. Live karaoke with Separated at Birth.

FOKL Center: 556 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kan., 913-2079549. Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, Goodwillies, Scammers, Vehicle Blues, 7 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Kyle Elliott.

DJ Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Recycled music with Brett Dietrich, 3:30 p.m. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Sunday Funday with DJ G Train, 10 p.m.

JAZZ Californos: 4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878. Natalia Olinetchuk, noon. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Jeff Harshbarger presents People’s Liberation Big Band with Black Crack Review, 7 p.m.

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Smackdown Trivia and Karaoke. The Brick: 1727 McGee, 816-421-1634. Susanna Lee (Lucky DeLuxe). Clarette Club: 5400 Martway, Mission, 913-384-0986. Texas Hold ’em, 7 & 10 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. KC’s Tougher than Hell Poker Run and Harley Giveaway, 9 a.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816623-3410. Open Blues and Funk Jam with Syncopation, 6 p.m. R.G.’s Lounge: 9100 E. 35th St., Independence, 816-358-5777. Jam Night hosted by Dennis Nickell, Scotty Yates, Rick Eidson, and Jan Lamb, 5 p.m.

VA R I E T Y Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Beneﬁt for EMU Theater, 4 p.m.

A P R I L 2 6 - M AY 2 , 2 0 1 2 pitch.com M O N T H X X–X X , 2 0 0 X pitch.com

T U E S D AY 1 ROCK/POP/INDIE The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Not a Planet, Dead Sevens. Jerry’s Bait Shop: 13412 Santa Fe Trail Dr., Lenexa, 913-8949676. Travelers Guild. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Country Mice, Doubleplus, 10 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL

The Gusto Lounge: 504 Westport Rd., 816-974-8786. The Dropout Boogie, 10 p.m., free.

JAZZ Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Mark Lowrey, 8 p.m.

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES Flying Saucer: 101 E. 13th St., 816-221-1900. Trivia Bowl, 7:30 & 10 p.m., free. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. Clash of the Comics, 7:30 p.m. Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785832-1085. It’s Karaoke Time! The Roxy: 7230 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-236-6211. Karaoke.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Open Mic Acoustic Jam.

W E D N E S D AY 2 ROCK/POP/INDIE The Beaumont Club: 4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560. The Wombats, Static Jacks, Flagship. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Bob Walkenhorst, 7 p.m. The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Pocket Vinyl with Opossum Trot, Oils, Shadow Paint, 8 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Billy Ebeling. Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Shinetop Jr.

JAZZ B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ: 1205 E. 85th St., 816-822-7427. New Vintage Big Band. Sullivan’s Steakhouse & Saloon: 4501 W. 119th St., Leawood, 913-345-0800. Candace Evans Duo, 6 p.m.

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES Beer Kitchen: 435 Westport Rd., 816-389-4180. Brodioke. Californos: 4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878. The Girlie Show, 8 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. Devin Henderson’s Mind Madness. The Union of Westport: 421 Westport Rd. Pop Culture Trivia.

EASY LISTENING

M O N D AY 3 0

Fuel: 7300 W. 119th St., Overland Park, 913-451-0444. Colby & Mole.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS

The Phoenix Jazz Club: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Millie Edwards and Michael Pagan, 7 p.m.

32 t h e p i t c h 2 THE PITCH

The Brick: 1727 McGee, 816-421-1634. Rural Grit Happy Hour, 6 p.m. Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387. Karaoke Idol with Tanya McNaughty. RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Sonic Spectrum Music Trivia, 7 p.m., $5.

ROCK/POP/INDIE

PATIO & DECK BANQUET & PRIVATE PARTY FACILITY

DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS/ COMEDY/BAR GAMES

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909. Chad Elliott, Bonita Crowe.

S U N D AY 2 9

FOOD AND DRINK

DJ Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909. Liquid Lounge DJs. The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Sad Bastards Mondays with DJ Sweeny, 9 p.m., free.

The Hideout: 6948 N. Oak Tfwy., 816-468-0550. Jacque Garoutte.

Aftershock Bar & Grill: 5240 Merriam Dr., Merriam, 913-3845646. The Kansas City Rock and Comic-Con, 5 p.m.

NIGHTLY SPECIALS

The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483. Yarn. Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Adam Ezra Group, 10 p.m.

SINGER-SONGWRITER

VA R I E T Y

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Listen to 101 the FOX to WIN tickets!

The Majestic Restaurant is Proud to Support Live Jazz in KC! 931 Broadway KCMO | 816-221-1888 | majestickc.com

WEEKLY JAZZ LINEUP Sunday Nights – The Mark Lowrey Jazz Trio hosts an Open Jam Session 6-10PM – Bring your horn! Sunday Jazz Brunch – Featuring one of KC’s best Jazz Pianists 11AM-1PM Monday – The Mark Lowrey Jazz Trio 6-10PM Tuesday (Starting May 8) – The Hermon Mehari Jazz Trio 6-10PM Wednesday – Featuring one of KC’s best Jazz Pianists 6-8PM Thursday – The Bram Wijnands Jazz Duo 6-10PM Friday – The Bram Wijnands Jazz Trio 7-11PM & Jazz Piano Player 5-7PM Saturday – The Bram Wijnands Jazz Trio 7-11PM & Jazz Piano Player 5-7PM

As always, NO COvEr for World Class Jazz at The Majestic! Times and artists subject to change without notice pitch.com

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RAPHEAL HOTEL Happy Hour 5-Close Live Entertainment GRANFALLOON Smirfnoff Special O’Dowd’s Little Dublin Free Cover & $5 Boru Irish vodka

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WESPORT COFFEE HOUSE Free House Coffee with any Specialty Drink KC JUICE 75¢ Off With Wristband GREEN ROOM BURGERS AND BEER Free Small Fries with Any Entrée JOE’S PIZZA Buy the Slice 2 Slices For $5

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S AVA G E L O V E

H OOK ING I T U P

Hoping One Person Enters Dear HOPE: A hookup is a relationship. It may

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DAN SAVAGE

squirt. Now that he knows, he thinks it’s really hot that I can and wants me to do it. But I can’t seem to get to that point anymore. I have a vibrator, and when I masturbate, I can squirt — no problem. But even with me, or him, stimulating my clit while having sex, I just can’t do it and I don’t know why.

Dear Dan: Is it possible for a hookup to turn into a relationship?

be a short-term relationship, but it’s a relationship regardless. And, yes, a short-term hookup can turn into a long-term relationship, but not if you’re treating your hookups like shit (because they’re only hookups!) and not if you’re willing to let the people you hook up with treat you like shit (because you’re only a hookup). Treat your hookups like people you might actually see again — like human beings with human feelings, not just human holes and/or poles — and you might actually see them again. You might even wind up in a long-term relationship. Now, sometimes people hook up with strangers precisely because they wanna have sex with someone they don’t know and don’t expect to see again. And that’s not always a bad idea: Having sex with someone you don’t expect to see again can be very liberating. A girl who can’t let herself go with a guy she’s dating — maybe she fears being slut- or nympho-shamed by a boyfriend — will grind the dick off a hookup. And it can be easier to ask someone you don’t expect to see again to do something kinky. Say a straight boy has always wanted a girl to put him in her panties and peg his ass. He could ask a girlfriend to do that for him, but the stakes are higher. What if she freaks out and dumps him and blabs to her friends — and his — about why she dumped him? People who divide the fuckable world into those they care about (and can’t open up to sexually) and those they don’t care about (and can open up to sexually but won’t date) wind up having awesome sex with people they don’t know and lousy sex with people they marry. That’s not a good strategy for anyone interested in a successful — and sexually fulfilling — longterm relationship. So here’s what you should do. Be uninhibited with your hookups while treating them like people you might actually see again, and insist on being treated that way in return. Don’t hook up with people who treat you like shit; don’t treat the people you hook up with like shit. Even if you know you’re not going to see someone again — maybe they’re not someone you would date, or circumstances are such that you couldn’t date them even if you wanted to (business trip, European vacation, spring break, etc.) — treat your hookups with kindness, respect and gratitude. Finally, some people treat hookups like shit — only after they’ve come, natch — because they want their hookups to understand that they’re not interested in a relationship. That’s not just assholery, assholes; it’s completely unnecessary assholery. If someone was kind enough to suck your dick or fuck your brains out — if someone hooked up with your ass

What Should I Do? Dear WSID: You should relax.

— a little kindness and consideration aren’t too much to ask. If you’re worried that your hookup might misinterpret “kindness and consideration” for “I want to be with you forever,” tell them — gently and directly — that you’re not interested in a relationship.

Dear Dan: Straight guy here. For the first time in my life, I am with someone who understands how much my work is a part of who I am. (I travel for research and come home and agonize over writing it up.) We have a caring and affectionate relationship. She told me at the start that she has never had an orgasm and she didn’t believe in masturbation. I knew then that the sex would be vanilla, but I didn’t realize that a year later, it would be more vanilla and less frequent. I’m going out of my mind. In the early months, we discussed open relationships. Her view was that she wasn’t interested, but if I cheated, it would be fine as long as she never found out. At the time, it sounded like a trap; now it sounds like an option. Help.

Sex Too Underwhelming Can’t Kontinue Dear STUCK: If an honest open relationship is off the table, I’m gonna urge you to DTMFA. (I’m not saying your girlfriend is an MF — heavens, no — but DTMFA is the term of art around here.) I’m thinking that you’ll have an easier time getting a girl who likes sex to understand how important your work is to you than you’ll have getting this girl to understand how important sex is to you. You and your current girlfriend simply aren’t sexually compatible, and sexual compatibility matters when you’re picking a sex partner. Duh. DTMFA. Dear Dan: I am a girl and I am stuck. My boy-

friend and I have been dating for nine months, and I only recently told him that I can squirt. When we would have sex before, I would tell him to stop before I came because I didn’t want to

I’m not saying that you’ll squirt the next time you fuck your boyfriend if you can just relax, but you’ll get there sooner if you relax about it. And let’s remember why you weren’t squirting with the boyfriend: You were worried that he might react negatively or think it was gross. Not squirting was something you were doing for him. Now that you know he’s into it, you want to squirt for him. Stop thinking about him and start thinking about yourself. You trained your body not to come when you were with your boyfriend, and it’s going to take some time to undo that training. But if you can squirt when you masturbate alone, you can squirt with your boyfriend. And here’s how you can get there: Masturbate with your boyfriend in the house but not in your room. Then do it with him in the room but not in the bed with you — and, hey, put a blindfold on him if you’re self-conscious about him watching you. Then masturbate with him in the bed with you blindfolded. Then masturbate with him in the bed with you not blindfolded. Then masturbate with him in the bed and not blindfolded and touching you, then with him in the bed holding you, then with him in the bed helping you. Relax, enjoy, have fun, and you’ll get there. I promise.

Dear Dan: The advice you gave to TUSH — the gay

teenager worried because he and his boyfriend weren’t any good at gay sex — isn’t exclusive to the gay young’uns. Most of us don’t start with the discipline of practice and communication often required for mutually successful sex. My first attempts, as a virgin male with a virgin female, were hilariously awkward. Nothing worked, nothing fit. Fifteen years later, with a combined 30 years of experience, we hooked up again for one of our best-ever sexual encounters. Please let the gay kids know that they’re not at all alone in this crazy game of sex. Like anything worthwhile, it takes time and effort and practice to get good at it.

Only Learning Doth Make a Notch Dear OLDMAN: Thanks for sharing. Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/ savage.

Have a question for Dan Savage? E-mail him at mail@savagelove.net pitch.com

MONTH

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CCAREER EDUCATION UC O

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$100 Deposit, All Utilities Paid, Laundry Facilities. On Metro Bus Line as of 10/3/11. Holiday Apts, 115 W.CM Harlem Rd, KCMO 816-221-1721 Se Hable Espanol

No Exp. needed/ Training Provided/ Opportunity to Advance to MGMT. Submit Resume at www.mp-inc.org under contact us or call 816-912-2890 - MP Incorporated

HOTEL ROOMS

A-1 Motel 816-765-6300 Capital Inn 816-765-4331

Scareleoso Entertainment

PARTY WITH POKER IN HIS LIMO $200 per night. Call for details.

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VEHICHLES. Call J.G.S. Auto Wrecking For Quote. 913-321-2716 ot Toll free 1-877-320-2716

DOWNTOWN AREA STUDIO APT $110/WEEK Min.

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AMERICAN GROWN TOBACCO CUSTOM BLENDED TO YOUR TASTE

Simple, Uncontested + Filing Fee. Don Davis. 816-531-1330

OPIATE OR PAINKILLER ADDICTION? We can help! Call 913-381-6900

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$100 Deposit, All Utilities Paid, Laundry Facilities. On Metro Bus Line as of 10/3/11. Holiday Apts, 115 W. Harlem Rd, KCMO 816-221-1721 Se Hable Espanol

Gore Automotive: Westport

Over 30 years of experience. Dedicated to quality service and quality work. Specializing in European, Asian & Domestic. 104 Westport Rd, KCMO. 816-569-1007 - GoreAutomotive.com

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Gore Automotive: Westport

Over 30 years of experience. Dedicated to quality service and quality work. Specializing in European, Asian & Domestic. 104 Westport Rd, KCMO. 816-569-1007 - GoreAutomotive.com

I have pre-qualified buyers for your property. We guarantee your payment. Our lease purchase program is the sales solution for your property. 816-853-8369

Mon-Sat 10-8 Sun 12-5

APTS/JOBS/STUFF

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1038 W 103rd St. KCMO 816.941.4100