Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Effort to Return Kansas City to Its Agricultural Roots
  To Roost
  For three weeks in May, denizens around 18th and Main weren't imagining the occasional rooster crow echoing through the Crossroads District's industrial/artistic landscape. The cock, named Bobby Du Soul, was part of a Telephone Booth exhibition by Jessica Johnson, a land surveyor and artist.... More >>
• Best Place to Meditate on Art
  Buddhist Temple
  When this old world starts getting you down, or when you just need a place to hear yourself think, retreat to the quiet and dimly lit Buddhist temple tucked into the second floor of the Nelson's east wing. Compiled from centuries-old Chinese temples, the space is built to resemble a single... More >>
• Best Weekend Folk Art Getaway
  Lucas, Kansas
  Lucas, Kansas, is a little more than three hours away from here by car, but well worth the trip for any fan of unusual art. For the better part of a century, it's been home to the Garden of Eden. The national treasure was made by S. P. Dinsmoor, a schoolteacher farmer who had a unique... More >>
• Best Reason to Read a Book in Kansas City
  Vivien Jennings
  Vivien Jennings has become a major player in the book world. Along with partner Roger Doeren, she's brought numerous hot authors to town, earning a national reputation for attracting some of the biggest crowds in the country (a couple thousand people) to author events. Savvy publicists... More >>
• Best Pretentious Author Lecture
  Dave Eggers
  Widely celebrated for his book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers drew a huge crowd composed mostly of hipsters and suburbanites. While his lecture had its ups and downs, it succeeded in dividing the crowd into those who thought he really was a genius and those who thought... More >>
• Best Author Appearance
  James Ellroy
  The wiry, gray-haired gentleman strutting on stage in a pin-striped suit came to read from and discuss his new book, The Cold Six Thousand -- not to watch a documentary about his own life. So James Ellroy announced (after calling members of the audience pimps, pedophiles and panty sniffers) that... More >>
• Best Airing of Kansas City's Dirty Laundry
  Whitney Terrell, The Huntsman
  Whitney Terrell is a 33-year-old writer in residence at Rockhurst University. This summer Viking published his first novel, The Huntsman. Plot-wise it's a standard mystery: A prominent judge's daughter has been murdered, and the wrong man's headed for the fall. But the judge's daughter was a... More >>
• Best Film Festival
  Halfway 2 Hollywood
  The Halfway 2 Hollywood Film Festival that debuted this June didn't just bring cinema in Kansas City up to par with regular film offerings in other cosmopolitan cities. It delivered a genuine extravaganza packed with celebrity appearances, small-budget films, old movies, genre movies,... More >>
• Best Place to Fall in Love Again with Ingrid Bergman
  Englewood Theater
  To hell with American Movie Classics -- true fans of Ingrid Bergman (or any other starlet of Hollywood's Golden Age) know that tiny TV tubes are no substitute for the Englewood Theater's fifty-foot screen. It's the only revival theater in the metro area and it's also a great date spot. With its... More >>
• Best Play
  The Laramie Project / Machinal (tie)
  Though The Laramie Project is only two years old and Machinal is pushing ninety, both plays examined various members of the underclass without once condescending to them. Both plays addressed oppression -- the first, against gay people; the second, against poor, unskilled females -- by... More >>
• Best Place to Hear Live Hip Hop
  The Next Space
  This 18th Street storefront might appear an unlikely spot for entertainment; it is, after all, essentially empty, no marquee broadcasting the names of the night's main acts or coming attractions, no box office, no eye-catching logo. But that bare-bones sensibility makes it possible to transform... More >>
• Best Actress in a Play
  Gena Bardwell in The Glass Menagerie
  Except for pointlessly resetting the play in Kansas City instead of Tennessee Williams' own St. Louis, The Coterie's all-black casting of the classic The Glass Menagerie found its heart and soul carried in Gena Bardwell's Amanda. Fiercely defending her pathologically shy daughter while... More >>
• Best New Club
  The Madrid Theatre
  At first, The Madrid Theatre's arrival on the just-off-Westport scene long ruled by the Grand Emporium and Davey's Uptown raised more questions than it answered: Is this place really going to open in time? (It didn't, but its grand opening was only a few weeks off-track.) Is it really going to... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress in a Play
  Kathleen Warfel in The Odd Couple
  This year, it seemed as if a wellspring of actors found complexity in fairly safe surroundings; they gave underwritten characters breadth that wasn't on the page. A small role in the American Heartland Theatre's female Odd Couple wasn't much of a challenge for someone like Kathleen Warfel. But... More >>
• Best Out-of-Control Performance
  The Last of the V8's
  It's safe to say that frontman Ryan Mattes had consumed a beverage substantially more toxic than V-8 before taking the stage for one of The Hurricane's aptly named Hellbound Wednesday rock showcases. Mattes yanked a cable from the ceiling (much to the soundman's dismay), repeatedly dropped his... More >>
• Best Crowd
  Weezer/The Get Up Kids
  Weezer famously made it acceptable to be geeky, and the band's fans lived its hip-to-be-square mantra at this feel-good show, dancing dorkily and cheering wildly without even attempting to maintain a cool sense of detachment. But while it was pleasantly novel to see people having fun at a... More >>
• Best Accordion Player
  Heather Cave, Lovelorn
  The alternative country band Lovelorn, originally consisting of vocalist Alex Fox and guitarist Teague Hayes, began playing gigs last fall. Early shows displayed a promising, if timid, lead voice, and lyrics as precise as they were poignant -- but the duo hadn't yet determined its direction.... More >>
• Best Cultural Oasis in Johnson County
  Johnson County Community College Gallery of Art
  Amid the metro's southwestern suburban sprawl stands a beacon of high culture -- the Johnson County Community College Gallery of Art. Directed by nationally renowned collector Bruce Hartman, the facility has graced Kansas City with work by some of the heaviest hitters in the international art... More >>
• Best Installation
  De Tempore
  In November and December, in conjunction with the Nelson's Tempus Fugit exhibition, Grand Arts hosted a show called De Tempore. It focused on objects that made the abstract notion of time's passage visually concrete and tangible. The three artists who contributed were Jyung Mee Park, Tara... More >>
• Best Curator
  Dana Self
  Few people know that the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art's spirited Dana Self brought honor on the city this past year when the National Endowment for the Arts named her to a panel that decides which museums and institutions get NEA funding. She also snagged a prestigious invitation to Bard... More >>
• Best Weekend Modern Art Getaway
  Des Moines Art Center
  First off, there's the building, which is a work of art in itself. The Des Moines Art Center was built in three stages, each designed by a top Twentieth Century architect: Eliel Saarinen (who designed the St. Louis arch), I. M. Pei (who conceived the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland) and... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor in a Musical
  Charles Fugate in Sweet Underground Charity
  Charles Fugate represented the straight man (well, sort of) in the center of a glitzy posse of bruised and battered boy and girl hustlers in Late Night Theatre's Sweet Underground Charity. With so much gloss and mascara plastered about, Fugate's conservatively dressed gentleman might have been... More >>
• Best Ensemble
  The Laramie Project
  The eight actors who played fifty residents of Laramie, Wyoming, in the Unicorn's The Laramie Project were at a disadvantage. In a normally structured play, actors have scenes with other actors. Here, in a series of brilliantly compiled monologues, they were often by themselves, creating... More >>
• Best Approach to an '80s Revival
  DJ Soulbot
  People have been reviving elements of colorful '80s fashion -- wristbands, cutoff sleeves -- in what seems like a contest to remember the weirdest relics of that backwards-skating glow-stick culture. The products of the '80s that were legitimately good, however, seem to have been neglected. John... More >>
• Best Wardrobe Mistress
  Georgianna Londré
  Between costuming productions at the Unicorn and Late Night Theatre, Georgianna Londré still managed to squeeze in a few side jobs. She's not had a flawless year; the back-up band's wardrobe in Hedwig and the Angry Inch for example, was unfortunate. But she seems to travel with a sketch... More >>
• Best Sound Man
  Little John Howard
  Ten, maybe fifteen, times before each act goes on stage, the Grand Emporium sound guy, Little John Howard, listens to the band members say, "check, check, check." Often, he must climb down from his perch above the beer-toting crowd and inch his way through to the stage. Once there, he... More >>
• Best Silk from Sows' Ears
  Hits from Flops
  It was a brave decision to use the word "flops" in a show title. But J. Kent Barnhart's expertise in musical theater mined one gem after another. Hits from Flops featured great tunes from misunderstood projects, like the Siamese-twin musical Side Show, and a few songs by Stephen Sondheim, whose... More >>
• Best Surprise Shows
  Reggie and the Full Effect, August 6, 2001 / The Get Up Kids, May 11, 2001
  Local music fans usually celebrate when a group raised in the area succeeds, even if that act subsequently packs up and moves to the coast, only to return on national tours. However, this feeling of pride and attachment grows much stronger if the band stays locally based, and it intensifies to... More >>
• Best Hire
  Sidonie Garrett
  Sidonie Garrett's success at making the Shakespeare Festival's Twelfth Night a spirited 1940s comedy was one of the things that led the organization to bring her on as artistic director. After several years in which her theater savvy was only a bit of moonlighting from her day job at a public... More >>
• Best Launch
  Peter Altman
  When Peter Altman was tapped to fill George Keathley's shoes at Missouri Repertory Theatre, it sent the acting community into an uproar. Actors were worried about losing their income if Altman began casting from out of town (and those fears partly came true). But Altman's was a favorable debut... More >>
• Best Comedian
  B. Rich
  Be sure to go to the bathroom before B. Rich gets on stage -- he'll have you laughing so hard you'll lose all control. Haling from KCK, Rich is easily the funniest guy in town. "I joke about what most people think about, like 'How does the pool table know to only send the white ball back?'" he... More >>
• Best New Radio Station
  e105.1 FM
  The best new radio station isn't one that's actually known for playing new music. Sure, occasionally a three-minute eternity such as Lifehouse's "Hanging by a Moment" and Train's "Drops of Jupiter" bleeds over from the other stations on which it's already overplayed, but e105.1 FM compensates... More >>
• Best Local Radio Show
  "Rockabilly Mood Swing"
  Johnny Cash and Social Distortion belong together, and Lynne Greenamyre and Tex Houston make this deep truth irrefutable every Friday afternoon on "Rockabilly Mood Swing." Their playlist stretches from the hometown bands that play at Davey's Uptown on any given Friday night all the way to Texas... More >>
• Best Unreleased Song
  "Nail the Devil to the Door"
  Big Jeter's blend of edgy performance art and old-school country doesn't always please everyone, but one of its songs always leaves even the most skeptical barflies satisfied. A gospel flavored stomp-along that urges the physical overthrow of Satan, "Nail the Devil to the Door" combines catchy... More >>
• Best Release
  AngHellic (JCOR/Interscope)
  Tech N9ne's major-label debut AngHellic is one of those rare hip-hop discs that blends party-ready choruses with genuine lyrical insights. The complex AngHellic sees Tech fearing fatherhood ("Real Killer"), hitting the strip clubs ("Here I Come," which memorably allows him to rhyme "Kansas City"... More >>
• Best Stories
  www.kcstories.com
  Dozens of older Kansas Citians have begun telling their histories at kcstories.com. Founded by writing teacher Michael Humphrey, the Thousand Stories project involves several public library systems and senior citizens' centers around the area, all of them encouraging old folks to write -- now.... More >>
• Best Marquee
  Uptown Theater
  Not only does the Uptown's high-visibility marquee inform commuters on one of the city's most-traveled streets about upcoming events; it also gives touring acts the impression that Kansas City is a must-stop destination for top musicians. It's versatile, too, surrendering space for wedding kudos... More >>
• Best Glorification of Sprawl
  Johnson County Museum of History
  Some call it sprawl, but the creators of the Johnson County Museum of History call it "the good life." And why not? That's what people move to Johnson County in search of, isn't it? The museum's winding exhibition space documents the earliest settlers in the area, through the early twentieth... More >>
• Best Place to See an Intimate Music Show
  The Pub
  Gigs at The Pub range from those by newly formed bands just making a name for themselves to groups hailing from faraway places like Australia, merchandise in hand. The thread that ties these shows together is the friendliness that quickly develops between performers and audience members. The Pub... More >>
• Best Place to Go to a Random Concert
  Davey's Uptown
  Even the best area clubs have off nights, hosting popular groups with dubious talent (or creatively bankrupt cover bands, which help bankroll risks on high-quality acts with smaller followings). But for the most part, if you like one show at Davey's Uptown, you'll like them all. Davey's has a... More >>
• Best All-Ages Club
  El Torreon
  Celebrating its second birthday -- an impressive accomplishment given that the lifespans of Kansas City's all-ages clubs are traditionally measured in fruit-fly years -- El Torreon now boasts an improved sound system, a few arcade games and a cozy concert area. Still the best place for the... More >>
• Best Place to See Free Movies
  Westport Presbyterian Church
  Westport's Film Chat Room and Cinema 'n' Soul sessions are sponsored by a church, but don't let that scare the bejesus out of you. Shown in a parlor where pews have been replaced by comfy sofas, movies are geared toward open-minded investigation. The monthly Cinema 'n Soul program began when... More >>
• Best TV Show
  "Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations"
  Living in the very heart of the country, we Kansas Citians are blessed with a uniquely intimate view of America. All around us are miles and miles of horizon filled with some of the strangest people on earth. At any time, we can hop in our cars to seek them out. Or we can let the hosts of "Rare... More >>
• Best Free Entertainment
  Recycled Sounds in-store performances
  Say you're a fourteen-year-old Get Up Kids fan whose meager allowance made attending the band's big arena rock shows (with Green Day and Weezer) a financial impossibility. Being underage, the shows at Davey's Uptown and The Bottleneck are out, too. So what's a teen to do? Well, Recycled Sounds,... More >>
• Best Actor in a Play
  Scott Cordes in The Hobbit
  The always watchable Scott Cordes took a leap by returning to a children's theater after a decade in darker territories. He triumphed at Theatre for Young America, making the story's spectacular adventures as nuanced as the quiet moments he spent sitting at a table and chatting with the... More >>
• Best Salsa Dancing
  Club Oasis
  Whenever you get the urge to swing your hips to a merengue beat or move your feet to salsa music, Club Oasis is the place to go. At least, it's the place Latinos like to go. On Saturday nights, it's always packed, the music is loud and almost everyone is laughing and chatting in Spanish. It's a... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor in a Play
  Henry Vick in Twelfth Night
  The whole cast was as fine as it could be in the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival's Capraesque interpretation of Twelfth Night, directed by the Festival's new artistic director, Sidonie Garrett. Henry Vick stood out, though, and not just because he's seven feet tall. He fluttered about like... More >>
• Best Low-Key Performance
  Namelessnumberheadman and The Stella Link
  People don't always go to a rock club to get rocked. Sometimes, they'd prefer to be transported to a synthesizer-smothered fantasy world, led by musicians who are so at ease in their tour-guide roles that they'll sit and play their keyboards on the floor. The Stella Link and... More >>
• Best Musical
  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
  The songs in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day weren't particularly memorable and the story was rather predictable. But the energetic cast, led by a crew of Late Night Theatre actors (Michael Andrew Smith as the bummed Alexander and Missy Koonce as his clueless mother,... More >>
• Best Concert
  Gil Scott-Heron
  Gil Scott-Heron's spontaneous appearance at The Blue Room took many local jazz fans by surprise. It also stunned Heron's own publicist, who says "Gil doesn't tell us when he's touring." But for those lucky enough to hear about the show through the 18th and grape-Vine, Scott-Heron's mix of... More >>
• Best Silver Lining
  Marilyn Manson at OZZfest
  For the most part, this year's OZZfest provided nothing but misery -- horrendous soundalike bands, frequent downpours paired with chilly winds, groan-inducing T-shirt slogans -- but there was one bright spot, one set that was so brilliantly staged that for thirty minutes it was possible to... More >>
• Best Indoor Mural
  The Don Quixote Frescoes
  In the 1930s, Luis Quintanilla was considered one of Spain's greatest living artists (Pablo Picasso held the premier spot). During the Spanish Civil War, Quintanilla's Loyalist activities brought him jail time, then exile when his party lost the war. In 1940, in cooperation with the Committee... More >>
• Best Art Exhibition
  Tempus Fugit: Time Flies
  Time ain't what it used to be. Not since we invented it, and certainly not since the turn of the twentieth century. Our concept of time will continue evolving as we develop new technologies, devise new scientific theories and create new paradigms of thought. The Nelson's Tempus Fugit: Time Flies... More >>
• Best Gallery
  Dirt Gallery
  Young artists Davin Watne and Leo Esquivel have neither money nor status to lose. They rely on firsthand knowledge of what makes good art, and close ties with other artists, to keep their Dirt Gallery afloat. The gallery specializes in innovative, short-lived shows and opening-night parties that... More >>
• Best Flier Design
  Molly Murphy
  Molly Murphy had a prolific few months early this year as the illustrator of numerous band fliers -- the colorful papers plastered on record store counter fronts and coffee shop bulletin boards. Whether we realize it or not, their aesthetic quality influences whether we stop and read or continue... More >>
• Best Actor and Actress in a Musical
  Brian Patrick Miller and Karen Hinton in Maybe Baby, It's You
  It came down to split-second timing -- the ability to play geeks and sophisticates with a quick change of costume and demeanor. Brian Patrick Miller and Karen Hinton actually played dozens of roles in Maybe Baby, It's You's madcap look at love in all of its fits and starts. They took a... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress in a Musical
  Karen Errington in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
  With merely one song in Act Two, Karen Errington’s bravura performance brought The New Theatre’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat alive. Errington may have the strongest vocal chords in town, and she makes singing look effortless; she doesn’t have to show off that she’s a Broadway... More >>
• Best Sets
  Missouri Repertory Theatre
  Machinal's stark minimalism and Major Barbara's oversized library and arms factory roof pooh-poohed The Missouri Repertory Theatre's past habit for fastidious realism. Russell Metheny's Machinal set smoothly danced into various configurations of the heroine's drab world; it had the troubled... More >>
• Best Versatile Artists
  The Kansas City Symphony
  Conducted by music director Anne Manson, The Kansas City Symphony has stretched its range to perform alongside everyone from Kenny Rogers to spectacular soloist Frederica von Stade to "Bugs Bunny on Broadway." However, the Symphony's most impressive showing of the year came in an unscheduled... More >>
• Best Avant-Gardism
  Evaporated Milk Society
  So many actors, directors and theater companies say they're going to do this or that play in a way that hasn't ever been done. And then Randall Cohn comes back to town from New York and practices what others preach. Even the audition announcement for the Evaporated Milk Society's upcoming Hamlet... More >>
• Best-Dressed Band
  Big Jeter
  Whether the members of Big Jeter are performing on stage or rushing the stage (as they did at the 2001 Klammies awards show), they always manage to stand out, thanks to their great sense of style: eclectic-meets-variety-show chic. Collectively, the band probably has more accessories and props... More >>
• Best Understudy
  Jon Piggy Cupit, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
  When it became clear that Rick Hammerly was not going to miss a performance in the Unicorn's Hedwig and the Angry Inch, someone had the brilliant idea to give over an afternoon of the Unicorn's stage to his understudy, Jon Piggy Cupit, for an hour of Hedwig highlights. Cupit's friends and peers... More >>
• Best Local Musician
  Tech N9ne
  For a glimpse at what makes Tech N9ne Kansas City's most explosive performer, think back to closing night of this year's Spirit Fest. A languid affair that exhumed unlamented '80s casualties, Spirit Fest lucked into scoring Tech N9ne at his hottest, only a few days after his album AngHellic hit... More >>
• Best Anthropomorphism
  Michael Andrew Smith in The Hobbit
  This year, Michael Andrew Smith came into his own with two diverse performances: in The Laramie Project, where he played several roles including Matthew Shepard's killer, Aaron McKinney; and in the elementary-school-aged title role in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.... More >>
• Best Place to Give a Shoutout to All Your Friends
  Hot 8@8 on Hot 103 Jamz
  Every night, the crew at KPRS 103.3 tallies up the day's requests and plays the eight most popular songs. The music's good, but what makes the Hot 8@8 especially entertaining are the intros, which are read by fans. Everyone gets a few seconds to give a shoutout to everyone they know, and... More >>
• Best Locally Produced Fanzine
  Rocky Mountain High Newsletter
  Hilltop crooner, bowl-cut champion and sort-of actor John Denver perished in a plane crash on October 12, 1997. Yet his spirit continues to soar like the gleaming love of a mountain girl -- and not just in late-night cable ads peddling his greatest hits. With each monthly e-zine issue, the Rocky... More >>
• Best Jukebox
  Dave's Stagecoach Inn
  The jukebox can be an instrument of empowerment. Play the right songs, and you'll have everyone in the bar swaying and singing along, shooting many approving glances your way. However, if you select, say, the entire repertoire of Enigma or the screechy hidden tracks of Beck, you'll be publicly... More >>
• Best Song
  "It's Alive", Tech N9ne
  After the prelude to this year's most slammin' single welcomes listeners to a "purgatory party," Tech N9ne opens the gates to Heaven, revamping D.O.C.'s classic "It's Funky Enough" over a thumping beat adrenalized by skittering drum-and-bass flourishes. Lyrically, "It's Alive" expresses Tech's... More >>
• Best Cow Reference
  "The Truth About Cows"
  On "The Truth About Cows," the opening track to its just-released album The Egg, Shiner's Allen Epley dutifully records the activities of a fairly unremarkable herd. The cows, they all make love/then leave when they are done, Epley notes with the detached tone of a bored wildlife documentarian.... More >>
• Best Defense of Literature
  "A Critic's Manifesto"
  Literature has always fallen victim to the publishing industry's greatest priority: its bottom line. Yet somehow the art of writing manages to keep rising -- all the way to the heart and brain, where intelligent, sensitive readers seek more than just entertaining plots to kill time. That wasn't... More >>
• Best Billboard
  Tech N9ne, AngHellic Album Release
  For motorists traveling south down Broadway, it might have been somewhat disconcerting to see an enormous image of Tech N9ne's face towering over Westport, a red "9" seemingly scorched into his forehead and braids lurking above his head like crimson snakes poised to attack. But those who weren't... More >>
• Best Place to Waste a Rainy Afternoon
  Toy and Miniature Museum
  You don't have to be with a child to enjoy this celebration of childish things. In fact, a noisy or rambunctious kid can actually ruin the richly nostalgic experience of wandering through the Toy and Miniature Museum's rooms filled with relics of long-gone childhoods. The vast collection is... More >>
• Best Midnight Matinee
  Big Jeter, Audio/Visual Club
  Usually, midnight movies offer cult favorites, inspiring even people who have seen the film a dozen times to make the trip for novelty's sake. Big Jeter, however, tempers the menu of classics (Dolemite, Shogun Assassin) with true oddities such as the inept '70s slasher flick Midnight Caller... More >>
• Best Jack of All Trades
  Gary Huggins, a.k.a. Big Jeter
  Gary Huggins is a man with so many names that we hardly know what to call him. It is possible to talk to Jeter under several different guises without realizing that he is just one man, though if you point that out to him he's likely to get carried away, claiming to be Walt Bodine, Venus at... More >>
• Best Place to Rock Out on Monday Nights
  Grand Emporium
  It's well established that the Grand Emporium is the area's, if not the country's, premier blues club, so publicly recognizing it as such would be redundant. Lesser known is the venue's consistent booking of solid rock acts, most of which come packaged with a strong local opener, on Zone... More >>
• Best Festival
  Kansas City's Blues and Jazz Festival
  When planning a festival that has the city's name in its title, it's best to tap into the local music resources, especially in talent-rich Kansas City. So instead of throwing money at B. B. King and Buddy Guy, both of whom would pass through the area anyway on their annual tours, Kansas City's... More >>