In 1984, Kansas City's Gay Pride Festival was little more than a halfhearted little carnival set up in the parking lot behind the since-razed Dover Fox saloon, at 43rd Street and Main. Over the past 29 years, the event has gotten much bigger, much grander - with the occasional financial scandal here and there.
This year, after a 2012 turn in the Power & Light District, the Gay Pride Festival is "scaling down, going back to basics," says the festival's chairman, Mason Hakes. Instead of a lavishly mounted production featuring nationally known performers, this year's Pride Festival returns to Westport on May 31 and June 1 and has booked only local performers, organized by Kansas City drag queen Moltyn Decadence.
It could be a long, long show: "NO ONE will be turned away that wants to showcase their talents," writes Ms. Decadence on the Facebook page for the Kansas City Diversity Coalition, the new organization sponsoring the event.
Also like his act, the book forswears profanity - not least because Dad Is Fat isn't just kid-friendly but kid-centered. But now an unexpected oath hangs in the air: the W-word. He wonders why people keep saying his contribution to goofy-father lit feels so ...
"Sentimental?" he asks. "Does wistful mean, I don't know, a sentimentality, a sincerity?" I make some fumbling defensive noises while scrolling through a mental thesaurus for a more flattering alternative, something less Proustian. But Gaffigan isn't really complaining. This comic, whose lens is perhaps second only to Jerry Seinfeld's in terms of clarity and polish, is just doing what he does: observing.
Friends of KCI just announced plans to start an initiative petition to prevent the advancement of a new airport terminal without the approval of voters.
"We do not need to spend $1.5 billion on a new airport," reads Friends of KCI's statement. "We believe there are better options."
Friends of KCI is something of an ad hoc group of Brookside residents with an ear to the ground under City Hall. It is focused against a single-terminal version of Kansas City International Airport.
"Microdistilleries look like the beginning stages of the microbrewery thing about 20 years ago," Strong says. "And I thought it would be cool to be in on something like this."
Thursday, May 16, at the Jackpot Music Hall, $8.
In print this week, we chatted with Brad Shanks of Replay Records, and rounded up a few recent releases from the the Lawrence label. One of them was a split 7" with the Hips and Hospital Ships. The latter's new album, Destruction in Yr Soul, is out June 18 on Graveface Records. Yesterday, both Pitchfork and Stereogum previewed "If It Speaks," a very Built-to-Spill-like song from the album. Up above us there is the video for "Servants," another song from Destruction in Yr Soul. In it, you will see elaborate wardrobes, the drinking of some kind of slime and various warrior rituals. Enjoy!
The jury in the Petro America case has returned guilty verdicts for all defendants in the Petro America trial.
The trial, which started April 17, went to the jury around noon Tuesday. Deliberation lasted nearly 24 hours.
Isreal Owen Hawkins was the CEO of a Kansas City company that held itself out as a natural-resources company which had generated $284 billion in revenues.
Paul Bax was asleep when he got the call. It was May 8, and he'd finished working his graveyard shift for the U.S. Postal Service. He was being summoned to testify in one of the oddest trials in Kansas City memory.
Bax wasn't blowing off a subpoena. Rather, this was his first notice that Isreal Owen Hawkins was trying to get him on the stand. By then, the prosecution had rested its case against Hawkins, the founder and CEO of Petro America, who is accused of securities fraud ("Fleecing the Flock," October 28, 2010).
So Bax, a proud father of two straight-A students and an investor in Petro America, hopped out of bed, donned a two-piece suit and zipped downtown to the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri. He was Hawkins' first witness - but not the first sign that Hawkins was in trouble.
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Soundgarden's sludgy sound, last night at the Midland (review)
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Parisi's Pete Licata is a World Barista Championship semifinalist
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Story celebrates with a pig roast and other weekend possibilities
Kansas House ignores Brownback, Senate, goes home early for long weekend