By NADIA PFLAUM
A Lee's Summit mom named Maria Sullivan filed a federal lawsuit today in Kansas City against the makers of baby products containing bisphenol A. The lawsuit, which also lists four other plaintiffs, seeks class-action status for anybody "who purchased plastic baby bottles, bottle liners, and cups containing the synthetic chemical."
Click here to read how Missouri biologist Frederick vom Saal and his team exposed the dangers of bisphenol A — and earned the wrath of the plastic industry.
And click here to read the lawsuit.
Andre Ethier is the most badass singer-songwriter you've never heard of. The Toronto musician (not to be confused with the LA Dodgers ballplayer of the same name*) used to front the grievously underrated garage-soul-folk-ruckus band the Deadly Snakes, which called it quits after releasing the Polaris-nominated album Porcella in 2006. Ethier continued on, and tonight at the Record Bar, he opens for lyrical genius Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer.
These two nuggets are off Andre's 2006 album Secondathallam (Paper Bag Records).
MP3: Andre Ethier, "The Best We Ever Had"
MP3: Andre Ethier, "Now I Wanna Be Your Dad"
*Fun fact!: Ethier was invited to sing "Oh Canada!" at a Blue Jays vs. Dodgers game.
By PETER RUGG
The Pitch — along with, apparently, every other media outlet in town — received an e-mail Tuesday for a free family portrait by photographer Michael T. Van De Carr at Temptations, a strip club downtown on Grand.
So this afternoon, I was joined by the Ginger Man and a resident women’s objectification expert – we’ll call her Cassandra — to scout the downtown gentlemen’s club. By the appointed time of 12:30, there were only a few, lightly perspiring men in dark suits waving placards with random slogans — and no one had taken the bait for free photos. There was one tall man with a fat digital camera, though unfortunately, he carried no Olan Mills-style backdrops. Disheartened, we got a table at Willie’s, where we could lean out the long, open windows and wait for something to happen.
Not much did, except for a circle jerk involving the local TV-news crews that did show up and a waxing crowd of the anti-strip-club crowd (captured in the photo below).
But no one except The Pitch, with this blog item, actually publicized the event beforehand. And even we were only a few hours ahead. So it seems reasonable that few Temptations regulars even knew about the sting.
By 1 p.m., the crowd started to disperse. We’d expected them to go at least an hour or at least wait for someone to come to the club. Cassandra and I jumped through the window and ran toward the crowd, holding hands so that they might assume we were a couple.
“I don’t want to be respected!” she said. “And how about the First Amendment?”
“I love watching tities! Let’s go watch some tits!” I said.
Unfortunately, they didn’t tell us about the error of our ways or offer to take a picture. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have a child with us. One man did tell us to have a blessed day, though.
We did go into Temptations to see if they’d barricaded themselves in, like the losing side in the last days of a war waiting out the artillery shells. But aside from one Amazonian bartender, a waitress and a security guard near the stage, the place was empty. There wasn’t even a dancer performing. Next door at the Cigar Box, the hostess told us the Christians had been taking photos of people’s parked cars and shots of the drivers getting out when they could. Perhaps they’ll be circulated later on a Web site, to shame them for parking within 30 feet of a place that, later today, will feature topless women.
“It’s all right though,” the hostess told us. “We just put on the music really loud and blasted them out. They left pretty soon.”
... thepitch
Enter it hither: place to buy tickets
And then say the magic word:
yousaaaaaaaiiiiieeeeeeeooooooo!
Local jazz blogger Plastic Sax recently made a muxtape of KC artists. Listen here.
Has anyone else out there made a local muxtape?
I'll get to work on one featuing shitty local gangsta rap and holler when it's done.
New Joy
By ANDY VIHSTADT
Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, returns next month with Lie down in the Light. According to the press release, “[He] decided to go back to where he recorded Master and Everyone and the results couldn’t be better. The album arrives with a faster pace than usual Bonnie releases and then settles into a low key groove.”
MP3: Bonnie “Prince” Billy: “So Everyone (demo)”
Original version appears on Lie Down in the Light out May 13 on Drag City
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN
In the American League, teams have nine players paid to hit major league pitching. The Royals, by starting Tony Peña Jr., neglect this by using eight. Before this appears as hyperbole, consider:
Peña in '08:
.141 batting average
.162 on base percentage
.183 slugging percentage
NL Pitchers in '08:
.141 batting average
.177 on base percentage
.180 slugging percentage
It’s clear Peña can't hit. Even if he hit for a high average, his plate discipline is awful and he has minimal power. For every astonishing defensive play, like the one Saturday, there have been errors at critical times -- one Sunday, one in Oakland the previous weekend. P.S., he is a god-awful bunter.
So what's the solution? The obvious one is Alberto Callaspo, who is an above average hitter and can hold his own at defense. But here's how bad Peña is: If Callaspo injured himself, the Royals would achieve greater production from Ángel Berroa. Berroa is hitting .291 with power in Omaha after a good 2007 season there. He averaged a .263 average with a .384 slugging percentage in his unhappy tenure in KC, which far exceeds how Peña is performing now or how Peña could ever manage.
So it has actually come to this: longing for Ángel Berroa. I even have an informal slogan if this occurs:
Indifference, Not Incompetence. Berroa for Shortstop.
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN
In the American League, teams have nine players paid to hit major league pitching. The Royals, by starting Tony Peña Jr., neglect this by using eight. Before this appears as hyperbole, consider:
Peña in '08:
.141 batting average
.162 on base percentage
.183 slugging percentage
NL Pitchers in '08:
.141 batting average
.177 on base percentage
.180 slugging percentage
It’s clear Peña can't hit. Even if he hit for a high average, his plate discipline is awful and he has minimal power. For every astonishing defensive play, like the one Saturday, there have been errors at critical times -- one Sunday, one in Oakland the previous weekend. P.S., he is a god-awful bunter.
So what's the solution? The obvious one is Alberto Callaspo, who is an above average hitter and can hold his own at defense. But here's how bad Peña is: If Callaspo injured himself, the Royals would achieve greater production from Ángel Berroa. Berroa is hitting .291 with power in Omaha after a good 2007 season there. He averaged a .263 average with a .384 slugging percentage in his unhappy tenure in KC, which far exceeds how Peña is performing now or how Peña could ever manage.
So it has actually come to this: longing for Ángel Berroa. I even have an informal slogan if this occurs:
Indifference, Not Incompetence. Berroa for Shortstop.
I'm about to the point where if I listen to this song one more time my head's going to fall off, but seriously -- good for the Tigers. This is some top-dollar work, probably not seen since, well, the Golden Republic was on Astralwerks and had this one done.
"Buildings & Mountains"
Summary: Tigers singer Kenn Jankowski drags a boat down the sidewalk of some Southwestern town. He passes band members along the way who join his expedition out into the desert, where they sit in the boat and look pensive. Très cinémathique.
Watch the making-of video after the jump.
By CHRIS PACKHAM
MyFox doesn't hate you. It just doesn't care that you're alive: If I had to pick a favorite local news channel, Fox 4 would definitely be in the running. Because in this crazy old Good Luck Chuck-making world, you need at least one island of stability, and I know for a fact that no matter how much the world changes, Phil Witt will always look exactly the same as he did in 1979. It's weird. But comforting!
Pictured: Phil Witt and his Cindy Crawford beauty mark, reporting live from the apocalypse 80 years from now.
Anyway, I occasionally link to stories on the Fox 4 Web site, and I owe you two kinds of apology for that: the regular, retroactive kind of apology, and also the pre-emptive kind, because I know I'll do it again in the future. But I'll do it soberly, the way you amputate a leg in order to save a dying puppy, because the Fox 4 site is the most disastrously bad site of all the local broadcast stations.
That's like being crowned the king of the floating island of human excrement that's choking off aquatic life around the Florida Keys, because all those Web sites are terrible. But in addition to its obvious retina-searing ugliness, the Fox 4 site loads, like, 12 different scripts and hijacks your browser for 20 or 30 seconds, apparently in order to launch a javascript newscrawl — just like the one on the Fox News channel! Whereas the one on Fox News says stuff like, "Cannibal sex parties: New trend for Democrats?" the one at the Fox 4 site says, hilariously: "Make myfoxkc.com Your Homepage." Why does that particular phrase have to crawl across a frame in your browser? I don't know. Science indicates that it actually will fit on your screen in its entirety.
So I hereby apologize for two things: (1) suggesting that there is a floating island of human excrement around the Florida Keys, which would be awesome from a news-gathering perspective, and (2) the following link to Fox 4.
MyFox Fan Fiction: Fox 4 is expressing journalistic outrage on behalf of you, the common man. The problem? A new road-tax system that penalizes the drivers of older cars. Did the treasury slip it through "on the quiet"? According to Fox 4, yes! The station tentatively adds the following piece of speculative, science-fiction-like journalism: "News of the levy is likely to provoke fury among motorists who have already been hit by soaring fuel costs." But how likely? Seventy-five percent? Eighty? If we're dealing in probabilities, the news copy-writing staff should take a page out of meteorologist Mike Thompson's book and switch to the time-tested Pop-O-Matic Bubble method of reporting. Otherwise, you need to cite your sources: "According to my ass, motorists will be furious."
Bumper sticker polemics: Oh! The federal excise tax on gasoline isn't actually used to fund the government department responsible for cataloging all the varieties of indigenous dust mites. What a surprise. The Hillary Clinton-John McCain plan for summer gas-tax relief would actually cut off funding for roadway projects. That's no problem in Kansas City, a town so tough, the streets are actually made out of steel plates, like the skin of a battle robot. But if you get the impression that I think the whole proposal is a whorish, pandering attempt at garnering the approval of blue-collar voters who can barely keep their heads above the payments on their gas-guzzling F-150 pickups, you've obviously seen the sticker in my car's rear window:
It's not pithy, but framing my arguments in formal "Calvin pissing" dialectic is my Fox 4 way of appealing to you, the common man.
The Gaf has closed in Waldo
Pitch Taste of KC beats the weather, draws 700 hungry people
Kanrocksas single-day tickets now on sale
Insane Clown Posse fans will be chugging Faygo in Lawrence tonight
Big Rip Brewing Co. opens to the world Sunday
Boulevard's Saison-Brett hits store shelves and taps Tuesday
KC Pride Festival 2013? Yes, it's still on
Rob Schamberger shows his paintings and sells prints of wrestling champions tonight with 100 percent of proceeds going to Make-A-Wish