Tragically, The Weekly World News, America’s only newspaper, went out of business earlier this year. I have absolutely no idea what it was like working at the WWN photo sweatshop, but the editors were clearly excellent at fostering creativity. When I think back on the 1990s, it’s with vivid memories of Bill Clinton’s summits with space aliens, apocalyptic New Year’s predictions that generally failed to come true and the soap-opera life of the perpetually aghast Bat Boy.
The Barn Players are staging Bat Boy – The Musical at the Barn Players Theater (6219 Martway in Mission), a show based on the WWN’s journalistic accounts of the chiropteric boy’s tumultuous life. Catch shows tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
It goes without saying that, because tonight is First Friday, you should rooster around the Crossroads, flaunting your new autumn finery and pretending to look at the art. Before Regulated Industries figured out that there were people in the city having unregulated fun, you could get free beer and wine at many of the more forward-thinking galleries and socialize with a civilized buzz. But that is clearly a pre-9/11 mindset. DO NOT DRINK, art aficionados, especially not from a hip flask or a bag-wrapped bottle, and not while you are taking in any of the following First Friday exhibits.
Jun Kaneko at the Sherry Leedy Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2004 Baltimore.
Pottery by Linda Christianson at Red Star Studios, 821 West 17th Street.
Various artists at an Open Studios event at the Kansas City Artists Coalition, 201 Wyandotte.
Jen Fridy’s Monsterladyland continues at the Mercy Seat, 210 East 16th Street, with musical guests American Catastrophe.
AND MANY MORE!
It has been a long time since Bill Moyers' The Power of Myth series of interviews with Joseph Campbell, which aired on PBS, the thinking man’s CBS. It was basically a weeklong discussion of Star Wars that George Lucas retroactively seized on as an intellectual underpinning he could cite whenever anyone bitched about Ewoks. Since then, the culture has absorbed enough unnecessary hours of Star Wars to justify casting Kevin Smith in the role of the United States of America in a hateful sitcom about a fat, subliterate country that eats nothing but Mashed Potato Bowls from Kentucky Fried Chicken and constantly references Yoda.
Anyway, Bill Moyers, whom PBS was lucky enough to land as the host of the appropriately named Bill Moyers Journal comes to Unity Temple on the Plaza (707 West 47th Street, 816-561-4466) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday to discuss the limits of presidential power with NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Hopefully, this discussion will not hinge on Lando Calrissian’s administrative term at a Tibanna gas mine.
What I like about independent radio can pretty much be summed up by the phrase "no Green Day" and also by a new swear that I just made up called "Nickelback-ass," as in "Turn off that Nickelback-ass, Creed-ass, Everclear-ass, Alt-Generica Clear Channel bullshit and play some Kelley Stoltz." Another reason I like independent radio: Without it, how would I even know that Mumia Abu-Jamal was even still alive? Except by talking to hippies, I mean. In fact, Abu-Jamal is still sitting on Pennsylvania's death row, writing essays, and recording commentary for Redwood Fund-endowed Prison Radio, which you can hear on KKFI 90.1 right here in Kansas City. WHO KNEW? Well, anybody who listens to KKFI, which should be everybody.
As it turns out, Abu-Jamal has a no-kidding dulcet radio voice. What with all the death-row-sitting, the man truly missed his calling. KKFI is having another fundraiser at 8 p.m. Saturday at Marty's Blues Cafe (5240 Merriam Drive in Merriam). It's a performance by 2006 Kansas Music Hall of Fame inductees Eric and the Norsemen, who rocked (or, I dunno, bluesed) the area back in the 1960s. What I'm saying is, attend, so that KKFI can continue broadcasting syndicated fare such as Mumia Abu-Jamal's commentaries, and also our own dulcet-voiced Charles Ferruzza. -- Chris Packham
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