BY OWEN MORRIS
Some of the best meals available in Kansas City are not on any menu. They're “off-menu” items, and they exist at almost every restaurant, available to regulars and whoever else is lucky enough to find out about them.
But you can’t just walk into most restaurants and ask about off-menu items. Many chefs will take that as an affront to the menu they designed, and waiters who don’t recognize you will give you the stink-eye as they think, “Who is this chump that thinks he owns the place?”
But these items do exist and they can be delicious. You just have to know what to ask for. Here are three that would make a good start.
I've had a busy morning, but the grossest headline I've read today is Brad Hugs Twins to His Bare Chest, from the Not-Kansas-City Star. I'm not 100 percent sure whether they're going for swoony romance novel imagery, or if they're implying that Brad Pitt is feeding all his breast milk to his new babies, but either way, GROSS. Below the jump, a creative project I've been working on, and some unfair stereotypes about seersucker-clad Southern political bosses. Click here or on the only Pulitzer-winning news journal available in the check-out lane at Green Apple Market.
By JEN CHEN
Last Saturday, I was out at Paddy O’Quigley’s at 119th Street and Roe for a karaoke birthday party. SoJoCo karaoke drew a preppy crowd. Guys in khaki shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts emblazoned with beer slogans or Greek letters clustered at the bar. Groups of women sported the official KC going-out look, which consists of strapless dresses, heels and shoulder-length sleek hair.
Because of her cute lacy sweater and maroon-purple belt, Lisa stood out from the rest of the crowd.
By MATT SPENCER
Great artwork tours all over this country, but these rolling installations don't go anywhere near Nelson-Atkins.
Each week, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
On the One Hand . . . The Economist's Joke Book.
Author: Economic Futurist Jeff Thredgold
Publisher: Thredgold Economic Associates
Date: 2001
The Cover Promises: D&D-style sorcery fun with a one-eared Richard Gephardt.
Discovered at: Goodwill at 89th & Wornall
Representative Quotes:
Page 24: “An 'acceptable' level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job."
Page 26: “A recession is when your neighbor has lost her job. A depression is when you lose yours.”
All right, all right. Maybe The Economist's Joke Book makes the same joke twice within three pages. (That's economical!) And maybe that joke is a thumb gouging out the eye of funny in the first place. (That saves on R&D!) And maybe Economic Futurist Jeff Thredgold's book is the self-published, sold-at-speaking-engagements, throw-awayable paperback equivalent of every forwarded e-mail your economist aunt ever passed on to everyone in her address book. Let's keep an open mind, here.
Page 57: “An economist is someone who knows 100 ways to make love ... but doesn't know any women/men.”
I don't know any women/men, either. But, really, Economic Futurist Jeff Thredgold, if you do get to know some women/men, or maybe some men/women, or even any other transgendered combination you happen upon in your Economic Futuring, the odds are good that the net gain in partner parts and orifices might boost your 100 known ways of making love exponentially.
You get one more chance, The Economist's Joke Book!!
The MP3 for this week's feature on Lawrence's swingingest new metal band, Hammerlord, has arrived!
It thrashes. It bashes. It wails. It's the perfect gift for Mother's Day. It cleans your chimney. It cleans your dad's chimney. It cleans your chimney dad. It makes all children resemble Clive Owen. It makes lawn furniture more comfortable. It makes French kissing legal again in Oklahoma. It turns plaid into paisley and paisley into the new symbol of the NOW. It elects Barack Obama's head on Claire McCaskill's body and gives it a John McCain-headed baby to kiss. In short, it may be the best thing to happen to metal since The Nothing. Plus, it's kinda catchy.
MP3: Hammerlord, "Dead City Radio"
"No wimps. No false metal."
Hammerlord singer Stevie Cruz asks that you visit the band's MySpace page and bang your head to three other releases from the upcoming record.
By ANDY VIHSTADT
Bob Dylan is releasing the 8th installment in his Bootleg Series on October 6. For $130, superfans can pre-order the special edition of Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, which is packed with extras, right here. (link1) Submit your email address here for a free download of “Dreamin’ of You,” an unreleased cut from the Time Out of Mind sessions.
BY OWEN MORRIS
A local beer blogger is giving away some awesome free schwag (sorry stoners, not that type) and all you have to do is answer one question right to be entered in the contest. If you are very knowledgeable about beer this is your contest. (A Beer Sort of Blog)
An article on cultivating a taste for cheap wine. Wasn't that what college was for? (WSJ)
Here's a New York Times op-ed that's about champagne. Except, it's not about champagne, it's about all wines. Or is it about globalization, recession or global warming? Frankly, the entire thing was more confusing than a Beckett play. But since it is on the most important page of the most important newspaper, it's probably good to read it anyhow. (NYT)
A state-by-state map of obesity levels. Kansas and Missouri are both squarely in the middle. Mississippi is the fattest and annoyingly, our neighbor to the west Colorado takes the title of thinnest by a good margin. I don't know if the solution is to diet or send truckloads full of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls to Denver. (Economist)
By FLANNERY CASHILL
In anticipation of his show this Friday, former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd talked with us at a mile a minute about Hendrix, rock and roll, and transcendental experiences.
Do you tour a lot?
No, and I want to. This is a real new beginning for me.
Have you been to Kansas City before?
Only with Television, I think opening for Peter Gabriel a long, long time ago. I’ve been to Kansas City with Rocket from the Tombs, I’m pretty sure. Rocket from the Tombs is like nitroglycerin, a one-act play where we blow the theater up at the end. It’s very exciting, hard rock, like Alice Cooper meets the Stooges meets Led Zeppelin, so it was very fun for me. And I’m pretty sure I played Kansas City on my Field of Fire tour which would have been in ’87, but not since then and I’m real excited to get over there. A musician is paid to go where the tourists pay to go and when you get there they applaud. I was on my knees when I was a teenager wanting to be a successful musician. Now I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, I’d be an idiot. But it is true that a week or so into the tour, I think, What have I gotten myself into? I’m playing in rooms with no windows and all-black walls and everybody’s intoxicated and I don’t drink, and I think, Oh my god, and then when it’s half over I say, Oh no! I wish it was twice as long!, and it’s over. They plop you down in front of your house and it’s hard to stop moving.
More after the jump.
I don'ts gots cables, otherwise I might have plunked myself in front of the tube a couple weeks ago to catch Lawrence band Big Surrender on the Lifetime show Army Wives. And then I might have grown breasts, but it wouldn't have been the band's fault.
Check out the playlist for episode 7, "Uncharted Territory," and go to the band's MySpace to hear the mighty catchy "Empty House."
Cool! But how'd they do it? Read on, friends, read on....
Phoenix will headline Buzz Beach Ball in September
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Boulevard and Sierra Nevada join forces for Terra Incognita, which hits shelves Wednesday