Kansas City News Blog

Television is dead. The first writers strike in 20 years has ended production on every show that we’re willing to admit still matters, so — other than an expressed desire to return to the womb — there’s absolutely no excuse for staying in the house anymore. Look: WE MISS ALEC BALDWIN, TOO. And this abrupt hiatus in his startling career renaissance is totally unfair. But he would want you to get out and experience your city — you can TiVo The Hills, people. But can you TiVo your lives?

We begin with poetry:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

That’s what we like about Langston Hughes: In the midst of verse about the deep frustrations of an entire race, the man had a sense of humor that could match the grossness quotient of the Farrelly brothers. Except that Hughes was amazingly hip and urbane, whereas the Farrelly brothers have spent their entire careers asking the world, cinematically, to “tell them again about the rabbits.” Yep, they suck, but we’ll let our Farrelly hatred “crust and sugar over” just long enough to tell you that tonight, the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Library presents Something Semple: The Power of Langston Hughes, a performance collage by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre. It takes place at the YWCA of Kansas City, Kansas, at 1017 North Sixth Street at 7:30 p.m. The performance is free.

Langston Hughes has a lot in common with another great American artist: We’re talking about Dweezil Zappa. The son of famed American musician Frank Zappa and Frank Zappa’s wife, Dweezil shot to fame in the 1980s as a VJ on MTV. He also recorded a guitar solo on Don Johnson’s Heartbeat album. When embarking on a creative project (such as this paragraph about Dweezil Zappa), it’s important to set some artistic constraints — a few rules that channel your creativity in a particular direction. Examples of artistic constraints: all haikus are constructed with the 5-7-5 syllable progression; all Precious Moments porcelain bisque figurines feature huge-eyed, pastel-colored aliens. In the case of this paragraph about Dweezil Zappa, we used the artistic constraint of conducting absolutely no research. It is built solely out of some scant biographical facts that everyone already knows and things we totally made up. For instance: We launched into this paragraph with a segue about Zappa’s similarities to Langston Hughes. In fact, rich, privileged Dweezil Zappa has absolutely nothing in common with Hughes. But Saturday night, you can “fester like a sore and run” to the Voodoo Lounge, where Dweezil and the Dweezil Family Trust present Zappa on Zappa — starring Dweezil playing his father’s music. The curtain rises at 8 p.m. Oh, yeah — you may also know Dweezil Zappa from his MTV performance as the younger brother of Moon Unit Zappa.

The Crown Center Ice Terrace at 2450 Grand is open for the season, where, in Jenee Osterheldt’s imagination, she is doing figure-eights with Lucy and Violet. I don’t know what kind of music they play at the Crown Center Ice Terrace, but I’ll bet you 10 bucks that a little Vince Guaraldi piano music would make you completely forget that it’s 65 degrees outside and you’re ice skating in a T-shirt. It’s Global Warming, Charlie Brown, and even though your giant inflatable snowglobe from Costco is baking on your front lawn in the noontime heat, you can skate at Crown Center through March 15, when we’ll be seeing highs back in the 80s. -- Chris Packham