Kansas City News Blog

Kansas City graffiti artist Scribe demonstrated his work outside of Creative Coldsnow last weekend with the camera rolling. Here's the time-lapse movie by Phil Koenig. Cool stuff.

My Barbarian's "The Only One," single-channel video from 2008

​A couple of calls for artists arrived at Pitch headquarters last week.

Anticipating the Ecstatic Resistance show that opens November 13 at Grand Arts, the My Barbarian collective is looking for local performance artists for a new work called "Broke People's Baroque People's Theater":

The project is a vaudeville style show in which the participants will perform their own work and join a chorus/cast directed and scripted by My Barbarian. The subject of the project is survival through economic hardship: critical, humorous, political, irreverent, satirical and/or earnest responses are encouraged.

Sketches, songs, dances, speeches and scenes get workshopped at a Master Class starting November 10. Find more details here.

If you don't mind your work decorating a shopping mall (we aren't judging!), the Summit Fair Development in Lee's Summit, home of the new Macy's and JCPenney, has $18,000 to spend on public art. From their call for entries: 

As part of the ongoing retail development at Summit Fair RED Development will commission an artist or an artist team to create a permanent, outdoor art installation for an important roundabout green space. Artists may be asked to to work collaboratively with members of the Artist Selection Panel and project consultants. The project welcomes all media and approaches for site-specific works.

Deadline is November 30. More information is here.

28 days after Zombieland, "zombie" is hardly even a noun anymore. It's gone adjective, especially when it comes to costume time: the Coterie at Night's show Maul of the Dead boasts a zombie nun, a zombie Girl Scout, a zombie ballerina, and Cody Wyoming as a zombie punk-rock guitar hero whose riffs will shred your brains before he even has a chance to eat 'em.

Up against such awesomeness, who in their right mind will dress up this weekend as a mere plain-jane, vanilla-yogurt, one-size-fits-all zombie?

For zombie advice, we turned to Ron Megee, the director of Maul of the Dead and a world-class wrangler of the undead.


Megee's Maul of the Dead is a splattery blast. It runs through Halloween night at Crown Center's Off-Center Theatre (Friday and Saturday at 7, 9 and 11 p.m.).

See our review here, and visit the Coterie Theatre's Web site for tickets.

​PBS kicks off the second season of its series Craft In America tonight with a two-part special that includes a segment on the Kansas City Art Institute's Ceramics Department. During the second hour -- an episode titled "Process," which starts at 8 p.m. on KCPT Channel 19 -- expect 10 minutes featuring the department's chairwoman, Cary Esser (pictured with former student Johanna Keefe, right). So You Think You Can Dance addicts: "Process" repeats at 1 a.m.

Before the local shout-out, the Craft episode "Origins" is at 7. And get fully arted by staying on Channel 19 for the season premiere of Art: 21 at 9. What, you were gonna watch Jay Leno?

(photo:Craft in America/PBS)

Pitch theater critic Alan Scherstuhl tells me that "Into the Woods" is the best show he's ever seen at the Kansas City Rep. So if you're a public service employee and you're free Wednesday at 7 p.m., the Kansas City Repertory Theatre has a great deal. You can see the show for free.

Here's the full details: If you're a solider, police officer, firefighter, EMT, ambulance driver or a city or county worker in Jackson, Johnson, Wyandotte, Clay or Platte counties, then you're eligible for free tickets to the show at the Spencer Theatre in the James C. Olson Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. There is a limit: Four tickets per family.

For tickets, call the Rep's box office at 816-235-2700 or e-mail your request to info@kcrep.org (don't forget the promo code "thankyou"). Include your name, address, phone number and the number of tickets you want to reserve.  Also, don't forget to bring your employment ID when you pick up your tix.

Not sold? Check out this preview:

"Sacred Heart" by Trenton Matthews

Tonight, an art show at Mood Swings Salon asks "What the Fuck is Wrong With this Kid?"

​ 1. Do the art thing. It's already First Friday again. (While you're in the Crossroads, head over to Union Station, for the opening night of Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life and Legends. Get a free beverage if you arrive between 5 and 9 p.m.)

2. Get some culture in Lee's Summit. Today and Saturday, the Longview Campus of Metropolitan Community Campus is holding a literary festival with workshops, readings and lectures. Nearby, today through Sunday, there's also the Longview Art and World Music Festival.

3. Shop for unexpected treasures. Urban Mining Homewares -- which is open every First Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- is celebrating its fifth anniversary.

4. Ogle some hot cars. KCI Cruise Night is a car show (that actually happens during the day on Saturday, from 3 to 8 p.m.) near Kansas City International Airport.

5. Pick out a pumpkin! It being October and all, there are now would-be-jack-o-lanterns aplenty at City Market. The pu kin patch is open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

6. Root on the Chiefs. KC's underdog football team takes on the New York Giants this Sunday.

For more ways to spend your weekend, see The Pitch calendar.

It takes more than perspective and execution to gain our approval as Best Outsider Art Gallery. Levitate a truck, though, and it's pretty much in the bag.

Click this video to watch trucks fly and hear Mo Dickens, gallery assistant for the Belger Arts Center, explain what makes the center's permanent and rotating exhibits an arts-scene fixture.

​This Friday, Union Station will open the doors on its Andy Warhol exhibit. The traveling review of the pop art king's work is the largest collection of Warhol's prints to ever be exhibited. But it remains to be seen how many people will buy tickets for the show, no matter how good it is.

"Out initial estimate was 25,000 but I'm curbing that," says Christopher Leitch, director of the Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall. Leitch is helping organize the exhibit for Union Station. "I think we can get 16,000 people out to see this."

Hope Leitch is wrong, because based on what's being shown, it would be sad if only 16,000 see it.

"This brings together 85 screen prints by Andy Warhol. I think it's the largest number of his works ever gathered together in one place," Leitch says. "We have some iconic work, like his Marilyn Monroe portrait and the soup cans, and some later works which are more attentive to social issues and larger world issues such as endangered species. It also covers the series of myths that he produced in the mid-'80s confronting mental and cultural stereotypes of all varieties. And these are really big, pristine and beautiful prints. Visually this is going to be a really aesthetically tasty meal for anybody."

Flickr: Britt Selvitelle

​

1. Take back the streets -- on a Schwinn! It's the last Friday of the month, and that means it's time for Critical Mass. Bicyclists gather at the Sun Fresh Market in Westport at 6 p.m.

2. See a black and white war in color. A new exhibit at the National World War One Museum presents the bright uniforms and other eye-catching elements of the Great War, which could not be captured in photographs from the period.

3. Laugh it up with comedienne Jennie McNulty, who's performing Saturday night at a benefit/poker tournament to support local women's sports teams.

4. Check out a goalie. The Kansas City Wizards take on the Colorado Rapids on Saturday at Community America Ballpark.

5. Get your face painted. That's one of the many activities offered during the Western Wyandotte Arts Festival on Sunday at Hollis Renewal Center in KCK.

For more ways to spend your weekend, see The Pitch calendar.

​Jamie Gray, an assistant professor in the Graphic Design Department at the Kansas City Art Institute, is living right -- or with a lot of sexy right angles, anyway. The River Market loft she shares with her husband gets the 13-photo treatment in a September 14 post on the trend-spotting, envy-inducing Web site Design*Sponge. With its glossy surfaces, sharp corners and subtle curves -- not to mention the abstract art and the posters from Poland (how do you say cowboy in Polish?) -- the place looks exactly the way you'd hope a graphic-design expert's home would.

The best part (for anyone not living in the apartment, that is): Gray's explanation of her interior design includes some local shouts out. Retro Inferno! (Office chairs.) Interstate 70! (The hanging tumbleweed, taken right off the side of the highway.)

The effort and expense are obvious, but before you go road-tripping to an Ikea or raiding your savings, heed Gray's offhand explanation of the orderly little assemblage in her living room: "The Tendo Mokko rocker and teak nesting tables are a few of our many eBay finds." Good advice. And it leaves room in your trunk for tumbleweeds.

(photo from Design*Sponge)

Marc Wilson

​Marc Wilson, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, will retire next year, joining fellow museum heads around the country in a mini exodus. Tyler Green, whose Modern Art Notes blog is essential reading for anyone who cares about, uh, modern art, checked in with Wilson during a recent KC visit. In Green's interview, published on MAN last week in two parts, Wilson mentions something pretty cool: "A third of [Nelson-Atkins] attendance now comes from households with incomes of less than $55,000. That tells you the people who are coming are not just on our lofty donor boards."

Wilson also offers a candid tidbit about life in the business of big-time museum management. See, you gotta deal with the nonbelievers. As he explains about the famous Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen sculptures on the museum's lawn:

At the time some of the reaction to [the] Shuttlecocks was nasty, nasty, nasty. A lady sent me a box with her return address on it. It was from Independence, Missouri. I opened it up and it was a diaper full of baby poop along with a note saying that this was her daughter's work of art and it was certainly the equal of the Shuttlecocks.

Thus was recorded the first attempt ever at performance art by an Independence resident.

Here's the first part of the interview, and here's the rest.

(Photo from the Nelson-Atkins) 

custompapertoys.com

See Matt Hawkins' crazy custom toys at the Emerald Space.

​ 1. Appreciate art in the West Bottoms. Tonight, the Emerald Space hosts The Proper Assortment, a group show by Phil Shafer, Tyler Coey and Matt Hawkins.

2. Contemplate rape, society and victimhood. Those are the themes of Extremities, the heavy show opening tonight the Just Off Broadway Theater The production is presented by Minds Eye Theatre company.

3. Laugh your ass off. The Kansas City Improv Festival continues tonight and Saturday at the Off Center Theater.

4. Walk for your health -- and someone else's. On Saturday, Theis Park is the setting for Kansas City's Walk for PKD, which stands for the terrifying and deadly phrase "polycystic kidney disease."



5. Watch a movie that was made in KC. On Saturday, the Lawrence Arts Center is screening Fight Night, a movie about a chick with mad mixed martial arts ability.

6. Support local music. The Crossroads Music Festival brings some 25 KC-area bands to various Crossroads stages on Saturday.

For more ways to use up the weekend, see The Pitch calendar.

Matt Hawkins' Flikr page

​If the phrase "insert tab A into slot B" makes your mouth go dry, you're not gonna like the new Justice League paper toys that come with Arby's kids meals right now. But here's a reason to love 'em: They're designed by KC artist Matt Hawkins.

Hawkins works for an Overland Park company called C3. They also make kids' meal toys for Sonic.

When Hawkins worked at Hallmark as a production designer back in the day, he'd amuse himself during slow times by molesting the office's paper cup supply -- turning them upside down, drawing on them, cutting up index cards to add limbs and ears and whatnot. He started a blog about his paper toys, which caught the eye of former Pitch art director Doug Kubert. Kubert, now C3's art director, recruited Hawkins to do freelance paper toy design for C3. Eventually, Hawkins joined the full-time staff.

Hawkins' paper bobbleheads for Arbys require some assembly on a kid's part, but a little work never hurt anyone. C3 designs plastic toys too, but the cost of plastic has gone up. Hawkins says, "Paper is a way to make cool things that are still affordable." By saving costs on the manufacturing end, C3 had extra money in the budget to buy the rights to licensed characters, hence the Justice League, by D.C. Comics.

So let's see ... we've got Superman, the Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, the Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, the Flash, aaaand ... "There's no Batman," Hawkins admits. "McDonald's has the rights to Batman."

The toy series launched nationwide inside Arby's kids' meals a week ago, and they'll last until each individual store runs out. Which means they're AVAILABLE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY! GET YOURS NOW!

Oh, and p.s. you can check out more of Hawkins' work at an art show, The Proper Assortment, at the Emerald Space in the West Bottoms (1323 Union)  this Friday.

They've lived parts of their lives caught in the clutches of homelessness and drug addiction, but they're through with all that now.

Men who participate in a residential program at the Kansas City Rescue Mission have teamed up with artist Richard Fritz of Storytellers Inc. to create a series of photo-collage panels that represent the journey of the homeless from hopelessness to recovery.

Each picture -- from burned-out campfires to train yards and graffiti-covered bricks -- forms a part of the larger journey each man has undertaken. It's powerful stuff. In this video, then men discuss their project and their lives:

Works in Progress: the art of the homeless from casey lyons on Vimeo.

The show opens tonight at the Kansas City Rescue Mission, 1520 Cherry St., from 7 to 10 p.m. The artists will be on hand to chat and answer questions. If you're heading out to First Friday in the Crossroads, add this to your stops.

See art like this piece by Deng Wushu on display in the Crossroads.

​

1. Meander all over the Crossroads because it's First Friday, yo.

2. Party down in Independence Square, where the Santa Cali Gon Days Festival kicks off today.

3. Party downtown, where the Kansas City Irish Festival starts today.

4. Get ready for some football -- Australian style. On Saturday, local Australian rules football teams square off in Gillham Park.

5. Get greasy. The two-day rockabilly car/art/movie/drinking fest known as Greaserama happens Saturday and Sunday at Boulevard Drive-In.

6. Go swimming for the last time. Jackson County beaches close for swimming on Monday, which happens to be Labor Day.

Jamie Burkart in Great Accomodations

​As I watched Jamie Burkart and his brave band of fellow artists ship off from Kaw Point in a boat made of recycled materials in July 2007, I admit, I was worried for their safety. Their intent was to sail their bicycle-propelled craft all the way down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers "until the taste of salt." They had their share of dramatic moments, but, proving that artists and idealists are the most resourceful people on the planet, Burkart and crew made it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico four months after they departed Kansas City.
 
That experience didn't satiate Burkart's fascination with the Missouri River and how it shapes Kansas City. On Tuesday his latest artistic endeavor opened at the Paragraph Gallery. But, while the door is open -- a revolving entry fashioned from four discarded wooden slabs fastened together -- the project is still a work in progress.   

​Since I commute down Troost Avenue on a daily basis, I noticed Head Space a few months ago. It's the brain child of Noah Holland, a Vermont artist who moved to Kansas City nearly a decade ago to apprentice with a local glassblower. Since April he and his business partner have been selling hand-blown pipes at the Rastafarian-colored digs at the intersection of 4srd Street and Troost.

Just this week, though, I noticed a new form of art on the outside of their shop. Aaron Sutton, a local painter, started work on an eye-catching mural.

Check it out.

​

In honor of Michael Jackson's birthday on August 29th, a small group of fans gathered to dance and mingle at 18th Street and Troost Avenue, under the shadow of Alexander Austin's tribute to the King of Pop. The mural looks amazing, but the art isn't entirely Austin's. On Saturday, dozens of Sharpie-wielding fans added their own words to the massive painting.

Here's what some of them said.

​It only takes a second for Alexander Austin to recall his finest moment impersonating Michael Jackson.

"In ninth grade, I played football and we'd have to go out of town for games," he says, laughing at the memory. "And, on the bus, I'd lead a Michael Jackson song: 'Dancing Machine.' All the guys on the team would do the background, and I'd just break out. My coach used to get mad at me and he actually banned me from singing after we lost a game. But we did end up winning the city championship that year."

When the King of Pop died in June, Austin was devastated, like all of Jackson's fans. It just so happened that the Kansas City artist was already looking for inspiration for a new mural at 18th and Troost.

1. Ooh and ah at some of the prettiest darn things in nature -- butterflies. Powell Gardens is hosting a Festival of Butterflies today through Sunday.

2. Go see a play under the moonlight. Chicago is on stage through Sunday at Starlight Theatre.

3. Go to Warrensburg. Kickass neo-classic country band Adam Lee and the Dead Horse Sound Company will be honky tonkin' at Bottomfeeder Bay on Saturday night.

4. Admire the genius of this guy:

Big Shots, an exhibit of photos by Andy Warhol opens Saturday at the Spencer Museum of Art on the KU campus in Lawrence.

5. Attend the Grammy Awards of Kansas City, aka the Pitch Music Awards. The red carpet (ok, not really) rolls out for the local music royalty at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Uptown Theater.

For more ways to waste your weekend, see The Pitch calendar.

Alexander Austin is painting a fantastic portrait of the late King of Pop on this building at the corner of 18th and Troost. Take a look at Austin's Michael Jackson masterpiece so far.

​

Here's what we think you should do this weekend:

1. Wander aimlessly around the Crossroads because it's First Friday. As usual, there'll be tons of art to gawk at. Plus, there's a fashion show by Lovesick Clothing happening at Blue Bouquet.

2. Honor a decade of Anodyne Records. Tonight, Czar Bar is the site of the rockin' anniversary show, featuring Valley Arena, Roman Numerals and Little Brazil.

3. Take in a movie at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. There's a free screening of the super sexy Mississippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington, on Saturday afternoon.

4. Party like it's 1955. There's a Sock Hop happening at the Brick on Saturday night.

​ This lowrider rolled up for last year's Wild West Showdown.

5. Hang out with some lowriders. The second annual Wild West Showdown -- a block party and car show -- hits the West Bottoms, on Union Avenue between Mulberry and Santa Fe, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $1 or free if you bring a canned good.

Majora Carter is serious about solving urban blight.

​ An event happening in Kansas City on August 20 rhymes with Red X. But just the fact that it's happening at the Nelson-Atkins Museum makes TEDx the diametric opposite of Riverside's favorite liquor and random supply store.

The concept behind TEDx is actually a little hard to get your head around. TED stands for "technology, entertainment and design" and is the acronym for a brainstorming conference that's been happening since 1984. According to a press release, the August 20 event is "a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. The August 20 event is called TEDxKC, where x=independently organized TED event." Three different speakers -- Majora Carter, John Gerzema and Adam Johnson -- will give presentations on the theme "Breakdown/Breakthrough: A Sobering/Uplifting Consideration of What's Next." Avant-garde local musician Mark Southerland will also perform with his Urban Noise Camp.

Although we're still unclear about just what's going to happen, the Nelson assures us that TEDx, which is free to attend, will fill Atkins Auditorium to capacity. So if you're curious about consumerism, urban renewal and how art museums balance art presentation and preservation, reserve your TEDx seat today.

simmons.edu

​The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has named Barbara O'Brien its new curator. She will start in mid-September.

According to the Kemper's press release, O'Brien (pictured), who holds undergraduate degrees in journalism and women's and gender studies from the University of Kansas, comes to Kansas City by way of Simmons College in Boston, where she was most recently an assistant professor of art and the director of the Trustman Art Gallery. Since 1990, the Kemper says, O'Brien has curated nearly 50 exhibitions of contemporary art. (More of her CV is on her Simmons bio page.)

The Kemper's previous curator, Chris Cook, left the museum this past spring to direct the Salina Art Center.

This is an untitled piece of art by Greg Crawford.

 Spend some time at Writers Place. Tonight, Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and "Brown Suga Poet" Stacey Tolbert will read from their works, starting at 8 p.m. It's also opening night for a Greg Crawford: Stacks, a new art exhibition at mansion where writers mingle.

Get the song "Somewhere Out There" stuck in your head. The cartoon An American Tail screens for free at 7 tonight at the Kansas City Museum as part of the Free Fridays in July entertainment series.

Sidle up to a snake. The Kansas City Reptile Show happens at the Overland Park Holiday Inn Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Ponder the collage art of Lawrence record label owner/budding artist Zach Hangauer. His first exhibition opens Saturday at Wonder Fair: Art Gallery and How!

Celebrate America. Duh -- it's Fourth of July weekend. But seriously, Worlds of Fun is having a Celebrate America Festival every Friday and Saturday in July. Since you're probably not working today, you should just go now. As a reward for surviving the Orient Express, there will be fireworks in the evening.

If you want to wait until Saturday to get your Independence Day on, head to the Crossroads. Due to the holiday, some galleries are waiting until next weekend to hold their monthly openings. But some, like the Pi Gallery, are doing the regular First Friday thing.

Watch the skies for bursts of color! Click for info on a bunch of fireworks happenings across the metro.

Before it gets dark, though, you should totally head to the National World War I Museum and let Rin Tin Tin's great great great great (maybe some more greats) grandpuppy lick your face. His appearance is part of a bunch of patriotic activities planned at the museum on Saturday.


Image courtesy Flickr: delgaudm

July's First Friday is proximal to the patriotic distraction of Independence Day, and maybe you're not so much thinking about art. While it's clearly important to drink American beer while listening to Toby Keith and reading the Constitution by the light of exploding fireworks this weekend, there are some art exhibits open in the Crossroads Art District on Friday night, among which you'll find an informal non-reception at the Late Show (1600 Cherry) for artists Steven Frink and David Gant.

Gallery owner Tom Deatherage will mount a full reception for the artists next Friday, but if you're in the neighborhood this week, he'll have the doors open and Gant's exhibit, American Family, is a knockout. Reinterpreting a collection of old family photographs in an anxious, gestural style, Gant's impressionist figures are mundanity heightened to a painterly beatitude. His tactile brushwork both veils and exaggerates his subjects, and creates an urge to touch the canvas which I'll just stipulate here that I was able to suppress because I am totally a professional.

Likewise, Steven Frink's impressive abstractions are objects of careful craftsmanship, but we don't have any digital images to post. Just getting images of Gant's work from the beloved and crazy Deatherage was like pulling teeth; we figured a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush and you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. "Why rock the boat?" we might have been heard to say.

Anyway, Frink's carefully layered paintings are a result of deliberately distressed canvas and successive passes of earthy colors and geometric patterns which are really kind of hard to describe, but which are very impressive in person. Thanks to Deatherage's eye for great work, his relationships with area artists and his constant search for emerging talent, the Late Show Gallery remains a mandatory First Friday destination for art collectors and enthusiasts.

The eyes staring back from the walls of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's current featured exhibit are not pleading for your help. Rather, most of the Indian women and girls photographed by artist-activist Fazal Sheikh for the exhibit Beloved Daughters appear resigned to their fates, however harrowing. Some of the women don't look into the camera at all, the outline of their faces barely visible beneath white shrouds. Others are visible only from behind.

The show, which opens to the public on Saturday, takes up two rooms. In the first are portraits of infants to young women from Sheikh's Ladli series. The second room contains portraits of widows taken in the holy city of Vrindavan for Sheikh's Moksha series. The black and white photographs are paired with testimonies -- stories of abuse, piety, hopelessness and loss in the women's own words. Young girls speak of abandonment by their parents; widows tell of being kicked out by their children; young women share the pain of forced marriages and beatings incurred for bearing female offspring. Sheikh's photographs literally put faces to the problems of poverty and human rights that we are accustomed to hearing about in statistical form.

Tonight, head to 13th Street and State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, for the Kansas City Kansas Street Blues Festival. The wailing and wah wah-ing extends through Saturday night.

Check out a brand new theater. Saturday is opening night for Sorry, Wrong Number, starring Corrie Van Ausdal, at the Fishtank Theatre. Van Ausdal (pictured above) also happens to be the executive director of the newest theatrical performance space in the Crossroads.

Get a glimpse of Indian women and girls (like the one above) and learn about their lives through Beloved Daughters: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, a photography exhibit opening at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on Saturday.

Cheer on some really tough women. Local women's football team the Kansas City Tribe takes on the Los Angeles Amazons at 6 p.m. Saturday on the Center High School field.

On Sunday, admire the fruits of some of the city's greenest thumbs during the Kansas City Urban Farms and Gardens Tour, which spans various plots, lawns and fields across the metro.

For more wonderful ways to spend your weekend, see the Pitch calendar.

Laugh for 24 hours straight. A bunch of improv comedy groups (including funnyman Clay Morgan, pictured above) are conducting a 24-hour performance starting at 9 tonight at Westport Coffee House to raise money for cancer research.

Check out artist Jackie Denning's brand-spanking-new gallery in the West Bottoms. Opening tonight at Gallery 111: Gnome Show.

Get ready for some football! Women's football, that is. The Kansas City Storm will take on the Iowa Thunder on Saturday.

Touch a cow's nipple. Saturday also happens to be family day at Shatto Milk Company.

Tell Dad that you love him. Sunday is Father's Day.

Before you take Dad out for a big steak dinner, though, find out where you can get him a locally raised steak. The Trails West Branch of the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library is holding a discussion on Sunday called "How to Eat Local in KC."

For more ways to fill up the next couple of days, see the Pitch Calendar.