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By CHRIS PACKHAM

Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall performed a two-hour set of mostly new material last night at the Uptown Theater. At least, the only sketch I recognized from the TV series was the "Chicken Lady Phone Sex" sketch. A return to form for the Kids in the Hall, the show also hearkens to their roots working stages in small clubs when they were in their twenties.

Five guys, dozens of characters, zero sets. Well, how would you do it, Baby Genius? The show, Live As We'll Ever Be, is a revue of sketches, demanding dozens of locations which the group evoked via a formal theatrical technique called the Wondrous Magic of Imagination. Plus, they made clever use of a back-projected Powerpoint-y display to suggest locations and transitions, as well as a couple of taped sketches and live shots of the audience at the Uptown, about which MORE LATER.

In an enormously crowd-pleasing show that featured a super-powered drunk, gay stage kisses, one stage blow job, a time helmet and attempted statutory rape of a retarded teen girl with a soy candle, the group also revisited classic characters from the television series in new situations:

• Hello, Buddy Cole! Until I saw him, I had no idea how much I missed Scott Thompson's gracefully aging, martini-swilling raconteur, Charles Budderick Cole. He was absent even from the 1996 Brain Candy, the last major creative collaboration by the Kids in the Hall. Unencumbered by TV time restrictions, Thompson delivered a hilarious monologue postulating the homosexuality of Jesus with biblical citations and Andrew Lloyd Weber references that went on for, like, 10 minutes.
• Two missionaries, played by Dave Foley and my new best friend Kevin McDonald, knock on a suburban door and are greeted by Bruce McCulloch's Gavin, the loquacious and inventive 8-year-old. "Did you know? That if your mom dies? And you tell the bus driver? You can ride FOR FREE!"
• In the show's encore, Mr. Tyzik, arguably Mark McKinney's most popular character, came out brandishing a video camera and crushing the heads of audience members on the giant projection screen. As a finale, Mr.Tyzik crushed the heads of each individual member of the KITH after hurling some actually pretty dire personal and professional criticisms, including — in a Smeagol vs. Gollum internal struggle — at himself.

My favorite moment of the show occurred after some technical fuck-ups that interrupted a new sketch with Foley and McDonald, and fully encapsulates why the Kids in the Hall are so great: Sixty seconds after beginning the sketch, realizing an off-stage Scott Thompson's mic was still on, the two shouted at him, aborting the scene. "Too bad. It's really a great sketch," Foley said, laughing. Starting over, they redelivered the scene's opening dialogue at a double-time clip, arriving at their previous stopping point.

"And now, the premise," said Foley to the audience, and the ensuing scene was brilliant and surreal and totally hilarious. The two actors, who hadn't performed original material together since Brain Candy, delivered their lines with confidence and fun, as though the scene — like the group's professional collaboration — had proceeded uninterrupted. HEY! Look what I did there.

By Justin Kendall

The season for the airing of grievances is upon us. Saturday night, Julianne Donovan will throw her fifth and most public Festivus party yet.

This year’s observance of the anti-holiday popularized by this episode of Seinfeld 10 years ago will take place at 8 p.m. at the Urban Living Center, 1705 Baltimore. A suggested donation of $5 gets you food and drink from Scrape the Plate catering and a chance to thumb-wrestle your way to a trophy. Proceeds from the event will go to AIDS research.

“If you come in and don’t give $5, then you’re a butthole and a grievance should be written about you,” Donovan says.

In preparation for Saturday, Donovan and friends have been designing thumb-wrestling costumes. “We have a lot of weird-looking thumb wrestling costumes that I’m very excited about,” Donovan says. Watch out for “the gimp with ball gag,” the creepy Grandma and the Hare Krishna. Donovan admits that the Krishna is “politically incorrect,” but he got his name “because he’s anatomically correct.”

“He has more than a flower to give you,” Donovan says.

This year, the winners of the feats-of-strength contest will take home “massive trophies,” Donovan says. The losers — just as in modern-day youth sports — will get “participant” ribbons. This year’s competitions include:

• Thumb wrestling

• Strongman, Yeah Right: a test of strength to see who can hold an 8-pound weight in his or her outstretched arm the longest

• Hipster Hula Hoop: a battle to see who can Hula-Hoop the longest while drinking, smoking or whatever hipsters do

• Chicken Limbo: a duel of contortionists to see how low you can go

• Pain H2O: an endurance test to determine who can hold his or her breath with a head in a bucket of ice water the longest

The night will culminate with the airing of grievances. “A lot of times, guests get a little pushy about it,” Donovan says. “They want to see what other people are saying.”

Until Saturday night, check out this admittedly “obnoxious” and horribly acted YouTube video inspired by The Neverending Story.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Comic actor Kevin McDonald began performing with Dave Foley as The Kids in the Hall in 1984. Some stuff happened, time passed, they met some guys and the group became larger, in both a literal and figurative sense. They wrote and performed their self-titled sketch comedy series from 1988 to 1995.

McDonald has played housewives, secretaries, insane bank robbers, satanists and one character in particular -- the King of Empty Promises -- whose dead, soulless delivery of seemingly sincere lines makes even the most straightforward dialogue hysterically funny:

The Kids in the Hall perform all-new material Thursday at the Uptown Theater. I had the opportunity to interview McDonald by phone. Recording of the interview posted below. Apologies in advance for my stupid voice. McDonald made up for it by being completely awesome.

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Move over Obama Girl, this Kansas City baby has a crush on the smooth-talking senator, too.

James Pfeiffer, an architect with the local firm BNIM, is the proud father of an Obama-loving toddler. Whenever Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama hits the airwaves, Pfeiffer says, his 16-month-old daughter lights up.

“She runs to the TV and starts making out with it,” he says with a laugh.

When the Pfeiffers left a copy of Time magazine lying around, their daughter gravitated toward the issue with Obama on the cover. Her mom, Bridget MacNevin-Pfeiffer, posted this video for their family to see.

Then, the clip was picked up by CNN and used in this montage of “The Kisser-in-Chief: Smooching on the Campaign Trail.”

“We didn’t program her, there was no coaching or anything like that,” Pfeiffer says. “She just gets very excited.”

So are her parents supporting the junior senator from Illinois, too?

“Luckily, we are,” Pfeiffer says. “It’d be a little awkward if we were, like, Mitt Romney supporters.”

By CHRIS PACKHAM

FRIDAY

• The Slap and Tickle gallery (504 East 18th Street, 816-716-5940), spiritual successor to the MoMo Gallery, hosts Erotica, its First Friday exhibit and party tonight at 6. Featured art includes work by local creators Dana Swedo-Bernal, Alan Winkler, Lori Raye Erickson, Jennifer Boe, and Slap and Tickle proprietress Apryl McAnerney. Live entertainment provided by St. Louis' Sturdy Gurlesque, Rita Brinkerhoff and singer Cheri Woods.

• The Grand Arts gallery at 1819 Grand screens a Laurel Nakadate documentary called Stay the Same Never Change at 6 and 7:30 p.m. A video artist, Nakadate spent the morning of September 11, 2001 on the roof of her building, dressed in a Girl Scout uniform and saluting the camera while the twin towers burned in the background. Director Neil LaBute wrote, “This is her first reaction — not to hide, not to run into the city and try and save lives, not to call home and tell her parents that she loves them. Laurel Nakadate sets up her tripod and her video camera and creates a painful, odd, and easily misunderstood piece of art. I told you this girl was trouble.”

SATURDAY

• Bingo Night at Sharp’s (128 West 63rd Street, 816-333-4355). Win prizes playing America’s favorite X-Y-coordinate-based game! No, not battleship. It’s bingo, the game where everyone’s a winner — even the losers! In the tradition of games that you win by shouting out the name of the game, such as Uno, Yahtzee and Dancing With the Stars, bingo is fast-paced and can even be considered challenging if you’re hard of hearing or you are unable to read letters and numbers printed on a card. The games start at 6 p.m.

• The KC Fringe Festival’s Mardi Gras party starts tonight at 7 at Arts Incubator (113 West 18th Street). Tickets cost $20 for singles or $30 for couples and include drinks and food provided by Californos. The evening includes a variety of live entertainers in the mold of crazy things you’d see during carnivale season: jugglers, fire breathers, dancers and musicians. As a bonus, you won’t encounter the drunk frat boys and Girls Gone Wild video crews that migrate to the actual Mardi Gras each year.

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

• Super Bowl Party at the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207).

• Cobra Starship, Metro Station, We the Kings, the Cab at the Beaumont Club (4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2668).

• The Lost Film Fest at Creative Minds Arts Center (3109 Troost). VJ Scott Beibin brings a traveling film series to Kansas City, with an emphasis on edgy political filmmaking. Admission is $10.

• The Midwest Music Showcase with Tyson Leslie, the Belated, and Action Figure at Jerry’s Bait Shop, 13412 Santa Fe, Lenexa, 913-894-9676.

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

In The Pitch’s recent Cheapskate Edition, we touted the joys of bingo and cheap PBR on Tuesday nights at the Brick. Sadly, though the weekly Game Night will continue with free Wii bowling, bingo will be part of the activities only once a month — on the last Tuesday, for Customer Appreciation Night. That means a lot fewer opportunities to hear hot host Alicia Solombrino whisper “Oooooo-sixxxxxxxxty-niiiiiiiiiiine” into the mic.

She said it a lot the other night. Unfortunately, O-69 appeared on none of my four bingo cards. I didn’t get a bingo all night. But, really, when you’re swigging from a bottomless cup of PBR (all-you-can-drink for $5 between 6 and 10 p.m.) and chowing remarkably tasty 75-cent tacos, not winning a box of 100 gumballs doesn’t really faze you.

My friend Sarah won the best prize all night, but too late. We could have used the toy set of “FBI agent” accessories before bingo started, when the Brick was still a virtual bowling alley, thanks to the powers of Wii. The video game portion of Game Night used to be Guitar Hero, but a couple of weeks ago it got changed to Wii bowling. We heard all about that multiple times from some drunk dude in a stocking cap and a Reggie and the Full Effect hoodie who said he and his friends were responsible for bringing in Wii and extending the PBR special for two more hours. I won’t argue with additional beertime. And I’m glad that the Wii freaks now have a place to wear their homemade Wii league shirts.

But I do wish Sarah would have had that nightstick when the duder started petting our friend Marc’s shoes and cooing about how the leather must be Italian. Weird.

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

Seeing the movie Sweeney Todd before seeing the theatrical production now playing at the Music Hall is a bad idea. Especially if you’re a shallow person. True, the slew of Broadway actors who make up the traveling cast are way more talented than their Hollywood counterparts. In addition to singing and acting, every member of the theater cast plays an instrument – and plays it well! But they’re not very much fun to look at. And when you’re watching people engage in such demented activities as throat-slitting and cannibalism for two hours, it helps if they look like Johnny Depp.

If you enjoyed Tim Burton’s lush-but-dreary take on the story, the scaled back theatrical version seems dry. Because every member of the cast is necessary for the songs, they still plod around on stage after they’re dead. They tromp among odd elements on the set, including two coffins that don’t quite make sense in the middle of a barbershop/restaurant. Then there’s the high-pitched blast that issues at 10 billion decibels through the loudspeakers every time someone gets sliced. When that happens, you feel like your eardrums have been stabbed.

Even though there are operatic songs about dining on human flesh, blood oddly seems at a premium in the play version. What, is fake blood up to $100 a barrel now, too? Instead of, say, a little ketchup after the cast members are symbolically dispatched by the Barber of Fleet Street, they stand up and struggle to put on red-stained lab coats. That’s just a bit distracting when there’s new action taking place onstage.

Judy Kaye does make a much better Mrs. Lovett than Tim Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter. Kaye played the role a few times on Broadway. She’s fun and mean, a strong Mrs. Lovett who’s more overtly sexual and playful. With her full figure, fishnets, short dress and sass, she comes across a bit like Karen from Will and Grace, whereas Carter’s Mrs. Lovett is so pathetic that you actually feel bad when she dies, which probably wasn’t Stephen Sondheim’s intention. One problem with the theatrical version, however: Minutes after Kaye’s version died, we see her standing around in a lab coat like everyone else.

And there is a people-watching element that comes with any trip to the playhouse. Last night, one of the bartenders was an old man whose name tag read “Wimp,” which he said was his nickname from 1961. At the intermission, we ran into Star gossip columnist Hearne Christopher, who admitted that he’d been more preoccupied with what was going on in the New Hampshire primary than whether Benjamin Barker was getting his revenge. It’s understandable, because there’s more of a chance of seeing blood splatter in the tight competition between Barack and Hillary.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Amber Hathaway, age 15

There is nothing that says Christmas like A Christmas Carol, as written in the 1800s by Charles Dickens. This classic and timeless story of Ebenezer Scrooge is certainly a beloved holiday favorite. In the beginning, he is visited by the ghost of his dead friend, who tells him he is going to be visited by three more ghosts on Christmas Eve: the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Now, and the Ghost of Christmas Future. In the end, Scrooge realizes that it is very important to celebrate Christmas, as shown by his throwing money to a lad in the street for a goose.

Maybe you didn’t know this, but A Christmas Carol is also in the form of a play and not just a book. Every year, the Kansas City Repertory Theatre puts on a play of A Christmas Carol, and this year is certainly no exception! It is showing tonight at 8 at the Spencer Theater (4949 Cherry Street, 816-235-2700). Tickets cost $12 to $20.

I told my mom I am going to see the Christmas Carol play with my friend Heather, but I am really going on a date with my boyfriend, Rick. I met Rick on MySpace. We have been dating for two weeks. He is 29 years old! This is his picture off MySpace. Dating an older man means I can get into bars and concerts, and Rick buys me alcohol! I like to drink Zima and Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Tonight, he is parking three blocks from my house so my parents won’t see him pick me up. They totally would not understand. Then I’m making him take me to see Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, DevilDriver, and Soilwork at Memorial Hall (600 North Seventh Street, Kansas City, Kansas, 913-371-7555). Tonight I think I might kiss Rick for the first time! But he has to buy me Zima.

Jonas Milbourne, age 14

My English teacher, Mr. Epstein, made me join TeenPitch as a punishment for bringing a lighter to class. Why doesn’t he just make me wear a dress to school, because that is how gay the TeenPitch is. Almost as gay as the stupid TeenPitch editor. He says I have to go see The Nutcracker, which is probably the gayest thing he could think of to make me go and write about. The Nutcracker is showing at the Kansas City Ballet Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m. My dad is dropping me off for the 2 p.m. show

I’m going to bring a jar of rubber cement with me so I can huff it for a good buzz after they dim the lights. We had to watch a video about huffing in health class last year, which is how I learned about it. As soon as I got home that night, I got some turpentine from the garage and huffed fumes for about 10 minutes, and then I sat in front of the Cartoon Network for, like, two hours. I had a bad headache the next morning, but that is probably the only way I’m going to make it through The Homocracker.

Whitney Alton, age 16

After church on Sunday, I have my Teen Devotions Group, and then my mom and grandma are celebrating Grandma’s birthday with Sunday brunch at 12 Baltimore (106 West 12th Street, 816-346-4410). It’s $14.95 a person and includes a carving station, French toast, pastries and muffins, and an omelet station where you can watch a chef make your omelet from scratch! They have brunch every week from 8:30 to 12:30.

Then I’m going by myself to the Crown Center Ice Terrace (2450 Grand) to strap on my skates and wait for Dave. He’s my new boyfriend. We met on MySpace three weeks ago, and he’s 29 years old! That’s his MySpace photo. He says he’s devoted his life to Jesus, just like me, and he likes the same Christian rock bands as me — 12 Stones, Blessed By a Broken Heart and Family Force 5. He also likes the same secular things I do, like Hannah Montana and Gossip Girl on the CW! It’s really very romantic. I wonder if he’ll try to hold my hand while we skate.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Look: We admit it. We were scooped by The Kansas City Star Thursday so forcefully that a tiny, vital part inside of us broke. Now we can feel it rattling around inside, like a cigarette butt in a beer can. I’ve personally apologized to our entire editorial staff for the complete failure of The Pitch's Night & Day section to highlight what is obviously the biggest entertainment story to hit Kansas City since marshmallowy singer Garth Brooks occupied the Sprint Center for a record-setting nine nights. Note that I’m using the word occupy the same way that hippies were described as “occupying” university administration buildings, often while wearing nothing but hemp sandals. Like the hippies, Brooks had to be forcibly dislodged by a hail of obsessive Timothy Finn blog reviews. And come to think of it, we totally missed the Garth Brooks story, too. So we’re 0-2 on this whole thing.

You win this round, Kansas City Star Preview section. Tonight, the 2006 Disney sensation High School Musical makes its Sprint Center debut translated into the girly idiom of figure skating — as clearly pictured in this huge image, reproduced in color at enormous expense, on the cover of yesterday's Preview section.

Adapting classic works for ice makes them that much better, the same way that reinterpreting Star Trek in the idiom of teddy bears adds layers of semiotic complexity to the glass case where your grandma keeps her Hummel figurine collection. Though I am forced to follow the example of the Kansas City Star Preview section in explicitly recommending High School Musical: The Ice Tour to readers of The Pitch, I would also like to point out that the excellent pun in the Preview headline, “High School Musical: The Ice Tour Is on the Rink of Success,” is followed up by this amazing play on words in the subhead: “Disney’s super franchise shows no signs of melting down anytime soon.” Then, inside, I found the headline “Ice Cool Musical.” While we’re doing our Daniel-san wax-on, wax-off in Preview’s backyard, hopefully Preview will also teach us which odd jobs will give us the muscle memory for crafting puns.

Shows are at 7 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 3 p.m. Sunday.

It seems really weird that other events are happening on the same weekend — mostly on regular-friction terra firma rather than ON ICE! But outside the Sprint Center, things are proceeding pretty much normally. On Saturday alone, you can see:

Sterilize Stereo, American Catastrophe and Red Water Revival at the Brick (1727 McGee, 816-421-1634)

Hopeless Destroyers, Young Livers, the Rich Boys and Brutally Frank at Davey's Uptown Ramblers Club (3402 Main, 816-753-1909)

Electric Six, Willowz and We Are the Fury at the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

Ad Astra Per Aspera at Love Garden Sounds (936 ½ Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-843-1551)

It's like they didn't even realize that High School Musical on Ice was getting "Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor"-grade front-page status in the Preview section. Maybe the bands will get some small turnout of their most hardcore fans.

Finally, after the prolonged weekend of rocking, you might consider attending the free screening of the 1980 East German film Solo Sunny at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (4420 Warwick, 816-753-5784) as part of the Behind the Wall Film Classics Series. I'm assuming that you somehow didn't manage to get tickets to every single performance of a certain lip-synced ice-skating extravaganza and you still need something to do. The film, which screens at 2 p.m., was the recipient of the coveted Silver Bear Award, which was the rickety and unreliable Party-sanctioned version of the Oscar, kind of the Yugo to the Academy Awards' Gran Torino. It addresses the longings and frustrations of German youth at the time — much the same way that High School Musical on Ice addresses the hopes and dreams of privileged Western kids on a smooth, Zambonied expanse of ice.

As a final act of contrition and an apes-in-the-wild display of submission to The Kansas City Star, I have crafted the image at right. Like a disgraced Japanese business executive in a movie caricaturing Japanese business culture, I now end my period of public self-flagellation.

I hope to demonstrate better judgment in the future.

This weekend, So This Is Xmas, an exhibit of John Lennon’s artwork, goes on display at the Hotel InterContinental. The paintings were handpicked – and some of them hand-colored – by Yoko Ono, who I got to talk to for this Night & Day blurb about the art show.

I would have posted the interview as an MP3, but I’m afraid that Ono’s people might put a hit out on me. Just before she patched me through to Ono in Brazil, I asked Ono’s assistant – a snippy woman who reserved the right to revoke my interviewing privileges at any time – if I could stream the interview at Pitch.com. She freaked out and scolded me for not asking about that in my original interview request. (OK, I should have.) Then she kept yammering nervously as if she were afraid I might just post the audio file anyway. You never can trust those rascally reporters.

Tomorrow night's ninth episode of the Garth Brooks Down Home Country Jamboree will be broadcast live from the Sprint Center to 300 movie theaters around the country for the benefit of people who are into watching concerts by proxy in movie theaters. Ordinarily, we’d make fun of this kind of person by resorting to a crude stereotype, but literally nobody we’ve ever met or heard about would ever pay money to watch a projected concert on a movie screen. It’s something that lies at the edge of imagination, like some kind of H.P. Lovecraft Color Out of Space deal.

Reportedly, the broadcast will include sweeping, David Lean-style shots of the Kansas City skyline, shot a night early from a helicopter, and Mayor Funkhouser is urging area residents and businesses to leave their lights on all night. In other words, Funkhouser is so concerned about impressing a slender demographic that would actually consider paying money to watch a movie theater’s simulcast of a puffy country musician that he’s disregarding the desperate warnings of climatologists.

For Dane Cook’s appearance on November 25, perhaps the mayor’s office could urge all area residents to start their car engines, close their garage doors and wait for blissful sleep. JUST A JOKE. The Mayor’s office actively discourages all forms of suicide and also cutting behavior. Into every life a little Dane Cook must fall, and, like a lengthy series of concerts by Garth Brooks, he, too, will eventually pass.

After the jump, the extremely weird press release from the Mayor’s office:

Our shiny new radial tire in downtown, the Sprint Center, is set to open for some seriously aging stars. And no, we’re not talking the Chiefs. The headliners include Van Halen, Elton John and, now, Garth Brooks. To help put some perspective on these aging showmen, here’s a look at their careers:

Elton John
Age: 60
First hit: “Your Song” in 1970
Last hit: “Answer in the Sky” in 2005
Lowest point: There’s many, but in 1997, for his 50th birthday party, Sir Elton performed in an $80,000 Louis XIV costume
Second job: Agreed in 2001 to appear on a BBC’s quiz show but backed out hours before filming and was replaced with a cab driver who worked as an Elton John impersonator

Mark your calendars for the seven days between September 29 and October 6, because the ACLU is celebrating Banned Books Week, the Shark Week of censorship. At 7 p.m. October 3, author Chris Finan reads from his ponderously titled From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America at the Kansas City Public Library's Central Branch, 14 West 10th Street.

Hey – come to think of it, somebody else is celebrating Banned Books Week. I know it was someone important. Damn. Who was it?

Oh, yeah.

This week in the Village Voice, former Pitch staffer and VV columnist Annie Fischer writes about reliving Kansas City's 18th Street Mardi Gras traditions at a Brooklyn opening.

The God of Indulgence (and Anthropologie)

On the weekend of September 15, local artist David Ford, who owns YJ's Snack Bar and several 18th Street buildings in the Crossroads, flew a crew (or, rather krewe) for a performance-art-y opening at Jack the Pelican Presents in Williamsburg. The opening/party centered around a Latin-American deity known as St. Maximon. Attendees witnessed the out-jazz of KC combo Snuff Jazz and the guerilla antics of 18th Street favorite the Dirty Force Brass Knuckle Street Band. Costumes were worn. Drunkeness was attained. Bacon was cooked.

Bitch was owned, son.

Image courtesy JackthePelicanPresents.org

A new, KC-based late night talk show debuting sometime on some local TV station might actually be kind of good. Or maybe that’s all the free screw-top wine and Busch Light talking. Anyway, I went last night to the taping of After Hours, hosted by Darron Story and Cara Kahn. It was filmed last night in a KCPT studio room, although it’s not clear which TV station will pick it up. About 50 people showed up to be part of the studio audience, some of us lured by the many bulletins sent from After Hours’ MySpace page in recent weeks. The free reservations included a chicken dinner, plus your choice of Busch Light, Bud Lite or screw-top wine. While that was a nice gesture, no amount of booze could atone for the boring experience of sitting in on a television recording.