As we've thoroughly documented here, last night Kansas City's favorite performers gathered to declaim from Sarah Palin's new book, Amelia Bedelia Runs For Office. This time, Amelia's literal-mindedness accidentally destroys the Republican Party for a whole generation!
Also, she tries to teach herself to fly and goes kerplump on an Alaskan boardwalk full of Alaskan history and decency.
Here are highlights from the first three readers, Ron Megee (in the ascot), David Wayne Reed (with the glasses) and Gail Bronfman Bunch (with both her knees scraped).
Dying camera batteries prevented me from capturing the epic and bosomy performance of Janet Henry, but, really, if I had, Tea Partiers might have drafted her impersonation as a third-party candidate. So it's probably for the best.
Maybe I'm still getting a contact high from the K2, but I really like the Chiefs' 30 Rock knockoff, 1 Arrowhead.
Good job out of cheerleader Kerriand announcer Mitch Holthus in the Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) roles. Not sure who KC Wolf is supposed to be ... Tracy Morgan?
This follows a pretty damn good parody of The Office, which debuted during the preseason.
Since the video starts automatically, I put it after the jump.
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 colleague, Casey Lyons, told me about this trailer for an upcoming horror movie set in Kansas City. The plot is familiar. An idealistic couple played by Nikki and Dennis Dupont move here only to have their dreams destroyed and sink into despair and mediocrity. Happy Halloween, folks!
The trailer for James Cameron's long-anticipated (and allegedly ripped off) sci-fi flick Avatar hit theaters last weekend and today the trailer is finally online (see below, via Trailer Addict).
Chose the one with subtitles because we're worldly and fancy and stuff.
For all things Avatar, local guy T.F. Powell is running an unofficial fan site, AvatarMovieZone.com, that archives stories about the film scheduled for a December 18 release. He's pretty excited, and the trailer is impressive.
"I think it's going to be one of those great old sci-fi adventures that you don't see too often," Powell told me,
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.).
Found this video produced for Arte Television on Vimeo about the aftermath of Wichita abortion provider George Tiller's death. I don't understand the French narration, but the rest of the video is in English and some pretty creepy moments thanks to an aimless anti-abortion protester wandering around the outskirts of Tiller's closed down
clinic and defending "justifiable homicide."
Earlier this week, ex-Missourite and transit wonk Clay Chastain lit up Union Station with some memorable oratorical fireworks to promote the newest version of his old idea: Kansas City can only be saved from itself and propelled into the future if its people are carried around by light rail.
The whole press conference reminded me of the famous Monorail song from The Simpsons. If my Auto-Tune skills existed, I'd have set his words to a beat and spliced in the song.
Briefly, Chastain's plan calls for another ballot initiative to leverage a 3/8-cent sales tax increase over 25 years, and public and private funds for $2.2 billion in order to construct a 35 mile starter light rail, which will eventually tie into an intermodal public transportation system that goes from the 'burbs to the urban core.
Based on a similar line in Charlotte, Chastain said the light rail, which he designed himself using self-taught skills and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, would use a third-rail instead of overhead wires, tie Penn Valley Park and Union Station into the mix and cost $47 million per mile.
Here's a highlight from Chastain's press conference. He begins by addressing criticisms that mass transit is not a priority during the economic downturn and wraps up with a rather tortured George Brett reference.
In July, 81-year-old Lee's Summit bowler Ollie Harbin became the oldest American woman to roll a perfect 300 in a sanctioned game. She also rolled her way into our Best Of Kansas City awards as Best Bowler.
Harbin has been a bowler off and on for 30 years, and when she's on, she's on. Harbin's 12-strike game in July was the second of her career, and the first after hip replacement surgery.
She rolls her 14-pound ball with a slight hook to it so it fades right and strikes the pocket, which is the space between the front pin and the one behind it and to the right. That's how you bowl strikes, and Harbin is pretty darn good at it.
Next time you're crawling across the Paseo Bridge (like 101,999 other people every day), look north at the birth of a Kansas City icon: the Christopher S. Bond Bridge.
The 4.7 mile span over the Missouri River cost us only $245 million. Huzzah! When it's done, cannon lights will bathe the bridge in a seasonal colors (like green for St. Patrick's Day). The bridge is scheduled to open in 2010, and everything -- including all 12 new on/off ramps -- will is supposed to be done by 2011.
On time, on budget and pretty freaking cool, Bond Bridge construction effort is so cool that we had to name it Best Work Site in this year's Best Of Kansas City. Do you know any other bridges that want to be friends?
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.
Her political theater of airing out the undies (pink, no less) at a Planning and Zoning Committee meeting on March 4 earned our approval as 2009's Best Use of Underwear in our Best of Kansas City 2009 edition.
C'mon, Chuck Todd. Sneezing in your hands in front of Health and Human Services Secretary (and former Kansas Gov.) Kathleen Sebelius? The NBC reporter made the faux pas during a briefing.
Sebelius threatened to have Elmo teach the NBC reporter how to sneeze without splattering his snot everywhere.
Patrick Swayze died yesterday at age 57 after a nearly two-year struggle with pancreatic cancer. A lot of tributes to Swayze will laud his roles in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. But my favorite Swayze flick is the one sandwiched between the two: Road House (although Red Dawn is an '80s wet dream for G.I. Joe-loving prepubescent boys).
In Road House, Swayze played Dalton, a professional bouncer from Los Angeles hired to clean up a small town bar, the Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri.
Jasper is real, and about a two-hour-and-twenty-minute drive from here. But there's no Double Deuce.
Road House was such a quirky pleasure that I watched it whenever I saw it on TBS or whatever cable channel always played it. In 2004, I read a piece by Chuck Klosterman in Esquire summing up the flick's odd greatness:
Outside the genre of sci-fi, I can't think of any film less plausible than Road House. Every element of the story is wholly preposterous: the idea of Swayze being a nationally famous bouncer (with a degree in philosophy), the concept of such a superviolent bar having such an attractive clientele, the likelihood of a tiny Kansas town having such a sophisticated hospital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Every single scene includes at least one detail that could never happen in real life. So does that make Road House bad? No. It makes Road House perfect. Because Road House exists in a parallel reality that is more fanciful (and more watchable) than The Lord of the Rings. The characters in Road House live within the mythology of rural legend while grappling with exaggerated moral dilemmas and neoclassical archetypes. I don't feel guilty for liking any of that. Road House also includes a monster truck. I don't feel guilty for liking that, either.
Klosterman is right about all but one thing: The movie was set in Missouri.
Road House is fantastical but perfect -- even when Dalton rips a guy's throat out with his bare hands -- and it's because of Swayze. I can't imagine another actor in the role. Swayze, while cut, wasn't as big as the action heroes of the '80s (though he was prettier). The filmmakers worked Swayze's size difference into the dialogue, which includes some of the most memorable quotes of my childhood. Mainly, "pain don't hurt."
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:
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.
Last month's G.I. Joe Convention was the best example of grown men wearing costumes since Halloween -- and all in semi-obsessive worship of plastic dolls action figures.
Peter Rugg's cover story this week tells how G.I. Joe lovers from around the country packed the Hyatt with their special brand of enthusiasm for a weekend of buying, selling, and, as one guy in the video says, "Acting like a 12-year-old."
If you have an hour today, tomorrow or whenever, I recommend watching Brian Schodorf's documentary Greensburg, about the tiny Kansas town that was pretty much wiped off the map by "the most destructive tornado in history" on May 4, 2007.
Folks from the International House of Prayer held their first of two information sessions last week in an attempt to ask Grandview-at-large, "We're still cool, right?"
No mention of Armageddon or 100 foot snakes but the 400 or so people who came to the meeting were uneasy about clogged streets and houses, and tying so much of the community's real estate and economy to a single source.
"The idea of one particular group coming in and buying a lot of property and getting control over the community is a bit disturbing to all of us," said one attendee.
One neighbor claimed there were 17 IHOPers living in a house across the street. Another called the organization's followers "the most naive kids I've ever met." IHOP executives denied the naive thing and said they'd look into the overcrowding.
Complaints about development aside, most everyone wanted to know one thing: Is IHOP a cult? Mike Bickle, IHOP's founder, gave the short answer: "No, we're not a cult."
The long answer comes out in this lightly edited four-and-a-half minute video. That's Bickle talking.
The second information session is tonight at 7 at the Hillcrest Community Center (10401 Hillcrest Rd.). They're serving refreshments, but we suggest you bring your own Kool-Aid.
G.I. Joe Con 2009 officially commences today, although the real kickoff won't happen until 10:30 a.m. tomorrow when 300 12-inch action figures will parachute from 42-stories off the Hyatt Regency. But we're rolling out the welcome mat here on the Plog. So here's "The Ballad of G.I. Joe" (and it's so much better than the movie).
A small group of quirky protesters took to a Bannister Road median last Friday to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Ideology and small-scale theatrics marked the event, which took place outside the National Nuclear Security Administration/Honeywell facility in 95-degree, rush-hour hotness. Protest organizer Ann Suellentrop welcomed the heat, saying it would make her face paint drip like real blood. The Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technology plant on Bannister Road makes non-nuclear components for the nation's nukes and is a key component of what protesters called the national "bombplex." Plans are underway to expand operations in KC.
Some ideas from movies are too good to be true. The latest example: KMBC's story about two Leavenworth men who were busted yesterday for allegedly dealing drugs from their ice cream truck -- just like in the movie Friday! What's up Big Perm, I mean Big Worm?
KCPD Investigators stopped the truck, searched it and reportedly found drugs and drug paraphernalia. They took a 20-year-old and a 17-year-old into custody.
And now, since it's Friday and the 'hood comedy classic about drug capers and an ice-cream-truck is called Friday, we offer you this nice little clip to grease the day's passage.
Zombies walking for charity? Uh, OK. Here's a pretty cool video of the zombies parading through June First Friday. Thankfully, the zombies were collecting nonperishable items for the Bishop Sullivan Center. I guess brains spoil.
This Pixar-quality video was created by three French students (Vincent E Sousa, Bertrand Avril, Yann de Préval and Denis Bouyer) and is breathtakingly beautiful.
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