The Pitch: November 1, 2012

N O V E M B E R 1–7, 2 0 1 2 | F R E E | V O L . 3 2 N O . 1 8 | P I T C H . C O M

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NOVEMBER 1–7, 2012 | VOL. 32 NO. 18 E D I T O R I A L

Editor Scott Wilson Managing Editor Justin Kendall Music Editor David Hudnall Staff Writers Charles Ferruzza, Ben Palosaari Editorial Operations Manager Deborah Hirsch Calendar Editor Berry Anderson Clubs Editor Abbie Stutzer Food Blogger, Web Editor Jonathan Bender Proofreader Brent Shepherd Contributing Writers Tracy Abeln, Theresa Bembnister, April Fleming, Nancy Hull Rigdon, Matt Pearce, Dan Savage, Abbie Stutzer Intern Nadia Imafidon

A R T

Art Director Ashford Stamper Contributing Photographers Angela C. Bond, Chris Mullins, Lauren Phillips, Sabrina Staires, Brooke Vandever Design Intern Chloe George

P R O D U C T I O N

Production Manager Christina Riddle Multimedia Designer Vu Radley

A D V E R T I S I N G

Sales Manager Erin Carey Senior Classified Multimedia Specialist Steven Suarez Classified Multimedia Specialist Andrew Disper Multimedia Specialists Michelle Acevedo, Kirin Arnold Director of Marketing & Operations Jason Dockery Digital Marketing Manager Keli Sweetland

RISE OF THE RATS

C I R C U L A T I O N

Circulation Director Mike Ryan

Seen a big rodent lately?

B U S I N E S S

Accounts Receivable Jodi Waldsmith Publisher Joel Hornbostel

You’re not alone.

S O U T H C O M M

Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Chief Financial Officer Patrick Min Chief Operating Officer Rob Jiranek Chief Marketing Officer Susan Torregrossa Chief Technology Officer Matt Locke Business Manager Eric Norwood Director of Digital Sales & Marketing David Walker Director of Accounting Todd Patton Creative Director Heather Pierce Director of Online Content/Development Patrick Rains

N A T I O N A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

VMG Advertising 888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com Senior Vice President of Sales Susan Belair Senior Vice President of Sales Operations Joe Larkin

B A C K P A G E . C O M

BY C H A R L E S F E R R U Z Z A

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BUONA FORTUNA Changing the restaurant luck in Leawood with an Italian model named Mio.

Vice President Sales & Marketing Carl Ferrer Business Manager Jess Adams Accountant David Roberts

BY C H A R L E S F E R R U Z Z A

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D I S T R I B U T I O N

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WI NNER ’S C I R C LE Ross Brown comes out ahead on Small Victories.

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BY DAV I D H U D N A L L

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ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER

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PICKLEMAN’S is now open at 5050 Oak. KYLE JAMES has a song and now a video about getting really fucked up and laid a lot.

AEG CEO TIM LEIWEKE says an anchor tenant will be bad for Sprint Center, but we’ll get one anyway.

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THE PITCH

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QUESTIONNAIRE

DAN MAHANEY

What is Normal Human? Normal Human is a

Alone.

Celebrity you’d like to ride the Mamba with at Worlds of Fun: Queen Latifah

Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri Current neighborhood: Hanover Heights

Favorite person or thing to follow on Twitter: I actually don’t tweet. It’s not that I have anything against it, and I think I even created an account at some point. I just never use it.

You can find Normal Human on Instagram, though. My favorite follow there is Boulevard Brewing Co.

Who or what is your sidekick? Not really a side-

kick, but my business partner, Pat Egger, who started Normal Human with me.

What career would you choose in an alternate reality? Carpentry or some sort of skilled craftsman

Person or thing you find really irritating at this moment: Politics

What was the last local restaurant you patronized? The Art of Pizza. Fantastic gyros!

What subscription — print, digital, etc. — do you value most? Amazon Prime, thanks to

my brother.

Where do you drink? Harry’s Bar & Tables’ patio, Gilhouly’s

ily members involved with Operation Breakthrough, and I just started to get involved myself, so I’m partial to that. Through AT E N I ONL .COM Normal Human, we’ve H PITC been able to help a few, including Pages & Chapters and Spread a Little Joy. All are very worthy causes.

to make us a very attractive city for tech and e-commerce companies, which could lead to a lot of growth.

Favorite place to spend your paycheck: The hard-

“Kansas City screwed up when it …” Grew out-

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Q&As

ware store, usually Ace in Westport or True Value in Mission. I can never have enough tools. World Market comes in a close second.

What local phenomenon do you think is overrated? KC Strip. Full disclosure: I’ve never been on it; I’ve only seen how obnoxious it is when it stops in Westport.

Where do you like to take out-of-town guests?

Boulevard brewery, Oklahoma Joe’s, Westport, preferably in that order. And, of course, Normal Human.

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

Last book you read: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, an inspiring book specifically about writing but with applications to any and all creative endeavors in life.

S A B R I N A S TA I R E S

What’s your favorite charity? I have several fam-

THE PITCH

Normal Human

What movie do you watch at least once a year? The best Christmas movie ever: Home

retail shop, in downtown Mission, specializing in original, handmade screen prints on apparel and housewares.

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Co-owner of

Finish this sentence: “Kansas City got it right when …” We locked in Google Fiber. It’s going

ward instead of upward. We’re too spread out, and I think our economy suffers from it. It has also had a negative effect on the diversity of our neighborhoods.

“Kansas City needs …” Better public transit.

I’m no infrastructure expert, but I think it’s safe to say our bus system isn’t cutting it.

Hopefully that’ll change soon.

“People might be surprised to know that I …” Am

a big fan of cheesy action movies. Contraband, starring Mark Wahlberg, is a recent purchase.

pitch.com

“On my day off, I like to …” Stretch out on the

couch and watch several movies back-to-back.

“In fi ve years, I’ll be …” Surprised by whatever I’m doing, if the previous five are any indication.

What TV show do you make sure you watch?

Parks and Recreation, hands down the funniest show on television since its fi rst season.

take(s) up a lot of space in my iTunes:

Comedians. I have a ton of music, too, of course, but there’s nothing better than a good laugh.

What local tradition do you take part in every year? Watching the Plaza lights ceremony.

It’s usually from the comfort of home, but I never miss it.

pitch.com

Favorite day trip: It’s not out of town, but I can easily spend a whole day wandering around the River Market antique mall. For something outside KC, it’d be visiting my brother and his fiancée in Springfield, Missouri.

Interesting brush with the law? I can’t think of anything super interesting, but I have gotten a few speeding tickets in my day.

Lead. Foot.

Describe a recent triumph: Normal Human had its grand opening just a couple of months ago, and we had a huge turnout. It was actually a little overwhelming to have so many people in our shop, but it’s great to see how much support we have.

For more information on Normal Human (5916 West 59th Terrace, in Mission), see facebook.com/nrmlhmn.

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Kansas City Pitch 11-01-12.indd 1

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10/12/12 3:52 PM

PLOG

BINDERS FULL OF ALLEGATIONS

Former Jackson County Democratic boss Stephen Bough claims that Jacob Turk is violating election law.

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BE N PA L O S A A R I

Miles and Miles The Turks rolled ’em up.

J

acob and Donna Turk’s mileage reimbursements are the subject of one of Stephen Bough’s FEC complaints. Turk says his high mileage is simply the result of “campaigning hard” in a 5th District that grew during a redistricting year. “The district is so much bigger, we spend hours and hours and hours on the road meeting people,” he says.

One more ride for Turk (left). this man has no respect for compliance with those rules.”

Turk, who is widely seen as unthreatening in the race, has failed to come close to unseating Cleaver in three previous campaigns. However, Bough says he hopes that the FEC will hit Turk with a citation. Bough hasn’t heard from the FEC since he filed the complaint.

The most curious objection that Bough raises concerns Turk’s reimbursing himself and his wife for mileage. According to a campaign disclosure from the fi rst of the year through September 30, Turk has repaid himself $6,708 for mileage and travel. His wife, Donna, was given $5,428 in mileage reimbursement. In the FEC complaint, Bough points out that these numbers appear to be unusually high. Using the federal government’s rate of 55.5 cents per mile, that equates to 21,866 miles traveled. (Turk wasn’t nominated by Republicans until August.)

Cleaver’s campaign expenditures included thousands of dollars in airfare but didn’t list any mileage for either himself or his wife.

The FEC Press Office says it doesn’t comment on complaints it’s investigating, and Turk has refused to address the complaints (or even say if he has read them), citing laws about keeping pending complaints confidential. But Turk says filing these kinds of complaints is poor politics.

“It’s just a heinous thing to do,” Turk tells The Pitch. “We should be talking about issues.”

Although Turk wouldn’t discuss the current complaint, he finds vindication in the FEC’s ruling on the 2008 billboard complaint filed by Bough.

“This one in ’08, it was a big fishing expedition,” Turk says. “It’s unfortunate that in American politics, things like this are done completely without merit. That’s a distraction to voters. And it takes time away from a campaign to answer these.”

Turk, whose Lee’s Summit home was carved out of the 5th District during redistricting earlier this year, did address the mileage numbers with The Pitch but did so

pitch.com

only because they are publicly available in FEC filings.

“We have driven the wheels off our car to go and meet people across this now farflung district that Emanuel Cleaver used his political capital to get drawn,” Turk says.

Since the Show-Me State was redistricted, the 5th District has gone from measuring about 25 miles from west to east at its widest point to just more than 100 miles wide.

In 2010, Turk pulled in 44.2 percent of the vote and still lost by a little more than nine points. As his fourth bid for Congress wraps up, Turk says he’s feeling confident that this is his year.

“I feel good about where we are,” Turk says.

But will he run a fifth time if Cleaver beats him again?

“I don’t know,” he says with a slightly weary-sounding sigh.

Turk’s mileage by the numbers: Maximum district width, west to east:

102 miles Turk’s mileage reimbursement:

$6,708 Donna Turk’s reimbursement:

$5,428 IRS maximum rate for mileage:

55.5 cents per mile Equates to 21,866 total miles.

In a filing period of January 1- September 30:

273 days 80.09 miles a day

E-mail ben.palosaari@pitch.com

SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM THE NBA EXHIBITION GAME AT PITCH.COM

CHRIS MULLINS

he former chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Committee Stephen Bough likes to document things. On a desk in his Westport law office sits a hefty, red three-ring binder filled with neatly organized complaints against Republican 5th District congressional candidate Jacob Turk.

In June, Bough sent a copy of the binder to the Federal Election Commission. He claims that its contents document a history of Turk’s violating election law in his current and his 2010 campaigns to unseat Emanuel Cleaver II. “There can be no doubt that I am an enormous fan of Congressman Cleaver,” Bough tells The Pitch. So far, Bough has donated $3,000 to Cleaver’s 2012 campaign. “I’ve had LO G at my home. I’m MOLREINPE AT events often listed as one of G ON O L M/P his donors. Every time P IT C H .C O I make a donation, he has to list it,” he says.

“And that’s my same gripe against Turk. For years, he just slanders a wonderful congressman, and he doesn’t play by the rules.”

Pointing to his binder, with its 28 exhibits, color photos and screen captures, Bough adds, “The reason I put this together is because the way Mr. Turk runs his campaigns is not the way we should do things.”

This isn’t Bough’s first missive to the FEC regarding Turk. In 2008, Bough complained that Turk was benefiting from billboard advertisements that stayed up long after his contract for the boards expired. The FEC found in Turk’s favor in that case.

This time, Bough sounds confident that he has nailed Turk.

“I think it’s not a Republican-Democrat thing,” Bough says. “I think it’s a Turk thing.

I believe most of the Republicans want to play by the rules and do play by the rules when it comes to these campaigns. But I just don’t see Mr. Turk making an effort to comply with each and every rule.”

Bough admits that the alleged violations are far from sexy or scandalous. In them, he argues that Turk’s letterhead and ads that read “Turk U.S. Congress” violate a regulation that requires candidates to clearly identify themselves as running for office rather than as elected officials. He also alleges that anti-abortion group Missouri Right to Life coordinated with Turk by running a 2010 print ad in The Catholic Key that looked and read similar to Turk’s campaign website. And he says Turk hasn’t put the required box around the disclosure of who paid for his print ads and billboards.

“How these billboards look, I believe they truly are a technical violation of the FEC rules,” says Bough, who was appointed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority last summer. “But again, at the end of the day, it just shows that

BY

LeBron James and defending NBA champion Miami Heat showed off at the Sprint Center Wednesday, October 24. The Washington Wizards won the game, 101–94. pitch.com

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here was a full moon the night I saw the rat.

I had seen bigger rats before, but never one in this Brookside neighborhood and never one this brazen. This wasn’t a nervous rodent scurrying around a Dumpster. It moved with fearless swagger as it merrily crossed 59th Street. I stared as it found the sidewalk and then strolled along like a homeowner on a morning walk, nodding at the neighbors.

The next day, I mentioned that brassy Rattus norvegicus to a neighbor. He grabbed my arm, suddenly possessed. “Don’t let anyone know what you saw,” he said.

It’s the thing you don’t hear anybody talk about in Willard, that horror classic about killer rats: real estate. Rats don’t kill people, but they’re hell on house value.

And this lone gunman from the rat underground set my neighbor into a paroxysm of dread, confi rming his suspicions about Kansas City’s long-sought sewer renovations.

“When that happens,” he told me about the project, “thousands — maybe millions — of rats will come up from the sewers and take over Kansas City. The streets will be overflowing with them, like in some Third World country.” continued on page 12

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continued from page 11 He’s not the only one quaking in his bunga low. As I began to ask around over the following two weeks, I heard a halfdozen more variations of the displaced-rat scenario, all from seemingly well-adjusted people otherwise immune to urban legend.

“Don’t forget what happened in the 1990s, during the Brush Creek Flood Control and Beautification Project,” one person warned me. “They tore up those old sewers near the Plaza, and the West Plaza neighborhood was inundated by rats.”

I was reminded of a story I’d heard a lot back then, about a doctor living in one of the tasteful homes along Westwood Road, who found two jumbo rats lounging in his basement laundry room, where they’d eaten through a wooden door. Surely an apocryphal tale, right?

Well, no, according to Michael Swoyer, the supervisor of the Kansas City Health Department’s rat-control program.

“There’s documented truth to that tale,” he told me when I called him. “There was a big uptick in rat complaints from that neighborhood during that time.” (Darryl Franke, owner of SOS Pest Control, which has had a contract with the Health Department since 1995, confirmed that he was sent to the West Plaza “a whole lot of times” during that period.)

So is the sewer overhaul a precursor to rat domination?

“Kansas City has always had rats,” Swoyer says. “They’re already everywhere.”

K

ansas City’s rat population exists in an arc extending from the Missouri River on the north to the old city limits — around 85th Street — to the south. And Swoyer says downtown (and the area immediately surrounding it), which also boasts the city’s oldest sewer lines — some dating back to 1853 — has been a rat refuge for years. Everything the rats need is here: shelter, food, water.

Our rats are almost exclusively what pros like Swoyer call Norway rats: the wharf rat, the sewer rat, the street rat. If that sounds like the rodent version of a thug, that’s because it is. Averaging 9-12 inches in length, the Norway rat lives fast and dies hard (more on that later), with a life span of from six months to a year but a reproductive cycle that produces from four to seven litters a year, with at least eight pups to a litter.

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They may not attack people, but they carry diseases that do — more than 100 different bacterial illnesses, according to some reports, among them Murine typhus, leptospirosis, bubonic plague and rat-bite fever.

(The stealth sickening agent, though, might be salmonella. As Swoyer reminds us, rats “walk through a lot of nasty stuff.”)

They have a mean bite, with a pressure of 3.5 tons per square inch, compared with a human bite that’s 800-900 pounds per square inch. “Their teeth are harder than iron,” Swoyer says. “They can chew through almost anything.”

That includes wood and concrete. (Rats can chew through paper and plastic in seconds.) That’s what the customers at the illfated Family Dollar Store at 5440 Prospect discovered in May 2011, when a rat chased a patron out of the building. The customer reported to the Health Department an aggressive rat “tearing through bags of food” during business hours. An investigator with the department’s Food Protection Program suspended the health permit for the business after reporting “large amounts of rat droppings under shelves and shelves of merchandise.” The report also says the inspector “observed various shelves of cat and dog food bags, candies and potato chips containing opened bags that had been chewed through.”

The city knows where the rats are.

The store did not reopen, and the building that housed it sits at the western edge of KC’s ground zero for rat complaints: the 64130 zip code. The area bordered by Prospect to the west and Hardesty to the east, tucked between 39th Street and 63rd Street, dominates a 2011 chart produced by the Health Department to track such complaints.

Unlike that star-crossed store, though, most of the properties in that area remain occupied. “There’s a lot of human density in this area,” Swoyer says.

S

woyer is essentially a one-man show, and as recently as 2002, no one ran rat patrol for the city. In 2005, the Health Department made its rat-control program a full-time gig again and brought back Swoyer (who had held the job from 1998 to 2000, before being promoted to a technical-support position).

It was a rodent boom that made KC flip on its rat signal again, but not one in the 64130.

Swoyer says, “An uptick in rat complaints from the Brookside neighborhood brought the program back to life.”

But even with a rat population that Swoyer estimates to be in the thousands, his department isn’t growing very fast. “I

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“I can understand the discontent people have at the idea of these old sewers being ripped out,” Swoyer continues. “But it’s not going to be ‘open the sluices, here come the rats.’ There will be some rat issues around town, but for the most part, rats living in the sewers are just going to move to different parts of the sewer.”

Jennifer Kincaid, the external communications liaison for the Kansas City Water Services Department, echoes Swoyer’s calming refrain. She says the 25-year, $500 million Overflow Control Program isn’t designed to rip up as many of the aging sewer lines as rumor suggests.

“There will be some replacement of pipes,” she says, “but we’ll be making more cost-effective repairs that don’t involve digging up the old sewer lines. There’s a new technology that allows us to use a mylar product, almost like a balloon, in the existing lines to seal any cracks or problems.”

Kincaid adds: “I spoke to one of our rat gurus here at the Water Department, and he told me that he’s seen a lot of miles of our city sewer and really hasn’t seen a lot of rats in the lines unless it’s an area near a grain silo or a major food source. I don’t think our OCP project is going to stir up a lot of rats.”

But not everyone is so comfortable with the idea.

“This city is a giant rat’s nest,” said a 76-year-old woman I met at Home Depot last week. “I’ll never forget the night, in the 1960s, I was driving with my husband to a restaurant in the West Bottoms.

We made a wrong turn and found ourselves on this strange street, and we were surrounded by rats. Thousands of them. We barely escaped with our lives.”

She put a box of rat poison in her cart and moved on.

I chose a different brand.

I-3

take the complaints and file reports but very rarely visit the actual complaint sites,” he explains. “The city hires exterminators — currently Smithereen and SOS Pest Control — to handle the on-site visits.”

The outsourced exterminators investigating the complaints begin by looking for signs of residency: namely burrows around a property. These are easy to see in a wellmaintained neighborhood but less obvious around an abandoned building, which might be surrounded by brush and overgrown weeds.

The next step: dropping pellet poison into the burrows. “They do it so it mimics the action of seeds washing down the holes during a rain,” Swoyer says. “Unlike mice, rats are not curious creatures. They tend to be frightened or wary of anything new or unfamiliar.”

Rats have become resistant to most of the old-guard poisons, including warfarin, which was for years the ne plus ultra of rat killers. “Rats just got used to eating it and passed on the resistance to their children,” Swoyer says.

Swoyer says he averages about 1,200 complaints each year, and his program budgets about $27,000 for exterminator visits. (St. Louis received only 675 complaints about rats in 2011, according to Warren Nichols, the public information manager for the city’s Department of Health. This year’s budget for what St. Louis calls “vector problems” is $293,581, a figure that includes mitigation against not just rodents but also insects and any other pests. “We don’t break it down by the different areas we address,” Nichols says.)

SOS Pest Control’s Franke says the city contract is a very small part of his business.

“We make about 50 to 100 calls a year exclusively for the Health Department,” he says.

“Do I think Kansas City has a rat problem?

Let’s just say that Kansas City has a healthy rat population, especially in certain areas of town.”

“People get freaked out by rats, they really do,” says Swoyer, who will never forget his first professional run-in with a rodent. “I was moving a board leaning against a building, and a rat jumped out at me. I jumped back myself — about 30 feet.

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WEEK OF NOVEMBER 1-7 | BY BERRY ANDERSON

19

PAG E

FRIDAY

11. 2

First up: It’s Heads . again Friday

STAGE The Kansas City Rep digs up Irma Vep.

21

PAG E

FILM Denzel Washington crashes in Flight.

23 PAG E

CAFÉ Mio’s route to Italy goes through Leawood.

T H U R S D AY | 11 . 1 | CLOVER FIELD

American socialite and amateur photographer Marian “Clover” Hooper Adams was the wife of Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams. Her wealth and prominence gave her special access to WashE R MO ington’s elite in the mid1880s, so her suicide by ingesting potassium T A INE dioxide — a darkroom ONL .COM PITCH chemical — seemed pretty much inexplicable until Natalie Dykstra picked up the case.

“I was surprised by Clover’s verve, by her sense of adventure and athleticism, by how fully alive she was,” says Dykstra, associate professor of English at Hope College in Michigan. Her free lecture, Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, begins

EVENTS

FIRST FRIDAY ROUNDUP Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art (2004 Baltimore, 816-221-2626) opens the Rococoinspired installations of Misty Gamble, whose Abject Reverie aims to challenge stanat 7:30 p.m. at the University of Kansas Hall Center Conference Hall (900 Sunnyside, Lawrence, 785-864-4798).

F R I D AY | 11 . 2 | FIRST FRIDAY PARTY ROUNDUP

Prospero’s Uptown Books (3600 Broadway, 816-253-7243). The independently owned bookstore is opening its third location, with 65,000 titles — books, LPs, CDs, comics and movies — in the Uptown Shoppes.

Art by Sterling Witt and music by the Sexy Accident accompany free massages (with $10 purchases), raffles and witty discourse.

The party starts at 6 p.m.

Rhythm & Booze (423 Southwest Boulevard, 816-221-2669). Some of the best tacos on the Boulevard go just fine with shot specials starting at 3 p.m. today and happy-hour prices until midnight. The featured November artist is Christina Waidhima. continued on page 16

“6” by MA Alford (detail) at Beggar’s Table dards of feminine beauty using multiples, ceramics and pink-and-yellow partial people (made-up, limbless mannequins whose female faces are hidden by their coiffures and who stand amid symbols of indulgence). In Taking Aim, Linda Lighton, Jane Rainwater

and Charles Krafft use their various styles and preferred mediums to comment on the dark attractions of weaponry.

There’s a strong showing of ceramics at Red Star Studios (inside the Belger Arts Center at 2100 Walnut, 816-474-7316), where 2003 Kansas City Art Institute grads Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis present their surface decorated “copies” of museum works (created using 3-D scanners and printers). New this month is Porcelain Society by the internationally renowned Ilona Romule.

And it’s the last day to see the Belger’s exhibition of masterworks of Don Reitz.

With Discovery: a Friend in Art, Jim Leedy, Todd Weiner Gallery (115 West 18th Street, 816-984-8538) extends homage to the abstract-expressionist ceramic sculptor whose name is synonymous with seeding the Crossroads Arts District decades ago. Meet the artist and take in the power of the work for yourself.

The church-slash-gallery Beggar’s Table (2010 Baltimore, 816-500-0820) has rounded up a number of established local artists to address Dwell(ing): MA Alford, Kristi Arnold, Jorge Calvo, Christopher Clark, Kristin Goering, Kari Heybrock, Stephanie Leedy, Morgan Madison, Jenny MeyerMcCall, John Raux, Jennifer Rivera, Caleb Taylor and Courtney Wasson. Amid the First Friday frenzy, Beggar’s Table is also the site of Working Words’ KU @ First Fridays; the 7 p.m. literary reading showcases Phillip Garland, Sara Leavens, Jennifer Pacioianu, Caitlin Thornbrugh and Justin Zaruba.

— TRACY ABELN

S AT U R D AY | 1 1 . 3 |

YOU CAN DO IT

R

ob Schneider has been in so many comedies you’re embarrassed to admit you own — Grandma’s Boy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo — that it’s easy to forgive his whack-ass politics. Maybe. See how far his act has come since his late-1980s SNL stint when he appears at the VooDoo Lounge at Harrah’s Casino (1 Riverboat Drive, 816-472-7777). Tickets cost $40– $75, and doors open at 6:30 p.m. for the 21-and-older show.

Schneider makes his GOP face. pitch.com

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FRIDAY

11. 2

Crown ate at Free sk orning m is th Center

continued from page 15 The Writers Place (3607 Pennsylvania, 816-753-1090). The Latino Writers Collective, including poets Maria Vasquez Boyd, Jose Faus, Miguel M. Morales and featured reader Gustavo Adolfo Ayabar, invites you to a fiesta filled with poems and wine. It gets under way at 7 p.m. Admission costs $3 for members and $5 for nonmembers. See writersplace.org for more information.

sides of Crown Center’s Ice Terrace (2425 Grand, 816-274-8411). Today, the city’s only public outdoor rink begins its 40th season with three hours of free skating from 6 to 9 a.m. After that, the Ice Terrace is open daily. Admission costs $6 for those between the ages of 5 and 60 (free for everyone else), and skate rental is $3. See crowncenter.com for a full schedule and more information.

BLADES OF STEEL

Local comics and editorial-cartoon aggregator GoComics.com allows users to discover new artists, read news about comics, and catch up on everything from Calvin and Hobbes E R O M to Twaggies. And it couldn’t have done it without Universal T A INE Uclick — its parent comONL .COM H PITC pany — or social media.

UU director of marketing Gene Willis speaks at today’s Social Media Club KC November breakfast, from 7:30 to 10 a.m., about the use of social media to blow up the comics world. The event at the Kansas City Café (1532 Grand, 816-471-7111) costs $5 (an extra $10 buys breakfast). RSVP at smckc.com.

For the last 39 years, skaters have been either gliding gracefully around or clinging to the

S AT U R D AY | 1 1 . 3 |

AMPED-UP ALES

W

hen we asked McCoy’s Public House bar manager Randyl Danner to predict which beer would go fastest at this year’s Strong Ale Festival, she listed two brews: Deschutes Brewery’s Chasin’ Freshies (an IPA made from an heirloom strain of hops from Willamette Valley) and Perennial Artisan Ales’ Fantastic Voyage (a milk stout brewed with coconut). Try these beers plus selections from more than 30 breweries from 1 to 5 p.m. today on Pennsylvania Avenue between Westport Road and 40th Street.

Tickets cost $30 in advance and $35 at the door. Buy them at beerkc.com.

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EVENTS

S AT U R D AY | 11 . 3 | ’DOTTE CRAWL

With a full tank of gas, the right pair of shoes and a few energy drinks, one might make it to all eight stops during today’s Wyandotte County Museum Crawl. Start or end up at any one of the museums, and for one $5 ticket, from 2 to 6 p.m., visit as many as you’d like: the Clendening History of Medicine Museum at KU Medical Center, the Grinter Place Historical Site, the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, the Old Quindaro Museum, the Quindaro Underground Railroad Museum, the Strawberry Hill Ethnic Museum and Cultural Center, the Sumner High School Alumni Room, and the Wyandotte County Historical Society and Museum. Purchase tickets in advance at one of the museums. For more information, see visitkansascityks.com (click on “Events”) or call 913-321-5800.

AY

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MOND

gets a r Chief Maste ase. le e r t h midnig

S U N D AY | 11 . 4 | SHE’S CRAFTY

If you’ve been to Westport’s Strawberry Swing indie craft fair, then you’ve seen the finest selections of jewelry, photography, home décor, letterpress, pottery and bric-abrac from more than 80 independent artists from across the country. Hello Lovely Events has branched out with its second-annual Holiday Swing, a seasonal installment of the craft fair. Look for vendors such as Papillon Kate, Redesigning Women and Simply Paperie at the Alexander Majors Barn (8201 State Line, 816-444-1858) from 1 to 7 p.m. For more information, see hellolovelyevents.com.

M O N D AY | 11 . 5 |

T U E S D AY | 11 . 6 |

FORWARD UNTO DAWN

We didn’t choose the life of a gamer, so we can’t fully prepare you for how huge the release of first-person shooter-game Xbox

STEPHEN BUTLER

W E D N E S D AY | 1 1 .7 |

MORE THAN WORDS

P

360 Halo 4 is going to be. But we can tell you that the midnight release party at the Overland Park Microsoft Store (11467 West 95th Street, 913-693-0901) looks like it’s going to be a rager, with free Red Bull and Pizza Hut pizza, a DJ, giveaways, raffles and professional replica gaming suits.

Winners of the Halo 4 tournament should expect epic prizes, according to Amanda Trouba, product adviser and communitysupport team member. The Microsoft Store, which opens at 10 p.m. for the free event, is located on the lower level of Oak Park Mall between Build-A-Bear and Brookstone. For more information, see microsoftstore.com and search for the OP location.

oetry and visual arts come together at the American Jazz Museum (1616 East 18th Street, 816-474-8463) for Beyond Words, an exhibit curated by Glenn North, the museum’s poet-in-residence, and Sonié Joi Ruffin, KC fabric artist and Charlotte Street Award winner. Think improvisation, free flow and the celebration of culture. It runs through April 26, 2013. For more information, see americanjazzmuseum.org.

DAY OF RECKONING

Where will you be when the shit goes down? Here are the two best parties on either side of the line if you’re too antsy to sit at home and wait for returns. Just don’t forget to vote before you go out.

The View at Briarcliff, at the Courtyard

by Marriott (4000 North Mulberry Drive, 816-841-3300). Join Axiom Strategies and Congressman Sam Graves for this Republican throwdown complete with complimentary beer, wine and appetizers. Dress nicely and leave all firearms in the car. RSVPs are mandatory and should be made by Friday, November 2, by calling 816-407-1222 or e-mailing axiomelections@gmail.com.

Lucky Brewgrille (5401 Johnson Drive, Mission, 913-403-8571). Join up with the Johnson County Democrats from 7:30 to 10:30 to watch the returns in the downstairs of the bar and restaurant.

Uptown Arts Bar (3611 Broadway, 816-960-4611). It’s hoped that the mood in midtown will be as swell as these drink specials: $2 wells and domestic bottles all night, $1 shots for every swing state and 50-cent shots for every red state that Obama wins (no premiums, y’all) and one free round on the house if we get four more years.

Celebrate the Midwest with a Prairiefire or chilled chocolate-chip-cookie-dough vodka shot. Specials start at 7 p.m.

E-mail submissions to Filter editor Berry Anderson at calendar@pitch.com. Search our complete listings guide online at pitch.com.

Career Exploration Night Wednesday, November 7, 6-7:30 pm

MCC-Business & Technology

1775 Universal Ave., Kansas City, MO 64120 (Just off Front Street and I-435)

Meet instructors. Tour labs and classrooms. Learn about the career field. Find out how to get started in college, and how and when to apply for financial aid.

We will begin in Campus Center, Room 248. ● Industrial Technologies (Industrial Electrician, Maintenance Mechanic, PLC Specialist, Stationary Engineering, Millwright and Multi-Craft Technician)

● Computer Aided Drafting & Design ● Welding Technology & Management ● Engineering Technology (Computer/Electronics, Civil, Architectural, Mechanical, and Construction Management emphasis)

● Environmental Health & Safety ● Electric Utility Line Technician ● Cisco Networking Academy (CCNA, CCNP and Network Security)

● Precision Machining & Manufacturing (CNC and Manual)

● Photovoltaics/Energy Efficiency

● Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC/R, including Energy Efficiency)

● Military Degree Completion (Industrial Technologies)

Call or sign up online.

Blue River Business & Technology Longview Maple Woods Penn Valley

816.604.1000 mcckc.edu/visitbtc

pitch.com

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CLASSICS KANSAS CITY SYMPHONY

LOVE: IT TAKES TWO

Thursday, November 8 at 7PM | Helzberg Hall Aram Demirjian, assistant conductor

There is no more distinctly human emotion than love, and there is, perhaps, no other phenomenon in history that has inspired more art. In this program, we’ll explore the most famous couples, pairs and star-crossed lovers in history. Highlights include Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Tickets are $25 each and include a glass of champagne or wine after the concert in the Kauffman Center lobby, where you can mingle and meet the Symphony musicians.

PURCHASE TICKETS NOW KCSYMPHONY.ORG 816.471.0400

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S TA G E

LIGHTNING DRAG

The Rep dresses Irma Vep in high style — at high speed.

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M

In the production at the Kansas City Repuch has changed in this country since ertory Theatre, directed by Tom Aulino, the 1984. When The Mystery of Irma Vep two men portray several female and male — a Penny Dreadful debuted, gay jokes and roles between them. And because the play men in drag could still surprise mainstream calls for only two actors, that means Google theatergoers.

Fiber–speed wardrobe changes and characIn its original run, one of the two actors ter switches. in Irma Vep was its playwright, Charles By now, in 2012, men wearing dresses Ludlam, a director, writer and actor who onstage is old bonnet. Last year’s American had formed the Ridiculous Theatre in 1967.

Heartland Theatre production of The ImporThe avant-garde company was known for tance of Being Earnest, for instance, gave us satirizing cultural norms, parodying literary genres and upending theatrical traditions. Jim Korinke as Lady Bracknell in a casting Offering some historical context for a re- not intended as a stunt. What makes this Irma Vep interesting in 2012 is its setting at cent Irma Vep staging at the Court Theatre the old-guard KC Rep and its casting. of Chicago, Drew Dir (the Court’s resident Th is is the f irst Rep dramaturg) writes that the app ea ra nce for KC acRidiculous was a place for The Mystery of tor and director Megee, Ludlam and his company who’s know n primarily to “f launt and celebrate Irma Vep — for off beat, often gendertheir homosexuality before a Penny Dreadful bending roles. On opening a general audience.”

Through November 18, night, he drew a guffaw Ludlam preferred the Copaken Stage, 13th Street and Walnut, Kansas City in the first scene simply term “female impersonRepertory Theatre, ambling across the stage as ator” to drag. Dir explains, 816-235-2700, kcrep.org Jane, the maid. Robbins, “Despite Ludlam’s literary also a talented longtime aspirations, there was a regKC actor and a director, has ular contingent of audience been on Rep stages many times, though members who saw his cross-dressing pernever before as a woman. They both looked formances … as pure drag entertainment.” right at home inside a topsy-turvy plot With or without that drag, though, Irma driven by purposely absurd machinations.

Vep still works as entertainment. It’s a Their timing and inflection are perfect.

Vaudeville-style silly good time, with room And they need to be — unsophisticated puns for actors to show off (in a good way). And and double-entendres dominate Ludlam’s its sendups of horror-fi lm tropes and 19thscript. In a typical exchange, as Lady Enid century melodrama hit a few satisfying notes. bends over before a fi re, Jane comes up beYet its main attraction remains the crosshind her and asks, “How do you like it?” dressing, at least when the female imper(Jane is, of course, referring to a cup of tea.) sonators are Mark Robbins and Ron Megee.

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From left: Robbins (Alcazar) and Megee (Lord Edgar) discover a sarcophagus in an ancient Egyptian tomb, and Megee and Robbins (Lady Enid) share a moment.

“Any man who dresses up as a woman can’t be all bad,” goes a line in one of the broadly self-referential moments. When Robbins’ Lady Enid demands to speak to another of his characters, Megee’s Jane replies, “You can’t.” Asked why, Jane answers, “For obvious reasons.”

Bits of Shakespeare mix with snippets of Edgar Allan Poe and sit up alongside mentions of a mummy, a vampire, ghosts and a werewolf. One quip drew a collective groan on opening night. Still, it’s fascinating to see the Rep this loose, and I won’t forget the quickchange artistry that powers this production and earns the major share of its laughs.

How quick? Megee exits as Jane through one door only to re-emerge elsewhere seconds later as Lord Edgar. Robbins departs as Lady Enid, then reappears almost instantly as Nicodemus the swineherd — carrying Lady Enid. Wardrobe trickery (costume design by Lindsay W. Davis) even enables a character transformation onstage, and the brilliantly choreographed mayhem culminates in Robbins’ portrayal of two characters at the same time.

Megee’s and Robbins’ performances elevate Irma Vep. (I would have liked to see it from backstage, seated near the dressers.)

The show may be shallow, but the talent here — onstage and behind it — runs deep.

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Denzel Washington can’t save this Flight.

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light, the new Denzel Washington movie from director Robert Zemeckis, cost a reported $31 million to produce. For an awardsseason-kickoff drama that boasts some 300 digital effects, that’s practically a mumblecore budget. And probably $28 million of Paramount’s cash went to music clearances.

Zemeckis has spent the past decade shepherding motion-capture filmmaking from dead-eyed creepy (Polar Express) to merely stupid (the sadly inevitable Jim Carrey-ing of A Christmas Carol), so his return to live action is a comfort — even when it’s also a rote disappointment. But E R O M the hugely successful director of Forrest Gump didn’t get where he is by T A INE ONL .COM being subtle, and so we H PITC get a Time-Life compilation’s worth of FM staples to lubricate Flight’s emotions. That means two helpings of Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright,” an application of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” that would make Martin Scorsese blush, and — to show that Zemeckis hasn’t lost a step since the 1990s — the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If someone is shooting heroin, it must be time for “Under the Bridge.” No smack addict has been this badly treated onscreen since Gene Hackman got tied to a bed in French Connection II. Denzel isn’t the one dancing with Mr. Brownstone, though. His problem, assigned

by Flight screenwriter John Gatins (Real Steel), is booze (bookended with coke when it’s time to wake up). See, airline pilot Whip Whitaker is an alcoholic. And he isn’t just any kind of alcoholic. He's the worst kind, the Hollywood kind.

Not to be unfair to those real-life alcoholics whose coffee-table clutterings are as bottledense as Whitaker’s, those drinkers who aren’t even in the same zip code as rock bottom when they pull from a half-gallon of McCormick before driving out of the liquor-store parking lot (as Whip does). Those people are out there, and they don’t live to tell Keith Richards’ tale.

But even they might laugh at Flight’s depiction of the disease’s throes, mostly because so much effort has gone into making Whitaker’s internal struggle so wince-inducing in its external specifics. Washington gets to play drunk in the classic movie modes: charismatic dissipation, slurred anger, stubborn denial, out cold. But the character must stay articulate enough to move along his melodrama, and he must also be convincingly capable of a pilot’s split-second judgment. So to tell us how drunk Whitaker is, how drunk he has been, and how drunk he’s going to be, Gatins and Zemeckis rely on sweaty close-ups, orgies of mini-bar empties, and Joe Cocker.

In spite of its sheer obviousness, Flight sometimes works. This owes something to one tenet of matinee dipso drama that’s as effective now as it was seven decades ago in The Lost Weekend: the manipulation of our rooting interest. Something about seeing a posse of well-meaning folks with fully functional self-

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control tweaks our inner libertarians, and we rationalize for our drunk-ass hero, willing him to quit and to do it, as he insists he can, on his own terms. Flight goes that impulse one better by making Whitaker a real hero — and daring us not to root for him to elude the punishment he deserves (that might, in fact, save his life).

Because even impaired — spectacularly impaired, a blood test later shows — Whitaker saves a crashing jet full of passengers (and untold lives on the ground) by executing a maneuver no other pilot could have made.

Whip’s trick — forcing the plane’s dive into an inversion, turning the thing upside down — is CGI catnip for Zemeckis. The director delivers an air sequence whose only rival is his own previous work: the FedEx cargo plane’s harrowing descent in Cast Away. It’s jarring to the point of near punishment, and it proves that Zemeckis remains among our most technically astute directors. (Don Burgess, who also shot Cast Away, is director of photography here, and his work is strong throughout.)

The last time Washington played a drunk with a unique skill set was in 2004’s Man on Fire, the most violent and direct of the actor’s increasingly absurd collaborations with the late Tony Scott, and one that came with some weird Catholic baggage. The arc for that Biblereading, gun-toting character was simple: Care about a child enough to stop drinking, avenge the child’s abduction with elaborate cruelty, yield sacrificially to God’s will.

Whitaker’s journey isn’t much more complex, but Flight’s God problem is different. Its most grating tic is the sneer it turns against Christianity, and not just because Whitaker thinks he doesn’t need the 12 steps. Whip’s co-pilot isn’t just a straight arrow but a prayerful man with a prayerful wife, and Brian Geraghty plays him just a few shades darker than Jack McBrayer’s character on 30 Rock. And the church that the doomed plane grazes is

Washington is high-malfunctioning. a Pentecostal sanctuary, whose white-robed (and glowingly photographed) parishioners are in the middle of a baptism when they’re called on to pull survivors from the wreckage.

Jesus, really?

Zemeckis’ good movies — the first Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit chief among them — do just fine without the quiet layering of subtext, though they’re not without nuance. Flight is second-tier Zemeckis, an effective demonstration of star power overcoming computer wizardry but not quite surmounting a schematic story. Washington is solid, and he is given room to capital-A act by the rest of the cast (though the English Kelly Reilly and the Canadian Bruce Greenwood relish their honey-glazed Georgia accents a bit too much).

The most interesting thing going on in Flight might be the return of Zemeckis not just to live action but to kid-unfriendly movies. The director has stuck PG-13 or lower since 1980’s frenetically debauched Used Cars (still a worthy companion to The Blues Brothers and Caddyshack, that year’s other high watermarks for the permanent adolescence allowed by cable TV), but Flight earns its hard-R wings.

There’s a generously naked Nadine Velazquez as the movie starts, frank drug use then and later, and profanity copious enough that it washes over you like jet-engine white noise on a red-eye. This is not a rebuke. I pretty much wish that everything but Pixar movies were rated R, and even that studio’s Cars franchise would benefit if it channeled a little Deadwood.

It’s my hope that Zemeckis, who proves here that a not-stupid, star-driven movie can be crafted cheaply, try again, with a script that’s as ambitious as he still is.

No purchase necessary. Limit one (admits two) pass per person. 50 passes will be available while supplies last. This film is not yet rated. Please note: Arrive early! Seating is firstcome, first-served, except for members of the reviewing press. Seating is not guaranteed.

Theatre is overbooked to ensure a full house. Theatre is not responsible for overbooking.

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CAFÉ

BUONA FORTUNA

Changing the restaurant luck in Leawood with an Italian model named Mio.

BY

CHARLES FERRUZZA

Mio: an Italian Trattoria • 4800 West 135th Street, Leawood, 913-685-9646 • Hours: Lunch 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Monday–Saturday; dinner 5:30–10 p.m. Monday–Thursday, 5:30–11 p.m. Friday–Saturday • Price: $$–$$$

he ingredients are easy enough to figure out: a good location, a talented chef, an interesting menu, polished service. But there’s no such thing as a surefire recipe for a successful restaurant, and even the most artful combination of these components sometimes can’t prevent a restaurant from failing.

A powerful intangible also comes into play: luck, which so far is smiling on the two-monthold restaurant called Mio: an Italian Trattoria.

The brainchild of Julian Viso, corporate executive turned chef, Mio seems to be thriving in a location that suffocated two previous tenants: Mandarinism and Blue Fin Asian Fusion. The memory of those places has faded over the two years that this suburban storefront, at 135th Street and Roe, has remained empty, and Mio (the Italian word for my or mine) has been full, with a waiting list, every time I’ve visited. (The first time I ate dinner here, I sat at the bar.)

Appearances, of course, can be a little deceiving. Mio’s dining room, which seats just 75 people, is small enough to appear robustly populated as soon as a handful of diners is present. Mio MORE could probably do twice its volume in a bigger space, but that’s not the T A INE ONL .COM point. This Mio is a test, PITCH a prototype for a chain of modestly priced casual Italian spots. (The most expensive entrée on the current menu is a $22 grilled steak.)

“This is not a red-sauce Italian restaurant,” says the Venezuelan-born Viso. He started his culinary career in the 1980s while working at movie producer Dino De Laurentiis’ Beverly Hills restaurant, DDL Foodshow.

“I worked every position in the restaurant,” he recalls.

“In the last 24 years, I’ve been mostly traveling for work,” Viso says. “I’ve eaten in at least 5,000 restaurants in 15 different countries. I have ideas for several different restaurants — a real Argentinian steakhouse, for example, and a traditional Latin tapas restaurant, the kind I grew up visiting in Venezuela.”

Viso has incorporated Specialty Cuisine Concepts as an umbrella operation for his planned culinary ventures. But the immediate success of Mio has narrowed his focus a bit: He wants to find a second location in downtown Kansas City, just east of the Crossroads. But it has to be the right space, he insists, “to replicate the energy and vitality of the Leawood restaurant.”

A lot of that vitality can be credited to Carl Brandt, the veteran local restaurateur whom Viso has hired as Mio’s general manager.

One of the most hands-on restaurant professionals I’ve ever met, Brandt has trained a young staff of servers and bartenders who are really on the ball: polished, articulate and knowledgable about the menu.

CAFÉ

ANGELA C. BOND

T

That knowledge is important because the spaghetti and meatballs on the list of entrées menu, though not sophisticated, is a little or spumoni on the dessert menu.

It’s not exactly a revolution, but Viso tricky — at least if you’re avoiding certain ingredients. The risotto di porcini looks from doesn’t offer any of those items. He admits its description to be a meatless dish, but Viso that customers come in looking for them, and he isn’t a bit cowed by their expectations. He’s uses prosciutto in the preparation. “It gives so much more depth to the dish,” he tells proud of his very un-Roma flatbread, for one thing. “It’s pizza dough,” he me. “These are my grandsays, explaining the discs mother’s dishes. They can’t Mio: An Italian that look like oversized combe changed.”

Trattoria munion wafers. “It’s an idea Yeah, I know what you’re Lentil-and-sausage soup ...$6 we discovered in a restaurant thinking. I’ve spent a lifeSpaghettini all’aglio ............$9 in California.” It doesn’t taste time tinkering with my ItalLasagne al forno .................$12 like an epiphany, even by ian grandmother’s dishes Grilled pork chops ..............$18 suburban standards, but it — not always for the better, Grilled lamb chops ............ $20 does come with a sensational I admit — and it’s the reason I Torta di panettone ...............$6 dipping sauce of sundriedrarely order a dish like Viso’s tomato-infused olive oil, spaghettini all’aglio (pasta oregano, salt, pepper and garlic. with garlic, olive oil and crushed red pepper).

Viso is tweaking the menu for a change in It’s easy and cheap to make at home. But the food here is executed well enough to merit November, but he plans to keep two of the metro’s best soups on his list. The minestrone taking the night off from the family cookbook.

Viso’s baked lasagne, for example, is simple is soothing, and the lentil-and-sausage soup, as thick as a porridge, borders on the divine. but very satisfying, layered with a robust It’s hearty, with a sly kick from fresh onions, Bolognese sauce and baked en casserole. basil and red-pepper flakes.

Kansas Citians have long been set in their Plenty of the dishes here are intensely flaways about Italian restaurants. Historically, vorful. I like the thick grilled pork chop — a they’ve been used to baskets of Roma bread first-rate, wonderfully moist cut slathered served with ice-cold pats of hard butter.

They expect a salad to be included in the with a piquant balsamic reduction — though price of the meal. And God forbid there’s no it needs a name change. It’s not a Sicilian

Viso’s vision for Mio’s menu ranges from the savory to the sexy. braciola, which few local restaurants serve, but a sexy braciolette. Viso says he’s about to tweak that dish, but the excellent grilled lamb chops will stay just as they are: a meaty rack blanketed in a shiny, supple sauce seasoned with rosemary, thyme and allspice.

The dolci list is strictly Italian — not even a scoop of spumoni to be found — with a moist ricotta cake, a pretty little chocolate tart, and a bread pudding made with squares of panettone. The staff raves about that festive yeast loaf (baked with raisons, citron and pine nuts), but the serving I tasted was dry.

And when did bread pudding become the new crème brûlée anyway?

Viso picked the restaurant’s name because he liked the idea that “what’s mine is yours.”

There’s an undeniable conviviality in this dining room (a good thing because it’s so small), and Viso is one of those chef-restaurateurs who likes to come out of the kitchen and talk to his guests. If he can figure out how to replicate himself for every future Mio, he’ll really have the winning recipe for a dynamic restaurant chain.

Have a suggestion for a restaurant The Pitch should review?

E-mail charles.ferruzza@pitch.com

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THE PITCH

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

n 1995, the idea that Sandra Bullock didn’t have to pick up a phone to get a large pizza with anchovies, garlic and extra cheese seemed revolutionary. Nearly two decades after The Net, Ashishh Desai and the team at Menufy are proving that Hollywood’s early vision of the Web was onto something: Ordering restaurant food online doesn’t have to be hard.

The KCK startup creates online menus, ordering systems and websites for restaurants.

The 10-person business began as a conversation three years ago. Desai and Hoang Nguyen were sitting in the dining room of what would become Menufy’s first customer: Stix in the Legends. Nguyen, Stix’s general manager, had been tasked with developing and launching a website for the Asian-fusion restaurant.

“We started this thinking about Stix,” says Desai, who remained the restaurant’s senior manager until last year. “But we quickly realized we could think broader, and this template would work for other restaurants.”

Desai and Nguyen had restaurant experience, but they needed a team to build the website. Desai approached his brother Sharmil, who at the time was working as a software engineer at Cerner. The duo had previously collaborated on several other business ideas; precut boxes of sod and tinted window decals were among their early endeavors.

From these projects, they’d learned a lesson.

“Market research was critical,” Desai says.

And what they discovered as they started Menufy was what anyone who has searched online for dinner options already knew: Restaurant websites are often an exercise in frustration, if they exist at all. Menus are outdated, the hours are hidden, or the website refuses to load on a smartphone. In a report issued earlier this year, the marketing firm Restaurant Sciences noted that 50 percent of restaurants don’t have a website and 60 percent don’t put a menu online. And even those restaurants with a Web presence don’t always understand how potential diners search for their next meal.

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According to a Cornell University report released this year, though, 40 percent of U.S. adults have placed restaurant orders online.

The Cornell study indicates that Web orders account for 10 percent of all restaurant business.

In the gap between these findings is where Menufy hopes to find its niche. It builds textbased menus for each client’s homepage, with templates that allow potential diners to look at a restaurant’s current offerings. Crucially, the design also lets search-engine crawlers index the site.

As Desai talks with The Pitch at Homer’s Coffee House, his cell phone chirps with the electronic sound of Nintendo’s Mario finding a mushroom. The text message alerts him that a new restaurant client has received an order.

It’s a reminder that his company’s small size means that its clients get personal attention.

Partner Shawn Lee inputs each menu manually, and he can verify updates and keep on top of substitutions.

And the staff can keep restaurants from being their own worst enemies online. “We see it all,” Desai says. “The worst is when somebody is trying to do everything on their site. And when they have music.” Desai shakes his head slowly and goes on: “Nobody wants to hear music when they’re searching for a menu.”

Unlike most of its competitors, including GrubHub, Seamless and Delivery.com, Menufy has so far made its services free for restaurants.

The company instead generates its revenue by charging a flat $1.25 per each online order.

For some consumers, that fee represents a learning curve. A few times a month, Desai says, a diner calls Menufy to ask about a $1.25 charge. Desai explains the convenience charge, and the customer remembers that he or she did indeed order food online. “They didn’t think about it,” Desai says. “And that’s what we want” — to advance carryout ordering online until it becomes not just common but habit.

It’s an approach that emphasizes high delivery volume, and it appears to be working.

(And restaurants can elect to absorb the ordering fees.) Menufy’s client base has quadrupled

Examples of Menufy’s onlineordering menu in the past 10 months, growing from 30 to 136 restaurants in 17 states.

Within that growth, Menufy has found another niche: Asian-owned businesses. So Desai has hired two salespeople who are fluent in Mandarin Chinese, the language of a major customer base. “It’s not a coincidence that if you look at our clients, half are Asian-owned businesses,” he says. “We’ve made a real effort to understand the cultural needs and practices of the Asian community.

It’s a world that is familiar to Menufy’s partners. Desai, Lee and Nguyen co-founded Lambda Phi Epsilon, a fraternity dedicated to promoting Asian American awareness, while attending the University of Kansas.

“Hoang is Vietnamese. Shawn is Korean. My brother and I are Indian,“ Desai says. “We have a programmer from Russia and another from Eritrea. I like to think we understand a lot about culturally owned businesses. It’s how we know so much about restaurants’ menus. We know to ask if they want dim sum on their Google Map entry or whether or not to even shake hands.”

Regardless of what’s on the menu, Desai believes that every restaurant can benefit from online ordering. “Pizza Hut or Domino’s can spend millions on an online-ordering app,” Desai says. “We just want to make the same thing possible for every mom-and-pop shop.

Everybody has a Yelp. We believe that everybody should have a Menufy.”

E-mail jonathan.bender@pitch.com Editor’s note: At its annual awards ceremony October 24, the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association named The Pitch’s Jonathan Bender its media person of the year. Read a full archive of Bender’s work at pitch.com.

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THE PITCH

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

MUSIC

WINNER’S CIRCLE

Ross Brown inches out ahead on Small Victories.

BY

D AV ID HUDN A L L

T

he unofficial headquarters of Golden Sound Records is the basement of a house on Rockhill Road, near Rockhurst University.

Ross Brown and Jerad Tomasino, two of the three young men who run the local record label, live at the house; Mat Shoare, the third, recently moved out. The basement is split into two sides, though the sides basically mirror each other: drum kit, amps, guitar cases, beer bottles, cords, microphones.

“That’s where Everyday/Everynight practices,” Brown says, seated cross-legged on a patch of carpet beside his black-and-white Rickenbacker and pointing across the room.

Everyday/Everynight is Tomasino’s band. It takes a certain amount of focus to keep up with the various projects roiling around under the Golden Sound umbrella. In addition to putting out other people’s music, all three guys lead their own bands: Shoare, the Empty Spaces; Tomasino, Everyday/Everynight; and Brown, the Fullbloods. They also tend to play in one another’s bands, and they all have released solo albums. The most recent of these, Brown’s Small Victories, arrived last week. It is the most interesting thing the label has put out to date.

Brown is the studio rat of the label, and he engineers, mixes and masters most Golden Sound releases down in this grimy basement.

In person, Brown wears his dark hair slicked and parted, greaser style, and he speaks softly and sometimes haltingly. He’s quietly funny, but you also get the sense that he’s holding back stranger thoughts. This suspicion is confirmed upon listening to the music he makes.

Brown grew up on the rural western edge of Olathe and started playing music in middle school — trumpet, then euphonium, then guitar, then drums. He was home-schooled from his sophomore year on (he started at De Soto High School), which gave him time to start writing and recording music. In 2007, when he was 18 and still living at home, he recorded an album, Ross Brown’s Human Condition, on which he played all the instruments. “Don’t … listen too closely to this,” he told me, as he handed me the album the other day.

The songs on Human Condition are amateurish, lacking in focus and generally forgettable.

But they’re also remarkably ambitious for a teenager. In addition to David Bazan and American Analog Set, Brown cites Art Blakey and bossa nova as early influences. “I think there’s some songs on that record that are these kind of cringeworthy attempts at mimicking those styles and trying to fit them into simple rock songs,” Brown says. The lyrics also reveal a sharper-than-average 18-year-old. I don’t know what I’ve got the leverage if I need to talk some trash/I’ve got the floor plans, I just don’t have the cash means, but it sounds smarter than what was going on inside my brain in high school.

A year after Human Condition, Brown enrolled at BRC Audio Productions, a two-year training school for audio engineering, where he met Tomasino. “They do a pretty awesome job of balancing music education — theory,

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arrangements, stuff like that — with the technical side of things,” Brown says. He soon formed a band, Fullbloods, with some BRC guys: Bill Pollock, Glenn Shipps and Alex Chapman.

“I had written a bunch of songs and wanted to make a concept album out of them, which is an absurd thing to do, and I would discourage anyone from attempting it,” Brown says.

“And I wanted to play with people, so I wrote the parts and had those guys come in and play the parts, and we started playing some shows.”

The Perpetual Machine sprawls across genres, but the songwriting has matured. The surf-rock guitars, Western twang and more traditional pop leanings add up to something like an indie-rock version of Chris Isaak. (Brown’s hairstyle might add to this impression.) There are also moments of beauty, like the ballad “Alaska,” a five-minute triumph of lovesick loneliness.

Now we have Small Victories, a brightly detailed, adventurous solo album on which Brown played all the instruments. This begs the question of why a band member who writes all the songs needs to make a solo album.

“That’s a good question,” Brown says. “I think Fullbloods is — I can’t play the instruments like the guys in Fullbloods, so I think we try to play to their strengths. There’s a groovy rock-and-roll thing to it. It’s really groovereliant. And the lyrics tend to be more vague and metaphorical. I probably have more reservations with the lyrics with Fullbloods because I’m representing a full band. With this new solo album, the lyrics are maybe goofier.

I was listening to a lot of Randy Newman and Warren Zevon at the time, guys who have really thick sarcasm and heavy satire in their lyrics.”

That much is apparent. The lyrics on Small Victories are clever and playful and a little unhinged — some of the best I’ve heard locally this year. The album opens on “Dishes” with a drum crash and Brown shouting through a distorted microphone: wooo! then ha! Then yeah!

Then he rambles about how he’s the director and actor and cinematographer and producer and writer and makeup artist. Then he says something about screaming at dirty dishes. It’s

“Is this thing on?” wide-eyed and demented, like a mad scientist cooking up crazy schemes in isolation.

“The album was made in about four weeks, and it’s a lot of me just coming straight home from work” — Brown is employed as a Web developer four days a week — “and fleshing out ideas by myself down here in the basement,” he says. “A lot of the stuff, definitely ‘Dishes,’ I just improvised and rambled off. Then I’d listen to it later and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty stupid, but I’m going to keep it on there anyway.’ ” “Superomance” is less a song than a line of questioning set to a cyclical riff: What happens to your soul when you die?

How long can you safely store pulled pork in your refrigerator before it goes bad?

How often do you use mathematics?

How would you change the way our government operates?

What do you think about the starving children of India?

What do you think I think about the starving children of India.

And so on. Brown lists Richard Swift as a producer he admires, and there are echoes of Swift’s weirdo pop layers throughout, such as on “Lion’s Den,” with its funky keyboard riff and sunny orchestral glitches. Interestingly, the standout cut, “Small Victories,” is the most straightforward, a concise bit of melodic versechorus-verse alt-pop à la Matthew Sweet. Small victories tell the truth/If you can’t land a passenger plane, pack a parachute / Small victories turn me on/If you can’t be a steward of peace, better drop the bomb, Brown sings.

“I was kind of in a rut, to the point where I was celebrating little things way too much,” Brown says of the title track. “Like, ‘Oh, I spent less than $8 on lunch today.’ Or, ‘Oh, I was able to get that girl to smile at me.’ And I started thinking about the idea of small victories in a larger sense, like with relationships and life and whatever, things like that. And then I guess the album kind of spilled out from there.”

E-mail david.hudnall@pitch.com pitch.com

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N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

’ve learned over the years, the hard way, that there is a problem with my face. Really, it is not so much my face, which is basically average, as it is my face’s default expression, which I have been told is the look of a “judgmental asshole” or a “shithead” or a “condescending piece of shit.” I don’t really have any control over this expression, but as I understand it, it is somewhere between a smirk and a frown. I know this because when my friends get mad at me, they all do the same impression of me. They raise their upper lips to ridiculous heights and say pessimistic things in a nasal, grating voice. It’s really mean when they do this.

I can’t say how many people my stupid face has alienated over the years, though it’s possibly fewer than the thousands I imagine it to be. What I do know is that I wore a Halloween costume last weekend that obscured a good chunk of my face, and people were about 9,000 percent friendlier to me everywhere I went.

I stopped by Costume Depot, a pop-up shop at 16th Street and Oak, just before closing time on Friday. The foreign couple who run the place graciously kept the place open as I rummaged through their inventory. I spied a lobster costume hanging on the wall and pointed at it.

“You no want that,” the woman said.

“I think I do want that,” I said.

“Too pricey,” she said. I looked closer.

It was $269.

“You’re right, I don’t want that,” I said.

“What about the Cookie Monster one? I like that.”

“That one good, that funny,” she said, smiling. “You funny.”

But it was $70. “I don’t know …” I said.

“I cut you deal,” she said. She nodded, and her eyes narrowed with mischief. Sold.

I corralled a cousin and a co-worker, and we rolled down to the West Bottoms. The destination was the loft of a guy named John Bersuch.

Bersuch is in a bunch of bands around town (the Caves, Thee Water MoccaSins), and every year for the past five years, he has thrown a big party where he converts his place into a haunted house.

I was unclear on the alcohol situation at the party, so we stopped at the gas station down in the Bottoms that’s connected to the Wendy’s and bought a six-pack and some tallboys. Then we parked in a lot a few blocks from the party. It was 11 p.m., and we were all sober. “Let’s sink a few of these before heading in,” I said. So we sat and guzzled beers and watched teenagers wander to and from the Beast, the Edge of Hell and the other West Bottoms haunted houses. After 30 minutes, we had drunk all the beers, so we headed back over to the gas station and bought more beers. I parked again and got out and urinated on a tree. A family approached and loaded into a nearby

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COSTUME CONTEST (PRIZES TOP 3)

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MONSTER WEEKEND

Haunting around in

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OCTOBER 31ST 7PM

WED. OCT. 31

MUSIC | STREETSIDE

car. “Cookie Monster!” a little girl shouted.

“That’s me,” I said, zipping up very, very fast.

The party itself was on the top floor of the building; to reach it, guests walked up through the haunted-house part. I led the way because I am a big strong man, and the girly-boys I came with were too afraid.

Everything was dark and red. There were a couple of dead bodies along the way, I think.

As we climbed the fl ights of stairs, the faint sounds of Black Sabbath grew louder and louder. At one point, everything went pitchblack, and I inched forward down a tight, slanted hallway. Very tight, like claustrophobia tight. Do I still have that Xanax in my wallet? I wondered. But then the path opened up, and light seeped in.

“That part was actually kind of scary,” I said, laughing, and right then, some guy in a mask shot out of a shadow and roared in my ear, and I jumped up in the air and screamed, and everybody laughed at me.

The Black Sabbath we were hearing was from a cover band called Rat Salad. “They only play obscure Black Sabbath songs,” a friend at the party told me.

“That’s kind of badass,” I said. I don’t really know any obscure Sabbath songs, but, you know, fuck the mainstream. (A Misfits cover band played later, though I was gone by then.)

Hoo boy, people really just love Cookie Monster. At fi rst, it was unnerving. Everywhere I went, I was hugged and rubbed and petted and called at and smiled at. Even

Rat Salad passes inspection. fl irted with! It was crazy! A cute dead girl with dull-green paint on her face came up and wanted to teach me a Cookie Monster song-and-dance patty-cake type of routine.

“What’s your angle here?” I said. “Is this a trick? What’s going on here?” I scanned the room for her conspirators. But she was just having fun and being friendly. Is this what it’s like to have an ordinary face?

Less popular at the party was the guy lurking in line behind me with black clothes, a sullen look on his face, and long curly hair parted way over on the side of his head.

“Are you supposed to be Robert Smith?” the woman ahead of us asked.

“I’m not dressed up,” he said, humorlessly. I laughed because I figured he really was supposed to be Robert Smith, and his morose response was part of the act. But then I saw in his eyes that he was not joking, and I felt bad, and I stared at the bathroom door in silence until it was my turn.

Later, at YJ’s, I ordered my usual: breakfast sandwich with gravy on it, an order of biscuits and gravy (which I am willing to share with companions but will also eat by myself if I must) and a coffee. “That Cookie Monster better be ordering a damn cookie,” somebody at one of the tables called out. And so I did. Chocolate chip. It was delicious.

E-mail david.hudnall@pitch.com pitch.com

MONTH

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IS AY TH RD TU SA

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Saturday, November 3, 2012

THREADZ BY HEADZ FOR THE HEADS CLOTHING - JEWELRY ACCESSORIES - ART

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Mon - Thurs 12-9pm • Fri - Sat 12-10pm • Sun 12-6pm

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Mon - Thurs 12-9pm • Fri - Sat 12-10pm • Sun 12-6pm

BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY Thursday, December 6, 2012

ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA Thursday, December 13, 2012

UPCOMING SHOWS: 11/9 Flirt Friday 11/10 Pure Empire

11/16 Club Wars Presents: the Best of Cover Wars 11/17 Saturday Night Vibrations hosted by 95.7 The Vibe

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N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

THE PITCH

29

MUSIC

RADAR

M U S I C F O R E CAST

BY

Other shows worth seeing this week.

D AV ID HUDN A L L

T H U R S D AY, N O V E M B E R 1 Casey Donahew Band, Matt Stell: The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

The Fresh & Onlys, Swayback: Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-832-1085.

Daughn Gibson: 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676.

Snow Patrol, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Jake Bugg: The Midland, 1228 Main, 816-283-9900.

Dan Deacon

The new Dan Deacon album, America, is a fuzzy blast of electronic music, which is no huge surprise. But it’s also a step forward both sonically and thematically for Deacon, the breakout star of Wham City, a Baltimore collective of party-throwing art freaks. There are classical influences stitched into the EDM on America, plus moments that sound like a Laurie Anderson record. It also contains a fouract, 20-minute suite called “USA” that is far more serious than, say, his debut album, which was called Spiderman of the Rings. Happily, Deacon’s goofball charisma and performative populism — he often sets up in the crowd instead of onstage, and dance circles are not uncommon — have remained intact.

Friday, November 2, at the Granada (1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390)

Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay lasted five years as keyboardist in hyper American bar band the Hold Steady before quitting the group to chase his old-world vaudevillian muses. He has since released three solo records of the theatrical gypsyrock variety, the latest being this year’s Do the Struggle. Nicolay’s sonic aesthetic is miles from the Hold Steady’s, but he shares with former bandmate Craig Finn an urgent stage manner and a knack for clever, specific storytelling.

Sunday, November 4, at the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179)

Rosie Flores

Rockabilly is Rosie Flores’ calling card — it’s easy to confuse her with Wanda Jackson, who, at 75, is about a decade her senior — but she’s hardly confined to the genre. On her latest Bloodshot release, Working Girl’s Guitar, she tools around with shitkicker honky-tonk, western swings and bluesy ballads. If it’s in any way rootsy, Flores knows her way around it.

Thursday, November 1, at Knuckleheads Saloon (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456)

Regina Spektor

I’ve always thought of Regina Spektor as the Norah Jones of indie rock, but that’s not really fair to either of them. For one, Spektor doesn’t play indie rock; her fans just tend to be indierock types. Spektor instead plays oddball piano

F R I D AY, N O V E M B E R 2 Chuck Mead: The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483.

Primus 3D: Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665.

Rusted Root CD-release show, with Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd: Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456.

S AT U R D AY, N O V E M B E R 3

pop, accentuated by the bipolar — and sometimes excessively cute — vocal curlicues that are her trademark. Expect songs from her latest, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, which arrived back in May. Wednesday, November 7, at the Music Hall (301 West 13th Street, 800-745-3000)

David Bazan Band

When Christian-ish indie-rock band Pedro the Lion dissolved a half-decade ago, frontman David Bazan went solo and secular.

He hasn’t completely left the past behind, though. On his current tour, he’s performing Pedro’s 2002 concept album, Control, in its entirety, with his new band.

Monday, November 5, at RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

Apocalypse Meow 5

Now five years in, this Midwest Music Foundation event aims to secure funds for uninsured musicians working in the Kansas City area. It’s a two-night affair. The 7 p.m. show Friday, featuring Dead Voices and Tiny Horse at Midwestern Musical Co., is all-ages and free. Saturday night at the Beaumont, admission is $10, but you get a broad sampling of local music that includes Deco Auto, the Empty Spaces, the Blue Boot Heelers, Cadillac Flambe and the Architects.

Friday, November 2, at the Midwestern Musical Co. (1830 Locust, 816-931-6962) and Saturday, November 3, at the Beaumont Club (4050 Pennsylvania, 816-561-2560)

Lindsey Buckingham

Johnson County Community College hosts an intimate one-man show with the former Fleetwood Mac singer and iconic guitarist — no picks! — Lindsey Buckingham. Expect songs from Buckingham’s most recent solo effort, Seeds We Sow, plus a smattering of Mac classics — and, if there is a God, a performance of his solo hit “Trouble,” one of the greatest songs of the 1980s.

Sunday, November 4, Yardley Hall at Johnson County Community College (12345 College Boulevard, Overland Park, 913-469-4445)

The Helio Sequence is about as standard-issue as indie-rock gets, with its Pacific Northwest roots; Sub Pop affiliation; and gray, reverby, midtempo songs. This is the part where I crack a joke about sawing logs, but there’s something about this band’s sound that I really dial into. Keep Your Eyes Ahead, from 2008, is an album I find myself returning to again and again when my iTunes collection fails to excite me. Its latest, Negotiations, is maybe a little dreamier and more produced but basically has more of those same lovely, melodic vibes.

Thursday, November 1, at RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

K E Y

..................................................Pick of the Week

.................................................. Locally Sourced

............................................ Probable Accordion

........................................No Picks, Just Fingers

.................................................. Possible Felines

............................................. Super-Sweaty Man

..................................................... Baby Boomers

............................................... Vocal Gymnastics

........................................................ Dance Party

.................................................... Christian Rock

................................ Lotta Females in the House

....................................................... Portlandians

.............................................. Also, Secular Rock

........................................................ Tough Broad

............................................Literary Rock Songs

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N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

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S U N D AY, N O V E M B E R 4 Allen Stone, Selah Sue, Tingsek: The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

M O N D AY, N O V E M B E R 5 Cinnamon Chasers, Sweet Down Deep: The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179.

T U E S D AY, N O V E M B E R 6 Cheap Girls, the Front Bottoms: RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207.

System Divide, Vektor, Hellevate, Vanlade: The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179.

W E D N E S D AY, N O V E M B E R 7

The Helio Sequence

F O R E C A S T

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From Russia with yelps: Spektor

Angelspit, Night Creation, Razorwire Halo: The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179.

Iwrestledabearonce, Oceano, Vanna, Within the Ruins, the Plot in You, Surrounded by Monsters: 6 p.m. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

Matt and Kim: Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1972.

Rob Schneider: VooDoo Lounge, Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City, 816-472-7777.

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Gentleman Jesse & His Men, Berwanger: Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-832-1085.

Jay-Z’s DJ Young Guru: Czar, 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300.

James McMurtry, the Gourds: The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-5483.

Unearth, Born of Osiris, Wolves at the Gate, At the Left Hand of God, Wrath and Ruin: The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390.

FUTURECAST NOVEMBER WEDNESDAY 14 Aerosmith, Cheap Trick: Sprint Center THURSDAY 15 Dropkick Murphys: Uptown Theater The Twilight Sad: RecordBar The Wallflowers: The Midland SATURDAY 17 Metalocalypse: Dethklok: The Midland Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Sprint Center SUNDAY 18 Matisyahu: Uptown Theater MONDAY 26 Paul Banks, Conner: The Granada, Lawrence THURSDAY 29 Tyler Ward: The Granada, Lawrence

M O N T H X X–X X , 2 0 0 X

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$2 Happy Hour Specials til 6pm!

Bar

“Where somebody might know your name”

Live Music Fri Nov 9 with 13th Hour Watch the Chiefs on our HUGE 10’ TV! Knockout Pool Tournament on Tuesdays [150% Payback, $10.00 Entry Fee]

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Lunch Buffet, Salad Bar Daily Food & Drink Specials Bloody Mary Bar & Breakfast Pizza Buffet Sundays 11am - 2pm

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WED 10/31 LADIES NIGHT - DJ DANCE/HALLOWEEN PARTY THU 11/1 KANSAS CITY CHIEFS ON THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL 7PM FRI 11/2 LEVEE TOWN 9PM SAT 11/3 JAH LION REGGAE BAND 9PM SUN 11/4 OPEN JAM HOSTED BY COYOTE BILL 7PM MON 11/5 MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL 7PM TUE 11/6 ACOUSTIC ELECTION DAY FEATURING POLITICAL SONGS 7PM WED 11/7 LADIES NIGHT DJ DANCE PARTY 8PM THU 11/8 J.D. MICHAEL KING 8PM FRI 11/9 BACK PORCH BLUES BAND 9PM SAT 11/10 SAMANTHA FISH 9PM SUN 11/11 OPEN JAM HOSTED BY TOMMY TAYLOR 7PM MON 11/12 KANSAS CITY CHIEFS ON MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL 7PM TUES 11/13 TELE-TUESDAY HOSTED BY OUTLAW JIM AND THE WHISKEY BENDERS 7PM

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There is no band for KCMO (816) that 421-0300 Friday, so leave blank

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LIVE MUSIC. NO COVER

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Poker and Pool Tournaments

FRI 11/2 TBA

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WED 10.31 SlaughterHarlow Movie House Halloween Costume Bash Camp 5pm THU 11.02 1st Fridays w.

Chris Williams Drew 6 10pm SAT 11.03 Woody Pines FRI 11.23 1 More Time for Creep: A Benefit for Chad Creepyface Ford FRI 11.30 AndBroncho then to fill space left

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Food Hours Hours: TUE-SAT, 3PM-Midnight TUE Elkheart’s Downtown Outlaw Fiasco / Taco Tuesday happy hour, Weekdays WED Guerilla$3 Movement Presents 2 - 4 -2-7 1 KC’s Best Burgers THU Hot Caution Downtown / Philly Thursday

EVERY WEDNESDAY Lonnie Ray Blues Band EVERY THURSDAY Live Reggae with AZ One

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Weekdays 2-7 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3rd Camp Harlow - 5pm Drew 6 -10pm NIGHTLY SPECIALS

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N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

THE PITCH

31

NIGHTLIFE Send submissions to Clubs Editor Abbie Stutzer by e-mail (abbie.stutzer@pitch.com), fax (816-756-0502) or phone (816-218-6926).

Continuing items must be resubmitted monthly.

T H U R S D AY 1 ROCK/POP/INDIE The All-Star Rock Bar: 7210 N.E. 43rd St., 816-452-2660. Rob Foster and Dudes, and more.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909.

The Old No. 5s.

Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Grand Marquis.

Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Justin Andrew Murray.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Kanza Hall: 7300 W. 119th St., Overland Park, 913-451-0444.

Casey Brett Band.

The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Shovels and Rope, Shivering Timbers, Attic Wolves.

DJ The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Goomba Rave, with Team Bear Club.

Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

Bass Function with JSN, Aether, Forrester, On It. Mosaic Lounge: 1331 Walnut, 816-679-0076. Mosaic Thursdays.

Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900. DJ Brad Sager.

JAZZ The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Mike Moreno.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888. Bram Wijnands, 7 p.m.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Dan Bliss and Rod Fleeman.

Take Five Coffee + Bar: 5336 W. 151st St., Overland Park, 913-948-5550. Rob Scheps featuring Kathleen Holeman and Bob Bowman.

WORLD The Levee: 16 W. 43rd St., 816-561-2821. Live Reggae with AZ-ONE.

COMEDY Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. DeRay Davis.

Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Colin Kane.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS

Bulldog: 1715 Main, 816-421-4799. Brodioke, 9 p.m.

Buzzard Beach: 4110 Pennsylvania, 816-753-4455. Trivia, Ladies’ Night, and DJ HoodNasty.

Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Hot Caution Thursdays, 10 p.m., free.

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444. “You Sing It” Live Band Karaoke.

Fatso’s Public House and Stage: 1016 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-865-4055. Electro Therapy Thursdays, 10 p.m.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Charity Bingo with Valerie Versace, 8 p.m., $1 per game.

Hurricane Allie’s Bar and Grill: 5541 Merriam Dr., Shawnee, 913-217-7665. Karaoke, 8:30 p.m.

J. Murphy’s Irish Pub and Grille: 22730 Midland Dr., Shawnee, 913-825-3880. Ladies’ night.

Jake’s Place Bar and Grill: 12001 Johnson Dr., Shawnee, 913-962-5253. Trivia.

Johnny’s Tavern: 8262 Mission, Prairie Village, 913-901-0322.

Bingo, 8 p.m.

Mac’s Place: 580 S. Fourth St., Edwardsville. Karaoke.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-5610625. Karaoke on the main floor, 10 p.m.

MORE RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816753-5207. Trivia Clash, 7 p.m.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th GS IN T St., Overland Park, 913-962-2330.

T LIS A E IN Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

ONL M Sherlock’s Underground PITCH.CO Coffeehouse & Pub: 858 State Route 291, Liberty, 816-429-5262.

Karaoke, ladies’ night.

The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. City in Motion Dance Theater, 7 p.m.; MBird’s Artist Showcase, 7:30 p.m.; Uptown Heat, 10:30 p.m.

The Velvet Dog: 400 E. 31st St., 816-753-9990. Skeeball League Night.

Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986. Trivia, 9 p.m.

CLUB

EASY LISTENING Jerry’s Bait Shop: 13412 Santa Fe Trail Dr., Lenexa, 913-8949676. Interactive Acoustic with Jason Kayne, 9 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Double T’s Roadhouse: 1421 Merriam Ln., Kansas City, Kan., 913-432-5555. Blues Jam hosted by RocknRick’s Boogie Leggin’ Blues Band, 7 p.m.

Jerry’s Bait Shop: 302 S.W. Main, Lee’s Summit, 816-525-1871.

Jerry’s Jam Night, 9 p.m.

Mike Kelly’s Westsider: 1515 Westport Rd., 816-931-9417.

Brother Bagman’s Big Dam Jam.

REGGAE Afrobeat: 9922 Holmes, 816-943-6333. Reggae Rockers, 10 p.m.

SINGER-SONGWRITER

Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Extreme Bingo.

Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. William Saunders Band vs. Band.

32

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THE PITCH

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

F R I D AY 2

WORLD

ROCK/POP/INDIE RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Adam Breckenridge & Brown Sugar Bourbon, the Awkward Robot, Atlas, 9 p.m.

Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676.

Karma Vision, Rainbow Worm Factory, Y[our] Fri[end], 10 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ: 1205 E. 85th St., 816-822-7427. Josh Vowell.

Clarette Club: 5400 Martway, Mission, 913-384-0986. Kyle Elliott and Voodoo Soul.

Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Cold Sweat.

RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Danny Cox and friends, 6 p.m.

The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. The Phantastics, Dutch Newman with a live band, Lucid Flows with Sage N Sour, COA. Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. The Bluz Benderz, Jonah Smith.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-7531909. The Freight Train, the Givern, Hoot and Hollers, Joe Buckyourself.

Gran-Daddy’s Barbeque: 1447 W. 23rd St., Lawrence, 785830-8665. Jeff Dunaway.

Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676.

The Kansas City Bear Fighters, Loaded Goat, 6 p.m.

DJ Beer Kitchen: 435 Westport Rd., 816-389-4180. DCal. Club Monaco: 334 E. 31st St., 816-753-5990. DJ Shaun Flo. The Gusto Lounge: 504 Westport Rd., 816-974-8786. Gruv: First Friday, 10 p.m.

MiniBar: 3810 Broadway. DJ Superwolf.

Mosaic Lounge: 1331 Walnut, 816-679-0076. Mosaic Friday hosted by Luke Rich, with DJ Allen Michael.

The Quaff: 1010 Broadway, 816-471-1918. DJ E. Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900. DJ TA. Strikerz Entertainment Center: 18900 E. Valley View Pkwy., Independence, 816-313-5166. DJ night.

Z Strike: 1370 Grand, 816-471-2316. Fabowlous Fridays with DJ Nuveau, 9 p.m.

JAZZ The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Angela Hagenbach, Nedra Dixon, Pamela Baskin-Watson.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888. Bram Wijnands, 7 p.m.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Lonnie McFadden, 4:30 p.m.

Take Five Coffee + Bar: 5336 W. 151st St., Overland Park, 913-948-5550. Clint Ashlock presents Jazz Messengers Songbook.

Thai Place: 9359 W. 87th St., Overland Park, 913-649-5420.

Jerry Hahn.

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Blvd. Nights: 2805 Southwest Blvd., 816-931-6900. Good Fridays: International Party Experience, 10 p.m.

COMEDY Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. DeRay Davis, 8 & 10:30 p.m.

Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Colin Kane, 7:45 & 9:45 p.m.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Open Juke Box. The Blue Line: 529 Walnut, 816-472-7825. Red Friday.

ComedyCity at Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-842-2744. Major League Improv, 7:30 p.m.

Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. First Friday art by Chris Williams, with HoodNasty.

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444. KC’s Original Dueling Pianos.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919.

Maryoke with Monique.

Hurricane Allie’s Bar and Grill: 5541 Merriam Dr., Shawnee, 913-217-7665. Karaoke, 8:30 p.m.

J. Murphy’s Irish Pub and Grille: 22730 Midland Dr., Shawnee, 913-825-3880. Karaoke, 9 p.m.

Maker’s Mark Bourbon House & Lounge: 1333 Walnut, 816442-8115. La Femme First Fridays.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. Ab Fab Fridays on the main floor, 9 p.m.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-9622330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

Retro Downtown Drinks & Dance: 1518 McGee, 816-4214201. Trivia Riot, 7 p.m.

Sharks: 10320 Shawnee Mission Pkwy., Merriam, 913-2684006. Dart tournament, 8 p.m.

The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. First Friday Story Slam, 7 p.m.

Uptown Theater: 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. First Friday, with art by Teresa Mastro.

REGGAE Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

Soul Rebel and the Beast.

R O C K A B I L LY Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. First Friday with Jason Vivone and the Billy Bats.

SINGER-SONGWRITER Westport Coffee House: 4010 Pennsylvania, 816-756-3222.

Nicolette Paige album release, 8 p.m.

VA R I E T Y VooDoo Lounge: Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City, 816-472-7777. The Fall Free-for-All.

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S AT U R D AY 3 ROCK/POP/INDIE The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785841-5483. Approach, My Brother, the Vulture, Radkey, American Youth.

The Brooksider: 6330 Brookside Plz., 816-363-4070. Charlie & the Stingrays.

Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Narrow Hearts, Defender, Treebeard, Collapse the Masses, 6 p.m.

Gran-Daddy’s Barbeque: 1447 W. 23rd St., Lawrence, 785830-8665. Mr. and Mrs., Theo’s Mystic Robot Orchestra.

Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785832-1085. The Awkward Robot, O’ Handsome Navigator, Atlas.

Jake’s Place Bar and Grill: 12001 Johnson Dr., Shawnee, 913962-5253. Live music.

Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

The Crumpletons, 7 p.m.; The Majestics Rhythm Revue, 10 p.m.

Jerry’s Bait Shop: 302 S.W. Main, Lee’s Summit, 816-525-1871.

Paisty Jenny.

RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. The Casket Lottery (CD release), Muscle Worship, New Franklin Panthers, 9 p.m.

Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. Samuel Locke Ward & the Garbage Boys, the Ants, 10 p.m.

The Well: 7421 Broadway, 816-361-1700. Cherry Bomb.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ: 1205 E. 85th St., 816-822-7427. Mama Ray Jazz Meets Blues Jam, 2 p.m.; Tullie Brae, 9 p.m.

Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. Four Fried Chickens and a Coke, 8:30 p.m.; Chris Beard Blues Band, Living Room session, 9 p.m.

Mike Kelly’s Westsider: 1515 Westport Rd., 816-931-9417.

Roland Allen Band.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Cadillac Flambe, 9 p.m.

Sharks: 10320 Shawnee Mission Pkwy., Merriam, 913-2684006. Rock and blues jam, 8 p.m.

Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. The Belairs.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Woody Pines, Brent Lee, 10 p.m.

DJ Beer Kitchen: 435 Westport Rd., 816-389-4180. DJ Finius.

Club Monaco: 334 E. 31st St., 816-753-5990. DJ Pure.

The Eighth Street Taproom: 801 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-841-6918. Saturday Soulclap with Josh Powers.

Johnny’s Tavern: 6765 W. 119th St., Leawood, 913-451-4542.

Live DJ, 9 p.m.

MiniBar: 3810 Broadway. DJ Jochen (Hog-In).

The Quaff: 1010 Broadway, 816-471-1918. DJ Chris.

Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900. DJ Brad Sager.

The Brick: 1727 McGee, 816-421-1634. Cliff Hines, and more.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888. Bram Wijnands, 7 p.m.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Monique Danielle, 4:30 p.m.

Take Five Coffee + Bar: 5336 W. 151st St., Overland Park, 913948-5550. Chris Burnett Quartet.

Uptown Theater: 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. Jeff Harshbarger and Brad Cox, Cliff Hines, J. Ashley Miller.

WORLD Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Mafia Nortena, 10:45 p.m.

AMERICANA Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. The Silver Maggies, and more.

COMEDY ComedyCity at Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-842-2744. ComedyCity After Dark, 10 p.m.

Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. DeRay Davis, 7 & 10 p.m.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. Dirty Dorothy on the main floor, 10 p.m.

Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Colin Kane, 7:45 & 9:45 p.m.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS Avalon Ultra Lounge: 5505 N.E. Antioch, 816-452-CLUB. Ladies’ night, no cover for ladies until 10:30 p.m., $2 drink specials, $10.

Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Live music.

ComedyCity at Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-842-2744. Major League Improv, 7:30 p.m.

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444. KC’s Original Dueling Pianos.

The Firehouse Bar: 1222 N.W. Woods Chapel Rd., Blue Springs, 816-220-3735. Karaoke, 7 p.m.

403 Club: 403 N. Fifth St., 913-499-8392. Pinball tournament, cash prize for winner, 4:30 p.m., $5 entry fee.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Charity Bingo, 5 p.m.; Maryoke, 9 p.m.

Hotel: 1300 Grand, 816-226-3232. Hotel Saturdays.

Hurricane Allie’s Bar and Grill: 5541 Merriam Dr., Shawnee, 913-217-7665. Karaoke, 8:30 p.m.

Mosaic Lounge: 1331 Walnut, 816-679-0076. Mosaic Saturdays.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-9622330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

Sharks: 10320 Shawnee Mission Pkwy., Merriam, 913-2684006. Pool tournament, 1 p.m.

Wallaby’s Grill and Pub: 9562 Lackman, Lenexa, 913-5419255. Karaoke, 9 p.m.

Westport Coffee House: 4010 Pennsylvania, 816-756-3222. The Kick Comedy Theatre: the Kick-Off Improv Comedy Show, 8 p.m.

FOLK Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909.

Eyelit, Afton Concert Series.

JAZZ The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Everette Devan.

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M O N T H X X–X X , 2 0 0 X

VA R I E T Y Aftershock Bar & Grill: 5240 Merriam Dr., Merriam, 913-3845646. Fall Club Wars.

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The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. KC Cabaret variety show.

S U N D AY 4 BLUES/FUNK/SOUL B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ: 1205 E. 85th St., 816-822-7427. Lee McBee and the Confessors, 6 p.m.

The Brickyard Tavern: 1001 S. Weaver, Olathe, 913-780-0266.

Crosseyed Cat open blues jam, 3-7 p.m.

Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Rich Berry.

DJ Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Bad Music Sundays with Brett Dietrich, 3:30 p.m.

ACOUSTIC Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Acoustic Showcase.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. Show Stopper Karaoke, midnight.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-9622330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900. Free pool.

Wallaby’s Grill and Pub: 9562 Lackman, Lenexa, 913-5419255. Texas Hold ’em, 6 & 9 p.m.

Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986. Texas Hold ’em, 3 & 6 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Groove Station: 9916 Holmes, 816-942-1000. KC Blues Jam with Crosseyed Cat, 2-6 p.m.

The Hideout: 6948 N. Oak Tfwy., 816-468-0550. Open blues jam, 7 p.m.

Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. Open Jam with Levee Town, 2 p.m., free.

R.G.’s Lounge: 9100 E. 35th St., Independence, 816-358-5777.

Jam Night hosted by Dennis Nickell, Scotty Yates, Rick Eidson, and Jan Lamb, 5 p.m.

JAZZ

M E TA L / P U N K

Kansas City Academy: 7933 Main, 816-444-5225. Cliff Hines, and more, noon.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888. Mark Lowrey Jazz Trio open jam session, 5 p.m.

RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. The People’s Liberation Big Band, 7 p.m.

Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-8321085. Ghostwriter, Mosquito Bandito, Sex Tapes.

CLASSICAL Chaz on the Plaza: 325 Ward Pkwy., 816-802-2152. Les Mengel Duo, 5-9 p.m.

SINGER-SONGWRITER Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444.

Singer-Songwriter Sundays.

The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Franz Nicolay, Dead Ven, Olassa.

M O N D AY 5

COMEDY

ROCK/POP/INDIE

Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. DeRay Davis.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. Dirty Dorothy on the main floor, 10 p.m.

Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Colin Kane.

The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Taking Back Mondays.

Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-7676.

Violent Bullshit, 10 p.m.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS

The Hideout: 6948 N. Oak Tfwy., 816-468-0550. Blue Monday Trio.

Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-8321085. Slow Ya Roll, the Brody Buster Band.

Clarette Club: 5400 Martway, Mission, 913-384-0986. Texas Hold ’em, 7 & 10 p.m.

The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Smackdown Trivia and Karaoke.

The Fox and Hound: 10428 Metcalf, Overland Park, 913-6491700. Poker, 7 & 10 p.m.

Frank James Saloon: 10919 N.W. Hwy. 45, Parkville, 816-5050800. Karaoke, 6-10 p.m.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Mary’s Drag Brunch, 11 a.m.

Hurricane Allie’s Bar and Grill: 5541 Merriam Dr., Shawnee, 913-217-7665. Karaoke, 8:30 p.m.

Jake’s Place Bar and Grill: 12001 Johnson Dr., Shawnee, 913962-5253. Free pool, 3 p.m.

Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

No band, no cover, great drink specials, $3.

Johnny’s Tavern: 13410 W. 62nd Terr., Shawnee, 913-962-5777.

Live music.

Johnny’s Tavern - Lawrence: 410 N. Second St., Lawrence, 785-842-0377. Poker.

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BLUES/FUNK/SOUL

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Barnyard Beer: 925 Iowa, Lawrence, 785-393-9696. Mudstomp Mondays.

DJ Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909.

DJ Big Brother, Dark Drag, 9 p.m.

JAZZ The Blue Room: 1616 E. 18th St., 816-474-8463. Josh Williams.

Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Jazzbo.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888. Mark Lowrey Trio, 6 p.m.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Millie Edwards and Michael Pagan, 7 p.m.

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

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COMEDY

FIND THE

Perfect

PLACE TO

ENJOY AUTUMN!

Check out these decks & patios for great outdoor dining & drinking!

B.B.’S LAWNSIDE BAR-B-Q 1205 Easts 85th St. KC,MO 816-822-7427

LUCKY BREWGRILLE 5401 Johnson Dr Mission, KS 913-403-8571 luckybrewgrille.com

BLUE BIRD BISTRO 1700 Summit KC,MO 816-221-7559 bluebirdbistro.com

MAMA TIO’S Inside Town Pavillion on 11th St between Main & Walnut KC,MO 816-221-0589 mamatios.com

BRIO TUSCAN GRILL 502 Nichols Drive KC,MO 816-561-5888 brioitalian.com THE BROOKSIDER 6330 Brookside Plaza KC,MO 816-363-4070 brooksiderbarandgrill.com CHEZ ELLE 1713 Summit St KC,MO 816- 471-2616 chezelle.com CZAR 1531 Grand Boulevard KC,MO 816- 221-2244 czarkc.com GARRET’S BAR 6505 Nieman Rd Shawnee,KS 913-608-5995 facebook.com/garretsbar FUEL 7300 W. 119th St OP,KS 913-451-0444 fuelkc.com KNUCKLEHEADS 2715 Rochester KC,MO 816-483-1456 knuckleheadskc.com THE LEVEE 16 W. 43rd St KC,MO 816-561-5565 thelevee.net LITTLE EGYPT 3927 BROADWAY KC,MO 816-753-8988 34

THE PITCH

MCCORMICK & SCHMICK’S 448 W 47th Street KC,MO 816-531-6800 mccormickandschmicks.com MICHAELANGELOS ITALIAN GRILL 17104 E. 24 Hwy. Independence, MO 816-257-1122 POWER & LIGHT DISTRICT 13th and Main KC,MO 816-842-1045 RAOUL’S VELVET ROOM 7222 W. 119th St OP,KS 913-469-0466 raoulsvelvetroom.com RECORD BAR 1020 Westport Road KC,MO 816-753-5207 therecordbar.com RIOT ROOM 4048 Broadway KC,MO 816-442-8177 theriotroom.com 403 CLUB 403 N. 5th St. Kansas City, KS 913-499-8392 77 SOUTH 5041 W. 135th St. Leawood, KS 913-742-7727 77south.net

N O V E M B E R 1 - 7, 2 0 1 2

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. MANic Monday on the main floor, 10 p.m., free.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS The All-Star Rock Bar: 7210 N.E. 43rd St., 816-452-2660.

Monday Mancave: sports, drink and food specials.

The Brick: 1727 McGee, 816-421-1634. Rural Grit Happy Hour, 6 p.m.

Bulldog: 1715 Main, 816-421-4799. Trivia, service industry night.

Clarette Club: 5400 Martway, Mission, 913-384-0986. Texas Hold ’em, 7 & 10 p.m.

Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Slaughter Movie House: The Sleeper 1981.

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444.

Mancave Mondays.

Green Room Burgers & Beer: 4010 Pennsylvania, Ste. D, 816216-7682. Geeks Who Drink Pub Quiz, 8 p.m.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919.

Maryoke, 8 p.m.

Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

Karaoke Idol with Tanya McNaughty.

Nara: 1617 Main, 816-221-6272. Brodioke, 9 p.m.

RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Sonic Spectrum Music Trivia, 7 p.m., $5.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-9622330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

Sherlock’s Underground Coffeehouse & Pub: 858 State Route 291, Liberty, 816-429-5262. Tell a Joke Mondays.

The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. Snazzy Cheap-Ass Drinks, all night.

Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986. Texas Hold ’em, 8 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. Johnny Green Open Mic and Jam Session, 7:30 p.m.

M E TA L / P U N K The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Picture It in Ruins.

SINGER-SONGWRITER Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909.

The Songwriter’s Scene, 7 p.m.

T U E S D AY 6 BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Slow Ride Roadhouse: 1350 N. Third St., Lawrence, 785-7492727. Lonnie Ray Blues Band.

ROOTS/COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS Czar: 1531 Grand, 816-421-0300. Elkheart’s Downtown Outlaw Fiasco.

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-753-1909.

Tex Railer’s Doomtown.

RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Rex Hobart’s Honky Tonk Supper, 6 p.m.

DJ Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. DJ Whatshisname, service industry night, 9 p.m.

The Gusto Lounge: 504 Westport Rd., 816-974-8786. The Dropout Boogie, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC Jerry’s Bait Shop: 302 S.W. Main, Lee’s Summit, 816-525-1871.

Clint Martinez.

JAZZ Californos: 4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878. Nicolette Paige Ragtime Revelry, 8:30 p.m.

Finnigan’s Hall: 503 E. 18th Ave., North Kansas City, 816-2213466. Abel Ramirez Big Band, 6 p.m.

Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Rick Bacus and Monique Danielle.

The Majestic Restaurant: 931 Broadway, 816-221-1888.

Hermon Mehari Trio.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. Open Jam with Everette DeVan, 7 p.m.

Uptown Theater: 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. Snuff Jazz, the Tady Brothers, and more.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS Bleachers Bar & Grill: 210 S.W. Greenwich Dr., Lee’s Summit, 816-623-3410. Texas Hold ’em Poker Night, 7 & 9:15 p.m.

The Bottleneck: 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-8415483. Gak Attack.

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The Brick: 1727 McGee, 816-421-1634. Scrabble Club, 7 p.m.

Bulldog: 1715 Main, 816-421-4799. Double-feature movie night.

Californos: 4124 Pennsylvania, 816-531-7878. Election day watch party, 7 p.m.

Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. Coda Pursuit Team Trivia with Teague Hayes, 7 p.m.

Double Nickel Bar: 189 S. Rogers, Ste. 1614, Olathe, 913-3900363. Poker night.

The Drop: 409 E. 31st St., 816-756-3767. Brodioke, 9:30 p.m.

Flying Saucer: 101 E. 13th St., 816-221-1900. Trivia Bowl, 7:30 & 10 p.m., free.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Boob Tube Tuesdays, 7 p.m.

Jackpot Music Hall: 943 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-832-1085. It’s Karaoke Time!

Johnny’s Tavern: 13410 W. 62nd Terr., Shawnee, 913-962-5777.

Bingo.

Johnny’s Tavern: 11316 W. 135th St., E R Overland Park, 913-851-5165. Texas MO Hold ’em.

Mike Kelly’s Westsider: 1515 Westport Rd., 816-931-9417.

INGS Critter’s Tye Dye Tuesday.

LIST E AT N I MiniBar: 3810 Broadway. Sonic ONL M Spectrum Trivia: the Bizarre, Pop PITCH.CO Culture, and Travel, 7 p.m.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-5610625. Gayme Night upstairs, 7:30-10 p.m.; karaoke on the main floor, 10 p.m.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-962-2330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

The Roxy: 7230 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-236-6211.

Karaoke.

Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900.

Karaoke, 9 p.m.

Sherlock’s Underground Coffeehouse & Pub: 858 State Route 291, Liberty, 816-429-5262. Country and Western Tuesdays.

Tower Tavern: 401 E. 31st St., 816-931-9300. Trivia, 8 p.m.

The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. Election night watch party.

The Velvet Dog: 400 E. 31st St., 816-753-9990. Beer Pong, team registration starts at 9:30 p.m., tournament starts at 10 p.m.

Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986. Chess Club, 7 p.m.

CLUB

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS DiCarlo’s Mustard Seed Mexican-Americana Restaurant & Bar: 15015 E. U.S. Hwy. 40, 816-373-4240.

Blues, country and classic rock hosted by Rick Eidson and friends.

Quasimodo: 12056 W. 135th St., Overland Park, 913-239-9666.

Dave Hays Band Open Jam. Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Open Mic Night.

SINGER-SONGWRITER The All-Star Rock Bar: 7210 N.E. 43rd St., 816-452-2660.

Scott Ford Songwriter Showcase, 7 p.m.

W E D N E S D AY 7 ROCK/POP/INDIE RecordBar: 1020 Westport Rd., 816-753-5207. Bob Walkenhorst, 7 p.m.; Netherfriends, 9 p.m.

Replay Lounge: 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-7497676. The New Trust, 10 p.m.

BLUES/FUNK/SOUL Jazz: 1823 W. 39th St., 816-531-5556. Billy Ebeling.

Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. Gospel Lounge with Carl Butler, 7:30 p.m.

The Phoenix: 302 W. Eighth St., 816-221-5299. The Brian Ruskin Quartet.

Trouser Mouse: 625 N.W. Mock Ave., Blue Springs, 816-2201222. Hudspeth and Shinetop.

DJ Avalon Ultra Lounge: 5505 N.E. Antioch, 816-452-CLUB. Flashback Wednesdays.

Coda: 1744 Broadway, 816-569-1747. Sonic Spectrum with DJ Robert Moore, 10 p.m.

The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Booty Jamz, 10 p.m.

Saints Pub + Patio: 9720 Quivira, Lenexa, 913-492-3900. DJ Pure.

The Union of Westport: 421 Westport Rd. Random Play Wednesday.

ACOUSTIC Dark Horse Tavern: 4112 Pennsylvania, 816-931-3663. Live acoustic.

JAZZ B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ: 1205 E. 85th St., 816-822-7427. New Vintage Big Band.

Chaz on the Plaza: 325 Ward Pkwy., 816-802-2152. Max Groove Trio, 6 p.m.

AMERICANA Mike Kelly’s Westsider: 1515 Westport Rd., 816-931-9417. TJ’s Hindu Cowboy Gospel Piano.

COMEDY Stanford’s Comedy Club: 1867 Village West Pkwy., Kansas City, Kan., 913-400-7500. Andrew Santino.

BAR GAMES/DRUNKEN DISTRACTIONS The All-Star Rock Bar: 7210 N.E. 43rd St., 816-452-2660.

Karaoke.

Beer Kitchen: 435 Westport Rd., 816-389-4180. Brodioke.

The Blue Line: 529 Walnut, 816-472-7825. Karaoke.

Bulldog: 1715 Main, 816-421-4799. Drink specials.

Danny’s Bar and Grill: 13350 College Blvd., Lenexa, 913-3459717. Trivia and karaoke with DJ Smooth, 8 p.m.

Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar: 4115 Mill, 816-561-2444.

Hump Day Party.

403 Club: 403 N. Fifth St., 913-499-8392. Pinball tournament, Cash prize for winner, 8:30 p.m., $5 entry fee.

Hamburger Mary’s: 101 Southwest Blvd., 816-842-1919. Charity Bingo with Valerie Versace, 8 p.m., $1 per game.

Hurricane Allie’s Bar and Grill: 5541 Merriam Dr., Shawnee, 913-217-7665. Bike night; karaoke, 8:30 p.m.

Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater: 7260 N.W. 87th St., 816-759-5233. Devin Henderson’s Mind Madness.

J. Murphy’s Irish Pub and Grille: 22730 Midland Dr., Shawnee, 913-825-3880. Karaoke, 9 p.m.

Jake’s Place Bar and Grill: 12001 Johnson Dr., Shawnee, 913962-5253. Karaoke.

Johnny’s Tavern: 6765 W. 119th St., Leawood, 913-451-4542.

Texas Hold ’em.

Johnny’s Tavern - Lawrence: 410 N. Second St., Lawrence, 785-842-0377. Cajun night.

Johnny’s Tavern: 10384 S. Ridgeview Rd., Olathe, 913-3780744. Trivia.

Johnny’s Tavern: 8719 W. 95th St., Overland Park, 913-9489500. Trivioke.

Missie B’s: 805 W. 39th St., 816-561-0625. The Dirty Game Show, 10 p.m.

Nara: 1617 Main, 816-221-6272. Ladies’ Night.

Outabounds Sports Bar & Grill: 3601 Broadway, 816-2148732. Karaoke.

The Red Balloon: 10325 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-9622330. Karaoke, 8 p.m., free.

The Roxy: 7230 W. 75th St., Overland Park, 913-236-6211.

Karaoke.

Sherlock’s Underground Coffeehouse & Pub: 858 State Route 291, Liberty, 816-429-5262. Animal House Wednesdays; open jam blues, bike night specials.

Strikerz Entertainment Center: 18900 E. Valley View Pkwy., Independence, 816-313-5166. Ladies’ Night, ladies bowl for free in the Spare Room Party Room, live DJ, 9 p.m.

The Uptown Arts Bar: 3611 Broadway. Prometheus Unleashed.

Westport Flea Market: 817 Westport Rd., 816-931-1986.

Trivia.

Wilde’s Chateau 24: 2412 Iowa, Lawrence, 785-856-1514.

Pride Night, 8 p.m.

FOLK The Riot Room: 4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179. Husky, Hannah Georgas, 8 p.m.

OPEN MIC/JAM SESSIONS Jazzhaus: 926-1/2 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-749-1387.

Tyler Gregory’s two-year anniversary as host of Acoustic Open Mic, 10 p.m.

Jerry’s Bait Shop: 13412 Santa Fe Trail Dr., Lenexa, 913-8949676. Jam Night, 9 p.m.

Tonahill’s 3 of a Kind: 11703 E. 23rd St., Independence, 816-833-5021. Blues, country and classic rock hosted by Rick Eidson and friends.

M E TA L / P U N K The Granada: 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-8421390. Unearth, Born of Osiris, Wolves at the Gate, and more.

REGGAE Knuckleheads Saloon: 2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456. Jon Wayne and the Pain,77 Jefferson, 8:30 p.m.

VA R I E T Y Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club: 3402 Main, 816-7531909. Amy Farrand’s Weirdo Wednesday Social Club, 7 p.m., no cover.

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S AVA G E L O V E

GET/GOT SACKED Dear Dan: So I was innocently browsing the

personal ads on Craigslist and saw one from a dude who was looking to try “saline balls” for the first time. Having no idea what this was, I Googled it. Even worse, I Google-imaged it. I pride myself on being unshockable, but I was completely and utterly mortified at what I saw. With that said, my copious Internet searching failed to yield the answers to the basic and most important questions regarding saline balls: (1) What is the procedure or process for salining one’s balls? (2) What about it turns on the saliner/salinee? (3) How long does the effect last? (4) Can it be (God forbid) irreversible?

Completely Utterly Mortified Dear CUM: “The technical name is ‘scrotal

inflation,’ ” says Dart, a leatherman, BDSM/ kink educator, and host of the Dart’s Domain podcast. “It’s a type of body-modification play where the scrotum is infused with approximately 500 milliliters to 1 liter of saline solution via an IV/cannula drip, which results in the balls appearing to have enlarged to the size of a pair of grapefruits.”

Saline, of course, is simply salt water, and sterile saline solutions are administered intravenously to dehydrated patients so that they don’t, you know, die. But some people, like the guys your Craigslist friend was seeking out, engage in recreational saline play.

But they’re not putting saline in their balls, they’re putting saline in their ball sacks.

“The skin of the sack has a great deal of elasticity and can safely stretch to this large size without incurring damage,” Dart says. Balls, of course, are not noted for their elasticity, and they can burst.

“While this is a more extreme form of kink play, if done under sterile conditions with hospital-grade materials, it can be accomplished with a minimal risk,” Dart says.

“No one should experiment with scrotal inflation without some experienced guidance, and no one should do it alone. Some of the risks that can happen include local infection and cellulitis, which can occur from a lack of sterility. There can also be dangerous problems if any air was present in the tubing of the IV during the infusion.

But again, if proper precautions are taken, these risks can be avoided.”

The inflation process takes about an hour.

The effect lasts for a day or two, and the sack gradually returns to normal size as the saline is absorbed into the body. So the process is always reversible — so long as you’re inflating your sack with saline and not, say, silicone, Spackle or packing peanuts. Your sack may be a little looser afterward, but you’re not going to be stuck with a giant sack forever.

As for why this is a turn-on, well, turnons are highly subjective.

“The turn-on answer varies from person to person,” Dart says. “For some, there is a 36

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certain rush from temporarily modifying a part of their body to a ‘monstrous’ size.

Others have ‘medical play’ fantasies. In a power-exchange setting between a dominant and a submissive, the dom may get off on ‘altering’ a part of the sub’s body against the sub’s will, while the sub may get turned on by the humiliation aspect. It’s a wide spectrum. As I say, it’s not for everyone. But many, including myself, have engaged in it safely and had a pretty fun time doing it.”

Anyone who wants to see a pair of grapefruit- size “saline balls” in action: tinyurl.com/salineballs. Anyone who wants to find Dart’s blog, podcast, and videos: dartsdomain.com.

Dear Dan: You once pointed out that you

heard from readers only when their attempts to be GGG backfired. If something went wrong, you got a letter. But when an effort to be GGG didn’t cause a problem, no one wrote you. And this was leading other readers to conclude that being GGG is always a risky mistake. So I thought I’d write to tell you that nothing went wrong after I was GGG for my girlfriend (we had sex in a series of semipublic places), and she was GGG for me (she arranged a small CFNM party at which I was the NM). We are being GGG, and all is well with us, Dan, and we wanted to thank you for giving us the tools that we needed to talk about this stuff !

Clamoring About My Experiences Dear CAME: Thanks for sharing.

Dear Dan: I have a problem with a guy I like and his porn habits. I know you’ve answered a lot of questions about porn, but I don’t think you’ve answered one like mine. The problem is, I used to be his porn. I work part-time as a

BY

D A N S AVA G E

cam girl. He was one of my regular customers.

I came to like him as a human being, and he seemed to feel the same about me. This last summer, we actually got a chance to meet in person. It was fucking amazing! Since then, we’ve continued playing online, although for free now, because it feels unethical to charge someone I really like. We’ve also tossed around the idea of another visit. So here’s the problem: He’s still paying other cam girls, and it makes me upset. I don’t mind that he looks at porn. I don’t even mind that he pays for live interactive porn. There are plenty of times when he’s horny but I’m asleep (we live in different time zones) or I’m at my other job, and I don’t care what he does then. The thing is, I feel I should be the one he plays with when we’re both awake and online at the same time.

But just as often, when we are both awake and online, he’s busy with other cam girls. It makes me feel ignored and neglected.

Am I overreacting? Should I ask to be prioritized over porn? And how can I bring up this subject? I don’t want to tell him that he can’t jerk off or insist that I have to be at the center of everything he thinks about sexually, but feeling constantly sidelined isn’t OK, either. And, frankly, it makes me feel like a chump for not charging him anymore.

Clever Acronym Missing Dear CAM: Monitoring this guy’s porn habits

seems like a waste of time and emotional energy, considering that he’s not your boyfriend, you’ve only met in person on one occasion, you don’t live in the same time zone, and a second meeting is just an idea that’s being “tossed around.” You’re not in a relationship with him and, really, would you wanna be? I’m pro-porn and I’m proporn-cam girls, but a guy who invests the amount of time, money and emotional energy in porn that Mr. Not Your Boyfriend does, well, he hardly seems like decent relationship material.

But you’ve got nothing to lose — literally nothing — so go ahead and ask him to prioritize you over porn and to prioritize the free porn you’re offering him over the porn he’s still paying for, and see what he says. If you don’t like what you hear, if he makes it clear that he doesn’t feel about you the same way that you feel about him, then you should definitely start charging him again.

CONFIDENTIAL TO READERS IN THE UNITED STATES: Please vote on November 6 — or before November 6 — for Barack Obama. And if you’re in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota or Washington state, please vote for marriage equality!

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

Have a question for Dan Savage?

E-mail him at mail@savagelove.net pitch.com

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P

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