The Outhouse: The Film / Scenester Pick of the Day: Morning Teleportation at Jackpot

We arrived in Larryville too late to witness the legendary era (1985-1998) when The Outhouse was not yet a strip club nestled in a cornfield outside of town but rather a punk rock club nestled in a cornfield outside of town that played host to everybody from the Meat Puppets to the Descendents to Fugazi.

A documentary (The Outhouse: The Film) is now in the works about this era and the filmmakers are looking for interview subjects to gather on Nov. 5 at Record Bar in KC and Nov. 6 at the Jackpot in Larryville to tell their Outhouse stories.

Visit the cool website for full info and a kick-ass photo gallery of fliers from the shows.

Chip: "I don't get why there's so much nostalgia for a smelly rock club when the venue is so great as it is right now. A perfect Larryville night is to board the Boobie Bus for a relaxing ride into the country and lie on the stage with a dollar in one's mouth while a young woman grinds her perfumed crotch directly into one's face. Beats Fugazi any day."


THEN:















AND NOW:














Readers, we invite you to tell US your favorite Outhouse strip club stories for a future oral history blog project we're putting together on the current incarnation of the venue. Don't be shy. We know most of you have been there. Get in touch.

Chip: "I also hope to obtain a few 'oral histories' from the strippers, if you catch my meaning. I understand they'll give you one for the right price."

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Our research shows that Morning Teleportation has a history on the jamband circuit, so that's a scenester strike against them, but they are from Portland, so it balances back out. They're at the Jackpot tonight and they look like this:

Our Dumpster Diving Art Project is Underway! / Final Friday Photos / Dennis Art

Readers, we don't have a lot of time to blog this weekend because we're hard at work on our dumpster diving art project in which we photograph a single dumpster at various intervals to watch how items come and go. We believe this will produce a profound statement on...something (consumption and desire and economic circumstances and college life, etc etc). And we hope to exhibit our photographs at a future Final Friday.

You can see updates on our Twitter account @LarryvilleLife during the weekend, and we'll collect the photos for a future blog entry. In the meantime, here are two of them, in which a collection of items is snatched up within a few hours, leaving only a lonely Dust Devil to hold vigil at the Dumpster.






























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And here are a few pics we snapped on our Final Friday sojourn.

1) Katy Perry at Lawrence Art Party (former Maurice's building). Notice how her boobs are personified with the shirt. Chip had a boner and had to stand in front of the picture for a very long time until it subsided. Note the dude who is staring at the American flag but (we suspect) secretly looking at Perry's boobs.


















2) Turtle Claw (Social Services League building). Strangely enough, this one also gave Chip a boner, for some reason.

















3) Dennis on a ride at the fair (window of Maurice's building).

















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Dennis art, it seems, is very hip right now. Have you seen the controversial new "Dear Lawrence" photography contest submission of Dennis in front of the new Compton building, with a caption that reads, "Where did our sky go?" Brilliant cultural commentary? Exploitation of the mentally disabled? Or both?

See the full photo gallery of the ongoing Dear Lawrence project at the LJ-World site .

Friday Art and Music Reviews: Wonder Fair's OurTube 2, Cloud Dog, Cowboy Indian Bear, and Mammoth Life / Final Friday Reminder

When you witness something from the Wonder Fair gang you expect to be baffled, startled, possibly angered, but you don't necessarily expect to be moved. However, we think it's safe to say there wasn't a dry eye in the house at OurTube 2 last night at the Spencer Museum during BARRR's portrayal of a Juggalo's "existential meltdown" while trying to explain how magnets work (a clever riff, of course, on ICP's infamous "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" lyric).

Chip: "In every great performance there's a moment when the actor achieves complete synthesis with the character and you cease to forget the actor at all. It happened with Robert DeNiro as Jake Lamotta, it happened with Kevin James as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and it happened with J-BARRR as a Juggalo."

Richard: "While OurTube 2 was a little less entertaining, on the whole, than OurTube 1, it was ultimately a more intellectually stimulating treatise on the frustrating inability of criticism and science to ever truly 'solve' anything. Also, nice use of silence in the final moments about 'merchandising.' Audiences are always unsettled by lack of sound. For a great example of this, see Tree of Life at Liberty Hall this weekend and watch people squirm uncomfortably throughout the film."

Our sole complaint: The Wonder Fair gang should have served ICP-approved Faygo instead of Orange Fanta.

Catch OurTube 3 and OurTube 4 at the Spencer later this summer.

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Readers, it was dangerously fucking hot at the Jackpot last night. We kept thinking the cops would eventually show up and shut the place down for safety violations and (hopefully) spray us all down with a frigid water-hosing, but that didn't happen. So we gutted it out and watched the bands.

Cloud Dog: What they lack in musical and lyrical diversity and catchiness, they make up for in pure intense shirtless drumming fury. They're not our particular cup of PBR, but there's something impressive about them. They were like a cyclone of sweat and nipples.

Chip: "I wish they were women."

Cowboy Indian Bear: This was actually our first time seeing Larryville's beloved popsters, and we were impressed by their set that smoothly transitioned from sultry (boner-inducing) crooning to soaring, symphonic pop before culminating in a smooth funk groove. This band was only 1/4 shirtless (Marty, not Katlyn).

Mammoth Life: The room had thinned out a little too much before the stars of the evening finally took the stage for their EP release/farewell-to-Larryville party, but a small crew of devoted fans took to the dancefloor for a bouncy party of catchy new tunes and old favorites from the band (now a duo, neither of them shirtless). In a delirium of heat and PBR exhaustion, we had to made our exit about six songs in, during the EP's title track "Small Town Rock and Roll Kids," but this sweet tune is a perfect way to remember Nicholas and Elizabeth. Good luck in the big city, kids!

Most glorious moment of the evening: we stepped outside onto the patio during the Cowboy Indian Bear/Mammoth Life set break and found it to be at least 20 degrees cooler, with a delightful breeze blowing down Mass. Street.

And make sure to stop by I Heart Local Music for another review complete with videos and pictures of shirtless mustached drummers: review


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It's Final Friday, so make sure to peruse some art tonight. At Ben Strawn's Invisible Hand opening, you may even be able to fondle the art: "Holding the painting against a light source can reveal more details, and Strawn hopes to hang the paintings in a way that allows attendees to lift them off the wall and explore each piece’s tiny but intricate world" (L.com).

Chip: "I'm totally going to hold Strawn's 'Red Bird' against the light until I figure out why the fuck a naked person riding a bird is emerging from this headless figure."

Wonder Fair's OurTube Part II at Spencer Art Museum / Mammoth Bear Dog at Jackpot / A Romantic Local Missed Connection

If you saw Ourtube Part I, Wonder Fair's powerful deconstruction of art and cinema, you have no doubt been waiting not-so-patiently for Part 2. It arrives tonight at the Spencer Art Museum, with screenings at 6:00, 6:30, 7:00, and 7:30. Prepare for the show by reading our Part I review and watching this segment from the first show titled "A Critical Moment."

Chip: "I can tolerate art when it comes with free popcorn."













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So many local bills seem like a slapdash collection of bands, but tonight's animal-themed triple-threat at the Jackpot is wonderfully cohesive: Cloud Dog, Cowboy Indian Bear, and Mammoth Life. A rumor is circulating (started by us) that the evening will culminate with all the bands jamming together and calling themselves "Mammoth Bear Dog." Let's hope this is true.

The hippest among us caught a sneak preview of Mammoth Life when they stopped by the Dark Times comedy show at the Granada last night and played "An Oasis in the Midwest." Here's Nicholas in a moment of victory and ecstasy after the performance:
















In other Dark Times-related news, we've begun negotiations with host Jay Maus about the possibility of writing a future comedy sketch for the show. We have exactly zero experience writing comedy for the stage, but we plan to follow the dictum set forth in the Mr. Show episode titled "If You're Going to Write a Comedy Scene, You're Going to Have Some Rat Feces in There." We'll probably add a few boners as well.

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Here's a change-of-pace local Missed Connection from Craigslist, in which a woman has a poetic reverie of what should have happened during the three weekends she spent with a traveling doctor.

"I would have taken you tubing down a lazy river and made love to you over and over while it rained..."

Chip: "After all the lewd and crude Missed Connections, it's just nice on occasion to read an old-fashioned romantic piece about fucking in the river."

"Give me one kiss and I'll drag you with me into the hottest hell you've ever known. And you would like it. It would be sweeter than heaven."

Richard: "I like how she inverts the standard definitions of heaven and hell here, quite cleverly. But I also fear this woman is crazy."

We Get Meta on Your Asses With A Review of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia / Dirty Dillons of the Future / Podcast of the Week: Hospital Ships vs. ADD

If you're like us, you love pretentious postmodern literature and you love rock and roll, so what a treat when a novel like Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia comes along.

Remember last summer when we all read Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, with its 60 page power-point presentation about great "rock and roll pauses?" It went on to win the Pulitzer, of course. Is the same fate in store for Spiotta's tale of a rock star who obsessively and often fictionally chronicles his life in a document called The Chronicles? Let's hope so.

Here's an excerpt from the book (borrowed from an NPR review):

"Nik's Chronicles adhered to the facts and then didn't. When Nik's dog died in real life, his dog died in The Chronicles. But in The Chronicles he got a big funeral and a tribute album. Fans sent thousands of condolence cards. But it wasn't always clear what was conjured. The music for the tribute album for the dog actually exists, as does the cover art for it ... But the fan letters didn't exist. In this way Nik chronicled his years in minute-but-twisted detail."

And an excerpt from the review itself:

"Critics often use adjectives like "smart," "brilliant" and "intelligent" to refer to Spiotta's work because she tackles philosophical subjects in an edgy collage-type style that jumbles together time frames and narrative modes. She even throws around words like "ontological. If all that sounds off-putting, be assured that Spiotta's novels are post-modern without the chill: character development and the spiky nuances of family relationships are always a central concern."

Richard: "I'm sold already. I rarely have a single conversation that doesn't use the word 'ontological.' However, I prefer my postmodern novels to be very 'chilly' in a DeLillo-esque way that doesn't allow for deep emotional connection."

Chip: "Aren't Nik's Chronicles in the novel sort of frighteningly similar to our own aesthetic of blending Larryville cultural reality with manufactured personas."

Richard: "Shut up, Chip. Everything here is real."

The NPR review praises the novel's postmodern ambiguity:

"You could imagine someone discovering The Chronicles 100 years from now and heralding Nik as some outsider-artist genius; or, just as plausibly, you could consider The Chronicles as a testament to a wasted life; the work of a troubled mind. Or both. Stone Arabia evades answers and instead encourages an open-minded blurring of the lines between lived experience and fantasy; art which is authorized vs. art which is un-vetted. The form of this novel itself revels in the confusion: Stone Arabia juggles letters and diary entries; CD liner notes and obituaries — some false, some all too true."

Look for us at the Pig today, each of us with a copy of this book in our hands, occasionally taking a break for an ontological debate. Do you believe us?





















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The City Fathers officially approved plans for the new Dillons on Mass. Street last night. So long, Dirty Dillons. Say hello to the Dirty Dillons of the future (which looks a bit like a prison, at least in this rendering):
















On the LJ-World talkback, Consumer1 says: "The rendering looks great! But, if that is Mass street shouldn't it have pot holes, cracks and tar all over the road?"

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If you scenesters are STILL not burned out on Hospital Ships, make sure to download BARRR's new ADD podcast with Jordan Geiger. It contains a story about "seeing the Strokes get beaten up in Lawrence,", which alone is surely worth your time today. Get it here .

Now, Carry On.

Chip: "Is 'Carry On' a Hospital Ships reference? I haven't heard the album yet."

July Final Friday Coverage Begins / Scenester Pick of the Week: Mammoth Life CD Release Party at Jackpot on Thursday

This month's Final Friday is just around the corner and today we highlight a few events that have caught our eye so far:

1) Alicia Kelly's "Today Smells Like Today" at Acme. Mainly we like the adorable title, and we're hoping there's some kind of scratch-and-sniff art going on.


















2) Another event that sounds cute is "Animals and Stuff" at the Lawrence Public Library. The press release promises that "there IS a drawing of a plush rabbit."

3) Teller's offers "Dungeons and Dragons," by Geoff Benzing, "a collection of pencil and ink drawings on matte board inspired from everyday life, role playing games, and the UFO phenomenon." We fear there will be a lot of cos-playing geeks mingling around disturbing the diners who are out for a romantic Friday evening meal.

4) And Ben Prawn's "End of Days Parade" at Invisible Hand is our most-anticipated event so far, based on this baffling excerpt from the artist's statement:

"The headless characters have not been decapitated, but they may have been. There is an internal narrative to the paintings that makes no actual sense. They have recurring characters - kind of but not really. If they were arranged in a story book it would make as much sense to read it backwards. Henny Penny would be sprinkled throughout it."

See you on the art scene.

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If you love a good costume party, don't miss Mammoth Life's CD release (and farewell to Larryville) party this Thursday at the Jackpot (with Cowboy Indian Bear and Cloud Dog). ML have been touring hard and working hard on new band uniforms all summer long, and this is your last chance to catch them locally before they move out to California. They were nice enough to pass along to us their new EP, "Small Town Rock and Roll Kids," and we've been grooving with its catchy, bouncy pop songs all summer. We love Elizabeth's repeated mantra of "Let it sway" on the title track (she can stretch the word "sway" out for an impressive length of time), and "An Oasis in the Midwest" is a lovely tribute to Larryville: "It's quite a scene and it's worth being seen." When Elizabeth sings about "A bona fide moment down on Mass. Street," Chip always pumps his fist in the air like a frat boy. We hope they close with this song on Thursday, and we encourage you to sway and raise your fists in the air and think about how hip you are, and how the town will be a little less hip when Nicholas and Elizabeth move away.

Visit their website here .

Talkbackers Talk Back About the Lawrence Public Library Design Plans / We Hang Out With Monzie Leo / A Rant and Rave From Larryville Craigslist

Local progressives mingled at the Lawrence Public Library at a reception last night which unveiled the design for the $19 million expansion plan. Here it is:














Let's see if the LJ-World talkbackers are pleased:


KUweatherman "Doesn't fit at all with anything downtown. Looks like a child's Lincoln Log set. Next design, please..."

Lady J: "And yet the Dillon's design was not approved because it was too nondescript."

Deec: "How very suburban business park this looks."

Verity: "The Wescoe of downtown Lawrence. I mean that is one butt-ugly building."

Thank goodness for Alabamastreet, whose post offers this rejoinder to the haters: "The dark silhouettes in the back of the drawing are the souls of posters on the LJWorld.com. - wandering aimlessly through the Universe in search of friendship and validation."

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While the progressives ate cookies and looked at library plans and the haters hated, we were down the street enjoying a Replay matinee by Monzie Leo and Big Sky. Monzie's real name is Joel, and he used to be in the metal band Stull (named after the town just down the road which houses one of the gates of Hell). We never saw Stull, but we understand that their sets often conjured up the Devil himself, who would then rock out with them for a few tunes. Monzie Leo and Big Sky is not metal. It's slow dirges played on guitar and washboard and fiddle combined with occasional a cappella numbers (seriously). But the lyrics are still metal. They're all about "tonight we'll die" and blackbirds and coyotes and shit. Chip was pretty scared, but we chatted with Joel for a bit afterward and he seemed like a nice dude (with a William Burroughs tattoo on his arm) who was more than pleased to tell us where the name Monzie Leo came from. It's his grandfather's name. And his grandfather drank his way across the country before drinking himself to death in a tavern out West on New Year's Eve (in 1976, we think). Joel wants to reclaim the name in tribute to his grandfather and he's happy if you call him Monzie Leo. And we're happy to do it, because we love the name Monzie ("It reminds us of the name Fonzie," we told Monzie, who responded, somewhat oddly: "Of course it does! It's an old Scottish name.").

[Part of today's goal has been to insure that the name Monzie Leo is the first Google search result if one ever has occasion to Google the name "Monzie Leo." Go see if it works].

Here they are singing an a cappela number while a small child approaches the stage to try to figure out what the fuck is going on up there (click to enlarge):















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We don't dip into the "rants and raves" section of the Larryville Craigslist very often because we usually get plenty of craziness from the LJ-World talkbackers, but occasionally we spot something too good to resist, like this critique of Larryville women:

"Look, it's no wonder people in Lawrence are lonely. Nobody is really close with each other. The name of the game here is distance. Even when I've been in bed with girls here it's like they're not even there, they don't even want to be touched because they're so uncomfortable with their bodies and there's no passion in it at all--yes, I'm saying Lawrence girls are BAD IN BED, and are bad lovers entirely. I mean c'mon!! I've seriously gone down on three girls and they told me to stop! WTF?!"

Chip: "This may well be true of apathetic lady scenesters who'd rather be playing around on turntable.fm than playing with a boner, but when I fantasize about Quinton's waitresses, this is not at ALL how I imagine them to be. Zing! Quinton's joke. First one in a long time."

Read the full rant and rave here

We Go Balls Deep With Victor Continental / Progressive Pick of the Day: "Sneak Peek Party" at Lawrence Public Library

As we've reported recently, there's a growing new comedy scene in Larryville (Dark Times with Jay Maus; Not So Late Show; joke night at Jackpot). But there's still only one reigning king, Victor Continental, who took his throne at a packed Liberty Hall last night for his 17th show and one of the best in years (we suspected the Brownback administration would spur a renewed sense of energy and outrage in the writers, and we were correct).

Here's our awards for the show:

Most inspired moment: A naked hand emerges from behind the Shitty Deal Puppet Theater stage. Why? Brownback cut the sock puppet budget.

Most sustained creative sketch: The Day After: The Musical. This spin on Larryville's legendary 1983 made-for-TV disaster epic allowed the gang to very effectively merge the local, the absurd, and their flair for songwriting. Best bits: Gorbachev's take on Run DMC's "It's Tricky" ("It's tricky to drop a bomb.") and the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" number ("Now I only glow in the dark."). Impressive work and nicely placed as the centerpiece of the show, just before intermission (although there was absolutely no way to top it).

Best hyper-local references: Buying "pagan dildoes" at the Village Witch; Doug Compton setting fire to a Boog Highberger float in the St. Patrick's Day parade.

Most joyous moment: Victor bringing his 3 favorite hairdressers from Static on-stage for a drunken, grinding dance party near the end of the show during the always excellent Product Placement sketches. Nice synthesis of the artistic community and the businesses that support it. Here they are, shaking their asses (click to enlarge):




















Biggest clunker: The bizarre Lava Lawyer sketch early in the evening (which resembled a rambling SNL time-filler: remember Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer? This was not as funny and should have been saved for the later, more drunken part of the night).

Obligatory but "too soon" joke: the death of Amy Winehouse.

Personal favorite line: "Fuck a bunch of Alvamar."

Observations:

Drunk people (and morons) simply cannot help repeating punch lines loudly amongst themselves. It was funnier two seconds ago...when the actors said it!

Despite Victor admonishing the audience not to be "buttplugs" and talk during the sketches, a guy in the top of the balcony was one of the biggest buttplugs in the history of Victor shows. How much booze (or bath salts) does it take to be that fucking disrespectful to people who have worked hard to entertain you? A lot, we suspect.

We'll leave you with this picture of a naked Mick Cottin, who had too much to drink at a Thursday afternoon Cottin's Farmer Market.





















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Make sure to stop by the Lawrence Public Library tonight at 7:00 for a public "sneak peek party" to show off the new design plans. There will be jazz and refreshments.

Our current favorite library-related activity is dropping off materials in the new solar-powered return box at Checker's:

"The audiovisual bin is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer so that more fragile materials are not damaged by temperature extremes in the return box. The heating and cooling systems are powered by solar energy."

Richard: "It's totally out of my way to return things there, but it makes me feel good about myself to make sure that my copy of Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf will not be damaged in the heatwave."

Please watch the bad-ass book trailer for The Last Werewolf here

Chip: "Books have trailers?"

We Attend an Old Fashioned Freakout With Ad Astra Arkestra / Plus, Party Pics and More Shenanigans From Team Bear Club and Baiowolf

It was 102 degrees when we walked into the Replay for last night's Ad Astra Arkestra matinee and the band was rocking a 20 minute percussion-party. In our heat-induced delirium, we briefly thought we'd passed through some sort of Donnie Darko-style wormhole and landed in a Bonnaroo drum circle. Yes, we were pretty scared. Looking around, however, we spotted a veritable panoply (Chip: "?") of local scenester culture. Look: there's Hospital Ships docked (get it?) in a nearby booth. And there's @nuthousepunks filming the "happening" for the Pitch. And there's A. Ruscin snapping Party Pics that might eventually appear on L.com. So we relaxed, downed a PBR, and after the drum solos ended, the band took a break, regrouped, discovered an attractive female lead singer, and launched into some actual songs.



















The first song may have been our favorite: a cover of the Beatles' "Don't Let Me Down" that was occasionally punctuated by off-tempo strikes of a transparent upright bass drum that were as shockingly loud as shotgun blasts. Amazing. After that they leapfrogged through all manner of weirdness. Music-scholar King Tosser felt a bit of a Buena Vista Social Club vibe to some of the sounds (more like Buena Vista Social Club on bath salts!). And at one point the lead singer blew a whistle for a long time while the band counted off as in the midst of a cheerleading session. The set proper closed with an Ad Astra Per Aspera cover, the band's previous incarnation before morphing into an "Arkestra." And this was followed by an encore of a little more quiet and contemplative percussive plunking.

Verdict: three out of four PBRs that we sweated out immediately.

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Party Pics are back in action on L.com, taken at DanceItLawrence's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" party on July 15 at the Granada. Can anybody explain to us what is going on in these photos and why we weren't informed that nearly naked ladies would be on parade? Rob was out of town at Pitchfork Fest when this occurred, so we'll forgive him for not offering us an "all-access backstage boner pass."


























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Those little scamps in Team Bear Club are always doing dirty things, and tonight they're doing something called "Dirty Dirty Dirty" at the Granada. We love the info on their FB event page :

"These bastards sound too damn good. Mitmo sounds like Teriyaki covered shrimp. I H8 TASTY SOUNDING THINGS. And that nigga MORRI$ is way too swagged out, with his wooden jesus piece, and his GQ glasses. And that Fire For Effect dood, homie looks like Johnny Depp on fairy dust. Shit.

And the women, way too pretty. I hate rooms full of bad bitches. I mean srsly, this shit is ridiculous. It's like I died and arose in a supermodel grinding competition. It's like Noodles and Co. and 3 spoons merged to create the bad bitch hangout spot (incorporated). It's like a bad bitch family reunion.

And I wasn't that mad until I learned about the special guest. MUTHA FUCKIN BAIOWOLF? fuck this, all they rap about is video games and sex. why can't they rap about cooler things, like the kerbs cycle or dental floss. Im over this.

Watch Baiowolf perform "Dumptrucks" here .

Hopefully Phil Canty is going to send us some exclusive rare Bear footage one of these days!

Weekend Scenester Guide / Guest Column: @oxfordist and @beer_attack Go To Pitchfork Fest

It's another blazing hot weekend in Larryville. If you survived yesterday's sidewalk sale without suffering from immobilizing heat exhaustion, here are our picks for possible weekend events.

1) Tonight at Love Garden at 7:00: "Bullshit Artist will perform "Free Spazz" to a 16mm print of Ernie Gehr's "Serene Velocity".

This should be either the hippest or most pretentious event of the night. Maybe both?

2) Ad Astra Arkestra at the Replay: This is going to be sort of like a "sweat lodge." You will see rare visions.

















3) Chicago duo My Gold Mask is rocking the Replay's late show. Pitchfork says: "The guitar stabs on "Fingerprints" are so Nick Zinnerishly juiced-up they actually splash." But apparently such a sound is only worth a paltry 5.9.



4) Spook Lights and Latenight Callers are at the Bottleneck tonight. We're getting more and more excited about the Spook Lights' new film, The Galactic Jungle. Check out this image of Gina Machina and go to the film's FB page for more:






















5) The Granada offers up a steamy dance party with "Afro Night," which includes KC's Hearts of Darkness. We saw them recently at the Replay. There were so many people in the band they couldn't fit on the Replay's outdoor stage, but the Granada should give everybody room to shake it. Do you get in free if you have an Afro?

Go here for full details .

















6) Victor Continental brings his erotic summer spectacular to Liberty Hall tonight and tomorrow at 9:30. We love yelling "Balls deep" and getting absolutely hammered with townies and scenesters, though we're kind of hoping for a new catchphrase this year.


7) Continents take the stage at the Jackpot tomorrow. I Heart Local Music has a recent piece about them (be warned: the piece contains no snark).

8) And at your local multiplex, Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake will be fucking in Friends With Benefits. But we predict they'll ultimately fall in love at the end (hopefully in a scene where somebody chases somebody else to the airport).

Chip: "Does she show her kunis in this film or doesn't she?"

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Our friends @oxfordist and @beer_attack sent us this nicely written piece about their trek to the Pitchfork Festival last weekend. Thanks! We love guest columns, readers! With your help, we could turn this blog into a collaborative cultural enterprise that's a little less dependent on Chip's boner jokes.

Enjoy the article:


Our trip to the Pitchfork Music Festival in numbers


2: Times we ate at Boiler Room, an amazing pizza joint that gives you a free shot of Jameson if you show them a receipt from using their ATM. (Nearly every local place is cash-only.) We tried slices of the Thai and of the pepperoni, not at the same time.

13: Bands we saw: Battles, Das Racist, James Blake, Animal Collective, Chrissy Murderbot, Woods, Gang Gang Dance, Odd Future, Baths, Kylesa, Toro Y Moi, HEALTH, and TV on the Radio. But the biggest star at the festival was the sun. #heatwave

2: Comic book stores we visited. CHECK!

20: Free water bottles we drank in the VIP area.

10: Free beers we drank in the VIP area. We stopped drinking when we didn’t feel drunk, but smelled drunk.

6: Inches away we were from Tyler, the Creator at one point. We didn’t ask for a photograph or autograph. That would be unhip.

2: Burgers we consumed named after metal bands. Kuma’s Corner, you may just be better than the Burger Stand.

2: Pretzels with beer cheese we ate. BEER CHEESE!

95: Degrees it got on the last day of the festival — the hottest.

10: Floors in the Harold Washington Library, which we visited. Speeches from the ‘80s are the best.

6: Free containers of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream we ate in the VIP area. Did we mention the free stuff?

0: Things we can say about the music, because no matter what, at Pitchfork everyone has their own personal opinions and most people don't care what others think.


And here is @oxfordist 's video of Tyler, the Creator digging the smooth grooves of Toro Y Moi. Who knew he was so sensitive?

We Attend a Taping of Channel 6's Not So Late Show / Sidewalk Sale Photo / Progressive Pick of the Day: Vanishing of the Bees

Our summer investigation of the public face of Larryville comedy took us first to the new "Dark Times With Jay Maus" show at the Granada (our report is here ).

Yesterday we paid a visit to another new venture as we sat in on a taping of Channel 6's "Not So Late Show" with host Mike Anderson. Lucky for us, the guest on this day was none other than Victor Continental, the crown prince of Larryville comedy, in the house to promote this weekend's annual shenanigans at Liberty Hall. Seeing Victor (slightly) out of character before the taping--wearing glasses and sitting with (presumably) his wife and daughter and being called Jerry--was a bit startling: imagine if you bumped into Chip in a library, reading a physics book. But we were mightly impressed by Victor's pre-taping singing skills, as he joined Anderson (on guitar) in a raucous cover of 4 Non-Blondes "What's Going On." On stage for the interview later, "Jerry" slipped comfortably into character, promoting his new burger at Dempsey's with a spectacularly filthy sex joke (involving messiness and a warm washcloth) and teasing us with bits of info about this weekend's show that might or might not be true, such as a musical version of Larryville's classic nuclear disaster epic: The Day After (most likely this is real).

The day's first guest, however, was Chris Fitz, a promoter of the upcoming Kanrocksas festival (yes, we're still bitter that they denied us a media pass because our blog's demographic doesn't suit their "targeting" campaign). Fitz insisted that the festival's line-up was the greatest line-up in the history of festivals. We felt Anderson needed to be feisty in this interview (we'd have tossed in an edgy Altamount reference to get a rise out of the corporate "suit"), but instead he mostly reacted, letting Fitz, not a particularly funny fellow, lead the interview (the tactic worked fine with Victor later, since Victor likes to lead and needs room to riff). The taping itself ended with Anderson (during a break) donning a Kanrocksas "green man" leotard and bidding us adieu from behind his desk, but we think he should have been prancing atop the desk in that suit (Chip: "Those things are funny because they show off your dingus.").

All in all, a pleasant outing but we hope Anderson amps up the local humor of the show and gets a little bolder in his interviewing.

Chip: "We're being extra-nice because I hope to be a future guest on this show."

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If you're like us, you're currently camped out at one of the "cooling stations" taking a brief break from the heat of the sidewalk sale before heading back into the fray to buy stuff you don't need at slightly reduced prices.

Here's a woman at the sale who seems to have been attacked by a large snake (photo from gallery at LJ-World):
















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If you're a local progressive who listens to Bill Maher a lot, you're probably worried as hell about the vanishing of the bees ("colony collapse disorder"). So make sure to stop by Pachamama's tonight at 7:00 to watch the documentary Vanishing of the Bees (narrated by Ellen Page, who is also concerned about the bees).

Richard: "I simply cannot believe that local band Colony Collapse is not booked for this show. What an oversight on someone's part."

Head to the official website and watch the trailer, in which one reviewer calls the film the "bee's knees."

Chip: "We joke, but we are really pretty fucking concerned about the bees."

C V L T S at Replay Tonight / Talkbackers Talk Back About the Future of Mass. Street / Controversial Movie Poster of the Week: Nurse 3D

The excessive heat warning marches on toward the weekend and we're all feeling a little loopy. How hot IS it? It's so hot we (briefly) switched from PBR to snow cones yesterday afternoon. It's so hot Chip's boner is wilting like a delicate flower. It's almost as hot as Mila Kunis will be in this weekend's Friends With Benefits (Richard: "It's like they filmed one of my dreams.").

But if you're brave enough to venture out, tonight brings a good scenester opportunity: C V L T S at the Replay.

"The band is stopping in Lawrence for its last show in the US before it catches a plane to perform at the Creepy Teepee Festival in the Czech Republic at the end of the month" (L.com).

And www.imposemagazine.com offers this take on the band's new album:

"C V L T S' "Mirror Face" takes their quintessential sound-tracky minimal synth ambles and tunes them into a wind field of textural drone, and the results are utterly dreamy."

If the song "Flashlight Soliloquy" does not feature a moment in which someone delivers a soliloquy by flashlight, we'll be very disappointed.

Visit their Bandcamp page here .
















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We were glued to our computer screens yesterday morning during the LJ-World live-blog roundtable which featured, among others, local developer Doug Compton and City Father Bob ("How about a Fat Tire Amber Ale? Right. Now.") Schumm.

But our favorite part may have been the talkback, especially this cogent assessment from Wissmo about why Manhattan's downtown functions better than ours:

"OMG, a biscuit and gravy hippy joint went belly up down there [on Mass. Street], and we think major companies are standing in line to lose money. Good golly, 3 buck breakfasts, no employee benefits, low rent, and no profit. Yes, they went belly up. Yes, what a business climate. Add in hairy wet shelter dirty men and women begging for money then some unique hand made printer paper magic marker advertising, wow, what a deal. Oh, we can all point to Free State Brewery with pride and say something on the order what a wonderful place it is. Folks, everybody everywhere has a Free State Brewery now. Manhattan has is right, local well oiled (money to operate) and local ownership."

Is the "biscuit and gravy hippy joint" a reference to Paradise Cafe?

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Like most moviegoers, we're turning against big-budget films with their unnecessary 3D elements. But we're still in favor of good old-fashioned 3D sex-and-violence exploitation. Based on its controversial poster of a naked, blood-covered Paz de la Huerta, Nurse 3D may be just the ticket.

Our feminist readers: "The medical theme is indeed appropriate. Truly, our culture is diseased."

Chip: "I've never been a huge fan of the horror genre's consistent linking of sex and violence but I find it easy enough with this poster to tune out the blood and focus on Paz's nipple.

We'll leave some space before the poster so you sensitive types can avoid the imagery if you desire. The rest of you can scroll down and click to enlarge.

We Stock Up On Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joe's in Kansas City / Day 3 Reviews From Pitchfork Fest

If you're anything like us, you probably rocked out with your glocks out (glockenspiels, that is) with Hidden Pictures on the Replay patio last night. And perhaps you donated some cash this weekend to the final film in the Harry Potter franchise, contributing to the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time (Chip: "Is it okay that I had a boner when Hermione disguised herself as Helena Bonham Carter?"). But perhaps many of us missed the biggest regional event of the past week: the opening of Trader Joe's in KC:

"As customers entered the stores, they were greeted by cheering and clapping employees who gave them high-fives and draped plastic leis over their shoulders. Some customers stopped to take photos with their cellphones or even handed strangers their cameras and posed in the perishables aisle as if they were visiting the Grand Canyon" (KC-Star).

As for us, we're a couple of Larryville rubes who have never yet experienced the joys of Trader Joe's, so we're not sure what we're missing. But we plan to make a pilgrimage this week and stock up on Two Buck Chuck. Is it sort of like the PBR of urban scenester wines?















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To get a feel for Day 3 of the Pitchfork Fest, we're turning to the Chicago Tribune for a few remarks:

"[Kurt Vile was] in the running for best rock-star hair of the weekend, his wind-aided mane getting an extra boost from an electric fan whirring at his feet. It’s like watching a Winger video from the ‘80s."

Chip: "I prefer Winger."

Who has the best rock star hair in Larryville?


















And here's the Tribune's take on Odd Future's controversial set:

"It all ends in a hail of profane chants directed at school, property and people in general – these are equal opportunity haters, if nothing else, and major wind-up artists. The more upset skeptics become, the louder and more extreme Odd Future becomes. Thousands thrust middle digits in the air, shout along, then disperse in orderly fashion as Odd Future leaves the stage."

Classic scenester audience. Their supposed disdain for authority ends as soon as the music stops and then it's right back to apathy.

We know that at least a few of our readers were on the scene this weekend and, as always, we'd love to have guest columns, scenester photos, etc (if you're not too apathetic to help us out).

Sunday Kickball Preview / Hidden Pictures and Howard Iceberg / Pitchfork Fest Reviews / Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf

In our opinion, anybody playing kickball today, during a week-long "excessive heat warning, is a fool. But presumably the games will go on. Let's take a look at Coach Cyrus's preview of the 7:00 Liberty Hall Late Fees/Eldridge Ghosts showdown on the KVKL blog :


"Sure, Quantril burnt their building down once, but we burnt ourselves down twice! FEES!!! One of the best games I can recall during my time in the KVKL was when we played The Eldridge during Week 7 in 2008... In triple digit temperatures, at the shade-less Broken Arrow field, with our line-up scribbled on the back of a PBR case, we beat them 21-12. It was pretty great for us. Anyways, they’re a good team, this will be a great game, and if The Eldridge loses they have to turn that ugly-ass parking lot next to their building back into a cute little park."

Good luck, Late Fees. We want that cute little park!

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Local scenester (and friend of ours) Richard Gintowt is throwing a 30th birthday bash at today's Replay patio matinee. His band Hidden Pictures is the headliner and legendary KC singer-songwriter Howard Titanic is also on the bill in the early slot. We're a little worried about poor Howard up there at 7:00 with the sun in his face. He's no spring chicken. Hell, we're a little worried about ourselves in this heat too. But we plan to stop by and listen to the sweet sounds of Hidden Pictures anyway. Look for us singing along drunkenly with "Anne Apparently" and "Alexander Bell." Study up on their Bandcamp page so you can do the same.

Let's look at this old L.com photo of Richard. Happy birthday!













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Day 2 of Pitchfork Fest has come and gone, and everything we streamed yesterday was as boring as the last. Perhaps it plays differently in a live setting, but we just can't imagine the experimental tendencies of so many hipster-beloved bands lending themselves to large open-air spaces.

Here's a scathing take on yesterday's proceedings from legendary music-scribe Jim DeRogatis:

"Was Manhattan’s arty electronic Gang Gang Dance as bad as Animal Collective in Grateful Dead mode Friday night? Almost. And at least Panda Bear and pals had a light show. The set started out with about 10 minutes of grooveless beeps, squiggles, and synthesizer farts, and things only got marginally better when the drum machine kicked in. The utter lack of dynamic range, melodic ideas, rhythmic originality, or sonic diversity of any kind made the hourlong set easily seem six times as long. Rating for Gang Gang Dance: 2.5. "

Chip: "I love it when these bands get called out, instead of embraced, for their experimental noodling!"

Richard: "I enjoy grooveless beeps, but only in the right atmosphere, such as theReplay, late at night, while under the influence of 'shrooms or some nice bath salts."

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One of the most anticipated books of the summer has finally arrived: Glen Duncan's very literary, very meta, very sexy The Last Werewolf. It gets a (mostly) rave NY-Times review which is titled "A Melancholy Werewolf's Existential Howl." The review is written by Justin Cronin (author of last summer's post-apocalyptic vampire-zombie novel The Passage).

A few excerpts from the review :

"Two centuries of undead living have endowed [the narrator] with a vast pile of cultural capital and a linguistic style that swings gleefully between the wisecracking cynicism of his noir namesake and the syntactical curlicues of Humbert Humbert...Even at the novel’s most bluntly biological, its register scrapes the ceiling. Not a few readers will find themselves scrambling to the dictionary to look up words only vaguely recalled from SAT prep courses. (I did.)."

Looks like the book's intelligence level rules out the adult readers of the Harry Potter and Twilight series! Finally, a monster book for literary geeks. We plan to read the entire thing straight through this afternoon. Chip is especially excited by this promise:

"Here too is a great deal of heroically athletic sex — a werewolf should deliver nothing less."

Chip: "It's true. Werewolves are the horniest of creatures. They love to fuck."

But is there really anything here we didn't do first (and better) in our multi-authored, very meta Harry Lupus series that ran on this blog for awhile? Doubtful.

Illustration from the NY-Times review:

Saturday Photo Blog: SRS Rally at South Park / Pitchfork Festival Reviews

While Larryville's apathetic scenester culture slept away a PBR hangover this morning, a few hundred local progressives took a break from the Farmer's Market to rally against the SRS closure in South Park.

As was the case on Monday night, Plymouth's Rev. Dr. Luckey kicked off the rally with a stirring vow to fight until SRS re-opened. He even tossed in a tenuous (but always crowd-pleasing) attempt to link the Brownback administration to Larryville's greatest historical villain: William Quantrill.

A bit later, Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg rallied us with a poem.

Chip: "If I've said it once, I've said it...several times. Nothing gets shit accomplished quicker than poetry."

And the rally ended with Democratic State Senator Tom Holland leading a band in a rousing version of "This Land is Your Land" (the obvious closer for any good rally) while local "consumers" of SRS arrayed themselves in front of the gazebo. We were inspired. So inspired, in fact, that we thought of getting on stage to recite Harper's beautiful monologue from the end of Angels in America (this being Tony Kushner's birthday and all, which we know because we are literary geeks):

"Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so."


But ultimately we weren't quite inspired enough to do that. And still not quite inspired enough to march on Topeka (despite several more calls for that during the rally). It's sort of far away and there's a heat warning in effect.

Here's the sing-a-long:
















As we hoped, there were plenty of good signs on the scene for the rally.

These ladies were pleased to pose for us with this sign referencing Sedliecki's comments that deciding which SRS offices to close is like sacrificing a child.
















Did you know "Brownbackistan" has its own Urban Dictionary page ?
















These Unitarians showed up a little late, but they were "standing on the side of love."

















And we're pretty sure these signs are not meant to be read together.

















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We're far too lazy to travel to the Pitchfork Festival (though we streamed the GBV set yesterday while shotgunning a few PBRs). So we have to turn to the blogosphere for the inside scoop. Here's a description of James Blake's set from The Music Slut:

"...during moments of silence, when nearby Neko Case’s performance would leak in, you could hear people instinctively “shhhhhh” her."

Richard: "Anybody that shushes Neko Case is a dick."

Chip: "I enjoy James Blake. Especially that 'You're Beautiful' song."

Richard: "You're thinking of James Blunt."

Chip: "Oh. You're right. Yeah, I don't care for James Blake."

Local Photography Contest / Weekend Scenester Guide: Potter, Protests, and Rock and Roll / Checking In With Style Scout / Yard Sale of the Century!

LJ-World is promoting a "Dear Lawrence" version of the "Dear Photograph" project:

"People bring old photographs to the exact locations where they were shot years ago. Then, quite literally, you take a picture of that old picture in the location as it looks today" (LJ-World).

We're looking for a large photograph of Replay scenesters circa mid-90's to juxtapose with the Replay scenesters of today. Can anyone help us out? Get in touch. Seriously.

Submissions are due on August 15. See the full story and guidelines here .

Here's a photo from the LJ-World:








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1) This weekend marks the end of a pop culture era as the final Harry Potter film hits theaters. Our wands are tingling with anticipation.

Chip: "Actually, I may opt for the new Pooh film instead. It cracks me up when his fat ass gets stuck in the cave. That bear sure loves honey!"

2) Our Twitter buddies The Noise FM hit the Bottleneck tonight (with Quiet Corral and The Photo Atlas). We can dig the music of Noise, but what we really enjoy is their erotic Boy Meets World fan-fiction, which they occasionally write on their Twitter feed.

Check out this video of a recent show in which a very drunk fellow joins them on stage at around the 6:30 mark. You will laugh.


3) Hospital Ships have a Replay gig tonight. Now that they are basically a household word, have scenesters turned against them yet?

4) If you didn't get all the shouting out of your system at Monday's SRS meeting, there's another chance Saturday morning: a SAVE SRS rally in South Park at 9:30. We're hoping this event features a lot of great protest signs (none were in evidence at the Monday meeting).

Richard: "My sign reads "FU, Governor!' What it lacks in subtlety and profundity, it makes up for in unbridled rage."

5) Seattle's Redwood Plan takes the stage at the Replay on Saturday evening. They are a dance band. But it's too fucking hot to dance. Look at them:
















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This week's Style Scout of Josie McCoy, 21, gets our vote as the best in a very long time! She describes her look as "’70s throwback/’90s grunge/Native American wannabe," lists Mary Kate Olsen as a fashion influence, and sometimes is compared to Mischa Barton. Josie works at Urban Outfitters. Knowing this, Chip is likely to stop by a little more often.

Where is her photo taken? It's nice to see a piece of graffiti in the background that, for once, does not say AJAX.



















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Only in Larryville would someone write this kind of a description of a yard sale on Craigslist. Thanks to our friend Katie for sending it to us. It's happening today and tomorrow. Check it out. Apparently it will get you laid.



"Bob's Excellent Yard Sale Adventure 7/15-7/16 (1307 Connecticut)

Bob didn't have that much going for him. He worked accounts receivable at a local shower curtain ring distribution plant. Although business was strong, he felt that something was lacking. Something essential. Something profound. Something that would imbue his life with a sense of purpose, of meaning; he was a ship afloat, hopelessly navigating the changing tides of an otherwise banal doldrums.

Bob tried to fill the void. He tried women. He tried betting on the horses. Some nights, he would simply leave his house and wander aimlessly. He would look in shop windows; he would see people eating and talking and laughing and drinking from life as if it were a veritable and ever-replenishing source of sustenance. He wanted that. He yearned for it, that sense of belonging. That sense of being a small but important part of something timeless and great.

What Bob needed was a symbol. A crest. A token that stood for something substantial, something permanent. One day, he happened upon a yard sale located at 1307 Connecticut. He remembered the day clearly. It was on July 15, 2011. It was a Friday at around 8 a.m. (the sale was also going on the following day, Saturday, July 16th). As he approached the green house, located near the cross streets of Connecticut and 13th in Lawrence, KS, he could feel a new spark. A growing of anticipation the likes of which he had never experienced. At this sale, he found new life. He bought lamps, home furnishings, dishes, chairs, TVs, odds, ends, handbags, shirts, picture frames, art, blankets, candelabras, shoes, oven mitts, bookends, hand towels, various sundry items, engine blocks, scientific journals, patents of nobility, moustache trimmers, rubber bands, gumball dispensers, car speakers, dog kennels, rocket ships, unicorns, hummingbird feeders, and tapes and CDs.

Bob was also surprised at the amicable conversation provided, free of charge, by the proprietors of the sale.

Quickly thereafter, Bob got laid every night. And I mean really laid.

Moral of the story: Consider doing something for yourself. Get laid."

Bastille Day / Naked Soccer Players/ Hello Biplane and The Hips / Controversial KC Album Cover of the Week: thePhantom* 's Fountain of Youth

Happy Bastille Day, readers! If you are Francophiles, like us, you'll be headed down to the Pig's annual Bastille Day celebration. They are slated to tap a firkin of Tallgrass Ale at 5:00. What does a beer brewed in Manhattan, KS have to do with Bastille Day? Who knows? But we love a nice firkin-tapping.

Chip also plans to celebrate all things French by rubbing one out to this nude photo of the French women's soccer team (the photo appeared earlier this week as a way of drumming up interest for the team).















Sorry, Frenchies. The US ladies still beat you! And perhaps we'll celebrate their victory by reacquainting ourselves with the legendary '99 Sports Illustrated shot of Brandi Chastain:



















Chip: "Nudity is indeed the only real way to get me interested in female sporting competitions."

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If you'd prefer to stick to more traditional scenester celebrations, head to the Tap Room to watch Hello Biplane and The Hips. The latter, especially, is gaining a reputation as Larryville's sexiest band, and the press from L.com plays this up:

"A night for lovers and future lovers. Two super-groups take to the floor and we take over the taproom with the help of very special bartenders and a surprise (and famous) musical guest. No one goes home alone when there's a song in their hearts."

Can anyone tell us who the surprise (and famous) musical guest is? Zach Campbell?
















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We love artists with oddly punctuated names, so we were immediately drawn to this week's Pitchweekly story about thePhantom* , whose new album Fountain of Youth features a cover of a mermaid with an Afro being stared down by a conquistador (cover art by KC rapper Lucid):


"Some have complained that it's degrading to women. Some have said that it looks like a man discovering "prey," mistaking the light shining off the mermaid as a net" (Pitchweekly).

Personally, we feel that it's an inspiring multicultural take on the mermaid legend and we find that Afro'd mermaid quite erotic. Listen to and download the album here .

(Former) Local Scenester Makes Good: Chrissy Murderbot at Pitchfork Music Fest / Scenester Pick of the Day: Mountain Man at Bottleneck

We got political on your asses with our SRS stories for a few days, but today we'll focus on an issue that scenesters can get behind: the Pitchfork Music Fest, which kicks off Friday in Chicago.

Surely it's the dream of every local scenester to score a slot at the Festival, and one of our former KC/Larryville DJ's has done just that. Chrissy Murderbot (with MC Zulu) will take the Blue Stage this Saturday at 1:00 p.m, and we imagine it will be a lot like a Tap Room dance party, except even hotter and sweatier and smellier and with more expensive beer. Here's a photo followed by a nice blurb from Pitchfork.
















"Chrissy Murderbot is a Chicago-based DJ/Producer who describes his sound as "juke-rave-jungle-disco- tropical-hi-NRG-gangsta-dancehall-ghetto-garage-core." He is the man behind forward-thinking dance label Sleazetone Records and Chicago's monthly "Loose Squares" parties, and he's done official remixes for Delorean, Lemonade, Warrior Queen, CZR, Ward 21, and more. In addition to all this, Chrissy runs the popular blog My Year of Mixtapes (http://yearofmixtapes.blogspot.com). His new album, Women's Studies, is out now on Planet Mu Records."

We know that some of you will be making the trek this weekend, so make sure you check them out (and report back to us).

Our feminist readers: "This Women's Studies album sounds like something we can really get behind. But we'll be out in force protesting the Odd Future set on Sunday at 3:20. Why do those kids love to rape so much?"



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We're pretty sure that Portland's Blind Pilot is not hip anymore, even though they have the Portland connection going for them, along with this:

"The band completed a bicycle tour in 2008, biking from Bellingham, Washington to San Diego, California, carrying their instruments on custom bicycle trailers they fashioned themselves." (L.com).

But the real reason to check out their Bottleneck gig tonight is for the opener, Mountain Man, who have garnered plenty of blogosphere buzz of late. Mountain Man consists of three women (Chip: "Ironic band names are never not hip!") and have been dubbed the "female Fleet Foxes" by The Guardian. Pitchfork digs their debut (7.7):

"It's Mountain Man's bell-toned voices volleying off the walls of an abandoned ice cream parlor where the album was recorded that sells it."

Richard: "They're perfectly pleasant, but I'll probably just stay home where it's cool and listen to the new Gillian Welch record."

Chip: "Upon seeing this photo, I couldn't immediately decide if I was attracted to all three Mountain Men are not. But it turns out that I am."