The Larryville Chronicles

Our Top Five Final Friday Art and Music Picks

2012-01-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

Another Final Friday is around the corner and this one seems unusually full of music to go along with your monthly dose of art.

Here's what catches our eye so far (quotes taken from the Final Fridays Wordpress site , which will give you a more wide-ranging scoop on tomorrow's events):

1) Lawrence Percolator has been off our scenester radar for awhile (and perhaps they'll soon be off everyone's radar when they are obscured by Doug Compton's newest downtown high-rise). But tomorrow they offer up a "Final Fridaze Extravaganza" called "Songs Amidst Stillness," with performances by Hello Biplane! (we love the exclamation point) and Heartscape Landbreak (clever name!). Audiences are also invited to "bring your music makers" so we expect a room full of Eastside lunatics beating on pots and pans. And we hear soup will be served too. Music around 7:00.

2) The Lost Art Space (formerly Penny Annies) has become the scenester art gallery/performance art space of choice lately, full of "Heaven Parties" and comedians talking about their dicks. The space will host a group show called "Sweet/Sweat Shop" with music by DJ BARRR and One Million Light Years (music at 9:00).

3) Wonder Fair gets our vote for most adorably titled opening with "Togethers": "an exhibition exploring the intrinsic influence and inspiration between two artists who choose to share time, space and life experiences." Also, the Wonder Fair bar will serve up some beer and chocolate pairings. And, in a perfect world, Transmittens would return to Larryville and mumble songs about "sparklemittens" in the corner during this event.

4) The Pig gets cute as well with a Valentine's themed show called "Venus Loves Me," featuring "goddesses, love letters, beautiful germs, bathing beauties, genies, flowers, tassels, trophies with boobs." Chip likes the poster because it has titties on it.

(5) Finally, Love Garden's opening is called "Animal/Magnetism," featuring "life music by Animism, which is a thrown together band that will be ambient noir." We're pretty sure that's supposed to read "live music," but "life music" sounds more important. Music around 7:30.

Get the more wide-ranging scoop on Final Fridays events at the Wordpress site.

Larryville Approves Fambrough Drive / Pitchfork's NECESSARY Album of the Week

2012-01-25T11:39:00.000-08:00

Larryville's City Fathers approved a plan last night to rename a portion of 11th Street Fambrough Drive in honor of late, great Missouri-hater and former KU football coach Don Fambrough. Fambrough Drive will stretch from Mississipi to Missouri Streets. Are we excited? You bet we are.

Chip: "I suspect that if you stand at the intersection of Fambrough Drive and Missouri Street and hate Missouri with all your might the ghost of Fambrough will appear and call Missourians a bunch of sons-of-bitches."

But let's see what the LJ-World talkbackers think?

Observant says: "Just when I thought commissioners couldn't do any thing stupider than anything before, they did it. A memorial to a losing coach with only his hatred of Missouri as his claim to fame."

Trollkiller says: "Good thing we don't have a coach with a winning record like Bill Snyder, we'd have to re-name the entire town (Snyderville)."

And Andini says: "Can a roundabout be named after Mangino?"

We have to admit, however, that we do feel a little sorry for the frat guys of Delta Tau Delta who pride themselves on their 1111 W 11th St address (and their 11/11 parties). They may never find their way back home from Brother's after the name change.

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When Pitchfork uses the word "necessary," we take notice. Here's a line from their rave 8.6 review of Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory:

"As an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo (as defined by Dischord, Deep Elm, and especially Jade Tree), Attack on Memory feels above all necessary, a corrective for indie rock making allowances for everything except music that actually rocks."

Making a concept album without even knowing it is pretty hip in our book.

And check out this cat in an Ernest Tubb Record Shop t-shirt:

Super Nerd Night Returns! (not to be confused with Nerd Nite) / Replay Photo of the Week

2012-01-24T08:47:00.000-08:00

We're getting a little worried that there are too many nerds in Larryville these days, what with the new Nerd Nite series of lectures at Pachamama's and the sure-to-be-triumphant return of Astro Kitty's Super Nerd Nite on Wednesday (now at the Bottleneck). But at least this week's nerds have a kissing booth staffed by the Foxy By Proxy burlesque ladies. Perhaps next time they'll consider the "groping booth" which we remember so fondly from the old Bottleneck "Fetish Nights" (Chip: "One of the top-five erotic Larryville experiences of my life.").

There's also a "VIDEO-DRONE™ OLD-SCHOOL GAMING BAR!" (we dig the Cronenberg reference) as well as a "SINEMASCOPE™ SILENT FILM/DRINKING EXPERIENCE!" (which we assume means getting trashed while watching silent films).

Also: rock and roll from Radar Defender.

Visit the Facebook event page for Super Nerd Night here here .

And visit Radar Defender's site here and dig the tune "Simian Rock."

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The picture of the day comes to us from the KU Nights site. Apparently they sometimes visit the Replay in addition to Abe and Jake's and Tonic and Brothers. But did the Replay become a hippie bar? Or is this cat being ironic? As always, free PBR if you identify the scenesters. Or perhaps you'd prefer a toke?

Courtneybelle Gets Sloshed on Sidecars at Speakeasy Night at Eldridge / We Recommend a Four Hour Japanese Film About Religion and Upskirt Photography

2012-01-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

Larryville has been clamoring for Courtneybelle's first post of the new year, so here it is: her adventures at last Friday's "speakeasy night" at the Eldridge. Enjoy.

"If you need an excuse to be in costume on a Friday, look no further than “speakeasy night" at the Eldridge. It is always fun to celebrate our nation’s puritanical streak by getting plowed on Sidecars and Cosmopolitans. Based on the crowd this Watkins Museum event drew, it’s pretty hip to be historical. I think modern ladies are drawn to these events because they hearken back to a day in fashion when flat chested girls stood a chance in this world. Once patrons uttered the password, they were admitted to a dimly lit basement room. Watkins Museum provided some entertaining local historical factoids and artifacts [pictured]. Not surprisingly, Lawrence has a rich history of disobedience during Prohibition. As far as I know, Prohibition-era Lawrencians didn’t invent alcohol made out of hemp, but they did their part to contribute to the immorality of the community."

If you look really closely at the second photo, you might see Courtneybelle, trapped forever in the Eldridge, Shining-style!!

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If you're like us, you just finished reading Haruki Murakami's 925-page opus 1Q84 with the PBR_Book_Club and immediately started looking for another ridiculously long and insane recent Japanese work of art. Luckily, we've got just the ticket for you: Love Exposure, a four-hour 2008 film by Sion Sono about a teenage boy who wants to sin as much as possible to impress his Christian priest father during confessions so he joins forces with an intrepid band of upskirt-photographers who stalk the city, hoping all the while to take the perfect picture of his dream girl who will give him his first boner, which finally happens while he's dressed in drag and pretending to be a bad-ass kung fu fighter named "Miss Scorpion" to impress a man-hating schoolgirl crush. Sold yet? We're two hours in and loving it. Call to discuss. And watch the Youtube trailer here.

AV Club describes the film: "A soundtrack flush with passages from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Ravel’s Bolero. A roving gang of martial-arts-trained up-skirt photographers. Boners aplenty."

Our Danny Pound Revue Review

2012-01-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

Readers, if we learned anything from the first installment of the Nine Forty LIVE concert series at the Lawrence Arts Center last night it's that there are a significant number of old folks and Eastsiders willing to pay ten bucks to hear local music in a comfortable seat and get home by 10:30 to relieve the babysitters. Indeed, the house was packed for an evening with Danny Pound, Arthur Dodge, Suzannah Johannes, and Matt Suggs.

The highlight: people were roaming the aisles hawking beer (Free State beer, no less) as if we were at a baseball game! Holy shit! Liberty Hall should take a note from this idea and bring us beer when we are crammed in like sardines at a concert.

The lowlights: The evening's MC, Tim, is probably a very nice fellow, but we thought the drunken, abrasive style clashed pretty jarringly with the mellow vibe of the performances. As Art Dodge curtly told him, late in the show: "Wrap it up." And then there was the inevitable dude who finally got drunk enough to yell for Skynyrd after a contemplative Dodge song ("Meet me out back after the show," Dodge said, and hopefully he kicked the guy's ass good and proper).

Our top musical moments:

Danny Pound's rip-roaring song about how "the sun hasn't set on this boy yet." (we don't know titles, but we're guessing that might be the title!). And also his cover of Warren Zevon's "Mohammed's Radio" ("Don't it make you want to rock and roll?").

Arthur Dodge's duets with Mrs. Dodge (who was perhaps the unsung musical hero of the night).

Suzannah Johannes, in a sparkly shirt and boots, singing a lovely duet with Danny Pound after awkward attempts to arrange themselves atop very tall stools. Sadly, she didn't tell the hilarious vibrator story she regaled us with at last week's BARRR stand-up show.

Matt Suggs' "Where's Your Patience, Dear?" (if you have a mix-CD from us, there's a 72% chance this song is on it).

Verdict: four out of four Free State beers brought directly to our seats!

Upcoming shows include Truckstop Honeymoon, with perpetual Larryville neo-hobo Tyler Gregory. And later: Hospital Ships! (is the Hospital Ships show really on St. Patrick's Day, as the MC announced? That seems like an odd night to try to draw a big crowd to a mellow gig).

Artistic discovery of the evening:

Richard was profoundly moved by the haybale art in the gallery, while Chip felt the hay could have been put toward a more practical use, such as a nice breakfast for Coco the Pony.

Weekend Scenester Picks: Speakeasies, Sex Films, and Skronky Tonk

2012-01-20T10:29:00.001-08:00

Sure, a lot of you scenesters will be "jockin' your freshes" down at the Jackpot on Saturday (Chip: "I think that's hip-hop lingo for masturbation"), and you can get the full info on that and other weekend music events at I Heart Local Music.

But what else should you consider this weekend?

How about Speakeasy Night at the Eldridge this evening? It seems that HBO's Boardwalk Empire and Ken Burns Prohibition have made such gatherings hip again (so long as there's plenty of booze involved, of course). So dress like a flapper and check it out. We recommend drinking a lot of Sidecars, which we sampled at the recent Bonnie and Clyde bank robbery re-enactment. They'll get you nice and hammered, and quick. We sincerely hope Courtneybelle attends and reports back to us.

Film buffs will want to head to KC this weekend to see British auteur Steve McQueen's NC-17 sex-addiction drama Shame, though Chip's a little intimidated to spend two hours in the presence of Fassbender's (by all accounts impressive) schlong. We hope it's as pretentious as the poster and have no doubt it will be!

Or maybe you're in the mood for some "mayhem-infused skronky tonk music." Old Country Death Band's at the Jackpot tonight. They have a cool name and a cool flyer:

SOPA Blackouts Are So Hip Right Now!

2012-01-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

Behind this censored bar is the greatest boner joke that we have ever written. Make sure to shout angrily about the SOPA legislation today to insure that our boners keep on coming (if you catch our play on words!).

Chip: "There's so much talk about how SOPA will effectively censor all aspects of the interweb that people are losing sight of the basic fact that it will also keep me from downloading shoddy bootlegs of the newest Transformers movies from random BitTorrent sites."

A Local Missed Connections Mash-Up Poem / Scenester Pick of the Day: Up the Academy and Nurses at Jackpot

2012-01-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

Readers, it's been awhile since we collected a sampling of excerpts from Larryville's Craigslist Missed Connections and Personals and assembled them into a mash-up poem of lust and longing. But you're in luck today. Enjoy.

I have a hotel room all to myself and was wanting to cheat on my current girlfriend, Pamela Handerson.
I'm young, thin, and have a body smoother than the taste of Camel Lights.
Send me an email with "Battletoads" in the subject line.

U always smile when i come thru the drive up.
Order hotdog n shake or melt n shake and u always try to make it a meal

i asked for oil/vinegar and you're like yeah, they're awesome

seen she had the sexiest waist and tight butt I'd ever seen

Your mom mentioned something to me about my sons straw

What song were you singing?

I was wearing a backwards hat

What I meant was "I want to lay face down in your bathwater as a reward for being a good puppy."

Big boobs and kissing...Good looking guy seeks these two things

i'm a guy, masculine and sane
just want to try giving a dude a handjob or using your pocket pussy on you
while you kick backand watch some porn

you are so sexy and have the nicest ass
You drive a blue ford and have dog
I see You give off so many happy vibrations
I want to bring you flowers every day and treat you like a queen
I bet your amazing in bed
Describe to me what your dog looks like

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The Jackpot is still rocking, at least for now, so make sure to head down tonight and see our buddies in Up the Academy.

Remember that time they fed us patriotic grilled-cheese sandwiches at Love Garden?

Or that time they dressed like bunnies?

They're opening up for Portland's Nurses. You should probably chat with them about Portlandia. Check out their Bandcamp page.

And here are Nurses (they don't look at all like Chip hoped):

Scenester Pick for Tuesday: Daymoths at the Replay / Local Art Feud of the Week

2012-01-16T11:41:00.000-08:00

At the LC, we're always on the lookout for adorable duos, and the husband/wife team of Minnesota's Daymoths (at the Replay on Tuesday) just might fit the bill. From what we've gathered on the interwebs, they're an organ/piano/drums duo who occasionally bring handmade soap to their shows!

Urban Tulsa Weekly says:

"The songs bring to mind the freakish contents of Victorian curiosity cabinets and would make for a great soundtrack to the most adorable little taxidermy shop you’ve ever seen."

If Animal Planet's American Stuffers gets a second season, perhaps Daymoths can do the score!

PLEASE watch this video of Daymoths' making unusual sounds in a pastoral setting.

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In a recent LJ-World editorial, Richard Wingfield complains:

"If taking a picture of a mannequin in a field (Journal-World front page, Jan.10) is the kind of art Gov. Brownback is cutting funding to, please, governor, cut away. I would like my tax money spent on better roads."

Guess what, Richard Wingfield? The artist is not going to put up with your shit!

Emily Johnson responds:

"This is a message for Richard Wingfield (Public Forum, Jan. 12). Thank you for taking all of a paragraph to completely generalize the world of art. Art is ultimately about thinking, and it is clear you did little of that. The mannequin, you so easily tossed aside as irrelevant and absurd, symbolizes my mother. It is even more relevant because my most vivid memory of my mother involves her sewing clothes for me on a mannequin dress form. The baby dress on top of the mannequin’s “head” symbolizes me and the way my very existence can be a burden and a blinder, both financially and emotionally.

So, before you decide to attack art, me and, by extension, my family, perhaps you should do some thinking of your own. Even some abstract thinking if you’re up to it, because that is the kind we could use here in Kansas."

At the LC, we fully support any and all mannequin art, especially in fields.

Chip: "I support them not so much for the artistic value, but because they can double as scarecrows."

Top Secret Stand-Up Comedy Highlights / Graffiti of the Week: Blockbuster? More Like...Cockduster!

2012-01-14T10:34:00.000-08:00

Readers, we've always been a little frightened of attending one of BARRR's "secret" stand-up shows. What if he singles us out and makes fun of Chip's boner? Or what if he gets naked on stage (we don't care to witness that). So in the past we've sent in the bold Tweetnasty to provide coverage on such events.

But last night we decided to take our chances and join the throng of scenesters in the old Penny Annie's location (now art gallery) for an evening of vulgarity, depravity, and, who knows, maybe even some jokes.

Here's the line-up:

Peter Lyrene. Peter came armed with some amusing sex jokes about "his and her" lubes and rules regarding porn-watching, but we preferred his geekery (a story about the largely-forgotten mid-to-late 90's fantasy series Early Edition; an unexpected use of the word "Dickensian.").

Chance Dibben. This cat made us laugh with his deadpan delivery. He offered up some good jokes about his stripper/pilot mother and a long story about the time he ejaculated like "the St. Louis arch" into his own mouth.

Suzannah Johannes. Yes, the very same Suzannah who sings quiet and contemplative love songs in a gorgeous voice will also tell you a tale about the time she left her bright blue vibrator (with 15 settings!) in full view, along with a box full of ribs she'd been eating. Photo courtesy of @Steve_Dalhberg:

Ed (somebody help us out with his last name). He regaled us with a tale of how Sir Paul McCartney blessed his baby in Branson.

Chip: "Branson gets a lot of flak from comedians, but most of them would change their point of view if they actually attended the Shoji Tabuchi show."

And (finally) the man of the evening, BARRR, took the stage, promising to "rape the shit out of us" for 45 minutes. Beginning with his exploits cheating "the Man" at Papa Murphy's Pizza with altered coupons, BARRR soon took us on a powerful journey through his frustrations with his job, the difficulties of marriage and fatherhood, and the sheer terror of being stalked by a local homeless woman. We learned that, when BARRR fucks, the sound (for some reason) is the sound of a big truck backing up (BEEP. BEEP). And we learned that he will sometimes answer the door of his home in N. Lawrence completely naked, with a boner, at 4:00 in the morning. Here's a photo of BARRR in his BARRRhartt jacket.

And then, as if the evening wasn't already weird enough, legendary Larryville denizen Wayne Propst took the stage to end the evening with a 35-second poem(?) about zygotes. He stormed off the stage with his arm raised in victory and the crowd thanked him.

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Just when you thought Larryville graffiti was nothing more than "AJAX" written on every available surface, along comes this message on the 23rd Street Blockbuster. We think it's a trenchant commentary on the failing economy.

Friday Night Scenester Guide: Secret Stand-Up Comedy and Batmen / Important Local Legislation of the Week: Potbellied Pigs

2012-01-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

It's time to quit whining about this week's tiny January snowfall and hit the town, so we'll be starting our evening with a top-secret stand-up comedy show...which you probably already know about if you follow @BARRR on Twitter. But if you still need an invite, we've been authorized to give out 10 of them (it gives Chip a boner to think he knows about shit that other people do not). So send a DM to @larryvillelife if you need the scoop. And we hear Wayne Propst is going to be in the house. Will he be performing any stand-up (or perhaps a ventriloquist act using those freaky babydoll heads?). There's only one way to know for sure.

Afterward, you should probably either head home to watch the Battlestar Galactica episode of Portlandia or to the Jackpot to see Batmen and Mouthbreathers, a show so hip it's not listed on the Jackpot's calendar.

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And don't forget that the City Fathers are meeting next week to decide whether pot-bellied pigs should be allowed as pets. Personally, we don't find them as adorable as hedgehogs. Look at this 70 pound beast named Sparky from the LJ-World story on the subject:

Do you want that thing rooting around in the apartment above you?

If you're a local progressive (or resident of the Eastside) the answer is almost certainly yes.

Nerd Nite 3: Observations and Reflections

2012-01-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

Readers, Nerd Nite has reached its "tipping point" (as that nerdy Malcolm Gladwell would say). Doors opened last night at 7:30 and by the time we arrived, at 7:34, the room was at capacity. However, we luckily scored a seat, not because we're the only son-of-a-bitches in town who cover this event but simply because a group of people waiting nearby did not want to leave any of their members behind. We are pleased to note, however, that the next Nerd Nite will be held in Pachamama's ballroom, which should provide plenty of room for every interested nerd in town

And now some highlights from the three presentations:

1) Truck Stop presentation

"Showers are golden when you're on the road." (The presenter never seemed to realize the unintentional sexual innuendo here, but the nerds sure did. We all snickered like Beavis and Butthead.

The presentation was notably lacking in trucker music and clips from films such as Smokey and the Bandit, but at least Convoy was referenced.

One of the presenter's Top Ten trucker lessons was that "Truck stop food is awful," but Chip profoundly disagreed, as he has never met a truckstop chicken-fried steak that he didn't enjoy.

2) Intro to Whisky presentation

No, there's not supposed to be an "e" in whisky, you dummies!

Line about barley that gave Chip a boner: "You've got to get it wet and sopping."

We scored a free sample of whisky (thanks to Courtneybelle!).

3) Neo-Archaic Revivalism lecture

These days people who are into Terence McKenna are the kinds of folks that go to Sound Tribe Sector 9 shows (good point, Nick Ray!).

"Knurds" are "agents of change." Especially Plato.

Admittedly, we were drunk on good Scotch by this point, but we're pretty sure that Nick Ray accidentally said "John Cameron Mitchell" instead of "James Cameron" at one point, which made us think about how awesome Avatar would have been if the director of Shortbus had made it: imagine all the hot Na'vi orgies that would have ensued!

Important point established during the Q&A: There is no sequel to Titanic.

Also, all nerds in attendance last night were given a copy of the inaugural Nerd Nite magazine, and we have spent the morning studying the Nerd Nite personals. We're totally going to email Pam Willis from Austin, a sexy biologist nerd who is made happy by "critters, surprise cocktails, and singing in the car." Go here to subscribe to the magazine.

Most Anticipated Album/Time Machine of the Year: White Flight

2012-01-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

Readers, if you're like us, you scour the interwebs each day looking for information about White Flight's new album. So imagine how excited we were yesterday when we discovered (via Range Life Records) a missive from "Whitey" himself.

"ALOHA! I write from southern California on this beautiful sunny day. We are alive and this planet is hot hot hot right now! I have begun work on a new recording, which I won't even call an album, as it is going to be much more than that, the genesis sounds for a film and eventual multi-sensoral other-dimensional transport tool."

If we're reading this correctly, the album will double as a time-machine! Let's hope he finishes the album before the Mayan apocalypse arrives in December. In order to insure that this happens, he needs someone to offer up a "special retreat-like space that could be transformed into a studio for 2 weeks to 2 months."

Please visit Range Life Records here and offer up your services in whatever way you can.

Scenester Pick of the Day: Dubb Nubb (and Pizza Power!) at Wonder Fair

2012-01-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

All the Pizza Power folks want to do is eat some delicious pizza and rock out, but The Man managed to shut down their house parties. Luckily for you, the party returns to Wonder Fair tonight, with pizza at 6:00 and music from Dubb Nubb and others at 7:00.

Dubb Nubb is two nineteen year old twin sisters from Missouri, and they even have a Daytrotter session, which we'd happily listen to except we get annoyed by having to register for shit over at Daytrotter these days, so we'll dig their Bandcamp tunes instead.

Daytrotter says: "Dubb Nubb has created these succulent moments of introspective black holes - those HUGE thoughts that, once you get going on them, you find that they're deeper than the deepest well and you're falling forever."

Sounds dangerous, but we love "succulent moments!" Go check it out, why don't you?

Alternative Lecture Series Take the Scenester World By Storm / Nerd Nite 3 Preview / Replay Matinee Recap

2012-01-07T15:45:00.001-08:00

"Alternative lecture series" are so hip right now! Check out this piece from the NY-Times which offers a glimpse inside several such series.

There's the "Secret Science Night" series:

"Dr. Harcourt-Smith flashed a “slightly kinky” slide of a chimp holding up a silver stiletto with its feet before offering to buy that evening’s special cocktail, the Fossil Evidence, for anyone who could guess the name of a certain bone."

There's the "Moonlighter Presents" series:

"This series, which started in 2010 in a former funeral home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, draws about 50 people. It features youngish academics, artists and writers on subjects outside their expertise... topics lean toward theory-tinged eclectica like the poetics of hay fever, the cultural politics of Steely Dan fandom and the history of the car ferry in Elberta, Mich...".

And of course there's "Nerd Nite":

"Susan Carnell... did manage to slip some real science into her talk, including references to a recent study of the mating behavior of male topi antelopes and a slide depicting the vagina photoplethysmograph, a contraption used to measure female arousal."

As you should know by now, Larryville has its own Nerd Nite series, and Round 3 is this Tuesday.

This week's lectures:

"Caffeine, Public Showers, and Howling Wolf T-Shirts: Exploring
America’s Truck Stops" by Stephanie Day

"An Introduction to Scotch Whisky" by Kevin Freese (let's hope there are free samples!).

and the one with the most adorably academic title:

"Let’s Get (meta)Physical!: How to dip your toes in the Neoarchaic
Revival without getting wet" by Nick Ray.

Visit the FB event page here.

And you should also consider presenting at a future Nerd Nite. Chip is hard (!) at work on a presentation called "A History of Boners: From Lysistrata to Bridesmaids to the One in My Pants As I Speak." And Richard is rumored to be preparing a collaborative presentation with Bananasuit called "Building a Better Book Club: How We Convinced a Bunch of Folks to Spend the Holidays Reading a 900 Page Japanese Novel."

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We didn't make it to any late-night scenesters shows this weekend, but that doesn't mean we didn't witness some weird shit at the Replay. At Friday's matinee, we beheld the following sights:

--Lance Fahey marching around the inside bar with an accordion trying to get the crowd to sing along to the Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven" (with very few joining in despite the fact that everyone in the bar is BORN knowing those lyrics).

--the gals in Smile High Club inviting a (lucky) guy onstage to be ridden like a horse during a song about ponies (bad photo here, but we assure you this dude is being ridden like a horse!).

--Smile High Club performing a song about the pleasures of sitting atop a washing machine (with the orgasmic moments consisting of the chorus from "Natural Woman"). Is this something that women often do? Please send us detailed accounts of your experiences to be incorporated into a future Nerd Nite presentation titled "Spin Cycle: Oh My God Don't Stop!"

Picking and Grinning Pick of the Day: Smile High Club

2012-01-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

Our friends at I Heart Local Music have already informed you of the weekend's hippest events, such as Kaitlyn Conroy's new project La Guerre at the Replay on Saturday and The Sluts at the Bottleneck (also on Saturday).

So let's take a look at a few other choices you might otherwise overlook. For the early birds amongst us, the Replay offers a matinee of picking and grinning this evening (it's so fucking warm they should move it outdoors and pretend it's summer again!). Will Katz is opening the show with "singing commentary for the misleaders of our state?" (L.com). Is this dude like the Mark Russell of Larryville? He better have a Brownback/#heblowsalot tune! And maybe a tune written in the past few days about Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal forwarding along offensive emails about Michelle "YoMama."

And the matinee headliner is Smile High Club. We can only assume (and hope) they thought of the name while getting high and having sex in an airplane restroom. We're sold based on this photo (note the PBR t-shirt). Also, they have a wonderfully vulgar song called "Sweet Ass" which you can hear at their FB page . Learn it and sing along tonight.

Or perhaps you should head to Wayne and Larry's to support K-State in the Cotton Bowl at the "Lawrence Area Catbacker Watch Party." Just kidding. You should NOT do that. Instead, you should root for the Hogs, because Richard still has Razorback roots. However, Chip does enjoy this pic from the official Wayne and Larry's website, which suggests that the waitresses are folksy types with bare feet and rolled-up jeans.

We Don't Know What a "Global Pants Party" Is All About, But There's Not Much Else Going On Tonight / Local Missed Connection of the Week

2012-01-04T10:32:00.001-08:00

Readers, if you're like us you've no doubt already clicked on the Jackpot's home page to plan your January hipster itinerary and found yourself facing a totally blank slate. Sure, we cried a little. But we're told there ARE still occasional events scheduled (which you can find listed at I Heart Local Music). And of course Duckie and company are still doing karaoke on Tuesdays.

However, let's face it. It's slow this time of year in general and, without the Jackpot rocking on a nightly basis, it's going to be a long winter and you're going to have to settle for some off-the-beaten-path events at other, less hip venues.

So we'll see you at the Bottleneck tonight for something called a "global pants party." It's free if you're over 21 and there's also going to be some "live painting" going on.

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Romance is in the air at the gym in this recent "m4f" Missed Connection.

"Anyways I am definitely turned on by you and would love to tear my shirt off and show you what I have underneath for you. Reply back to this telling me what color shirt I wore last night. Clue...We did lock eyes a few times and I also know that you switched from the treadmill to the stair-stepper because it was right by the tricep machine that I was using and you wanted to show off that ass of yours."

Chip: "Women love when a guy rips his own shirt off and the tricep machine is indeed the best vantage point to check out asses at the gym. I have a feeling this guy will get lucky."

The LC's New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T07:08:00.000-08:00

1) Readers, we resolve to publish a little more sporadically in 2012. Daily posting just gets to be a little much. Some days there is simply nothing hip going on. And, on a few rare occasions, the pressure to publish daily has been so intense that Chip has had to fake a boner. So we'll likely be limiting our coverage to the hippest of events and essential local stories (such as #heblowsalot and Coco the Pony). For those needing a more constant source of snark, local links, and PBR jokes, there's always the @larryvillelife Twitter feed.

2) We resolve to bring you a few more guest pieces in 2012. Last year we offered up fine work ranging from Courtneybelle's analysis of the Twilight series ("Mormons wank too!") to @plyrene 's powerful investigation of local scenester violence ("Just stand your ground, go home, and write a fast and loud song about the experience for your band's next 9-minute EP.") to Tweetnasty's ever-popular sex advice columns ("Dudes: don't send a flaccid dongshot to a girl you're trying to impress."). However, it's surprisingly hard to get apathetic local scenesters to commit to actually writing a short piece for us, even though we KNOW you're out there on the scene every night drinking PBR. So...when we ask for your help, please rise to the challenge and take comfort in the fact that your week may eventually be discovered through random Google searches (especially if you use the word "naked" a few times).

3) Finally, we resolve to continue being the fourth best source in town for local cultural coverage. Thanks for reading.

[Also, as with all New Year's resolutions, we reserve the right to break all of these in a few weeks and return to writing lazy daily boner jokes].

New Year's Eve at the Replay Recap / Local Mural Restoration Project of the Week

2012-01-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

Readers, normally we spend a quiet New Year's Eve in bucolic Romance, Arkansas, which is now home to a new reality show on Animal Planet called American Stuffers, about a family of extreme taxidermists who specialize in stuffing beloved pets (this shit is real: take a look !).

But last night we found ourselves in Larryville, so we ventured to the Replay to see how local scenesters ring in the New Year. How? With a 45 minute set break and absolutely nothing happening on stage at midnight nor any announcement of the New Year (probably there was more festivity on the patio than inside).

But at least Dean Monkey's pre-midnight opening set of "dirty doo wop," complete with ZZ Top beards and a shirtless adult baby with a pacifier, offered up a version of "Auld Lang Syne."

And in the early minutes of 2012, likely to be humanity's final year, The Devil (turns out The Devil is a woman) took the stage with distorted guitars and gave Chip an evil boner in the front row.

Here's a frighteningly ethereal picture of The Devil:

And it's probably safe to assume that Fag Cop (or "Homo 5-0," as Dean Monkey called them) played later, but we were passed out in the alley by then.

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If you're a local progressive, you love art and you love saving art, so head over to Dave Loewenstein's blog and find out about one of his 1993 murals (the one in the alley on the side of Signs of Life bookstore) that just got painted over but MIGHT be restored with a little support from you. Do you want the mural back? Of course you fucking do!

Thanks to @oxfordist for the story tip.

The LC's Christmas Vacation

2011-12-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

Readers, we're officially on holiday break, so we'll be blogging intermittently, if at all, for the next few weeks, depending if there are any stories (such as #heblowsalot) that require immediate attention.

In the meantime, we urge you all to gather around your tree made of PBR cans, like the one pictured below in Williamsburg, and enjoy the holidays.

The Wilders Tear the Roof Off / Alarmist LJ-World Editorial of the Day / Odd Photo of the Weekend

2011-12-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

Readers, some things are too good and pure for us to heap any snark upon them and such is the case with the Wilders' "end of an era" show at Liberty Hall last night, a masterpiece of breakneck fiddling, heartbreaking honky-tonk, and certainly the best harmonica playing we've ever witnessed (courtesy of Pokey Lafarge's ace multi-instrumentalist Ryan Koenig). The evening culminated with both bands joining the crowd on the dance floor and taking turns solo-ing atop a chair for a singalong of "I Wish I Was a Catfish." If you didn't wish YOU were a catfish by the end of the set, you probably weren't paying attention.

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We can't get enough of editorials by East Larryville progressives up in arms about the possibility of Doug Compton's new hotel. Here's one from today's paper called "Death Knell":

"I see where they want to build another tower in East Lawrence: the “iSoar Tower.” Is that grandiose enough?

This seems an odd neighbor for the old veterinary office, the Social Service League, the Percolator, the ancient Turnhalle and the other venerable buildings along Rhode Island Street.

Apartments, condos — gosh, even a hotel. Perhaps they’ll have a casino. The winner would get the last parking place in Lawrence.

Let’s be serious. This tower would toll the death knell for East Lawrence. It must not happen."

Richard: "The writer should have printed that last sentence in all caps."

Chip: "A casino sounds terrific."

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And we leave you today with this photo of KU basketball's Naadir Tharpe being pushed around in a shopping cart at Wal-Mart. It's one of Coach Self's more unusual training methods.

Weekend Cultural Coverage: Honky-Tonkin' with the Wilders, Booze-Fueled Mayhem with Scroat Belly, and Cavorting With Drunken Santas

2011-12-16T10:59:00.001-08:00

Signs are pointing to tonight's Wilders' gig at Liberty Hall being an old-fashioned barnburner. A) It's one of their last gigs before taking 2012 off. B) They are joined by Pokey Lafarge and the South City Three. C) The gig is not billed as the usual ultra-family-friendly Holiday Hoedown (which had grown a bit forced in its jolliness lo these past few years). But yet there is still special child-pricing ($2.50) making us fear the room will be full of kids crying like babies when we spill our beers on them.

Here's Pokey!

And you should probably follow up the Liberty show with a trek down to the Replay to catch the legendary Scroat Belly (have they played without Kirk before?) and Snakebite, which features members of Split Lip, Grain and Demise, and Hell Cat Trio, or so says the Replay's site. This show will be rowdy. Someone send us a report (since we'll certainly be passed out already by then).

And don't forget to join the drunken Santas of SantaCon tomorrow as they booze it up at the Sandbar, the Granada, the Red Lyon, the Replay, and Henry's. Check out their itinerary here

Look at Santa on stage at the Replay from last year's event:

And we leave you today with this video of a Senior Citizen flash mob dancing at the Larryville Wal-Mart. Old folks are so hip right now!

Nerd Nite Recap / KC Scenester Pick of the Week: La Guerre at Record Bar

2011-12-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

Larryville's second installment of Nerd Nite has come and gone and, like the first, it packed Pachamamas full of nerds. After the Nerd Nite origin story had been invoked (this is a nice touch, conjuring the feel of a comic book...or a religion), the presentations began.

Here is what we learned:

--Sometimes a lecture about orchids can sound like a lecture about boners ("Long." "Veiny." Size is very important in judging.").

--"Some orchids smell like rotting meat."

--Children's activities can work just as well with a roomful of intoxicated nerds as they do with children ("Zip Zap Zop!").

--If a lecturer asks an audience of nerds whether they remember the terrible 1996 film version of The Phantom the audience will all sigh "Billy Zane" in unison.

--Nerds may not ask a lot of questions following a presentation about orchids or a presentation about "attunement," but they will ask A LOT of fucking questions after a presentation about comic books.

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That Katlyn Conroy sure is prolific. Her new solo project, La Guerre, makes its debut tomorrow night (Dec. 16) at the Record Bar in KC at 10:00 (preceding sets by the Fullbloods and Hidden Pictures). You should probably go.

Chip: "I think 'La Guerre' is French for sex, isn't it? And I've heard that Katlyn will be dressed as a French chanteuse. And why do I know the word chanteuse?"

Check out the La Guerre Tumblr site over here

Nerd Nite Is Back for Round Two / Indie Flick Pick of the Week: Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

2011-12-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

Readers, we had a good time at the first Nerd Nite last month and we're ready for Round 2. The line-up looks like this.

Paphiopedilum Dreams: Confessions of an Orchid Freak by Brian Donovan

Attunement- 4 Steps Toward Making A Connection by Sam Bunnyfield

Superheroes as Symbols of Justice by Blake Wilson

Our initial reactions:

What's a Paphiopedilum?

We know Sam Bunnyfield and she's cool as hell.

The third title seems kind of obvious.

Look for us in the back taking notes (drunkenly).

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Our indie flick pick of the week is Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty, which is currently in theaters (not near us) and OnDemand. It makes for a good unsexy, sex flick to tide you over until the Midwest finally opens McQueen's Shame and Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method in late January.

Look at this excerpt from The Guardian's review:

"In a way, Sleeping Beauty is a very unmodern film, a throwback to the artporn and chateau-erotica of the 1970s, epitomised by the delirious, and once much-banned fantasies of Walerian Borowczyk: Immoral Tales and The Beast... Yet Leigh carries off her semi-surreal fantasy, mostly, just by keeping it utterly deadpan. She audaciously tests her audience's patience, quite a bit, by preceding one sex scene with an extended dialogue about the Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann. This scene has caused many to groan, and yet it is all part of Leigh's elegant, asymmetric style."

Chip: "Will this film give me a boner, or is it just some artsy feminist tract?"

Chip, the answer is yes to both.

LJ-World Rant of the Week / Bizarre "Best of the Year" Choice of the Week: Fast Five

2011-12-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Our favorite editorial this week comes from a reader who's finally had just about enough of...FDR.

"The [Pearl Harbor] bombing, of course, precipitated World War II and allowed one of our most incompetent Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to assume a larger role in history than he deserved...His now-famous “Day of Infamy” speech should have included a mea culpa for this hubristic putridity...Roosevelt, who would die in a room with his mistress — not his wife — should be relegated to the lower tier of U.S. presidents, a rather despicable creature for whom Hell no doubt would open wide its gates."

Chip: "This seems like a cogent argument, but I tend to feel that the limited space of the LJ-World editorial section should be devoted to more contemporary or local anti-liberal screeds."

The letter also elicited this great rejoinder from Cato_the_elder:

"No FDR apologists out there to respond to a very provocative letter impugning the integrity and reputation of a liberal Democrat icon? Too early in the morning, or have all of the juvenile leftists who post on this forum never heard of FDR?"

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We continue scouring Best of the Year lists and our favorite bizarre inclusion this year (thus far) comes from TIME's Richard Corliss, who lists Vin Diesel's Fast Five in his tenth slot with this explanation:

"The dialogue, characterizations and acting are irrelevant to the success of this first great film of the post-human era. As if recalling the epochal heist in 1903′s The Great Train Robbery and, a decade later, the auto carnage of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, director Justin Lin goes back to basics with another train robbery and vehicular violence in police rides — souped up and stripped down like stock cars in a death race — on the streets of Rio. A carnival of roguish heroes and pretty girls, car chases and cliffhangers, Fast Five is as much a tribute as The Artist or Hugo to the cinema’s primal thrills."

Post-human era, eh? We're pretty sure that most films (including this one) still contain humans: isn't Vin Diesel technically a human?

Chip: "When I saw The Artist, the sound and color in the theater was off almost the entire time."

Richard: "The Artist is a silent film in black and white, Chip."

Chip: "That can't be right, can it?"

SantaCon is Coming (Back) To Town / Missed Connection of the Week From Aladdin's Cafe

2011-12-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

Last year marked Larryville's first experience with SantaCon, a nationwide gathering of bar-hopping Santas.

This Saturday the event returns. Hopefully the weather is fit for frolicking, so locate a Santa suit and meet up with the participants at 2:00 at the Sandbar.

But will there be any naked Santas of the sort that assembled in San Francisco this past Saturday attempting to set a record for "largest gathering of naked Santas?" We sure hope so. You can watch a short video of the naked Santa gathering here via Buzzfeed (warning: video contains naked Santas) and you can get the full scoop on the Lawrence SantaCon over here .

And here's a patio full of Sandbar Santas at last year's event. How many can you recognize?

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Here's a new Larryville Missed Connection from Aladdin's. Somehow we have a feeling this gentleman is not going to get a call from the lady in question, but maybe we're wrong and she's totally into orgies with obnoxious dudes.

"You were wearing a black shirt and jeans. I can't stop thinking about your amazing rack (D cups?). I wrote my phone number on the bill, but you must have lost it since you never called me. I thought we had real chemistry. You giggled when I tried to pronounce Gyro as JI-ROH...I am open to just one on one sex or an orgy with your hot friends (I mean you're hot, so you have hot friends right?). Sorry, no long term relationship, I'm a playa ya know?"

What We Missed On Stop Day Eve / Weekend Multiplex Guide: David Gordon Green's The Sitter

2011-12-11T10:14:00.001-08:00

Readers, we had a rollicking time at Noise for Toys last night. Chip almost won the ugly sweater contest (inadvertently, as usual) and Hawley Shoffner embraced her inner sex symbol and rock star with a kick-ass opening set. Head over to I Heart Local Music for a full gallery of shots such as this from last night's proceedings:

But let's turn our attention today not to pictures of bands but to pictures of drunken scholars taking a well-deserved study break on Stop Day Eve. Luckily, the KU Nights site gives us an important glimpse into this culture.

First is this pic from the Miss Phoggy Dog contest photo gallery (which includes not a single shot of the actual Miss Phoggy Dog contest):

Meanwhile, over at Saint's, this happened (Free PBR for whoever comes up with the funniest caption to explain what's going on in the photo).

And at Abe and Jake's, things got a little sexy (Chip: "When I was young and 'going steady,' we used to walk around with our hands in each other's back pockets. These days, it's right down the front of the pants. Certainly it's a change for the better.").

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Readers, it's awards season, and that means each week brings a new film looking for Oscar gold, such as...Jonah Hill in The Sitter, this weekend's raunchy babysitter comedy from (once well-respected) David Gordon Green.

NY Mag says: "The opening scene has [Hill] giving epic head to a furiously climaxing Ari Graynor...".

Chip: "The last great film I saw that began with a scene of cunnilingus was Sam Mendes' Away We Go. And the last great film I saw before that which began with a scene of cunnilingus was probably Twat Lickers 3, which I picked up on a whim from Miracle Video without even having seen the first two films in the trilogy. It was quite good."

Richard: "Seriously, is David Gordon Green ever going to make another REAL film? Did anyone actually make it to the end of Your Highness?"

Scenester Pick and Worthy Cause of the Day: Noise for Toys at Bottleneck

2011-12-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

Each year around this time, the Noise Boys of The Noise FM roll into town from Chicago, bringing rock and roll to hip boys and girls and raising money to make sure tots have toys (all proceeds go to Douglas County Toys for Tots). But don't think the Boys have forgotten their humble roots in Fort Scott, Kansas, where they spent their teenage years with none other than Chip himself, doing whatever it is young boys do in Fort Scott (chasing farmer's daughters around the hayloft, probably).

Also on tonight's bill is Cowboy Indian Bear, who have been making A LOT of noise recently, opening for Florence and the Machine in KC and recording a Daytrotter session complete with the typically nutty Daytrotter description full of lines such as this: "The new heart would act as potting soil and tender loving care to bring something shiny and sunnier to this area of such ugly and cold topography."

Rounding out the line-up will be KC's Making Movies (we're gonna shake our asses, Latin-style!), Team Bear Club (hijinks), and Hawley Shoffner ("Adorkable!"*), whom you may remember from the era when Larryville still had a Style Scout column (here is Hawley's Scout ).

*Chip is responsible for the above obnoxious use of the word "Adorkable," a Zooey Deschanel/ New Girl reference. He watches with a faithful Zooey-boner each week even though it's 100% dreadful.

Doors at 8:00. Show at 8:30.

We Welcome New KU Football Coach Charlie Weis / Scenester Pick of the Day: Paradise Cookbook Party / Sexy Pick of the Day: Winter Wonderland at R Bar

2011-12-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

The KU Athletics Department has been severely lacking in big ol' boys since the departures of Lew Perkins and Mark Mangino but all that changed yesterday when new KU football coach Charlie Weis flew into town.

Chip: "Seriously, there is NO way that man fit in that teensy little airplane."

But let's get beyond the weight jokes and turn to the LJ-World talkbackers for some trenchant sports analysis regarding the new hire, a man who knows his way around not only BCS Bowls but Super Bowls.

thepianoman says: "I say we take this new coach out and hit up the buffett at the Habitachi Grill over by Jason's Deli!"

520dude says: "Is he not doing anymore Mike and Molly shows?"

And hawkster007says: "Weis knew that Kansas' topography would support his frame because of Mangino's prior tour of duty here."

So, is ANYBODY talking about his coaching capabilities?

drgnslayr says: "It feels like we are a restaurant hiring a waitress who seems very qualified, but has worked at 30 or 40 other restaurants in the past 5 years. The formula for success is right next door in Manhattan. KSU was a zilch in football (pretty much like us) and built a program with a guy who put his roots in Manhattan.
Do any of you really think Weis will be here in 5 years? Until I read something different, my first impression is we just hired a very qualified waitress."

And here's another photo that looks like an outtake from Scorsese's Goodfellas:

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You can't talk to an aging scenester in this town for more than 10 minutes without at least one reference to Paradise Cafe. So we assume that tonight's Paradise Cafe and Bakery Cookbook release party and book-signing will draw a nice crowd to The Raven (5:00-7:00). If you take a walk early tomorrow in East Lawrence, expect to smell a lot of the Paradise's breakfast enchiladas cooking.

Get the full scoop from The Raven's site .

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But maybe you're looking for something a little sexier, something that skews to a younger demographic. We recommend tonight's Winter Wonderland event at R-Bar (former Jet Lag) which features a "Sexy Santa Helpers" costume contest that can land you a trip to Mexico. The very idea of it is giving us a major Christmas boner the likes of which we haven't experienced since Alison Brie's Christmas song on last night's episode of Community (which geeks across the land are masturbating to even as we speak: you know that it's true.). Please watch said video on YouTube right here if you have somehow not seen it yet.

We Watch the Naked Lola Episode of Work of Art / Scenester Pick of the Day: Hidden Pictures and Minden at Tap Room

2011-12-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

Readers, we watch Bravo's Work of Art regularly anyway, but we watched more closely than ever last night, since this "Lola gets naked" episode had been heavily promoted for weeks, keeping Chip in a state of constant agitation. And did it live up to his expectations? Yes. In fact, he added it to his list of "most erotic TV moments" alongside "Audrey and the cherry stem on Twin Peaks" and "Quinton's waitress appears on The Bachelor."

Here's a look at Lola's work of art, which consisted of a naked photo of herself with brutally honest "secrets" superimposed over the top. Get it? The idea of "baring all" has a double meaning here. Naturally, her piece was one of the winners. (sorry for the small pic, dirty-minded readers, but go watch the episode).

The AV-Club raises some interesting points about televised nudity in their review:

"As with Kymia early in the season, Lola’s actual breasts threaten to send society into a Caligula-esque spiral of decadence and must be censored, but life-size photographs of her breasts are A-OK. I guess that once the female form has been processed through TWO different layers of conglomerate-sanctioned mediation, it is suitable for viewing by America. Quite a culture we got here!"

Indeed, during the actual photo-shoot, Lola's "naughty parts are obscured in the TV image by superimposed flesh-colored shapes—a post-production technique far weirder than the traditional pixelation route" (AV-Club).

Chip: "Weirder, yes. Better, definitely."

Read the full AV-Club review over here .

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It's Stop Day Eve in Larryville, and that means pure debauchery, but if you're like us you're a little too old too partake in the best of it (we'll just peruse the KU Nights website instead to see what we missed). The best bet for scenesters this evening is to check out our adorable buddies in Hidden Pictures at the Tap Room. They're joined by Minden who, according to HP's Facebook page, "will be covering the new Mariah Carey Christmas album." That's probably not true. But expect plenty of surprises and catchy pop tunes.

Go to HP's Bandcamp and get the new song "Tangerine," along with a cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams."

And make sure to get Minden's new EP "Gold Standard" over here and watch the very funny title video, Warning: the video contains powerful imagery such as this:

KU vs Porn / Plus: Checking in With Seapony (ex-Transmittens)

2011-12-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

When Chip heard the news yesterday (via this Channel 6 story ) that KU was buying up pornography websites, he got very excited. He was bummed to learn, however, that the university was simply buying Dot XXX websites that "contained its own trademarks" and did not plan on actually using those sites.

Chip: "In today's porno-centric culture, why not embrace the revenue that a site with a name like, for instance, "KU Chi Omega Fountain Fucking" could generate? Loyalty to the KU brand runs deep, even among perverts. Maybe even especially among perverts."

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We haven't checked in with Danny and Jen from the Transmittens in far too long, but their new project Seapony, out in Seattle, is still going strong. The debut album, Go With Me, even got reviewed by Pitchfork in May, although it received only a middling 5.3 (making us shake our sparklemitten-covered fists in mild fury!):

"If your anorak pockets are stuffed with indie pop show flyers, or you are a daily reader of Skatterbrain, Go With Me has a place in your record collection. But until they can really stand out from the crowd, Seapony just come across as garden-variety twee."

And a little research reveals they have a new song called "Sailing" on Bandcamp:

"Sailing" pushes the Seapony sound into new territory, featuring xylophone, syncopated hand-claps, and acoustic guitar, all layered over a wash of memorable guitar melodies."

We find it adorable! Go listen to it here .

We Check In With Pitchfork to See If It's Still Okay to Like The Black Keys

2011-12-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

As scenesters, we always feel like we should turn against a band once they achieve the level of fame The Black Keys have reached in recent years (they were on SNL, for goodness sake!). But the truth is that we still dig them, perhaps primarily because we saw one of their blistering early career gigs at the Replay for three bucks and we can forever lord that little bit of scenester-knowledge over the heads of any recent fans.

But let's take a look at Pitchfork's review of their new album, El Camino, which is out today.

The review first offers a terrific assessment of the band's full career, including this description of the debut: "...The Big Come Up emerged in 2002 and offered a walking rockist orgasm: two gawky white dudes from Akron, Ohio, drums and surly guitar and burning-oatmeal-mouthed yawps of not terribly articulate romantic frustration, all powering cartoonishly virile garage-blues jams of prison-phone-call fidelity and sentiment. Ridiculous and kind of awesome. (This assumes racially uneasy cultural appropriation is no longer an issue for you, but if so, feel free to evoke the Blueshammer scene in the Ghost World movie and the hell with it.)."

Richard: "Believe me, I evoke the Blueshammer scene in Ghost World every chance I getn during debates about 'uneasy cultural appropriation.' "

And the new album itself. We're sold simply on this description of a single song: ""Gold on the Ceiling" is just filthy, like George Thorogood scoring porn, all raunchy organ and licentious handclaps and chorus help from ladies attempting to sound like the sorts of ladies Steely Dan loved to write songs about."

Chip: "I have a feeling this song is going to give me a boner."

Final verdict from Pitchfork is 7.4: "...their best and (not coincidentally) goofiest album, a veritable frat-worthy "Pimp 'n' Ho" party in which T. Rex has somehow been tricked into serving as house band."

Read the full Pitchfork review here .

Also, holy shit, look at these photos from The Black Keys and The Hefners at the Replay circa 2003 over here .

The East Side vs. Doug Compton / Hanging Dong on the Big Screen

2011-12-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

An important local showdown is slated for tomorrow, when the City Fathers will consider plans for the new six-story hotel/apartment building next to the Arts Center. The Percolator folks are hard at work on protest signs that read "Please don't take our sunshine away." But will this be enough to stop the march of "progress?" Let's see what the talkbackers are saying.

Consumer1 says: "Look where the shadow falls this time of year??? There is almost no shadow at all, and in the summer time they should wecome the shadow from the intense evening summer sun. What a bunch of crybabies!! Grow a pair!!"

Deec counters with a Compton-attack (complete with a fantastic zebra reference): "Compton rarely if ever has built a project without taxpayer subsidies. His company is a predatory landlord. He had an unoccupied house that was within the environs of a historic structure that he didn't want to build around mysteriously burn to the ground. He buys up buildings and lets them deteriorate for years, then asks for taxpayer funds to fix them up. A zebra he owned attacked an employee. That's for starters."

And beatnik says: "we obviously don't care about preserving historic downtown except as a growth area so why don't we kill 2 birds with one stone and build the hotel/apartment building on top of the masonic temple?"

Chip: "Great minds think alike, Beatnik!

Eastsiders, If you don't support this plan, Compton might sic his vicious zebra on you!

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If you've watched more than a few raunchy bromances in recent years you've no doubt noted the number of stars "hanging dong" for laughs. The censors are cool with it. But to go full-frontal in the context of a searing indie-drama about sex addiction will earn you an NC-17 and a lot of attention. Check out this description of Michael Fassbender's member in this AICN review of Shame:

"Now I don’t know if Fassbender was rocking a stunt cock or what, but let’s just say that my reaction to him in his fully uncensored glory was approximately that of Tom Hanks in BACHELOR PARTY upon seeing “Nick The Dick”: reluctant amazement, giving way to awe. As I straight man, I am here to tell you that this thing in its fulsome magnificence is the kind of talisman that can unite a divided nation, and has such power that it will lift us out of our economic malaise. Audiences will be blown right past revulsion or defensiveness into a state of wonder formerly achievable only by meditation or reflecting upon the cosmos. And that’s the real reason SHAME can’t be anything less than NC-17. Its best supporting actor would end up on the cutting room floor."

Chip: "All this is well and good, but will I see Carey Mulligan naked or won't I?"

Wilco and Nick Lowe at the Uptown Theater in KC: Peace, Love, Understanding, Weed, and Scorching Rock and Roll

2011-12-04T08:53:00.001-08:00

Scenesters, you can say what you will about Wilco: that they haven't been truly great since A Ghost is Born, that the last three albums sometimes feel a bit interchangeable, that they've embraced their jammy tendencies a little too much in the live show. And there are elements of truth in all of those oft-delivered critiques. But all that melts away (along with your face) in the midst of a truly monstrous Nels Cline guitar solo like the one at the end of "Art of Almost," which arrived two songs into last night's set and more than made up for the five minutes of unecessary drone at the end of the first song and the seizure-inducing light show accompanying "Almost." You snarky scenesters can throw around the term "dad rock" all you want but it's VERY unlikely your dads can rock like motherfucking Nels Cline.

Guitar wizardry aside, however, at the center of Wilco is the lyrics, which is what drew us to them from their very first album (AM is far better than anyone gives it credit for, and "Box Full of Letters" was a set highlight last night). Here are a few lines that stuck in our ears during last night's set:

"I dreamed about killing you again last night...and it felt all right to me." ("Via Chicago.").

"Oh, distance has no way...of making love...understandable." ("Radio Cure.").

"His goal in life was to be an echo." ("Hummingbird").

When we first listened to Wilco's sophomore album Being There, way back in 1996, we already knew they were evolving into something (dare we say) important, but it never occurred to us that a song like "Misunderstood" might become a singalong anthem for sold-out crowds fifteen years down the line with its cynical shout-a-long final lines: "I'd like to thank you all for nothing at all." But we know that Tweedy is very thankful his fans have been so devoted for so long (look no further than his good-humored but obviously pissed-off comments last night about some sort of ticket snafu that resulted in those who waited the longest in the rain not necessarily being able to stand the closest).

And what about Nick Lowe? Looking dapper and dressed in black (below that shock of white hair), he regaled us with a short set that included a Rockpile song, a cover of his pal Elvis Costello's "Alison," and, of course, the song that Costello made legendary: "(What's So Funny Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding." Generally, he charmed everyone's pants off for about half an hour (except for maybe the dude behind us, who spent most of Lowe's set telling a rather loud anecdote about pajamas and gerbils). At the end of the evening, Tweedy referred to Lowe as "our hero" and brought him back out for the night's final song, with the two swapping lyrics on "Cruel To Be Kind."

"Do you still love rock and roll?" Tweedy asks, in "Misunderstood." We sure do, Wilco.

Random observations:

KC brought out its finest weed for the elegant Uptown Theater. This stuff smelled far superior to that skunky shit you all are always smoking outdoors at the Crossroads.

Our personal set highlight was the one-two hootenany punch of Tupelo's "New Madrid" followed up by "Someday Soon," a little gem from Being There.

Readers, do you realize that, if you purchased four "large" beers at this show, you spent the same amount of money you spent on your concert ticket? Ten bucks for a beer? We certainly weren't in Larryville anymore! So we drank "small" beers out of what appeared to be a thimble and still spent too much.

Cheap Beer: Drink It and Listen To It

2011-12-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sure, every night is cheap beer night in Larryville, but tonight it's official: Cheap Beer, the debut vinyl compilation from Replay Records, will be available at the Jackpot for ten bucks (which also scores you a Jackpot rock show tonight, a Love Garden rock show tomorrow evening, and a Replay rock show tomorrow night). We recommend carrying the record around for the rest of the weekend to prove that you are hip.

Will we be in attendance? Unlikely, since tonight also brings the coolest Christmas party of the year at Free State Glass Company. Glassblowing, Free State beer, bands, dancing, and smoked meats.

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And we'll leave you today with this picture of former KU basketball star Scot Pollard trying on some red heels. (The annual Red Shoe calendar is available starting today).

KU Basketball Condom Art / KC First Fridays Art / Unhip But Titillating Local Website of the Week: KU Nights

2011-12-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

Readers, we hope you stopped by campus to check out the Latexhibition, an exhibit for World AIDS Day that features some giant condoms with a few basketball players' heads attached to them along with the slogan (not visible below) "Keep Your Head in the Game." But is Taylor, with his many recent sloppy turnovers, really the best spokesmodel for safe sex? We're not so sure.

If you prefer your art to be a little cuter than a giant Elijah Johnson johnson, you might want to head to KC tomorrow for MicDanDanLand during First Fridays. It's a multi-artist opening at FOKL featuring Micah Buzan, Daniel Forth, and the prolific Danny Joe Gibson (who single-handedly united the divided local scene with his recent three-month poster exhibit). There's live music at 9:00.

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If you're like us, you enjoy looking at pictures of locals while they are partying. But L.com's Party Pics don't always appear regularly, plus it gets boring looking at the same old scenesters. So lately we've found ourselves turning to the KU Nights site , where Chip has been delighted to discover numerous photo galleries from events that we are far too old to witness ourselves, such as Ladies Night at Quinton's, which apparently looks like this:

Wait. Wait. It gets better.

And then it gets even better still. Chip has moved this site to the top of his bookmarks.

Missed Connection of the Week: A Dirty Dillons Reverie / We Begin Studying "Best of the Year" Lists

2011-11-30T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dirty Dillons is nothing but a pile of rubble these days, but the sweet memories remain, as witnessed in this romantic recent Missed Connection from Craigslist:

"we used to meet up at the Dillons on Mass St a couple years ago, and drive to the park and suck each other off. hit me up if you're still around."

But where should they meet now?

Chip: "There was definitely something about Dirty Dillons that made people horny. I think it was the desperation. I almost masturbated once in Aisle 2."

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It's almost December and that means it's time for us to start constantly perusing "Best of the Year" lists to make sure we didn't miss anything hip this year. PopMatters' already has their list up and "the best rock song of the year," they say, is "We Bros" by Manchester's Wu Lyf.

"Here’s a fun party game: drop the needle on WU LYF’s debut record, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, and take a drink every time you understand something gravel-throated frontman Ellery Roberts says. Chances are you’ll end up stone cold sober by the time album closer “Heavy Pop” fades away."

We're not sure why ending up stone-cold sober is a fun party game, but we do like song titles such as "Such a Sad Puppy Dog."

Tuesday Scenester Picks: Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin at Wonder Fair and Horror Remix at Bottleneck

2011-11-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

Let's take a (brief) break from talking about #heblowsalot and concentrate on what to do in Larryville tonight.

With the Jackpot scenester era nearing an end, where should one go for an $8 rock show? How about Wonder Fair? They stake their claim as a musical contender tonight with a show by Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin (who have played the Jackpot on numerous occasions). Sure, a few of you will miss the full bar at the Jackpot, but most of you only drink PBR anyway and, let's not kid ourselves, both the sightlines and likely the sound will be better in the intimate confines of Wonder Fair. Ghosty opens the show at 8:30.

Tonight's other event of note is the Thanksgiving-themed edition of Horror Remix at the Bottleneck. Why is it happening AFTER Thankgiving? Who cares? Any time is a good time for "2 hours of turkey terror," as far as we're concerned, and the website information on tonight's offering has already given Chip a boner:

"SHADOW WOODS randomly places leftover edits (or trimmings) from nude scenes already in the film and redistributes them out of context to the story’s timeline... it’s just about the cheapest thing I’ve ever seen. And I love cheap, but this was obviously not the director’s decision, just a butcher job by a producer trying to make a boob quota."

Chip: "Why doesn't EVERY cheap horror film employ this technique? Most horror films today don't even seem to have a boob quota."

And is another of tonight's films seriously about a giant killer turkey who drinks the blood of drug addicts? This poster would suggest so:

Nice Guys Finish Last (And $6 Million Richer): We Say Goodbye To Turner Gill / "He Blows a Lot," Part II: The Ballad of EmmaKate988

2011-11-28T12:14:00.001-08:00

Readers, college football is a business and, if you lose enough games, you're eventually going to get sacked, no matter if you are a big fat bully or an upstanding Christian gentleman. So we bid Turner Gill farewell today and hope his players immediately get drunk, open Twitter accounts, and have sex after 10:00 pm.

But what will the future of KU football hold? We've got our fingers crossed for former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who's currrently suing ESPN and is prone to making offensive comments about his players' "fat little girlfriends." Sure, he'll no doubt get into trouble and have to be fired within a couple years as well, but at least it will be a fun ride while it lasts. We might even win a few games.

Here's Gill preparing to thumb a ride on the private jet he can purchase with his $6 million dollar buy-out:

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Local progressives have been in desperate need of a new Kansas folk hero, and teen-tweeter Emma Sullivan is proving just the ticket after last week's Brownback/#heblowsalot controversy. Word spread last night that Sullivan would NOT be writing the school-mandated apology letter to the Governor, assuring us all that certain rights (namely, the right to tell each other via Twitter who blows a lot) are worth protecting no matter the consequences.

Today the governor's office issued a statement of apology for his staff's over-reaction (an act of damage control, no doubt), which included this statement: "Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms."

But we personally won't be satisfied until he issues a statement admitting that he does blow. A lot.

"He Blows a Lot": The Governor Brownback Story / Documentary Pick of the Day / Courtneybelle Watches Breaking Dawn, Part One

2011-11-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Readers, if we learned one thing during Reconciliation Week, it's that one shouldn't tweet silly things about the governor during Reconciliation Week or you'll be made to write a letter of apology.

During a Statehouse Field Trip for the Youth in Government program, a KC teenager fired off the following tweet:

“Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.”

Sure, the tweet may have been untrue in its specifics (she didn't really say this in person to the gov) but it's certainly very true in a larger sense (He does blow. A lot.). The governor's office flagged the tweet and passed it along to the Youth in Government program who passed it along to the school whose principal ordered her to write an apology. Forced "reconciliation" is so hip right now!

Here's the gov drinking some beers, perhaps to celebrate another successful reconciliation:

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Whether you're a hipster or a hippie, you've no doubt had more than a few good times with Split Lip Rayfield during your time in Larryville, so you should probably see the new documentary Never Make It Home at Liberty Hall tonight at 7:30. It chronicles the band's final tour with Kirk. Check out the official website here

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Since our intrepid field reporter Courtneybelle decided to camp out four hours early to see the new Twilight film, we asked her to document the madness for us. Here's the result, which becomes a rather profound inquiry into the idea of "vampire masturbation." Enjoy.

Breaking Dawn Part 1

Look, we know these movies are bad and that teenage abstinence is folly as well as a statistical unlikelihood. That’s not the point. There are many reasons highly functioning, basically rational American females will wait in line anywhere from 4 to 19 hours to see the worst acting of the year. Of course, we have to be there at midnight or the whole saccharine fairy tale will turn into a pumpkin latte. It’s clearly just porn for girls. You don’t justify men’s porn, so we shouldn’t have to justify ours. While you roll your eyes at our vacuous choice of fare, remember that Breaking Dawn made 139.5 million in two days. Beat that, Ron Jeremy!

With that defense in mind I will say that being at Southwind at 9 a.m. (4 hours before it's open) is top-level crazy (although, no one looks askance at Star Wars fans doing the same or worse). The next craziest women arrived at 1:30 p.m., replete with matching hoodies, T-shirts, and jewelry. Naturally they brought the books, since you never do know when a girl fight may break out over some minute detail of the story. A couple of women were having a very serious discussion about which names from the books were going to be used to name a litter of puppies. It also came out that these two ladies had made a pilgrimage to Forks, Washington, the setting of the film's improbable tales. An industry which caters to droves of romance-starved women is mounting there. Moreover, I learned that Forks has a parade in honor of Bella's fictitious birthday and tourists can get "tribal elders" to spin their yarns.

Even though I dig the books (and tolerate the movies), there’s always been one liberty taken with vampire canon that is unforgivable. VAMPIRES DON’T HAVE SWIMMERS! Sure, they can wander in the day. There’s precedence for that. Vampires that don’t prey on humans? - fine. Sparkles? - whatever. Corpses with functioning sperm is out of the question. That leaves the reader thinking about vampire masturbation. That is an image I don’t need. And it rather takes the sheen off the fun of living forever, don’t you think? Imagine our favorite tragically romantic monsters, Dracula, Lestat, Nosferatu, furtively disposing of ejaculates into a tube sock? I’m not having it.

Look people, this Twilight thing is real and inescapable, like Top Gun, Titanic, and women in bikinis with machine guns. The top two baby names of last year were Jacob and Isabella. The only way to sleep after learning that little factoid is to embrace the madness. I hear a lot of bitching about Stephanie Meyer’s "heteronormative vampires". I think we're giving the author more credit for insidious, right-wing messages than she deserves. Mormons wank too! It Hasn't occurred to anyone that Stephanie Meyer just wanted a nice, clean, teen menage a trois fantasy to toss off to?

Thanksgiving Break / Late Night Sports Event of the Week

2011-11-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

Readers, we're taking the week off from blogging, but we're reasonably confident you can find enough on-line porn and/or pictures of cute fuzzy animals to entertain you in the meantime.

Also, don't forget to hit the bars tonight for KU's 11:00 tip-off! It's a good chance to close the bars down on a Monday.

LJ-World Rant of the Week

2011-11-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

We love the continuing series of LJ-World articles about Doug Compton "stealing the sun" with his seven-story building across from the Pig and the potential six-story hotel complex likely to go up just across from it.

Here's a furious LJ-World talkbacker named Swan_Diver considering the implications of the new building:

"This proposed monstrosity represents nothing less than the on-going rape of an important national historic site, related to the epic conflict of the American Civil War. The building has absolutely nothing to offer this cultural legacy, which has been designed for a vacuum. Its bought-and-paid-for 'architects' understand that they can vulgarly thumb their noses at Lawrence's history and heritage, it's toothless Historic Resources Commission, powerless and ineffective Historic Resources 'Coordinator,' and so-called 'Downtown Design Guidelines.'

Dozens of men, some as young as teens, died at the hands of the mass-murderers from Jackson County, Missouri, on the morning of the Lawrence Massacre of August, 1863 -- in the two-hundred yards surrounding this site. This irrelevant mass of thoughtless hubris will serve only to desecrate their sacrifices, and further erase the physical context of the era in which this community was born.

Furthermore -- you definitely won't see see such development proposals for the west side of downtown, along Vermont. These new high-rises will be exclusively reserved for Lawrence's east side, where the race and social and economic class of its residents can continue to be denigrated and ignored by wholly-unrepresentative officials seated at the poorly-designed and outmoded City Hall at 6th and Massachusetts."

Chip: Swan_Diver must not realize that this building is slated to have a rooftop pool. It's imperative that Larryville be able to compete with KC's rooftop pool at The Jones, a place where, according to my best research, every day looks like this:

We Celebrate Brownback's "Reconciliation Week" / Required Reading: "The Hipsterfication of America"

2011-11-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

Readers, we hope you are aware that Governor Brownback issued a proclamation on Thursday that the coming week should be known as "Reconciliation Week":

“Reconciliation involves owning the past and looking forward to the future. As Mahatma Gandhi said: ‘Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.' I urge all Kansans to contact and attempt to reconcile with anyone with whom they are estranged by harsh feelings or anger."

So call up your scenester friends and apologize for spilling PBR on them during the 11/11/11 festivities and call up Chip and forgive him for his many embarrassing and inopportune boners. But will you forgive the Governor himself for his many crimes against Kansas and art? Personally we won't go that far.

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A hip friend sent us this NPR piece yesterday called "The Hipsterfication of America." Do you agree with this assertion?

"You might think that as hipsterism ripples out, in concentric (and eccentric) circles farther and farther from its big-city epicenters, the ultra-coolitude would lose its authenticity, Furia says, "but the opposite may be true. Cities are known for setting trends; hipsterism is about anti-trends. It sounds funny, but hipsters in Omaha may actually be cooler than hipsters in New York City — everyone knows about New York City."

We don't trust any piece about the idea of "hip" unless it quotes John Leland, who wrote Hip: The History. Luckily, this piece contains a choice quote from Leland:

"I like to believe there's something smarter lurking within our romance with hip ... an idea of enlightenment and awareness."

Isn't it pretty to think so?*

[Free PBR for the first person to name the literary reference of our last sentence.]

Weekend Guide: Sparkly Vampires, Sparkly Singers, Royal Bangs and Bear Hands

2011-11-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

If you're a tweenage girl, a vampire freak, or have a boner for Kristen Stewart (Chip: "Guilty!"), the movie of the weekend is of course The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-- Part I (which has been divided, Harry Potter-style, into two parts to gauge as much money out of you as possible).

In a surprisingly un-scathing review, the AV Club asserts: "In directing these final films, Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) has created something that’s half shameless wedding fantasia and half David Cronenberg-worthy body horror."

Richard: "I'm literally crying right now to see Cronenberg's name invoked in connection to these films."

But how do the snarky AV-Club talkbackers feel:

bukaball says: "My wife guilted me into watching the first one. I didn't even need to ask for the blowjob, that's how bad she felt."

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If you're looking for an early excuse to booze it up tonight (7:00-9:00), we recommmend you stop by the Jazzhaus (that's right: the Jazzhaus!) and listen to KC's Li'l Rachel belt out some blues with the Rhythm Busters. She's quite popular in Europe, she dresses in sparkly dresses, and you might remember her from such local booze-soaked evening as the Free State Glass Christmas party from a couple years ago. We'll be on the scene.

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And of course you'll want to spend as much time as possible at the Jackpot in the next few weeks before it transitions into...something else. Saturday offers two Pitchfork-approved bands: Royal Bangs and Bear Hands. The latter is pictured below. The dude is wearing a shirt with the Morton's salt logo! That's got to be hip, right?

Work of Art Review: The Tiger Penis Episode / NachoTron 3000 / Local Theatre Pick of the Week: Brecht Meets Miller

2011-11-17T10:36:00.001-08:00

We've been huge fans of Work of Art since the beginning, and last night's episode was one of the strongest yet, with our favorite artist of the season, The Sucklord, spray-painting nipples on China Chow's dress and this year's resident sexpot, Lola, creating a giant street mural of a group of orgiastic tigers with "striped tiger dicks" in which passers-by could paste more tiger-boners to the piece, creating an important communal boner-bonding moment.

Chip: "How that piece did not win is a mystery I'll never understand."

The AV-Club review seems to agree: "You can create serious art with tiger penises...this is a phallic episode of Work Of Art, and thus a kind of delightful one for those of us who appreciate the show’s willingness to engage in discourses not often seen within other reality programming. Which, yes, in this case means penises."

If you're not engaging in these discourses every week, you're missing out!

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Readers, we hate Missouri more than ever right now due to their decision to jump ship and head to the SEC, and we were fully prepared to swear off this year's Border Showdown altogether until we heard about the Nachotron 3000:

"Fans are invited to experience NachoTron 3000, the world's first interactive, competitive nacho-making machine created by “scientists” to analyze how human football fandom correlates to delicious nacho toppings. Before the Jayhawks and Tigers go head-to-head on the gridiron, their fans will compete in a test of wits and brute athleticism off the field as they throw footballs at close-range targets in hopes of winning nacho toppings for their Mission tortilla chips and scoring points for their beloved team."

And look at this quote, which we swear to you is not from The Onion but is indeed real:

“The Border Showdown represents the perfect blend of competitive sportsmanship and ravenous fans that NachoTron 3000 was made for,” explained Pete Thornfield, Director at Mission Foods, the company who funded the NachoTron research. “Fans should come hungry, both for their team to win and for nachos."

Read more here and behold the Nachotron 3000:

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Finally, are you excited about KU University Theatre's experimental Brechtian interpretation of Arthur Miller's American classic All My Sons, which runs through Sunday:

Richard: "Yes. Look for me during intermission expounding on Brecht's use of 'the alienation effect.' If I don't leave the theatre completely alienated, I'm asking for my money back."

Chip: "That would probably be amusing if I knew who Brecht was. Also, based on the official trailer for the performance, it's going to be fucking hilarious. But I didn't realize it was a comedy?"

Watch the trailer on YouTube here

Local Music Compilation of the Winter: Replay Records' Cheap Beer

2011-11-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Readers, after all the distressing news about the Jackpot sale this week, we need a hip event to anticipate, ideally one that is occurring at the Jackpot during its final days of scenester glory.

Luckily, we've found just the event.

On Friday Dec. 2, ten bucks will grant you the following: admission into the Jackpot's Replay Records release party featuring numerous bands from the debut compilation; a free copy of said compilation album (featuring a kick-ass cover by Kenneth Kupfer); and free entry into the following night's Replay show featuring many more of those bands. Get the full scoop on the bands here .

Now check out the cover. The AJAX graffiti is an especially nice touch.

Chip: "I think the serpent symbolizes how the Replay is a den of iniquity."

A Twitter-Tone Poem to Celebrate the End of the Jackpot Scenester Era / Required Reading of the Week: Hipsters and Bobos

2011-11-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since we assembled one of our Twitter poems for your reading pleasure, but the sale of the Jackpot seemed a perfect time to engage in a little scenester nostalgia and ask our Twitter army to send us your #favoritejackpotmoments. So here it is: a poem assembled from your tweets (with minor edits and at least one line presented totally out of context for humorous artistic purposes and a few of our own ideas tossed in for good measure). Enjoy!

double-fisting PBR band-beer pitchers the time I got to open for bill Callahan!
drunk metal tom climbing on the stage and karl of the donkey show throwing him off skidding in a puddle of beer
Watching KU win the championship with a packed house.
playing with delta saints and spirit is the spirit.
getting obliterated in the basement then chasing down a punk kid in the alley that stole a mandolin
getting drunk and ignoring the legendary arcade fire show there! #crowdsmakemenervous
Getting a free beer from a guy at a show just because I was a KJHK DJ.
Having a beer with Jason Molina from Magnolia Electric Co before the show, which was amazing. My hero.
John Darnielle politely shushing a cellphone conversation during his set.
BARRR doing an artist talk with like 10 people there.
Win Butler destroying the old drop ceiling with his guitar.
Seeing The Architects punk rock jump, and then come down THROUGH the stage. They had to reinforce that sucker early on.
Opening for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros in 09'...jackpot was packed Top to bottom, left to right, front 2 back

Seeing Deerhoof, Damien Jurado.
And Arcade Fire. And Black Christmas.
a pretty epic evening with the the antlers
tUnE yArDs rocked it pretty hard

April 15. Such a crazy night.

Shiner Bock on tap.

The time this drunk girl was hanging all over me and E kept referring to her as "Sweaty Boobs"

The time I gave a guy a wedgie while bouncing him-- tore his undies COMPLETELY out of his pants.

Favorite Jackpot moment: Where's my face? On the Jackpot floor. Because Dan Deacon arrived, glowing skull in hand, years ago.

Jackpot bathroom graffiti:

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We love articles in which authors try to define the term "hipster," and Sunday's NY-Times piece called "Generation Sell" is certainly worth a read. It argues that "hipsters and bobos are symbiotic" and have combined to produce the following mentality:

"Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms."

The piece builds to a conclusion that Chip finds terrifying, which is that hipsters (as we know them now) are possibly here to stay:

"...hipsters, who’ve been around for 15 years or so, appear to have become a durable part of our cultural configuration."

Sad Scenester News of the Week: The Jackpot Gets Sold / KU Quidditch and Dirty Dillons Demolition Photos

2011-11-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

If you're hip, you've probably heard the rumors for awhile now, but the word is officially out today (via the LJ-World's bizarre, speculative Town Talk column ): the Jackpot is getting sold.

According to the piece, the new owner is Eric Berman, who "hopes to still have some local music shows but also wants to add some "typical bar fare, a pool table or two, dart boards, a juke box, that sort of thing." Berman said he went to school in Lawrence in the '70s and '80s, moved to San Francisco and then spent a lot of time trying to persuade his California wife to move to Lawrence" (LJ-World).

San Francisco, eh? Perhaps he'll be bringing in a lot of noodly jambands. Expect to see puzzled scenesters crying outside the Japes as early as December.

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Sadly, KU's young wizards didn't prove victorious in the Quidditch World Cup this weekend, but we celebrate their valiant efforts and strongly encourage you to click this UDK link for a photo gallery of images such as this, which appears to be some sort of broomstick boner-fight:

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The UDK is really doing a bang-up job of images lately, and here's one that's sure to make you cry: it's the directory sign from Dirty Dillons, still hanging amidst the rubble of the demolition. Go here for a demolition photo gallery .

Football and Quidditch Photos of the Weekend / Missed Connection of the Week

2011-11-13T10:06:00.000-08:00

So yesterday's KU-Baylor game was hardly the slaughter we predicted. But in many ways it was far worse, with KU blowing a 21 point lead in the fourth quarter and losing in overtime on a bold or crazy (depending on your point of view) attempt at a two-point conversion.

The day also brought a rare display of emotion from Gill, as witnessed in this great LJ-World shot of him being restrained by the refs. Will we soon see him sacked, paid off, and dragged off of campus in a similar fashion?

We're not sure exactly how the Quidditch World Cup works, but apparently one plays A LOT of matches in a two day time span. We do know that KU Quidditch suffered their first tournament loss yesterday afternoon, 30-20, due to a "Hofstra snitch snatch" (via @UDK_Quidditch).

And here's our favorite photo of the tournament, taken from the Gothamist website. That kid in the background is using what Chip refers to as a "boner-grip."

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Here's an intriguing W4M Missed Connection from last night's Guns N' Roses show in KC. If the dude discovers the post, he might just hook up with this lady AND her mother (and please note the clever lyrical references throughout):

"I was wearing an American flag bandana, you had a red bandana coming out of your back left pocket...I don't usually go for gingers but I think we got what it takes to make it. You're a bit older than me but I feel like I've known you forever. I think my mom would love to meet you, too. Please e-mail me if you're ready to meet your rocket queen. I still love you, baby."

We Look for Our Joy With Lucinda Williams at Liberty Hall / KU Quidditch Gets Its World Cup On!

2011-11-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sure, we missed a chance to get banged-up at a Ricky Fitts reunion show and sit on the Tap Room floor communing with our scenester brethren during a Suzannah Johannes set during last night's Up to Eleven Music Festival, but we'll just read about those shenanigans over at I Heart Local Music and spend our day telling you about the badass Lucinda Williams show at Liberty Hall.

If your father is one of America's greatest poets (Miller Williams), perhaps it's no surprise that you can rattle off so many wonderfully precise images with such seeming ease. But we always marvel at Lucinda's ability to say a lot with a little, as we did last night at Liberty Hall while standing dead-center about 30 feet from the stage:

"I'm broken down like a train-wreck" ("Can't Let Go").

"My brother knows where the best bars are." ("Crescent City").

"You took my joy. I want it back." ("Joy").

There's nothing flashy, rarely an extra word, rarely the kind of extensive metaphors or wordplay so many in the folkie tradition might toss at you.

Lucinda had a cold, but promised we'd get our money's worth even if she had to start songs over (This only happened once, with "Crescent City"). It's doubtful anyone would quibble too much with either her voice or her top-flight backing band (including new-ish hotshot jawdropping lead guitarist Blake Mills). The performance began with a series of Car Wheels and self-titled era favorites, worked its way through newer material, and finally drifted into an escalating fury of rock and roll with the angry-yet-funny "Changed My Locks" ("I changed the name of this town/so you can't follow me down") and the angry-yet-hopeful "Joy" ("Maybe in Slidell, I'll find my joy."). A top-flight encore slowed the pace briefly with "Blessed," the title track of the newest album, before culminating in the searing blues of the Allman Brother's "It's Not My Cross To Bear" and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," which could have been corny if it wasn't played with such absolute conviction. Played with said conviction, however, it became a cathartic sing-a-long with Larryville's older hippies and progressives, most of whom had no idea the Up To Eleven festival was going on in six venues along the same street.

Verdict: four out of four Free State Winter Ales (which cost $4.25 a piece? holy shit, Liberty Hall!).

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Sure, KU football is about to get slaughtered at home by Baylor this afternoon, but the real KU sports action is in New York this weekend, where KU Quidditch is already wreaking havoc in the World Cup, beating Vermont 170-0 and Utah 80-60.

Even the UDK recaps of the Quidditch matches are more exciting than anything KU football has accomplished this season (and possibly ever):

"The snitch-runner was more crafty than any Kansas had seen before. Kansas' seeker, Joel Haverkamp, had his broom snatched by the snitch. The broom was handed off to a crowd member who took off running so Haverkamp followed in hot pursuit."

Make sure to follow @UDK_Quidditch for live updates throughout the weekend.

Weekend Scenester Guide: Music, More Music, Movies, and Girls Gone Wild

2011-11-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

We assume most of you will be heading out for some of the 11/11/11 music festival tonight. Try not to fight each other, scenesters. There seems to be too much of that going around these days.

Others of us (older, more boring, poetic types) are opting for Lucinda Williams at Liberty Hall instead.

And Chip, who spotted the Girls Gone Wild van outside Brothers yesterday, plans to follow it around town all weekend like a kid chasing an ice cream truck.

Captain Chanute scored a nice picture of the van for us, but we're having technological trouble today, so we'll just show you this interweb photo instead, and you can imagine Chip trying to run with a boner.

If you're in the mood for shitty films, it looks to be a banner weekend at the box office. Adam Sandler plays dual roles (he's his own sister!) in Jack and Jill. A.O. Scott writes in the NY-Times review:

"As for Mr. Sandler, I have always been interested in what he would do next, and I suppose I still am, especially if what he does next is retire."

And then there's Tarsem's 3D The Immortals. The NY-Times writes:

"This is an ugly, burlap sack of a film...".

See you on the town.

11/11/11 Approaches: The Sluts and Ponyboy / Firkin Tapping of the Week at the Pig

2011-11-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

The buzz of the week in Larryville music circles is (probably) Up To Eleven's six-venue music extravaganza tomorrow night.

Have you marked out your trajectory yet? Here's a handy set-time list that you can click to enlarge.

We're curious about The Sluts, who have been profiled over here at I Heart Local Music and deemed "screamy" and "noisy" and possibly "the best new rock band in the area." And also Ponyboy, who have an I Heart Local Music profile as well. Ponyboy recently did the score for a transexual porn film called "Sexing the Trans Man."

Chip: "I accidentally rented it because I mistakenly read the title as "Sexing the Trans Am" and thought it would feature a bunch of women getting banged on Trans-Ams, kind of like a porno version of Smoky and the Bandit. I was more than a little shocked."

Ponyboy has a family-friendly set time of 7:30 so you should probably bring the kids and sing along to the amusingly titled "Bro is the New Word for Faggot." And click here if you want to see the video . (Admit it, Chip: you're going to click that link).

And make sure to attend the official 11/11/11 kick-off TONIGHT with a firkin tapping at the Pig. Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat Stout has been mixed with coffee beans to produce something called Cafe Buffalo. It sounds both sophisticated and disgusting!

What We Learned at Nerd Nite / Spot Those tUnE-yArDs Scenesters

2011-11-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

Neither a cold, wet evening nor a KU basketball game could keep Larryville's nerds from assembling at Pachamamas for the Larryville debut of "Nerd Nite." Overall, the crowd skewed a little older and more academic than we expected. Imagine a group of eccentric pop culture conference participants deciding to get hammered BEFORE presenting their lectures, and you'll have some idea of the feel.

Here's what we learned before the presentations began:

--Official "Nerd Nites" are now happening in 26 cities spanning seven countries.

--Nerd Nites begin with a "co-boss" delivering the "Story of Origin," a tale which begins with the first use of the word as a slang term (Detroit, 1951) and leads through Dr. Seuss's "knurds" before finally tracing the history of "nerd nites."

And here's what we learned in the three lectures (as reconstructed in this moment based on our drunken notes from last night):

--many people can't see Vancouver as it really exists because they've watched too much Battlestar Galactica.

--there are A LOT more bicycle accidents than you might expect in Madison, Wisconsin

--"Everyone has a right to practical obscurity."

--Famous "poetic terrorists" include Jesus, Bugs Bunny, Andy Kaufman, and Betty White

--Larryville's Busker Fest might be seen as a good example of a "temporary autonomous zone"

--No one in a crowd of Larryville nerds identifies him or herself as a "serious anarchist."

Verdict: nerdy as fuck. We'll be there again on Wednesday Dec. 14 and you should probably join us.

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L.com has given us TWO sets of Party Pics in one week. Here's one from the new tUnE-yArDs gallery .

Who can name those scenesters?

Chip: "I didn't realize it was hip to make that cunnilingus gesture, but I'm glad to learn that it is!"

Larryville Gets a "Nerd Nite" / Spot Those Scenester Mummies / Missed Connection of the Week: Baiowolf Edition

2011-11-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Readers, do you know about the nationwide gatherings known as "nerd nites," in which nerds "get together for nerdery of all sorts (well, mostly presentations and drinking)." --quote from official website .

Larryville joins the festivities tonight with a gathering at Pachamamas featuring three presentations:

“Animals and Zombies! Africa and the Media” by Emily Fekete
“How I Learned to Start Worrying and Make a Map . . . of Bike Accidents” by Germaine Halegoua
“Walden Pond, Speakeasies, and Revenge of the Nerds: Temporary Autonomous Zones and Poetic Terrorism in American Life.“ by Michael Black

It's free, and doors open at 7:30 (but supposedly only 50 nerds will be allowed into the event). What time will the presentations begin? None of the info bothers to say, but we'll guess 8:00. Will you be one of the lucky 50 nerds?

Chip: "There's a basketball game tonight, for fuck's sake."

Richard: "I may well attend, and I'm hoping our Bananasuited buddy will click on the official website link above and volunteer for a future presentation about the PBR Book Club."

Here's a tiny little flyer because we can't find a bigger one:

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For the first time since the St. Vincent show, L.com has published a new set of Party Pics taken at the recent Fashion Monsters Fashion Show at the Replay and featuring both models and random Replay revelers.

Below is our favorite. Unwrapped mummies are so hip right now! Name those mummies and win a PBR.

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This local W4M Missed Connection will provide amusement for certain local scenesters:

"you: yellow backpack, great eyewear, curly hair and from what I can tell, usually a button up short sleeve shirt. I heard you were maybe in Baiowolf? This is less of a missed connection and more of a general statement. I see you around once in a while and I think you're really attractive. I don't think that I want to get to know you because I would probably only grow to hate you because that's usually how things work out for me. Just know that you have a secret admirer. I'll see you around!!"

And speaking of Baiowolf, Rob (Robocopter) sent us some links to a powerful new series of "anticipation" videos. Check out "Cigarette Anticipation" (and the others) over here .

Is "Lawrence Laundry" the New Style Scout? / Literary Pick of the Winter: Murakami's IQ84 / Scenester Pick of the Day: tUnE-yArDs

2011-11-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

Readers, we know how much you all loved snarking about Style Scout each week, so we're hoping the new column called "Lawrence Laundry" (which debuts today in LJ-World's "Go" Magazine!) will fill that void. It's written by Ali Edwards and here's the mission statement:

"In this column, we’ll be keeping it local: local people, local clothes, local style. I’ll be diving headlong into what people in Lawrence wear and why they wear it by featuring local humanitarians who “look good” while they “do good,” combing through local thrift stores to find hidden treasures and chasing down Lawrence fashionistas on the street to find out where they got their clothes (and where you can find similar looks in town).

Lawrence locals are public-spirited and well-dressed with personal beliefs that are tightly kept and loudly spoken. Our little liberal-minded blip in a beautifully barren state teems and boils with a zest unlike that of our conservative counterparts. The style of locals has a certain honesty and charm to it that seems forged on the coasts."

In our experience, humanitarians are rarely stylish, but this column may be worth monitoring and we hope to see some of you thrift store "fashionistas" in there soon. Check it out here .

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Those of you keeping up with the hijinks of the PBR Book Club blog (currently reading: Ready Player One) are no doubt getting excited that we'll be devoting both December and January to Harumi Murakami's new 925 page IQ84. The reviews are in over at the NY-Times:

"...trust me when I say I appreciate a steamy scene between a female cop and a female assassin as much as the next guy (arguably more)."

Chip: "Doubtful."

Ultimately, the reviewer is baffled yet affected by the novel:

"By every standard metric, it is gravely flawed. But, I admit, standard metrics are difficult to apply to Murakami. It’s tempting to write that out of five stars, I’d give this book two moons. In fact, though, I’d give it back what it gave me: an entire universe, all of it far out, some of it dazzling, whole swaths of it just empty space and dark matter... It’s a credit to Murakami’s mammoth talent that “1Q84,” for all its flaws, got to me more than most decent books I’ve read this year, and lingered with me far longer: a paper moon, yes, but by a real star."

Readers, this book is so large that we recommend you push it to our book club meetings in a wheelbarrow full of iced-down PBR.

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Tonight brings the long-awaited, rescheduled tUnE-yArDs show to the Jackpot. If you haven't seen tUnE-yArDs before, rest assured there's plenty of weirdness besides just the strange capitalizations of the band name. Will we be out till 2:00 am on a rainy Monday in Larryville? Definitely not. But if someone wants to write a review for our blog, we'd love it!

Occupying the Rooftop of Weavers in a Guy Fawkes Mask Will Get You Arrested / Local Video of the Day: Sexy Librarian / Missed Connection of the Week

2011-11-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

Just when we were starting to forget Occupy Lawrence, they reminded us of their importance when a renegade member in a Guy Fawkes mask scaled Weaver's department store and chanted "slogans" for half an hour before officers climbed up in a ladder and hauled him away to shouts of "You're my hero" and "This is what democracy looks like."

Chip: "If that's really what democracy looks like, it looks pretty fucking silly, doesn't it?"

PLEASE watch the LJ-World video

And here's an LJ-World photo of the "hero." Does anyone have a masked photo you can send us?

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Speaking of local videos, how about we offer you something a little sexier than silly civil disobedience. Check out this "Sexy Librarian" video filmed at Lawrence Public Library and starring The Not So Late Show's Mike Anderson and some sexy librarians.

Chip: "Can someone please send me a copy of this video in which Mike has been digitally removed?"

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And enjoy this local Craigslist Missed Connection from Halloween weekend:

"As I mentioned Halloween night... I'm not really from Finland. Although I would learn Finnish just to get innish. JK. When you said you'd be back someday, I couldn't tell if you meant in a couple of years or later this weekend."

Scenester Reminder: Set Your Clocks Back One Hour Tonight

2011-11-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

Readers, it's one of our favorite nights in Larryville, a magical evening when our favorite bars can serve us an extra hour of PBR. Where will you be?

Weekend Scenester Picks: 3D Vulgarity, Bazan, Hamburger, and Guy Fawkes!

2011-11-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

Readers, we've always been consistent in our views of 3D, maintaining that it should be used solely for exploitation and hurling ridiculous shit at the audience and never for "artistic" cinematic purposes. So we're more than okay with the prospect of A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, which opens this weekend (despite the fact that it's still two fucking months before Christmas). The AV Club writes:

"Why not take advantage of 3-D by having Danny Trejo ejaculate on a Christmas tree in all three dimensions?"

Why not indeed! We'll see you at the multiplex.

But what shows should you hit this weekend? The Generals are at the Replay tonight. It's damn near impossible to find them on the interweb (we gave up after multiple attempts), but if you're hip you probably already know all you need to know. And Panda Circus is at the Jackpot. Didn't they win the Farmer's Ball?

Saturday brings David Bazan to the Bottleneck (Chip: "That's the dude who was in the Christian band, right? Weren't they called White Lion?"). And don't forget Neil Hamburger at the Jackpot on Saturday (Chip: "Isn't he one of those comedians who's funny because he isn't funny? I don't get it.").

As for us, we'll be at the annual Eastside Guy Fawkes party on Saturday. Who will be the effigy this year? Brownback? Coach Gill? Doug Compt.n?

And isn't it cool that Guy Fawkes masks are the official masks of the Occupy movements? Anarchy is so hip right now!

Jersey Shore Conferences, Dirty Novels, Three-Peat KC Art Events, Future Islands, and KU Quidditch

2011-11-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

Important Academic Conference of the Year:

The recent UChicago Conference for Jersey Shore studies explored such issues as Deena's role as "a trickster figure, upending the show’s heteronormativity and its power dynamics" and offered presentations with slides like "Bodily Discipline: Foucault + Snooki = BFF."

If we had written our dissertations on topics such as these, we'd probably have better jobs right now.

Dirty Literary Book of the Month:

Despite receiving a lot of praise for its clever wordplay, much of Nicholson Baker's House of Holes: A Book of Raunch sounded (to us) like Chip could have written it. Perhaps a more shocking and satirical work like Helen Dewitt's Lightning Rods will better serve you horny literary types. Here's a synopsis:

"When I heard the premise of DeWitt’s new novel...it struck me as both brilliantly satirical and nearly impossible to pull off...With Clinton in office and sexual harassment institutionalized in the White House, Joe is convinced that men cannot reach their true work potential without releasing their sexual urges, which have no place in the workplace. So Joe creates Lightning Rods, Inc., a business that installs “toilet cubicles” in office spaces. The other side of the cubicles contain “lightning rods,” prostitutes hired so men can satisfy their urges while at work, bringing true glory to the idea of the glory hole, and leading to healthy office environments for all." (Time Out New York).

Naturally, this is Chip's pick for future PBR Book Club reading material.

Scenester Pick of the Day:

Future Islands hits the Jackpot tonight for a (supposedly) early show. Pitchfork gives their new album, On the Water, a 7.7 and writes of the lead singer: "He sings every line like Meat Loaf serenading Yorick's skull." Sold.

KC Art Event of the Year:

Our friend Danny Gibson's Quietly Contributing poster exhibition of KC and Larryville bands is proving the perfect event for procrastinating scenesters: it's being held over for the third straight month! The third First Friday opening is tomorrow night at 1819 Central Gallery. And if you still aren't convinced, please note that the Pitch awarded the show its prestigious "Best Scene-Uniting Retrospective" award, deeming it "a giant, overwhelming, colorful shrine to our music community, and a reminder of the staggering talent of one of our city's finest artists." So quit dicking around and go see it, why don't you?

Here's a peek inside the gallery at the floor to ceiling array of posters on display:

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With KU Quidditch a major contender in the World Cup (Nov. 12-13 in New York), we'll be providing extensive coverage of the team, which means primarily looking at hilarious pictures of dudes running around with brooms between their legs, like this:

Talkbackers Talk Back About the Newest Set of Library Plans / Scenester Pick of the Day: ANR at Jackpot

2011-11-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Readers, remember when all of us progressives voted for the library expansion last year? Those plans are inching closer to reality as the City Fathers last night approved specific design plans: "a see-through parking garage and a terra cotta-inspired library" (LJ-World).

Let's see if the LJ-World talkbackers are satisfied.

Jayhawker07 says: "I believe that the Library should move to the riverfront mall and stay there."

Pastor_Bedtime says: "Most butt-ugly design ever. Simply horrible looking."

LadyJ asks: "Just wondering if the perforated steel mesh will allow snow to build up inside that will have to be removed."

And Yeoman 2 changes the subject: "Watch your water bills! The city is scheming to get a trash company that will give kickback to the city to finance their damned foolishness. You will pay and pay for this one."

We'd like to show you pictures of the design plans now but LJ-World doesn't include them in the piece.

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Many of you probably haven't been to the Replay or the Jackpot since Halloween, two long days ago, so we better check in and see what's happening tonight. The Replay has a band called Beta Maxx, which we are happy to endorse based on name alone, and the Jackpot offers up a Miami band called ANR. We found this interweb description of their song "It's Around You":

"It’s an indebted tune combining the barbershop vocals of TV On The Radio with the apocalyptic lyrical tenderness of something found on The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Throw in some horn stabs and creeping synth reminiscent of Animal Collective and you’ve got this song cornered."

We're suckers for "apocalyptic lyrical tenderness" (why do you think we want to see the film Bellflower so fucking badly), so we'll see you at the Jackpot tonight.

Head to their official site for some free tunes and videos and such.

And check out this album cover with a colorful pony on it!

Dio de los Muertos Celebration at Percolator / Unhip Album of the Century: Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu

2011-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Readers, Halloween may be over, but if you're looking for an unusual event tonight look no further than the Percolator. Here are the details we received:

A Day of the Dead celebration at the Lawrence Percolator
Tuesday November 1, 2011
6:30 pm Potluck dinner
7:30 pm Procession & invocation
Bring something to add to the altar.

The last time we joined a Percolator procession was during an "Apocalypse" art opening and party, and the procession led us to a building on the Eastside where we were forced to watch a terrible play. So we're a little leery of Percolator processions. Otherwise, this sounds more than a little intriguing.

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If you've read any recent interviews with Lou Reed or Metallica, you've been told that their collaborative album Lulu is likely the greatest thing either has ever done and, in fact, quite possibly the greatest thing ever recorded by humans.

But if you've read the reviews of the album (out today), you're hearing a far different tale.

Pitchfork serves up a 1.0 (holy shit!): "For most of the record, Lou Reed and Metallica barely sound like they're on the same planet, let alone in the same room."

Even better is Entertainment Weekly's assessment (Grade: D): "...the bulk of Lulu sounds like your dad's drunk friend reciting his self-penned erotica over a melting ReLoad cassette."

And then there's Chuck Klosterman's more accepting evaluation: "A confident, unvarnished attempt at taking arcane high art (Lulu is based on theatrical German expressionism from the early 20th century) and repackaging it for denim-clad teenagers huffing gas in Arizona parking lots."

Readers, could a 90 minute concept album about strippers and Jack the Ripper, with lyrics like “the taste of your vulva and everything on it," really be ALL bad? Or is it only a matter of time until scenesters decide to embrace Lulu because the media surely has it all wrong? Let's huff some gas and form an opinion.

Hanging with the Hep Cats at Herbie Hancock / Mass. Street Marriage Proposal / And a "Delicious" Halloween Photo

2011-10-31T13:08:00.000-07:00

Readers, we don't "get" jazz, but we weren't about to let the elderly West Side rich folks and a few young hep cats spend an evening watching Herbie Hancock without us. So we trekked out to the Lied Center last night for his solo show. Yep. Just Herbie at his piano...and also manning a wide array of equipment to produce a multitude of sounds supplementing his keys. Did it work? Mostly. At first we were afraid that the evening was going to be akin to Beethoven choosing Transmittens as a backing band, and at times the dissonance between beautiful live piano and computerized accompaniment WAS a little jarring. But by the third piece of the evening, things were clicking, and the audience was ready to get funky with "Cantaloupe Island," which culminated in Herbie bringing out the keytar! Earlier in the evening, after opening with a lengthy (and unaccompanied by sampling) reading of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," the maestro explained that he likes to get "in the zone" when performing and that thirty minutes might well pass without him noticing. He encouraged the audience to make throat-slitting gestures if he went on too long. Sure, Chip made a few of those gestures during 'Dolphin Dance.' ("Those dolphins danced for a hell of a long time."), but for the rest of us the evening with Herbie was all too short, and the keytar encore left us wanting more, as the best shows should.

Final verdict: a nice (expensive) evening with a national treasure.

Head over to the Pitch for a review from @nuthousepunks with some cool photos from the foot of the stage.

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Did any of you witness the Mass. Street marriage proposal sign on Saturday?

We missed it, but luckily the UDK offered up this photo. The only way this could possibly be more romantic is if it had occurred in front of the Replay.

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Well, it's Halloween, which means you're probably on Day 5 (at least) of drunken, costumed revelry. And it can't be Halloween without some Hall and Oates covers from Haulin' Oats, so hauling ass to the Replay tonight goes without saying. In the meantime, enjoy this Ink KC cover photo of Miss Kansas USA lounging in a field of candy corn with some candy corns on her belly. Chip has pronounced this photo the "most delicious" of the week.

Spooky Sunday Scenester Selections / Special Guest Columnist Best-Kept-Secretary Reviews The Slasher Kings In KC

2011-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

Readers, you might be tempted to take a break from your five nights of Halloween debauchery today and rest up for tomorrow's big night, but don't be a pussy. There are several activities worthy of your attention today.

First up, the Lawrence Art Walk. This is Chip's pick for the scariest Halloween event of the weekend.

Chip: "What could be more frightening than actually going into an artist's home and hearing them talk about their work in a one-on-one setting? People shell out big bucks for those KC spookhouses and none of them provide half the fright of sitting in a local artist's studio and listening to them tell you about their pottery."

And tonight brings Hammerlord's Misfit tribute, Fiend Club, to the Replay.

And the Granada offers at least the third local screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show within the last few weeks. We wandered by the line outside Liberty Hall last weekend and saw surprisingly few fishnetted dudes, so make sure to dress the part. We haven't seen Rocky Horror with an audience in too many years, but our personal favorite participatory moment has always been the first appearance of the narrator, when everyone shouts, "The man you are about to see has no fucking neck. WHERE is your fucking neck?" It makes us laugh every single time.

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While we were all getting drunk in Larryville this weekend, our guest correspondent, Best Kept Secretary, was in KC at Union Station listening to The Slasher Kings play 70's-style rock while dressed as famous slasher movie villains! Luckily, the show runs through Nov. 6, so you've still got time to seek it out. Here's her review:

I'm not a slasher-movie fan--horror movies in general aren't my thing--but I do my best to support local musician friends. When a a guy I know mentioned he was in this show, I swung by their website and checked out one of their videos. Hooked . The music style leans more toward hard 70s rock with some fantastic harmonica riffs thrown in, and some super cheesy lyrics. Everyone’s in on the joke here, and the band offers up their homage to slasher films with tongues firmly in cheek. Might be someone else’s tongue, but hey.

You don't need to know the movies or the characters to enjoy the show, although it's a rare person who won't get the references to at least one or two of the personalities portrayed (Mike Myers, Jason Voorhees, Hannibal Lecter, and Buffalo Bill). The show starts with a short film. It’s a nice set-up for the live performance, with a closing shot that perfectly references the rock-star-walking-down-the-arena-hallway that appears in all rock documentary movies.

I know we’re not supposed to admit to really liking anything here, but the musical performance part of the show is basically 100% awesome. I'm not a fan of stage patter (just play the fucking music, guys), but the men playing Lecter and Bill were in character and entertaining--even when they needed to fill some unexpected dead air to resolve a couple technical difficulties.

I went to the show mostly to support Curtis Smith, on bass as Mike Myers. Smith’s part is by far the most disturbing of the four, and the fact that the bass guitar is the most subtle instrument in this band highlights the creep factor. He (nearly literally) sneaks up on you. I don't want to ruin too much of the experience, so I'll just say that Smith is the only character who doesn't remove his mask the entire show and that does a lot to encourage the sense of discomfort between him and the audience.

Matt Rapport, who plays Buffalo Bill, is an incredibly good performer. His characterization was excellent, his harmonica skills are ace, and damn if he doesn't give a wrenchingly emotive performance in the one part of the show that borders on seriousness (as well as earns it a mild R rating, btw).

Jason (on drums and, for one song, on tenor sax) is played by John Lenati. Blocked by a drum set and a hockey mask for 90% of the show, Lenati doesn't have the opportunity to exude the level of menace as the other guys, but he's a fine drummer, and shines on the song where he plays the saxophone. That song was the highlight of the show for me--a surprisingly heartbreaking piece performed sans drums or harmonica while Rapport gave a discomforting and silent performance downstage.

On guitar and main vocals, performing as Hannibal Lecter, is Ron Simonian. He also co-wrote and produced the show and wrote all the songs for the live part of show. This guy. Wow, this guy. He's got a good voice with a lot of character, and can sing several different styles (the songs are mostly hard rock, with some country, ballad, and punk influences thrown in the mix). He's not a stranger to the music scene in KC, and I'll be checking out more of the events/acts with which he's involved. Super talented (and really nice) guy.

My one quibble has nothing to do with the show, but rather with the venue. They didn’t have the downstairs bar open as they have for other events I’ve attended at City Theater. Bring a flask.

More show details, as well as a code for $5 off phone ticket orders can be found on the KC Horror Club website.
KC Star article highlighting frontman Ron Simonian here.
And of course, they're on Facebook.

Saturday Scenester Picks: Spook Lights, Dry Bonnet, Long Shadows / Art and Fashion Photo Blog

2011-10-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

Based on your tweets this morning, you all got 100% hammered last night. But we assume you'll sober up enough by tonight to re-don those costumes and head back to the Replay for Spook Lights, Dry Bonnet, and Long Shadows. But who is Long Shadows? It's the #new #band with @AdAstraJaspera, so it's #probably going to be #awesome (yeah, those hashtags are a Twitter inside joke).

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There were numerous sights to behold on Mass. Street last night and here are a few of them.

We traversed a long, narrow, and strangely frightening "blanket fort" at Wonder Fair and finally rounded a corner to encounter...this guy. He served up a potent apple cider.

Along 8th Street we ran smack into the March 4 Marching Band, drumming up business for their Liberty Hall show with an old-fashioned promenade of funk. They were pretty terrific.

Then we saw a robot!

At the Replay's Fashion Monsters Fashion Show, the models were dead-sexy (Chip: "Get it? Because they were zombies and Frankensteins and shit!").

We learned that showing a lot of ass is very fashionable this year,

And then it was time for scenesters to join the models for a dance party.

Friday Scenester Guide: Art, Fashion, Rock and Roll

2011-10-28T12:15:00.001-07:00

Readers, it's Halloween weekend, and there's a lot going on, but you'll be too drunk most of the time to even know which show you're at, so we're not going to bother trying to cover it all.

Look for us at Final Fridays (mostly in Wonder Fair's "blanket fort") and at Fashion Monsters 5 at the Replay (more fucking zombies?). But if we were truly hip we'd probably go to the Jackpot and see Bleached. Look at this LA Times blurb:

"If you swept up all the vegan muffin crumbs and other detritus from the Smell's floor, combined it with some sawdust from a dirtbag country bar where Merle Haggard once drunkenly two-stepped, and then threw in some tangy candy bits only found at a little corner store around the way from where Joey Ramone's grandmother lived, you'd have something like Bleached."

Openers include your weekly dose of Mouthbreathers and an appearance by "consumate synthesizer artists" CVLTS (yes, the interweb site we consulted spelled "consummate" incorrectly).

We like their album cover, which has some boobies on it (and click here for an important list, with photos, of more than 30 album covers that contain "visible nipples").

More Final Friday Coverage: Hospital Ships at Dusty Bookshelf / Missed Connection of the Week / And A Dog with Candy-Corn Colored Toenails

2011-10-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

Final Fridays aren't all about art. There's music too, and tomorrow's events include a special acoustic performance from Hospital Ships at the Dusty Bookshelf. Get there early to choose the perfect dusty tome to peruse during the show in order to look like you're too hip to actually be there for the band but rather just happened to be hanging out reading something postmodern. We recommend William Giraldi's Busy Monsters, a very meta tale of true love and giant squids. It sounds like this:

"Facts about the giant squid make my lover damp--I encouraged her pre-bed reading--and we indulged in each other's bodies for nearly an hour. Twice I thought I would hyperventilate or else have cardiac arrest."

and this:

"...he's an atheist through and through. I hear he has a sculpture of Percy Shelley and Bertrand Russell doing a French kiss and ball-sack grab."

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It's time for another Missed Connection from Larryville's Craigslist. We love how this one transitions so abruptly from the barely-literate to the downright poetic:

"U were wearing sexy tights. Damn u were hot, and the way u talked was so smart and dope. U said it was ur birthday. At some point, u changed into an old t-shirt. We traded delicious vegan food, had lude and ridiculous conversations. watched part of a crappy movie. I wanted to get with u so bad. My pillow smells like u. U made me feel alive. Big, burdensome things felt like air."

Chip: "The phrase 'delicious vegan food' makes me skeptical that any of this ever happened."

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And thanks to the LJ-World for making our day with this photo of a dog with "candy-corn colored toenails" taken recently at Dogtoberfest.

Horror Remix Recap: Zombie Edition / A Special Guest Report on Scenester Violence

2011-10-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

We stopped by the Bottleneck last night for the "zombie" edition of Horror Remix (even though we're bored with zombies) and caught the evening's first film, 1987's The Video Dead. Readers, we're pleased to report that this is a lost-masterpiece along the lines of Cronenberg's Videodrome or DeLillo's novel White Noise in the way it equates death and technology. Nah. We're just fucking with you. It's a gloriously stupid film about zombies that come out of a TV set and kill a chihuhauha named Chocolate and then get slaughtered with bows and arrows and chainsaws and at one point a zombie woman uses a chainsaw herself. Yeah. It's pretty terrific. Especially with $2 Free State draws (we tried the new Winter Ale) and cheap kettle corn and hot dogs. There were even a couple of folks dressed as zombies amongst the crowd, which is pretty hardcore just to sit around in the dark and watch zombie movies.

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Aside from the on-screen carnage, things were peaceful at the Bottleneck, but apparently that wasn't the case a few blocks away, where the Jackpot's karaoke night turned violent. Yes, you read that right. We're pleased to bring you this special report on "scenester violence" from guest correspondent Peter. Follow him at @plyrene on Twitter.

"A large fight broke out in front of the Jackpot around midnight on Tuesday 10/25. This occurred during the venue's weekly Karaoke night, and I wish I could remember what song was being sung inside. (Top songs to fight to? Iggy and the Stooges?).

The crowd that night was mostly service-industry scenesters from Tellers and 715. The fight broke out when an inebriated passerby (who had apparently just been thrown out of the Red Lyon) slurred some insulting words at this group (including some of the tuffies from Tommy Ferrari and the Future Motor Machines). A drink was promptly thrown at his face, and a beatdown [followed].

Sean Hunt (aka Approach) was working door and quickly jumped in the fracas to restore order. While trying to separate and protect the guy getting beat up, the offender BIT him in the leg. Though Sean was luckily wearing thick jeans, the bite still broke the skin pretty bad. Zombie jokes and fears of hepatitis ensued.

I waited until things cleared up to ask the guys what prompted the confrontation. When I got my answer, I was shocked at their violent response and surprised nobody found it ironic--the offending party, who had dreadlocks and was wearing a dirty Hawaiian shirt-- had called them "fucking hippies."

The cops showed up about 20 minutes too late, and just took a few statements before leaving. There was a weirdly celebratory atmosphere in the bar afterwards. I wondered how many people were thinking about S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.

This comes just weeks after an incident where a former KJHK DJ, Ian, called for a scene-wide boycott of the Granada across Facebook after feeling harassed by a member of the crowd at the Odd Future Show and the venue's security answering his request for assistance with a dismissive "quit being such a pussy." (Then again, what did he expect at the concert for a shock rap group with Kill Them All in their name? Nothing but cardigan-clad Pitchfork readers?).

In parting, if there's anything we can learn [from these incidents], it's that no matter how rough things get in a packed crowd, or what derogatory names you get called, it's not worth resorting to violence. Just stand your ground, go home, and write a fast and loud song about the experience for your band's next 9-minute EP."

Occupy Larryville Gets Assaulted By Hobos / Scenester Picks of the Day: AIDS Wolf, Henry and Hazel Slaughter, and Folkicide

2011-10-25T07:17:00.001-07:00

The Occupy Lawrence protesters may not be afraid of police brutality, but after (alleged) physical and sexual assaults by local hobos (who were apparently invited into the tents) they have become so frightened that they are apparently giving up their tents and sleeping on the ground, presumably because it's pretty easy to outrun a staggery hobo in the open air.

Group members are also considering various options to deal with these problems, such as "distribution of a flier titled “Creating a safe space,” which asks participants to 'refrain from engaging in activities that are not conducive to creating and maintaining a safe space'" (LJ-World). Let's assume that "inviting hobos into your tents" will be included among the unsafe activities.

Chip: "Another option for the protesters would be to go home at night and sleep in a cozy bed."

The LJ-World talkback, as you might expect, is solid gold.

FalseHopeNoChange says: "These radical malcontents are the best of the best in Larryville. They are examples of the finest government education the Liberal Spring can provide. The cream has risen to the top. Who says the future of this country they call United is gloomy. Oh. And they can also multitask by reporting crimes while breaking the law."

Larrynative says: "If a person was raped at a local bar, you would all be screaming to close the bar and blame the owner. Occupy Lawrence provides a rape tent and their supporters don't want to blame Occupy Lawrence."

We suspect "Rape Tent" will become a future band name or song title for a local metal band. Are you listening, Troglodyte? This could be a great follow-up to "Skunk Ape Rape."

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Speaking of potentially offensive band names, Canada's AIDS Wolf hits the Replay tonight. They've been slammed (3.9) and modestly praised (6.9) in Pitchfork over the years. Here's Pitchfork pointing out their "buzzworthy" aspects of their debut The Lovvers (yes, it has two 'v's):

"There's the Montreal mailing address, the cluelessly offensive name, the awkward hairy-fairy nude photos, and the fact that Wolf Parade's Arlen Thompson helped record the eight tracks that make up the official debut (though they spelled his last name wrong in the liner notes)."

A little research after that "hairy-fairy nude photo" reference revealed that, indeed, the band is prone to naked publicity photos. Avert your eyes quickly!

Also on tonight's bizarre triple bill is Henry and Hazel Slaughter. We're pretty sure it's not this gospel act:

And we're pretty sure it's this guy:

Opening the evening is KC's Folkicide, who recently got some attention in the Pitch and here on our blog and sounds absolutely bonkers.

Someone please go and report back to us.

National Food Day / Wonder Fair Gets Adorable For Final Fridays / Courtneybelle and Hammerlord

2011-10-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it's National Food Day, and if you're a local progressive we assume you'll head to The Raven tonight for "a reading from a new booklet of interviews with small-scale, sustainable women farmers." The booklet is called "Girls Got Guts," and the event will offer local food samples such as fresh sheep cheese from Green Dirt Farm, garlic conserve from Maggie's Farm, and Hippie Chow brand granola, which we hear is the official granola of the Occupy Lawrence movement. Be there at 7:00.

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The next edition of Final Friday is just around the bend and Wonder Fair is offering something so adorable that our heads are already spinning with twee little dreams. It's called "Hibernation," an installation which will transform the space into "a cozy cabin, complete with custom-designed screen-printed armchairs, hand-printed brick fireplace, snuggly screen-printed firewood, and a charming menagerie of winter-ready stuffed animals... visitors are invited to crawl through an extensive blanket fort to reach the Wonder Bar, a pop-up cantina stocked with hot mixed drinks, cocoa, and gingerbread" (from FB event page).

They had us at stuffed animals and blew our minds at "blanket fort." We may just remain there all month (so long as the Wonder Bar is also well-stocked with PBR...we like to dip our gingerbread in it).

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Courtneybelle braved the metal mayhem at the Replay on Friday to rock with Hammerlord and Troglodyte. Here's what she witnessed, with a few "Chipnotes" in bold:

"Those of us hanging out at Replay on Friday night to see @BillyGayCyrus give the unwashed masses on the patio boogie fever, were maybe hesitant to know what madness would soon break forth in the front room. Especially after “the man” came to shake you down for the cover. But don’t, like Richard, be afraid. Hammerlord and Troglodyte are amazing and athletic musicians. Both bands have very devoted followers. I can’t tell you the difference between Death Metal and Thrash Metal, but I know an audience in love when I see it. [Chip: "Death metal is the one where they sacrifice a goat onstage."] You might recognize Hammerlord’s lead vocalist Stevie Cruz (a.k.a DJ Cruz) from the Replay patio and sundry other projects. And you’ll definitely recognize Troglodyte since they perform in full cinema-grade facemasks. That is quite a feat, if you consider the amount of energy these guys put out under the hellish heat of stage lights. And if you really want a show, check them next year at the annual “Hammerween”. [Chip: "This is one of my many nicknames for my boner."] You missed it Saturday, but I promise you the BEST people watching and costumes in Kansas City (and of course many hardcore metal thrashings). If metal isn’t your bag, take a chance this Sunday the 30th when Fiend Club, Hammerlord’s Misfits tribute band will be at Replay."

Here's what we missed (click to enlarge and realize that, holy shit, it's a severed woman!):

And here's what is on the way this Friday in KC and Sunday in Larryville:

Occupy Larryville Update / Nine Minute EP of the Week: Trash Talk

2011-10-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

It's a slow day in Larryville and there's not much to do except Occupy Lawrence, which is still going strong in South Park, though Johnny Law finally saw fit to roll through about 1:30 am one evening (out of the public eye) and issue a few citations to the protesters, who are expected to appear in court in mid-November.

Chip: "I'm not sure I'd trust them to take a break in their Occupation to show up in court."

According to the Occupy Lawrence Facebook page, the group's biggest concern is not any sort of police brutality, but rather attacks from the good citizens of Larryville: "We had no interaction at the camp with police [on Saturday]. We did have multiple members physically assaulted by Lawrence residents - We have video and have filed complaints with the police department for these events."

Our best guess is that these attacks were from "bros" on their way home from Brother's. Or perhaps from K-State fans too drunk to make it back home to Manhattan after the game yesterday. But does anyone have actual details? And did anyone attend the Occupy Lawrence "pumpkin carving" that was scheduled for Saturday at 3:00. We'd fucking love it if someone could send us a picture of a pumpkin with protest messages carved into it!

Photo from LJ-World:

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Local scenesters love the ultra-short songs of Rooftop Vigilantes, but we came across a Pitchfork rave this week for a band called Trash Talk that might give the Vigilantes a run for the money in the brevity department. Pitchfork gives Trash Talk's new EP an 8.2:

"The group's 10-song, 17-minute 2010 third album, Eyes & Nines, was good; their new, five-song, nine-minute Awake EP is great."

What Trash Talk lacks in melody they more than make up for in furious anger:

"From the thorny inverted peace symbol on the cover, the disenfranchised lyrical sentiment (see the the smash-shit-up "Awake" video), Trash Talk continue to dig into the sort of anger that inspired the recent Occupy Wall Street protests. Though it taps into feelings that have always been there, it feels especially important and of this moment" (Pitchfork).

If Occupy Lawerence sticks around, we're giving the camp this EP as a holiday gift!

Weekend Art Post: Boner Art on Bravo's Work of Art

2011-10-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Readers, we were planning to write about football today, since the local media spent the week convincing us that KU had a legitimate shot at knocking off unbeaten K-State today. Mind you, we never understood the logic of this argument, but we nevertheless spent the week imagining a vicious slaughter of those purple pussies followed by the inevitable dismantling of the goalposts and parade to Potter Lake. But as we write this post K-State is up 59-14, so we're just going to offer up a quick art-related boner post today instead.

Are you watching Bravo's Work of Art? If not, you should be. One artist insists on referring to himself as "the Sucklord." And another spent this week's episode constructing a stick model of a pervert with a boner with a playground photo as a backdrop. Here's a recap from the AV-Club review that we believe will fully convince you to watch the show from here on out:

"Michelle’s work is a wooden, geometric stick-figure contraption that’s wired up in front of a picture of a little New York park. The lines of the figure echo the lines of the plants in the bucolic park scene, which creates some clever thematic tension, as the stick-figure guy is a lecher who gets an erection when someone pulls his string. At least, we can gather that he gets an erection. Judging by the clumsy, panicked cuts that take place every time someone pulls the string on Michelle’s piece, Bravo’s standards-and-practices department does not allow the depiction of boners in motion, not even artistic ones. (Note that Sara’s moving clay vulva is A-OK, though, because it is still stationary relative to the crotch of the figure, and therefore not capable of breaking loose and destroying civilized society.) During the critique of this work, China takes pains to remind everyone how comfortable she is in the company of an erect penis."

Future band name: Boners in Motion.

We can't seem to find a picture of the work to snag, but you can look at it here

And here's our pick for America's next great artist: the Sucklord!

Check in this week for coverage of Larryville's Halloween edition of the Final Fridays art walk. We suspect there will be a zombie exhibition or four to peruse.

Weekend Picks for Gorehounds, Metalheads, Lovecraft Enthusiasts, and People Who Like Bands With Funny Names

2011-10-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

If you're in the mood for a bit of the old ultraviolence, tonight's your night: Liberty Hall offers up a print of Fulci's Zombie. It's early-ish (10:00), so make sure to take the children! After all, you took them to the fucking Zombie Walk.

Fulci's zombie vs. shark action looks like this:

Metalheads should head to the Replay, where Hammerlord and Troglodyte are holding an early Halloween bash. Our favorite Troglodyte song remains "Skunk Ape Rape" but let's admit that "Mummified Yeti Hand" is pretty terrific as well. And we love that this album cover is a riff on 1972's classic Legend of Boggy Creek, about the Arkansas "Fouke monster." But of course we're absolutely terrified to see one of their live shows and will exit the Replay tonight long before they take the stage.

And our buddies at EMU are hosting their fifth annual HorrorShow at the Arts Center. This year's piece offers up seven short plays adapted from Lovecraft. When last we saw the EMU gang, they were parading naked people around the stage. We can't promise nudity this time, but you can certainly expect a crowd well-versed in the Necronomicon at these performances, since Lovecraft geeks are the absolute geekiest of horror geeks, You can catch “Horrorshow V: Last Call of C’thulhu at the Old Arkham Saloon" at 8:00 tonight and tomorrow and also on Halloween weekend (and even Halloween night).

But what if you're not quite ready to get into the gruesome Halloween spirit just yet? Consider the Saturday triple-bill at the Replay, which is perfect for those of us who love bands with silly names:

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Nude Sunrise
South Bitch Diet.

If there's not at least a bit of nudity during the Nude Sunrise set, we're asking for our three bucks back.

And the best interweb description of Dinosaurs' sound that we discovered is this: "Like if Flipper moved to Texas and gangbanged Don Walsh."

Larryville's "Permanent" Occupation Gets an Eviction Notice / KU Quidditch Is #1 IN THE WORLD!

2011-10-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

Shortly after being told they could "permanently" Occupy South Park, the protesters were informed by the City Fathers that "permanently" did not cover the hours when the park was closed, and that they needed to be out by tonight. The only thing for the protesters to do, at that point, was hold a three-hour meeting to determine who was bold enough to remain and risk "citation" (arrests are reputed to be unlikely):

"After a meeting of more than three hours — which featured protesters huddled in a circle around donated propane heaters, speechmakers standing on a stump, and a voting system that involves several types of hand signals — many members said the Occupy Lawrence movement needed to move into a new phase of civil disobedience." (LJ-World).

Chip: "When I walked by last night and heard them singing Kum Ba Yah, I wanted to show them a particular kind of hand signal, if you catch my meaning."

Best sentence of the LJ-World piece: "Several [protesters] were writing in magic marker on their forearms the telephone number of an attorney who previously had told the crowd that he would represent any protesters who were arrested."

We look forward to seeing what happens! And we continue to support Occupy Lawrence 100% (from the cozy confines of our homes, of course).

Photo from the UDK:

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Sure, the Big 12 continues to disintegrate, the football team just plain stinks, and even the basketball squad looks a little bumpy this year. But did you know that KU is #1 in THE WORLD in a game that's meant to be fictional. It's true, we're simply the fucking best at Quidditch, according to this UDK article .

We're not sure when or where you can see a KU Quidditch match, but you should probably hop on your broomstick and seek one out.

Go here for a terrific photo gallery from the recent KU/MU Border War:

Vegetarian Concept Album of the Week: One Pig / Adorable Event of the Day

2011-10-19T13:31:00.001-07:00

Have you been looking for the perfect background music for an evening of sitting around with your progressive friends talking about your favorite causes? Well, we may have found it. It's called One Pig, and it's by the British electronic artist Matthew Herbert:

"It tracks a single swine’s life from its birth on a farm to its slaughter 25 weeks later, using sounds from the pig’s environment...After capturing the pig’s growth to maturity, oink by oink, he transformed those recordings into a dark kind of dance music punctuated by telling sounds: the moo of a nearby cow, frantic squealing, an idling truck. Each track on the album is named after a month in the pig’s journey, culminating in a banquet full of chomping and lip smacking."

Read the full NY-Times piece here

And stream the full album here (but we warned, scenesters, that there's also a link on that page to the new Coldplay album):

Chip: "This album makes me hungry. For pig."

We suspect that 715 Restaurant will play One Pig ironically during their next "Butchery Dinner."

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Readers, do you like cute babies and/or bands that like cute babies. If so, swing by Love Garden around 5:00 this evening to watch the band Rubblebucket doing a photo shoot with our Twitter-buddy Saint_Upid and his new baby. It seems that Saint_Upid wrote the band a tweet about how their song "Came Out of a Lady" was the first song he played to his baby in utero. The band was so excited they got in touch prior to their visit to Lawrence and set up a meeting. It all promises to be about the cutest damn thing you've seen since a Transmittens video.

The video for the song looks like this and the band looks like this (and check them out tonight at the Bottleneck):

Larryville Gets a Permanent "Occupation" / New Restaurant of the Week: Queen Lizzy's Fish and Chips

2011-10-18T13:12:00.001-07:00

If you're like Chip, you enjoy lounging around South Park staring at pretty birds (he likes to describe women using British slang sometimes).

But this week your views have been obstructed by sights such as this:

Yes, a "permanent" encampment has been constructed (and approved by the City Fathers), raising such questions as (1) why couldn't they hire an "artsy" East Larryville type to design a nicer banner? and (2) will they really last longer than the first snowfall?

Let's check in with some conservative talkbackers at the LJ-World and find out how they feel about this "occupation":

equalaccessprivacy says: "Lawrence may be one place already way too occupied by scary ignorant yahoos..."

FalseHopeNoChange says: "Good news for the Occupation. The NAZI party, communist party, Barack Hussein Obama, Hugo Chavez and the Socialist party is supporting the Occupation. Along with the black anti-semites, the Occupation should last for a long while. You all are true Patriots."

and snap_pop_no_crackle says: "A SuperSoaker loaded with fox urine......".

Presumably that's his idea for chasing them away.

Chip: "Let's hear him out before making any judgments."

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First Fuzzy's Tacos and now Queen Lizzy's Fish and Chips! Yes, Mass. Street has been gifted with two new dining destinations within the span of a week.

Queen Lizzy's apparently opened briefly today, sold out of food, was unable to get a delivery for the afternoon, and promptly closed (according to their Facebook page). But (presumably) they'll be open again tomorrow, serving up "battered bangers" and other British fare in addition to their namesake dish. Based on their Facebook Wall, plenty of Larryville diners have ideas about what the restaurant should serve, such as:

Bubble and squeak
Gravy
Haggis suppers
Mushy peas

Sounds delicious?

Go here and "like" their Facebook page and go downtown and like them in person (assuming they re-open).

Local Zombie Picks / We Consider KU Football's New Strategies

2011-10-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Readers, don't think that Larryville has moved on from its zombie-fixation after the Zombie Walk. The pre-Halloween weeks will bring two more prime opportunities to celebrate your love of the undead.

Tuesday Oct. 25 at the Bottleneck, the always-amusing Horror Remix offers up a night of flesheating (including a film called Flesheater).

And for the truly hardcore, Liberty Hall (this Friday at 10:00) will present Lucio Fulci's Zombie "like you've never seen or heard it before."

So take a break from watching AMC's Walking Dead and reading Colson Whitehead's Zone One and join the fun, because we're starting to think the zombie trend is never-ending.

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When one looks at the scoreboard after KU football games, it's easy to speculate that some of Gill's strategies (no cursing, no tweeting, no sex after 10:00) aren't exactly paying off.

Chip: "If you're going to force the kids to lose, at least let them screw."

But we're fully behind Gill's new technique of using image boards of Big Bird and rappers and other assorted images instead of the usual hand signals. It's easily the best idea since the Snickers reward system.

Let's see if the talkbackers agree:

"Maybe Gill has finally figured out what is wrong with this team...could it be that they understand pictures better than words."

"At first I thought it was billboards advertising "throwed rolls" and "One kansas farmer feeds four NFL football teams" in an effort to entice Mangino back."

We hope that at least one image for the impending K-State game is of "EcoKat," as a signal to rip their fucking heads off (in the most environmentally-friendly manner possible, of course.).

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Sunday Scenester Picks: Pierced Arrows vs. Chip the Ripper / Literary Pick of the Week: The Marriage Plot

2011-10-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

There seems to be more on the docket than usual for a Sunday in Larryville.

The Jackpot follows up the Farmer's Ball (we still can't figure out who won?) with an impressive bill that looks like a mini-Garagefest. There's Pierced Arrows (former members of Dead Moon), Don't (former members of Wipers), and local heroes The Spook Lights, Baby Boomers, and Up the Academy. One's ears will likely never recover: an interweb review describes a Pierced Arrows gig as a "performance that pushed the boundaries of volume humanly possible to withstand."

We'll remain across the street at the Replay where it's nice and quiet and MAW will play us some songs about mules and The KC Bear Fighters will be up to their usual hijinks, which look like this .

And there's also Oktoberfest at the Pig tonight.

And Chip the Ripper is at the Granada.

Chip: "He's no relation to me, but I'm certainly a fan. My favorite song is 'That Spot' and these are my favorite lines of that song: Panties and bra is what I want to see you in / Then we can just minus the panties and bra / Massage your thighs and just add this cannon with balls. I think the cannon is a metaphor for his dingus."

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Sure, Oprah's endorsements of their work sort of took the scenester appeal out of writers like Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, but that doesn't mean we won't be picking up Eugenides long-awaited (9 years) third-novel The Marriage Plot. The NY-Times review has appeared, and it's largely positive:

"the novel is also great on the patter and pretentiousness of college intellectuals (“The bookshelves held the usual Kafka, the obligatory Borges, the point-scoring Musil”); on the sweet banter of courtship;... and especially on what happens after you graduate, when the whole scaffolding of classes and the college social scene you’ve been training your personality around is suddenly taken away, and you have to grope for a new way to be in the world."

Or...you can just hang around at the Pig and Replay long after grad school and maybe start your own book club

What We Saw at the Farmer's Ball / Bill Self in Leather

2011-10-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

We dropped by around 8:30 and caught five of the evening's eight acts. Attendance was mostly sparse during this time, likely because most scenesters don't go out until 11:30 and others didn't realize it actually started early (since L.com didn't bother to list the event at all yesterday).

Here's what we witnessed:

Captain Ahab and the Narwhals: These fresh-faced youngsters didn't look tough enough to be fearsome sea captains, but kudos for dressing the part. They sounded kind of like the Avett Brothers. We enjoyed their cello. Now how about some sea chantees?

Todd: His bandmate in Instant Tradition had other engagements, so Todd just played the guitar and talked a bit about Catholicism and the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Fire in the Churchyard: These two ladies rocked the drums and electric ukulele, but not in a very twee way. They wore homemade masks. They played an obligatory rap number (Wu Tang Clan).

Royal: These dudes rolled in from McPherson, Kansas and proved it's possible to play loud(ish) guitar rock in a live setting while still showcasing kick-ass harmony vocals. Plus, a trumpet!

Strider: Reppin' the Bear Club, Strider delivered a smooth set of socially-conscious numbers such as "Don't Fuck With Ugly Bitches" (Chip: "I love songs with a message.").

We weren't allowed to vote prior to midnight, which sort of makes sense (we had not seen all the bands) but sort of doesn't (there's probably less than ten people who are actually present for ALL of the bands, and we suspect whoever plays latest when the scenesters arrive inevitably advances to the Finals).

Anyway, our vote is...Royal!

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We didn't make it to Late Night, but it appears that Coach Self retired his Vanilla Ice duds in favor of...the Fonz:

Weekend Cultural Coverage: Basketball, Farmer's Ball, and Food

2011-10-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

With Late Night in the Phog mere hours away and Larryville saturated with basketball buzz, it's almost possible to forget that a primetime football massacre is slated for tomorrow.

We assume that tonight's Late Night festivities will offer some devastating satirical sketches about the collapse of the Big 12 conference. Just kidding! We assume that it will involve Coach Self in a Vanilla Ice outfit. That shit never gets old!

But we'll skip Late Night in favor of the Farmer's Ball, where Captain Ahab and the Narwhals can earn our support if (and only if) they can intelligently discuss the significance of each of the ships that the Pequod meets on its voyage in Moby Dick. And they BETTER be dressed in full seafaring regalia, as in this photo:

At the Bottleneck tonight, one of the Grizzly Bear dudes is performing with his solo project CANT. Is Grizzly Bear still hip? We're not sure.

And at the Replay, the Mouthbreathers are headlining. They haven't played in six days, an eternity by their standards.

Foodies can attend both tonight's Homegrown Lawrence Festival at Abe and Jake's (which features a band called ThunderKat and a balloonist) and Haskell Indigenous Food Festival at Haskell tomorrow, which culminates in a community potluck of dishes containing indigenous ingredients (hopefully not contaminated fish from the Kaw).

And what else? You tell us, and we might even add you to the list.

Scenester Picks of the Day: Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Twin Sister, and Farmer's Ball Pre-Party / Plus, Missed Connections and Fuzzy's Tacos

2011-10-13T10:20:00.001-07:00

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart set the blogosphere a-buzz awhile back when their self-titled debut "landed with a bookish and fuzzy aesthetic" (Pitchfork). But are they still hip after their sophomore album? Pitchfork assure us they are: Belong gets at 8.2:

"Pains nudge themselves slightly out of their comfort zone, replicating the motorbike roar of JAMC on "Girl of 1,000 Dreams" or the bliss of My Bloody Valentine on "Strange."

Personally, we liked them better when they more bookish and fuzzier, but tonight's Bottleneck gig promises to be a scenester-worthy show nonetheless, in no small part due to opener Twin Sister. Refresh your memory by looking at our recent post about them.

And if you're not willing to shell out for Bottleneck pricing, stop by the Jackpot for the Farmer's Ball pre-party with previous winners Hospital Ships, Nezbeat, and Will Nots.

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We haven't showcased a local Craigslist "Missed Connection" in awhile (they are surprisingly dull), but here's one that we enjoy. The woman in question was spotted at 715:

"Your hair was of auburn red crazy corkscrews, your smile and eyes are infectuous, and your olive skin makes my mouth wet with lust. I'd love an afternoon to give you the pleasures of the universe!"

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Fuzzy's Tacos is officially in business on Mass. Street, opening up a wide world of new innuendo opportunities for Chip. According to their Facebook, they also have (yesterday at least) $1.50 PBR schooners. This place may be hipper than we thought! And they open at 7:00 am for those who like to "go downtown" and "eat out" early in the morning. One of their logos is a fish that says "Eat me."

Chip: "This place is going to be an endless source of comic gold!"

The KJHK Farmer's Ball Approaches: Tell Us Who's Hip? / Photo of the Week: PETA, Mass. Street, Condom Suit

2011-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Readers, the Farmer's Ball has slipped up on us. It's this weekend and we don't even know who's hip enough to deserve our support. Send us tips. As of now we're leaning toward thePhantom* because we like the strange punctuation and the asterisk. In fact, we've blogged about thePhantom*'s mermaid album cover in the past. And we're on board (get it!) with Captain Ahab and the Narwhals (so long as they've actually read Moby Dick and can hold their own in a conversation about the "doubloon" chapter with us after their set). And Strider seems cool because we sometimes tweet with that dude? What else should we know about this year's Farmer Ball?

Or perhaps we should spend the time to actually research all 8 acts over at the KJHK website and vote responsibly? Just kidding! We like to go in fresh, get hammered on PBR, and vote for whomever strikes our fancy at the time.

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Our photo of the week is courtesy of the LJ-World. It's a PETA member in a "giant plush condom" suit parading down Mass. Street to try and convince people to spay and neuter their pets.

Chip: "Personally, I won't get my dog fixed, but I do insist that he wears a rubber whenever he mounts a bitch."

Read the full story and see a video at LJWorld .

Future KU Basketball Autobiographies / We Look at Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive / Controversial Pick of the Day: Odd Future at Granada

2011-10-11T10:17:00.001-07:00

Sure, there's still a few weeks of soul-crushing losses ahead for KU football, but as of this Friday (with Late Night in the Phog) all eyes will be on KU basketball from here on out. We're going to prepare for the season by reading Tyrell Reed's new book: Reed All About It: Driven to be a Jayhawk.

We suspect the Reed story might be a little tame for our tastes, however. Here are a few suggestions for KU basketball autobiographies we'd be more excited to read:

Love in an Elevator: The True Confessions of Sherron Collins

Moon Bar Knife Fight: The JR Giddens Story

Everything AND the Kitchen Sink: Mario Little's Big Adventure

Tyshawn Taylor: Sex in the Fieldhouse (An Illustrated Guide)

Free PBR for the best alternate suggestion for future KU basketball autobiographies.

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Each year we wait anxiously for Esquire to tell us who's the Sexiest Woman Alive. This year: Rihanna. She graces the cover and photo shoot naked and covered in dirt and leaves.

Our feminist readers: "There's a terribly disturbing trend of photographing African-American women in 'primitive' or 'animalized' fashion. It looks like she's just stepped out of the jungle. We're surprised she's not riding a fucking tiger or something."

Chip: "I thought the leaves were meant to suggest a Garden of Eden feel. Innocence corrupted. I'd like to rake those leaves, if you catch my meaning. What I mean is that I'd like to see her completely naked."

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If you love songs about murder and rape, it's a good night to be in Larryville: Odd Future is at the Granada for a sold-out show.

Let's take a look at a few lyrics from "Orange Juice":

"I stumbled down a hill then I had Jill jack me off
Harder than my dick when Taylor Swift is in my basement
Cause I've been doin' this since Pooh fucked Christopher Robinson"

Richard: "Odd Future's vision is a truly uncompromising one, and 'Orange Juice' is some of their best work. As they dismantle and reverse these iconic images of innocence, everything from Taylor Swift to Pooh Bear, we are forced to acknowledge the corruption beneath the surface of our cherished ideals."

Chip: "I can't get that vision of Pooh raping Christopher Robinson out of my head. I'm probably going to skip the Odd Future show."

Weird Music and Art Pick of the Week: Close/Far Family Tour at Wonder Fair on Tuesday / Scenester Pick of the Day: Not in the Face at the Replay

2011-10-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

We try to befriend as many Brooklyn artists and bands as possible on Twitter, because we feel like they hold the key to a secret realm of scenester knowledge that we are keen to possess. So when the Close/Far Family (a collective from Brooklyn, Chicago, Springfield, and St. Louis) asked us to help get the word out regarding their Tuesday performance at Wonder Fair, we were eager to help.

Readers, here is what you will witness: "...a single morphing set of music and sound art through a handmade multichannel sound system/installation/instrument—transmitted through wood, clay, wire, and twine."

Sold. But we're left with two pressing questions. (1) Will this work better with weed or 'shrooms? And (2) can Chip shake his ass to this morphing set?

Read more about the Close/Far Family tour here and watch a sneak preview of the instrument here and respond "attending" to the Facebook page here

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Not In The Face has a funny name and Chip finds their album cover erotic. They are a duo from Austin. Go see them tonight at the Replay. But first watch this video of their song "Way to Go Baby" in which these two scruffy mustached scamps stop and smell the roses (literally) and playfully wrestle each other in the grass and get shirtless and prance around and drink out of a water hose together. Some of you will love us for posting this. And others of you will swear off this blog altogether because this shit you are about to see is damn near as precious as the Transmittens! Will you take a look ?

Sunday Photo Blog: Hot Rod Hullabaloo / Spot That Mass. Street Occupier / And a St. Vincent Party Pic

2011-10-09T09:50:00.001-07:00

Yesterday afternoon we donned our leather jackets, styled our pompadours, and pocketed our switchblades to join the greasers for the first annual Rev It Up Hot Rod Hullabaloo in downtown Larryville.

Our favorite car: the Drag Stripper (which gave Chip a boner):

We also enjoyed the car with the skull under its hood:

While we were scoping out cars, Larryville's progressive-minded rabble-rousers were Occupying Mass. Street. Name those progressives in this LJ-World photo and win a free beer after the next protest of your choice! Check out that Gray Panthers shirt. Are they like an old, white, boring version of the Black Panthers?

And for the first time since Kanrocksas, Lcom deemed an event hip enough to publish a set of Party Pics. That event: St. Vincent. Check out this little PBR party. Are these folks hip enough to be drinking PBR?

St. Vincent Review / LJ-World Zombie Photo of the Week

2011-10-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

Last night was our first St. Vincent experience and we were suitably impressed. Imagine if one of David Lynch's ethereal songstresses crawled out of the screen and decided she wanted to supplement her dreamy lyrics with occasional bouts of absolutely furious guitar-shredding. It was sort of like that. With blackouts between each song, the concert took on a theatrical aspect, as if each song were a new "act" (an act full of seizure-inducing lights and thick fog-machine fog).

Check out these lyrics from "Dilettante":

"You're like a party I heard through the wall
Invite me
But I'm always watching you through a keyhole
Let's not forget, let's not forget
Let's not forget, where we crawled from

Oh Elijah, don't make me wait
What is so pressing
You can't undress me anyway?"

Chip: "I imagined that she was saying 'Chip' instead of 'Elijah' throughout this song, and I was more than a little turned on."

Verdict: four out of four Free State Octoberfests, even though they were expensive as fucking gold ($4.25?!).

Check out I Heart Local Music over here for a photo gallery and video.

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Kudos to the LJ-World for this Zombie Walk photo, which perfectly encapsulates the tension between the element of Larryville that wants to "keep it weird" and the element of Larryville that just wants to enjoy a pleasant evening in the park without having to put up with screaming teenagers dressed as zombies.

See more LJ-World zombie photos here

Weekend Scenester Picks: Albums In Full and Art of All Sorts (Most of it in KC)

2011-10-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

If you love when bands perform entire albums from start to finish (Chip: "It's the next best thing to staying home and playing the record!"), then this is your weekend. Minus the Bear will perform Highly Refined Pirates in its entirety tonight at the Granada and Midday Ramblers will perform their first album, Free Country Music, in its entirety on Sunday at the Replay (at least they will "attempt to," according to the flyer).

If you're not into prog or bluegrass, reserve Saturday for hip-hop at the Replay with Stik Figa and Ebony Tusks and Ivory Hooves and Motorboater and (rumor has it) a special rapping appearance by Katlyn Conroy (happy birthday!).

But there's art to squeeze in as well. Don't miss the Postcommodity installation tonight at the Lawrence Arts Center. Here's the mission statement from the Postcommodity website:

"Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage and respond to the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence."

Sounds fun, doesn't it!

And here's the info on tonight's installation:

"The Night is Filled With the Harmonics of Suburban Dreams is an amplified hydro-feedback system in which pool pump motors and circulatory systems, working with and against each other, generate meditative harmonic oscillations. PVC pipes containing the hydro circulatory systems are shaped into a series of geometric patterns that imitate the oscillations of pool pump motors. The work recreates the sonic environment of suburban backyards where ubiquitous pool pumps sing through summer nights."

And you can experience the suburban magic without ever having to set foot in Overland Park! See you tonight at the Art Center, and make sure to follow it up by Occupying Mass Street tomorrow!

Chip: "I wish I could just look at Danny Gibson's poster art again instead."

Chip, you can! There's a second opening at KC's First Fridays tonight. Pay attention to the sidebar. His show was so popular it's being held over, perhaps because scenesters love to stand around and reminisce about attending all those gigs on the posters.

And while you're in KC you should probably also see Marc Shank's "Welcome to Scurvyville," which "simulates a roving eye over the locale of Scurvyville, a fictional tale of lovably bulging eyes, guts, and asses." Click this and tell us this stuff is not super fucking cool.

Chip: "Is Scurvyville meant to represent Ft. Scott?"

And follow that up with Candychrome, Dirk Hooper's "fetish photography" exhibit. Looks like KC is outdoing us on boner-inducing art. Step it up, Larryville!

Occupy Larryville on Saturday! / Plus, Take Back the Night March vs. Zombie Walk

2011-10-06T10:09:00.001-07:00

We inquired via Twitter this week as to when an Occupy Larryville movement would spread to Mass. Street (since we know that local progressives can't resist a chance to congregate with picket signs). Well, it turns out that a group called Occupy Lawrence is on top of things and asking people to gather at noon on Saturday in front of US Bank at 9th and Mass.

And of course no social movement can occur without a corresponding Facebook page, so go here to claim that you're attending, whether you are or not:

So far, six people are listed as attending.

Chip: "I've added those six names to my "suspected socialists" notebook."

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And speaking of "occupations" on Mass. Street, tonight promises to be interesting, as the Take Back the Night March and the Zombie Walk are happening simultaneously.

Chip: "I've always dreamed of seeing a group of feminists chased by zombies. This promises to be the best zombie walk yet!"

Doubtful, Chip. The Zombie Walk of 2009 was a dark and stormy night (as we recall) and in those days the zombies were free to smash themselves up against the windows of bars to frighten boozing scenesters. Here's a classic shot we took from inside Harbour Lights:

Can anyone name those zombies?

We Prepare for St. Vincent / Horror Pick of the Week: American Horror Story

2011-10-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

St. Vincent sold out the Bottleneck the last time she stopped by Larryville, but our sources down at Liberty Hall say that Friday's show is selling slowly. Presumably all the true scenesters saw her the first time around and can't be bothered? According to Pitchfork, however, she's still hip as ever. Those astute critics give her new album, Strange Mercy, an impressive 9.0:

"The opening track on Annie Clark's third album as St. Vincent is also called "Chloe in the Afternoon", and while Clark has acknowledged the influence of Rohmer's film on the song, she takes the story to a darker, more dominatrix-y place."

French films and S&M? You have our attention, Pitchfork. Proceed.

"Clark's recent live Big Black covers saw her taking the pretty/ugly contrast to raw new levels: "I think I fucked your girlfriend once, maybe twice," she sang, fervently, on "Bad Penny", "I fucked all your friends' girlfriends-- now they hate you!"

Keep going.

"...anyone who's seen the Berklee dropout do her seizured duckwalk in concert while soloing on unhinged tracks like "Your Lips Are Red" knows her not-so-secret weapon is a lurching guitar style somewhere between Robert Fripp's sheet-metal prog and Tom Morello's 10-ton riffage."

"Seizured duckwalk," eh? Give us one more reason to buy a ticket, Pitchfork.

"The playful "Dilettante" combines the mutant funk of David Bowie's "Fashion" with the understated genius of D'Angelo's Voodoo, and has Clark possibly propositioning a prophet: "Oh, Elijah, don't make me wait/ What is so pressing that you can't undress me, anyway?"

Sold! See you at the show. How many boners do you predict that Chip will get during this performance?

Chip: "That's a trick question. It's more likely to be one long boner that lasts for the duration of the set."

Full review here .

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Speaking of S&M (in the previous post), FX's new series American Horror Story premieres tonight and it's been getting a lot of attention for a sex scene between Friday Night Lights' Connie Britton and a man in a rubber suit (called Rubber Man).

Here's an image from the FX website.

And here's our favorite line from today's NY-Times review:

"Before the hourlong premiere is over, we’ve been made aware of at least eight ghosts...".

Ah, we were hoping for at least ten! But we'll still check it out for this Rubber Man business.

Midweek Scenester Pick: Wavves and Rooftop Vigilantes at Jackpot / Zombie Book of the Week: Colson Whitehead's Zone One

2011-10-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you know Wavves as the band with the annoying extra "v" in its name, or the band that had the legendary on-stage meltdown in Barcelona, or the band with Best Coast's boyfriend in it. Or perhaps you actually know some of their songs.

At any rate, they are back in Larryville at the Jackpot tomorrow.

Let's see if Pitchfork digs their new EP:

"Side B of Life Sux, well, kinda sux: The title of "Poor Lenore" is the first time Williams has implied he's ever picked up a book in his life, but the turgid, 3rd-gen grunge suggests he found that Poe anthology right next to a used copy of Frogstomp."

Ouch.

Opening up (naturally) is the regrouped Rooftop Vigilantes. Real Pony Glue is officially available, and we're jamming "Love Garden Hold Policy" (clocking in at 1 minute exactly) on Bandcamp right this minute. It's so hip when bands reference places we know and love!

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If you're like us, you're pretty fucking bored with zombies these days, but we're fans of Colson Whitehead's postmodern literary shenanigans in books like John Henry Days, so we'll have to check out his new literary zombie novel Zone One, which has been voted Esquire's #1 pick of the fall (Chip: "I trust Esquire's literary choices completely."):

"This isn't Colson Whitehead taking preening batting-practice swings for the amusement of a twitterized fan base...In Whitehead's suddenly sure hands this is a stressed nation blinking its eyes in the dim light of a train platform, or a farm, or a ruined city, working to distinguish who might be there to do us harm. You don't need to have lived through a lifetime of movies about zombies or a single showing of An Inconvenient Truth to understand that Zone One formulates an essential equation: the measure of what we once had versus the hint of what we have left."

Hey now! We're part of Whitehead's "twitterized fan base." He even responded directly to us recently, which gave us a true literary boner!

Read Esquire's full piece here

If you need a literary zombie fix in the meantime, we recommend George Saunders' absolutely vicious and hilarious short story "Sea Oak," in which dissatisfied and very dead Aunt Bernie comes back to life determined to do things better this time around:

"Well I am going to have lovers now, you fucks! Like in the movies, big shoulders and all, and a summer house, and nice trips, and in the morning in my room a big vase of flowers, and I'm going to get my nipples hard standing in the breeze from the ocean, eating shrimp from a cup, you sons of bitches..."

It's available in full on-line over here . Thank us later when you're recommending it to all your freaky friends.

We Weigh in On Larryville's Huge 11/11/11 Music Event

2011-10-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

If you're a local scenester, you're already aware of today's breaking news about Eleven Productions' huge multi-venue tenth anniversary concert (to be held on 11/11/11). Check it out:

We'd be very excited if we didn't already have other plans.

Richard: "I'm going to the Lucinda Williams show at Liberty."

Chip: "I'm going to the opening night of Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill, in which he plays his own sister. I bet he gets kicked in the balls AND the cootch."

Check out I Heart Local Music's full story with videos and ticket info over here and check out the Facebook event page over here .

Editorial of the Week: Larryville Struggles to Get PC With the New Gender Ordinance / The Zombie Walk Draws Near

2011-10-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

In the wake of this week's new gender ordinance act, this editorial appeared in the LJ-World, taking issue with the newspaper's reporting of the subject:

"I understand how complicated and diverse LGBTQ terminology can be. This is no excuse, however, for the Journal-World to use the word transvestite. Transgender is an umbrella term for anyone who does not identify with the gender that was assigned to them at birth. This includes many identities: transsexual (where someone actually takes steps to change their gender), genderqueer (someone who does not identify as a man or a woman), and crossdresser (people who regularly or occasionally wear the clothing socially assigned to a gender not their own, but are not usually interested in changing their gender)."

Let's see what the talkbackers think.

Funkdog1 says: "Look, I'm about as liberal as they come. I have lesbian friends, gay friends and transgender friends. But "genderqueer"? That's just some ridiculous hipster term. How about "pangender"? Get off my lawn, you darn kids."

Smitty says: "It goes way beyond this PC scolding. Software now removes words no matter the context. Dyke Hall has a real problem passing the PC software test."

We're pretty sure it's spelled "Dyche Hall," Smitty!

And Weiser says, out of nowhere: "My dog is convinced she is a person."

Chip: "I have a terrible fear of calling a "genderqueer" a "transsexual," or vice versa, so I usually just cross the street and pretend I don't notice them."

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Last year's Zombie Walk was a terrible disappointment, having been taken over almost completely by boring, obnoxious high-school kids who barely put any effort into looking disgusting. We urge you scenesters to reclaim the event this Thursday or, even better, to do something hipper. How about a Werewolf Walk starting at the opposite end of Mass. Street and meeting the Zombie Walk halfway for an old-fashioned monster street brawl?

Spot that Local History Nerd / Tweetnasty's Top Ten Sexting Tips Will Spice Up Your Saturday

2011-10-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

We had a front row position near the getaway car during last night's re-enactment of a Clyde Barrow bank robbery that may or may not have ever actually occurred in Larryville, and we snapped this sweet picture. We had not been this excited about history since ten minutes previously, where we watched the actress playing Bonnie Parker vamp it up at the Eldridge. Click to enlarge the pic and see how many photo-snapping local history buffs you can spot in the background. We hope that Courtneybelle, our favorite history nerd, sends in her full report later on, as she was actually inside Teller's during the "robbery."

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Readers, we know there's a small (freaky) percentage of you who tune in every day hoping against hope that Tweetnasty will return with a sexy advice column. Today, you get lucky! Here's Tweetnasty's Top Ten sexting tips.

Chip: "It turns out that sexting is a lot more complex than simply sending a picture of your dingus to someone."

Enjoy, and we hope you use these tips to sext someone today!

Tweetnasty's Top Ten Sexting Tips

Sexting is a lot like texting, especially if your phone isn't photo capable. But with a camera phone and unlimited messaging plan, the tele-erotic possibilities are endless! So you wanna sext? Here are some pointers! (Hehe)

10. Be prepared. Make sure you're physically ready to be exchanging lots of sexual/personal info with another person. Make sure you have unlimited messaging capabilities, especially if you have multiple phone buddies.

9. Location, location, location. Make sure you're sexting in a comfortable environment. A lot of you are freaks, so this could be anywhere.

8. Don't talk about boring or non-sexual things. When initiating a sext sesh, you can say you're bored so the other person knows you're thinking of them, but not doing anything that would hinder sexting. But after that's established, save the work rant for someone who cares.

7. Stranger Danger. Make sure you trust the person(s) you're wordfucking. Look at their contact photo. Is that someone you KNOW won't put your shit on isanyoneup.com? Will they forward your tits to their phone book just because you said it was small? Let's hope not. If need be, start with body shots. Keep recognizable features out of it until you know they're legit, you impatient hussy.

6. Let your freak flag fly. Don't be afraid to get crazy! They're just words. You can always blame auto-correct later. You meant to type "kissing" not "fisting"?! Okay then. Seriously, go wild. Hyperbole the shit out of them. "I'm gonna put my tongue so far down your throat I'll be licking your taint", etc.

5. Play it cool. Don't respond 3x to every message you receive. You'll come off eager and creepy and no one will love you. Ever. Never send until you receive. Initiate with a single sext and go 1:1 until completion. (Someone will eventually confess their release or one of you will fall asleep.)

4. Safety first. Double check the message before you send it. Are you sending it to the right person? Are there excessive spelling or grammatical errors? Would you fuck someone sending you a message like the one you're about to send? Check twice, send once.

3. Don't be stupid. Leave the LOLs and winky faces out of this. We're all adults (make sure you're all adults). Use "your" instead of "ur". This face :p might get you blackballed, or worse. (Blueballed, obviously.)

2. Flattery will get you everywhere. This goes for the flattery you give the other person, and how flattering your photos are. Take a few and pick a good one. Dudes: don't send a flaccid dongshot to a girl you're trying to impress. Ladies: Make sure you get the goods in there. If I wanted to look at your myspace self-portraits, I'd create a myspace account and do so.

1. Listen to this.

Friday Cultural Guide: Gangsters, Art, and Music

2011-09-30T12:22:00.001-07:00

It's Final Friday, and we hope you join us for our rounds.

Practice up on your gangster lingo (we plan to quote Miller's Crossing all night: "What's the rumpus?") and enjoy the staged robbery at Teller's. Get yourself an Asteroid Head cocktail at Pachamama's (it may or may not contain Pop Rocks and kill you). And check out The Spook Lights rocking outside the Arts Center.

After that, we'll be passed out. But the rest of you can stick around for the Netherfriends, who play the late show at the Replay and have an adorable name.

According to their Facebook page they "are that bastard-psych-pop-catchy as hell one-man band that you’ve been searching for."

Netherfriends played the Pitchfork Music Fest in 2010, so they must be sufficiently hip. And we can dig this album cover.

Thursday Scenester Picks: Vigilantes, Baiowolf, Wonder Fair / KC Writing Workshop of the Week: "Writing Fabulous Sex Scenes"

2011-09-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

If you're any kind of scenester, you already know that the Rooftop Vigilantes are back, that they have a show at the Replay tonight, that the legendary second album is about to see the light of day. Maybe you read the Pitch piece by @nuthousepunks yesterday. Or maybe you read the Riot on the Plaza
review yesterday.

So there's not much for us to add at this point. We just ask that the Vigilantes keep that fucking racket to a minimum tonight (amps at 11 instead of 12), because our PBR Book Club will be holding its first "official" meeting out back.

Chip: "Come for the literary debate. Stay for the drunken librarians."

Elsewhere in town this evening, Baiowolf will be up to their usual hijinks at the Bottleneck, which look something like this:

And ACB's will be rocking at Wonder Fair (see yesterday's post).

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If you need help writing sex scenes, we hope you've signed up for the "Writing Fabulous Sex Scenes" workshop this Saturday from 9:00-12:00 am at the Writer's Place in Westport: "We’ll write during the workshop, then read our efforts to see if the readers are convinced. If you don’t get excited, your reader won’t either."

Chip: "I call this 'the boner test.' This is going to be a really fun morning."

It will cost you $45 bucks to enroll, but we suspect it's worth it for the weirdness.

In the meantime, would you like to read Salon's piece about the best sex scenes of 2011? Sure, you would. Their contest is all very high-brow and literary and judged by a panel of esteemed writers and critics including "Walter Kirn, Maud Newton, Louis Bayard and Salon's own Laura Miller." The winning passage is from James Hynes' Next (which we've read and loved, and not just for the dirty parts, of which there are many). Go here and check it out if you're into such things.

Here's a teaser:

"The porch railing creaks under their weight, and even drunk and excited Kevin wonders about the farmhouse's craftsmanship...".

And here's Mayard's analysis of the scene:

"The Hynes gets points because it's both hot (i.e., the only excerpt that actually made me want to have sex) and technically assured: that sly interplay, for instance, between the cab driver's chattering and the erotic reverie. It's exact without being mechanical, and its details are spot-on. I particularly loved the porch rail threatening to give way the whole time."

Talkbackers Talk Back About the New Gender Identity Ordinance / Wonder Fair Rock Show

2011-09-28T06:05:00.001-07:00

It's a good day for Larryville progressives, as Larryville's City Fathers (or at least 4 out of 5 of them) approved a new gender identity ordinance last night "providing new legal protections to people who are transgender" (LJ-World).

But let's see what the talkbackers are saying, starting with this hateful missive:

AOD506 says: "Ahh, the power of the vote. OK, Like I said a couple of days ago, lets get it together and start listing the names of the traitors, so we can vote these commissioners out next election. All except for Mr.Amyx. America wasn't built on the backs of Trannys. It was built by Red, White, and Blue blooded heterosexual men and women. Send the freaks back to California."

And here is a (confusing) rejoinder from geekin_topekan:

"Umm, unlimited resources secured via genocide and human trafficking in the name of Christ-- Where does R,W and B come into this? Get over your the myths about American (pron:Ah-mer-kin) history and realize that the entitlement complex goes way back, way before the welfare age. I have no numbers as to how many of the Chinese, which made up 90% of the railroad labor force, were in fact gender identified. Do you?"

Chip: "No, I don't, but I think I once spotted a film called 'Chinese Trannies' in the back of Miracle Video."

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If you've noticed that the downtown art scene hasn't been weird enough lately, it's probably because Wonder Fair has been closed. But the gallery is back in a big way this weekend (under new ownership) with a rock show tomorrow and a Final Fridays exhibition.

Thursday's festivities will feature the ACB's, Kusikia, and Mega Bog.

We first thought that last band was called "mega-bong," which is what you should probably hit before coming to the show and rocking out with some free ice cream. Head over to the FB event page and tell them you're coming).

Here's the flier.

Ancient Larryville Traditions and Future Larryville Traditions (Hobo Day, The Big Eat, Bank Robbery Re-Enactments) / Anti-Brownback Bumper Stickers

2011-09-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we came across a fun piece in the UDK about "failed" KU homecoming traditions, which included Hobo Day ("students got in two vegetable trucks on campus and had a vegetable fight") and the Potter Lake duck races.

We're also currently reading David Ohle's Cows Are Freaky When They Look At You to gain a better understanding of Larryville's drug-soaked counterculture past. From this source, we discovered "the Big Eat," whose members "assembled annually, most often at Jerry Cantrell's farm, for the drug n' drink n' fuck picnic...where they smoked, dropped, drank, shot up, and competed for most stoned honors in the Kansas Death Match."

We're sad to have missed such things.

But we're hoping this week inaugurates a new tradition in Larryville: the re-enactment of famous local crimes. Yes, if you're downtown on Friday night, you can witness Clyde Barrow's 1932 robbery of the First National Bank (now Teller's). Here's the scoop from the Final Fridays Wordpress site :

"Events begin with a cocktail party at The Eldridge at 7th & Mass St. beginning at 5:45pm complete with various 1930’s cocktails including a Sidecar, Whiskey Sour, Gibson, Mint Julep and Manhattan. Guests will be able to meet “Clyde Barrows”, “Bonnie Parker”, “Ralph Fults” and various other members of the staged re-enactment robbery. Teller’s will be taking dinner reservations for the evening. Guests at Teller’s will be able to watch the robbery happening from the inside of the restaurant. Dinner will be served during this event giving guests an eye-witness advantage to the robbery. At 6:30pm those people on the street will be able to see the event unfold on downtown Massachusetts Street which will include “Clyde”, “Ralph” and “Ray” walking south on Mass St. from The Eldridge at 7th St. to Teller’s at 8th St. Action will also take place in front of Teller’s as the gang shuffles the “bank president” played by Lawrence’s Mayor Aron Cromwell and two actors playing the “tellers” into Teller’s Restaurant."

Sadly, we were not asked to portray any of the characters in this drama, but we still plan to dress in full gangster attire and drink Sidecars at the Eldridge, then hang out in front of Teller's for the action. And look for LC columnist and local history-nerd Courtneybelle dining at Teller's during the robbery (hopefully she'll cover the inside story for us).

Let's hope that this event is so successful that Larryville begins to host other re-enactments, such as the recent crime in which Horse Shit attacked Free State Brewery with a railroad spike (see our old story here ). Or maybe the time that dude wreaked havoc with a cue ball in a Crown Royal bag at Henry's. Or the time a poor guy got his pants set on fire at the Replay.

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Readers, don't think we've forgotten about Brownback's anti-art crusade, because we haven't (and won't). Our buddy Leo Hayden has some new bumper stickers available for $4 bucks each at this week's Final Fridays Lawrence Art Party in the Hobbs building. Go to Leo's site for the full scoop.

Twee Band of the Week: Twin Sister / (Scary) Local Tattoo of the Week

2011-09-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

It's fall, and that's when we always miss Transmittens the most. We're looking for a new twee band to listen to while we traipse around through falling leaves and look at puffy clouds. Perhaps the new Twin Sister album, In Heaven, will do:

"More interested in documenting life's minor moments than the big, transformative ones, they sing about things like recommending movies to friends or having an awkward crush go unspoken...This type of narrative might skew a little twee for some...[but] it's important to point out that they buoy these bashful sentiments with some really outward, bouncy music. (Pitchfork, 7.8).

"The best twee music is girded with steel. On “In Heaven,” Twin Sister’s first album, Andrea Estella sings in a small voice, her aims and ambitions under control. She sounds amused and engaged, repeating lost-in-thought lines over and over... The band gazes lovingly into the synthesizer presets of late 1970s and ’80s soft-pop, which is nothing new, but it goes deep... It’s as if some gifted and cloistered young minds had just been introduced to, oh, the Tom Tom Club, Vangelis and the English language" (NY-Times)

Let's clamber up on this Soundcloud and spend the afternoon listening to "Gene Ciampi," why don't we?

Look at this adorable quintet! They'll be opening for The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on Oct. 13 at the Bottleneck and we plan to join them.

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Our Twitter-buddy @GrandmaSlump sent us this picture taken recently at Pizza Shuttle in Larryville. It's a "simplified Confederate flag." Chances are this guy will kick our ass if we say anything snarky about him. But probably he was simply passing through liberal Larryville on his way back to Top City, so we doubt we'll run into him at the Replay.

Weekend Recap: Donald Glover at Lied Center and Legends of the Phog

2011-09-25T10:22:00.001-07:00

We joined the youthful throngs at the Lied Center last night for an evening of dick, shit, rape, and race jokes (all delivered in a playful tone of childlike wonder) from rising star Donald Glover, known to many as Troy on Community.

Favorite line: "Kix is like the handjob of cereal."

Favorite bit of crowd interaction:

Glover (to a group of loud and obnoxious and likely-drunk grad students): "Are you all studying acting?"
Students: "WE'RE MFA's!"
Glover: "I don't understand. I feel like you're just shouting letters at me."

Verdict: big laughs, and a hearty thanks to Glover for sticking around for a wonderful and lengthy and unexpected Q&A session after the set.

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Elsewhere in Larryville, the Legends of the Phog (plus Josh Selby) delivered a rousing performance to a packed Fieldhouse that culminated in a tie game (111-111) after a last second 3-point shot from Mario Chalmers (oh, the memories!).

The announcers spoke of how the tied scoreboard make them think of family and the undying bonds of Jayhawk unity.

Chip: "It made ME think that they needed to finish the fucking game. This ain't soccer, folks."

And over at KU Sports we found this very bizarre (and poetic!) talkback comment from "jaybate" which we're presenting here in full. Let's title it "An Ode to Brandon Rush."

A legendary day!

Pierce has grown up to be an incredible human being.

Mario Chalmers is the man the gods have chosen to do their will.

Danny is our Joe Dimaggio quietly dignified.

And like always, in the background, quietly letting it all play out around him, leaving space and time for every one to play their riffs, to be themselves, there is MY man...

Brandon Rush.

He is the grand master of jazz.

He is the Count Basie of wood.

He is a man out of time in time.

In the age of the ego maniacal, in the age of the grab it all sooner rather later, in the age of XTReme hype, he is the man that makes the whole flipping band play beautiful.

Brandon is still the real invisible hand.

Brandon is still the Dancing Wu Li master.

Brandon is still the only one who gets it all.

Everyone else is playing their role magnificently.

But Brandon is the Kool Jazz goofy Buddha at the center of it all.

He is the axle on this mandella.

He is the youngest brother who has seen it all and gets it all and know you just do what you do and keep the family loose and keep a low profile and step in occasionally, as smoothly as possible, and support them when they need it...expecting no reward.

Brandon even has to be patient with Bill Self, who is so busy with his as ringmaster and being in awe of his own heroes.

Even Coach Self is not yet at a point where he can see Brandon for what he is.

Brandon is The Legacy's Wu Li Master.

Rock Chalk!

Saturday Foodie Blog: Art and Donuts and Queen Lizzy's Fish and Chips

2011-09-24T10:04:00.001-07:00

Here's a random sampling of our favorite foodie news of the week.

--If you stopped by the Farmer's Market this morning for a Hurtz Donut, you might have been surprised to find it accompanied by specially designed artwork from BARRR (photo courtesy of @lally_mac ):

Chip: "A man can't even eat a fucking longjohn in this town without being accosted by art. I've reported this to Brownback."

--If you stop by the Burger Stand for a late-night snack tonight (perhaps the new meatloaf burger or Guinness pork chili), your food will be accompanied by the crooning of local crooner (and our old pal and former LC-writer) Dr. Cl.thier, performing in the front window. He promised us he'd play the 'Mats "Unsatisfied" but we're not sure we believe him.

--Have you been hoping for a British restaurant on Mass. Street? If you're willing to shell out some cash, Queen Lizzy's Fish and Chips might open up in Larryville!

For a mere $10 bucks, you "will have a picture of yourself hung on our restaurant wall in the form of a mosaic of the Union Jack flag."

They've got our ten bucks, readers!

Please go here for the full scoop on rewards for your kind donations.

When our British friend King Tosser heard about Queen Lizzy's last night, he expressed disdain for the restaurant's name but pure excitement that a place might cook him some "mushy peas."

And we leave you with our favorite bit of NY-Times restaurant criticism that we read this week (from a review of the Williamsburg restaurant St. Anselm):

"Some attitude from the floor staff may be expected if you are not within the demographic that lives within bicycling distance, or if you have no facial hair, visible tattoos or interesting eyewear."