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Today’s “then and now” is in bustling downtown Olathe, KS.

Looking west along Park Street between Chestnut and Cherry in Olathe. Shows these businesses: Hyer Boot Company Building; Shriver Hardware; Taylor Drug, Laborers AFL-CIO, TG&Y. (1960’s)

Looking west along Park Street at Chestnut in Olathe at buildings under construction (1970’s).

Same view today.

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After a popular post about the sorority girls of KU I searched the Life photo archives for something about the University of Missouri. There weren’t too many photographs but they led me to this interesting story.

In 1959 the Life Magazine published an article Famous Cartoonists Share a Silver Jubilee. One of the cartoonists was the future Hall-of-Famer Milton Caniff – creator of the famous comic strip Steve Canyon.

(Canyon) is so famous that Colorado changed the name of Squirrel Gulch to Steve Canyon. Columbia, Mo., home of “Old Mizzou” (student name for the University of Missouri), would have named a street after Caniff except the conservative citizens protested. They suspected Miss Mizzou, a Canyon dame, wears no clothes under her trench coat

Infamous Miss Mizzou appears among other “ever-luscious ladies” who frequently graced the comic strip (sorry for the quality, I had to splice this from two sides of the magazine).

Some sources report that Miss Mizzou, who was introduced in 1952, was patterned after Marilyn Monroe, others mention a model named Bek Stiner.

Update: JB Winter of Mid-Missouri Comics Collective emailed me the following information:

“For some time I had been mulling over a girl character who would be what a Marilyn Monroe type might be like if she had not hit the jackpot in Hollywood,” Caniff explained in a 1954 letter. “Every college town has girls who live and work on the edge of the campus and who are very much a part of the life of the school, but who who do not get invited to fraternity formals. Usually they come up from small towns and often become as loyal to the school as the best-heeled alumnae. I decided my gal wold be from the University of Missouri, if not of it.”

But he did also base the character off of Bek Stiner (born Bek Nelson) too. He would often model new characters off of real people with the intention of having the photos of the model in the paper to publicize the strip.

Even though Miss Mizzou was fictional, the street-naming fiasco mentioned in Life was real, warranting a humorous article in the 1958 Time Magazine:

Faintly but distinctly, the mesmeric boomlay-boom of publicity drums on Manhattan’s Madison Ave. is heard 980 miles away in Columbia (pop. 43,000), site of the University of Missouri. Stout-souled citizens wonder what is wrong. Chamber of Commerce members writhe to the beat and get the message. It is so nonsensical that at first it seems to be garbled: name the new boulevard (boom-lay boom) after Milton Caniff.

In the end, the name Providence Road won.

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20 years ago today a popular Russian rock singer Victor Tsoi died in a car accident.

20 years ago his songs  spoke to us.

20 years ago we raised our arms and yelled “We Are Waiting for Changes”  together with him.

20 years ago his songs sounded like a war cry.

20 years later it’s still the most played CD that I own.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB0ErvJfT7Q

We want changes!
It’s the demand of our hearts.
We want changes!
It’s the demand of our eyes.
In our laughter, in our tears, and the pulse in our veins.
We want changes!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5peDpAFVs

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7gPKBOGPAE

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After reading an article in the Pitch imploring me to see the Master and Margarita at the UMKC I knew I had to go. The Master and Margarita is one of only a few books that I read more than once and discovered something new every time. It is also one of a few Russian masterpieces  that no matter how well translated could not be fully understood by a foreigner (that would be you); it’s somewhat similar to me trying to decipher Cris Packham’s pop-cultural references (not that I don’t try). The book was written during the times of the strictest censorship when even a hint of anti-Soviet criticism could literally threaten the writer’s life and that’s why Mikhail Bulgakov had to insinuate just as much as he wrote down. The average Soviet reader could easily read “between the lines” and see the satire in the most innocent dialogues and descriptions. Some of the references were to the specific characters in the author’s life and are not easily recognizable but the barbs thrown at the Soviet bureaucrats, censors, informers, dimwits, careerists, sellouts and the regime itself were obvious to the people who still encountered them in their everyday life for another 50 years after the book was written.
Not too many people risked producing it on the stage or on the screen, it could not be easily condensed and the characters were so well-known and beloved that any such attempt would be criticized by the fans. That’s why I was pretty skeptical going to the UMKC performance. I didn’t expect the cast to have an understanding of the book required to convey it onto the stage and it couldn’t possibly be shortened to fit into the regular length of the theater performance. What I saw was pretty amazing and truly one of the best theatrical performances I’ve seen in my life – honest, funny, enthusiastic, smart, inventive and, although not very close to the book, with plenty of Blugakov’s spirit in it. Once you get past the fact that some male roles are played by girls (i.e. Koroviev and Azazello), the character of the devil – Woland is wearing hooves, and the Cat Behemoth is a black guy with the red Mohawk dressed in some kind of leather corset and a shaggy trench coat, everything else falls in place. The actors were outstanding but Patrick DuLaney who played Woland was on par with the Russian actors who played this role in the movie versions of the Master and Margarita. He was able to convey Woland’s millenniums-old age, his exhaustion with life, his disgust with people which could only be defeated by the true love and selfless sacrifice. Julane Havens as Margarita was also very impressive, as a sensitive, sensual, defenseless but determined woman ready to sacrifice everything just to be with Master. The actress who played Hella gets a special mention, nice job keeping every male eye locked on the stage!
I also would like to specifically praise the costume and stage design. The Soviet people are all dressed in the same gray uniforms lovingly adorned by red stars; even their underwear is gray (as was revealed later and you missed it). I also liked the use of projection screens.
During the show I (illegally) made a few videos, sorry, serious-looking-bearded-usher-guy, I didn’t spend years in the KGB school in the USSR to be told what to do by the Man.

(By the way, in the bottom part of these videos you’ll see a jackass who didn’t feel it was necessary to take his stupid hat off in the theater; maybe the usher should have concerned himself with this view-obstructing clown instead of making sure I can’t record a low-quality video.)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPQqevnTdiw

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw9F3GrppVM

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOpHIxKJqdk

After the show I overheard  one lady ask her friend if she enjoyed the show, “it was too weird” was the reply. It’s hard to convey the whole complexity of the book on the stage to an unprepared viewer, but to people who understood it was an amazing effort worthy of a professional venue.

P.S. Alan Scherstuhl is my new Facebook friend on the condition that I will never have to pronounce his last name.

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