Lawrence.com

The Pitch released its Best of Kansas City issue today, and Lawrence is pretty well represented, both by staff picks and readers' choice picks.

So, here we go:

Goods & Services

• Best Cool Stuff: Made, 737 Mass.
• Love Garden Sounds was voted Best Place to Buy Records; it also won Best Record Store in our Best of Lawrence contest.

Arts & Entertainment

• Local rockers Ghosty won Best Local Album;
• Lawrence musician Brodie Rush, of Be/Non, won for Best Music in a Theater Production;
• Kristie Stremel won the readers' choice for Best Local Band.

Food & Drink

• Queen Lizzy's Fish & Chips won Best Fish and Chips (and also won Best New Restaurant in our own Best of Lawrence contest);
• Munchers came in second for readers' choice in Best Bakery;
• Queen Lizzy's came in second for Best Breakfast, third in Best French Fries, and first in Best Takeout;
• Encore won second in Best Chinese Restaurant;
• Aladdin Cafe was Best Mediterranean Food; it has locations in KC, and won Best Middle Eastern Food in the Best of Lawrence contest;
• Minsky's won Best Pizza; it's new to Lawrence, but has several KC locations; Papa Keno's took home third.
• Johnny's Tavern, which won Best Place to Watch a Game in our contest, took home Best College Bar (it has three other KC-area locations); it also won Best Sports Bar;

Sports & Recreation

• KU sprinter and Olympic gold-medal winner Diamond Dixon was named Best College Athlete;
• Former Jayhawk Thomas Robinson, Best College Basketball Player;
• Allen Fieldhouse was voted Best Basketball Court;
• Clinton State Park was named No. 2 in the Best Campsite category;
• The Kaw Valley Kickball League took home third in Best Local Kickball League;
• Danny Manning was voted Best Jayhawks Basketball Player;
• Dayne Crist was voted Best Jayhawks Football Player;
• The Brew to Brew run was voted Best Organized Foot Race/Run;
• Snub alert: Mizzou's Frank Haith was named Best College Basketball Coach by the Pitch, and KU's Bill Self came in third behind UMKC coach Matt Brown and former Mizzou coach Norm Stewart in the readers' picks.

A hearty congratulations to a trio of Lawrence establishments that made a list of the top 100 college bars for bros by the esteemed cultural periodical BroBible.com (part 1 | part 2).

Bullwinkle's (No. 69), Jayhawk Cafe (aka The Hawk, No. 59) and the Wheel (No. 35) all placed among drinking institutions such as the University of Arizona's Dirtbag's, Ohio University's Broney's, Mizzou's Harpo's and your top bro bar, Indiana University's Kilroy's Sports Bar.

(Side note: I may or may not have frequented several of these bars. Certainly not Miami University's Brick Street nor Benchmark in Chicago.)

So how do the scribes at BroBible.com explain the Lawrence bars' inclusion?

The Bull: "Established in 1920, the Bull's survived its rough jaunt in Prohibition, developing beautifully into to one of KU’s premier drinking establishments." It gives the bar props for great service and "outdoor swag."

The Hawk: "This place gets pretty silly (the ladies gon’ feel me), especially on dollar Wednesdays." Bonus points for being around nearly 100 years (Google says it originally opened in 1919).

The Wheel: "The finest of our Lawrence spots, Wagon Wheel is one for tradition--and therefore, everlasting memories." A reader notes it's a favorite among visiting ESPN crews.

The criteria for inclusion is a bit suspect, but bros will be bros.

A College Bro's bar of choice is not so much a defining factor as it is THE defining factor of what he'll ultimately get out of his sacred four years. Choosing the right booze den has many idiosyncracies, often a function of mood, talent, and overall alcohol friendliness. Yet at the end of the day, there's always those tried and true spots that'll emerge head and shoulders above the rest of them, with forays on beer-soaked floors leading to endless memories both at the venue and in the sheets.

The omission of It's Brothers! is perhaps glaring, but the bar's Champaign, Ill., location got a mention.

Nikki Glaser, a 2006 Kansas University graduate, took the stage on "Conan" Tuesday night, performing a stand-up routine that hit on all the big topics: the perils of living at home, the perils of pregnancy scares and the perils of being broke.

A few years removed from appearing on NBC's "Last Comic Standing," she's set to debut a new show on MTV in January with fellow comedienne Sara Schaefer called "The Nikki and Sara Show."

The pair has a popular podcast called "You Had to Be There." The MTV program is said to be part stand-up, part sketch comedy and part interviews.

They hit it big when they released a video last year imploring Justin Timberlake to make music again.

The New York Times described "You Had to Be There" thusly:

Most podcasts, it’s true, are hosted by people who at least vaguely know each other. But when “You Had to Be There” made its debut in early 2011, Glaser and Schaefer’s burgeoning relationship became a big part of the draw. And they got to know each other quickly. They filled episodes with conversations about the death of Schaefer’s mother, Glaser’s treatment for an eating disorder, various relationship woes and their love of Beyoncé. Talking about the gritty truth allowed them to be earnest and hilarious, and it made the podcast intimate. Now each “You Had to Be There” episode starts with Schaefer and Glaser catching each other up on their lives before welcoming a guest, usually one of their comedian friends, to comment on the duo’s recent adventures.

Kansas City filmmaker Kevin McKinney's documentary "Corporate FM" won over moviegoers who caught the film at the Lawrence Arts Center in May. The film explores the corporate takeover of local radio stations that began with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and led to the homogenization of local radio.

McKinney, a KU grad, uses the example of KLZR, the erstwhile Lazer (now KISS FM), as a poster child for all that's wrong with Big Radio. Interviews with former owner Hank Booth (who expresses remorse for selling that station), former DJs and folks embedded in the bustling Lawrence music scene of the 1990s create a somber scene.

McKinney argues that the lack of diverse, locally owned radio stations leads to cracks in the community (for instance, a syndicated radio show out of Miami can't tell you about a fundraising drive for a cancer-stricken child or that traffic on I-70 is backed up.). The film takes the stance that the plight of local radio represents everything that's wrong with the corporate influence on government and society. Basically, it's all about money.

So McKinney is taking another shot at a Kickstarter campaign to get the film in more independent theaters and college campuses (college kids listen to radio, right?). In June, McKinney tried to raise $20,000 for distribution costs, but that proved impossible. Now he's back with a smaller goal of $7,200.

With four days to go, he's almost there. So far, 75 backers have pledged more than $5,000.

Kickstarter, if you're not aware, allows artists and others seeking funding for projects to raise money through pledged donations. Those donations are put in escrow until the fundraising goal is met. If it is not met, the pledged donations are nullified.

File this one under no good deed goes unpunished.

This combination of two undated handout photos made available by the Centro de estudios Borjanos shows the 20th century Ecce Homo-style fresco of Christ before (left) and after (right) an elderly amateur artist Celia Gimenez, 80, took it upon herself to restore it in the church of the northern Spanish agricultural town of Borja. The incident made national news and was an Internet trending topic Thursday Aug 23 2012 with some Twitter users dubbing it ‘Ecce Mono’, meaning ‘Behold the Monkey’ instead of ‘Behold Man.’

The AP reports:

A small Spanish town is trying to figure out what to do with a 20th-century painting of Christ that has been disfigured by a local artist who took it upon herself to restore it.

Juan Maria Ojeda, an official in Borja town, said 80-year-old Celia Gimenez decided to touch up the fresco of Christ wearing a crown of thorns in the Misericordia church because she thought it need restoration. He said no one realized how badly disfigured the painting was until she rang town hall to say what she had done.

The fate of the painting has made national news in Spain.

The fresco is of the genre known as "Ecce Homo" style ("Behold the Man"). But on Thursday some Twitter users were dubbing it "Ecce Mono" ("Behold the Monkey").

Wichita chef Jason Febres says he didn't mean to offend anyone when he added lion meat to an exotic, $160-a-plate dinner. But the loud voices of the Internet clamoring for his restaurant, Taste & See, to take lion meat off the menu won out, reports the Wichita Eagle.

On his Facebook page Friday night, Febres wrote: “We did took a second look ... and realized that yes, it can be a little shocking and disturbing for some people. ... I did felt touched and didn’t mean to offend anybody so I decided to make it right and substitute the Lion course.”

A Change.org petition garnered more than 10,500 signatures (up from 3,800 when we wrote about the issue Friday), and animal rights group Born Free USA also complained loudly. Febres said the groups were spreading misinformation about the origins of the lion meat; he said the lions are raised on an American farm, not the African plains.

The dinner, set for Tuesday is sold out. And while lion meat is no longer on the menu, diners will still get to try Scottish wild hare, Indian alpaca, Australian crocodile and African water buffalo and antelope.

As we continue to get lots of ballots in our Best of Lawrence contest, one category we didn't have was Best Place to Eat Lion. In Wichita, that place is Taste & See, a Latin-fusion joint that is offering an exotic, $160-per-person eight-course dinner later this month featuring a zoo of meats.

There's Scottish wild hare; alpaca from India; Aussie crocodile; water buffalo from Africa; kangaroo loin; African antelope, and the reason you're reading this, African lion.

It's like an alternate ending to a snuff-film version of "Madagascar." And, not surprisingly, Chef Jason Febres is taking some heat.

A Change.org petition calling for Febres and Taste & See to cancel the dinner has garnered more than 3,800 signatures. The restaurant was forced to take down its Facebook page after it was inundated with angry comments.

The petition claims eating lion meat is wrong - though not illegal - and a health risk. It complains the restaurant won't share where the lions are coming from. Febres says they're from a farm in the U.S.

Febres told local media that had he known there would be such backlash, he wouldn't have proposed the dinner.

"It's a special dining experience for people," Febres told KWCH. "For people to just try something else that they haven't had a chance to eat."

You may have noticed that our sites look a bit different this morning. That's because our content management system has been updated to allow for new and improved features.

I'll talk a bit about those in a moment, but first you should know that, as with any major change, we're experiencing some bugs. So we've been troubleshooting, identifying problem areas and compiling issues so that our Web development team can fix them.

Some of the issues we've experienced so far are: - missing comments; - inaccurate comment counts; - problems with the mobile site of ljworld.com; - email editions are not going out; - problems reading private messages

We apologize for these issues, and we're working to fix them.

Now, for the good news. Our upgraded system has a number of new features that we're excited about.

Social networking

You can now sign into LJWorld.com, KUsports.com and Lawrence.com. using your Twitter, Google or OpenID accounts.

In comments

• An updated "reply" function that makes threaded comments easier to follow;
• A thumbs-up button that lets users like a comment, as you might on Facebook.
• Links to photos and videos will now show in the comments section, and users can upload photos with a caption; remember, with great power comes great responsibility

Mobile

If you're tired of trying to navigate our sites on your phone, you'll be pleased to know that the sites now automatically redirect to stripped-down mobile versions, which are easier to read. We're still working out some kinks, but we're especially excited about this. If you liked reading the regular site on your mobile device, there's a "view full site" button at the bottom of the page, which loads the normal site.

We anticipate more features rolling out in the near future. If you're experiencing any of our growing pains, please be patient as we work out the kinks.

Boulevard Brewing Company announced today it would not produce the furiously sought-after Chocolate Ale this winter, hinting that it faced problems meeting customer demand.

Boulevard's Chocolate Ale is in demand, but supplies are virtually gone.

In an announcement on its website, Boulevard said it isn't necessarily ending production of Chocolate Ale forever, but it won't be part of the popular Smokestack Series for 2013.

It’s no secret that Boulevard faced challenges during the two previous releases of the popular seasonal beer, not least of which was satisfying surprisingly strong consumer demand. The company is actively working on several initiatives to help overcome these challenges, for Chocolate Ale as well as its other Smokestack Series seasonal and limited release offerings.

Beer fans across the Kansas City area raced to get some of the limited-production brew this year.

“It’s just so popular and just so limited on once a year when they make it that people just go crazy for it,” On the Rocks manager Matt Green told Lawrence.com in February. “It might have gone even faster this year.”

Later that month, the brewery announced some its Chocolate Ale, which was made in collaboration with KC chocolatier Christopher Elbow, had an "unwanted flavor," and offered refunds.

So it's a bummer for beer nuts with sweet teeth. But if it's any consolation, Boulevard's just released a new addition to the Smokestack Series, called Love Child No. 2. It's features "sour characteristics that come to the fore, foreshadowed by the tart, winey aroma. Notes of cherry, oak, olive, brine and leather give way to a subtle hint of funk and a dry, earthy finish," according to the brewery's tasting notes.

by Alex Parker

But if you want it, you'd better act now. Only 16,800 bottles of Boulevard's most expensive beer to date were brewed.

In our haste to make what we thought was a minor change - changing the Arts and Entertainment link on LJWorld.com to take readers to Lawrence.com - we failed to properly account for several items that readers are now asking about, namely games and puzzles, and comics.

Don't worry! They haven't gone away. They're just in a new place. You can now find our games and puzzles here, and comics can be found here. They're also part of the "Latest" tab on the navigation bar above; just hover over that, and you'll see the links near the bottom of the menu.

And if you don't want to hang out on Lawrence.com, you can still visit the old A&E page. It just won't be updated frequently. But we hope you'll join us over here in Lcom Land, where we'll be putting a greater focus on arts and entertainment coverage.