KC Confidential

Hey, I’m no expert…

That said, I’ve been fumbling around off and on for seven, eight years, so you’d think I would know something. But I’m gonna tell you the truth; I totally don’t.

Except to say, try to avoid positioning yourself  in such a manner that you either have to know better, or can’t stop yourself. That make any sense?

Didn’t think so.

In my case, I started my online dating misadventure around 2017 when I found myself hanging out in Lawrence, Kansas learning to sell hot cars . Fun cars, not stolen hot cars, by the way. Specifically BMWs, Volkswagens and exotic European cars.

After a couple successful careers in the stock and commodities racket, advertising and marketing, then writing, I wanted to do something where I could make pretty good money, have fun meeting and working with a wide range of people, so being a “car guy” seemed to make sense.

A friend of mine, Marion Battaglia the head of Aristocrat Motors in Kansas City had been hinting for some time that he’d like me to join him, and when I found out he’d just taken over a small dealership in Topeka, Kansas – of all places – I was living a half hour away in Lawrence, so I called him and next thing I knew I had a gig helping market his brand new place.

It was pretty cool…

Even though I had this marketing title, how much publicity and excitement can one churn up in a tiny town like T Town?

Uh, not that much, media wise.

So I joined forces with a handful of rookie fellow car salespeople and started filling my days washing cars for deliveries to customers, answering phones, greeting locals who walked in warily – expecting the worse (come on, who doesn’t love talking to car salesmen) – and after two or so months of pretending to be “in marketing,” I woke up one day and found that by selling cars, I was making double, triple or quadruple my marketing money.

Moreover, I didn’t have to lower myself to the stereotype of doing the sorts of stuff people often fear and expect from car salespeople. And since I lucked out and was working for a blue chip company like Aristocrat Motors, we had the finest assembly of new and pre-owned (as opposed to “used”) cars in the Topeka market.

Locals could buy stereotypical American and Asian-made cars, or they could take a walk on the wild side with me and get really good deals on European spec cars. Cars that were far more fun and distinctive than what everybody else in town was hawking.

And it fit right in with my column writing career…

I got to talk to a wide variety of people every day, have fun meeting and getting to know them, and actually help them, rather than con them like many expected.

So it worked… Continue reading →

Don’t spend much time boring you guys about my personal life, but…

As I think you know, I’m going through a divorce right now (what, again) in Arizona. It’s kinda been dragging on for nearly two years with – I’m happy to report – zero fireworks. Meaning, everything is filed and with luck will be o-v-e-r ASAP.

So what have I been up to of late?

Well, last summer I got a pair of new knees from Santa, that I’d been waiting on for three years. So now I can finally qualify for whatever passes for the senior olympics and prepare for my long wanted hang gliding lessons.

Largely healthy otherwise, for the most part. Unless, of course, you count what my wife describes as my near death experience with the  original COVID. I contracted it five days before Christmas 2020, a month before the first vaccine was released.

Actually, it was kinda colorful with a few fun accents. Like passing out on the sidewalk outside a rental car company after returning to Tucson from Kansas City. Not exactly sure how that went down, but one minute I was living large, anxious to get home and catch a few zzzzzzzzzzzs.

Next thing I knew, I was –  in a private hospital room, being kept pretty much away from anyone and everyone that was hoping not to die of whatever exactly I had. Not surprisingly, it was a pretty anxious time – and the name of the game for the nurses, was to get me the heck out of Dodge, so to speak.  The next morning they wheeled me to the exit door and my wife took me home where I was more than happy to climb onto a new seven grand mattress and try not to look I was going to my final resting place.

Then for eight, pretty much totally out of it days, I was in a daze.

Truth be told, I had no clue as to what was happening, how I ate; what I ate; how or what I drank; or how I, uh, relieved myself. I was long gone – or as President Trump might say, gone baby gone! Continue reading →

Why do so many folks seem to be running around with their hair on fire? 

It’s like some sort of Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World condition has overtaken our culture. I remember growing up when our parents and their friends – on opposite sides of the political spectrum – could still joke about politics. And they didn’t seem to think their world was coming to an end when their side lost.

My parents were republicans, old school republicans. They had some dough, didn’t like being in those 70 to 90 percent tax brackets, but they didn’t lose it when JFK beat Nixon.

Oh, they gave it their best shot – campaign contributions and let people know who they thought was in the right. They also went to high society election parties – or hosted them – and nobody got beat up or black balled because they saw things in a different light.

And everybody lived to tell the story, or so it seemed.

Fast forward to today…

We live in a time where the sky-is-falling when the party of our choice takes an election night bullet. Everybody’s either cheating, or wish they had, when their side looses.

True confession:  I voted for Trump – the first time almost as a lark. Like the times I voted for Ralph Nader. Even though as a “car guy,” most automotive enthusiasts thought of Nader as the Great Satin – an enemy of automotive fun. Making all those obnoxious, burdensome safety regs…the annoying seat belt buzzers people used to unplug or string their belts behind them and plug them in without actually wearing. Remember?

People tend not to like change, and I have to admit that it took me some time before I started putting my seatbelt on without feeling a little annoyed, Then again, most of my earliest cars were two seater convertibles, so I wasn’t exactly a safety nut – just a regular nut.

Back to my original point…

These days people seem hell bent on over overreacting to anything and everything. I feel sorry for my more liberal friends that have to put up with some of the crazy picks Trump is making. They’re besides themselves.

Am I missing something?

Yet after the past four years, even inanity seems refreshing. Continue reading →

When I was a lad, I learned one thing…

The kids we called “jocks,” were celebrated by schools, teachers and students. They got their perks, and aside from playing big shots, acting tough, intimidating mild mannered students, stuffing them into trash cans and making flatulent sound effects, they often lead classy existences.

For the record, I attended to one of the snootiest, high dollar private schools in KC – perhaps you’ve heard of it, Pembroke.

So listening to ESPN talking heads discuss former Chief Tyreek Hill’s high profile arrest earlier Sunday was, uh, familiar.

“I cannot fathom this (happening),” deadpanned former Chiefs QB Alex Smith who I believe was a Chiefs when Tyreek was drafted.  “I don’t know what happened.”

First, let’s take a brief step into what passes for the real world.

The one where Oklahoma State kicked Hill off the team despite his skills, which enabled the Chiefs to draft him on the cheap because nobody else wanted the risk.

Remember?

Hill is quoted yesterday as saying something like, he didn’t do anything to deserve to be cuffed and laid face down on the street, because that’s not the way his mother raised him.

Seriously…

How about the time he roughed up the pregnant mother of son Zev? She raise him to do that?

Check out Hill’s official statement at the time:

“I was in a fight with my girlfriend that turned physical between us and I wrongfully put her in a headlock, putting external pressure on her neck that compressed her airway causing bodily injury.”

Hill’s testimony that helped cause OK State to cut him lose:

“I — I did something that — I did something that I shouldn’t have done that night, which was I just let my feelings take — take control of me…I wasn’t thinking. I just — I just reacted and hit her, choked her. I’m real sorry for that.”

Continue reading →