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Hearne’s been sending me ideas all week for things to write about.
He wants me to write about Gloria again. But I can’t upload vomit.
He wants me to write about Tony’s Kansas City. But it’s the same thing with diarrhea.
He wants the “top reasons why Kansas City will never truly make it to the Big Time.” But that would be pretty stupid coming from me because there are a lot more reasons why I won’t.
He wants me to write a “road map for KC to mend its small town mentality ways.” But I don’t really think KC has a “small town” mentality. I think it has a suburban mentality, which is worse. So my road map is this: Remember that Kansas City is a fucking city.
But that’s not really enough for a column.
And not just any column. My last column. The swan song of a shooting star who burned ever so brightly. History. Right before your eyes. On the Internets.
Savor it.
I told a friend yesterday that writing this marathon series of posts has had me feeling like I’m the schmuck who’s trying to make his girlfriend break up with him. But now that I think about it, I realize that’s ridiculous because Kansas City barely even knows I’m alive, much less sees me as relationship material.
I’m thinking it’s more like I hate saying goodbye. So this narcissistic purging online has been an effective way to rouse a small but noisy Greek chorus of boos to encourage me on my way.
When I haven’t been writing leftist screeds for Hearne, I’ve been hitting some of my favorite spots.
I dropped a hundred bucks at Love Garden on Friday. Had an order of short ends at Bryant’s today. Been walking the dogs at Berkley Riverfront Park everyday.
On Saturday, my wife and I relived our first date, or what she believes to be our first date. We spent the afternoon hopping from gallery to gallery.
When we got to the H&R Block Art Space near the Kansas City Art Institute we saw the amazing exhibition of brilliant performance/video pieces by John Wood and Paul Harrison.
And I understood then what I was trying to get at with my first installment in this series, the post about how I’d ruined this town for myself.
The upshot in that post was that I’d made an ass of myself in politics and I’d done a lot of people wrong and now I can’t go anywhere in the city without fear of an awkward interaction with somebody.
Which is true.
But it’s more that I came here for reasons that pretty much negated my ability to build a real, lasting relationship with this place.
When I came to work for the Pitch, my charge was to find shit that’s wrong with this place, and put it all out there, with my name on top.
Finding fault, and getting attention. Not the best motives for a healthy, long-term relationship.
Now I’m going some place new and maybe I’ve learned enough to do it right this time. When people ask me how I feel about moving, I say I’m looking forward to living in a place where I can just enjoy the sausage and not know or worry about how it’s made, where I can live in an anonymity more befitting of my name.
Am I going to miss it?
Some things. I’ll definitely miss Love Garden. Fucking amazing record store. Earwaxx, too, for the old stuff. Boulevard Beer. Bryants. The new bike path by Berkley Park. Cliff Drive. City Market. Elbow Chocolate. Charles Feruzza’s writing. The Pitch. The Brick. The KC Library. Fall. Spring. Ice storms. Broadway Café. The Franz Klein and Mike Rothko pieces at the Nelson. The Nelson, especially the new addition. Charlotte Street. Cellar Rat. Frevere bread. El Torito Taqueria y Carneceria. Some people.
Short list, really.
Makes me kind of feel as though I never even lived here.
Closing Time
Every new beginning is some other beginnings end.
Take solace in the fact that those that never fail never do anything.
Good luck!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Joe,
when you teach a class, show this column to your students. So they can realize how truly uncoachable you were.
You phoned this is for your final $50.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Know Your Artist
Mark Rothko…not Mike Rothko. But you should check out some of the Clarence Monet pieces.
Joe has left the building….somebody count the silverware
Just a few parting shots before you let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
1. Gloria makes you want to vomit. Just a month or two back you professed your undying love to the bare foot beast. Even when you try to man up and talk hard, you come off like the pillsbury dough boy. Even as you attempt to show some spine you manage to fail by contradicting yourself.
2. Hearne comes of as a douche bag, at least that’s the feel I get from his writing. That said, he has embraced that shit. He is consistant. The only consistancy in your writing is the certainty that you will spend part or all of the post with a a huge dose of self pity. No humor. No real substance. Just white guilt, low self esteem, and a delusional belief that you can actually write anything anyone will care about.
3. The Pitch years. i’ve lived in this city most all of my 52 years, read the pitch since it started. I cant recall a single thing you ever penned. Not. Fucking. One. On the other hand , Nadia, Martin, Rugg, Feruzza, have all written some solid stuff that I recall even now. Hell Joe Tone was around for less than a year, and he wrote some memorable stuff. You wrote a book that nobody read and a hit piece on Salon that showed you to not only be a fuckin cry baby, but a rat who sold out the people who he swore loyalty to. Nobody likes a rat.
4. The people of KC, or at least the ones who read this site, don’t need any parting advice on how to be “a city”. We made it before you slithered on the scene, and I’m sure we will continue to plod along with a straw hanging out of our mouths as we sit on a split rail fence and drink moonshine like the suburban hillbilly hoople heads you take us for.
5. last but not least, you won’t be missed. In order to be missed, people need to know you existed. Your fifteen minutes was up after you scurried from city hall after helping those 2 trolls fuck this city up. There won’t be any trace of you once you are departed from this town. Not a single earth shoe footprint.
now beat it.
Oh, shit I almost forgot. Good luck!
damn
Mark ripped you a new one there. I agree. I couldn’t really put my finger on it but the lack of consistency, self-pity and bad rat-tidude make reading your pity party-ing shots an uncomfortable read.
This site in general should be called something like “Locker Room Confessionals.” You, Hearne and Glazer just get together and pump each other up about how you really mattered once and/or still do. Here’s some highlights from the locker room confessional:
“I did blow and made out with insecure 18-year-old college students and then posted a picture of it on Hearne’s blog which gets 75 million page views a FORTNIGHT!”
“I got some people elected who make me want to vomit and NOBODY can fucking take it away from me!” (WTF?)
“I didn’t get fired, I got laidoff, and I’m still trying to explain the difference (to who?) 3 years later. my lockeroom confessionals program is guaranteed to be the next big news source trust me (last two words in italics).”
Someone please put this site out of its misery. It started out promising, but clearly anyone with a sense of shame is gone and so are the bloggers who got tired of this hotbed of insecurity. You’ve got some hack doing comedy that’s painful to read, a kid writing sporadically about bands the pitch put on their cover years ago, and then Glazer’s daily boasts about how awesome he is. Shit is sad. Leave it in the lockerroom, my gossipy bro-dogs! Middle age is a bitch.
Mark Smith
I love the venom coming from Mark Smith. Especially the condescending part about Joe’s book, which was quite good, read by quit a number of people and resonated well with the critics. But like many bloggers in this town, Mark Smith sees failure in other people’s accomplishments. Or perhaps sees his own failure. Mark Smith writes a pedestrian blog with a holier than not too much whine to each passage, has no book with his name on the cover but a rap sheet adorned with moronic crimes. So yes, the venom coming from Mark Smith is quite funny. But not for the reasons Mark Smith is probably hoping for. Joke’s on him.
Good luck, Joe. Your writing will be missed here.
thanks for the plug tom
You forgot to link. Midtownmiscreant.blogspot.com .
a not so smart phone or a Freudian slip?
Mark sloth? Wtf?
Sloth’s probably right
Yeah, I’d say you’re something of a sloth. You’ve been visiting about each and every Joe Miller post on this site and repeating all the same ad hominem attacks against him. So yeah, Mark Sloth has a nice ring to it and it’s fairly accurate.
Hey, Mark.
Joe said he felt guilty about Gloria. Not that he wanted to take anything back. For crying out loud, he then turned around and gave me the scoop that she and Funk did it on the mayoral couch!
Second, thanks for the, uh, compliment. I’ll consider the source.
Third, from your memory of Joe at the Pitch it’s painfully clear that you recall the recent writers. Hello! Joe left when most of those folks were just getting started. That’s OK though. Most people remember stuff that’s a year or two old better than five or six years. Don’t worry about it.
Fourthly, I love this comment. Big hug.
As for number 5, well said again. I don’t ness agree but you laid it down quite well.
Well Toby, your anger issues aside, it’s comforting to us that you are here reading us still. And bestowing upon us all your infinite wisdom. Can’t tell you what it means to us all.
I’m with Tom. For what it’s worth!
So long Joe, we hardly knew ye
I got nothing else for ya, except…
I ate at Bryants a month or so ago.
God it was fuckin awful.
Cold fries, stringy meat, small portions.
Yech!! Has the place been bought out or somethin???
Haywoods is terrible too. Jeeze. awful.
I have been doin Brobecks, really tasty. You guys ever try the Beef Brisket sammy at McGonnigles? Excellent.
Gates sucks, you get a great meal 2 outta 5 times, but 2 other meals are average, and one (Like the one I had Thursday) is nasty. Bad stringy meat again (Cue some jokes here…).
Gotta go take cram some statins down my throat (Cue some jokes here).
Only Joe could get fuckin Bar B Q wrong in KC.
Vaya con dias.
Statins and Goose
My car always points to Danny Edwards for Que. No corner cutting…fresh hand sliced.
Gates has Best Ribs..a little pricey..
Will try Brobrecks…in the old DQ right?
Rosedale = Aldi of BBQ
Danny’s stuff is first rate
I’m not down there very often.