Yearly Archives: 2011
Today: Source Says Kauffman Performing Arts Center Crowd 20,000 Not 55,000
Why ruin a totally cool event with fraudulent crowd counts?
Simply said, there’s no effing way the new, 3.400 seat Kauffman Performing Arts Center hosted 55,000 people at its open house Sunday.
I mean, think about it.
That’s nearly double the size of the Plaza Lighting Ceremony. More people than attend sold out Royals games, which have acres of parking and dozens of police and staff to manage and control the traffic and crowds.
All of that said, here’s what the Star’s Robert Truseell reported:
"Nobody can know with certainty how many people actually walked through the center Sunday, but an estimate of 55,000 was based on the assumption that the building could only accommodate 5,000 at a time. If that number ‘turned over’ 10 times, then total attendance would be 50,000, which was the official estimate by midafternoon. Later, (Kauffman CEO Jane Chu) upped the figure to 55,000."
Hold it right there…
Today: Love at First Sight? Nah, Just the Watson’s Girl & Ex Star Honcho Mark Zieman
OK Cliffy, you asked for it, now you’re gonna get it…
I’m not talking Craig Glazer. I’m not gonna punch anybody’s lights out, Just making good on my pledge to publish the pic I took several years back of Watson’s Girl Jennifer Eichler and then Star editor Mark Zieman.
It was taken when the owners of Watson’s (now Family Leisure) strode through town calling on advertisers – the Star being one – and I hijacked the Watson’s Girl for a photo shoot. The Star photographer who got to do the honors still worships at my altar for bestowing on him the savory task.
Far less thrilled was Zieman, who posed uncomfortably (and looking a little pudgy) when I led Jennifer to his office while giving her a tour of the newsroom and asked them to pose. Yes, it was my idea alone. Nothing sinister, mind you. I’d have done the same thing had she been standing by that statue of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois.
I digress…
Starbeams: Breaking Smashing, Where’s Whitney? & Thinking Outside The Bun
A group of eight children were arrested for breaking into Weeks Elementary in Kansas City and vandalizing school computers to the tune of more than $25,000 in damages. When I went to Devry, we used to get arrested for breaking into the school to do maintenance on the computers.
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Sweet Springs kindergarten students were asked to bring important family items to show and tell. One kindergartner brought his mother’s crack pipe and an ounce of drugs. His mom is now in prison. I wasn’t aware that Whitney Houston lived in Sweet Springs?
Jack Goes Confidential: Yale Economics (and the Royals) Fuels ‘MONEYBALL’
Let me say right upfront MONEYBALL is a terrific movie…
And like me, you don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy it. Why?
Because it explores ones true worth, being an underdog and one of the most unorthodox comebacks in Major League Baseball. Let’s be real, back in 2001 there were rich teams, poor teams and crap teams like the OAKLAND A’S.
And there was no money to ‘buy-up’
Enter legendary general manager Billy Bean (Brad Pitt) who hires nerdy Yale grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) whose analysis techniques revolutionized the way teams evaluated players and took the A’s all the way to the playoffs despite having one of the lowest payrolls in the majors!
Glazer: War is Hell and Hell is for Heroes
Sgt. Dakota Meyer didn’t smile much when the President of The United States put that Medal of Honor on his chest.
Meyer understood what the medal had cost. And not just on the day of the combat, September 8, 2009, but all that went before.
I watched Meyer on 60 Minutes and he’s an impressive young man. One of the youngest Medal of Honor winners in several decades at 23. He’s also alive and not wounded. He saved 36 lives that day.
Of the men he went back for, four US Marines, were dead when he got to them. They were pinned down and had called for help. And other than Meyer, it never came. How sad and tragic. Meyer said, "He felt he had failed" because they all died. It wasn’t his fault, of course.
He also said the most interesting thing of all. When asked if it was worth it – THE WAR – did it really mean anything, he answered, "No."
I agree.
Leftridge: Charles Done for Year: Fantasy Football Fans Despondent, Suicidal
With one awkward landing, a fantastic grimace and the collective gasp of hundreds of thousands of fans, Jamaal Charles effectively dashed this town’s playoff hopes against the rocks of reality.
Okay, so I’m being melodramatic.
This season was likely lost before Charles’ knee turned into a quivering mass of gelatin early in Sunday’s game. Had he not gone down, and had all of the stars that were rapidly plummeting to earth remained securely tucked in the heavens, this was still nothing better than an 8 win team. At absolute best. But truthfully, they’d been shaving wins off of the turkey’s carcass before the season even started.
Sounds Good: Steve Earle@Uptown, Dollar Fox@???, An Horse@Jackpot
Hello everyone, it’s that time once again for "Who’s More Grizzled?" the game show that finds out who’s the roughest, toughest, most grizzled old timer around.
Let’s bring out the contestants. He is our returning champion; he dropped out of school in the ninth grade, is a former heroin addict, and has been married seven times – twice to the same woman. Plus, he attended the execution of an inmate in Texas in 1996, and has been accused of being a terrorist sympathizer.
Everyone say hello to Steve!
Steve, what’ve you been up to lately? – I don’t care much for you.
And I don’t blame you, Steve. Here are your categories: War, Hard Times, Bear Attacks, Ailments, Dead Wives, and finally, the Government…
Hearne: The Pitch’s ‘Big Deal’ Tanking; Are Daily Deals Drying Up?
Goes without saying, when even the Pitch and Star hop on the daily discount deals bandwagon the party’s about over….
With two fierce years and dozens of firms hawking half price email offerings, a thinning of the herd is in order. So how many different companies are out there attempting to con local businesses into giving their shit away at half price?
"I’ve been contacted by no less than 40 and I’ve used 10," says Stanford’s main man Craig Glazer. "And none of them got anywhere near the results I got with Living Social and Groupon. Our last round with Groupon was in May and we did around 1,000 deals when they had 450,000 people on their list. Now they say they have 680,000."
New owners of the Pitch are trying to cash in on the gold rush but with little apparent success.
I contacted a number of businesses that participated in the Pitch‘s The Big Deal. Results; weak as a kitten. Its Big Deal Kansas City Facebook page has been frozen for weeks at 146 "likes."
Glazer: 610 Sports’ Nick Wright Now on the Craig Glazer Bandwagon
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Yes it’s true…
610 Sports afternoon host Nick Wright now says on the air that he believes Chiefs coach Todd Haley will soon be gone. And Nick really likes Todd and thinks he is a good coach in a bad situation. But Nick believes Scott Pioli is also to blame and blames him hard.
It’s now also known that Todd and Scott do not get along and haven’t for some time.
All of which adds up to the following; its just a matter of time before Haley is let go by the Chiefs. Word at Woodside – where I met Haley during his first season – is that the decision has already been made. I think the Haley family is getting ready to leave Kansas City soon. Not until after it’s official, of course. I also believe Haley will land a post in the NFL or College Football, but probably not as a head coach in the NFL.
Many other radio sports guys are saying how shocked they are at Chiefs being so bad and that nobody saw this coming.
Glazer: The KCC, True Hollywood Story of Chocolate Becky
It’s not often the No.1 morning radio host gets upstaged…
But it happened last week when Johnny Dare had local media phenom Chocolate Becky on as his guest. OMG, she rocked the house big time. So much so, Dare’s considering her as the replacement for recently departed Kari Coogan.
Not so fast.
More likely Becky will get her own segment once a week or more. Why?
"You have to be good at reading the news and do alot of homework," Dare says. "And that’s a bit tough for someone who’s never done that. But oh yeah, we want her."
So who is Chocolate Becky, for God’s sake?
New Jack City: Nice Rack (at 97th and Quivira, that is)
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It’s been quite a year for national brand favorites expanding into Kansas City…
The most anticipated was the long awaited opening of not one, but two TRADER JOE’S. And let’s not overlook popular Nebraska export RUNZA which opened its first fast food outlet recently in Mission. JACK IN THE BOX made a splash last year in KCK and its second opens this coming Monday at 103rd and Metcalf in OP.
They say Jack’s’ tacos are to die for.
But hold on, there’s another really big one right around the corner.
Hearne: Remember When Jason Whitlock Tweeted He’d Replace Nick Wright Sept. 5th?
Don’t look now but…
A funny thing happened earlier this month. September 5th to be exact. That’s the date former Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock teased via Twitter that he’d be heading home to KC to do a radio show on 610 Sports. Maybe even take rising star Nick Wright‘s place.
Some local bloggers were all over that story early this summer. The Royals were in the tank. The Chiefs up in the air. And MU, KU and K-State football and KU basketball were a long way off. Even the Big 12 appeared halfway off the hook. They needed something to write about.
Remember the sports talk radio war?
"He intended everyone to think he meant he was coming back to take my job," Wright says.
Today: Lest There Be Any Mystery, I Present To You Brandon Leftridge
You asked for it…
You wanted an even humbler sports scribe. Someone to walk the walk and talk the talk, hotties be damned. A writer with whom English is not a second language – sex with strangers an avocation. A sportswriter cut from the actual cloth (not Fredericks of Hollywood). With ears not mired in the hopelessness of Don Fortune and the inability to look past hip-hop into the full metal straightjacket that is Kansas City.
To borrow a trite expression from fallen Star Jason Whitlock – you wanted "the real deal."
So here it is…
Glazer: Humble Scribe Apologizes to Chiefs Fans, Prescribes Fresh Air Cure
Yes I know, I know your Humble Scribe is a near genius NFL/College football guy…
Nobody in the KC sports media has had the two weeks I have. I have one game left on the Pros and if that wins, I’ll have gone 100% on pro picks and gotten all but that late night ASU game that I missed by half a point. Yes, I know you all want my cell number for next week. I did have two Vegas guys (people I met there not casino employees) call for my pic’s. Nice.
OK our Clown Act (the Chiefs) Quit.
They quit on their coach, their city, their profession. This team would like to forfeit the season. They would, I’m not kidding. Almost none of them want to play anymore. In fact, at season’s end this team will be mentioned with the ALL TIME WORST NFL CLUBS.
Leftridge: Curtains for Great Kansas Hope Ortiz, Mayweather Still Sidestepping Pacquiao
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A headbutt.
A hug and a kiss.
A cheap (legal) shot.
And that was all she wrote.
Floyd Mayweather (42-0), undefeated, undisputed champion of everything not MMA, knocked out local(ish) boy Victor Ortiz (29-3-2) in the fourth round of Saturday’s battle in Las Vegas. The hook he threw that connected solidly with Ortiz’s chin was about as hard a punch as Mayweather throws—but it didn’t come without controversy.
Leftridge: Weekend That Was; Chiefs Implode, Royals Tantalize, KU Curb-Stomped
The ship done sank before it left the dock…
Everything that you need to know happened in the first drive. Back to back 15-yard penalties against the Chiefs. A fumbled interception by Jon ‘Yee-haw’ McGraw. Our newly minted $50 million dollar man getting blasted for a touchdown.
The summation of the game reads like some sort of Kafkaesque nightmare crafted specifically to cost a head coach his job. Six turnovers. An anemic offense. A porous defense. Eight penalties for 70 yards to their 4/35. You’re never going to win this game on the road. EVER. You’re rarely going to pull this kind of thing off at home.
And perhaps the biggest blow of all was the injury to Jamaal Charles. Look, almost nobody in their right mind thought that the Chiefs would be winning the division this year, but strident optimists thought that maybe they’d be able to crap out 8 or 9 wins. If Charles is out for any extended period of time, however, all bets are off. It will mean that they’ve firmly planted themselves in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes, though.
Elsewhere:
Starbeams: Kauffman Center Boasts of ‘Plaza Lights” Crowd, Chiefs Lose to Infomercial & No Cheese!
An estimated 50,000 people took the first public tour of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Sunday. Sounds like they hired the same folks who used to put out the Plaza lights crowd count. I was there with the family but discovered the line to get in was 4 blocks long.
Most of the people I met thought they were in the unemployment line.
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Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles had a season-ending injury yesterday as the team fell apart losing 48-3 to Detroit. Even worse, the TV ratings are out and the Chiefs game came in behind an infomercial aired by Channel 9.
Hearne: Halloween City Blows Away Christmas at Borders, 91st & Metcalf
I’ve seen the future of Halloween and it is now….
That spanking new Halloween City at 91st and Metcalf in the former home of Borders Books is eye popping beyond belief. I kid you not. This store has anything and everything that you can or cannot imagine where Halloween is concerned. And you can take that to the bank.
Entire sections of spiders, swords, Jack O Lanterns, vampire capes, witch’s brooms and hats, plastic swords, caveman clubs, shields, fog and sound effects machines, massive displays of everything immaginable, devil paraphernelia, "spooky frames," life-sized, suspendible fiends of every type and an incredibly wide variety of costumes for every age.
Plus a whole heckuva lot more.
Remember how vast Kansas City’s first Borders was? Halloween City has jammed stuff into every square inch!
It’s Disney in Orlando-like, and then some. It’s completely over-the-top. It puts Christmas to shame.
And here’s where it starts to get interesting…
Starbeams: New Federal Reserve Board Queen & Top 10 Reasons Bikers Won’t Miss Sedalia
For the first time in its 97 year history, a woman will lead the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Esther George is from Faucett, Missouri, just north of the metro. With a woman’s in charge of such a powerful bank, there’s bound to be a SUBSTANTIAL PENALTY FOR EARLY WITHDRAWAL. I tried going through theReserve bank drive-thru to get a sucker recently, but all I got was a black helicopter and and a lot of questions from the FBI.
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Yesterday we learned AMC Theatres is moving its headquarters from downtown KC to South Leawood. Also, the 28th annual BIKE MS Ride is moving from Missouri to Kansas. We used to ride from Ray-Pec to Sedalia. Saturday, we ride from Garmin in Olathe to Lawrence.
To wit…
The TOP 10 THINGS WE WON’T MISS ABOUT RIDING TO SEDALIA:
Hearne: Don’t Look Now but KC Confidential has a New Sports Columnist
It’s like this…
Things are about to get a lot more sporty at KC Confidential. You asked for it and now you’re about to get it receive. Starting this Monday – and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday – KCC will sally forth with a blazingly hot, new sports columnist. One who even knows how to spell and has a rudimentary command of the King’s English.
A dude who’s passionate about sports and will bring both a knife and an edge to the gunfight otherwise known as the "comments section." Some of you may remember him from the Pitch. And no, it’s not C.J. I’m talking a different kinda dude.
And not Charles Ferruzza either.
I won’t bore you with the details until I can unleash a full bio but, suffice it to say sports is back.
