Yearly Archives: 2011
New Jack City: Your Tax Dollars at Work – Don’t Ask-Just Measure!
Too much dysfunctional dicking around in Washington DC?
So what else is new? Now the National Institutes of Health, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, has come under scrutiny for spending precious dollars on what many consider to be useless and wasteful programs.
You decide!
Probably the most stupid of the bunch was a study that examined what effect a gay man’s penis size has on his sex life. Apparently inquiring minds wanted to know to the tune of $899,769.
Other recent research by the agency has been directed towards fascinating and must-know subjects as:
Glazer: Tom Cruise Rocks TJ Miller with Movie Schmooze @ Stanford’s
My buddy TJ Miller is now closer to being able to say, "Man, I’ve done it all…"
On his way to Stanford’s last week, to help launch the career of his pal, Nick Vatterott, Miller got a call from his agent. Tom Cruise is shooting a big budget film called ROCK OF AGES and had one more part to cast. Tom picks his co-stars and he’d just been watching Miller’s clips and asked TJ to come to Miami Sunday, hang and go over his part.
TJ joked, "Hell, they’re spending more on getting me there and five star hotel and travel than I may even get paid."
A limo picked TJ up at the Legends hotel he was staying. And last night he was hanging with the Cruiser in Miami.
Joe Miller: Democracy, Inc. in Kansas City
One of the most disturbing moments in my short run in politics came right at the end, when I was working on the campaign for light rail in fall 2008.
I was the Mayor’s Office rep on the campaign committee, which was chaired by C. Patrick McLarney, a lawyer who worked for a long time at Shook Hardy & Bacon and who is involved with all kinds of civic stuff. Anyway, we had just finished a meeting with the committee and a few of us were lingering in the conference room at Shook’s headquarters when McLarney declared that he had an idea for how we’d get voters’ attention.
“We’ll just have Tracy stand out by the highway with her shirt off,” he said.
Donnelly: Bela Fleck and Bruce Horsnby at Crossroads KC, July 22, 2011
Bela Fleck has been described in a lot of different ways.
"Best banjo player ever."
"Musical buffet."
"Humblest superstar I know."
And it makes sense, because musically, he is a virtuoso, who moves effortlessly through styles and genres – and sometimes even makes up entirely new ones – while plying his trade alongside musicians from every conceivable background and style.
But until Friday night I had never heard Fleck described the way Flecktones bassist, Victor Wooten, did…
Glazer: Keeping the Faith, a Slam Time Flashback
The prison guard aimed his shotgun at my waist…
There was really no need for that. I was shackled from head to toe. Handcuffs, leg irons and a waist chain hooked to the man next to me. I looked up at the towers, just like in the movies, and it was like Alcatraz. It was Terminal Island Federal Prison, around 10 PM, mid-March, 1985.
I was about to start a seven-year hitch in prison. I had taken over a million dollars in an elaborate sting against Colombian Cartel members over a one year period. My crew had posed as Mafia members in Vegas to convince the Cartel we were to be trusted laundering their money. But my crew were all paid actors – like in the movie "The Sting" – and the Cartel was actually the Pacific Strike Force made up of FBI, DEA, IRS, Customs and attached LA police officers.
Yeah, I took them alright. But in the end about the worst thing you can do is "sting" the Feds.
Glazer: KMBZ’s Shanin & Parks Show Fighting the Good Fight
I’ve been a guest on the Mike Shanin and Scott Parks show on 980 KMBZ many times…
Both been wonderful to me as a guest. Yeah, like Johnny Dare they like to give me a little bit of crap. "Oh now he’s gonna mention his book six times." Or, "Oh yeah, we forgot he’s also a film producer as well."
Parks can be a bit edgy at times, as can Shanin.
But I have to say this; no other show, including sports talk, has more callers than these guys.
I know they have decent numbers in the new Arbitron ratings system, but like many people, I’m not sure how accurate that system is.
Starbeams: KC Cops Face Facebook, Whitlock Showers & Lara Moritz does Obama
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Kansas City municipal court is going paperless. Now officers will whip out a hand held computer, input your offense, and print a receipt right on the spot as you get a ticket. For an extra $20 he can post your offense on Facebook and poke somebody.
*******
Kansas City water services is asking people to conserve water because they’re treating 153 million gallons of wet stuff a month. That’s compared the usual 115 million. Most of the water is being used for watering lawns and then water main breaks suck up a lot of it. The record was over 200 million gallons in 2007. This was back when Jason Whitlock was bathing twice a day.
Joe Miller: What’s Black and White and White All Over?
A year or so after I moved to Kansas City, the Star offered an opportunity for select readers to come and tour their newsroom and printing plant, and to attend an editorial meeting. I signed up for it without disclosing that I was a reporter for the Pitch.
I was in my early 30s then and I was the youngest person on the tour. All of us were white. When we met with the Star’s editorial board, one of the older members of our touring party, a man from a suburb on the far edge of the metropolitan area, told how he basked in the paper everyday, reading the sports page first, then the front section, then local and business, and finally the lifestyle section, and the comics.
Jack Goes Confidential: ‘FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS’ Cruises Predictable Territory
Ever heard, "Liking HARRY POTTER doesn’t make you gay." How about, "Do you know how hard it is to pee with a hard-on?"
Those are just two of the nuggets from the trying-too-hard-to-be-hip, romantic comedy FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS. It’s not as we haven’t seen it before.
Like earlier this year in NO STRINGS ATTACHED. Good looking young people just wanting casual sex without any commitments. (Arguably this one’s funnier.)
Donnelly: New Players, Stadium, Saves Sporting-Newcastle Snoozefest
Some blamed the heat. Others, the fact that it was just a friendly match. 
But damn. That was one of the dullest, least entertaining games I’ve witnessed in quite some time.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Sporting Kansas City and Newcastle United of the English Premier League managed to tally 25 combined shots – but only three of those were on target. And there wasn’t a single shot on target in the first half by either team. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.
Ouch.
After the game, the players and coaches acknowledged the lackluster showing, with most blaming the sweltering heat and humidity for the result.
Sounds Good: Old 97’s@Crossroads TONIGHT!; Blitzen Trapper@Riot Room; Bela Fleck & Bruce Hornsby@Crossroads
Have you ever written a song before?
If you have, you probably thought it was really great at first, really original and profound. Maybe you got the balls to play it for a friend, and then tried to gauge their reaction. But inevitably, their reaction didn’t match your high opinion of the artistic merit.
“What do they know about music?” you thought.
Then a few days later you went back to it and realized what a sappy, derivative, huge piece of shit your song is, amiright?
Now imagine that your friend is Bob Dylan. And you are re-writing the lyrics to one of his most iconic songs.
This is not going to go well.
That is, unless you’re Rhett Miller, the boyish front man of the Old 97’s, who sat silent and nervous while Bobby D himself read Miller’s new words to the classic, “Desolation Row.”
“He turns down, he says, a hundred requests like this out of hand every day,” Miller recently told Dan Weiss of Village Voice. “I had to type out the lyrics and let Dylan sit there and read my lyrics. The next day I got the call that Dylan likes it, and he likes it enough to give us half the publishing on it, which we didn’t even ask for.”
Today: Watson’s Girl Preamble; Divorced, Single, New Boobs & Ready to Rumble
This just in….
Spoke with Family Leisure head Andy Prefontaine this a,m. in Asia. Family Leisure is the name of the biz formerly known as Watson’s and Prefontaine still runs it. He’s also the stepfather of Jennifer Eichler aka the Watson’s Girl.
Prefontaine gave me Jennifer’s cell number – she’s 30-something, divorced, single and no longer shilling for the company. And I have a call into her.
Meanwhile, allow me to share what Metromix Indianapolis laid down in an interview with Eichler last month.
Glazer: Craig’s List, My Plan for KC Confidential World Domination
OK, here it is and this could really happen…
KCCONFIDENTIAL IS NOW MORE READ THAN THE KANSAS CITY STAR. That’s going to take a minute or a few years, but stranger things have happened!
The Star, as we all know and agree, along with all print media, is falling hard and fast. Web sites like this one are growing and there are millions of them. With a quarter million unique visitors a month, kcconfidential.com is fast becoming the most popular outside the Star and closing in on the Pitch.
Joe Miller: Star Gazing @ 18th and Grand
A little more than 10 years ago, when I still bought into the notion of the honorable American newspaper, and there wasn’t yet a lot of talk about its eminent death, I traveled to Omaha for a journalism conference where I heard a reporter from the Kansas City Star named Mike McGraw say, “I love documents,” and my career instantly came into focus.
Starbeams: How Hot Was It, The Second Coming
More – HOW HOT WAS IT?
It was so hot, my car over-heated shortly before I started the engine.
It was so hot, the Watson’s Girl called and asked for her pool back.
It was so hot Gatorade changed their slogan from IS IT IN YOU? To –
JUST GIVE US SOME LOUSY FLAVORED WATER.
It’s so hot, Tiger Woods has changed his slogan from IS IT IN YOU? –
WAIT A MINUTE…
Today: The Awful Truth About Trader Joe’s; It’s a Poor Man’s Whole Foods
First White Castle, then Starbucks, now Trader Joe’s...
Allow me to let you in on a little secret about the business reporting in the Kansas City Star. If they can find a way to make things larger-than-life, they will. I remember the newspaper’s mid-’80s hype about Kansas Citians flying in White Castle burgers from St. Louis the demand was so great.
Fifteen lackluster years later, White Castle beat it out of town, its tail between its legs.
In 1998 Starbucks came to KC. Much to the chagrin of next-door neighbor, Westport’s locally-owned Broadway Cafe. Broadway didn’t stand a chance. Ten years later, Starbucks moved on while Broadway is stronger than ever.
Which brings us to the much-ballyhooed grocer Trader Joe’s…
Starbeams: It Was So Hot in Kansas City That…
HEAT is the number one weather related killer. If you’re outside experts recommend you drink at least two bottles of water per hour. The excessive heat warning has been extended through the weekend.
SO HOW HOT WAS IT?
It was so hot Rupert Murdoch’s reporters were hacking phone lines to Sheridan’s.
It was so hot, Mike Shanin was seen wearing a 3 – piece swimsuit.
It was so hot, Nikita, the polar bear, called 1-800-BE-IDEAL for Laser Hair Removal.
It was so hot, people want to bring back Mayor Funkhouser for the shade.
Joe Miller: Hell Hath No Fury Like Christine Brennan, Exec Managing Editor of Village Voice Media
OK, so this is some serious inside-baseball shit that will only appeal to current and former New Times / Village Voice Media Gossip Whores.
But it must be told.
Christine Brennan is VVM’s editorial second in command, the person who oversees thew chain’s flagship paper, the Village Voice, and it’s a mystery how she got there. As far as I know, she’s only written and published one story in her career and it was unequivocally libelous.
Seriously. Just read it.
Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of libel law should be able to see the burning red flags that wave all through it.
Anyway, the story is about Brennan’s ex-husband, a former Westword staff writer, with whom I once worked at an alt weekly in Boulder.
Glazer: Legends / Village West on Fast Track w/ Retail, Livestrong, Farm Aid, KanRocksas
We all know the economy is awful…
Everyone’s looking for deals or shopping at places with big discounts and strong value. Even major concerts are on Groupon at 2 for 1 prices. Shopping malls and entertainment districts ONLY see crowds on weekends.
If then.
Well. The Legends at Village West has made its move and it’s working.
"We have a strong increase in almost every area of sales right now, the changes and additions are working well," says Amy Craft, marketing director for the area.
Joe Miller: Confessions of a Corporate Journalism Hit Man, Part II
Long before I had any idea that Mark Funkhouser would become mayor, much less that I would work in the Mayor’s Office, he pulled me aside at a City Council meeting and said that a recent story I’d written was “wretched, absolute drivel.”
He was right.
The story in question was a fictional piece about Kansas City set in the far future, a total slam on then-Mayor Kay Barnes. The upshot was that the city had become a living hell, with pot holes the size of Midtown and sidewalks in such disrepair that people needed dune buggies just to get around.
And it was horribly mean. What I remember most is its reference to the factoid that Barnes had been a sex therapist in the 1970s.
I wrote: “It must’ve been aversion therapy.”
