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Sounds Good: Cowboy Indian Bear@Jackpot, Hearts of Darkness@Legends, Hottie@Stanford’s
Think of this weekend as a little warmup…
You know, go out Friday, see a few good bands, have a drink or two. Wake up Saturday with a dry mouth and ringing in your ears.
Then Saturday hit it even harder.
Drink more. See more bands that are even louder and more rockin’. Lose even more of your already diminished hearing.
Why, you ask?
Well, Wednesday, on August 3rd at the Uptown, My Morning Jacket is going to rip your damn face off three times before you hit the ground if you’re not ready for it. This is an absolutely can’t miss show that also features one of my new favorites bands, Delta Spririt, doing the opening honors.
So go out this weekend, feel some bass pounding in your lungs, and get ready…
Glazer: From Party Time to Slam Time, Tommy Chong Returns to KC @ Stanford’s
Tommy Chong and I were going through tough times back in 1988…
I was working at Stanford’s one night for a headline gig – that’s right – me doing comedy for an hour. I tanked. Sold out show and I blew it. A few nights later Tommy Chong was headlining the club. He also was off his game. Tommy was battling the loss of Cheech Marin, his longtime stage partner and film co star. I was in town for a five day furlough from federal prison.
My pal Seth Jaffe had warned me NOT TO DO MY PRISON bits.
I didn’t listen, because when I did stand up for the entire joint it killed. Well, they get all those jokes, the public, uh, not so much. Had I done my regular stuff, who knows? Maybe I would have become a stand up comic. But I felt so bad about it, that I quit doing stand up.
Dumb ass me. Chong. to his credit kept pushing the ball uphill.
Joe Miller: Central High Debate a Thing of the Past
In 2003, a debate team from Central High School finished tenth in the nation – an unlikely accomplishment, considering the school had been declared “academically deficient” by the state of Missouri a year earlier.
Five years later, debaters from Central won the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues’ national championship.
Central has won the city championship more times than any other school, even Lincoln College Prep, a school students have to score high on tests to get into.
And dozens and dozens of Central debaters have gone on to college, many of them with full-ride scholarships, while more than half of their classmates have wound up being drop outs.
Now the Central High debate program is a thing of the past.
Glazer: Chiefs Return Needs to be Wakeup Call for Star’s Mellinger
So as I wrote a few months back, the football strike that never really was, would be over soon…
Sorry, I mean the lockout. I doubt nine people could tell you much about it or what really happened and why. It’s like Watergate; we’ve all heard of it and, oh yeah, "Nixon’s a Crook." But can anybody really tell you what happened?
Uh, not so much.
And I’m not sure that Nixon (who I didn’t care for) really was a crook. No more so than the other presidents.
SO WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE NFL?
Joe Miller: Knocking One Out of the Park; The Highs and Lows of Politics
I’ve done a lot of drugs in my life, but I’ve rarely been as high as I was on Election Night in late March 2007.
I had volunteered for a campaign on a whim, and I wound up my masterminding an impossible upset of a popular politician who was the odds on favorite at the beginning of the race. I got a little help from the Star, of course, but they can’t take credit for it, so the victory was mine as much as any other’s.
So when the results came in and we learned that we’d won by the narrowest of margins, I felt a rush beyond compare.
Starbeams: Clay Chastain to China, Trucker to Jail & Willie to Ag Hall of Fame
China is trying to expand its high-speed rail service despite the wreck that recently killed 39 people. In an attempt to keep the project moving forward, they have asked Clay Chastain to collect one billion signatures.
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A green pickup stopped traffic for hours yesterday on I-70 west of Topeka. The truck was full of chemicals and covered with anti-government slogans. The man driving it was arrested. Chemicals? Anti-government slogans? If he’d have just made it to Lawrence, he would have been welcomed with a parade.
Donnelly: That’s More Like It! Sporting Man-Handles Toronto, Matches Longest Unbeaten Streak
Remember the last Sporting KC game, the one I called a ‘snoozefest’?
Well, Saturday night’s game was certainly a welcome contrast to last week’s friendly against English Premier League club Newcastle United.
First of all, there were goals scored. Six of them!
Some fans I spoke with after the game described it as the most entertaining of the season so far.
I’m guessing Kei Kamara‘s bicycle kick goal to open the scoring had something to do with it…
Today: What Boycott? P&L District Cover Charge Sends Urban Kid Crowds Packing
About KC Confidential’s scoop on the Power & Light District‘s new credit card only cover charge policy…
Looks like it’s working. The crowds of urban youth that have been assembling on weekend nights this summer outside the P&L were down markedly Friday and Saturday, reports KC Strip point man Bill Nigro.
"I drove through there and I’d say there were less kids there this weekend than last weekend," Nigro says. "Maybe 200 or 300 total. Where the week before there were easily 500 kids."
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.
