Category Archives: Tony_Botello

Johnny Dare seems to have it all. The DJ for 98.9 The Rock has consistently been the most highly rated radio personality in Kansas City for years at a time.

I’ve also heard he banged Holly Starr. Which probably means he shook her hand at some point.

I also hope to shake her hand too.

In any event, Johnny Dare has legions of fans who are intensely dedicated to his work and some of them, like the broad in the photo adorning this post, have awesome cans.

Nevertheless, as the the Kansas City Godfather of Hard Rock tries to take his game to the Internets, he is the only local celebrity to experience a rather common Facebook problem. He has so many fans that he has reached capacity and had to start two accounts. I’d like to take a quick moment to do my best in explaining how this situation came to pass.
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I don’t know 810WHB Sports Talker Kevin Kietzman but I don’t like him.

His mostly cheerleading fan boy sports perspective misses the point that pro-sports in Kansas City has always been about mediocrity and money grabbing from tax payers in KC Proper. I’m guessing the dude lives in JoCo since he’s a Shawnee Mission North/K-State grad and from his overall jocular on-air persona aimed at impressing the d-bags who closely follow Kansas City Sports in order to distract themselves from their lives of quiet desperation.

Again and again, Kietzman misses the political and socio-economic impact of pro-sports in Kansas City and actually wastes time thinking about what happens in these mostly meaningless games. That’s probably because pro-sports funding and coverage in this cowtown represent a wide-scale endorsement of the status quo which keeps dudes like Kietzman in business. To to be fair, Kietzman did take on a Union debate regarding the Stadiums earlier this year and was spun into a tizzy by political operatives and paid lead on fan boys like him. But at the end of the day most of his reporting on the subject was inconsequential and turned out to be nothing but Union muscle flexing with the help of his microphone.

Still, Keitzman missed the real Stadium Tax rip off. And pretty much like every other JoCo resident, Continue reading →

Dan Verbeck is a local radio news legend but that doesn’t mean he’s above writing PR. In his latest communique from KCUR he notes the great community relations that the University of Missouri – Kansas City has with their neighbors given a recent award from some small East Coast College I’ve never heard of .

Great neighborhood relations for UMKC is an interesting thesis, but it’s also completely bogus.

There are many reasons why this ranking and subsequent award have no basis in reality, but probably the most obvious is that UMKC got rid of its neighbors a long time ago.
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It’s safe to say that Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser has lost support from The Internet. However, what most people might not remember from a mere two years back was that the Funkhouser campaign was extremely Internet savvy and earned a loyal online following via myspace (wow, it was long ago) a blog and a few campy dog commercials.

Heck, the guy was so open to new technology that I was even contacted to make a video documenting a brief interview at his trailer based campaign headquarters.

Now, more than halfway through with his tenure, the local Internet is completely out of love with Kansas City’s Mayor.
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There are certain recurring themes that define Kansas City other than the fact that KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser and his co-mayor wife are still running this town into the ground from their Brookside residence. For this post I’d like to present a bit of a retrospective on the cultural logics that are currently informing our stereotypes regarding River City.

Check out the following trends I’m poaching from newsies too lazy to come up with anything new (for me to steal reference) . . . Continue reading →

Do you know the worst thing about Kansas City?

I guess it could be the institutional racism, an overall atmosphere of mediocrity or maybe even the pervasive middle-class sense of entitlement that seems to permeate every topic in the local discourse.

But I’m pretty sure that David Cook is what’s worst about Kansas City. Or at the very least his D-list celebrity status that symbolizes all of this cowtown’s failings with a throaty, retrofitted REO Speedwagon-esque muzak serving as our soundtrack. No offense directed at REO Speedwagon, who actually had a couple of decent albums.
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There’s a good chance that any extended stay in Kansas City will present the opportunity to check out one of many local improv comedy groups.

My only advice: STAY AWAY!!!

After the jump there’s a bit of news about new online local improv comedy developments but I thought it was worth remembering: My hatred of local improv comedy stems from a couple of years ago when I checked out one of them still doing Clinton jokes and Scottish accents. Those cretins took me for $37, and were probably the impetus for a breakup with a broad I had yet to bang, SOOOOO I’m obviously one of the foremost experts on local improv (or at least its criticism) in the KC area. More importantly, I consider myself an authority on broken dreams in this cowtown, and I can say without question that there is nothing more unfunny than a liberal arts major on stage bravely undertaking a last ditch effort to avoid real work.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule (not really), but I can note with a great deal of confidence that every comedy improv group in Kansas City is comprised of people who are completely untalented and unfunny. Continue reading →

Baseball isn’t just about the game.

Fans of the America’s Pastime are wrapped up in a cultural mythology that surrounds every facet of the sport. Selling the “idea” of baseball (and not just the tickets) has now become the last resort of a Major League Baseball league caught in the midst of The Great Recession and a shrinking fan base.

Already, the legacy of baseball as an American tradition no longer exists in the urban core as African-American youth have seemingly lost interest in the game. And let’s face it: between X-box Live, American Idol, and so many other entertainment options, people just don’t have time to sit through an entire day at the ballpark watching leisurely games that mostly feature the Royals losing.

Luckily, there’s a solution to keep that money machine oiled.
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There was a minor controversy this week regarding the politics of Kansas City Sports Fans.

Walking penis impersonator Chris Stigall – the morning – host of 710 KCMO AM – Continue reading →

There’s a lot to be said for longevity, but it’s definitely never pretty. There have been a great many people thinking about the Sprint Center after the recent propaganda put forth regarding some accounting tricks that produced an “operating profit.”

The Pitch even tried to do some financial reporting today and scribbled down some numbers related to the place but came to no real conclusion about Sprint Center finances.

Make no mistake, The Sprint Center is costing Kansas City big money.

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I’ve come to yet another conclusion this evening regarding the fate of the dead tree media: Now that hookers are completely online, newspapers have been rendered obsolete in yet another profitable demographic.

Earlier this year Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster made a big show of going after Craigslist for its hooker ads. And this evening there are reports that the Independence po-po putsource its resources into scouring online content for hooker ads. The local NBC affiliate reports:

Between Thursday and Saturday, investigators contacted people posting online ads on popular websites like Craigslist and Backpage.They arrested 13 men for patronizing and 14 women for prostitution. Investigators say two of the women were 5 and 6 months pregnant. Continue reading →