KC Confidential

Date night at Cinetopia

Wars can be a good thing…

Not the ones where people die. I’m talking about the ones that pit one business against another. Sometimes it can be in the form of a price war, other times a battle to see who can provide the best product or services.

And for the past several months local movie theater powerhouse AMC Theatres has been furiously readying it’s Leawood Town Center 20 to do battle this summer with formidable competitor Cinetopia and its coming-very-soon Overland Park 18 movieplex.

This one could get ugly, ladies and gentlemen.

And based upon my sampling of AMC’s redo,  Cinetopia may already be poised to win this war.

Seriously. Continue reading →

Things are looking up for former Kansas City Star sports scribe Jason Whitlock…

At long last.

“I’m not saying he’s Bryant Gumbel, but at least he’s showing up,”  says sports guru Craig Glazer. “There’s no point in my guessing his salary, but I think he’s making some halfway decent money now.”

Not long ago, that wasn’t the case.

“If you go back three or so years ago when Jason left the Star and Nick Wright said he was going to make millions of dollars, obviously Nick was wrong. That was somewhat naive of Nick Wright and the number he gave out was outrageous because people like me knew better that those numbers were pretty dicey. Bloggers don’t make that kind of money – even working for the big boys like ESPN and Fox – unless you are an established, big name player.”

However things have changed since the big fella returned to ESPN last year, Glazer says. Continue reading →

Nanny state, anyone?

It’s hard to imagine that a “minority” newspaper columnist would demand that an independent business discriminate against poor, young black kids, but that’s exactly what the Kansas City Star‘s Mary Sanchez did in her column, “Let’s Deal With The Rowdy Youths.”

“Create the environment for chaos, bear the responsibility when the shots are fired and the punches are thrown,” Sanchez begins. “That should be the standard. It doesn’t matter whether the problems are at the zoo during free days, outside Cinemark theaters on the Country Club Plaza or anywhere else in town. The draw is free or cheap. Deal with what shows up.”

I get it. Make things affordable at your own risk and you’re on the hook for bad behavior.

That’s a pretty sweeping statement when you think about it. Continue reading →

You read it here first…

A year ago KC Confidential cast its aspersions on the alcohol policies of The Cave, a four level nightclub buried in the bowels of the fancy-schmancy new Oread hotel on the KU campus in Lawrence.

After staying there a year ago this past New Year’s Eve, it seemed all too obvious that the club appeared to be a haven for some of the wide open, college party bar excesses described by Maria Juarez here three years ago in her column, “Open Letter to Hawk Whores.” Continue reading →

Once upon a time there were such things as school spirit…

Back when movies were often black and white and people went to colleges near where they were from or had ideological connections to. And they played sports for those school’s teams. Undoubtedly allowances made for the jocks – they always are – but still the kids had to attend classes and get passing grades.

Pretty quaint, huh?

Larger schools drew larger talent pools and often fielded superior teams. And some schools specialized in sports like golf or ice hockey or even the un-American sport of soccer. And tiny midwestern flyover states like Kansas – however unlikely – managed to attain a measure of success in “major” sports like football, basketball, even track.

Ever heard of a kid from Wichita named Jim Ryun, the first high schooler to break the four minute mile in 1964?

Athletes usually went to college all four years (if they measured up) before turning pro and state university athletics officials were expected to be entirely ethical if they wanted to keep their jobs.

All of that of course was long before Joe Paterno and Lew Perkins.

And before the expression, “Just win, baby!”

Which brings us to the KU basketball of today and coach Bill Self…

Continue reading →

Despite the early returns, it was never to be for Bill Self and KU and he knew it…

“I bet against them,” says sports handicapper Craig Glazer. “There was never a sense of urgency. They looked like a bunch of fat cats that knew they would be going to the NBA and it really didn’t matter that much. You could just smell the loss coming.

“They’re just too young and they’ve not been indoctrinated to play at this level. They’re not really a team. They haven’t played together long enough.”

That’s what KU gets for playing the One & Done card.

“The three best teams this year are Louisville, Wichita State and Florida,” Glazer says. “And what they have in common is a lot of juniors and seniors that have played together two or three years.”

There’s more… Continue reading →

Here we go again…

The February 2014 Kansas City radio rankings are in for listeners age 6 and older. To be clear again up front, this is the broadest – and thus the most accurate – measure of radio listenership. However, it’s not the demographic used by stations to sell advertising targeting more specific demos like women 18 to 34 or men 25 to 54.

Now let’s get on with the show before you-know-who lurches in with his all-too-predictable “assessments.”

So the No. 1 radio station in Kansas City for February is… Continue reading →