“And the worst part about losing this job is that I’m no longer covered by NBC, now I’ll have to sign up for ObamaCare.”
Jay Leno‘s final joke….
Always one for a good conspiracy, is there something more sinister going on here than a mere retirement? Maybe I’m just always skeptical of things and seldom buy the “official” story.
But something just doesn’t add up about Jay Leno’s retiring. Continue reading
It’s been a slo week…
Snow’s kept the Darwinians inside, but for your consideration, I offer the following from the all the news that’s not.
2014 #SochiProblems
If you want some great reading, add #SochiProblems to your Twitter feed; apparently Russia needs Mitt Romney to come and fix the glitches:
I think everyone in Kansas City agrees, we’ve seen way too much white for this to be black history month.
*******
A bionic hand has been developed in Denmark that can actually feel textures. That does it. I’m changing my name to “Textures.”
******* Continue reading
Who goes to a WWE wrestling match on Super Sunday anyway?
Who goes to a WWE match period, you might counter.
Uh, me.
I actually paid for tickets and took my stepsons – ages 11 and 15 and a comments section refugee – to the Sunday afternoon affair at Sprint Center.
Hey, I’m not exactly alone. Justin Kendall of The Pitch seems to be something of a wrestling buff – although like me, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t take it ultra seriously like The Glaze. You know, jaunts to La Vegas to put his money down.
Kendall wrote a couple pieces about Sunday’s match here, including an advance item speculating that WWE “superstar” C.M. Punk probably wouldn’t be making it even though he’d been advertised as coming.
Now here’s what you didn’t read in the Pitch:
Kansas City pretty much got screwed. Continue reading
Middle of the Map Fest – the local, multi-venue indie rock, film, art, and technology showcase – has recently announced its lineup for this spring’s throwdown. The music portion takes place on April 3-5 and features a bunch of local acts like Cowboy Indian Bear, La Guerre, CS Luxem, Psychic Heat, Schwervon, Shy Boys, Rev Gusto, Y(our) Fri(end), Howard Iceberg, and many more.
The headliners (which in year’s past have included bands that went on to blow up like fun., e.g.) are The Get Up Kids, Of Montreal, Kate Nash, !!!, J. Roddy Walston & the Business, William Elliott Whitmore, and a bunch of others.
In only its fourth year of existence, it’s pretty cool that this festival seems to be really taking off. It’s a great, and relatively inexpensive way to see a bunch of up and comers that are mostly Pitchfork approved (you’ve been warned).
Check out the full lineup here, and take a look at some picks for this weekend. Continue reading
And with an all star assemblage that includes George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Cate Blanchett one would think The Monuments Men would be loaded with action-adventure and plenty of boy-toy funny one liners and zingers.
Sort of like an OCEAN’S 11 set near the end of World War II in Germany maybe.
However, you’d be wrong.
The setting and time frame for THE MONUMENTS MEN certainly is correct but screenwriter, co-producer, director and star George Clooney set out to create a historical tribute to events which barely registered a blip on the total scope of the war. Continue reading
As tangled webs go, the behind the scenes demise of Alice 102.1 FM was a lively one…
Juxtaposed alongside the rebirth of competing AAA station The Bridge 90.9 FM made for one soap opera albeit a short lived one. Then there was the station’s Facebook fumble late last week, in which what appeared to be Alice’s new format was revealed as KC102.1 “More Music, Variety & Fun!”
A revealing accident or merely a stunt?
Lame as the station’s new name and catch phrase was, some insiders figured the latter. They couldn’t possibly going with that poor of a name choice…or could they?
“I can’t believe they kept that name,” says one radio insider. “But so it is a gold-based adult contemporary format. It’s 80s and 90s to today. It looks to me like they’re targeting women between the ages of 30 and 45. And The Point 99.7 FM is probably targeting women 21 to 35. And Mix 93.3 FM is targeting 18 to 29 year-old women. Continue reading
Don’t take this the wrong way but…
I’d like to dedicate this nightmarish snowstorm to…KSHB TV weather wonk Gary Lezak‘s mother Kay Rubell, who passsed away last Sunday.
A little background…
To get your head around this concept, you need to understand two things. That the two things Lezak has loved most are his mom and the weather.
That’s not to say he’s lacking in affection for other family members, in his romantic life or for his friends, workmates, etc. It’s simply that Lezak lives to study and break down storms and the weather and was amazingly close to his mother.
Anybody who has called Gary on his cellphone, knows that what they hear while awaiting his answer is not the typical phone ring, but rather a selection of music from one of Lezak’s favorite artists…or…more often than not, one of his mother’s favorite artists.
Like the Simon & Garfunkle song “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Continue reading
High School cheerleaders, anyone?
Starting Tuesday, resident KC Confidential contributor dude and the Theater League main man Mark Edelman is presenting Bring It On: The Musical at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
And believe it or not, your well-coiffed Scribe will be there back stage and out front, reviewing it on opening night. Set aside any predetermined notions you may have; this is a show you simply must go see. Especially, if like me, you have a daughter who’s deep into the dance, theatre and the performance world. Plus it’s a great date night and that’s what I’m making it. Continue reading
All bets are off at Alice 102.1 FM…
Or perhaps on, depending upon how you look at it. Because as predicted here last week, the low-rated Adult Album Alternative (AAA) station is doornail dead and a robotic on-air countdown is on – presumably leading to whatever format the station debuts at sometime tomorrow.
Will it be a Gold Based Adult Contemporary format as hinted on that mysterious Facebook page that radio insiders suspect was a curveball thrown by Alice to draw attention away from whatever the real format will be.
Besides, “KC 102.1” and “More Music, Variety & Fun!” is lame, insiders say. Continue reading
Wilco
Going, going…
Triple A radio station Alice 102.1 FM isn’t gone yet, but the future of the Adult Album Alternative format on airwaves is soon to rest solely on the untested shoulders of a public radio station owned by public television station KCPT, Channel 19.
Which of course makes for some interesting prospects.
Because while KCPT may have borrowed and/or invested way too much ($1.7 million and $400,000) in acquiring and bringing its new baby The Bridge 90.9 FM fully into the local marketplace, the pending departure of Alice 102.1 FM certainly could help them – and maybe help them a lot. Continue reading
There’s nothing quite like quarreling over radio station ratings…
On the surface, radio ratings may appear to be a zero sum game, but after the slicing and dicing of the all-important demographics go down – you know, men, women, age groups, sexual orientation, etc – are factored in, practically anybody can play and everybody is a winner. Or are they?
Most media buyers probably know better though they may be loath to admit it. Continue reading
Grandma VaLue stockpiled aluminum tins…
If it came from the store in aluminum tins, it was washed, saved and packed away. She had a pantry dedicated to every type, size and style you could imagine. Whenever I asked her why she did that, she had a standard, unwavering response; “You never went through the depression, did you, Paul?”
Stockpiling takes all forms, but the one that leaves me scratching my head most each year is the run on bread and milk when the local weather wizards predict our impending doom. Like when they started doing it again yesterday.
I made the obligatory grocery run on the way home from the office after picking up my step daughter and there it was again; near empty bread racks. A few jugs of whole milk were available, with more one percent “blue milk” sitting there, like lonely orphans no one wanted until there was no other choice. One-percent milk is the dairy metaphor of being picked last for kickball when you were in grade school.
There has to be some history that brought us to this point as a species. Continue reading
The Sasha Menu Courey saga was a story worth telling…
And my intent was to boil hundreds of pages of information and documents I’d gathered over weeks and present them with the facts, in a chronological order.
Let me preface my conclusion today with the disclaimer that if this indeed occurred as reported, Courey didn’t “have it coming” and at no point am I accusing her of crying wolf.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Being an opinion columnist, my conclusion is my opinion, which likely is not a popular one.
False rape reports hit the news with a splash, but in reality, only about 2% of all rape accusations reported to police turn out to be false. That’s no higher than the false reporting of any other violent crime. Continue reading
In a KC Confidential story late last year, Hearne questioned the feasibility of new twice a day United Airlines service from Topeka to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport…
My being in the travel agency business, he asked my opinion at the time.
“Not realistic” was my immediate thought. Continue reading
Philip Seymour Hoffman was late Sunday to pick up the three kids he had by his longtime girlfriend…
Hoffman never showed because he was found dead by two friends later that day in his Greenwich Village apartment, a heroin needle dangling from his arm. With 63 movie credits – six as producer, one as director and one for soundtrack – the guy kicked some serious creative butt in his 46 short years on the 3rd rock from the sun.
“Field of Dreams” is a baseball movie that’s not really about baseball. It’s actually a Phillip Seymour Hoffman story that isn’t really about Hoffman.
It simply asks the question, why? Continue reading
How bad was it?
Comedy club czar turned sports scribe Craig Glazer’s esteemed take on yesterday’s Super Bowl:
“Well, unless you were a Seattle fan or bet a lot of money on Seattle, you’d probably call it the Super Dud,” Glazer cracks.
Final score: Seattle 43, Denver 8
Not that the game itself wasn’t telling. Continue reading
The worst Super Bowl ad?
Hands down the Bob Dylan ad for Chrysler.
Dylan departed from irony and his poetic ability to make profound statements to swim in the bathos of psuedo-patriotism for the American made (but Italian owned) new Chrysler 200. The car looks great- a euro-tailored design mid-size sedan. Not that it seemed to matter… We saw the car for all of ten seconds.
Instead there was Dylan taking up screen time, looking like a corpse with dyed black hair and badly lip-synching an over-the-top paean to American virtues.
What in the world was he thinking? Continue reading
Original art by Mark Valentine
The groundhog is a living, breathing, well-loved symbol of disrespect for science…
I googled Groundhog Day 2014 and got 259,000,000 pages. The top pages included The Weather Channel, National Geographic, The Huffington Post, USA Today, even CBS News.
People seem to have a lot of interest in ridiculing meteorologists.
We all do it. You have probably said, “I wish I could be wrong that often and keep my job.” Continue reading
Mom!
Yesterday I lost my mother (Kay Rubell) after her hard fought battle during the past six months. She had two major surgeries back-to-back last August, the second of which saved her life, but mired her in a long struggle.
We were already so very close, but through these past six months we grew even closer and had some deep and meaningful conversations. Someone told me the other day, “You do realize that she’s your biggest fan.”
I’d never thought of my mom that way, and I cry every time I really think about it. Continue reading
