KC Confidential

Deny, deny, deny…

That’s a strategy some folks employ for almost any situation – any prickly situation – that they don’t want to admit to or have to deal with.

And face it, when it comes to pending music format changes, not may radio stations like to come clean until they’re darn good and ready. No sense giving their employees advance notice so they can find another job (and possibly leave the station in the lurch for a few days or weeks).

Nope, it’s far easier to plot one’s course, then spring the new listening format on everybody after the proverbial t’s are crossed and i’s dotted.

So when Jack Poessiger speculated here quite recently that changes may be in the works at Alice FM – the AAA station at 102.1 on the FM dial – he took some grief from Alice stationalities who scolded, while assuring that nothing of the sort was in the works.

Nope, the Kansas City Adult Album Alternative station was doing just fine and was ready to steam into the bright future of kicking public television station KCPT’s Warrenburg AAA import, The Bridge 90.9 FM’s butt.

Just one problem… Continue reading →

And now, the rest of the story…

It’s not every day that Overland Park’s 22 year-old New Theatre Restaurant has to cancel its opening night performance. But that’s exactly what happened last Wednesday for the kickoff performance of the classic play Harvey starring Judge Reinhold.

The same Judge Reinhold who hooked up in 1982 with Eddie Murphy for Beverly Hills Cop, co-starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and appeared in those goofy Beethoven mutt movies in the 1990s and early 2000s. He’s also the 56 year-old Hollywood has been who the New Theatre signed to be the token “name” star in its 10 week run here of the Jimmy Stewart classic.

That is until a last minute dustup last week resulted in Reinhold bailing on the New Theatre and causing it to cancel for the first time in the company’s history, what was probably a sold out opening night performance. Continue reading →

Mike Valentine
Cries Foul on Car & Driver Radar test

Why is it that we seldom seem get the entire story?

My theory – and it’s an obvious one – m-o-n-e-y. Which brings me to the January issue of Car and Driver magazine and its first-in-a-long-time Radar Test.

That’s right, fellow traffic scofflaws, over the years Car & Driver has periodically conducted extensive tests of traffic radar detectors for folks who don’t like the idea of spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, just because they slipped up and were going a few extra miles-per-hour over the speed limit on the way to giving birth or trying to get to a movie, funeral or church service in time to get a little texting in before things got too distracting.

And for those of you who follow such things, engineer geek Mike Valentine‘s detector, the Valentine One has long reigned atop the slagheap of wannabes detectors from Escort (that Valentine co-founded), Bel, Cobra, Whistler and other pretenders to the throne.

Until now.

“Who builds the best high-end detector?” C&D’s headline asks. Continue reading →