A St. Louis lawmaker introduced a bill that would close Missouri retail stores on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas so people can be with their families on those days. Heck, if it wasn’t for retail, I’d have no excuse to get away from my family!
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An Olathe man is suffering from smoke inhalation after retrieving an X-Box from a burning home. The X-Box was rescued, but the cat didn’t fare so well.
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There’s a reason fledgling journalists don’t get many front page story assignments…
That being it takes time and experience to sharpen the skills and develop the critical thinking necessary to report hard news, not just write whatever somebody says and run with it as gospel.
That’s where you can get into trouble.
Especially when the sources being quoted have an obvious vested interest in spinning the story to their advantage. That’s when you’re supposed to reach out and attempt to corroborate what’s being said with independent sources and/or experts in the given field.
Which didn’t happen in the case of Kansas City Star intern Tess Hart’s double-barrelled attaboy this week about Kansas City public television station KCPT’s recent acquisition of radio station 90.9 FM The Bridge. Continue reading
This time out, it’s not sperm they seek…
Kansas wants blood from William Marotta – in the form of child support – and they want it deposited at the Kansas Payment Center in Topeka.
Angela Bauer and her former partner Jennifer Schreiner were like any other same sex couple who wanted a child. Absent the ability to procreate the hot, steamy way, they turned to outside assistance. In this case, in the form of a Craigslist ad seeking a sperm donor.
Enter William Marotta, a local, Topeka body shop dude, who saw their cause as a valid one and felt he could insert a solution.
He did, They did. A star appeared in the East, and a child was born. Continue reading
This doesn’t happen often!
With last week’s announcement of the Oscar nominations, we’ve got an unusal situation.
All nine films nominated for Best Picture are still showing in local theatres.
Why? Because they were all released in the latter part of the year prompting some of the studios to either extend runs or re-release their possible award winners.
This is your RARE opportunity to experience this year’s major Oscar hopefuls the way they were meant to be seen—on the BIG SCREEN.
Here’s the line up of the nine motion pictures nominated for Best Picture. Continue reading
Sam Smith to the rescue
A couple weeks back the Scribe pretty much nailed the Kansas City of today…
Oh sure, he still loves it here – blah, blah, blah – but the excitement’s gone. The wide open, we can do anything – damn the torpedos – attitude of our storied (and at times criminal) past.
Sure, things are better than they were 10 years ago, but we’re still not Denver – not Austin, Dallas, Atlanta or Indianapolis even. We’re a sleepy city in too many critical ways – politically inept and predictable – with something important missing in the overall mix…too many somethings.
Why would the Republican Convention come to Kansas City? Even the Future Farmers bailed long ago because Louisville was more fun.
Ever been to Louisville?
But wait, we’re not alone. Continue reading
A week from Sunday will be a Super Bowl first…
The big talk now is Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman, who’s having his 15 days of fame. Which may well continue if the Seahawks win the big game and Sherman makes a couple of good plays against Peyton Manning. His jersey sales have already jumped into the top 10 along with those of Seattle QB Russell Wilson.
But what we really should be talking about is the first ever Marijuana Bowl.
That’s right, both Super Bowl cities – Denver and Seattle – have legalized pot for personal use. So it’s the first time both teams in the Super Bowl are from cities where people can light up to their hearts content before, during and after the game. Continue reading
As rhetorical questions go, how long you should leave the Christmas lights up ranks fairly high…
Given that Christmas, after all, comes and goes on December 25, wouldn’t the 26th seem as good a time as any to take them down? Or perhaps the first of January following New Year’s Eve. The eight-day-long Jewish holiday of Hanukkah commenced on November 27th, so there no reason there to keep the lights ablaze.
Yet we seem to live in a world where people can’t seem to get enough Christmas.
The escape from all of our cares Christmas.
I mean, screw Thanksgiving. Continue reading
Weather, weather everywhere and not a drop to shovel…
Think of the weather conditions here as the lull before the storms. So says KSHB TV weather wonk Gary Lezak about the area’s relatively mild climes as parts of the rest of the country suffers through record snowfalls.
So what lies ahead?
Remember when they said the Power and Light District would pay for itself? Some financial movers and shakers at City Hall gave us a quick update recently. The bond used to pay for Power and Light costs Kansas City about $20 million per year. And Power and Light brings in less than $6 million per year in tax revenues.
So now we know.
The math used to sell the project was Delusional.
The City wants to refinance by adding more years to the loan. If they can accomplish that, we would only be in the hole about $8 million a year instead of $14 million a year for the next 2 years. Of course, that would add $36 million to the debt for 2032-2033. Continue reading
Kellen Wnslow
Ellen DeGeneres was voted America’s Favorite TV personality, followed by Mark Harmon. Yet, another slap in the face for Mike Shanin and Mary O’Halloran.
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I spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day watching white guys on ESPN bicker over Richard Sherman and Michael Crabtree.
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One of the most hateful legacies of Karl Marx is the notion of “class enemies.”
This is the idea that if you belong to a certain social class (e.g. Stalin’s “Kulaks,” Mao’s “rich peasants”) you are by definition an exploiter of the proletariat and thus intrinsically evil. Class enemies were “outlaws” in the original sense. That is they were outside society’s protection. No law protected them and they could be killed and their property seized by anyone.
An unfortunate example of this syndrome ran in last week’s Kansas City Star in the form of an “As I see It” column. Written by Jim Haas of Olathe, a retired history teacher, principal, and graduate degree director, it was a slam on Downton Abbey, the PBS prime time soap opera set in an English country house 90-plus years ago. The title of the piece was; “Downton Abbey: A Republican Dream.” Continue reading
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Crime Fighter Alonzo Washington
I’m not a Twitter person…
At last count I have 49 followers. I don’t even know how I got them as I use Twitter to follow, not be followed.
It’s there to feed me, not the other way around.
Over the weekend I received a message from a guy noting the insane level of posts from resident crime fighter and Twitter-twit, Alonzo Washington. I did a piece on the local comic book caricature several weeks back – cornering him with a series of facts – and watched as he melted into a pile of goo. No surprise there, typical behavior for Washington when he can’t baffle with his bullshit.
Put another way, Alonzo has a dizzying intellect. Continue reading
So by now, you’ve seen it…
You saw it live or you saw Karen Kornacki blathering about it, or maybe you saw it on social media or Jim Rome has already released some sort of “hot take” on it.
But in case you missed it—in case you were “living under a rock” (fucking clichés—we’ll get to that)—here’s what happened:
After Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman deflected an end-zone pass into the hands of a teammate for a 4th quarter, game clinching interception, he met with reporter Erin Andrews on the sideline and he spouted some real crazy, real aggressive shit.
It basically went like this:
Andrews: The final play, take us through it.
Sherman: (channeling one of WWE’s The Road Warriors) WHEN YOU TRY ME WITH A SORRY RECEIVER LIKE CRABTREE? THAT’S THE RESULT YOU GON’ GET! DON’T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT ME! (heavy panting. sexual. weird.)
Andrews: (remarkably nonplussed) Who was talking about you?
Road Warrior Sherman: CRABTREE! (duh) DON’T YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH ABOUT THE BEST. OR I’MA SETTLE IT FOR YOU RILL QUICK. L.O.B! (which stands for Legion of Boom, which is funny in that the Road Warriors were also known as “Legion of Doom.” Get it?)
So he stomped off, and it was very awkward. And then, the INDIGNITY rained down. And it was great. Continue reading
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art by mark valentine
I need a new prescription…
Everything seems out of focus to me. The headline in The Star said, “Art takes aim at gun violence in KC.” I was trying to decide how a reference to gun violence like “takes aim” was a good way to stop gun violence, so I read on.
According to The Star, African-American artists get grant money to create anti-gun violence art to display in schools and barber shops. So I adjusted my glasses. There must have been some study showing how posters have a positive effect on gun violence. I couldn’t find that study, so I cleaned my glasses.
The artists were not advocating gun control. Continue reading
photo by mark webb
Longtime readers of may recall the early days of KC Confidential…
Including the occasions I turned flipped the spotlight around and pointed it at the denizens of our fledgling comments section. It was an exercise in alternately saluting and grimacing at the heights to which they soared and the depths to which they sank.
Because sometimes it’s hard to do them justice given the limitations of the medium.
Take yesterday, when the newbaum turk wrote, The biggest loss is Charly Arnault moving back to Indy. She was the hottest girl on local news here.”
Not being a local television news kinda guy I was curious. Continue reading
Even though the Chiefs are in decompression mode—quickly losing focus with video games, weed, unhealthy eating habits and extended excursions to exotic locales—that doesn’t mean the world ends. It doesn’t mean that there still isn’t some fantastic playoff football to be played.
(The better teams prevailed, Leftridge, the better teams prevailed, Leftridge…)
And truly, they did. The four teams left are inarguably the four best teams in the league. That makes for some probably pretty awesome upcoming football. There were no weird, undeserving outliers sneaking in. The Chargers didn’t manage to finagle their way to the conference championship; The New York Giants—who’ve had a propensity for such things in the recent past—were torpedoed early this year, and never recovered.
Good.
This Sunday should be exciting, then, as football is meant to be. Evenly matched teams. Super-hero quarterbacks. Late-game dramatics. Etc., etc.
Here’s who will win. Continue reading
Dennis McGuire
On February 11, 1989, 22 year-old Joy Stewart met Dennis McGuire while he was working on her friend’s house….
Stewart mentioned that she would like to buy some weed, McGuire said he was just the guy to get it for her and the two left in his car.
The next day, her body was found by two hikers in the woods.
To set the stage, the following are excerpts are taken from court transcripts; “The front of her shirt was saturated with blood. One deputy sheriff at the scene noted that there appeared to be a “blood wipe mark” on her right arm. The autopsy revealed that Joy had been stabbed twice. The critical wound was a four-and-a-half-inch-deep cut in the throat, which completely severed the carotid artery and jugular vein.
“The doctor said Joy was alive when she received the wound. The autopsy also revealed abrasions around the neck, impressed with the cloth pattern of Joy’s shirt.”
The coroner’s office also took vaginal, oral, and anal swabs and found “an abundant amount of sperm on the anal swab, some sperm on the vaginal swab, and none on the oral swab.”
Stewart was eight months pregnant; McGuire was sentenced to death. Continue reading
Think of it as the nice guys finish last syndrome…
By most accounts former KMBC TV “weatherman” Joel Nichols truly is a really nice guy. Yet after a quarter century at Channel 9 doing the weather and oddball, odd hour celebrity interviews, the baby-faced newsie is o-u-t.
As for a rumor started New Year’s Day by former KC media blogger John Landsberg that Nichols may rejoin his old boss at Channel 41… mere speculation. Landsberg confessed as much in the comments section following his scoop that caught the rest of Kansas City media (me included) snoozing.
The concept of Nichols doing weather at KSHB seems a reach.
For starters, “He doesn’t really know weather,” says one television news source. “And he owned that – he said that he didn’t.”
Nichols comes from the era of smiling, chatty weathermen and women who were ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s. However those days have mostly faded to gray. Today’s ultra competitive TV weather-scape all but requires a degree in meteorology. Continue reading
