KC Confidential

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 →

Time flies whether you’re having fun or not…

That said, I was definitely having fun in the summer of 1992 when Kansas City Star publisher Jim Hale and spanking new editor Art Brisbane sent me down to the minors for a chance to try out for a column in big leagues.

The back story: both the Pitch and rival alt weekly The New Times were struggling mightily – kinda like now except The New Times is long gone – and having run both, I had this genius stroke that the newspaper could buy one or both, let me run the show and turn all the red ink into black… just like that.

However after spending a couple months trying to put a deal together, Hale looked at me one afternoon and in his best Texas drawl said, “Do you want a job?”

The rest is history, but it wasn’t quite that simple. Continue reading →

Lauren Euston

What a way to go, death by text…

That’s how a Florida father bit the dust – on “Senior Monday” at a Cobb  movie-plex in Tampa. Retired cop  Curtis Reeves shot and killed 43 year-old Chad Oulson after complaining to him about Oulson texting his 31/2 year-old daughter. The shooting went down during the previews prior to an afternoon screening of the movie “Lone Survivor.”

“Well, it had to happen,” says fierce anti-text movie critic Jack Poessiger. “Yes, I am down on texting but obviously it’s over-the-top to shoot somebody over it.”

In Poessiger’s world – and other dead serious movie critics and fanatics like Alamo Drafthouse owner Tim League – there are no valid excuses for texting or looking at texts on your phone during movies.

Not even for people with young children, seriously ailing relatives or pending personal issues? Continue reading →

How about we take a more objective look at David Cook?

Between myself and local music industry veteran Mark Valentine, we’ve already pretty well covered the Blue Springs export’s more obvious entertainment career bases.

You know, that Cook got cut by his record company after two albums – the last of which stiffed – that he’s gone from playing arenas, then theaters like the Midland to bars like Knuckleheads here in KC.

And as duly noted by Mark, Cook’s big win on American Idol in 2008 put him in the pop culture history books for all time and should afford him name recognition well into the immediate future. He’ll probably never again be the total nobody he and most bar band musicians that never break out nationally inevitably are.

Nbody can take any of that away from him.

That said, he’s also a card carrying member of a not-so-exclusive club; Idol winners who got dumped by their record labels and are out beating the streets all on their lonesome. Continue reading →