Unlike last week, there’s a ton of buzzy shows coming up this weekend and into next week.
There’s Haim at the Granada on Thursday, Neko Case at Liberty Hall on Tuesday (going head-to-head with Hanson, just down the block at the Granada), and Todd Snider at Knuckleheads on Wednesday. Not to mention ZZ Ward and Pretty Lights at the Midland, and Barenaked Ladies at the Uptown.
Whew.
Oh, and these as well…. Continue reading
It’s time for even the skeptics to face facts…
“The Chiefs are definitely in the Super Bowl mix,” asserts sports scribe Craig Glazer.
“I mean they have Alex Smith at quarterback. Name an elite quarterback you’d rather have. Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger? He’s o-4. Eli Manning‘s 0-5 and the Chiefs beat him. And there’s another elite quarterback that threw for 500 yards last Sunday – Dallas quarterback Tony Romo – and his team is 2-3 and the Chiefs beat them. Continue reading
I’m going to keep this to bite size portions…
Mainly because there are lots of regulations, programs and numbers to cover in order to properly explain what the mythological ObamaPhone is, how it came into being and the real story behind it. If not done in two or three parts it would induce a coma. However it’s a huge scandal that needs to be explained.
Read closely, it may not be the scandal you’re expecting and there’s a plot twist at the end.
I’ve researched this for weeks and the best I can tell, the term “ObamaPhone” was coined by the lady who appears in the video link below on September 26, 2012. I can find no reliable reference prior to this event.
She became known simply as the “ObamaPhone Lady.”
Danica Patrick wrecked on lap one of the Hollywood 400 at Kansas Speedway. She says she got distracted by the sale sign at the Saks Fifth Avenue outlet at The Legends.
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The Chiefs are the first team in NFL history to go 5-0 after only winning two games the previous year. We haven’t seen a turnaround like this since Danica Patrick tapped the wall Sunday.
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A Plaza jewelry store was robbed during the Chiefs game Sunday. So far police have ruled out every straight male in the metro. Continue reading
Two years ago WaterOne in Johnson County made a deal with the devil…
The utility agreed to allow HomeServe – a 20 year-old British plumbing repair and insurance company – to hawk its wares using the local water company’s letterhead and website to sell pipe protection insurance policies to locals.
“WaterOne has partnered with HomeServe to provide you with a voluntary plan that can protect you from the expense and inconvenience of water service line emergencies,” reads the pitch on WaterOne’s website. “With the Water Service Line Protection Plan, you can save a significant amount of money, eliminate the line inconvenience of finding a quality plumber and be sure that the job is professionally completed and guaranteed.”
In return for allowing HomeServe to trade on WaterOne’s good name – resulting in significantly more sales – the local water company gets a kickback or commission from the Walsall, England based firm.
The $64 million question being, is it a good deal for homeowners and will HomeServe be around to cover their claims in the years to come?
The Better Business Bureau has its doubts. Continue reading
Judith Hill performs at Sprint October 16th
It can difficult coming down too hard on the venue or performer, but, I’ve been lucky enough to cover artists I’m personally invested in. Josh Groban is a totally different situation but his show here a week from Wednesday has a silver lining. That being an opening act that offsets my opinion of the much loved headliner.
Groban is touring in support of his most recent album, “All That Echos.” For people buying a ticket and clamoring to see him, they probably aren’t going to get many surprises. The self-effacing, avuncular-styled Groban generally delivers an enjoyable, consistent product for his fans. It’s an interactive experience with him frequently taking questions from the crowd, cracking jokes and having a great time while on stage.
And Groban’s incomparable, richly textured baritone voice has few equals. Continue reading
Sporting KC got the result they needed Saturday on the road at the Columbus Crew…
Though it wasn’t pretty (at all), the boys in blue fought for a 1-0 win that puts them solidly in second in the East, just two points off of New York with a game in hand.
“If we were a little bit more clinical we probably would have caught them on the break two or three times,” said KC boss Peter Vermes after the game. “When someone would run a play and they would kick some balls off, we would run at them and could have been a little bit better in our decisions, but other than that it was an excellent performance for us.” Continue reading
John Landsberg
Yesterday Hearne pointed out an article written by John Landsberg, media mogul at Bottom Line Communications…
I hadn’t seen the story but apparently Hearne is among Landsberg’s eight or ten readers and he asked me for my thoughts. So I decided to write a story about it for one reason and one reason only; hoping I could write a story Mysterious J could get all of the way through.
In Landsberg’s September 25th post entitled, “Popular Science Joins Others in Shutting Off Comments,” his thesis was based on the 114 year old magazine announcing it was shutting down its blog comments section, stating that comments can be “bad for science.”
Landsberg pointed this out as a trend “sweeping the country.” Continue reading
“Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in which we live, society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes last too long, that the people do not come to think that they can very easily do without us.”
Benjamin Franklin on Government Shutdowns to the Constitutional Convention 1787
I drove by the Bolling Federal Building today in downtown KCMO and didn’t see the place boarded up. I even stopped for a bit and noticed that people were coming and going and the parking lot wasn’t empty.
Could that be because in actuality less that 20% of the Federal Government workforce has actually been furloughed? Continue reading
Kirstie Alley will speak at the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce annual meeting…only because Anthony Michael Hall was not available.
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A woman tried to crash the barrier at the White House with a kid in her car and was shot and killed by police. She’ll never know now if former President Bill Clinton was really the father.
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Remember that expression, it’s deja vu all over again…
Well, a mere seven months ago I wrote what amounted to an advance obituary on singer David Cook, the kid from Blue Springs who walked away five years ago with a million bucks, a record deal and a shoe endorsement after winning season seven of American Idol.
Would Cook follow in the footsteps of successful past Idol winners like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, or had his 15 minutes of fame passed its expiration date? Continue reading
1917 Jayhawk
It was not a good year for KU Professor Katherine (“Kate”) Stephens. ..
The sixty-nine year old professor emeritus of Greek had two staggering blows to contend with in 1922.
First of all, a long forgotten boyfriend had managed to publish his memoirs in which she figured prominently as one of his sexual conquests. Said boyfriend, the British pornographer Frank Harris, had come out with; “My Life and Loves,” based on supposed events in a long and picaresque career. Considered an erotic classic, it begins in Ireland in the 1850’s, skips over to New York and Chicago in the 1860’s, and pauses for most of the 1870’s in Kansas, where Harris was a cowboy in the Flint Hills and then a law student at KU, studying under James “Uncle Jimmy” Green, the first Dean of the KU School of Law and Kate’s brother-in-law.
If Harris is to be believed (which he isn’t!) there was far more casual sex going on in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1870’s than in the 1970’s. Continue reading
For no good reason, here’s the K-Crew
Travel with me back in time. Say, oh, six months or so. The government was still doing governmental things. It was a snowy spring, brutish and cold. Our grandmothers hadn’t yet been subjected to the horrors of twerking. It was a simpler time, really.
Baseball season was just blossoming, full of promise and hope springing eternal and whatever and ever amen. I was full of excitement—as I am apt to be before the Royals actually take the field—and expecting big things across the board.
How big?
Let’s take a look. Continue reading
With megahit WICKED coming to the Music Hall next week for three big weeks (Oct 9-27), it’s interesting to chart the ever-more intersecting lines between rock and Broadway…Kind of a slow week for national acts coming through town…
Then again, many of you will be all stuffed full of smoked meat and beer in the Bottoms at the American Royal anyway.
If you can break out of your coma, there are a couple shows worth checking out.
Come with me….
Everyone in Kansas City is excited by the prospect of a 5 and 0 Chiefs team come this Sunday…
For once the Chiefs seems to be leading a blessed life. However they will play their strongest opponent of this season thus far on Sunday when they face the Tennessee Titans. Tennessee is but a field goal away from being 4 and 0 as well, and they have a top rated defense and solid offense. However the Titans have a problem in that they lost star quarterback, Jake Locker to a hip injury. So instead the Titans will have to start former Buffalo bust, Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick played well last week after replacing Locker near the end of the Jets game.
However, advantage Chiefs. Continue reading
I’m sure most of you’ve seen the news about the NYC bikers who go by the name Hollywood Stuntz…
They mounted up Sunday for their end of summer ride to Times Square. A ride that resulted in a road rage incident in Manhattan on the Hudson Parkway between the bikers and the driver of a black Ranger Rover, his wife and two year-old child.
One biker, Christopher Cruz, 28, was charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly starting the incident by cutting in front of the Range Rover then slowing down while staring at its driver, causing the car to bump into the back tire of the bike. The driver, Alexian Lien, pulled over then was surrounded by Cruz other bikers who hit the vehicle and spiked its tires, police say.
Lien then pulled away, frightened for his family, plowing into three bikers and over one of them, breaking his legs and causing spinal injuries that left him paralyzed.
The bikers continued to chase the Ranger Rover, cornering the SUV after it became stuck in traffic. A video shows one of the bikers smashing the driver’s window, whereupon they dragged him out and beat him as his wife and child looked on. Continue reading
This just in from The Hollywood Reporter…
Remember AMC Theatres new owner Wang Jianlin‘s ambitious new plans for an $8.2 billion movie studio complex, reported on here recently by Sir Paul Wilson?
Fifty-eight year-old Wang is China’s richest tycoon. He’s also the dude who quite likely will be pulling the plug on AMC’s headquarters here and moving them to someplace that makes more sense like Hollywood, Wilson prophesied.
Yet while Wang may very well relocate AMC, his ambitious proposal to erect 20 studios, an underwater stage, film museum and neighboring amusement park in China by 2017 is a whole nother matter, skeptics say. Continue reading
In ALIEN we were told that in space no one can hear you scream…
The spectacular new space thriller GRAVITY begs to differ.
But not with the typical screams we’re used to. There are no aliens, monsters or space battles here. Instead director Alfonso Cuaron takes us on an astonishing journey into zero gravity some 300-plus miles above earth.
From the incredible almost 15 minute long opening sequence to the film’s final frame, viewers come to the realization that they’re part of something very special here.
In GRAVITY Sandra Bullock plays a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission with smug astronaut George Clooney in command of his last mission before retirement.
But on a routine space walk disaster strikes. Continue reading
He wanted to be Kansas City’s mayor (twice)…
He also wanted to erect a London-sized fariis wheel along the banks of the Missouri River. Hey, Stan “The Man” Glazer wanted to do lotsa cool stuff over the course of his 80-plus years on this earth. And of course, he begat our beloved Scribe – son Craig Glazer – so there’s that.
So what’s he up to now? Funny you should ask. Continue reading
