KC Confidential

Little help?

I don’t know of anybody who’s sung the praises of Star sports columnist Sam Mellinger more than I. From the get go, I saw things in Sam that foretold of a bright future.

Allow me to remind.

When he started the column two years ago, Sam He Am had big shoes to fill.

Amidst third degree belt tightening and rather awkward circumstances, the newspaper had lost its two top sports guns, Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock.

And Whitlock on his way out had unleashed a scandal involving the paper’s newly minted main editor with an attractive, highly placed female sports editor who worked under him. Whitlock publically accused the two of having an improper relationship.

It was plenty ugly and mum was the word on the subject at 18th and Grand.

And having worked there until late the previous year, I can tell you Whitlock was far from alone in his belief as to what went on and the bogusness of it. The woman editor in question – fresh off a divorce – skedaddled with little to no explanation as to exactly why and it was a rocky, uncertain time at best.

Enter Mellinger buoyed by youth, local connects and a way with words that positioned him somewhere between the oft overwraughten, prosaic Posnanski and the undisputed king-of-newspaper-reader-pimpers Whitlock.

Sam had the writing chops to play the JoPo card – which Whitlock obviously never had – but he appeared far less likely to deal out race cards and stir up thinly thought out controversies that were Whitlock’s bread and butter.

As many said four years back of President Barack Obama, Sam was a blank slate.

Readers of the Star could look forward to watching him grow and mature as he found his voice as the one, true sports columnist at 18th and Grand.

I liked what I saw then and I continue to like much of what I see today.

But I’d like to see less of the stereotypical, hand wringing columns Posnaski flooded the sport universe with.

I’d like to see Sam take out his crayon sharpener, give it a few deft twists on his you-know-what and put some growl in his game.

Is that too much to ask?

The impetus for my critique is Mellinger’s formulaic column about the NCAA tourney loss by the highly-ranked Missouri Tigers basketball team. To the ever so lowly Norfolk State whatever-they-ares.

Look, anybody who cared either saw or heard the game and/or the highlight clips showing devastated MU players and jubilant Norfolk Staters. And even if they didn’t, it doesn’t take a wordsmith to hammer home the agony of defeat in a game that big or the ecstasy of a once-in-a-lifetime victory.

Tell us something we don’t know.

Or maybe even bring your gun to the knife fight and shock our sports monkeys.

Here’s what we got instead.

"The tears started almost immediately, beaten only by the cussing," Mellinger begins. "Missouri basketball players range from stunned to ticked, staring into the distance or slamming punches into chairs, fresh victims of one the biggest upsets in NCAA Tournament history."

To which I’d like to add, oh the anguish.

"Maybe 30 feet away from them, pandemonium. Norfolk State, 21-point underdogs, sprinting around in circles around midcourt, hamming it up for the TV cameras, making sure everyone watching remembers the fifth team in 28 years to win an NCAA Tournament game as a No. 15 seed."

That’s a surprise. A nobody team wins a huge upset and they’re loving life. Who knew?

Oh but Sam’s not even done milking this tear stained Hallmark Moment.

"Phil Pressey, who took the final shot in Missouri’s 86-84 loss, falls to the court. He doesn’t get up, doesn’t move, hides his head under his jersey until Kyle O’Quinn — now Missouri’s version of Ali Farokhmanesh, with 26 points and 14 rebounds for Norfolk State — offers a hug. ‘He looked like he needed a helping hand,’ O’Quinn later said."

Is it possible Mellinger was actually crying as he wrote those moving words?

So how original was Mellinger’s soft shoe?

Oh I dunno, check out MU beat writer Terez Paylor‘s lead sentence on his game story and you tell me:

"Kim English slumped back in his locker, the bright camera lights illuminating his solemn face. His quad hurt, his dreams dashed."

See what I mean? Who isn’t choking out this kinda sports schlock?

Now here’s my take:

It was only a college basketball game, nobody died in a tornado. Move on.

"This isn’t how it was supposed to happen," Mellinger continues. "This isn’t the way dream seasons end, one of the most successful years in MU basketball history suddenly washed away in disappointment."

You can read the rest of the column if you wish.

But that’s one of the easiest columns a guy as gifted as Sam ever wrote. And frankly not everybody is as gifted as Sam in the writing department. You want me to get Glaze to paraphrase Sam’s column so you can compare?

Hey, it’s not my place to put words into Sam’s mouth, but surely he could come up with something edgier or more imaginative.

Channel a little Whitlock even, for old times sake.

Lemme try:

They blew it…

No two ways about it, faced with the college sports opportunity of a lifetime – in the most important game in the school’s history – the Missouri Tiger basketball team curled up and died.

And in doing so, MU gifted its former friends in the Big 12 with a going away gift they could only dream of.

Instead of triumphantly marching, heads held high, into the SEC, Missouri ended its days in the Big 12 with an embarassment of squandered riches and crawled off like wailing babies. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the enduring, indelible image KU and K-State fans will savor and take to their graves.

They’ll die with smiles on their faces, because instead of having to sulk over MU’s arguably lucky Big 12 tourney win over Baylor following KU’s unlikely collapse the day before, they’ll now be able to jest about K-State’s twin pounding of the Tigers and KU’s winning the team’s final meeting and the Big 12 championship.

So long, Missouri. Don’t let Norfolk State’s goofy Spartan mascot stab you in the butt.

Plus KU won’t have to play MU in football off campus anymore, and that’s a going away gift money can’t buy!

*******

There are a million ways Sam could’ve skinned this cat, but he opted for the schlocky one.

My advice; put away the Kleenex, Sam. Everybody who wanted to cry already got it out of their system long before you choked your sentimental chicken.

If Kleenex need be involved, bust out the entire whole box, wad it up in whichever hand’s the strongest and stuff it into that imaginary, writer’s erotic zone before you start the next column.

[

NEWSFLASH FROM MANCOW: FOX  DECIDED AT THE LAST MINUTE TO MOVE THE BROADCAST TO A DIFFERENT NIGHT TO AVOID GETTING BURRIED ALIVE IN GREEN ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY. NEW BROADCAST DATE TBD ]

This just in…

Long time no Mancow on local airwaves. But you know, given the slippery slope terrestrial radio personalities face in today’s metered ratings world, it’s lucky anybody besides Johnny Dare actually still has a high-rated show and a paycheck worth crowing about.

Mancow syndicates his show nationally out of Chicago on Talk Radio Network.

The latest?

A former disciple of infamous KC radio bad boy Randy Miller, Mancow’s recorded a pair of one hour specials to air on Fox Television this today and tomorrow – March 17th and 18th – and next Saturday and Sunday, March 24th and 25th.

In a release, Mancow TV Worldwide "promises to throw traditional TV norms out the window with its no-holds-barred, politically incorrect interviews. According to Muller, his show will be the ‘cold shower to sober up an America drunk on political correctness.’ It is a fusion of many things—politics, entertainment, news, etc. One thing it won’t be is conventional."

Like anybody who’s followed Mancow’s career in the slightest would suspect it would.

Mancow’s show doesn’t show up on this weekend’s online programming guide on FOX 4, so it may take a bit of poking around to catch his new act.

YouTube, maybe?

The taping goes down at 12:30 p.m. today and next Saturday at Fox headquarters in New York, Mancow says.

So we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Mancow offered no specifics on what to expect, but he did text share a nice little rant about how the liberal media’s been beating up on fellow Missourian Rush Limbaugh.

"The way the left wing media and the libs are treating Rush is like he is the most evil person on the planet," Mancow says. "Worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot combined. I thought that I should come up with some extreme nonsense to match the libs outrageous claims. There are Jack Bauer and Chuck Norris facts all over the place. So I came up with (some) ‘Rush Limbaugh is so evil’ facts:

Before Satan ruled hell, Rush readied the place for him first.

Rush takes babies from candy.

Rush doesn’t host Tea Party events. He hosts Kool-Aid events using Jim Jones recipe.

Rush bought the planet Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life there anymore.

Rush was great at playing hide and go seek with kids. They were never seen again.

Rush likes planting things in his backyard. So far the count is over 30 foreign houseboys.

Rush frequently donates blood to the Red Cross. Its blood he took from unconscious hobos.

Rush bought the Sahara forest. Look at it today.

Rush sued his secretary for every penny she had in a sexual harassment lawsuit. He claimed she inappropriately touched the palm of his hand with her ass.

Rush was an informant for law enforcement when children were operating illegal lemonade stands.

Rush visited George W Bush in Texas when Bush was Governor there. Rush asked Bush if he could push the button that initiates the lethal injection to death row convicts.

Rush challenged Stevie Wonder to a staring contest. Steven Hawking to a poetry reading contest. And Christopher Reeve to a fist fight.

Rush buys up battered women shelters and rape crisis centers, and then evicts the occupants and turns the places into strip clubs for men."

I think it’s safe to say that Mancow’s playing the tongue-in-cheek card here.

Are the days of local bookstores numbered?

With mom and pop book shops few and far between, the death last year of book behemoth Borders and word that Barnes & Noble is hanging on by the skin of its teeth, it’s easy to make that case.

It’s already painfully obvious that music CDs and DVD movies are not long for this world. Chances are if you’re still buying those, you’re mulling over things like AARP memberships and Jack’s erectile disfunction ads.

Face it, what local businesses really are "safe" anymore outside of clothing, drugstores, groceries and necessities people need to purchase in person?

But back to books…

“I don’t think that books are going away,” says Vivien Jennings of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, the leading purveyor of big name author events in Kansas City. “A lot of people still like the organic book because it’s just you and the book. So I think the organic book is here for at least my lifetime.”

What about libraries? Who really needs them anymore with Google and the Internet just clicks away?

“I think libraries are doing okay,” Jennings says. “And studies have shown that people’s brains – particularly young people – that if they only use computers, where the computer does the thinking and seeking – they won’t be able to remember and think as well. So kids should not just let the computer do everything for them.”

Like newspapers, greeting cards and many businesses, survival in the Internet Age is the name of today’s game.

Faced with competition from huge chain bookstores in the 1990s Rainy Day embarked on a course of promoting its small store by bringing in authors for book signings and talks at area venues. That after watching the majority of its rival, small booksellers bite the dust. First it was the big box stores, then Amazon, Ebay and now electronic books.

“They were going to put a Borders up the street with taxpayer dollars and we were against it,” Jennings says. “Because for us to be able to do what we do we have to have community support. And it would not only have hurt our business, it would have hurt what we were trying to do for the community.”

Yet while it would be unthinkable even a few years back, Jennings and her fellow small, independent bookstore peers are actually feeling sorry these days for mega players like Borders.

"I do because  it’s very dangerous for anyone to have too much impact (and control) over an industry," Jennings says. "That’s why we have anti trust laws. So it’s better to have a number of players. We were at the Winter Institute meeting in New Orleans in January and there was a lot of concern about Barnes & Noble. Because we want to be able to have bricks and mortar bookstores where you have people selling books and creating interest in reading. You don’t want people to just be in a cave – you know – a computer cave. We want people interacting and exchanging ideas – especially for budding new authors.

"And you know what? I feel bad for the booksellers who worked at Borders. That was tough. The thing is that they were a community business and a local business to some extent and they invested money into the community. Maybe not as much as us but…"

While Rainy Day dodged the going out of biz bullet in large part by hosting hundreds of author events every year, Jennings and partner-in-crime Roger Doeren decided a few years ago to dial things way back.

Did they?

"Ohhhhhhh, well we are, but pay attention," Jennings hedges. "I told you we were going to do fewer but bigger. And we were doing 20 to 25 a month – almost every week night – so we’ve cut back some. But we’re still out all of the time. We decided to do fewer but bigger, but we didn’t really affect that very well. But it’s really difficult to get people out now because people are overloaded and they don’t have the time.

"So we’ve realized that we need to make each event an experience. Not just an author signing a book. It’s a total experience – the best experience we can think of for each author -an experience you cannot miss.”

OK, what’s the post-cutback, magic number now?

"Now we just do a couple a week, maybe two or three a week," Jennings says. “We’re still doing well  because we work smart and we work hard, but there’s still no rest.”

In the begininng, getting the big book companies to send authors to KC was the hardest part.

“Kansas City was a total flyover zone,” Jennings says. “People just did not believe this was a (legitimate) market. So we did Anne Rice at the Alexander Majors home and we showed ‘em. Nobody had ever done anything like that here before.”

Take author Jodi Picoult’s signing tonight at Unity Temple on the Plaza.

"That’s a big, big girl’s night out for her book Lone Wolf," Jennings says. "It’s fiction and is about the question of who has the right to make end of life decisions. And then Giada De Laurentis is coming to the Midland on April 5th and Lauren Conrad the star of The Hills will be at Unity Temple for another girls night out on April 10th. And MSNBC host Rachel Madow and I will be having a conversation at the Uptown on Earth Day in April, so that’s going to be really fun."

It doesn’t get much cruder and crasser around these parts than St. Patrick’s Day in Westport…

With the possible exception of Fake St. Patty’s Day in Manhattan. More on that in  a minute.

But here in KC, drunken dudes in green and bar owners revere the Green Day madness. However having worked in Westport for several years, I can tell you it’s one sick puppy that many non booze-based businesses avoid by closing that day to escape streets and sidewalks beset with wiped out women and messed up men publically puddled in greenish fluids and gosh knows what else.

Truth be told, for those who hold their Irishness dear – my mother’s maiden name was O’Callahan – it’s a one day black eye for the Mother Country that lasts about a year…until next St. Patrick’s Day.

Which brings us to the K-State party headquarters known as Aggieville in beautiful downtown Manhattan.

A handful of years back K-State robbed Aggieville of its student population for St. Patrick’s Day by including the holiday in the school’s spring break. So bummed out bar owners got together in 2007 to launch Fake St. Patty’s Day.

Check the Wikipedia:

"The Fake Patty’s Day celebration was started by bar proprietors’ who wanted students to celebrate together in Manhattan rather than miss their patronage during the real St. Patty’s holiday while the students were elsewhere on vacation over spring break. Recently, the Fake Patty’s Day celebration has attracted increasing debate following the community’s disapproval resulting from of the prevalence of criminal offenses associated with the event, such as underage drinking, assaults and batteries, public urination, noise complaints, driving under the influence, littering, amongst other resulting nuisances."

Fake St. Patty’s Day is like Westport’s real one only arguably worse.

Because while Westport targets the 21 and up crowd, Aggieville goes mostly after underage drinkers – K-State students – most of whom are are freshman, sophomores and juniors likely to be under the legal drinking age.

Which explains why the City Fathers have been fighting it all these years.

"The Manhattan City Council has been presented with a number of proposed city ordinances aimed at controlling the event but none have passed due to public debate, objections from the local tavern owners, and legal questions associated with such action," Wikipedia adds.

That is until this year’s Fake St. Patty’s this past Saturday.

"Despite property damage, rising arrests and public outcry, the City and law enforcement officials have had few viable options over the years with regards to curbing or even shutting down Fake Patty’s as no one group, bar or organization has taken ownership of the event," Manhattan alt weekly Hype reports. "Thus, in years past the Aggieville Business Association, City of Manhattan and Riley County only had the power to attempt to cleanup, manage and police an event growing in number of participants and effect upon life in the City.

"What’s new is that the Aggieville Business Association has decided to promote the safety and general well-being of the community by becoming officially involved with the event!" Hype adds. "They’re not promoting the binge drinking and green puke that the media focuses on, but acknowledging that the businesses in Aggieville that profit from this event need to accept the responsibility that the thousands who flock to FPD won’t."

To that end, they bought insurance, blocked off streets, loaded up with cops, brought in food vendors, portapotties, trash recepticles, cleanup crews, hotel shuttles and support staff to attempt to civilize this year’s wilding.

How bad was it? Check out K-State anthropology student CNH‘s blog about last year’s Fake St. P’s:

"Fake Patty’s Day – the Manhattan, Kansas twist on the traditional Irish holiday went off with a bang yesterday,"  he begins. "And I mean that literally, for I awoke to the sounds of car doors slamming and people yelling outside my window and my upstairs neighbor collapsing. Startled out of my slumber, my initial reaction was fire? Shooting? Massive car pile-up? Explosion? I jumped out of bed before remembering it was Fake Patty’s Day… promptly climbed back in bed and curled up under the covers as if that would make the racket stop.

"It has become an all day, green smeared, drinking fest. Officially beginning at 8am on Saturday, some students get up to pre-drink by 6 and it continues to the wee hours of the ‘morn. Last year the bars ran out of liquor. An impressive feat considering there are something like 40 bars in an area the size of a city block. The main road is blocked off and drunken leprechauns pour forth from all directions."

To cover increased costs this year, a controversial cover charge of $3 to $10 was implemented by bars.

"The students and patrons need to understand that they have to ‘pay to play’ and accept that if they’re going to help trash Aggieville…then they need to be willing to help the businesses cover the expense of cleanup, safety and management of it," Hype reports.

And this just in… it looks like the civilizing of Fake St. Patty’s worked all too well.

A blogger who goes by samizdat was astonished at how civilized and devoid of fun Saturday’s Fake St. Patty’s was.

"The thing is that I walked around with a camera and I had real trouble finding the usual sort of spectacle, like I’d’ve stumbled across in years prior," samizdat blogs. "The whole ambience was more like cordial festivity than wanton drunken revelry. I felt like I was strutting through Disneyland. Next year there should be an official mascot, and a gift shop selling action figures."

And where police at last year’s Fake St. Patty’s issued more citations than any other single day in the past three years  – with a 65 percent increase in calls for service from the year before – television station WIBW’s headline for this year’s fest reads as follows:

"No Major Incidents During Fake Patty’s Day"