KC Confidential

They can dish it out, but they can’t take it…

The funny thing about power – besides absolute power corrupting absolutely – is the people who possess it tend think of themselves as inarguably correct most of the time.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that the powers that be at the Kansas City Star think of themselves as all knowing. Their points of view are the correct ones. People who see things differently are merely in need of enlightenment.

Which of course, Star editors and writers are happy to provide.

It’s not so much arrogance – although it can be in some instances – it’s just the way they feel and think.

What they – you know, the editors and writers – fail to recognize is that despite their full time pursuit of truth, justice and the American way, they’re human too. They make mistakes, err in judgements and embrace wrong headed ideas…just like the rest of us.

No way was then editor Mark Zeiman about to lower himself by returning a call to then Pitch editor CJ Janovy for a comment. Not when he was dead certain she would administer a journalistic spanking. After all, the Pitch was too small to much matter, why lower himself? Continue reading →

Brace yourselves, here it comes…

“Craig passed away last night,” says longtime friend and former Chiefs star Ted McKnight. “He had a heart attack and passed. I don’t think his heart could handle everything that was going on.”

“Everything” ranged from years of having type 2 diabetes while continuing to drink, smoke and not eat right. Followed by leukemia, gall bladder issues and his kidneys shutting down.

It wasn’t pretty, but the guy who grabbed life by the balls and wrested every ounce of sex, drugs and rock n roll he could from it has moved on.

“He lived large,” says faithful friend Bill Nigro.

“You know, people say a lot of things about Craig, but I know for a fact that when I needed him he was there,” McKnight adds. “And you know what? I’m heartsick but I know for a fact he’s in a better place. He’s with Junior again.”

Being a good friend isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be…

Such seems to be the case with Westport businessman Bill Nigro. 

From the get-go – for the past several months – Nigro has been Johnny-on-the-spot there for his seriously sick friend Craig Glazer. He helped Glazer move from his condo into a small, inexpensive Plaza apartment.

He visited Glazer frequently, taking him food and urging him to eat as he watched Craig’s weight plummet 45 pounds as he struggled with gall bladder issues and leukemia.

Nigro’s visited Craig at the hospital as much or more than anyone, and spent two hours last night cheering him up and communicating via Glazer squeezing Nigro’s hand once for yes, twice for no.

Yet after all that… Continue reading →

I’ll be honest…

When I first heard of this movie it sounded like a racial slur to me. Imagine substituting just about ANY other ethnic group into the title!

“Crazy Rich (Blank),” anyone?

I digress.

CRAZY RICH ASIANS is a fantasy, escapist kind of rom-com.

And it could very well be just what the doctor ordered for late summer, female moviegoers.

They’ll eat it up with our star-eyed lovers facing questions of class, money and family/social backround.

And don’t think the audience doesn’t know what to expect. After all the film is based on Kevin Kwan‘s 2013 bestseller of the same name.

As the story unfolds we find Nick Young (Henry Golding) in an ongoing relationship with Chinese-American economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu).

Their life in the Big Apple is nearly perfect.

But things are about to change. Continue reading →

Whatever happened to halfway unbiased journalism?

When it comes to politics it’s long gone. As evidenced by the local newspaper of record’s relentless, blatant efforts to diminish Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach. Right down to running an unflattering, sinister pic of him above in the online story reporting that Kobach had won.

Look, I’m no fan of Kobach’s, but I do have an affinity for level playing fields, fair play and the like. Both of which are increasingly missing-in-action in local and national news.

In no small part because of the massive layoffs in most newsrooms and influx of inexperienced reporters with paper thin resumes from beleaguered “news” organizations like the Pitch and Kansas City Business Journal .

Net result: pretty much anything goes.

What halfway fair minded individual can watch CNN these days without cringing? That once heralded news network makes Fox News look “fair and balanced.”

And while the Kansas City Star has long been a supporter of most things Democrat and liberal (just ask Stomps), until the past year or so I’ve never seen anything approaching the levels of over-the-top bias being exhibited daily.

The Star news staff more closely resembles a political party than independent journalists.

Take the recent hit job on an area “GOP” nominee who in the Star’s headline “racked up $12K-plus in child support debt.”

Like that’s not intended to bias readers against the dude from the get go.

However, talking to local women attorneys there are many understandable reasons why people can fall behind in such payments…job loss, difficult economy, disagreements over finances to name three.

And rather than the dude being a chronic offender, he caught up on the amount he was behind and the court reduced his payments to make things more equitable. Five years later he fell behind again but settled up and put the matter behind him.

That was five years ago.

What this story really was about was the reporter disagreed with the dude’s politics. As evidenced by noting that the pol in question  “peddles bigoted conspiracy theories on the radio.”

In who’s opinion? The reporter’s. Continue reading →

This just in…

KCC scribe and comedy club czar Craig Glazer underwent surgery earlier today and lived to tell the story…in a manner of speaking.

That according to longtime Glazer pal (and former roommate) legendary Chiefs running back Ted McKnight.

“I was just at the hospital with Craig and he’s in a pretty bad way, but he seems to be resting,” McKnight says. “They operated on him today – they’re just doing what they can – and they have him stabilized. So right now they’ve got some control of him and they’re just trying to keep the guy alive.”

McKnight says he watched Glazer go downhill over the past year… Continue reading →

BLACKkKLANSMAN ranks right up there as the ULTIMATE CON…

Had things not gone down the way they did in the late 1970s we’d be tearing it apart for being too improbable. But this is an incredible and outrageous TRUE story!

The setting is Colorado Springs where the local police department has just hired Ron Stallworth as its first African-American detective.

He’s perfectly portrayed by John David Washington.

Stallworth’s first assignment: To go undercover, infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the KKK.

And how he did it as a BLACK man is something to behold!

In simple terms he answers a Klan recruitment ad in the local newspaper. And yes, he sounds white on the call.

And fellow (Jewish) cop Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) stands in for Stallworth whenever it comes to a face-to-face meetings. (We all know how well Klan members like the company of Blacks and Jews—NOT!)

So it goes with ongoing investigations by the Klan by Stallworth—which almost includes a lie detector test.

Somehow the Ron/Flip facade works and soon the police department has its own credible guy as an insider. Continue reading →

Salt Bae…Nusr-Et New York

I just came back from lunch with (a friend)…

LA is a giant suburb – that’s why I’m comfortable there – I grew up in the suburbs! You can own a house, have a yard and drive your car. Although I must admit as the years have gone by the traffic has gotten even worse. I’m now one of those people who will say no to things based on the traffic. But most modern business is done via computer/phone. You only leave the office to go to lunch or the occasional meeting. Hell, I can work anywhere. I could be anywhere and oftentimes I am and you don’t know it!

But there’s nothing like New York City.

I grew up in the dark ages, when New York was still dangerous.

My mother had a chain ripped right off her neck.

There were certain places you didn’t go. It was dirty, and Times Square was filled with arcades. That’s right, when you turned 14 you took the train into the city and went to guitar shops and pinball palaces – that’s what freedom looked like in the old days.

But now, New York City is a theme park.

To the tourist.

But if you live here…

There’s a vibrancy as soon as you walk outside your building.

Just like there are cars on L.A.’s freeways all night there are people walking the streets of New York at all hours, and 24 hour shops, everything just a block or two away. I wonder what it would be like to live here.

Oh, I know it would get oppressive, I’d need to get out, but to be able to walk to the store, to have everything at your fingertips, to be able to take the train across town, that would be a revelation.

That’s city living. Continue reading →

If you’re following airline history, you know it’s a legendarily bad business…

The runway is littered with bankrupted airlines, Pan Am, Braniff, Eastern, TWA…the list is endless.

But now airlines are incredibly profitable, because they’ve figured out YIELD!

The bottom line: Flights fly full.

So I’m inured to the procedure.

The endless wait at security, at the gate. The reason executives (AND DEEJAYS!) fly private is TIME. They’re not making any more of it and if yours is precious the two plus hours you waste before your flight is now productive time.

Then again, the have-nots will keep telling anybody with a life that we have it good, that they were born in a field and crapped in an outhouse and the rest of us are abusing them and therefore Trumpgot elected.

There you have it folks!

The truth is my non-flight experience is everybody’s experience. Our infrastructure has gone to hell, because no one wants to pay anymore. Taxes are bad, you’re entitled to your income without deductions, and the truth is we live in a society and what affects one of us affects us all…when a butterfly flaps his wings in Japan…

So I’m on the plane. Sans upgrade.

Yup, that’s another scam, they tie you to an airline so you have status, so you don’t have to pay for baggage, so maybe you can get an upgrade. And the hoi polloi take their entire belongings with them on the plane, so there’s no luggage space, because they don’t want to pay and nobody wants to wait for their baggage, but…

I can’t travel that light. I’m willing to wait. But for how long?

The girl next to me is skinny, but she’s got B.O. Really? Isn’t this part of the social contract, that you shower before you go into public?

But that depends upon parents. That’s where we learn this stuff. And too many of today’s parents are dingbats. It’s the basics that count, table manners, cleanliness… But these are the same parents who go blast the principal when their kid is sent home with a note.

I grew up in a different era, where your parents weren’t your best friends, you were AFRAID OF THEM! 

And sure, my dad hit me with a belt and a brush and I’m probably traumatized forever but I knew if I screwed up in school I wouldn’t get into a good college and my future would be sacrificed… Life is all about delayed gratification, and I’m aiming this at you Baby Boomers, taking social security early.

Do you really want to make that bet? What if you outlive your money? Happened to some friends of mine, they had to get a reverse mortgage to get by, but at least they owned real property. As for me dying before I hit the crossover point, I’m willing to make that bet, the government can have my money. I just don’t want to be without when I need it. As for working in your late 80s… GOOD LUCK! No one wants to hire you, you’re too old, and probably too infirm to boot.

So we sat on the tarmac for three hours.Even though there was bright sunshine outside. The pilot said there was weather somewhere. But at the three hour mark you’ve got to go back to the gate where we sat for another hour before they canceled the flight.

But here’s the kicker: Since they book the flights so full, I CAN’T GET OUT UNTIL TOMORROW NIGHT!

That’s right, despite flights on the hour, there are no seats. Continue reading →

Seems like every summer one small film comes along that really gets it…

Think LADY BIRD—and maybe LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.

No explosions. No car chases. No CGI.

Just a ton of buzz at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

So it is with the comedic-drama EIGHTH GRADE which opened in a handful of major markets a couple of weeks back and immediately captivated audiences and critics alike. It also gained a 98% approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website. Pretty impressive.

This week the movie platforms out to theaters nationwide!

Realistically EIGHTH GRADE delves into the agonies of middle school.

Those cringe-worthy, embarrassing, awkward moments associated with coming of age.

The story has newcomer Elsie Fisher starring as 13 year old Kayla Day, an 8th grader in her final week in middle school. She lives with her single-parent dad and posts motivational videos on YouTube.

Kayla is awkward in the truest sense of the word as she stumbles  her way through the highs—but mainly lows that face her. Continue reading →

A moment of silence, please…

Because the dude who started Stanford & Sons, ran for Kansas City mayor and went toes up in just about every biz he ever owned, “has left the building.”

So says an online ad for Glazer’s “estate sale.”

“Stan Glazer (former owner of Stanford & Sons and past candidate for KC mayor) has moved and we will sell the contents of their Overland Park, KS home.”

And just like that one of the Cowtown’s most colorful, controversial caricatures is no more…not locally anyway.

Allegedly…

Because judging from the sale pics, Stan the Man must have left town with little more than his toothbrush, because it sure doesn’t look like he took much of his stuff (Hey, maybe he did die…nah).

Stan’s also the dude who lorded over the town’s highest profile, dysfunctional family – in the form of sons Craig, Jeff and Jack.

Seriously, who can forget Stan’s headline grabbing lawsuit against his sons in 1998 demanding that they continue to support him to the tune of $5,000 a month from the proceeds of the comedy club even after he’d run the thing into the ground?

Speaking of which, Jack and Jeff have passed and Craig is currently hospitalized. Continue reading →

The now abandoned Kansas City Star Building at 18th and Grand, Kansas City, Missouri.

And then there were none…

The long, sad exodus of beleaguered, beat down journalists from the Kansas City Star‘s proud home at 18th and Grand is in the books. The last of the last checked out on July 19th for a makeshift news annex in the nearby press building (which by the by was never intended to serve as an office let alone a newsroom).

Good thing, because most of the 2,000 ink stained wretches already took a bullet, making squeezing the surviving 200 or so a more livable proposition.

But this just in, not only is there a far smaller body count these days, from the looks of it they’re also mailing it in. When I circled past around 9:30 pm Thursday the new newsroom was all but if not empty.

No wonder they no longer get any even halfway late sports scores in and are riddled with all those typos and incorrect verb tenses that come from migrating day-old news stories into the print edition sans much in the way of quality of editing.

In days gone by most of the news staff would gone by six p.m. or shortly thereafter, but there were always a dozen or so reporters and editors putting the newspaper to bed until between 10 p.m. and midnight.

No mas.

The security guard who’s worked at the main Star building for more than a decade told me the place is usually a ghost town by the time she gets in at 9 p.m.

And this just in…

Turns out the staff’s great escape was punctuated by a last minute freak out! Continue reading →

Give credit to Tom Cruise for keeping this franchise strong and fresh…

Not necessarily from a standpoint of story line, mind you, but by creating ever more exciting action stunts to amaze us.

Could he top his impressive ROGUE NATION stunts of 2015 which found him hanging onto an aircraft at takeoff?

Or how about 2011’s GHOST PROTOCOL which saw Cruise scale that glass skyscraper?

Certainly tough acts to follow.

But take it from me, for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-  FALLOUT Cruise goes out of his way to give us his physical best while dissing James Bond (something to chew on).

Ethan Hunt has never really been encountered an impossible mission—so why would he now?

Never mind that MI6’s Solomon Lane flipped to the dark side and a terrorist cell known as The Apostles.

Their mission: to acquire dangerous amounts of plutonium to produce the world’s most powerful nuclear weapon. Continue reading →

This is just weird…

I’ll make some calls and see what I can learn, but there’s something rotten in Denmark.

In a manner of speaking.

Because since the dawn of time, the alt weekly (turned monthly) known as the Pitch has been the proud possessor of the website pitch.com. Similarly to how fellow beleaguered local print pub the Kansas City Star owns kansascity.com.

And while clearly both publications have been circling the drain for more than a decade – and the Star had to unload its historic home at 18th and Grand – the newspaper has somehow managed to hang on to, you know its, URL. That’s Uniform Resource Locator (or web address for those of you still tethered to your driveways).

But a funny thing happened recently…

Actually, it’s not funny at all. More like lame, inexplicable and – as I said – weird.

Because a week or two back I noticed that somehow or another pitch.com did not appear to be KC’s skeletal alt weekly’s home.

Had to be a mistake, right? Maybe I hit my head and who knows what’s really going on? Continue reading →

Know what gets tedious?

Wading through nonstop Donald Trump bashing day in and day out.

Hey, I get it.

When people hate their jobs, the nasty neighbor who disagrees with them, traffic snarls on the drive to work or the hubby who crawls into bed with 12-pack bad breath…they’re gonna complain.

It’s the human condition.

Unfortunately, what used to pass for halfway objective journalism goes missing in action all too frequently these days.

Case in point, an innocuous story about the president’s pending visit to the Cowtown today in the Kansas City Star.

U.S. presidents have a long history of coming to KC. Sometimes they eat at Bryant’s, sometimes Gates. Sometimes they tie up traffic. Correction, they always tie up traffic.

All of that said, I don’t recall advance news accounts being peppered with snide suggestions for locals affected by their visits to call in sick.

Ah, but that’s what cub reporter Edward McKinley wrote.

Like that’s supposed to be funny?  Continue reading →

Hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since the producing team of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson successfully brought one of today’s most popular musical romantic comedy plays to the big screen…

MAMMA MIA! would go on to earn in the neighborhood of $610 million in worldwide ticket sales.

So you just knew that their had to be a follow-up—and it arrives in theaters this weekend.

MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAINis a sequel. But it is also a TWIST IN TIME PREQUEL giving us the backstory of Donna, the possible three dads and how she ended up on that Greek island.

The good new, of course, is that the ENTIRE original cast is back including Meryl Streep (well sort of), Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Julie Waters, Christine Baranski, Dominic Cooper, Stellan Skarsgard—EVERYONE!

The film begins in the late 70’s with Lily James as a young, pretty and free-spirited Donna Sheridan leaving school (and ‘The Dynamos’) for a great big world adventure—with some romantic hook-ups along the way.

Fast forward to the present where we find Sophie having just upgraded the old Greek hotel. It’s now called the Hotel Bella Donna and everyone is attending the grand re-opening. 

Oh, and Sophie is expecting.

SPOILER ALERT! Continue reading →

There wasn’t one song everybody didn’t know…

That’s the difference between yesterday and today, the ubiquity of the hits. If you were alive in the 1960s and 1970s, you heard them. They penetrated not only the airwaves, but society, and these acts had a bunch of them.

The surprise was the Cowsills. They were so tight, the harmonies so perfect, it was amazing. You noticed, as you did for the band that backed up all the acts, that they were superb, proving once again that real music can triumph.

In the 1960s.

The other jaw-dropper was Chuck Negron, who sang with oxygen.

I kid you not. I even sang along a bit with “Joy To The World,” which I absolutely HATED back when, but with the passage of time…

But this was not a nostalgia show – they were not tugging on our heartstrings – and that was so weird. I expected to sit back in my seat and have the sixties flash before my eyes, but really it was all about the songs. It was a celebration of the songs – you sang along to all of them.

There was a video screen that showed hair products during the Cowsills, did you know Dippity-do had sunscreen?

But other than that…

And this is a low budget production, even the screen is small and those in attendance are not hip.

The upstairs was filled with the nearly-dead, purchasing their seats on Goldstar. Continue reading →

It’s about time…

Ever since KU got its panties in a bunch over Mizzou bailing on the Big 12, leaving the Jayhawks high and dry, the oldest rivalry in Division One college sports “west of the Mississippi” has been missing in action.

Missouri wanted to keep things going, but like jilted lovers, KU basketball deity Bill Self (and what former KU coach Roy Williams referred to as the “wine and cheese” KU fan base) would have none of it.

Kansas wasn’t about to suffer an annual drubbing by MU’s football team. Nor would it risk losing to Missouri in basketball and endangering its perennial Top 20 basketball ranking.

Screw those unfaithful losers in Columbia, KU would be just fine without ’em.

Trouble is, ever since KU ended the rivalry, its football fortunes have plummeted.

But now guess what?

Lawrence Journal World sports editor Tom Keegan has finally grown a pair and is calling out KU for its folly and telling them to renew the rivalry if they want to breathe life into Jayhawks football.

“Playing Missouri in football is a no-lose proposition for Kansas” Keegan writes. “Losing is the expected outcome, unless KU (can close) ground on Missouri by the time a game can be scheduled. Defeating Missouri would do more for a Kansas coach’s popularity than slaying any other opponent.” Continue reading →

Took a while, but…

With Lawrence and Topeka in the rearview mirror, at long last I’m back in the Cowtown. And with a little luck, the folks in the Philippines who work for the local newspaper will have my delivery rectified by Monday and I can complete my return.

Gotta tell ya though, it wasn’t easy (nor inexpensive).

Moving money aside, it’s gonna take some time before I can figure out what goes where, what went where and which end is up on the home front where chaos reigns..

Ah but some things never seem to change.

Like how the Star milks stories like the Schlitterbahn water park’s Verruckt.

Seriously, I could have written most of the headlines a year in advance.

The latest: Stop the presses they’re finally going to tear the ride down.

Somewhat obviously they’ve been planning / waiting to tear the thing down for over a year while the various legal teams sorted out the nuances of the accident. But is the long awaited announcement really a news scoop? Continue reading →