KC Confidential.com

“I think it’s fairly obvious. Cole (Aldrich) averaged 11 points per game.”
Mike DeCourcy, college basketball writer for The Sporting News, when asked why KU’s Aldrich was left off all of TSN’s five-deep All-American teams, 810 AM
GH: DeCourcy spent ten minutes on WHB’s Border Patrol Wednesday morning defending his magazine’s decision to not list Aldrich as one of the top 25 players in the country. I was neither convinced nor swayed by DeCourcy’s adamant and fervent arguments against the Kansas center. The fact DeCourcy used Aldrich’s PPG stat as his first line of defense only weakened his argument — it made DeCourcy’s reputation as a college hoops guru slip toward the Bob Knight range. Read on.

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The US Supreme Court is hearing the Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church case allowing demonstrations at funerals.  Ironically, I had to Google Topeka to find that story.

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The Big 12 Basketball Tournament is in town this week, putting Kansas City in the national spotlight for the first time since that lady threw mop water at McDonald’s employees.

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TOP 5 SIGNS I’M HAVING BAD LUCK THIS WEEK:

#5.  My car keeps accelerating because its name is Christine.

#4.  I put all of my money on Gabby winning the Oscar.

#3.  Can’t get the Road Runner to eat the poisoned birdseed.

#2.  My Ouija board keeps leading me to Cameron, Missouri.

#1.  I just got called up by the Royals.

Kelly Urich

Good news! 97 year old former Chiefs band leader Tony di Pardo just donated $1,000 to the Cristo Rey School drum line.

Bad news! He donated money he would have spent on Chiefs season tickets.

A long overdue omission is rectified in today’s Kansas City Star…

In the form of a well-written story  about Jasper “J.J.” Mirabile on the front cover of FYI by freelancer Mary G. Pepitone. For years the Star refused to do a feature on Mirabile and Jasper’s Ristorante – for reasons I won’t go into. That in spite of the fact that the chef and eatery had evolved into one of the town’s most popular and successful upscale eateries. Outside restaurant reviews and my column in FYI, that is.

Suffice it to say, when the Star gets something stuck in its craw – for one reason or another – stories either do or don’t get written. Big surprise, right? Were stories about Jasper’s planned and then killed? I can tell you for certain that was the case on at least one significant occasion. But judging from the heavy duty front-page FYI treatment today, the quarantine appears lifted. And that’s a good thing. Why ignore the obvious for petty reasons.

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“Chiefs are one of my sleeper teams – even more so with Thomas Jones now. Jamal Charles was unreal last year but reality is that he’s not a full-time 320-carry back. Jones and Charles could be dynamic.”
Chris Mortensen, ESPN NFL insider, Twitter
GH: Could that be the sound of national expectations being showered upon our long-destitute Chiefs? Read on.

“I think this is the best move of the Scott Pioli era so far. They absolutely needed help at running back. I don’t think fans understand how beat up that guy (Jamal Charles) was last season. What makes this move even better is they didn’t have to waste a draft pick on it. I think this is maybe their best free-agent signing in years.”
Kent Babb, KC Star Chiefs beat writer, 810 AM
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The slight chance that an Internet Juggernaut could come to town has unleashed limitless possibilities in my imagination. BlogKC provides the background:

“Last week the City Council formally endorsed an application to be a test city for Google Fiber for Communities, the company’s plan to build its own high speed Internet networks around the country. The gigabit/second speeds would be 100 times faster than most DSL and cable modem lines.”

More than anything this potential move has me thinking about upcoming Kansas City apps.
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What’s the saying, three strikes and you’re out?

Had  my three this past weekend.

Starting Friday when I picked up an order of Burnt Ends at Wyandot Bar-B-Q in Overland Park.

After opening the carry out container at home I discovered more than half of the meat was little more than fat and threw it all out. So I got my ends burned to the tune of $ 7.50 plus tax.

Strike one. Continue reading

“I think it (the NCAA Tournament) should expand to 128 teams. I think everyone should play one more game. I don’t think teams should get byes in the NCAA tournament. That’s not what it’s about. I think if you’re going to expand, you go the whole boat and everyone plays one more game.”
Frank Martin, 810 AM
GH: And you thought the talk of a 96-team field was too large! Read on.

“There’s 347 teams in college basketball. If you expand it to 128, you still (inviting) less than half. What a tremendous opportunity! In football, 68% of the schools get to play in a bowl game, why not do that for college basketball?”
Frank Martin, 810 AM
GH: Martin says this like the college bowl system ain’t broke. Why would basketball want to follow the footsteps of the BCS bowl system? You know why – so mediocre basketball coached could do what mediocre football coaches do – talk about how their team was “bowl eligible.” What a crock.

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It’s back to work for what currently constitutes the full Kansas City Star newsroom…

Tuesday is the first fully staffed paper of the week, following the Star’s skeletal weekend staffing.

Let’s see what they got!

Okay, time out. Looking at today’s front page reminds me of how difficult it is to come up with truly poignant news stories and features. I won’t pretend that if I ruled the world, things would be any easier.

The problem is twofold… Continue reading

Kansas City Royal Alex Gordon broke his thumb sliding headfirst into second base Saturday in Arizona and will miss several weeks. Once called “the next George Brett,” Gordon’s future doesn’t look good with the team.  As evidenced by GM Dayton Moore’s comment, “I hope this won’t affect his ability to hitchhike.”

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KCI will be one of 11 airports to get full body scanners by this summer.  Officials made the announcement Friday.  The first scanner will be installed in the Southwest Airlines terminal. It will be placed just ahead of Southwest’s fat scanner.

Kelly Urich

Basketball is coming back to Downtown Kansas City this week and already there’s a wide-scale push to continue the urban legend otherwise known as The Downtown Renaissance.

Of course The Kansas City Star is content to report unquestioningly from PR copy but the figures just don’t add up. The underlying cultural logics of all the news stories celebrating the crowds coming to see the Big 12 reveals that Kansas City just wanted to bring white people back downtown no matter what the cost. And while this city is drowning in a sea of debt, there is no question (this week anyway) that the goal of bringing JoCo and other suburban sports fans back into the loop has been accomplished.

Still, a few years into all this subsidized construction it’s plain to see that a flock of sports dorks from The Golden Ghetto won’t save Kansas City. Not even close.
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With the extremely successful 3-D opening of Disney’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND this past weekend, one has to wonder whether the 3-dimensional movie process has come of age or, as some are predicting, is an expensive fad doomed to extinction?

For the record, the Tim Burton directed classic fairytale enjoyed approximately $116 million in ticket sales at some 3,728 playdates throughout North America—making it the biggest grossing 1st quarter opening weekend in history!

2,063 of those locations were showing the blockbuster in 3-D and another 188 in IMAX 3-D.

Additionally ALICE IN WONDERLAND’s opening debut weekend brought in another $94 million from international engagements for a projected worldwide 3-day total of $210 million. Continue reading

“I told (John Currie) from day one that I want to be the guy that grows old with you here.”
Frank Martin, after K-State announced they had signed Martin to a contract extension through the 2014-15 season, 610 AM
GH: Everybody gets what they wanted with this agreement. Martin gets stability for the first time in his coaching career along with his salary doubling. K-State gets to keep their first Big 12 COTY in basketball at a price that may be considered a bargain. And the Big 12 keeps one of the conference’s most dynamic young coaches the conference has ever birthed.

“If there were any doubters that Frank wanted to stay, he cried during the press conference. He appreciates the hometown feel and loyalty and all that kind of thing that K-State people have shown him. To watch him cry, it was a little bit out of place but you could understand where he was coming from. It was pretty cool.”
Curtis Kitchen, 810 AM
GH: Martin is an emotional guy and he makes no excuses for his passion. But Kitchen’s assumption that Martin’s tears were evidence that he “wanted to stay” might be more wishful thinking than reporting. If my boss walks in my office today and doubles my salary, I’ll shed a couple of tears as well. But I’d do the same if I was moving to Bloomington, IN for double the money.

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A salute to the dedicated, surviving staff members of FYI who conduct an annual slumber party of sorts every Academy Awards Sunday…

That said, let’s rock with the FYI section first.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t regard competitive movie award-giving as spectator sport. Perusing a list of winners and losers will suffice.

I understand, of course, that there are those who do. And to them, today’s FYI coverage is a First Class Effort. So indulge, I’ll bag on it no further. Continue reading

Alow me to begin this “review” by saying that I know Brian McTavish and I’m no Brian McTavish…

But since McT got trapped off base somewhere between Gretchen Wilson and the Ballet Ball, I batted for him Saturday at Norah Jones’ concert at the Midland by AMC.

The venue was superb; the sound lighting, staffing – all first order. Which brings us to the show.

So let’s cut to the chase… Continue reading

The new director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will ‘bring a new dimension’ to the museum. From now on, additions to the Nelson will look less like lawnmower sheds and more like tool sheds.

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TOP 5 SIGNS ITS ALMOST SPRING IN KANSAS CITY:

#5.  Christmas trees thrown on 71 highway are ready for composting.

#4.  Royals start talking about the 2011 season…

#3. You immediately find a clock just to make sure it’s Wednesday at 11 when you hear a siren…

#2.  Deffenbaugh sets aside a special day to pickup school closing trash…

#1.  Everyone springs forward - not just Toyota owners…

Kelly Urich