KC Confidential.com

Chris and Cowboy were left apologizing to their 610 audience on Monday afternoon after Carl Henry didn’t show for his well-hyped interview. The unlikely threesome made up for Monday’s malaise with a Tuesday to remember when Carl not only spent 15 minutes talking with C&C but also dropped bombs about Xavier and C.J possibly reneging on their commitment to Kansas and chasing after Coach Cal at Kentucky. Below are excerpts from Carl’s conversation with C&C.

“Let me clear this up, because Coach Self knows this ‘cuz I called him. Xavier, if it weren’t for his momma saying, ‘I would not go down to Kentucky,’ Xavier woulda been at Kentucky. He would have been at Kentucky if not for his mom saying, ‘I don’t want to move to Kentucky.’ So, Xavier said, ‘I’m gonna go to Kansas.’ Even though that’s what he wanted to do – go to Kentucky to play under Coach Cal, that’s what he wanted to do. I expressed this to Coach Self. Told them. Now, after all this been said, his mom don’t care where he goes. So guess what? The kid might have a change of mind.”
Carl Henry, 610 AM
GH: Chris & Cowboy have been viewed as a ragtag duo whose radio show is unfit for prime time. These claims are not without warrant. But their work on the Carl Henry/J. Brady McCollough/Kansas story this week has been laudable. This kind of work, timely interviews and drop-everything-and-listen-to-this kind of content is what propelled 1510 into the behemoth sports station it has become as 810. Excellent work by the two guys whose show everyone was discussing Tuesday afternoon.

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Make way for the haters…

It’s like clockwork; write something, anything online about Stanford & Sons comedy club kingpin Craig Glazer and out come the boo-birds – the, uh, anonymous boo-birds. This news ought to really rile ‘em.

It comes via today’s Hollywood Reporter.

“Veteran scribe Dan Gordon has been anointed to pen ‘The King of Sting,’ ” the Reporterreports. “The writer behind ‘The Hurricane’ and ‘Wyatt Earp’ has signed to write the screenplay for the drama about the life of con man Craig Glazer. Continue reading

Have you ever been to Bakersfield, California? I have, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s a meth-infested, rat’s nest of lowlife; a shit hole. It’s the perfect setting for Denis Johnson’s new novel, Nobody Move.

In this, his tenth work of fiction, Johnson tells a story of twisted retribution. Guns, girls, and vendettas.

What happens to the man who shoots you in the leg and then steals your car? Well, he’s hunted down. Especially if that man is wearing a white tux, and he’s no James Bond. No, to add insult to injury, the gunman is wearing a white tux because he’s an amateur barbershop singer and has just performed a mere hours before shooting you in the leg. How very insulting.

But Adam, “shoot ‘em up” novels are all the same, aren’t they? You should know better.

The National Book Award winner (Tree of Smoke) doesn’t let the novel get cliché. In fact, it doesn’t come close. It’s a babe-ridden, gun-toting, pulp fiction masterpiece. It was previously serialized in Playboy, for crying out loud. And while it’s not quite as brilliant as Jesus’ Son, Johnson’s first notable work (and my personal favorite), Nobody Move is the perfect summer read.

My favorite all time bank robbing EPIC has to be director Arthur Penn’s 1967 trend setting BONNIE & CLYDE starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard and Gene Hackman.

And when it comes to gangsters and bank jobs, there was John Milius’ 1973 DILLINGER with Warren Oates, Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman leading the heavy handed and ultra violent gunplay.

So maybe my expectations for PUBLIC ENEMIES were just a bit too high? Continue reading

This just in from KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser re his eyewitnessing of last weekend’s P&L brawl…

The Funk was hanging with Star editorialist Yael Abouhalkah in the post midnight hours Saturday when the reported stabbings and 20-person melee went down. It was what Funkhouser refers to jokingly as Yael & Funk’s Excellent Adventure.

“Well, I wanted to go down and see what was happening,” Funkhouser says.

The highlight of their Odd Couple Adventure went down after 2 a.m. when they were hanging at the Lucky Strike bowling alley.

“Right when we were getting ready to leave we saw some people being ushered out,” Funk says. “Including a six foot tall Aisan kid who looked like he had been punched and his girlfriend who was just sobbing profusely. I mean, she was out of control screaming and crying, and she’d been hit in the face and was bleeding from the face. And I just sort of stood there to see what was going to happen next. The Asian kid was injured and obvioulsy very angry and upset, and he couldn’t figure out whether to go back in there or stay and comfort his girlfriend. Then the Kansas City police ushered an African American kid out that seemed to be the perpetrator. And when Yael and I were leaving the parking garage there were a whole lot of emergency vehicles.”

The $64 million question: was it a bowling date, as P&L District sources claimed? Continue reading

“All of that is false. I had a friend of mine in Kansas City read me a lot of what was printed and it’s false.”
Carl Henry, TheShiver.com
GH: Matt Scott posted Carl Henry’s response to J. Brady McCollough’s story on Xavier and C.J. Henry in Sunday’s Star on the ESPN-sponsored TheShiver.com. Just what “all of that” includes is up for debate. Is Carl saying McCollough made up his story? Fabricated the quotes? The Kansas City Star doesn’t work that way. Read on.  

“We had lunch. The tape recorder was sitting right in front of (Carl Henry) the entire time. He knew it was on. He knew he was being quoted. I was a little taken aback by some of the things he said, but they were said with a recorder there and never did he say, ‘You shouldn’t put that in there.’ There was nothing like that. So to me, I felt that I had full reign to use everything he said.”
L. Brady McCollough, 610 AM
GH: McCollough has covered the Jayhawk beat for The Star for two years. He is not a sensationalistic reporter who would want to burn an incoming basketball star like Xavier Henry and his brother, C.J. It makes no sense to believe his story is anything but valid.

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Talk about super strange bedfellows…

About that melee that went down during the wee hours Saturday (technically Sunday) in the Power & Light District. The one where three people were stabbed and 20 or so others were involved in a fight that allegedly started inside Lucky Strike Lanes.

Here’s where it gets – I don’t know – humorous?

Turns out spunky Star editorialist Yael T. Abouhalkah and KC Mayor Mark Funkhouser were more-or-less on hand for the big brawl.

Abouhalkah said as much Sunday on the paper’s online blog:

“One of the last things Funkhouser told me after our visit to the Power & Light District early Sunday morning – we left around 2:30 a.m….was that he thought there was the possibility of violence in the area, not surprising given the youthful crowds and drinking that goes on.”

Which brings us to the part of this column where inquiring minds want to know… Continue reading

“Nothing in life is guaranteed and nothing is assured. You can only do what you feel in your gut is best. Maybe about six months ago we started talking, I knew my contract was coming up and I just had this feeling, this isn’t good.”
Frank Boal, who will be retiring after 28 years at WDAF TV Fox 4 after Tuesday night’s 10:00 PM broadcast, 810 AM
GH: Boal’s contract at WDAF was coming up June 30^th and he has decided to accept the company’s buyout instead of taking the chance the offer may not be offered in the uncertain future of local sports television. Boal is the rare media type to spend 29 years in the same market and cultivated very few enemies. Some would call that commendable, others would call it 28 years of playing it safe.

“WDAF did everything they possibly could to try and move some things around to try and entice me to stay. They did a wonderful job of trying to do that. But it’s just a matter of what you can possibly do with what you’ve got. And it just didn’t add up – that’s the bottom line.”
Frank Boal, on the financial aspects of his decision to stay or go, 810 AM

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Looking for proof that the decline of western civilization is speeding up even faster than global warming?

Try this: The monumentally dreadful sci-fi action epic, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” grossed $201.2 million in its first five days in U.S. theaters.

Scary, huh?

The good news is that the box-office numbers fell just shy of “The Dark Knight’s” record-breaking opening in 2008.

“The Dark Knight” deserved to be seen by as many people as possible, because it’s a superhero movie masterpiece.

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J. Brady McCollough authored an interesting and timely story in the Sunday Kansas City Star about Xavier and C.J. Henry, the most highly-anticipated siblings in Kansas basketball history. The real focus of McCollough’s story for me was Carl Henry, the father of these two prize recruits. The college hoops season is still four months away but this threesome sounds like their eventual arrival on campus this August has all the makings of a ratings-busting reality show.

“Carl says both of his sons hope to be one-and-done at KU.”
J. Brady McCollough, Kansas City Star
GH: Everyone has Xavier pegged as a one-and-done recruit. No one I know of outside the Henry family has tabbed his older brother as a lock for the NBA – even after four years in college.

“I don’t like stepping on people’s toes, but I just know what I know. I watch them play, all the Kansas kids. I like these kids, (Sherron) Collins, (Tyshawn Taylor), they’re good kids, man. But they’re not better than C.J.”
Carl Henry, Kansas City Star
GH: If Carl truly doesn’t like to step on toes, it appears he doesn’t mind delivery a shot to the groin of the Jayhawks’ team chemistry. C.J. may be as good as Carl thinks. How would anyone know? He hasn’t played real competitive hoops in what, five years? What is obvious from this statement is that Carl expects not only Xavier to start next season but C.J. as well. You can bet this quote has been discussed plenty in Lawrence by players, coaches and fans.

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If you view rock music as a commodity, then Joe Cocker’s rock show Saturday night at Ameristar Casino’s Star Pavilion showed the benefits of a long shelf life.

Cocker is no longer the full-tilt twitching maniac who in the 1960s and ’70s proved to be as interesting for his spasmodic antics onstage as he was for his throaty majesty.

But the 65-year-old Brit’s got enough blues power left in him, as well as classic songs and talented musicians around him (a group of eight, including Mike Finnegan, Kansas City’s gift to the Hammond organ), that he was able to deliver an extremely solid if predictable performance to the faithful.

The audience mostly consisted of folks hovering around or past the half-century mark. This was their music and as long as Cocker didn’t screw it up – which he didn’t by a long shot – then they would go home happy. My guess is that everyone went home happy.

My 16-year-old son enjoyed the show. So Cocker must still be doing something right – namely, the Scream that Shook Woodstock. OK, it’s not all it used to be in ’69, but it still gets your attention and makes you shake your head and smile in semi-amazement (so gut-wrenching, yet so tuneful). Continue reading

This Throwback OTC is from April 2001. Dick Vermeil was the new coach of the Chiefs and there was much speculation as to what his first draft would look like. Don Fortune was still competing with Kevin Kietzman for the afternoon drive sports talk radio audience.

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The Chiefs own the 12^th pick in the NFL draft this Saturday and there is much speculation as to what they’ll do with that selection. Some think Carl Peterson will trade down to get a second-round pick that he gave up for Dick Vermeil. Others think Vermeil will use the pick to get the marquee running back that Marty Schottenheimer and Gunther Cunningham said the Chiefs never needed. Here is how some experts predict the Chiefs will use their first-round pick.

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Don’t stop till you get enough?

When it comes to milking the you-know-what out of notable news most media never seem to get enough. Anna Nicole Smith ring any bells? And where Michael Jackson is concerned – for better and for worse – pretty much everyone has been riding his end of days train.

So there was little surprise when I ducked into Nara for some late night sushi Friday after Stevie Wonder’s blockbuster show at Starlight, and the DJ action there was all MJ. Wonder had just mounted a more than two-hour impromptu sendup to the artist some media outlets labeled Wacko Jacko.

Stevie wasn’t alone…

Across town at the new Beaumont Club in Westport, Nas and Damian Marley were forging a hip-hop salutaion of sorts.

“Nas walked out in a Michael Jackson ‘Rest in Peace’ T-shirt and the crowd went crazy,” says Hobbs fashionista Shauna Swanson. “Then he took it off and threw it into the the crowd and went into a 15 minute Michael jackson set that was un-believable. The Beaumont just went crazy. And I can’t tell you how many people were wearing Michael Jackson T-shirts. That and Heath Ledger T-shirts – it was a bizarre memorial as far as the Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson contrast.”

Missing in action at the MJ mode melee: “I didn’t see any Farrah Fawcett or Ed McMahon,” Swanson says.

When first announced, Stevie Wonder’s concert Friday at Starlight Theatre was seen as significant for being the celebrated hit-maker’s first show in Kansas City since 1986 at Kemper Arena. Call it history with a little “h.”

Then Michael Jackson died on Thursday – only a day before Wonder’s show at Starlight – and the resulting pop-culture shockwave instantly imbued the gig with a previously unimagined magnitude. Call it History.

How would Wonder publicly handle the stunning loss of his longtime friend, with whom he’d also shared the bond of being a former child pop star? What would he say to ease the ache? What would he sing in tribute?

Wonder didn’t waste any time making his feelings known to the thousands that packed Starlight on Friday. Before a note was played, he stood center-stage with Aisha Morris (his daughter and backup singer) to share his grief and search for meaning.

He solemnly called it an “amazing night” because of the “pain that is felt through the world with the loss of Michael Jackson.” Continue reading

King of Pop or has been? You make the call…

Forget for a moment the debate over whether Michael Jackson will be best remembered as a musical genius or world’s biggest perv. The question at hand is, was he in fact The King of Pop as the front page of the Kansas City Star today decreed.

“You can have the debate,” says KC Confidential entertainment writer Brian McTavish. “But I mean, it’s self-serving. He invented the title for himself and he certainly promoted it’s use.”

Kief’s Downtown Music in Lawrence main man Steve Wilson concurs.

“As great a career as Michael Jackson had, that was a tribute he gave himself,” Wilson says. “You know, he wanted very much to be in that Pantheon with Elvis and the Beatles. And what could be bigger than the king of pop? This is how the myopic and self-involved that are isolated by their own little Mafias think. They kind of have to be continually reminded and reinforced that they’re something special – and in many respects Michael Jackson was something special.”

But after more than a decade of musical irrelevance, did Jackson still lord over the pop kingdom? Continue reading