Make no mistake, Kevin Costner knows his sports movies…
BULL DURHAM, FIELD OF DREAMS, FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME and TIN CUP to mention a few.
Meanwhile filmmaker Ivan Reitman of UP IN THE AIR, GHOSTBUSTERS, STRIPES and ANIMAL HOUSE fame knows GOOD movies.
Now they’ve teamed for a solid new sports themed movie called DRAFT DAY.
Think a football version of MONEYBALL. Continue reading
Buy protonix and Generic Pantoprazole tablets online for gastrointestinal tract. Available without prior prescription. Continue reading
Hard as it may be for many of us to admit, in Kansas City today country music is king…
I almost can’t believe I even wrote the above words.
Look, I grew up here in Kansas City and worked for many years as a merchandiser of grain – corn, wheat, milo and soybeans, to name four. I worked closely with farmers and grain elevators throughout the midwest and south. I even was trained in the inspection of grain by the USDA grain inspector in Cairo, Illinois. And I still buy country ham and moonshine on my yearly swings through Kentucky and Tennessee.
The flip side of all that: I ran and built up The Pitch during its most critical formative years and was a key player in promoting alternative rock bands like Green Day in Kansas City and Lawrence – long before anybody in radio here had the guts to roll the dice on an alt station like The Buzz.
So country music has always been something of an anathema to me. Continue reading
This just in…
In barely one week superstar actor and comic Chris Tucker will headline Stanford & Sons comedy club at The Legends in Kansas City, Kansas.
“We just got him booked,” says Stanford’s main man Craig Glazer. “He’ll be at Stanford’s April 17, 18 and 19, which is Easter weekend. He’ll be doing one show on Thursday and two each night on Friday and Saturday.”
In addition to Tucker’s more recent role in the Academy Award-winning movie Silver Linings Playbook with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, he’s best remembered “rom when he was in the Rush Hour movies with Jackie Chan,” Glazer says. “And he played Smokey in the Friday movies. At one point he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood.” Continue reading
I’m gonna to deliver the punch line, the money quote, right up front…
Why? Because in an effort to save time for Harley so he can get right to his negative spin and not have to read the whole story, big words and all. It’s a beautiful day and I want to start things off right for our short bus brother by serving one up high with plenty of hang time so he can effortlessly spike his comment ball of illiteracy back over the net of mediocrity.
This July, I turn the Big Six Zero.
That’s right, sports fans. Your well-coiffed scribe is aging, but – I’d like to think – doing so with style and grace.
Maybe not Craig’s version of grace and style, but grace and style nonetheless. Continue reading
![rapidrewardsbirthday-sweeps[1]](https://www.kcconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rapidrewardsbirthday-sweeps1.jpg)
It goes without saying that Southwest Airlines provides the biggest lift out of KCI…
Yet despite what you may believe, Southwest is not necessarily the lowest ticket in the market anymore. It all varies by where you are flying to.
However that price differential is often determined by the fact that you can still check TWO FREE BAGS with Southwest. Try doing that with other carriers where a pair of checked bags can set you back $120.- on a round trip flight.
And God forbid you have to reschedule your already ticketed trip on another airline. You are looking at a ticket-change fee of $200.- PLUS the difference in the price of the new ticket. Continue reading
Time flies whether you’re having fun or not…
And so it is that more than a month ago a local jeweler rumored to be up you-know-what creek fled his nicely appointed Johnson County office in what is said to have been a late night move, for a space far less fashionable. And frankly, that’s accessing the new digs very generously.
Two weeks later I visited the jeweler’s former offices before checking out his new haunt. And since nobody was home, I took a peek through the mail slot in the front door where to my surprise I saw was a very small, very plain room, loaded to the gills with plastic and cardboard storage boxes filled with what appeared to be business records.
They were strewn and stacked about the room, filling the viewable space as if someone had brought them there in great haste and plopped them down willy-nilly. Continue reading
Sheesh!
It’s one thing to lose a hard drive for the very first time. A long overdue right of passage, the geniuses at the Apple Store on the Plaza told me. And I didn’t even really have to man-up or anything.
My Applecare had about a month left and the helpful, knowledgeable genius dude slapped a brand new hard drive in my computer in practically no time, before my very eyes, free of charge.
It was magical really.
All that remained was for me to synch it to my backup drive at home and reload a program or two. No problem.
Or so I thought. Continue reading
The American
The American Restaurant is about to celebrate 40 years of being Kansas City’s Five-Star restaurant. I’ve stopped there several times but I still can’t find the drive-thru.
*******
Tough choice at the movie theater. Do I pay $7.50 to see Captain America or do I pay $1.50 to see Captain Mexico?
******* Continue reading
Original art by Mark Valentine
What if you had an employee that drove customers away?
And what if that employee kept new customers from coming in? What if that employee also had access to your bank account and made decisions that hurt your bottom line?
Kansas City taxpayers have all of that in the Kansas City School District.
Families with school age children move to the suburbs if they can afford to. They want to get their kids into an accredited school system. The growth of these surrounding little towns is not due to the allure of living on a cul-de-sac. It’s the schools.
If you relocate to Kansas City, you can find beautiful stately homes for bargain prices. But if you have children, you will chose to live in a cookie cutter suburb in a house that looks like all the rest because of the schools.
The Kansas City School District made the news twice this month and the common theme of each story was mismanagement. Continue reading
This just in from former Kansas City Star columnist Steve Penn…
In addition to promoting his book about former Kansas City Black Panthers leader Pete O’Neal – Case for a Pardon – “I’m bringing in the National Alumnae Association of the Black Panther party in October,” Penn says. “I’ll be the host with Charlotte O’Neal – she’s married to Pete ‘Neal. Continue reading
Believe it or not, it’s been 10 years since iconic, local audio store Brandsmart bit the dust…
And 10 years as well since local furniture powerhouse Benchmark put its spanking new, mega complex near 119th and I-35 up for sale.
Think about it just 10 years.
Of course as a matter of sheer coincidence Brandsmart and Benchmark competitor Nebraska Furniture Mart celebrated it’s 10th birthday here just last year. In other words, it only to Nebraska a year, give-or-take, to snuff both of KC’s top retailers. Continue reading
Pardon me while I share a bit of, “What CNN Sacrificed for Missing Plane Ratings”
First what I wrote last week:
“With CNN’s ratings reportedly up some 86 percent, the only thing that doesn’t seem odd, mysterious or suspicious is the reason the news network has all but ignored 90-plus percent of the world news it regularly covers to air out-there speculation and rumors about the missing flight. Especially given that the actual amount of news to report has been essentially slim to none.”
Now let’s take a look at what TV news monitor Andrew Tyndall had to say in a Hollywood Reporter column headlined as quoted in my lead above.
“Wall-to-wall coverage, ridiculous theories: An analysis on how Jeff Zucker replaced news with the “pseudo-fictions of reality TV.” Continue reading
MLK & Coretta
Talk about paradoxes…
On April 4, 1968 civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated at the age of 39 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, as his horrified mistress remained inside his room. Since that day the resume of the man we’ve sainted with a national holiday has been scrubbed clean, Hallmark-carded and buried in an ocean of idolization and denial.
Why do we do this?
Is it merely out of our desire for perpetual protection of perceived perfection? Continue reading
Game on…
Looks like former Kansas City Star columnist Steve Penn will be going forward after all with his defamation lawsuit against the newspaper. Penn was axed in July of 2011 for allegedly quoting from news releases without attribution.
According to a 2012 story by Poynter Institute reporter Andrew Beaujon, “Penn maintains that copying from press releases was always OK at the Star and his firing resulted from management’s failure to make it clear that there’d been a shift in policy. ‘Acting pursuant to his training and to widespread practice at the newspaper, he would occasionally use in his general interest column press releases which described upcoming community events.
‘In fact, Plaintiff’s experience and training at the Star was that such attribution was not required. … Nevertheless, one of those supervisors apparently objected to the widespread practice and without informing Plaintiff that it should no longer be followed, decided to “make an example” of Plaintiff and push for his firing.’ ”
However, just when everything was ready to explode in the courtroom last November, Penn’s lawyer moved for a Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice when the mother of a witness “critical” to his case – a prominent PR expert – fell ill and was unable to testify at the last minute. Continue reading
Never mind the fact that, as I write this, it’s in the mid-30s outside, with a wind that makes it feel positively Arctic…
Forget that the Royals are 0-2 on the season, with gut-wrenching losses that came in the ninth inning or later. Let’s pretend that the bullpen—something that was widely regarded as the team’s greatest asset—cost the team each time, and that the offense looked flatter than a European model’s ass. (So, you know, no different than last season’s offense.)
None of that matters because it’s only two games, an infinitesimal percentage of the season, and even better, it’s Opening Day at the K. Continue reading
Some would argue that CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER doesn’t stack up to Marvel Studio’s original 2011 movie…
Then again everyone has an opinion.
For my money it comes mighty close and plays well beyond its fanboy base.
Make no mistake, the storyline here is a bit complex and sometimes hard to follow as Chris Evans‘ Steve Rogers/Captain America is now living quietly in Washington D.C. trying to adjust to the modern world.
But when a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague comes under attack, Rogers becomes embroiled in a web of intrigue that threatens to put the world at risk. Continue reading
Steve Rose
One of the most well known uses of allegory is by the Greek philosopher Plato, who meant it to illustrate the limited understanding we have of life’s events given our narrow perspective. He gave the example of people chained to the walls of a cave their entire lives. Since there is a fire at the entrance of the cave, it blocks their view to the outside. All they can see are the shadows cast on the back wall of their cave by objects passing in front of the fire. They don’t see the reality, but only the shadows.
When it comes to understanding state and local politics, most people here in Kansas City are like those prisoners in a cave. They have a wide range of sources of information and commentary on national and international events and issues. On television, you can watch CNN, MSNBC, or Fox or any of the Big Four broadcast networks. In print media, you have a variety of magazines and newspapers, with ones to meet every point of view. Now, of course, you also have the Internet; with an almost infinite choice of websites, blogs, or online columns. Finally, there is Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as independent bookstores like Fairway’s Rainy Day Books or Kansas City’s Prospero’s, which offer an endless bounty of new books on economics, politics, history, and sociology.
However, when it comes to state and local matters, most of the time you’re pretty much stuck with the Kansas City Star as your only source of information and opinion. (The former Sun newspapers were simply an echo of the Establishment platitudes of the Grand Avenue Oligarchy, otherwise known as the KC Star. This is confirmed by the ease with which former Sun publisher, Steve Rose, slid over into writing a column for the Star after the Sun ceased publication. Citizen Rose, of course, was crying all the way to the bank, having sold the money-losing Sun papers to the unsuspecting new owners for a king’s ransom, based on the alluring demographics of JoCo, despite precious few actual paying subscribers.) Continue reading
I was in Memphis visiting The King when the devil died…
Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka hate monger Fred Phelps, that is. So I didn’t get to “experience” much of the hoopla that went down in Phelps’ wake – or at his wake – but a check of the church’s website proved telling.
These guys love to dish it out, but they totally can’t take it.
“The world-wide media has been in a frenzy during the last few days, gleefully anticipating the death of Fred Waldron Phelps Sr.,” the church’s blog begins. “It has been an unprecedented, hypocritical, vitriolic explosion of words. Do they vainly hope for the death of his body? People die – that is the way of all flesh.”
There’s more. Continue reading
You know, if the shoe fits…
The Kansas City Star had an interesting piece Sunday about Internet trolls and “sadists. It was titled, “New research finds that many Internet trolls are ‘everyday sadists’ who feed on suffering.”
After I read it, all I could think about was finally, the insanity of vile, evil, anonymous, fake-name comments has come to the surface. Turns out a Canadian research team has been mulling over the data from these commenters who regularly attack individuals who write stories or make the Facebook posts, with little to no comment about the story itself.
Sound familiar? Continue reading
