Obviously, the Kansas City Police Department has had a long 24 hours. It held a press release at 3 this afternoon to talk about yesterday’s shootout at Ward Parkway Center and has been e-mailing updates to media outlets all day.
We’re thinking someone might need a nap. One of those e-mails, from KCPD spokesman Darin Snapp, which we received at 11:52 a.m., read simply:
It should be noted that Patricia Reed is a white female, Leslie Ballew
is a white female and Luke Nilges is a white male.
If you’ve had one conversation about yesterday’s shooting at the Ward Parkway Center, you probably talked about the last time you were there. For me, it was late Saturday, when I went to sign up last-minute for the Trolley Run.
A good friend of mine was volunteering, directing the other procrastinators where they needed to go to fill out paperwork and get their T-shirts. The store rented out by the Trolley Run was full of good-intentioned people giving up their Saturday to make sure other people who had put off signing up could still run. It’s goddamned frightening to imagine that, if that lunatic had started shooting 24 hours earlier, my friend and the other volunteers may have been among the victims. And it’s goddamned frightening to think that the victims were just as innocent, just as undeserving of someone’s fucked-in-the-head act.
Fred Phelps’ infamy is spreading across the pond. The anti-gay Topeka preacher and his faithful flock were recently documented by Louis Theroux, an English broadcaster with the British Broadcasting Company and a former correspondent with Michael Moore’s TV Nation. Theroux hosted the documentary The Most Hated Family in America, which debuted on BBC 2 to more than 4 million Brits. The BBC is in negotiations with cable channels in the states to air the show, although it’s already available via YouTube (the video above is a clip from the film). Theroux took time out to talk about butting heads with Fred, empathizing with the young women in the church and going to hell.
On a sunny Saturday like today, yard sale signs in Brookside make the place look like it's election time again, except there's crap being sold instead of crappy candidates. But there was one at Gregory and Edgevale this morning that caught my eye. Down at the bottom of the store-bought sign were stickers advertising "Oprah for President '08."
A couple blocks north, I found the home of Patrick Crowe. If you haven't heard of him, the former car wash owner has been trying to get his favorite talk show host to run for president for more than a year now.
And in almost every way, Crowe's campaign has been a rousing success. He’s gotten loads of publicity, appearing on a half-dozen TV shows, on 25 radio programs and in another 10 newspaper articles, from London to Palm Springs. There’s just one thing he hasn’t been able to do: convince Oprah to run.
At 3 p.m. on Saturday, the non-profit organization Invisible Children is hosting a nationwide event to demand talks with the United States to end the war in Northern Uganda. There are an estimated 1.5 million displaced Ugandans living in refugee camps. About 1,700 Kansas Citians have signed up to attend the event at Kaw Point Riverfront Park (1 River City Drive, Kansas City, Kansas).
Hello! My name is Samantha. I’m an orphan, and I live with my wealthy grandmother in a turn-of-the-century house. It’s a style called a “gingerbread house.” I attend Miss Crampton’s Academy, a school situated in a fine private home. Miss Crampton teaches us penmanship, geography, arithmetic and history. On special occasions, I enjoy visiting Tyson’s Ice Cream parlor, and trips to Grandmary’s summer house at Piney Point.
I would like to get to know you! You can meet me at the American Girl Doll Exhibit at Kansas City’s Toy and Miniature Museum (5235 Oak).
Recently, a friend of mine called me from his seat on the patio of P.F. Chang’s on the Plaza to report, somewhat hysterically, that the Seville-inspired architecture was decorated with swastikas.
I initially assumed he’d had a few too many lychee-and-green-tea-infused cocktails, so I filed his message under W for “Whatthefuckever.”
This blog entry is (as the blogger himself says) kind of funny. It's a price comparison between a lovely old downtown Lawrence home and a home in Watts, L.A. -- Jason Harper
In the same week that Missouri native Sheryl Crow was suggesting that American consumers reduce their toilet paper consumption to one square per bowel movement, a little pinch of Kansas City’s rectal history was listed for sale on eBay. A seller used the online auction site to sell a “vintage physician’s sample tin” that once contained rectal cones (active ingredients: tannic acid, hydroxyquinoline, menthol and benzocaine) prepared by the staff of the long-forgotten Thornton & Minor Hospital. The empty, pocket-sized blue-and-white tin –- no vintage cones remained -- sold for $9.75, a modest price for a relic of the days when Kansas City was literally flush with clinics for rectal and colonic diseases.
It came over the wires today that the Chiefs are sending Dante Hall to the STL Rams in exchange for a fifth-round pick in this weekend’s draft, to which I say, “Why are you trying to tear my baby boy away from me?!?”
Ladies, you can have the big and strapping Tony Gonzales. With all due respect, he just doesn’t do it for me like Dante does.
I auditioned for Deal or No Deal yesterday. Six hours of standing in line got me 20 seconds in front of a casting director, two sore feet and an empty stomach (I skipped lunch).
The sad truth is, I really wanted on the game show. Seriously. Before I even knew about the audition, I put “aspiring Deal or No Deal contestant” on my MySpace page. Yes, I am lame.
For months I’d been running my mouth, talking about how much ass I would kick if I went on the show. There’s no skill to the game whatsoever. It’s totally about guessing. Anybody can do it, so why not me?
Then I saw a sign the other night. An omen, if you will. While jogging, I saw the Deal or No Deal tour bus parked outside the Marriott two blocks away from my apartment in downtown.
Did you know that the state of Kansas has a “no nit” policy? The press release below, from the Johnson County Health Department, informs us that cases of head lice have been reported in schools around the country. No word yet on whether frogs are falling from the ceilings and blood is running from the water fountains.
OLATHE, Kan. - Police said they felt their lives were in danger when they shot a woman yielding a knife.
Those two officers were on paid administrative leave while an investigation was done into the incident. Officials said that is standard procedure when a firearm is discharged.
Shooting a knife-yielding woman instead of a knife-wielding woman would be grounds for even more serious inquiry.
It takes only one finger to express Sarah Gibson’s feelings toward the scammer who tried to ruin her Crossroads bike shop’s good name recently. But plenty of local hands have offered the bird to help the owner of the Acme Bicycle Company emphasize her point in an online photo gallery.
