Uh, hey, sprechen ze talk? I’m Harry Ellis, and I’m in charge of international acquisitions at the Nakatomi Corporation.
Hey, I read the papers, I watch 60 Minutes. I say to myself, These guys are professionals, they're motivated, they're happening -- i.e., they wanna do something fun this weekend. Am I right? To put it in my terms, you're here on a hostile takeover, and you grab us for some greenmail but you didn't expect some poison pill was gonna be running around the building.
Pro wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his family and then offed himself last weekend. The gruesome details keep coming: bibles placed next to his victims’ bodies, a prophetic Wikipedia post and cryptic text messages sent by Benoit in his final hours. After hearing all of this, I couldn’t help remembering the last major wrestling misfortune and Benoit’s history in Kansas City.
In May of 1999, I road tripped with a couple of friends to Kansas City for the unfortunately titled pay-per-view event, Over The Edge. Kemper Arena was packed with thousands of pro wrestling fans. Midway through the night, the arena lights went dark. A video screen glowed with the antics of the Blue Blazer, a masked wrestler better known as Owen Hart. Hart was supposed to swoop into the ring by rappelling from the catwalk above Kemper. But something went horribly wrong.
Pitch reporter Justin Kendall received several angry phone messages following last week’s cover story, “The Dimwit D.A.,” which detailed Phill Kline’s performance as Johnson County district attorney. Most of the callers claimed the story had an anti-Christian and pro-choice bias, despite the story mentioning abortion only once in passing.
Last month, civic leader and Republican consigliere Warren Erdman told me that Gov. Matt Blunt is the state’s “leading advocate for stem-cell research.”
Erdman tried to pass this line of crap after the boy governor elevated a foe of stem-cell research. Blunt put state Rep. Rob Onder on the Life Sciences Research Board, even though Onder had fought the passage of the constitutional amendment to protect stem-cell research in Missouri.
Now we’re seeing the consequences of Blunt’s "leading advocacy."
Sure, its tap water might cause cancer, but at least the Kickapoo Indian tribe finally has some good news. Thanks to Wyandotte County residents’ overwhelming support in Tuesday’s vote to allow expanded gambling operations, the tribe can finally start work toward building a brand-new casino.
The Associated Press reports this morning that “Prisons and jails added more than 42,000 inmates last year, the largest increase since 2000.” Predictably, almost six out of every 10 prisoners was a minority. That might explain Jason Whitlock’s recent obsession with what he calls “prison culture” seeping out into the mainstream.
The Pitch’s sister paper, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, shadowed the fag-hating flock of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church as they picketed the supposed sinners of an Opa-locka megachurch. Writer Brandon K. Thorp focuses on the vitriolic reactions the family elicits. Check it here. – Justin Kendall
Did anyone else see a connection between these two seemingly unrelated stories – from far opposite ends of town – in this morning’s Star?
The first was this one, about how the grand opening for downtown’s prefab new Power & Light District has been moved back to next spring. Developers blamed the city for not transferring land quickly enough to keep the development on time, while Mayor Mark Funkhouser and City Manager Wayne Cauthen sent letters to the tenants they’d already booked, begging them to open earlier. In any event, here’s the point: “Long-term plans for the district call for 450,000 square feet of bars, restaurants, entertainment venues and specialty retail that would bring sizzle back downtown. Blake Cordish, the official in charge, promised a grand opening this fall when his company took over construction of the public-private venture last July.”
The marketing team for Overland Park-based Sprint has a whole new attitude! By which I mean that they’re executing a carefully planned new digital consumer outreach strategy that somehow combines the Bratz-style bitchiness of Gawker.com with those toothless Coca-Cola slide shows that run before movies start (“Unscramble ARPIS HILTON! Name the movie in which Michael Keaton says, 'I’m Batman!'”)
Last Saturday night, Julianne Donovan and Nathan Wyman got married. Since both are creative, crafty types, I knew that their wedding would be pretty spectacular, and my suspicions were confirmed when I got the invitation. It encouraged guests to wear costumes and comfortable shoes for the after-ceremony parade, and it also included two tickets to the debut performance of Love Shall Endure, the play that they wrote and directed.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies is off the chopping block for now, according to a letter sent out Saturday by the institute's only staff member, Judy Ancel. Last Friday, UMKC Chancellor Guy Bailey decided not to immediately close the institute. Bailey changed his mind after a meeting with Gary Kemp, the Business Manager of the Greater Kansas City Building & Construction Trades Council, and Missouri State Sens. Victor Callahan and Chris Koster.
Starbucks heard the “predator” taunts when it plopped a new store next to the Broadway Café in 1998. But the onslaught of green-aproned baristas hasn’t been all bad for independents. By ritualizing the consumption of fancy coffee drinks, Starbucks has made caffeine peddling an attractive business. As Starbucks boss Howard Schultz said on 60 Minutes, “[W]e created an industry that did not exist ... ”
A few places around town seem to support Schultz’s theory.
Yes, the episode is old – it first aired December 11, 2005. But a few nights ago, I caught the Aqua Teen Hunger Force spoof of Sprint’s Boost Mobile youth brand of cell phones. For those with lives, jobs and ambition, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a late-night cartoon about the misadventures of a floating box of French fries (Frylock), a rolling ball of meat (Meatwad) and a shit-talking milk shake (Master Shake).
Giant celebrity funnyman and Bullwinkle impersonator Dave Coulier (pictured) performs his inimitable brand of Bullwinkle-imitation-based comedy tonight at Stanford and Son's (1867 Village West Parkway, Kansas City, Kansas) and will be, perhaps, the only man in the city limits who has been seen on television somewhere in the world every single day since, like, 1987. Go experience the cognitive dissonance that can come only from seeing in person a man doing a Bullwinkle impression who, previously, you had seen doing a Bullwinkle impression only on TV. Coulier takes the stage at 7:30 p.m.
Uh, hey, sprechen ze talk? I’m Harry Ellis, and I’m in charge of international acquisitions at the Nakatomi Corporation. 
The marketing team for Overland Park-based Sprint has a whole new attitude! By which I mean that they’re executing a carefully planned new digital consumer outreach strategy that somehow combines the Bratz-style bitchiness of 
Giant celebrity funnyman and Bullwinkle impersonator Dave Coulier (pictured) performs his inimitable brand of Bullwinkle-imitation-based comedy tonight at Stanford and Son's (1867 Village West Parkway, Kansas City, Kansas) and will be, perhaps, the only man in the city limits who has been seen on television somewhere in the world every single day since, like, 1987. Go experience the cognitive dissonance that can come only from seeing in person a man doing a Bullwinkle impression who, previously, you had seen doing a Bullwinkle impression only on TV. Coulier takes the stage at 7:30 p.m.
