Blogs

Bryan Brown hasn’t forgotten about Kansas, especially the state’s jails.

Brown, the former head of the Consumer Protection Division in then-Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline’s office, skipped town earlier this year after Kline lost a re-election bid to Paul Morrison. Brown reportedly left the Sunflower State to start his own law firm in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

But Brown has kept his thoughts on Kansas – and distaste for Johnson County Sun columnist Steve Rose – alive on his blog. Brown reminisces about the 68 days he spent in the hoosegow on a contempt of court charge in 1992 for violating a federal judge's injunction that barred protestors from blocking the entrances to an abortion clinic.

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No doubt, it's hard to be single in Kansas City. That's evident in the fact that whenever we run a pretty woman on the cover of The Pitch, we're sure to get e-mails from dudes with crushes. That happened back in January when we ran this story on the smokiest bars in town, and a sultry-looking girl on the cover puffed away, luring readers to request her seven digits.

Mostly, they sound pretty innocuous, with something about being a nice guy, how it's hard to meet women in this town, how he just wants to get to know that model because she looks like she's smart.

We've gotten the same kind of messages this week, seeking the contact info for Kara McMurtry, who appears in a low-cut cop outfit while biting a pair of handcuffs for the article "Sex Police."

Well, here's Kara.

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So, boys, let’s say that it’s Halloween, you’re kind of an idiot and you need a costume – fast. If it’s 1998, you’d bust out the horn-rims and the tooth-blackener and call yourself shagadelic. If it were 2006, you’d smear on a 'stache and jabber about how sexy-time is “very nice.” But in 2007, the world of comedy has offered up no easily imitated character of Anchorman-sized obviousness – so what’s a jackass to do?

Easy. Stick your dick in a box.

Or at least pretend to. Dragged to the Granfalloon Saturday, I caught no fewer than half a dozen joiners giving their junk the ribbon-and-bow treatment from last year's memorable Saturday Night Live bit. Unlike Justin Timberlake, though, these guys weren’t getting anywhere. In fact, most of the women they attempted to favor were asking for gift receipts.

“That’s pretty disappointing,” a lady friend complained after peeking inside one tuxed-out shmoe’s present. His contents: a Twinkie. Once he’d stumbled off, a friend added, “It’s a Twinkie here, but in real life, he’s packing a Zinger.”

Other boxes yielded dildos or – lamest of all – nothing. Nobody had the wit to go with a Ding Dong or a picture of Nixon. One lazy guy didn’t even bother with the gift wrap, opting instead to tie an empty case of Miller Genuine Draft to his crotch – perfect for pledge week, maybe, but hardly effective with the Plaza women he was after.

At one point, two dick-in-a-box guys happened to find themselves waiting together at the bar. They glared at each other, for a second, probably wondering who was copying whom. Then they looked away, at the floor or the tumultuous crowd, both a little shaken: They’d seen the douche and the douche was them. – Alan Scherstuhl

Today, we here at the Plog hit a snag. For years now, we’ve been channeling Bart Simpson and prank-calling Royals owner David Glass. Usually, the phone calls go smoothly – we ask for someone with a silly name, Glass doesn’t realize he's being pranked, then he threatens to cut our bellies open. But not today. Things changed forever today.

First, let’s review recent calls.

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Is the Kansas City, Missouri, Council going to be awash in porn in a couple of weeks?

At Thursday’s business session, Mayor Pro Tem Bill Skaggs asked for an internal audit that supposedly has looked into the forbidden use of City Hall computers. In requesting the audit, Skaggs mentioned a blog.

The blog, Not Ready for Prime Buzz, said on October 6 that the city’s internal auditor was investigating an allegation that pornography was found on computer belonging to “LT.” In a separate entry, the blog referred to LT as LaTrisha Underhill, an assistant to City Manager Wayne Cauthen.

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On October 10, The Pitch requested a copy of any contracts issued or agreed to by the Jazz District Redevelopment Corporation. The JDRC responded on October 23 with a one-page letter that denied the request.

The following day, we published this story, in which several sources confirmed the existence of a contract between the JDRC and the Downtown Council. Hours after the edition hit the stands, The Pitch got a call from the JDRC that, yes, in fact, there was a contract. They offered to allow me to come inspect it at 8:30 this morning. After paying 70 cents, they handed over this copy of the contract.

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Say the name D.B. Cooper to a midtowner and they’ll probably think of the smoky 39th Street bar near the Kansas University Medical Center that opens at 6 a.m. and hosts some wild karaoke on Wednesdays. Many of the bar’s regulars might not even know the story of the real D.B. Cooper, a daring, albeit extraordinarily polite hijacker who jumped out of a Seattle-bound 727 with $200,000 in $20 bills in 1971, never to be seen again.

Kenny Giese, the owner of D.B. Cooper’s on 39th Street, lived in Seattle at the time of Cooper’s heist and became fascinated with the story. “He always wondered if Cooper was in some small town somewhere, tending some tiny bar,” a friend of Giese’s tells us. “So when he bought this bar from the original owners, that’s what he named it.”

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It has been nearly a week since Kansas made national headlines for rejecting a power plant because it would add to global warming – and the political fallout has been immediate and intense.

When Rod Bremby, the secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, denied an air permit for Sunflower Electric Power Corporation to drastically expand a coal-fired power complex in western Kansas, outrage flared across the state.

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Ever wonder what it’s like to be in a huddle with Bobby Knight yelling in your face, halitosis in full force? Ever dreamed of accepting bribes from influential boosters? What about screaming through your school president’s property on an ATV when you’re supposed to be serving time in a halfway house? Me neither. But there was one thing I did want to know about the new College Basketball Experience facility adjacent to the Sprint Center.

To be honest, I was less interested in paying homage to college basketball players and coaches than I was in testing the claim made by a sign above the CBE entrance: "Warning. This is NOT a museum. You may sweat." I usually avoid activity involving that possibility, but I thought, No one is going to threaten me like that.

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On Sunday night, Jon Fulton Adams and Ron Megee got married in a spectacular affair. JFA, a fashion and costume designer, and Ron, an actor who founded Late Night Theatre, are known for hosting creative theme parties in their West Bottoms loft. So it was no surprise that their big night incorporated an Edwardian-Victorian-goth theme, a touching ceremony that made most everyone cry and – of course – a stage show with drag and burlesque performances at the reception.

The ceremony -- which Ron described in his vows as a “one-night only” show -- took place at the Coterie Theater. The wedding party dressed in either black jackets with tails or corset dresses with billowing skirts, which they accessorized with pheasant feather corsages. Ron and JFA both sported top hats and tuxes; Ron had a black lace veil hanging from the front of his hat. De De Deville, who rocked the ringlet curls and a Victorian dress with a bustle, carried Atticus, the couple’s wire terrier. He served as the ring-bearer and his little stubby tail wagged excitedly as he went down the aisle.

After they were pronounced husband and husband, we headed to their loft for the reception. Some highlights of the night:

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It took jurors four hours today to convict Lisa Montgomery of cutting a baby from Bobbie Jo Stinnett's stomach. The jury rejected Montgomery's insanity claim and apparently believed proseuctors, who -- in calling her post-traumatic stress defense "voodoo science" -- came up with perhaps the best catchphrase of 2007. -- Eric Barton

Last Wednesday, Johnson County District Attorney filed 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood’s Overland Park clinic. Blah, blah, blah.

You probably already know the score, even though the usually loudmouthed Kline is conspicuously tight-lipped. But something seemed a bit odd about a quote in last Thursday’s Kansas City Star. The paper quoted Pat Adair, the president of the Kansas chapter of Women Influencing the Nation.

Adair claimed waiting these 10 months for Kline to file charges had made her “very impatient.” The Star didn’t mention if Adair was nagging Kline at the dinner table or the first of every month when he drops off his rent check. Yep, the Star neglected to mention Adair is Kline’s landlord.

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Over the weekend, E!’s The Soup featured this Nancy Grace snippet as its “Clip of the Week.” It’s taken from Nancy’s eponymous show, in which she discussed the Lisa Montgomery case in her usual screeching-banshee way. Despite the crappy video quality (I shot it off the TV with my digital camera), the flabbergasted look on Nancy’s face is awesome.

In case you’re interested in reading the interview in its full context, check out this CNN transcript. – Jen Chen

After publishing this blog entry on Wednesday about the famous Miss Douglas, Stacy Hedger, I got an e-mail from a Richard Dean of Austin, Texas. Dean, it seems, had done his homework on Miss Douglas. He found an entry for her on classmates.com from Douglas High School in Douglas, Arizona.

So I called the only Hedger in the book in Douglas, Arizona. Turns out it’s her dad. He gave me Stacy’s cell phone number. When I called on Thursday, she hadn’t seen the video or heard that it was making the rounds on the Web. Since then, she googled herself and learned that the video has appeared everywhere from VH1 to Jimmy Kimmel Live.

After her research, we talked by phone. Turns out the video doesn’t have a Kansas City connection. Still, because there are probably a few people out there who are curious about the real Stacy Hedger, I recorded this interview above. I agreed to leave off her married name from this article, mainly because she’s this sweet mother of two from this small border town down in Arizona who doesn’t need any more harassment. Beyond the harassment she’s already gotten from her relatives. – Eric Barton

It's been a crazy few days for the two founders of the Pitch's parent company. First, Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin faced criminal charges for running a story in the Pitch's sister paper in Phoenix. Then, faced with public outcry, prosecutors dismissed the charges and admitted mistakes had been made. Read more here, on the blog of the Phoenix New Times, which features a video of the top prosecutor eating crow. -- Eric Barton