Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Look: We admit it. We were scooped by The Kansas City Star Thursday so forcefully that a tiny, vital part inside of us broke. Now we can feel it rattling around inside, like a cigarette butt in a beer can. I’ve personally apologized to our entire editorial staff for the complete failure of The Pitch's Night & Day section to highlight what is obviously the biggest entertainment story to hit Kansas City since marshmallowy singer Garth Brooks occupied the Sprint Center for a record-setting nine nights. Note that I’m using the word occupy the same way that hippies were described as “occupying” university administration buildings, often while wearing nothing but hemp sandals. Like the hippies, Brooks had to be forcibly dislodged by a hail of obsessive Timothy Finn blog reviews. And come to think of it, we totally missed the Garth Brooks story, too. So we’re 0-2 on this whole thing.

You win this round, Kansas City Star Preview section. Tonight, the 2006 Disney sensation High School Musical makes its Sprint Center debut translated into the girly idiom of figure skating — as clearly pictured in this huge image, reproduced in color at enormous expense, on the cover of yesterday's Preview section.

Adapting classic works for ice makes them that much better, the same way that reinterpreting Star Trek in the idiom of teddy bears adds layers of semiotic complexity to the glass case where your grandma keeps her Hummel figurine collection. Though I am forced to follow the example of the Kansas City Star Preview section in explicitly recommending High School Musical: The Ice Tour to readers of The Pitch, I would also like to point out that the excellent pun in the Preview headline, “High School Musical: The Ice Tour Is on the Rink of Success,” is followed up by this amazing play on words in the subhead: “Disney’s super franchise shows no signs of melting down anytime soon.” Then, inside, I found the headline “Ice Cool Musical.” While we’re doing our Daniel-san wax-on, wax-off in Preview’s backyard, hopefully Preview will also teach us which odd jobs will give us the muscle memory for crafting puns.

Shows are at 7 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 3 p.m. Sunday.

It seems really weird that other events are happening on the same weekend — mostly on regular-friction terra firma rather than ON ICE! But outside the Sprint Center, things are proceeding pretty much normally. On Saturday alone, you can see:

Sterilize Stereo, American Catastrophe and Red Water Revival at the Brick (1727 McGee, 816-421-1634)

Hopeless Destroyers, Young Livers, the Rich Boys and Brutally Frank at Davey's Uptown Ramblers Club (3402 Main, 816-753-1909)

Electric Six, Willowz and We Are the Fury at the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

Ad Astra Per Aspera at Love Garden Sounds (936 ½ Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-843-1551)

It's like they didn't even realize that High School Musical on Ice was getting "Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor"-grade front-page status in the Preview section. Maybe the bands will get some small turnout of their most hardcore fans.

Finally, after the prolonged weekend of rocking, you might consider attending the free screening of the 1980 East German film Solo Sunny at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (4420 Warwick, 816-753-5784) as part of the Behind the Wall Film Classics Series. I'm assuming that you somehow didn't manage to get tickets to every single performance of a certain lip-synced ice-skating extravaganza and you still need something to do. The film, which screens at 2 p.m., was the recipient of the coveted Silver Bear Award, which was the rickety and unreliable Party-sanctioned version of the Oscar, kind of the Yugo to the Academy Awards' Gran Torino. It addresses the longings and frustrations of German youth at the time — much the same way that High School Musical on Ice addresses the hopes and dreams of privileged Western kids on a smooth, Zambonied expanse of ice.

As a final act of contrition and an apes-in-the-wild display of submission to The Kansas City Star, I have crafted the image at right. Like a disgraced Japanese business executive in a movie caricaturing Japanese business culture, I now end my period of public self-flagellation.

I hope to demonstrate better judgment in the future.

After all that smack talk last week between KU and MU fans, it appears Missourians have gotten the last laugh. Here's the latest e-mail volley.

By ERIC BARTON

Over the years, we here at The Pitch haven’t been fans of Phill Kine. We’ve called him a “douche bag,” a “dimwit” and a “conservative cyborg.” We’ve put a dunce cap on him and dressed him up like a doctor ready to prod kissing teenagers.

But today, we’re defending the guy.

Last night, KCTV Channel 5’s chief investigative reporter, Ash-har Quraishi, aired this anti-Kline report based largely on data that any journalist should’ve seen as faulty.

Quraishi’s report mostly used Johnson County documents that you can find here, here and here; they note the times when Kline, the Johnson County district attorney, used his keycard to access his secured parking area. Quraishi concluded that the documents prove Kline doesn’t show up for work on many days, and when he does, he works an average of just 29 hours a week.

The problem is that the keycard data is faulty. That’s clear by the fact that on some days it shows Kline coming in but never leaving, or vice versa. The keycard data also wouldn’t track Kline’s movements if he parked elsewhere or rode to work with someone else. Insiders in Kline’s office have told The Pitch that Kline sometimes hitches a ride to work. Also, there are several weeks of missing data, because the county says keycard information is routinely purged from the system. So it's impossible to tell which days he actually shows up by using the keycard documents.

Quraishi mentioned these problems in his report. But he still used them to draw faulty conclusions about how much time Kline is in the office.

We’re familiar with these documents because we tried to draw the same conclusions. Pitch reporter Justin Kendall requested the documents back in May, after a tipster told him that Kline rarely showed up for work. In this letter, our records request was denied by Cynthia Dunham, the assistant county counselor. Dunham cited a state law that allows government agencies to keep confidential any records related to security.

KCTV made the same request, and Dunham refused the station’s request, too. But KCTV sued the county on June 4 (click here to read the lawsuit). Senior Judge John Weckel agreed with KCTV, and on September 5 he ordered the county to turn over the records (click here to read the judge’s ruling).

The county then released the records to The Pitch and KCTV. After reviewing the records, The Pitch decided against publishing them.

Quraishi also tried to determine whether Kline is really living in Johnson County. Kline’s critics have charged that he isn’t actually living at the Stilwell apartment he rents. KCTV staked out the apartment overnight and saw no sign of him. The camera crew also tailed him from work and found that he went to the home he still owns in Topeka.

That portion of the report could be more damning. State law requires Kline to live in the county where he’s a public official. But the footage also felt creepy, especially when it showed hidden-camera video of Kline’s wife, Deborah, picking up their daughter from school.

Kline wouldn’t comment for Quraishi’s report. Quraishi caught him in his car outside the Johnson County Courthouse one day, but Kline pulled away during the interview.

Kline didn’t return our phone call this morning. His spokesman, Brian Burgess, said his office has a “general policy” of not commenting to The Pitch. But he did say that he tried to explain to Quraishi that the keycard data was flawed. “They wanted [Kline] to explain where he was during these gaps, and we said, ‘What gaps?’”

According to Web site Kansas Meadowlark, Kline spoke about the surveillance at a November 14 meeting of the Zenith Boosters Club. Kline complained about a camera crew tailing his daughter and the KCTV helicopter hovering over his property, according to this post. (Zenith head Jack Cashill declined to allow The Pitch to attend that meeting.)

Quraishi and his editor, Sam Zeff, KCTV’s executive producer for special projects, defended the report during a phone call with The Pitch this afternoon. They said they discussed the shortcomings of the data but decided it was backed up with “numerous” interviews with people who knew that Kline wasn’t in the office much. “We felt very comfortable with the conclusions we made with the data,” Zeff said. As for showing video of Deborah Kline and tailing the couple’s daughter, Zeff defended their actions by saying that Deborah Kline had made herself part of the story when she registered to vote using the Stilwell address.

“We stand by our report,” Zeff said. “We’re very proud of what we’ve done.”

Hey, we don’t see a problem with investigating Kline. We just think the data should back up the claims.

By JEN CHEN

A fan caught the scripted insanity of ESPN’s
College GameDay at Arrowhead.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s big game, here’s the only post-game analysis you need. And by “analysis,” I really mean my random thoughts about things other than yards and downs.

I sat through ESPN’s College GameDay, which broadcast that morning from the Arrowhead lot. The GameDay crew divided Kansas and Missouri fans into two sections that were separated by an aisle. Both sides brought clever signs. On the Kansas side, I liked the cutout of Grandpa Simpson. Near it was a talky bubble with his famous quote, “I’ll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah!” (For Simpsons nerds, that’s from the “Gummi Venus de Milo” episode, when Homer’s accused of sexually harassing the babysitter. In it, Marge asks Grandpa why his American flag has 49 stars; hence, his response).

Missouri and KU fans clearly put a lot of thought into their signs, which included:

• “Obesity Lives Here.” OK, that’s a cheap shot about Mangino’s weight, but the play on ESPN’s “College Football Lives Here” slogan is still kind of funny.


• “Kansas Football: A Tradition Since September.”


• A cutout of Mangino’s head accompanied by another massive cutout of a cupcake with a Mizzou logo on it.

During GameDay, the Mangino-cupcake was standing on the Kansas side. I was confused by that – where these Kansas fans implying that Mangino plays cupcake teams? Or were they Missouri fans who crossed the Home Depot-sponsored border and infiltrated the Kansas section? My boyfriend figured out that they meant that Mizzou’s a cupcake team. Apparently, the Star was confused, too; it printed a picture of these guys in Sunday’s paper and identified them as Mizzou fans (even though they’re clearly wearing KU shirts).

After the game, I also sat through Channel 9’s hilariously awful post-game broadcast. Here’s a brief rundown of its painfulness:

• KMBC’s Jim Flink interviews sports guy Andy Fales for like 10 minutes in a post-game circle jerk. They’re standing on the field, right in front of one of those crane-operated cameras. Jim starts of by saying something like, “It’s bedlam here!” Behind them, beyond the crane, the stadium is clearing out. Jim sounds like he’s auditioning for ESPN, as evidenced by his use of the term “big daddy mo.” Apparently, in sports dork talk, that means “momentum.” Hey guys, we just watched the game too. How about interviewing some players instead of each other?


• After the Jim-n-Andy show, the news switched to the standard “fan reaction” story. It cut to reporter Marcus Moore, who was supposedly at a raucous gamewatch at someone’s apartment up north. Yeah, behind him were six guys sitting on sofas. This just in: Sausagefest in NKC! Marcus swore that the party really was rockin’ earlier that night.


• The only useful part of the news was a snippet from Gary Pinkel’s press conference. Then, Karen Kornacki interviewed a Fiesta Bowl official. She asked him if the KU-MU game would influence who they’d pick for their game. He was like, hello, there’s a formula (note: this is an approximation of the actual interview, since I was a bit sleepy by this point). Karen then wrangled a KU player for an interview, but a couple of sentences into it, he got pulled away from some KU authority type.

Other than that, the game was great. Let the overhype begin for next weekend’s game!

By ERIC BARTON

This is not a scene from Arrowhead.

How insane is it that Mizzou is the No. 1 football program in the nation? According to this front page article in The New York Times today, it's like Albania playing for the World Cup title or Adam Sandler up for an Oscar. Yeah, it's that insane.

The article goes on to say that MU football typically does little more than cause reporters to use "thesauruses to find new ways to describe the Tigers’ football futility." The school is "better known for its journalism school than its football teams," the article continued.

But at least those in the ivory tower of journalism did come to this conclusion about Mizzou's season: "It would be difficult to make up a better story than the one that has unfolded this season in Columbia, Mo."

That's true as long as you're not a KU grad.

By C.J. JANOVY

Saturday night’s big football game at Arrowhead was exciting for all of Kansas City, sure. But I have only one thing to say about the experience of watching it at home. The only thing I really remember about the night is this Aflac commercial that perversely bastardizes the classic 1964 stop-motion animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special. I’m old enough to have witnessed all sorts of commercial degradation of once-great pop-culture artifacts, and I’m cynical enough not to be surprised when it happens. But this one caught me off guard. Apparently this commercial isn’t new, but I’d never seen it before. Now, Christmas will never be the same. Fuck you, Aflac.

I think it was Ludwig von Mises, considered by many to be the greatest economist of the 20th century, who said, “It’s the goddamnedest thing when the subprime lending market collapses and your mortgage division hemorrhages money for months on end and then your shareholders overwhelmingly reject your leadership by voting for dissident board candidates. Fuck.”

On the one hand, I have an antisocial personality spectrum diagnosis that causes me to take pleasure in the misfortune of other people. But then, over here, you have my short attention span, which makes it hard for me to follow the details of the collapse of the housing market. With H&R Block’s management shuffle, these two neurological pathologies have achieved a kind of equilibrium – I don’t necessarily need to know the details of chairman Mark A Ernst’s recent resignation. I just feel good knowing that the business community is regarding him pretty much the way Internet folks regard that photo of the poor bastard with elephantiasis of the testicles. I’ve been told that there’s an editorial injunction against posting that picture because we totally overused it during Saundra McFadden-Weaver’s trial on mortgage-fraud charges.

Now Ludwig von Mises’ words seem almost prescient. They’ll be chaining up a white ghost bike outside the H&R Block Center at 13th and Main in Ernst’s memory, and also pouring out a Labatt 50, but Richard C. Breeden, formerly of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is stepping forward as the new chairman to lead H&R Block back into the vanguard of tax-preparation services. The shareholders like him, but they also liked Ernst just fine when he was generating billions of dollars in a risky market. Now, all of a sudden, they’re feeling conservative again and wearing wingtips and decorating their houses with grandma furniture.

If anyone needs a mono-line subprime mortgage originator cheap, please call Breeden. He needs to unload Option One, Block’s mortgage unit, as quickly as possible, and will entertain any offer. --Chris Packham

Besides the ass-busting effort required to mount a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, is there any particular reason why turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie are only served in November? That’s my favorite kind of question: The kind that answers itself, freeing me up to spend more time on the things that matter, which, this weekend, will be drinking.

Yes, A Christmas Carol is playing at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre again, capping off another spectacular season of all the stuff the KC Rep does while prepping the next year’s production of A Christmas Carol. I don’t know who’s involved this year, so let’s just say Robert Gibby Brand. Also, Friday is a big shopping day – unless you’re celebrating National Buy Nothing Day, which, while a laudable blow against rampant consumerism, is pretty much ignored by everyone except for hippies. All that traditional stuff and more happens this Thanksgiving weekend, and what I’m saying is that you should instead ignore all of it and go run up some bar tabs around town.

At 10 p.m. on Friday, hit the Karaoke Ball at the Brick (1727 McGee). David Wayne Reed joins Alicia Solo of the Beautiful Bodies for an amateur singing competition with prizes. The bar will feature holiday drink specials including pumpkin beer and Wild Turkey -- these may unnecessarily remind you that it’s a special special time of year that you should be spending with family and loved ones and being thankful for the religious freedom we gained when our puritan ancestors launched their helicopters against the British. But try to ignore all that until you get a good buzz going and then maybe belt out “The Final Countdown.”

When anyone asks me the question, “If you could live your life as somebody else, who would you be?” the answer that immediately springs into my head is “A really hot chick.” But the one time I actually said it out loud, I totally came to regret it. So now I usually say I’d like to be Frank Sinatra, because what an unbelievably awesome life he led. Although I’d like to skip the final succession of heart attacks, please, if that’s OK.

Were you aware of the Copa Room at 3421 Broadway? It’s a shrine to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. So if you want to drink and you simultaneously need to entertain elderly relatives who came into town for Thanksgiving, the bar serves up signature cocktails with a Rat Pack theme, and hosts live music Wednesday through Saturday.

No matter which radio station you listen to, all the music getting airplay these days has something in common: the songs eventually come to an end. The “weedla-weedla” guitar solos and similar forms of musical self-indulgence from decades past are increasingly rare. There’s nothing I like more than a good jam band, unless you’re talking about cherry pie, the undisputed king of pies. But anyway. The 75th Street Brewery (520 West 75th Street) hosts Brew Jam every Sunday night at 8. It’s billed as the longest-running acoustic jam in Kansas City, and we’ll give the band the benefit of the doubt and assume that they play only one song each night. And if they’re taking requests, I wouldn’t say no to a three-hour version of Elvis Presley’s timeless classic “Viva Viagra.”

And since the show takes place at a brewery, there will be beer, which is the whole point. -- Chris Packham

If you’ve been to one of the metro’s more spacious liquor stores lately, you might’ve spotted Boulevard Brewing Company’s newest brews. You really can’t miss them: The Smokestack Series, as they’re called, are sold in champagne-style bottles, complete with a cork and antique-looking labels. They sit on wire racks that might otherwise display the newest offering from Napa Valley, rather than Southwest Boulevard.

I say the metro’s spacious liquor stores because not everywhere can carry these things. Some of the smaller shops complain that the 25.4-ounce bottles don’t fit in their beer cases. But if you’re looking for a bottle of beer to impress some dinner guest, these things are pretty damn striking (despite that they're so hard to uncork that it made several of us look like big pussies). And after The Pitch staff downed all four of them the other day, I’m happy to say the beer inside the bottles is pretty damn good.

Back in August, The Pitch reported that Boulevard was facing stiff competition from other specialty beers and was having trouble moving Lunar ale. But these four new Smokestack Series beers aren’t meant to be mass marketed like Lunar. That’s evident with the hefty price tag; I bought ours from Cellar Rat for $7.49 each, which is like buying two beers for the price of a six-pack. But it seems likely connoisseurs, at the least, will shell out a bit more dough for the uniqueness of a champagne bottle full of gourmet beer.

And unique they are. After our afternoon taste test, here’s our take on the four new brews:

Back when I was a cub reporter, my editor sent me to cover an auction of wild horses. They had been collected on the Western plains and were being sold to farmers who would tame them. When I approached the pen, the dozen or so horses scampered away in a tight pack. Wild horses stick together for strength, and when approached by a stranger, they rushed together in a group to the farthest corner. As I rounded the pen, the horses pressed together and sprinted from corner to corner in their protective herd.

I thought of those horses a lot lately while watching the press corps that covers the Chiefs.

I spent a few days on and off over the last three weeks tailing Herm Edwards for this week's cover story in The Pitch. I found myself fascinated by the habits of the beat reporters who huddle together like those wild horses, day after day, as they churn out stories on who’s injured or which player is saying what.

No doubt KU vs. MU talk has been getting as crazy as Gary Lezak in a pile of puppies. First came the T-shirt wars, including this tasteless one above, and then KU fans followed with their own version.

But the best volley yet has to be the e-mail going around that includes the cover of the "Missouriean" magazine. Even Mizzou fans have to appreciate this one. Or, maybe not. -- Eric Barton

This weekend, So This Is Xmas, an exhibit of John Lennon’s artwork, goes on display at the Hotel InterContinental. The paintings were handpicked – and some of them hand-colored – by Yoko Ono, who I got to talk to for this Night & Day blurb about the art show.

I would have posted the interview as an MP3, but I’m afraid that Ono’s people might put a hit out on me. Just before she patched me through to Ono in Brazil, I asked Ono’s assistant – a snippy woman who reserved the right to revoke my interviewing privileges at any time – if I could stream the interview at Pitch.com. She freaked out and scolded me for not asking about that in my original interview request. (OK, I should have.) Then she kept yammering nervously as if she were afraid I might just post the audio file anyway. You never can trust those rascally reporters.

An alert Plog reader, who apparently has some Photoshop skills, sent in this photo of a slightly doctored billboard that has been popping up around town. The Photoshopper in question wished to remain anonymous.

For once, we're on Hearne Christopher Jr.'s side. His editor never should have prevented The Kansas City Star's gossip columnist from publishing his REAL Thanksgiving column, which we found, mysteriously, tucked under our windshield wiper this morning, written in Hearne's own hand on a piece of spinach-stained parchment. Go to the Star's site to read the original column, in which he quotes the owners of Lew's Tavern in Waldo, a season-one Bachelor contestant, and Roger Naber -- the latter of whom being the only one who remained from Hearne's original, though in the original, published after the jump, he says something completely different.

Last month, The Pitch reported that the Blue Springs Chamber of Commerce had pushed local veterans groups out of running the beer garden at the town’s annual Fall Fun Festival. Since then, the issue has folks foaming at the mouth, according to Blue Springs City Councilman Ron Fowler. “This thing has taken on a life of its own,” Fowler says. “It’s gone beyond our city borders. Veterans outside Blue Springs want to know why the city is picking on veterans. This is something our Chamber of Commerce is mainly doing and that’s where we’ve started to address it.”

Blue Springs veteran groups have not tempered their dissatisfaction with the decision. “Without us, they don’t have a chance to do well” with beer garden sales, says Bob Tharp, the Elks festival chairman and a member of the American Legion. “They are getting some bad PR right now.”

Last month, Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman sent out a frantic fund-raising e-mail declaring his anti-abortion group “FLAT BROKE!!!” In all caps, Newman wrote that Operation Rescue was “$22,000 IN THE RED” and needed $43,000 in 10 days or “PLANNED PARENTHOOD COULD WEASEL OUT OF THESE 107 CHARGES.” How Planned Parenthood could “weasel” out of criminal charges brought by the nation’s leading abortion opponent – Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline – wasn’t clear. We called Newman to find out.

How’d you get $22,000 in the red?
By overspending. We’re back in the positive now. I do the projects that are necessary and worry about the details later. We have enough money in our savings account to cover that, and so it isn’t a problem. But we need to replenish our war chest to get back in the fight.

So you had the money in savings?
My accountant called me and told me we were upside down, what should we do? I said take it out of the savings account.

In John Updike novels, the characters never go to anyplace real like McDonald’s or Circuit City; they always go to made-up places like “Burger Land” or “World o’ TVs.” That disconnect creates a kind of fictitious fantasy world, like Middle Earth with basketball and suburbs. It’s kind of like putting ironic quote marks around real life, and then adding a bunch of golf and adultery, which is how John Updike books are written.

For the purposes of my argument, Sammy Hagar’s current lineup is kind of like a fictitious John Updike version of an '80s rock band. Hagar is 60 years old, so he’s an excellent stand-in for Updike, a man clinging to past glories and newly obsessed with his mortality and waning libido.

The push for a new coal-fired power plant in western Kansas has ignited a fierce debate about energy policy in Kansas. Now a similar proposal in the 805-person town of Norborne, Missouri, is setting the stage for a fossil-fuel showdown in the Show-Me State.

Last month, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources issued preliminary approval for a new coal-fired power plant in the small city 60 miles northeast of Kansas City. The project would be built by Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., a Springfield-based company that provides power to 56 local and regional cooperatives in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma. The new plant would be 780 megawatts -- about half the size of the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation proposed plant, which was rejected by Kansas officials last month. On Tuesday, supporters and opponents packed a lively public hearing that pushed the capacity of the city’s community center.

At 5:30 p.m., AECI’s trailer was still lighted up, and a half-dozen company officials were huddled around a table framed by the front window. Just down the street, a homemade sign warning, “Dirty Coal: Do you want to be downwind?” hung from a chain-link fence outside a modest white home. Across the road, a banner inscribed “Concerned Citizens of Carroll County” stood in front of the entrance to the Home Savings and Loan of Norborne. In the basement, dozens of citizens from surrounding towns and as far away as St. Louis put on black-and-white T-shirts denouncing coal-fired power and lined up with placards with messages such as “Don’t turn Missouri into Bejing.”

As reported in this week’s feature story, Kansas City, Missouri, Aviation Department officials think they landed a good deal for Kansas City when they leased 300 acres of city property to FastTrack Group LLC, owners of the KCI Motorsports Park planned for the site.

Here’s who landed two good deals: Rick Watkins, who owns a real estate firm called Watkins and Company, Inc. (Rick is no relation to Warren Watkins, the funeral-home director who is one of the main subjects of this week’s story). Rick Watkins is also a principal owner in FastTrack Group LLC. For putting together the land deal to build a racetrack that he’ll partly own, Watkins and Co. will be paid a $748,084 real estate commission from the city.

Last Saturday, the friends and families of Kansas City’s murder victims crowded beneath the peaked pavilion in Swope Park. Some had opted to decorate plastic white chairs with photos and words for departed loved ones. Others just came to hear music, share food and be together to enjoy the last bit of the day’s sunlight.

Al Brooks, in a black fedora and black leather jacket, stood on a picnic bench and offered comforting words, as he’s done so many times before at so many of the funerals for homicide victims, though he said, “I don’t like to speak at funerals of homicide victims. I do it because you ask me to.” He closed with his familiar signature, “God is good all the time. All the time God is good.” Families of victims whose murders were still unsolved were invited to give Brooks their information.

The people under the pavilion were in different stages of grief. Some had lost family this year, part of KC’s 79 homicides so far in 2007. Others mourned for loved ones as though they died yesterday -- even if they’d been gone longer.

As the CEO of $10 billion trucking company, Bill Zollars, you’d think, would spend a few minutes a day thinking about the price of oil and worst-case scenarios.

Or not.

Zollars runs YRC Worldwide, the Overland Park transportation company. Last week, Zollars and two railroad executives spoke at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Hyatt Regency. Zollars said some sensible things. On the topic of sustainability, he said that YRC instructs its drivers to check into hotels rather than watch porn and sleep in their cabs with their engines running. (OK, he didn’t mention porn.)

Tomorrow night's ninth episode of the Garth Brooks Down Home Country Jamboree will be broadcast live from the Sprint Center to 300 movie theaters around the country for the benefit of people who are into watching concerts by proxy in movie theaters. Ordinarily, we’d make fun of this kind of person by resorting to a crude stereotype, but literally nobody we’ve ever met or heard about would ever pay money to watch a projected concert on a movie screen. It’s something that lies at the edge of imagination, like some kind of H.P. Lovecraft Color Out of Space deal.

Reportedly, the broadcast will include sweeping, David Lean-style shots of the Kansas City skyline, shot a night early from a helicopter, and Mayor Funkhouser is urging area residents and businesses to leave their lights on all night. In other words, Funkhouser is so concerned about impressing a slender demographic that would actually consider paying money to watch a movie theater’s simulcast of a puffy country musician that he’s disregarding the desperate warnings of climatologists.

For Dane Cook’s appearance on November 25, perhaps the mayor’s office could urge all area residents to start their car engines, close their garage doors and wait for blissful sleep. JUST A JOKE. The Mayor’s office actively discourages all forms of suicide and also cutting behavior. Into every life a little Dane Cook must fall, and, like a lengthy series of concerts by Garth Brooks, he, too, will eventually pass.

After the jump, the extremely weird press release from the Mayor’s office:

There's power in a well-known acronym, especially a slightly racy, endearingly harmless one representing grown-up girl time. Such is the case with a certain power hour taking place tomorrow, at the Sav-Art Gallery in the lovely Westwood neighborhood just off of the Plaza. It’s called the NO Boys Girls OnlY Night.

Yeah, that’s O.B.G.Y.N.

Yeah, every celebrity out there has a MySpace page that's surely not created by them. Take this page for Brodie Croyle, the recently christened starting QB for the Chiefs. There's more than a couple clues that Croyle didn't create it, like indicating that his salary is "$250,000 and Higher." Another oddity is that his MySpace blog asks people to write cutlines on a couple mildly funny photos -- and 257 people have logged their ideas and "kudos."

The page's creator -- if it wasn't Croyle -- does know something about him. Take, for instance, the fact that it lists his major at University of Alabama correctly as "Human Environmental Sciences." And the page correctly lists his "hero" as his dad John Croyle.

Real or not, 23,709 people still thought it was worth their time to be one of his MySpace friends. And since November 6, 2005, 11,151 people have left Croyle a message on that page. Most of them are 'Bama fans, like Tyler, who posted:

"hey Brodie hows it been i watch the game yall arent that bad and u should b starting QB im tyler i made all county in high school im a jionor"

With Croyle expected to start this weekend, it looks like Tyler the "jionor" has gotten his wish. -- Eric Barton

Meredith Spencer, The Vicksburg Post

Four months since they shipped off from Kansas City on a raft made of recycled materials, a small band of local artists is back on the Mississippi River. A run-in with the Coast Guard beached the group's travels for nearly seven weeks.

Jamie Burkart and Libby Hendon, both Kansas City natives and students at the University of California-Santa Cruz, embarked on a journey they titled “Release Yourself Onto the Water Until It Tastes of Salt” this past summer. The idea was to experience the mighty Missouri and Mississippi rivers by traveling from Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico. To that end, they spent weeks fashioning a raft made of recycled materials they found around the metro. On July 21, Burkart, Hendon and a handful of other California artists departed Kaw Point on their one-of-a-kind craft (read about the start of their adventures here).

They had their share of brushes with authorities, though. After traveling more than 1,000 miles, they were ordered off the river on September 15 by Coast Guard officials fearful for the craft’s river-worthiness (click here for the full account).

They became local celebrities in the small town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where feds halted their travels. According to a report from The Vicksburg Post, the group stayed with Andrew Ross, a young lumber inspector they met their first night in the city. Hendon and Laura Mattingly, a Santa Cruz resident and one of the rafting trio, reportedly worked as substitute teachers while the small crew made repairs to the raft in the parking lot of a local apartment complex. The group also garnered the assistance of a local lawyer Kelly Loyacono to help broker an agreement with the Coast Guard.

Spotted in the parking garage beneath Barney Allis Plaza last Tuesday night.

-- Nadia Pflaum

Television is dead. The first writers strike in 20 years has ended production on every show that we’re willing to admit still matters, so — other than an expressed desire to return to the womb — there’s absolutely no excuse for staying in the house anymore. Look: WE MISS ALEC BALDWIN, TOO. And this abrupt hiatus in his startling career renaissance is totally unfair. But he would want you to get out and experience your city — you can TiVo The Hills, people. But can you TiVo your lives?

You know things are going to get ugly in Paris Hilton’s lawsuit against KC-based Hallmark Cards when one of the greeting card company’s recent court filings begins with this paragraph:

“Paris Whitney Hilton (‘Hilton’) is a privileged, jet-setting heiress to the Hilton family fortune, the center-of-attention ‘celebutante’ at the most lavish parties and exclusive events, and a consummate self-promoter who, by her own admission, considers working ‘manual, low-paying jobs’ and serving the public to be her ‘private nightmare.’”

Hilton’s suit is over a card that portrays her as a waitress giving a warning to a patron by pointing to his plate and saying her trademark line, “That’s hot.” Hilton claims in the lawsuit that it’s a trademark phrase. Hallmark claims in its recent court filing that it has a first amendment right to publish the card, which is, in the company’s own words, is in the “public interest.”

Click here to read the 32-page answer from Hallmark. -- Eric Barton

The hot-stove talk says the Royals are interested in Jose Guillen, a tantrum-prone slugger who has spent time in eight different organizations.

If the Royals import Guillen’s right-handed stick, Dayton Moore, the team’s general manager, stands to take a credibility hit. Since taking over in 2006, Moore has spoken frequently about building a team of upstanding citizens. “I would not hire someone unless I believed in his character,” Moore told Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski a year ago. “I would not draft or sign anyone unless I believed in his character. I learned that lesson a long time ago. We will have a team Kansas City can be proud of, I promise you that.”

Moore’s “promise” will feel a little cheap, however, if he were to add Guillen’s lifetime .447 slugging average to the lineup. Witness these events in the combustible player’s past:

The deluge of radio and TV ads for Avenue Q insist that the Broadway musical playing at the Music Hall through November 11 is for everyone – bachelors, college dropouts, college graduates, people who are wearing underwear and people who aren’t. At the same time, the spots issue a warning: Avenue Q, with its porn-addicted and suicide-pushing puppets, isn’t meant for kids. And, really, the show’s not meant for every adult, either, especially not for those uncomfortable with full puppet nudity.

What is meant for everyone, though?

The turnout for opening night of Kansas City’s six-day run skewed a little older, as play audiences often do. There were quite a few fancy-looking retirees. I sat in a row of mainly pairs of smartly dressed young men. The fellow to my left was involved with the production and seemed excited about the earful of complaints he expected today. “I left a whole stack of my business cards at the box office,” he said. I didn’t see anyone storm out, but a co-worker reported that she overheard some older patrons saying after the show that they liked it but would warn stiffer friends to steer clear.