Blogs

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Y'know, this has to be the toughest part of being a prosecutor. "Take somebody from the court, the prosecuting attorney, raise the dress and take a look. That's all they got to do," says Mishell Blomenkamp, who lives as a woman but never had sex-reassignment surgery. Blomenkamp is being prosecuted for perjury by the state of Missouri for applying for a marriage certificate as a man. It's all really complicated! I'm trying to imagine one of the KMBC Channel 9 producers slowly explaining it to Larry Moore.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. But I'ma cut you after lights-out!" Everyone: Look at the person to your left. Then look at the 99 people standing to their left. One of those people is going to jail. For the first time in American history, one out of every hundred people lives in prison. What with the privatization of the prison industry, the lobbying power of the prison guards union, the widespread popularity of "three strikes" legislation, and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, I guarantee you're pretty much going to jail sooner or later. I promise to sneak in a carton of Camel Snus for you, because they're totally like money in the slammer.

Don't cry for the hippo. Max and Tanna are claiming their firing from the former 99.7 KY is a case of age discrimination, right after traffic on the nines and three in a row from Joe Walsh. HAHAHAHA! You see what I did there? I totally implied they were old people who listen to Joe Walsh records.

"There's $50,000 hidden in the ... erggggh!" I like to pretend that at the end of this Mike Hendricks blog, where the copy trails off at the end into incoherent keyboard mashing, something dramatic happened — just like in a gothic horror story! Nothing like that ever happens in real life. It was probably just searing abdominal cramps. Here's a screen grab, in case somebody at kansascity.geocities.com logs in and fixes it:

He's writing about the Bodies Revealed exhibit at Union Station, opening this weekend. As regards the controversy, the AP Style Guide is unhelpful about the proper spelling of the loud raspberry fart noise that accompanies the eye-rolling jack-off gesture I reflexively make whenever I hear about it. Wake me up when you want to talk about the actually still-alive 7-year-old Vietnamese orphan who sewed the matching bra and panties your dad bought at Target to actualize his transgender inner-life. So that's where I stand on that whole thing. It makes me want to insult your dad.

Just smile and nod. Space stations: Do you have to live there forever? Or can you just stay a few days and come back? I'm hungry and fat — can pills make me feel not-so-hungry? That guy in China needs to talk to me! This video has a punchline that just might make you think. H/T to my pal Nadia.

By NADIA PFLAUM

Debra Higgs watched with relief as men wearing masks removed pile after pile of belongings and random debris from her neighbor’s house at 1806 East 36th Street. For years, she’d been asking City Hall to make her neighbors mow the lawn and stop using the property as a dumping ground for car parts and scraps of wood and metal.

But she faced a mighty stubborn opponent: The neighbor was Richard C. Tolbert — the same Richard Tolbert who recently circulated a petition to stop Bannister Mall from being redeveloped as a soccer stadium and office complex. The same Richard Tolbert who, when we last checked in on him, was running for Jackson County executive while facing numerous code violations and filing serial bankruptcy claims in what looked like an effort to avoid paying more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes and fines for code violations.

Last week, Tolbert, his brother “and some others,” were evicted from the property next door to Higgs, he told The Pitch February 27. “My brother got mixed up in one of those subprime mortgages,” he said, speaking on his cell phone while moving his belongings from the front lawn to a U-Haul pulled up next to the house. “He got behind. He got foreclosed upon. There was a trial. We appealed. We were granted a new trial. But before we got a new trial, they came and put us out without any real notice.… So we’re having to scramble and get our stuff.”

According to county records, the house is owned by Nationstar Mortgage LLC.

“The way they do it,” Tolbert said, “they put your stuff out of the house, and they made a big pile so you couldn’t get to anything. It’s taken us a week to dig out our important stuff from the stuff that isn’t so important. But we’re handling it. We’re dealing with it.”

Higgs, Tolbert’s long-suffering neighbor, said the same day that seeing the house turned inside-out was more disturbing than she expected.

“You would not believe someone living in that filth,” she said. “All these years I’ve been fighting about what’s outside the house, not knowing what’s inside the house.”

Tolbert the candidate in 2006  

“I don’t want to tell, because then they’ll come and mess with us there. They been following me around,” he said. When I asked who “they” were, he said: “The authorities! The civil process! The people that handle evictions! No one has ever seen a case like this!”

He continued, “Nothing should happen until your appeal is decided, right? Isn’t that what most of us think? Everyone’s telling me, 'We’ve never seen a case like this before.' I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’”

Higgs and most of Kansas City are by now quite familiar with Tolbert’s determination.

“He’s the first one on TV talking about saving Bannister Mall,” Higgs said with a chuckle.

From the looks of the mountains of junk piled on the front lawn of 1806 East 36th, Tolbert saves everything.

By PETER RUGG
Photos by NADIA PFLAUM

On your way out of the Bodies Revealed exhibit at Union Station, as they spill you into the gift shop, a sign implores you to use what you’ve learned to make better health choices. The sign seems to reinforce what supporters, when faced with criticism about the source of the cadavers, have said about it having an educational value. But after touring the exhibit this morning, here’s the problem: It’s not that educational.

More

By CHRIS PACKHAM

High, Hard and Inside: Yael T. Abouhalkah, who does not approve of higher water rates or new sales taxes to pay for the estimated $3 billion cost of an upgraded sewer system, is surprised to see polls reflecting support for a half-cent sales tax to pay for the fix. Also: Is Yael phasing out his old tagline? If so, can I have it? I saw this on Prime Buzz this morning:

The caption used to be "High, Hard and Inside." If he's done with it, I'm going to need new business cards.

Anyway, WDAF Fox 4 reports that the sewer system is now pumping fecal coliform and e-coli, the Riggs and Murtaugh of gram-negative bacterial pathogens, directly into Brush Creek. I pretty much assume Fox 4 considered the possibility of spraying Brush Creek with fluorescing chemicals and then using the news chopper to shine a giant black light on it, which would actually have been a very pretty display for Plaza shoppers, if you think about it.

The smell of hate: Universally loathed Overland Park-based Sprint has fecal coliform in the Brush Creek of its customer service department. BusinessWeek has a big ol' story about Sprint's gutting of customer service following the completion of the Nextel merger, and it's a delicious umami broth of interviews with customer-service reps treated like children (monitored bathroom breaks; "I hear McDonald's is hiring!"), the nightmare stories of customers and executive-level decisions that turned the customer service into an unscrupulous sales department. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN!

Marvel vs. DC: Venerable civil rights figure Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a superdelegate, has switched his superdelegate supersupport to Sen. Barack Obama. Here is Lewis pictured with Sen. Hillary Clinton:

Also applies to Cheeseburger Jerry: The flu is filling Kansas City hospitals right now due to a largely ineffective vaccine this year. Distinguishing between influenza and the common cold can be difficult, but if you're suffering from body aches, coughing, sneezing, extreme coldness, fever, nausea, vomiting, fatigue and severe congestion, please stay the fuck away from me.

Although your mom thinks it's a hoot: Anachronistic irrelevance Wired magazine hired a formerly funny blogger named Lore Sjöberg to be its humor columnist, an editorial bat mitzvah whereby Sjöberg blossomed not into a woman but rather into smelly old unfunny Dave Barry. This week's hilarity involves really sticking it to the lyrics of an innocuous 20-year-old Madonna song — edgy! It's a 700-word marathon of unrelieved despair. So, y'know, fair warning.

By JEN CHEN

I’ve long been obsessed with Celsius Tannery’s catchy radio jingles. You know, that easily-stuck-in-your-head refrain, “Oooh, that Celsius Tannery/Love the way they flatter me.” So, when I heard that a new version recently made its debut, I had to track it down. Like the others, it has a Caribbean-reggae-hip-hop sound and includes such classic lines as “For peace of mind … and a dark behind” and “There’s only one place that can tan your cans, like the white sands of the Virgin Islands.”

It turns out that the jingles are penned and produced by BicMedia, a small, Leawood-based operation run by brothers Austin and Julian Bickford. According to 27-year-old Austin, their philosophy with jingles is to “create more songs that feature a business.” Julian and another staffer, Adrian Bartholomew, wrote the lyrics and found a woman who sounds like Pink to sing the chorus. Their first effort aired in 2005, and every year since then, they’ve kept the chorus and changed the verse.

Julian and Adrian also double as rappers in the commercials. “Adrian’s Trinidadian, so he’s able to contribute his island influence there,” says 30-year-old Julian.

Austin adds that Julian “fancies himself, once in a while, as the eighth-best white rapper in Kansas City." He adds, "He does a variety of things that most people wouldn’t recognize when you look at him.”

The Bickfords say that the song-style jingles have garnered a lot of attention from the radio-listening public. “I remember listening to the radio when someone called in and requested it,” Julian says. They've heard that one local DJ ran a contest: He included a snippet of their jingle with two others and asked, “Which one isn’t a real song?” They have also created an MTV-video-style commercial — complete with lip-synchers, tanning bed shots and nightclub scenes — which has just started airing on a few cable channels.

“It’s one of the first jingles [we] put out there. It’s been a fun one to have,” Julian says. “A lot of people recognize that more than our other work, really.”

BY DAVID MARTIN

Kansas City, Missouri, Councilman Terry Riley called me this morning to complain about this column. Riley accused me of misquoting him when I wrote that he said: “All you guys do is fuck me every time we interview.”

Riley said this morning that he used the verb “screw.”

I told the councilman that I quoted him accurately. “No, you did not quote me accurately,” he responded.

But a recording of the conversation exists, and it supports what appears in print.

A digital recording device was running when I approached Riley on February 7 and asked for an interview. The device was in my coat pocket, which explains (a) the less-than-stellar quality of the recording and (b) Riley’s apparent willingness to drop an f-bomb and later deny it. Here's the conversation:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

• Kansas City, Kansas, is mounting surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods. Community Watch volunteers will be able to monitor the cameras via the internet. And if you think there aren't any people interested in pretending that they're Batman from the warm safety of their basement rec-rooms, you haven't been watching To Catch a Predator. The cameras will give them something to do when they're not pretending to be 14-year-old girls whose parents aren't home.

• In accordance with a bold new "protecting children" initiative, local Catholic officials say the Bodies Revealed exhibit at Union Station is not appropriate for school field trips. Following the decades-long "Clergy Revealed" exhibit which closed in a cloud of lawsuits and retribution, there's a new sensitivity in the church toward exposing children to creepy stuff. Bodies Revealed gives me the howling fantods, but then, so does this:

• All that unpleasantness the church thought was behind it is still standing right in front of it. Two new John Doe lawsuits have been filed against former Kansas City priests.

• Oh, look. It's a picture of your boyfriend:

• Kids have stupid ideas for experiments. They're like adorable little bad scientists! At Schlagle High School, a student committee thought that it would be a good idea during Black History Month to segregate the dark-skinned and light-skinned students and confer special treatment and extra benefits to one group — just like in the 1950s!

My favorite detail might be that the sorting process involved comparing relative pigmentation of each student to the color of a brown paper bag. Grown-ups were involved! The kind of grown-ups who, on hearing this idea, probably thought, "Well, it's no stupider than any of their other ideas." When you work in school, I think you get pretty jaded to the ideas kids come up with. From this awesome archive, this kid's science experiment is called "PLANTS AND POP."

• Trying to convince myself this actually happened in real life, rather than in a very special episode of Diff'rent Strokes in which Arnold encounters racism, is making me dizzy with cognitive dissonance. But Tim Russert chose to celebrate Black History Month last night by pelting Barack Obama with a litany of the most horrible public statements of Louis Farrakhan — just to inject the presidential campaign with some of the creepy sublimated racial tension he thought might be missing from the debate. Last month, I founded a think-tank called the Chris Packham Heritage Eagle Forum For the Development of Enterprise, staffed with conservative ideologues and propagandists charged with the responsibility of developing suitable replacements for the word "douchebag." Until their results are in, I don't have an appropriate name to call Tim Russert. Please leave suggestions in comments.

By NADIA PFLAUM

BlogKC spotted this link, a farcical yet helpful Web site for educating out-of-towners. It was apparently created by "Concerned Missourians for Truth," which is sick of explaining our curious twin-cities-that-aren't-really-twins phenomenon when they travel outside the Midwest.

A word of caution: They claim that the existence of a Kansas City, Kansas, is purely mythical, which is sure to spark some hurt feelings among those who know "Kansas City, Kansas: It's Not for Amateurs!"

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

In Kansas, the battle over a pair of new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas has gridlocked state politics for nearly two months. But on the Missouri side, officials aren't too concerned about a little inconvenience like global warming. Yesterday, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said: Show-Me more coal!

The new plant will be built by Springfield-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. in Norborne, a small town 60 miles northeast of Kansas City. Company spokeswoman Nancy Southworth says the plan was scrutinized by the state and has plenty of pollution controls to protect the environment. "The plant is equipped with the best technology on the market," she says.

But Melissa Hope, development director with the Missouri Sierra Club, says local residents aren't interested in more dirty, coal power. "The folks making the political decisions are really not listening to the public, like in Kansas," Hope says. "In Missouri, we want to move toward clean energy. This puts us 50 years in the hole."

The Sierra Club is planning to appeal the DNR's decision. But, in addition to the legal angle, Hope says the Missouri Clean Energy Coalition is encouraging a grassroots uprising aimed at the power co-ops themselves. Through the group's Web site, residents can send an e-mail directly to their power providers, encouraging them to dump coal in favor of renewable options, like wind.

With plenty of Missouri Republicans happy to deny the existence of global warming, Hope says, there's little chance of a political debate in Jefferson City like the one raging in Topeka. So to stop this coal plant — just a short drive from Kansas City — it will take some serious firepower in the courts or an avalanche of protest from pissed-off citizens.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

• State ethics officials have been looking into Mayor Mark Funkhouser's campaign finance reporting, but papers reviewed by The Kansas City Star are so completely without interesting malfeasance that reporters Michael Mansur and Dave Helling spend the bulk of the article entertaining each other with the filthiest language I've ever seen in public affairs journalism. No, I'm kidding — it's exactly as boring as it sounds! What is the exact opposite of News of the Weird? The 4 a.m. farm reports or this.

• Two Kansas City police officers were injured when one patrol car slammed into the back of another during pursuit of a carjacking suspect on slick roads.

• Kansas City International Airport ranks third-lowest on a U.S. News and World Report misery index that tracks the percentage of delayed flights and crowds. People love our airport!

• Do you remember the restored scene in the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Exorcist when the kid came spider-walking down the stairs upside down? And how unbelievably scary that was? Larry Elliot, economics editor of The Guardian, explains the coming global economic collapse to similar effect. Like any good economics reporter, I was going to post a picture of Linda Blair, but I just remembered that I already did that yesterday. Instead, here is a picture of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944:

• As the corporate headquarters of Sprint, Overland Park has the distinction of being the bad-customer-service capitol of the entire planet. It's a real point of pride for the company, based on the duration and consistency of its service. The Consumerist has this hilariously awful story in which a man's new contract is quadrupled and his bank account drained, all during the course of a weekend when — of course — the ordering department is closed.

• Look, I enjoy Dario Argento movies, violent auto collisions and comedy derived from inhuman cruelty as much as the next diagnosed borderline personality. But I'm not made of stone, people. I'm flesh and blood, just like you — I can be killed by fire, tornadoes and bullets and absolutely destroyed by a 3-year-old kid explaining the plot of Star Wars:

By DAVID MARTIN

Kansas City sports fans are lucky to have a writer as talented as Joe Posnanski covering their teams. If you don’t know what I mean, spend a few weeks subsisting on the poop Woody Paige leaves on Denver doorsteps every other day.

Yeah, it’s nice to be greeted by Joe’s big ol’ round head after getting through the Metro section. But his annual “The Royals are going to win the division!” column is a source of dread.

The Royals have been so bad for so long that even sunny Joe can’t write the column with a straight face. In this year’s edition of Hope Springs Eternal, Posnanski cops to thoughts of suspending the tradition. But the smell of freshly cut Arizona sod and an e-mail poll trumped reason. So at spring training, the Poz huddled with some unnamed baseball men, and from under their Panama hats out came these turds:

Hillman got tossed in Japan  

“To me, the difference is [new manager] Trey Hillman. Take a look and see what Eric Wedge did as manager in Cleveland.”

Number of years it took Wedge’s Indians to win the division: Five.

“Team environment is everything.”

Things actually more important than “environment”: Hitting, pitching, defense, base running, powder-blue uniforms, bat day.

“Brian Bannister is going to win 15 games.”

Bannister is a fun player. Not overly talented, he tends to get outs with his wits more than anything. But as much as they might be rooting for him, few educated people expect Bannister to match his 2007 performance (12-9, 3.87 ERA).

To evaluate pitchers, nerds have to come like a stat called batting average on balls hit in play. The research indicates that BABIP is largely a function of defense and the whims of the baseball gods. A typical BABIP is .290. Bannister’s was .264 last year, suggesting that Royals defenders’ mitts intercepted an unusually high number of hard-hit balls. Watch, those line drives will land for doubles in 2008.

“Brett Tomko is going to win 15 games.”

If a scout really said this, he should be fired immediately for incompetence. Brett Tomko sucks. The man hasn’t won 15 games, like, ever. Yet, according to Posnanski’s column, some sunburned, cigar-chomping fool actually thinks Tomko, at age 34, is going to win as many games as Johan Santana and Daisuke Matsuzaka did last year. Instead of writing down this quote, Joe should have punched the scout in the face.

Yes, David, you’re out  

“You know, David DeJesus, last year was really his first full season.”

Year DeJesus made his major-league debut: 2003.

Year DeJesus first started the majority of Royals games in CF: 2004

Year DeJesus first logged at least 450 at-bats: 2005.

“It was really Mark Teahen’s first full season.”

Teahen’s career at-bats: 1,384.

2006 NL MVP Ryan Howard’s career at-bats: 1,461.

“I think with David DeJesus, Mark Grudzielanek, Mark Teahen, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, Joe Guillen and all the others, we’re going to score a lot of runs.”

In 2007, only Guillen was better offensively than the average player at his position. Gordon and Butler seem poised for great things. But when DeJesus, Teahen and a 37-year-old second baseman comprise the core of your attack and you play in the American League, the words “a lot” and “runs” do not belong in the same sentence.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

BE TERRIFIED FOR THE CHILDREN!

• In a potentially lethal collision of trucks and children, a pickup truck rear-ended a stopped school bus in Kansas City, Kansas, injuring 10 students. Remember: School buses don't have seat belts, and I understand that children have soft little fontanelles where their skull bones have not yet ossified. That's what a local news broadcaster might be inclined to call a deadly combination. If you're allowing your children to ride to school each morning in the district's yellow death machines, I hope you've been paying the premiums on their Li'l Colonial Fidelity Tiny Tyke term life insurance policies.

BE TERRIFIED OF THE CHILDREN!

• Jacob Jett, the Independence teen who allegedly hired hit men to kill his parents, apparently had some grown-up gambling debts. Could your children have gambling debts? Be very, very afraid of your children, because I swear to Christ, they are coming for you. If you're afraid that your child has a gambling problem, call 1-888-BETS-OFF, or screw it, just wrestle him to the ground and pin him until the police arrive. Although he'll probably kill you and escape.

BE TERRIFIED FOR THE VIRTUAL CHILDREN!

• Christopher D. Snyder, the Lee's Summit firefighter accused of attempting to entice a simulated internet teen into illegal sexual activity, pleaded guilty. This is why you should be terrified for the virtual e-children. If you cyber-prick them, do they not iBleed? The victim in this case was an undercover law enforcement officer, but it could just as easily have been a living, breathing 14-year-old girl loaded up with societal narratives about brave, strong firefighters and their sexxxy fundraising calendars. If you live near a fire department, or you're afraid your house might catch on fire and attract the attention of firefighters, you should protect your children with firearms. Please note that your children are extremely likely to find your firearms and accidentally kill themselves, in which case you should be terrified for them. Unless they use those firearms to deliberately kill you, in which case you should be terrified of them.

BE TERRIFIED OF THE CHILDREN!

• Jackson County prosecutors charged three teens with robbery. Police suspect that they were members of a gang tied to a good dozen robberies. This is why kids should not be allowed to congregate in unsupervised groups. If you see two or more teens standing in proximity to one another, assume they're hunting the deadliest prey -- humans. Retreat in an evasive zig-zag path, keep your head low, and look for the nearest policeman. Firefighters should be avoided.

BE TERRIFIED FOR THE CHILDREN!

• Not only did sixth-grade teacher David B. Shanks, who taught students in Holden, Missouri, have child pornography on his home computer, he allegedly attempted to entice a virtual 13-year-old boy who lived in the internet realm where all virtual boys live. I don't want to linger on this creepy story because, like Shiites and Sunnis, irony and child porn don't mix well. But if you are sending your children to school each day, be aware that their teachers will probably molest them.

BE TERRIFIED OF, AND FOR, THE CHILDREN!

• Three Independence boys were hospitalized after taking what KMBC Channel 9 describes as "too many boxes of Benadryl." The story does not specify how many boxes of Benadryl are safe to take at one sitting. Two? Three? Benadryl overdose causes sedation, highs and hallucinations. Which is why you should be absolutely terrified about all the advertising pharmaceutical companies do on Nickelodeon. However, the story quotes a doctor saying, "You can become combative, start punching people -- punching doctors and parents and nurses and friends." If your child exhibits any of these symptoms, you can legally shoot them because they now meet the legal criteria of zombies. Remove the head or destroy the brain.

BY DAVID MARTIN

The Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joseph Railway collected fares from more than 2 million passengers in 1923. Known as the “maroon line” for the colors of its cars, it stretched 78 miles and touched four counties.

Today, of course, Amtrak is the only passenger rail option in these parts. But a century ago, five independently owned and operated companies connected Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, to suburban areas.

Ed Conrad, a retired technical writer who lives in Blue Springs, tells the story of Kansas City’s interurban lines in a book titled Heartland Traction. With Mayor Mark Funkhouser attempting to muster support for a regional light-rail plan, I decided to chat with Conrad about the days rail tied Olathe, Leavenworth and Liberty to the urban core.

We think of rail as a means of ameliorating sprawl. But your book seems to suggest that interurban lines played a part in spreading us out.
[City] streetcars, you might say, contributed to some what we now think of as suburban sprawl. But it was the interurban that contributed even more so, because interurbans allowed people to live in communities much further removed from the city than what the streetcars would allow.

Interurbans, having their own private right of way, could go fast, and that means people could travel longer distances in the same amount of time they could on a city streetcar. So that’s when started we seeing outlying places like Lenexa, Overland Park, Olathe, Leavenworth, Bonner Springs and to the north, Excelsior Springs, and to the far north, St. Joe. And then communities in between all those began to develop as a result of the interurban.

You have the ability to time travel. Which of the five lines you describe in your book would you want to ride first?
Well, I’d probably want to ride the Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joe, because that was built to such high standards. It was a very fast line. There is evidence that in the flats area north of Kansas City, going up to St. Joe, it could reach speeds of 70 miles an hour. Seventy miles an hour to people around the turn of the [last] century would be almost like supersonic travel today in an airplane.

Cable car employees in 1895 Kansas City.

What’s the condition of the tracks these lines used? Can they be of use to transportation planners today?
Well, no, the tracks are all gone. All of these interurban lines – with the exception of some tracks that have been relaid in one of the parks in Overland Park, where the Strang Line used to run, and they’re only there like museum pieces – but all of the tracks that the lines ran on are all gone.

What about the right-of-way?
Some of the right-of-way still exists, particularly on the Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joe, because the northern part of Kansas City was not developed as much and as fast as the southern part. So there are places, especially along the line that ran between Kansas City and Excelsior Springs.

I’m making you king. Give me a practical light-rail proposal.
Well, I’m not a real proponent of light rail… I feel that light rail has to serve all parts of the metro area, which means Missouri but also Kansas. But the folks in Kansas are really dragging their feet. Which is unfortunate, because right now that’s where the wealth of Kansas City is… So right now we need their support – their financial support, their political support, and we're just not getting it. Mayor Funkhouser has work cut out for him trying to bring them into the fold.

Beyond that, I really don’t have any preferences about particular routes. I think the routes that would have to be considered, though, would basically be the corridors of our freeways. [Interstate] 35 South, that would be the route I would start with first, because that’s where so much of the traffic is. And then I would probably look at 35 North and portions of 29…

So when you say you’re not a fan of light rail, does that mean you don’t think the starter route would really accomplish anything? You think we have to build something monumental.
That would be the preference. But from a practical point of view, we’re going to have to get in line to get the federal money to do all this. There are lot of other cities that are in line already. I would think it would probably be somewhere between five years at the very least and probably more like 10 years before we get the money to do very much. Because of that, some people say that what we ought to do is build a starter line within the city that we could finance through our means. But a starter line like that is just nothing more than another streetcar line, and it’s not going to have all the attributes that a real light-rail system is going to have. [Light rail] does have some street running, but it also has a lot of private right-of-way running. And that’s what you need -- you need the speed so that people can travel from outlying areas easily and rapidly into downtown Kansas City.

There are a lot of obstacles that have to be considered. The other obstacle is we have such a low population density here. Even though light rail in none of the cities makes money, they have to make a certain amount of money in order to quality for matching funds. And it would be difficult for us because of our light population density to achieve even that minimum. We have a lot of strikes against us here with trying to build a light-rail system here in Kansas City.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

• Hillary Clinton, after hammering Barack Obama for supposed "plagiarism," ended last night's debate with the line "You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country." Which, if you're a fan of phrases borrowed from other peoples' speeches, you're going to love.

• I was praying for this constitutional amendment! The irony is that I stood up and prayed for it in the middle of a public school. And in a horrifying twist for both the Christians and the Scientologists, I was praying to Lord Xenu, evil dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy," who brought billions of his people to earth 75 million years ago, stacked them around Earth's volcanoes and killed them with hydrogen bombs. SPOILER! This is actually the M. Night Shyamalan surprise twist ending of Operating Thetan Level III. I totally just saved you $100,000.

• Jesus, give a disease a Weekly World News name like "flesh-eating bacteria," and people completely freak out. If they'd created a more exciting name for AIDS 25 years ago, like "Necrotizing Vampire Evil Clown Virus," maybe the world would be a different place. Anyway, Merck is now testing a new staph vaccine in the Kansas City area that provides resistance to superstaph. IN YOUR FACE, GlaxoSmithKline!

• Since turkey fryers are basically culinary variants of improvised explosive devices, seeing the words "turkey fryer" and "OP day care center" in the same headline is the dee-licious journalistic equivalent of deep-fried Twinkies.

• The Hall Foundation made out a check for $43 million to Children's Mercy Hospital, and tucked it inside a lovable Ziggy card.

• Can you watch something so cute that it literally kills you dead? I've got the strength of a horse, but this sent me lurching around clutching my heart like Fred Sanford having a "big one." Three years ago, this kid's parents never dreamed of the entertainment cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine that would be detonated inside their house.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

• The Pitch sister paper The Village Voice has an exposé about fake pretend reality television that will chill you to the bone. Specifically, the bone that enjoys watching the American Iron Chef. I know, I know, reality is a construct and reality TV is an even more constructed construct, and we all know it. But seriously: TV is a liar who lies, and we're all really, really easy to trick.

• St. Mary's Academy headmaster Father Vicente A. Griego now says that female basketball referee Michelle Campbell was never told that there was any issue with her authority over boys. He now says that, out of deference to ladies, the boys would have felt inhibited on the court by their fear of slamming into a woman and causing her to explode into a lilac-scented cloud of flower petals.

• In an article John McCain's lawyers have been trying to smother for a while, The New York Times implies that the senator might have been sexing up lobbyist Vicki Iseman with some old-man sex. Maybe! "A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet," says the McCain-endorsing New York Times. "It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign," says The New York Times endorsement-accepting McCain campaign. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

• Independence teen's mean parents won't give him any money. So he allegedly hires someone to murder them. Now he's going to learn an important life-lesson about what happens in D-block when you cross the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

• State gaming regulators voted to fill the casino-shaped hole in Sugar Creek by accepting applications for a casino in Sugar Creek.

• An Overland Park man died playing Russian Roulette. The Pitch reminds readers that blackjack played with perfect basic strategy has much better odds than Russian Roulette, so gamble responsibly. If you think you have a Russian Roulette problem, call the compulsive gambling hotline at 1-888-BETS-OFF.