Blogs

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

An NBA team just might someday call Kansas City home. After all, we are one of the largest media markets without a major winter sport, and we recently built the Sprint Center, a downtown arena containing amenities that Kemper Arena lacked (also, the Sprint Center isn't haunted).

However, there is one problem: We do not deserve a professional basketball team.

After the NBA draft, Kansas City fans treat a former college star's existence as if that player entered a witness protection program. Royals' rain delay coverage on FSN (a/k/a "The Best Damn NASCAR Crashes") draws higher ratings than the NBA's playoffs, the only part of the NBA season that anyone ever admits to watching.

As a public service, here's an overview of the teams remaining in the NBA playoffs and why Big 12 fans should care:

The Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers play in the first Eastern Conference series. The Celtics, led by former Jayhawk Paul Pierce, proving that he has blossomed after the stifling influence of Roy Williams and Jeff Boschee.

Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference, the former champs Detroit Pistons are formidable and face the Orlando Magic, who has Keyon Dooling on their roster, a reminder that Missouri once fielded a competitive basketball team.

In the West, the Los Angeles Lakers finally have surrounded Kobe Bryant with a championship-caliber roster. Texas' Chris Mihm sits on the Laker bench where he checks out women who also don't ever appear in a playoff game. They face the Utah Jazz, a team facing immediate elimination if there is a conspiracy to boost the NBA's television ratings.

In the other Western Conference matchup, the defending champion San Antonio Spurs have won four championships in an almost anonymous fashion. Former KU star Jacque Vaughn plays for the Spurs, where he continues to refuse to shoot open jumpers. They face the New Orleans Hornets, who are led by point guard Chris Paul. KU's Julian Wright, who opted to play for a NBA championship for millions of dollars instead of a NCAA championship for no pay. Some in Lawrence think he regrets that decision.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

King Hillary of West Virginia: At his current pace of superdelegate endorsements, Barack Obama is on track to officially, numerically win the Democratic nomination by June 3. His team apparently mapped out the candidate's delegate strategy early in 2007, and I assume the plan extends all the way into the last year of his second term as president in 2015, including possible retorts to the accusations that he's become a "lame duck." For instance: "Am not."

Nonetheless, Fail Candidate Hillary Clinton is doggedly barreling ahead like the tough little fireplug she is. My feelings are best expressed in the lyrical idiom of Photoshop Elements 3.0:

By far, the most amount of time and work I've ever put into saying something mean. Daily Briefs: The only Web feature that cares about you.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously:Yael Abouhalkah thinks you should WAKE UP, PEOPLE! And DESTROY YOUR TELEVISION! It's an ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT, and all it does is teach you to PASSIVELY CONSUME! Seriously, this reads like the unpracticed cynicism of an undergrad political science major. With a headful of Noam Chomsky. And a hackey-sack. I guess mass-media has let Yael down just one too many times.

Leviticus 21:19 is pretty funny, too. Back when I used to believe in God and baseball, I'd go to Royals games and hold up my JOSHUA 5:3 sign. It's the only Bible passage I ever cite: "So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the men at the Hill of the Foreskins..." These days, I'm into Scientology and women's figure skating, but it's still the only Bible passage I ever cite, because it's the all-purpose Leatherman multitool of Biblical references. The Hill of the Foreskins, people.

Wayne Godsey, president and general manager of KMBC, is so mad about Kansas City's crumbling, Civil War-era sewer system that he reaches the expressive limits of monosyllabic television news writing and becomes unexpectedly Bible-y: "Kansas City residents and businesses are about to pay for the sins of their fathers," he says. He's plainly blaming your dad — and calling him "sinful" — for not solving the problem so that he, Wayne Godsey, wouldn't have to. While we're all paying higher sewage fees so we can avoid the sales taxes Godsey opposes, I think we should remember our dads, and also the brave men who had to march up a certain hill back in Bible-Shakespeare-Renaissance Festival days. When John McCain was a lad, har har.

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

What's the most touching thing you can imagine running across with your mom on Mother's Day? How about the Midwest Bang Bus?

On Sunday afternoon on Frederick Avenue in St. Joseph, my family and I pulled up behind The Bang Bus. In the back window was the clever warning, "If she's a rocking don't cum a knocking." The case on the spare tire advertised Truckershos.com, "the truckers web site." The otherwise nondescript black van had Missouri plates. I wondered what the male driver had done for his mom that day. Did he take her for a ride in the Bang Bus?

Later, I checked out the Web site. Slogan: "If it's got tits or tires, it will give you problems." Too bad the site itself has little of either. There are some photos of gals in tight shirts and bikini tops but no actual nudity -- yet. Most of the site is still under construction, but its makers promise in an intro that live video, chatrooms, Web radio and games like Donkey Kong are all coming soon: "Our mission here at truckershos is to provide you, the trucker, with as many tools, information, and entertainment as possible to make life on the road as stress free as we can." What a relief.

By PETER RUGG

Glass  

Fox blamed owner David Glass, who they say blames the team’s failures on the restrictions of a small market, then assembles a team of untested or fading players. Read the evaluation here.

BY DAVID MARTIN

A company that failed to win a multi-million-dollar contract is suing the City of Kansas City,
Missouri, and a rival.

Perfect Output, a minority-owned company based in Overland Park, says the city acted in bad faith when the council rejected its proposal to manage the city’s document flow. In a suit filed last month, Perfect Output says the city behaved in “an arbitrary and capricious manner,” costing the company $13.5 million.

The suit also faults a competitor, Ricoh Business Corporation. Perfect Output claims that Ricoh caused the city to deny approval of the contract by distributing false information and causing “inflammatory and racially motivated news coverage.”

In 2005, City Hall asked for bids on a job to supply photocopiers and handle other document needs. A selection committee ultimately recommended Perfect Output, and negotiations on a contract began.

Accusations of favoritism and interference tainted the process, however. City Auditor Gary White would later determine that Ricoh and Perfect Output had helped draft the requests for proposals and had personal contact with members of the selection committee. A councilman, Terry Riley, also intervened on Perfect Output’s behalf, at one point summoning a city staffer to his office to discuss a potential subcontractor’s minority status. Reporters started asking questions about Perfect Output’s bid proposal, which was significantly higher than Ricoh’s. (City officials said Perfect Output was promising do more if it got the job.)

Amid the controversy, the city’s Finance and Audit Committee voted in 2007 against entering into a contract with Perfect Output. The process is back at square one after the city decided to reject all the proposals.

White’s audit faulted the city for having inadequate procedures for awarding contracts and for doing a poor job of following the guidelines it has. Casting a wide net of blame, Perfect Output’s suit claims the audit was “erroneous” for holding the city to a process that hadn’t been adopted.

“How do you hold someone to a standard that isn’t in place,” Perfect Output’s attorney, Janet Blauvelt, tells me. “It’s a sham.”

The city denies wrongdoing. In an answer to the suit, the city’s attorneys say the council did not abuse its discretion by deciding not to award the deal to Perfect Output. No contract was breached because no contract existed, the city says.

A Ricoh official said the company had no comment.

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

After decades of progressive futility, Royals fans long ago gave up on the present. Instead, some look longingly at memories of successful Royals seasons, while others look to the farm system for a distant utopia where Deyton Moore makes the Royals successful again.

Me? I prefer alternate reality. In an effort to determine whether the Royals will appear in the playoffs, I have played a simulation of the next five years using the computer game Baseball Mogul 2009 to determine whether the Royals will appear in the playoffs.

A one-time thing?  

2008: 77-85. Hitting .235, Jose Guillen fails to live up to his massive contract. But unlike Emil Brown, he doesn't shoot a local television personality with a gun. The Philadelphia Phillies defeat the Cleveland Indians in five games, becoming the first World Series champions in history to be booed during their victory parade.

2009: 79-83. Alex Gordon finally breaks through with a big season, collecting 107 runs batted in, just in time for his salary arbitration hearings. Tampa Bay defeats Philadelphia 4-1 in the World Series, celebrating in front of a half-empty crowd in a poorly lit domed stadium.

2010: 93-69. The Royals lose Zach Greinke to the Washington Nationals in free agency but remain competitive throughout the year, failing by one game to gain the AL Central crown. The Yankees fail to make the post-season again, prompting the firing of Brian Cashman, Joe Girardi and, for old time's sake, the corpse of Billy Martin.

2011: 66-96. Alex Gordon signs with the Braves in the off-season after driving in 128 runs batted in for the Royals. Behind Gordon, the Braves defeat the resurgent Yankees in five games in the Series. David Glass defends not re-signing Gordon, saying that the Royals provide "Always Low Prices. ALWAYS!"

2012: 48-114. Royals finish with worst mark in their history, as David Glass readies to move the franchise to Bentonville, Arkansas, to reduce travel costs. The Yankees defeat the Dodgers in a thrilling World Series, leading to a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in which the crowd cheers new manager Derek Jeter and wife Miley Cyrus.

Also that year, Barry Bonds is inducted into the Hall of Fame, becoming the first player in history to give his induction speech via close-captioned television from a minimum-security prison.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Making voting more like airport security: Like drunken sex and accidental conception, voter disenfranchisement begins in the parking lot outside Sidepockets, or, if you're on a budget, at home. Sedalia Republican Stanley Cox wants to have a constitutional amendment on the August ballot enabling election officials to demand elaborate proof of identification and citizenship in order to vote in the state of Missouri. This is ostensibly about Mexicans, and — I guess — the fear that Mexicans will attempt to overthrow the United States by voting it out of office. It could happen! Remember when people were afraid of killer bees advancing across the American Midwest? That totally happened, too. We have to protect the virginal sanctity of the ballot, obvs, and disenfranchising actual Americans is just a side effect, like flipper hands on thalidomide babies.

Did I mention that every Missouri resident could potentially have to go diving for new state-issued ID before November's presidential election? Remember back in the olden days when the Supreme Court was all "in love" with voter rights and probably, like, wanted to marry it? That is a thing of the past, along with midwifery and tipping your pilgrim hat to the scrivener. The current Supreme Court refused to overturn an Indiana voter ID law, and guess who was turned away at the polls during the Indiana primary? If you guessed "Illegal Mexican workers," you're close — just substitute the words "illegal," "Mexican" and "workers" with the word "nuns," and then refer back to the thalidomide flipper hands I cited in the previous graf.

Corncob-pipe-smoking Democrats speak: America's future boyfriend, Barack Obama, does not have time to conquer West Virginia because he is going to be in Missouri on Tuesday. Besides, the sheer concentration of backward racist hill-folk in the Appalachian states makes it hard for an obvious Muslim terrorist elitist America-hater to achieve electoral victory. Here are some actual quotes from some of Hillary Clinton's hardworking whites, along with some artist's conceptions of what they might look like.

"I've got 50-some guns, and I wasn't crazy about Obama's talk about small towns ... Besides, Obama just doesn't sound right for an American president."

"Obama takes the cake because of, you know, who he is. [He has a] Muslim name ... He's just a mistake any way you look at him."

"Is he Islamic or is he not? I know he's tried to talk about it but he hasn't looked anybody in Wayne in the eye and told them."

"I can't stand him. He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and ... whites in both states who had not completed college [are] supporting me."

"His father was a Black Muslim Kenyan. His mother is a white atheist from Kansas. Barack was schooled in a Jakarta Muslim school ... The Bible warns of the devil in sheep's clothing. If you want to put the fox in the hen house to guard the chickens, then go ahead and elect Barack Obama."

Your 28800-baud government at work: Broadband Internet access in the United States is a gigantic embarrassment, unless you take nationalistic pride in placing 15th worldwide. WHOOO! USA! Telecom deregulation has yielded a duopoly in America, while "socialist" countries — such as France — have a robust, competitive broadband marketplace. GO BACK TO FRANCE, FRANCE! Also, GO BACK TO FRANCE, CANADA, because even Canada treats broadband Internet access as a core infrastructure element, like highways and and aqueducts.

Hillary in the House: Do these people know they lost? I'm not a hateful man. Once, I gave some money to a hobo or a charity or something. But I sincerely hate each and every person in this video, particularly the shrill man-harpy at the beginning who's so enthusiastic about women "cleaning up the house." Imagine that you had to live with that guy, like, because of a court order, or something. And you had an ankle bracelet that electro-snitched when you strayed beyond a certain radius. And you had to hold hands with him. And he wouldn't stop singing this song:

BY DAVID MARTIN

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s hairline has made a dramatic comeback.

The 62-year-old politician and minister is rocking a full head of hair in television spots that encourage residents to build rain gardens. Robust growth covers a forehead that had started to become exposed when Cleaver was mayor of Kansas City in the 1990s.

The congressman, it seems, got his new hair in surgery, not a wig shop. Cleaver spokesman Danny Rotert says the congressman is not wearing a hairpiece. Asked if Cleaver had undergone hair transplantation, Rotert says: “He may have.”

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

The Dodgers know general admission. So why don't the Royals?

Something other than the Royals offense was missing during KC’s 4-1 loss to Baltimore. I sat in the “Outfield Reserve” seats, the area formerly known as Left Field General Admission. The crowd was passive to the point of indifference, and it added to the dull, non-descript nature of the game itself.

Then it hit me: for all the talk of the return of the powder blue uniforms, why not bring back General Admission?

I sat in General Admission for some of the more memorable regular season games in Royals history. I was there when Willie Wilson helped clinch the AL West crown in 1985 with a game-winning single. And I witnessed an 18-inning game that began with Nolan Ryan and Bret Saberhagen and ended with GA fans suffering from sunburn and the effects of alcohol withdrawal.

When the Royals were successful (and even when they were not), the people seated in General Admission were, after several adult beverages, as entertaining as the game itself. Were they drunk and rowdy? Yes. Did the area resemble the bar in Star Wars on occasion? Absolutely.

Han would've sat in general admission.

Nevertheless, there was a camaraderie that existed in GA that is noticeably absent from Royals crowds in recent seasons. Fans cared about the team, in part because they saw each other every day or amused each other with their antics.

Most of all, sitting in General Admission was fun, something sorely missing from the current Royals experience.

By ERIC BARTON

University of Kansas prof David Perlmutter did well on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night, holding his own in a discussion about how the blogosphere is dominating politics.

But the real news for Jayhawk fans? Stewart's nearly subliminal Jayhawk battle cry before the interview begins.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Failure pile in a sadness bowl: Wednesday, Fail Candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton came right out and said that white people don't like Barack Obama.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

She's citing this AP-Yahoo News Poll, which was taken back during the Dawn of Man, on May 3. Before Indiana and North Carolina. Hillary, you are literally the worst. And I work with people who will trample baby ducks in order to correct anyone using the word "literally" incorrectly, so I actually mean it. The list goes: Stickers on fruit, A Prairie Home Companion, accidentally sharting in public, Kevin Smith, Hillary Clinton. Gross, Clintons. Also, FAIL.

Your Pocketbook: As in, HAHA, you carry a pocketbook: Like a bunch of Tom Jodes, hard-hit American consumers are filling up their horse-drawn SUVs with salvage goods and generic macaroni from Aldi because of all the recession we aren't having. Story here. Don't worry: Stimulus checks are coming! My finances are none of your business, but I will say that a close personal domestic partner of mine is an accountant, and she says we're putting our free government money on our car loan rather than all the fun recommended by the Bush administration. Sorry for all the un-American debt reduction, Bush administration. You should have sent out nontransferable Playstation 3's or something.

Deadly PhD... in DEATH! This report says that besides curing heart cancer and transplanting wieners and stuff, doctors are also the best at committing suicide. An estimated 300 to 400 U.S. doctors commit suicide each year. Y'know, that's definitely the hardest part of being a doctor. What happens is, doctors go to medical schools that teach them about things like overdosing, so they know exactly how to do it. You guys, this is why knowledge should not be taught in schools. Way to go, medical school. We should all take a page out of the book that the state of Kansas won't let you read because it doesn't "teach the controversy," and stop dispensing knowledge to students without a prescription from a depressed doctor. Do you know the causes, signs and symptoms of suicide? One symptom is being dead, so look out for that.

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Do it for the athletic bragging rights. Do it to combat global warming. Hell, do it for the drinking buddies, discounted ice cream and free breakfasts.

Saturday marks the start of the third-annual Bike Week, a series of events hosted by the local cycling community to inspire more Kansas City residents to travel on two wheels.

Every week, scores of area cyclists get together for evening rides and bike-oriented activities. But for the next 10 days, advocates are upping the ante with commuting convoys and daily rest stops along popular travel routes. Even if you’re not the spandex-sportin’ type or the air in your bike tires is from 1995, there are plenty of reasons to ditch your car in favor of more eco-friendly modes of travel.

Just a few of the more entertaining Bike Week festivities include:

• Get ready for a week on two wheels with an Urban Bike Safety Workshop in the Crossroads on Saturday morning.

• Take in a game of FRIZ -- ultimate Frisbee on bikes -- just north of the J.C. Nichols Fountain on Monday evening.

• Hit up a bike-friendly happy hour at McCoy's and then ride to the downtown library on Tuesday night for a screening of Triplets of Belleville.

• Help raise awareness about cyclists who have been injured or killed at the annual Ride of Silence on Wednesday.

• Check out trendy fixed-gear bikes at a track stand and skidding contest at Volker Bicycles on Thursday night.

• Ride the bus for free in Kansas City and Johnson County all day Friday, if traveling with a bike.

• On Saturday, bring your own donation or browse the wares at a sunrise bike swap meet at Acme Bicycle Company and stick around for the Tour de Cowtown ride later in the evening.

• End the week with a little divine intervention on Sunday afternoon, with a Blessing of the Bicycles, hosted by Family Bicycles in Brookside.

Need a little extra incentive? For those who sign up through the Web site for the Car-Free Challenge, awards will be doled out to folks who log the most trips by bike. Not to mention, there's more than personal bragging rights at stake, too.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Bicycle Federation released its first-annual Bicycling and Walking Report Card — and the results ain't pretty. Although the cycling ranks are swelling and the industry brings in more than $1.2 billion to the state's economy every year, Missouri is lagging far behind other states when it comes to safe streets and the number of cyclists traversing them. The overall grade for the Show-Me State: a decidedly embarrassing D.

So do it for the policymakers who don't take bike concerns seriously. If nothing else, consider it a one-week holiday from sky-high gas prices.

By JEN CHEN

Roeland Park recently put up sculptures in its “Art in R Park” project. Created by Kansas City Art Institute students, the sculptures will be on display for six months before another crop of artwork goes up. The drive-by art is located in Carpenter Park and on Roe Boulevard, between Johnson Drive and I-35.

Click on the photo for a slideshow.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

It's David Cook Day, Charlie Brown! Look, honest, I got no beef with David Cook Day in Kansas City. Because here's the thing: I've never even seen American Idol. Sorry — I'm just not a man of the people like Hillary Clinton. I think probably something else is on TV that night, but I'm not 100 percent sure what night it is. So it's entirely possible that I'm out drinking or attending to my many volunteer activities, such as buying cigars for children, which is a public service I provide at absolutely no cost. But seeing as it's David Cook Day Eve, why don't you all take a half-day off work, go home, and think about how commercial interests have sucked all the meaning out of David Cook Day.

The Brave Li'l Suburb: In the equivalent of a tax-break bat mitzvah, the City Council of Overland Park just approved the city's first TIF. Congratulations, Miss Overland Park. Now you can be called upon to read the Torah at a Shabbat, for today you have blossomed into a woman. Here, let me tuck this check into your coat pocket. Anyway. Developers will get $3.5 million in tax-increment financing to redevelop the Cherokee South Shopping Center at 95th Street and Antioch, if they meet certain requirements, which include delivering an anchor tenant. WEIRD! It's like this whole other country down there.

Volcanos: Nature's eruptions of ash, gas and magma: SURPRISE! The Chaitén Volcano in southern Chile erupted without warning last Friday for the first time in recorded history. These things happen. Five centimeters of ash have collected in Chaitén alone, and the plume is blowing across Argentina, choking vegetation and threatening all the cattle. BUT LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PICTURE!

It's a volcanic ash plume encountering a thunderstorm, and the image completely makes up for all the human and bovine suffering caused by unleashed tectonic forces. It's also helpful, for some reason, to remember that all of Yellowstone National Park is actually a supervolcano, which erupts periodically and sterilizes the entire surface of the Earth. So really, this isn't all that bad, as volcanic explosions go. Apocalyptic scenario sponsored by Nature, producer of soy isoflavones, MRSA, pooping, kittens, Larry Moore naked, and atoms.

Meet Vic: In case anyone wants to mess with me, I've hired a bodyguard. His name is Vic. He can't run far or fast without collapsing into a wheezing heap of gasping and heart attacks. And he's not smart. In fact, the only thing he can do is this:

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

To follow the translucent Chiefs organization, it is necessary to ascribe meaning to small signals, much as a Kremlinologist would analyze the seating charts at a Politburo meeting.

So when Adam Schefter's article on NFL.com suggests Tyler Thigpen may push Brodie Croyle for playing time (hat tip to the House of Georges blog), I can only offer two explanations of the motivation behind Chiefs president Carl Peterson and coach Herm Edwards:

a) They want to give a message to Croyle that his job is not secure so he will work hard in the off-season

b) They are assuring Croyle will start, as Tyler Thigpen is his only competition

So let's look at the participants in what shapes up as the lamest Chiefs quarterback battle since Todd Blackledge and Steve Fuller battled for playing time in the mid-80s.

Brodie Croyle starred at the University of Alabama, where he met his wife Kelli. A former Junior Miss winner, Kelli became an Internet sensation after displaying the poise and, um, physical attributes that Croyle frequently lacked in the pocket last year. Brodie landed Kelli with his sophistication, as evidenced bythis quote uttered on HBO's Hard Knocks documentary last year: "Camp should be a breeze after going through all the marriage stuff. Stressful time for the women folk."

Croyle was nicknamed "Blu-Ray" last yearby Priest Holmes for his laserlike arm, not for the additional speed he processes information. He looked lost and confused last year as a starter, compiling a 0-6 mark in 2007.

Tyler Thigpen starred at Coastal Carolina, whose mascot is a Chanticleer. A Chanticleer is a rooster that is a prominent character in a section of The Cantebury Tales as well the 1992 animated movie "Rock-A-Doodle" starring Glen Campbell and Charles Nelson Reilly. The chanticleer eludes a fox's capture in both stories, a relevant story for one protected by the Chiefs' porous offensive line.

According to Schefter's article, the performance in which Thigpen impressed Chiefs officials was a drive against the Chargers last season in which he completed two of six passes and ended in an interception in the endzone.

So expectations are low.