Kansas City News Blog

By THE PACKHAM VIC 20

Memo from Plog Shift Supervisor Faysal Alkhaiwani
Re: Chris Packham
Date: 9/24/08

Attention workers:

Until further notice, Daily Briefs to be assembled via the third shift's Packham Vic 20. Find it. Last seen at the 1998 office part. Find it.

Message from Plog shift worker Vadiz Levi to Chris Packham (private):

Chris, we found your note, the one you left on top of a neat pile of striped Lacoste shirts on your broken office chair, the one that says: "I'm raptured, you guys!" I don't think Faysal believes you're in heaven, Chris. Like last week, when you told him that the word bailout comes from George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character in It's a Wonderful Life whose friends bail out his savings and loan so he won't kill himself? He had to really read up on movies and savings and loans and bailouts, but he figured it out. And the time you brought your overhead projector to the office and told him you were a symbologist? He found your copy of The Da Vinci Code this morning, and I think he's going to figure that out, too. And he sees that all your other Dan Brown books are missing, and he doesn't think you could have ascended with them, especially if you had no pockets.

Anyway, we need you. Just look at yesterday's Kansas City Star, in which Dave Helling calls on Jeff Roe and Steve Glorioso to clear up the mysteries of presidential campaigning for him:

“Do they believe they can trust them? Do they want to have a beer with them?” said Republican consultant Jeff Roe, who is helping the McCain campaign. “The people who decide on the issues decided a long time ago.” ...

Steve Glorioso, a Democratic operative, said: “It’s not like (undecideds) ignore the issues. They factor it in, but in the end it’s a gut vote.”

Admit it, Chris: You wrote that. You've slipped over to the Star. How better to rattle from the inside out than with a slap-to-the-forehead, noncommittal headline like "Presidential race could be swayed by undecided voters"? Right?

Or were you editing Mike Hendricks, inserting random phrases from James Ellroy novels into his copy? Could anyone but a brilliant ironist have crammed "looking down the barrel of a gun," "the thug who shot her in the gut," "when the slimeball demanded them ... the perp pulled the trigger," "get a shot off before the hood robbing you pulls his trigger" AND "the shopkeeper who ends up in a pool of his own blood" in just a few hundred words of advice from the piney meadows of suburbia? And would anyone but you or a professional speechwriter have ended such a column with "There are all sorts of bad choices that people make ... But it’s simply no substitute for having more cops on the street"?

Genius, man. We need you. And I haven't forgotten I owe you $1.25 for the vending-machine Clark bar.

Usually when I want someone to come home and reunite with me, I write a letter that reads: "Why not come to L.A. to take up the guitar professionally?" One time it worked:

Come home, Chris. Your co-workers miss you and your natural-light soft 40-watt bulbs, which they probably don't need in heaven, either.