Kansas City News Blog

South by Southwest: Apparently, Johnson County is weathering the economic collapse a little better than Kansas City, Missouri. I'm moving to Overland Park, you guys. I've had it with Hobotown, its frustratingly spotty bus service, budget cuts, shiny prefabricated entertainment district, and punk-ass Child Protective Services department. If that bitch Doreen from CPS don't stop stickin' her nose into my business, one of these days, I'm gonna pop her one right in her smug fat face. She's all, "How much are you spending on diapers?" and "You can't give a baby no Hee Haw soda," and "If you miss this custody hearing, we gonna put little George Foreman Packham in foster care." Anyway, unlike Funktown, JoCo has deep cash reserves and the wherewithal to continue providing various services such as "the police" and "the fire department." I'm looking forward to my clean slate and a new life once my lawyer gets on top of this check-kiting charge and custody hearing.

Breaker-one-nine, it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again, you got a copy on me, Pig Pen? Come on. FBI investigators have assembled a database that pretty much shatters the "East Bound and Down" good-ol'-boy long-haul trucker's image personified by Jerry Reed, and replaces it with the creepy and easily-imitated Jamie Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs. The database contains information on over 500 dead women found near truck stops, motels and rest stops along popular trucking routes and strongly suggests serial killers working as long-haul truckers. So, great. I guess I'm more likely to yield the right-of-way to big rigs now that I know that murderous psychopaths are getting their CDL licenses. Money quote: "You've got a mobile crime scene... You can pick a girl up on the East Coast, kill her two states away and then dump her three states after that," says one investigator. My sister, a True Crime genre aficionado, is going to love this.



Oh, also Mickey Rourke knocked out Jericho. The conclusion of Wrestlemania Roman Numeral 25 was an unlikely combination of bitter and sweet, a flavor composite that somebody should probably try to think of a name for. "Switter?" "Bweet?" Get William Safire on the horn. On the one hand, John Cena is the new world heavyweight champ after his triple-threat match with Edge and The Big Show. But on the other hand, the Triple-H victory over Randy Orton was kind of anticlimactic after the truly epic encounter between the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, which finally ended after Michaels attempted to dive from the top rope and the Undertaker caught him in the Tombstone hold.

I can remember a time in the not-too-distant past when it was actually a surprise how, after two competitors sat down at a folding table placed conveniently near the ring in order to -- for instance -- sign a few documents, one guy would end up power-bombing the other guy through the table. Now they just fish around under the mat until they find folding tables, folding chairs and ladders. They don't even try to set it up with a narrative. It's the Wrestlemania equivalent of the kind of unimaginative, artless porn that starts right in with the fucking, without any narrative preamble about driving the babysitter home or the arrival of a painting crew. Also, I'm no longer a naive kid, so it's totally obvious that Stone Cold Steve Austin "drinks" beer the same way that Cookie Monster "eats" cookies. But hey, as far as I'm concerned, professional wrestling is still the pre-scripted, oily and pay-per-view sport of kings, the end. This Wrestlemania newsbrief dedicated to Clubs editor Berry Anderson, who, as a child, was actually present at Wrestlemania 3 when Hulk Hogan heaved Andre the Giant over his head during a cage match.