BY DAVID MARTIN
This week’s column describes the blocks that road builders and Chamber of Commerce types have put in front of light-rail efforts in Kansas City.
In 2001, highwaymen and rich guys like James B. Nutter Sr. bankrolled a campaign against the one and only light-rail plan the city has taken to voters. A neighborhood leader helped the bigwigs defeat the plan: former city councilwoman and current parks board member Aggie Stackhaus.
By ANDY VIHSTADT
Along with running the Serato for Kanye West on tour, Montreal’s DJ A-Trak has amassed an impressive collection of trophies, including being the youngest and first to win five DMC championships. He recently contributed a workout mix for the Nike Original Run series, now available on iTunes. Get a free taste below, thanks to Spinner.
MP3: DJ A-Trak, “Say Whoa,” The Running Man: Nike + Original Run
Little pig, little pig, let me in. Click below to view the slideshow.
By CHRIS PACKHAM
Wal-Mart has pulled its annual convention of flabby, middle-management retail drones out of Kansas City because we don't have a hotel that can accommodate 8,000 people in the continental breakfast/complimentary body-wash manner to which they've become accustomed. Apparently, this represents a loss of 8 million imaginary Americos to Kansas City, some of which local businesses had already factored into their budgets.
For dismayed business owners rebalancing their books, here's a hardcore accounting tip straight outta the Compton of auditing methodology: Those dollars are just as imaginary now as they were last week. As long as your budget includes anticipatory fantasy dollars, I say why not imagine even more pretend money? If anything, a pleasant reverie involving fat stacks of spendjamins, flashy private jets and lowriders with expensive height-adjustable hydraulic suspension systems will stave off depresson, or — best-case scenario — make them magically appear, à la The Secret. Other than that, I've got nothing. The wondrous Middle Earth alternate universe of your small business' finances is foreign to me, like Dungeons & Dragons.
After the jump, some stuff about Missouri prisons, and some area teens learning important lessons about recreational drinking. Click here, or on this Ronnie James Dio album cover that appeared when I typed "elf accountant" into Google Images:
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN
Nice guys finish last.
Leo Durocher said that 50 years ago, and that is nearly always been true in baseball. John McGraw brawled on and off the field. Ty Cobb hated everyone. Babe Ruth almost dropped
manager Miller Huggins off a train. Charlie Finley worked his team into a rage, and the team won three championships in Oakland. Billy Martin fought with Reggie Jackson on national television in the dugout at Fenway the season they won a championship. Lou Pinella and Ozzie Guillen both wear championship rings and occasionally show signs of mental instability. For all the hagiography that surrounded them, winners are occasionally first-class assholes.Until this year, the Royals were entirely too nice.
For much of the last decade, the Royals’ captain was Mike Sweeney – a legitimately good person by all accounts. He was not a leader, as he either would not call out his opponents or could not because he frequently was out of action due to injury. Sweeney is a devout Christian, perhaps too willing to see God’s will in yet another 90-loss season.
That’s changed with Jose Guillen.
By CHRIS PACKHAM
Small Market Scribblings — the sports feature you've seen on this blog for several weeks — has, via the kind of "slingshot" gravity assist you learned about in your junior college orbital mechanics course, been flung out of Plog orbit and is now floating through space as the first and only Pitch sports blog. SMALL MARKET SCRIBBLINGS, you guys. For all of you pedants who leave comments on the Plog demanding that I show my math and also calling me a "faget," I've whipped up this chart of Keplerian orbital elements describing the maneuver:
Authored by Pitch freelancer and embarrassing sports savant Chris Rasmussen, it's a surprisingly accessible and funny roundup of sports news and analysis the whole family can enjoy, except on Wednesdays, when Chris will be covering sports-related sex scandals in what can only be described as biologically disgusting detail. But think about it: Without a free press, athletes would be totally free to inject deca-durabolin and other illegal performance enhancing drugs directly into their biceps and quadriceps and what-not, and then where would we be? In a horrible dystopic world where baseball players were the size of halfbacks. GO BACK TO FRANCE, George Orwell. Check out Small Market Scribblings by clicking on this very sentence you are currently reading, or on the awesome logo below:
Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the blog of The Pitch's sister paper in St. Louis, the Riverfront Times.
By CHAD GARRISON
This celebrity news item comes a bit late, but what can I say? I wasn't on the invite list.
The infamous Paige Laurie tied the knot June 14.
Word is that Missouri's most eligible bachelorette, Wal-Mart heiress Paige Laurie, got hitched earlier this month in a secretive wedding in her hometown of Columbia.
I heard about the event only yesterday when a woman who worked the wedding absentmindedly told me about the soirée -- and then begged me not to repeat the news. Like everyone who worked the wedding, my source was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement promising she would not discuss the nuptials. The pact has apparently worked well, as I can't find a single news article about the ceremony on Google or LexisNexis.
Why all the secrecy? My guess is that Laurie's billionaire parents, Bill and Nancy Laurie, are still reeling from the 2004 cheating scandal involving their only child.
By OWEN MORRIS
There's no concrete definition on what a good summer beer is, just that it should be light and refreshing, usually with a touch of citrus.
Last night, Gordon Biersch threw a tapping party (its second of the year) to debut its new summer brew. Power & Light District brewery's attempt is an excellent, very drinkable offering most noticeable for what it lacks: the sweetness commonly associated with summer beers.
By ANDY VIHSTADT
The Faint recently left the Saddle Creek imprint to start its own blank.wav record label. The Omaha-based dance-punk outfit will debut its new business venture with its fifth LP, Fasciinatiion, out August 5. Have a listen to the album’s first single, “The Geeks Were Right,” here.
By CHRIS PACKHAM
You must click here. I'm always a fan of co-worker David Martin, but today's column is EXTRA good, a whole package of public-interest advocacy, pointed observation and stickin' it to the Man, as portrayed by Robert Culp in Turk 182.
All I have to offer are snotty jokes about local news. This is a test of your character. Which one will you choose to read? Click on the words "today's column" above to read David's column. Or, after the jump, a politician says something really, really stupid during a public meeting. Click here or on culture-jamming Timothy Hutton to sell your soul to empty irony:
WWE's Monday Night Raw returns to Kansas City October 14
Voltaire - the saloon, not the philosopher - opens tonight
Soundgarden's sludgy sound, last night at the Midland (review)
Big Rip Brewing Co. expands the Northland's beer universe
Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper are headed to Cricket Wireless Amphitheater
Yo La Tengo is at Grinders tonight
KCPD will breathalyze patrons at Tanner's tonight
Rob Zombie is coming to Cricket Wireless Amphitheater