My lovely, dear boys:
You have obviously got a fear of success, as evidenced by the last 4 (yes, FOUR!) games you have lost on your last play of the game.
Fear of success.
I prescribe the following:
*A new general manager
*A new head coach (oh, Marteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
*A therapist (to find out why you can’t stand to win)
Love,
Mojo
This is what I want to know: Why is Peterson getting WORSE at his job as time goes on? Isn’t he supposed to get BETTER at it? I mean, that’s how age and experience work, right? Right?
And you know what? I’m not even gonna touch Herm Edwards with a 10-foot punt. I want a Schottenheimer clone. Yeah, we never got the brass ring, but damn, at least we got close a few times.
Then I had to go rub salt in my wound and read Whitlock’s column this morning, which asks the question: “Why did the Chiefs go away from what was working?” Well. If they could answer that, we’d have a winning team, right? Or at least a mid-’90s team. And then this:
There was only one way to ruin Sunday’s game, and Edwards and Gailey found it.
For you non-Kansas City readers: We’re all about the football. I’m not sure who these “Royals” people are that get talked about every so often.
Shoal Creek Valley, in Clay County.
I’ve never been so happy to be wrong (about Olathe) in my life. Happy dance!
Yeah, I’m on a KC kick lately. This post is prompted by the search phrase “kielbasa kansas city.” Heh. Do I know where to point you.
Peter May’s House of Kielbasa, on the east side, just west of I-435, a few blocks south
of the Truman Road Viaduct. (In the Sheffield neighborhood—click the pic.)
Peter May’s House of Kielbasa
1654 Bristol Avenue
Kansas City, MO 64126
(816) 231-9850
I pimped a bunch of businesses in The Proviso, amongst them:
Peter May’s, Tasso’s Greek restaurant, Strawberry Hill povitica, Bryant’s, and Planter’s. (Mind, this does not mean I don’t like Gates, because I do, but I had to cut the scene in Gates, ’cause, damn, this book is huge.)
So. Peter May has precious little web presence. I’ve suggested they get a website and set up mail order because they are genius, but alas. Go there. Have much gastronomical orgasming.
And it’s ugly, too.
The Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art is one Kansas City locale that plays a fairly significant role in The Proviso. I mean, the whole city is rather its own character (or at least, I tried to make it so), but this one spot, I think, plays the most parts other than “Chouteau” County and its pretty courthouse and The Country Club Plaza. It hosts a senatorial fundraising party, it’s where one of the female protagonists goes to meditate, and it’s the gallery chosen to premier a new painting by an infamous artist.
Anyhoo, I see on BlogKC that the gallery’s having to cut back like everybody else. Well, you see, the difference this time is because of that, uhm, $200M construction trailer brilliant Steven Holl masterpiece called the Bloch addition that they built next to the neoclassical structure.
Time called it the number one “(New and Upcoming) Architectural Marvels.”
Adding a new wing to a neoclassical museum, Holl devised a spectacular update on classicism: an irregular series of volumes that cascade down the museum’s lawn and glow from within. The effect against the nighttime sky is nothing short of magical.
If you say so, but I’m just an ignernt country rube who obviously doesn’t know brilliance, especially when it cost more than it was sposed to. And why are all the kudos about its brilliance coming from people who don’t live here?
(Poor Rodin. They displaced The Thinker.)
Now, three problems with this thing.
A. It’s ugly. Did I mention that yet?
B. It’s expensive to light (because, you see, its only marginally redeeming architectural feature can only be seen at night when it’s lit).
C. It’s the most inefficiently designed interior space I’ve ever seen.
So what is one of the things they’re having to cut? The hours and the lighting. And I’m telling you, folks, in the daytime, without the lighting, it looks like a construction trailer/storage shed.
Now, I’m not going to be one of those people who would start crying if they began to charge admission, because, well, it’s a very prestigious gallery in terms of its collection and yeah, I’ll pay to get in. And I know they’re not going to knock the damned thing down especially since they spent so much money on it.
But I just need to poke a stick and say, you spent a whole lot more money than you thought you would on something the citizenry doesn’t really like and now you can’t pay to make it do its featured thing that somewhat redeems it.
Enjoy. Or don’t. If you live here and you feel me, meet me in the Rozzelle court (closed Tuesdays now, remember!) and we’ll commiserate.
So today at General Conference the announcement was made that the greater Kansas City metro area would have a temple of its own soon.
For my non-LDS readers, what this means basically is that the second coming of Christ is right around the corner. (Kidding. Well. Kind of.) Thing is, I’d be a lot happier about this if I didn’t think that half the Mormon corridor will be packing their bags come Monday to move here to prepare for aforementioned second coming. (And by the way, we don’t believe in the rapture version of the second coming.)
See, Independence, Missouri, is in the greater KC metro area and it’s significant to our religious history. During my incarceration in Provo, Utah, I realized that very few LDS, however, know that Independence is in KC because, well, nothing LDS exists east of the Rockies. And now that a new temple has been announced, they’ll all Google and figure it out and then oh noes! Here come the Saints back east dragging their handcarts behind them.
And if you do hit eastbound I-70, I-80, and I-90 running, prepare for tarring and feathering at the state line because the evangelical/born-again Christians still aren’t over that whole cult thing–like, they’re RABIDLY not over that whole cult thing.
Really, I’m happy we don’t have to drive 4 hours to St. Louis or Nauvoo, or 3 to Omaha to go to the temple and we have a built-in babysitter (grandma). Maybe I’m wrong about the impending mass immigration, given how the economy is right now. But really, folks, stay in Utah and Arizona and Idaho and Nevada and California. If you do come here, learn how to pronounce Olathe.
Now the question on everybody’s mind is: Where will it be built? I say Olathe.
Because I like saying Olathe.
Married to a Rock Star
by Tami Parrington
published by Prairieview Publishing via Lulu
I read a great review of this book and went immediately forthwith to purchase it. I don’t know whether I’m more upset with the book or with the review, but let’s just say this would’ve been a wallbanger had it not been on my precious ebook reader. I shouldn’t have finished it, really, but I kept reading because I thought surely, somewhere along the way, the heroine would pull her head out of her ass.
Alas.
I wanted to like this book. Really. I thought I would like this book because of the real-life fantasy of it (as in, not elf- fairy- magick-type fantasy). It’s independently published and I want and need to support that community. Thus, I’ve been sitting on this review for several days, thinking about whether I wanted to post it or not.
Here’s the summary:
Out in the country, Karen and her two teenage children have a new neighbor-Isaiah Highland, who is anything but the farm type. Isaiah is a rock-star looking for peace, starving for privacy, and he’s found them both…and a whole lot more. Swept into a world of fame, fortune, and betrayal, Karen finds herself in a world far removed from her little farm.
Two separate worlds….
Worlds bound to collide…
When they do Isaiah and Karen will have to choose between their own versions of paradise…and each other.
Good points:
1. It’s readable.
2. Great concept.
Bad points:
1. Consistent homonym, spelling, and grammar errors that should’ve been caught by a proofreader.
2. Kansas City errors. If you want to get detailed with a city, please know what you’re talking about.
a. There are no stockyards and haven’t been since 1974.
b. Kemper Arena is not a stadium and is not referred to as such by locals.
c. Bryant’s (the one on Brooklyn, which is the one referenced in the book) isn’t a restaurant; it’s a sleazy, nasty, dirty BBQ diner (which was a lot sleazier, nastier, dirtier when Mr. Arthur Bryant was alive and sitting in his straight-backed metal chair with his arms crossed over his chest, right next to the BBQ pit, overseeing the operations with an eagle eye) which does not take reservations and there is no cutting in line and most definitely not at midnight and I don’t care who the dignitary is (uh, with the exception of Jimmy Carter when he was president; I think Clinton chose Gates). Considering I worship at the altar of Arthur Bryant, this is an affront.
3. A 40-year-old 1-year-widowed heroine who:
a. becomes a rock star’s groupie in front of her 15-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter,
b. drags said teenagers back and forth across the country to follow this guy around,
c. tolerates his milieu’s dismissive treatment of her,
d. tolerates him screaming at her in front of Princess Stephanie of Monaco for talking to reporters when she has no idea what the word “groupie” really means,
e. takes the advice of aforementioned 17-year-old daughter who says, in effect, “If you don’t fuck him, the groupies will,” so she does,
f. goes back to him after he’s abandoned her 90 miles from home with no cash and slaps her (in front of aforementioned teenagers and his entire milieu),
g. tolerates the groupies anyway,
h. seems to have no grasp on how her behavior can/will affect her already angst-ridden children (their father died barely a year ago, remember) and if she does, doesn’t seem to care, and
i. doesn’t seem to love the guy in the first place, or at least if she does, I see no reason why she should and she never indicates by thought, word, or deed that this is anything but an exciting fling for her, no matter how degrading.
4. No comeuppance for the, ah, “hero,” who begins the “I love you” business as a bargaining chip.
And you know, I could’ve gone with it and had snarkworthy fun with it had not children (impressionable teenagers, yet) been involved in her rapid and willing debasement. For that, I felt dirty after reading this book and I finished it wondering if the reviewer (whose recommendation I took) and I read the same book.
So the people over in Kansas City, Kansas, got a little huffy over a Jeopardy! question somewhere in the early ’90s. “Kansas City, Kansas, is a suburb of what city?” That would be Kansas City, Missouri, dingdingding.
This post is not for those who live here because we know there’s a Kansas City in Kansas and one in Missouri, too. We’re just tired of having to conduct extemporaneous geography lessons to people who think they know what they’re talking about.
After viewing my KC photo gallery, a friend of mine said, “Oh, what a romantic city!”
Now, I love this town and yes, I have always thought there was a certain romance to it, but I never thought I’d hear someone not a native say it. I mean, that’s like saying Toledo is romantic. Maybe it is, but “romantic” isn’t the first thing I think of when I hear “Toledo, Ohio.”
