Dream job?

Let's face it, most of us aren't in a job we love. Personally, I merely like my job, but I always have this nagging thought that there's probably something better.

Then I caught this little nugget. It looks like KMBC Channel 9 News, home of geezersauraus rex Larry Moore, is looking for a new weather dude/wench.

In my mind, there are pros and cons to any career choice and you have to weigh these carefully before telling you current employer to foxtrot oscar. So, regarding this opportunity...

Pros

• You don't have to know a thing about meteorology.
• Chromakey+Maria Antonia+remote control=tons of fun.
• I have more hair than Micheal Mahoney.
• Endless opportunities to riff on Larry Moore.

Cons

• I'd have to develop a "sky is falling" attitude about thunderstorms.
• I've been told I have a face for radio and a voice for print.
• Endless opportunities to be hazed by Larry Moore.

All in all, I'd say it's worth a shot. I'm off to polish up my resume and get my audition tape ready.
tagged: media, job, career, meteorology, Maria Antonia, Larry Moore, Kansas City

Not news to me

Sometimes I wonder how Larry Moore sleeps at night.

Here's this supposedly mature, ostensibly credible so-called journalist who, by the looks of his gray hair and wrinkled skin (man, high definition really brings out the detail) has been in the TV news business for a while, and I have absolutely no respect for him.

It's not just the lame, banal unwisecracks he makes during the segment segues. And it's not just the sensationalist teasers that have become so commonplace that they don't even work any more.

It's the actual content of what he chooses (or, more probably, his bosses choose) to present.

I mean, how in the hell does Britney Spears posing nude and pregnant on a magazine cover rate a story on the local news coverage. Hell, Tony didn't even stoop that low.

And, to be fair, it's not just Larry Moore. He's just the most goobery of all the local news stations who pretty much give the same report every night.

So here's a hint for the so-called local, so-called news organization: If you're presenting something as news it should be NEW!. Reporting Friday on a building collapse that happened Monday isn't news. If anything, it's olds.

Reporting that Britney Spears is white trash attention whore isn't news. Everybody already knows that. And besides, Larry Moore, why do you think anyone cares.

If you want to maintain any kind of relevancy, quit broadcasting trash. Stop serving mental junk food and give us something with some intellectual protein.

tagged: Kansas City, local, news, media, Larry Moore, Britney Spears, nude, pregnant

Manufacturing concrete news

My Supermodel Wife and I were on our way home with our daughter after a community meeting last night when, on a whim, we decided to stop by Sheridan's Frozen Custard on 75th Street.

Someone mentioned at the meeting that Sheridan's was giving away free "concretes" if you mentioned that you "love KMBC Channel 9."

Now, "love" isn't a word I would use to describe any TV station, unless it's in the context of "I love to bash Larry Moore." But then again, who am I to scoff at a free frozen custard treat.

Then we pulled into the parking lot at 75th and Metcalf and realized that nothing is free. Check out the picture (from the KMBC website).

At the 75th Street location, the line stretched around the entire building. Sure, you don't have to pay money for the frozen custard, but you'll have to wait on line for an hour. It took us about two seconds to decide we didn't want to pay the price for Sheridan's, and about 10 minutes to drive over the Foo's Fabulous, which is right by our house anyway.

I would rather pay the 12 bucks to treat my family rather than make them stand in line with a bunch of moochers. Actually, that's not fair. I don't begrudge those who wanted a free frozen snack. What I really begrudge is KMBC reporting on this like it was a news story.

Look, I tune in to the local nightly news to get updates on Paris Hilton's jail sentence, the Iranian stance on porn stars and the bayou ban on baggy pants, not this meaningless manufactured tripe about people getting free frozen desserts.

To spend so much time setting up an event and then foisting the reporting on an unsuspecting public smacks of Rathergate.

tagged: news, KMBC, Larry Moore, media, Iran, porn star, Dan Rather

Another headline I couldn't resist

Blind snake rediscovered after 100 years

A rare blind snake has been rediscovered a century after its last sighting. The snake, which looks like a long, skinny pink worm, was only known from two other specimens, both discovered in 1905.

“They’re really rare because they’re subterranean,” said blind-snake expert Van Wallach of Harvard University who described the new specimen. “You can’t just go out anytime you want and collect these things. You can dig forever and never find them.”

It turns out that a UMKC biologist has discovered another specimen of this blind, pink snake which hasn't seen the light of day in 100 years in Larry Moore's pants.


tagged: news, blind, pink, snake, Larry Moore, science

Book Report: The Road

All I can say is "wow" ... just... "wow"...

I bought Cormac McCarthy's latest opus The Road not because Oprah recently added it to the Oprah Book Cult, but because one of the smartest bloggers I know suggested it.

All of the comments I've heard about the story are true. It is dismal, and tragic and bleak. In fact, saying this story is bleak is like saying the Pope is a little bit Catholic. It's like calling Larry Moore "mature" (had to get a Larry Moore dig in there).

This is a raw cheerless book. And yet somehow, after consuming it in about a day and a half (I do have a job unfortunately) I wasn't depressed at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

In case you haven't heard about it yet, the story follows the struggles of an unnamed man and his young son as they trudge through a post-apocalyptic America on their way to the coast and what they hope will be a better life. Along the way, they face threats from starvation, freezing, sickness and (gulp) cannibals.

It seemed to me McCarthy was attempting to strip away everything but the essence of existence. He peeled off the unnecessary layers of luxury, money, success, power, religion (though not necessarily spirituality) and cheap sentimentality in an attempt to discuss the core issues of why we are here.

Reflective of this philosophy, the writing is sparse, like the landscape it is describing. Anything unessential has been left out -- even to the point of eliminating some punctuation and parts of sentences.

This is all to illustrate that there is one thing important in this story: The relationship between the man and his son. In the world that McCarthy has conjured, there is no reason to go on living other than their love for each other. They are "each other's world entire" as McCarthy writes.

And this is the hope and beauty of the story set in an altogether ugly world. That at the heart of everything, taking away all of that which we think is important, in the end love is what will sustain us.

There was much symbolism around the nature of God, good and evil, and all manner of ethical questions that smarter people than I will get into.

But for me, the book wasn't depressing. In fact, when I finished the final pages my only thought was that I wanted to pick up my 4-year-old daughter and give her a long hug.

And that's what I did.

Rating: Highly recommended

---

PS - I was remiss in omitting these excellent and insightful posts about The Road by other of the smartest bloggers I know:

• Joel from Cup o' Joel: The Road
• Randall Sherman at Musings from the Hinterland: Creation "Myths" Meet Creation Reality: Some Thoughts On Cormac McCarthy's The Road

tagged: The Road, Cormac McCarthy, apocalypse, literature, Oprah

Get rich or die tryin'

So I caught this article about a UK guy who bet some bookies 10 years ago that he could live to be 100 years old. He won $50 grand yesterday when he celebrated his 100th birthday.

I can see some pros and cons to this.

The pros of course are that the dude is still alive and $50k richer. The con is, how much fun can a 100-year-old have with $50,000. I mean c'mon, he's 100 freakin' years old.

So for this to work for me, I would have to bet on someone else living to be 100. After all, I want my $50 large now, not 70 years from now. And the only guy I know who's even close to 100 years old is Xavier Onassis. He might have a shot at making it, too. Hell, he already quit smoking.

The other option is my favorite geezer Larry Moore. I'm not sure how old he is, but by the looks of him he can't be too far from the century mark. And I hear that there are a lot of preservatives in all of that makeup and hair "product". Plus, everyone knows that the annoying people are always the ones who tend to stick around the longest.

Anyway, I'm calling the bookies tonight to find out what kind of odds I can get. Want in on the action?

tagged: age wager, Alec Holden, Larry Moore, 100, get rich, UK, bet, bookie

Friday Feast

Hey, how about I do the Friday Feast this week?

Appetizer
Make up a word and give us its definition.
Multiple Sarkasm: A term I use for the media gush-fest that happened when the French elected Nicolas Sarkozy.


Soup
What is currently your favorite song?
Was, is and always will be Jimmy Buffett's Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw.

Salad
What’s at the top of your Christmas wish list this year?
I want an official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.

Main Course
Name a scent that reminds you of someone special in your life.
My grandmother always kept whole cloves in her purse and she would give them to us as mints. My guess it it's something she picked up as a young girl during The Depression when only the rich and powerful had access to TicTacs. Still, I can't smell cloves without thinking of my grandmother.

Dessert
Who is someone on television that you feel probably shouldn’t be, and why?
Omigod! The possibilities are endless! How about everyone on teevee between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Or how about a "contestent" on every Deal or No Dancing with America's Top Survivor Idol. But in keeping with theme, I'll just go with Larry Moore, for obvious reasons.

---

Here are alternative Friday Feast menus you might enjoy:

• Bea's Weblog
• Logtar's Blog
• Chimpotle
• ...and that's all I found. Leave a comment if you know of others.

tagged: meme, Friday Feast, television, Larry Moore, Jimmy Buffett, Sarkozy

It's a Mangino-ful life

The geniuses at JibJab have created one of the coolest web widgets ...EVAR!

To prove this, check out the video I made using their Sendables widget. You might recognize a few local celebrities, such as KU Coach Mark Mangino in the lead role, KMBC news zombie Larry Moore, King Leonidas from 300 fame and Your's Truly (sans cigarette).

Enjoy. If you make your own version, be sure to leave a comment to let me know so I can check it out.

Don't send a lame Starring You!
eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

PS- I think this is so cool that I didn't strip out the advertising code. Diggity!

tagged: video, Jib Jab, Larry Moore, Mark Mangino, Gabe Kaplan, holiday, It's a Wonderful Life

Headlines: 1st Beaver spotted in NYC in 200 years

This is great news for NYC.
Here's the key quote from the story:

"It had to happen because beaver populations are expanding, and their habitats are shrinking," said Dietland Muller-Schwarze, a beaver expert at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. "We're probably going to see more of them in the future."

This is true, even in these parts. A casual stroll through Westport on any Friday or Saturday night shows how even the furriest beavers seem to be bursting out of their surroundings.

Fortunately, there has never been a shortage of beaver in Kansas City, although I've heard that it's been at least 200 years since Larry Moore has seen one.

tagged: news, headlines, wildlife, beaver, Westport, Larry Moore

Victory for wanking and free speech

I wanted to give a shout out to the federal judge in Philadelphia who dealt another blow to government efforts to control Internet pornography.

In overturning a 1998 U.S. law which makes it a crime for commercial website operators to let children access "harmful" material, Judge Lowell Reed Jr. essentially said the right of free speech outweighs parents' rights to have the government raise their pervy kids.

In his opinion, Reed wrote:

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."

That's a good point. Everybody just needs to ease up a little and keep things in perspective.

I contend that if you’re a parent and you're worried about your kid seeing pornography on the internet, then you're probably already "with it" enough to use any of the myriad of blockers and filters available to prevent that sort of thing.

Besides, as the article points out there are bigger concerns for parents of connected kids to worry about such as predators on social networking sites like MySpace, identity theft through spyware, and the contagious geezerhood of Larry Moore.

tagged: free, speech , wanking, porn , Larry Moore, Judge Lowell Reed, internet

The Obvious Psychic

Most people don't know this, but I have psychic powers.

My powers used to be more acute. Back in high school, for example, I successfully predicted the rise and fall of Yahoo Serious. Then during college I got kind of messed up in drugs, and even though I'm clean now, I only have flash forwards every now and then.

But I still have a talent for making obvious psychic predictions with stunning accuracy, so I've put together a few for this weekend. You can keep score at home. It's fun, see?

• Saturday Night Live will lead off with a skit featuring Liz Lemmon impersonating Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin in the VP debate. That show's predictability is matched only by its unfunniness. Who'd a thought we'd look back with longing on the Kevin Nealon days.


• TKC will have no less than a dozen posts about the KCMO co-mayors. His predictability is matched only by the pictures of scantily clad women he posts. Still, he's an order of magnitude more original and funny than SNL.

• The K-State Wildcats undefense will get shredded by Texas Tech to the tune of about a brazillion yards.


• Congress will drive the final nail into the coffin of the country formerly known as America by passing the $850 billion Buy Our Way Into Social Totalitarianism Bill.


• There will be at least three people killed in East Kansas City over the weekend, which, with the direction this country is heading socially and politically, makes them the lucky ones.

And finally,


• Larry Moore will continue to be a complete goober by gushing all over MU while reading non-news stories about homeless cats or fake local celebrities.

There's more, but the premonitions are getting really weird and disturbing (I don't know why The D and XO would be sharing a pair of rubber pants (shiver)) so I'd better stop for now.

You kids have great weekend.

tagged: psychic, obvious, Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live, Sara Palin, k-State, Kansas City, Larry Moore, Congress, bailout, Yahoo Serious

Headlines: G.M.'s alternative fuel bet

General Motors is taking steps to make sure it maintains it's position on the cutting edge of automotive technology.

According to the New York Times, GM has invested heavily in a company that is developing a process to create alternative fuels out of waste products.

General Motors, eager to ensure a supply of fuel for the big fleet of flex-fuel ethanol-capable vehicles it is building, has joined the rush into alternative energy and invested in a company that intends to produce ethanol from crop wastes, wood chips, scrap plastic, rubber and even municipal garbage.

GM is investing in a company called Coskata, which is keeping it's fuel-generation process largely underwraps. But it has released an overview of it's technology.

Coskata is one of many companies ... in an emerging world of start-up firms that are making alternative fuels with a mix-and-match approach to existing technologies. In Coskata’s case it is a combination of gasification and bacterial action.

This overview is giving local economic development officials a lot of hope.

According to my many inside sources, officials with the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce have already contacted Coskata and notified them that Kansas City sits right on top of the largest source of gasified waste and municipal garbage in the Midwest.

He's on KMBZ each night at 6 and 10 p.m.

tagged: General Motors, ethanol, gasification, waste, Larry Moore, Kansas City, environmentalist

3AM Poll: Ad nauseating

In case you haven't noticed, there have been a lot of campaign ads on the television box lately. I was tempted to write that there have been a lot of classless campaign ads, but I like to avoid redundancies where possible.

Anyway, its easy to see that the entire commercial television industry is being kept financially afloat in these trying economic times by political advertisements and ads for erectile dysfunction remedies — both of which make me reach for the DVR fast forward button quicker than Larry Moore reaches for his jumbo bottle of Geritol.

But that may be just me. What do you think?


tagged: politics, campaign, advertising, media, erectile dysfunction, poll, vote

YouTube Tuesday: Blueman

Yesterday, Tony took exception with a recent column by The Star's Steve Kraske about the sorry state of so-called news reporting in this city.

Evidently Tony gets off on tales of car accidents, house fires, east-side shootings and Larry Moore. He's sick like that.

Personally, I had my fill of it two years ago and stopped watching the so-called local so-called news. With a DVR, there's no need to watch trash that doesn't feature Alissa Milano.

Anyway, this little YouTube video expresses my thoughts on the subject better than what you've read to this point...



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Network, blueman, pop culture, news media

Indicator

Hey people in case you haven't noticed, the economy is bad.

It's so bad that the KU basketball program has decided to lay off three refs this year. I mean it's rough. A buck is so hard to come by that Walt Bodine has taken a job moonlighting as The Crypt Keeper just to make ends meet.

But over the weekend I saw a true sign of economic meltdown while on a quest for super cheap headphones for my six-year-old daughter to destroy use.

What was this sign? I'm glad you asked. Allow me to illustrate via camera phone:



That's right, Big Lots is having a FREAKIN' LIQUIDATION SALE!!!

Now, I don't know if you've ever shopped at a Big Lots. This is the bottom feeder of the U.S. retail distribution system. So if the American consumer-driven economy were an ocean, all of the chum deemed inedible by big fish like Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware or FAO Schwartz, would filter down to smaller fish like Target, K-Mart and Walmart.

The dregs unworthy of even these "value" retailers sinks to the bottom of the sea, where Big Lots picks it ups, dusts if off and puts it on the shelf and ludicrously low prices. This place is one step up from the weekly Lee's Summit swap meet.

You always hear that when the economy starts to sag (much like Larry Moore's chins), consumers flock to the value (cheap) retailers. Yet, here in good ol' OP, the throngs of shoppers seeking disposable grass trimmers aren't enough to keep the doors open.

Still, I could be misreading this. It could be that the store is closing due to the long-rumored "renovation" of the strip mall at 95th and Nall. I hope that's the case and that in a few months we'll have a newer, brighter Big Lots to get cheap junk from.

If the economy keeps going the way it is, we'll need it.

PS -- I got the headphones. Four bucks.

tagged: Big Lots, economy, liquidation, Walt Bodine, KU, Bush, environmentalist

3 A.M. Poll: Parts is parts

As humans have evolved (if you believe in such things), we've retained certain evolutionary throwbacks that seem to serve no useful purpose.

The appendix, for example, or the fifth toe, or Larry Moore.

So, what is your favorite useless body part?


tagged: body, parts, biology, evolution, male nipples, poll, vote

That's all I've got to say about that

I'm a little bit bitter better today -- a state of mind I owe, no doubt, to the therapeutic affects of time and a Benadryl overdose (the original stuff, not that non-drowsy crap).

Today the KU fanboys (and girls) around the office are still obnoxious with their second straight day of Blue and Red, but they seem to have picked up on my non-verbal cues that I'm not one of them (chief among such cues: the purple shirt (the color of kings) that I'm wearing today).

I know I've been a whiny bitch about the whole KU thing. But in my defense, I just think someone should try to provide some kind of equal-time balance to the gigantic, collective Hawkgasm that has spewed its sticky self all over this city.

Still, I know a lot of the Cheathawk fans don't have much of a sense of humor in this regard, so I'm making this my last post on this particular issue (unless and until Coach Bill Self takes the money and runs to Okie State).

That being the case, I just need to get a couple of things off my chest.

First, I want to offer a bit of a mea culpa to KU's basketball team. I want to congratulate you for your accomplishment. You succeeded in using illegal recruiting practices* to build a team that could coast through the easiest bracket in the tournament and then accept the championship presented to you on a silver platter by an inept Memphis team that refused to foul when it needed and refused to make critical free throws.

So congratulations again on that.

Secondly, I know that this is a huge deal to KU fans, but just remember how annoying we all think the Oklahoma "longest-winning-streak-in-college-football-history" Sooners fans are.

With that in mind, if you must talk or interact with me, let's see if we can find a topic other than KU. I've come up with a starter list:

Things I would rather do than hearing about KU's win:

• Suffer through the New Kids on the Block reunion concert
• Go skinny dippin' in Brush Creek
• Open-mouth-kiss Larry Moore
• Experience a continuous 12-hour rickroll
• Shave my nipples off with a cheese grater

*NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, Oct. 12, 2006: "Major violations occurred in the men's basketball program from 2002 through 2005. During that time frame, a representative of the institution's athletics interests supplied cash, transportation, clothing and other benefits to two men's basketball student-athletes. The athletics representative befriended one of the young men while he was still a prospect, buying him clothing and meals and transporting him to a number of the institution's men's basketball contests. ..."
tagged: KU, cheater, basketball, Final Four, NCAA, Tournament, sports, Jayhawks, New Kids On The Block

I must've put a decimal point in the wrong place or something

You don't have to be a rocket scientist.

In fact, sometimes it's better if you're not.

Sometimes, like when it comes to predicting catastrophic asteroid impacts, it's better if you're -- oh, I don't know -- a 13-YEAR-OLD GERMAN KID!!!

That's right. The national brain trust at NASA just had their pocket protectors handed to them by a pimply faced German teenager, who discovered that there's actually a pretty damn good chance of a significant portion of North America and Europe being destroyed within the next 40 years.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth...

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

1 in 450?!?!!! That's better odds than Larry Moore saying something non-goobery within the next 40 years.

And we're not talking about some pea-sized piece of space granite, here.

Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

So nice going NASA. I don't suppose you have any ideas on what to do to avoid the mass calamity.

If you do, let's run them by the German grade school students for verification, mmmkay? You NASA guys can just keep looking for Klingons near Uranus.

tagged: NASA, asteroid, impact, Apophis, German, Klingons, Uranus, Michael Bolton, Nico Marquardt

Headlines: Void where prohibited

In case you haven't been keeping up with current events in science, astrophysicists have discovered the largest yet totally empty region of space.

Radio astronomers have found the biggest hole ever seen in the universe. The void, which is nearly a billion light years across, is empty of both normal matter and dark matter. The finding challenges theories of large-scale structure formation in the universe.

The void has nothing in it. No thing. You can't believe how utterly empty this thing is. It's like Paris Hilton's resume, or any song by Maroon 5. We're talking devoid of content here.

I read about this the other night and immediately went outside to see it for myself. Sure enough there it was, right there in space where they said it would be.

I took a picture to share with you. My little Nikon digital camera got a pretty good shot.



tagged: space, science, void, Paris Hilton, Larry Moore, Maroon 5, humor

Socky

One of the good things about our recent trip to Branson was the shopping.

Not that I'm an authority on shopping. I hate shopping. Frankly, I'd rather watch Larry Moore do a naked burlesque show than spend even five minutes in a mall.

But I had a nice score in a Branson outlet mall that almost makes the entire trip worthwhile.

First, a little background: About five years ago, I went through a simplification regimen. This consisted of getting rid of some of the extraneous "stuff" in my life. Focus on the important things, streamline the processes, etc. As part of this exercise, I got rid of all the fancy socks I used to wear to work and replaced them with plain black socks.

These are special (to me) socks, a lycra/cotton blend from Jockey that was comfortable and tended not to fade as much as other socks. At the time, I could only find them at one store, so I stocked up with a couple dozen pairs.

The beauty of the system is that they are all identical and they pretty much go with anything I might wear to work, so I never had to worry about finding a pair of matching socks. They all matched each other, see?

Over the years, a sock would wear out and I could just throw a new one into the rotation. This worked great until the store I shopped at quick carrying them. I searched online and couldn't find them anywhere.

As I started to wear holes into the heels of more socks, I resigned myself to the fact that my great sock experiment was coming to a close. I even went so far as to wear a couple of pairs of non-standard socks that I had received as a Christmas present (yes, I received socks as a Christmas present. Sad isn't it).

Then, while on a stroll around a Branson outlet mall while my Supermodel Wife was buying factory outlet-priced Supermodel clothes, I saw a Jockey outlet store. I felt a slight tinge of hope. I stepped in and saw a display of the very socks I needed -- and at factory outlet prices no less.

So, I restocked on socks. I've got a nice big stack of two dozen socks just waiting to move into the rotation as their older brethren wear out.

Life will continue to be simple for me -- at least in the sock department.

tagged: Branson, Jockey, socks, feet, shopping