Of all the names I’ve ever called Bobby Knight, I never imagined “quitter” would be one of them, but the big jerk abruptly decided to retire from coaching yesterday, with well over a month remaining on the Texas Tech basketball schedule. Knight has his admirers and Knight has his detractors—you can count me in the latter group. Yes, he’s the winningest coach in NCAA history, and yes, most of his players actually finish school and graduate—very admirable on both counts—but that doesn’t justify his often boorish behavior, on the court, and especially off it. I’m sorry, but I find it rather difficult to respect someone who goes around hurling office equipment at defenseless female support staffers or picking fights with university officials at salad bars, and yet goes around playing martyr because he gets such a bad rap. Whatever, Bob—I’ll save my respect for the classy coaches like Dean Smith, John Wooden and Coach K.PETTY THOUGHTS ON THE SUPER BOWL
Yes, pun intended. One thing I could’ve done without during Tom Petty’s Super Bowl set was the “designated audience” rushing the front of the stage as if Petty was their idol—these were the same people who were bopping along to Alicia Keys during the pre-game show. K.C. Star sports columnist Jeff Flanagan also made an excellent point in today’s paper about the halftime shows of recent years. By featuring old-school acts like Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Prince and The Stones, it speaks volumes about the current sorry-ass state of the music biz. There aren’t any remotely-decent—let alone relevant—bands out there today that are worthy of such a big-time stage. Pretty damn sad...
Getting back to Alicia Keys, I know she’s highly-acclaimed and all, but I just don’t see what the big deal is about her. Decent voice, I guess, but her music doesn’t do anything for me. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve grown really weary of all these female singers who do the whole choreography shtick that Madonna pioneered way back when. Is there no room for improvisation on stage anymore? Call me old-school, but Pat Benatar, Ann Wilson and Belinda Carlisle never needed a flotilla of dancers on stage with them to get their point across—they let their singing to the talking, which is how it should be.
As for the rest of the day’s proceedings, there’s something just a tad warped about Fox-TV staging a pre-game show that was nearly an hour longer than the game itself—can you say overkill, boys and girls? And Ryan Seacrest is about the phoniest som-bitch this side of John Tesh. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I missed most of the first quarter and part of the second quarter, therefore I didn’t get to see all the commercials, so I can’t really comment on them, but the one I liked was the Coke ad featuring the Macy’s parade balloons of Underdog and Stewie from “Family Guy” losing their beloved soda to Charlie Brown, who finally scored for once!
A CLEAR-CUT MAJORITY
There’s been a rather comical attempt by local politico wanna-be Richard Tolbert to block the recently approved plan to demolish Bannister Mall and replace it with a new soccer stadium for the Kansas City Wizards, along with an attached office and retail complex similar in concept to the Legends complex adjacent to the Kansas Speedway over in Wyandotte County. Mr. Tolbert—a black man—says Bannister Mall is still viable and that there is a definite need for a “black mall” in the area—is this not racism in reverse? He claims Bannister is still worth saving, never mind the fact that there were only a handful of shops still operating when the mall closed last May, and nearly all of them were operated by African-Americans—and not exactly doing scintillating business, either.
Anyway, Mr. Tolbert tried to get a petition going to block the new project, which required a minimum of 8,475 signatures and he managed to obtain all but 8,473 of them—and one of those was probably his! The guy has no actual plan to save the mall anyway, and what’s worse, this joker doesn’t even live anywhere near it! If you were so bloody concerned about saving Bannister Mall, Mr. Tolbert, where the fuck were you about ten years ago when all the carjackings, purse-snatchings and sexual assaults started driving customers away, causing the long steady decline of what was once one of the premier shopping malls in this region? Okay, bud, you got your name in the paper, you had your 15 minutes of fame, now go crawl back under your rock before you fuck up a really cool project for the rest of us.
THE THING THAT WON’T GO AWAY
Remember that old “Saturday Night Live” skit where John Belushi was this uninvited guest of Bill Murray and Jane Curtin who wouldn’t take a hint and refused to leave the premises? Well, I get that same vibe from local “legendary” DJ Randy Miller, who’s openly-campaigning to be the morning drive jock at the new 99.7 Boulevard station. This hack used to be the #1 jock in Kansas City for years back during the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I’ve never understood why—he’s not all that funny, his on-air comments and publicity stunts often backfired on him, thus leading to numerous suspensions and/or firings from the various stations he worked at, and he’s Exhibit A on why I so totally despise that species of sub-humans known as “shock jocks”. He also goes around now claiming to be a Born-Again Christian to make people think he’s not the asshole he used to be, but I’m not buying it. Fortunately, The Boulevard says their focus will be on the music, so they aren’t likely to hire Miller for his shopworn on-air histrionics anyway.
A BLAST FROM THE PAST
Anybody out there remember this guy? Anybody out there got a hanker for a hunka cheese? Special thanks to my friend Stacy for jogging my memory banks—I hadn't seen ol' Timer in over 30 years!
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