JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

The New York Times had an excellent story last week about noisy restaurants and how some restaurateurs are paying more attention to acoustics in the interests of most diners’ desire to go somewhere and have a good meal and good conversation.

The story, titled “Taking the Din out of Dining,” said:

“(A)t some places, at least places where the target audience is more than a few years out of college, owners are spending money so that a big night out is actually decipherable.

“…After years of paying lip service to the idea of fostering civilized conversation over deafening clatter…some restaurateurs appear to be listening to customers’ pleas.” 

This is music to my hearing-reduced ears because I have been to far too many restaurants in the Kansas City area where it is extremely difficult, sometimes nearly impossible, to engage in comfortable conversation.

The loudest restaurant I have been in, by far, is Char Bar in Westport. Of course, it does cater — to borrow The Times’ line — to people a few years out of college.

Patty and I went there with another couple several weeks ago, and we weren’t smart enough to leave when they told us the wait would be 30 to 45 minutes. We had plenty of time to assess the noise level, but we hung on, mainly because one member of our party had her heart set on trying the place.

At the table, I couldn’t hear any of the conversation, and neither could the other guy. Every once in a while I would shout something at him, and he would either nod or shout a few words back. The ladies did a little better; neither has a hearing deficit…As for the food, I don’t remember much about it.

Other restaurants I have been to that are extremely loud, when crowded, are Summit Bar and Grill, near 75th and Wornall, and Louie’s Wine Dive, Gregory and Wornall. The Yard House, with locations at The Legends and the Power & Light District, is also very loud, but when I was at the P&L location recently with Brooks, we sat at a rear booth that was sheltered from the cacophonous main dining area.

The quietest restaurant I have been to — and by far the most pleasant dining experience I have had in a long time — was at Cafe Provence in Prairie Village. The Tavern in Prairie Village and Avenues Bistro in Brookside are also fairly easy on the ears.

A significant problem at many restaurants is that the owners or managers are convinced that loud music is a requisite. So, they turn the music up loud, and then the diners try to shout over the music, creating a true din. Frequently, I ask waiters or managers to turn the music down. Sometimes they do and sometimes not.

But restaurants don’t have to be loud. As The Times story said, “acoustic buffers and panels are nothing new, but restaurant designers are becoming more precise and scientific, working to create self-enclosed huddles of talk at each table without losing the low rumble of activity that makes a place feel alive.”

…Don’t call me a fuddy-duddy. Like most people, I like restaurants that “feel alive”; I just don’t want to have to strain and turn my hearing aids up to their highest level, which makes everything sound tinny, to hear what my companions are saying.

:: I read with awe and admiration today about firefighters from the Midwest gathering in Kansas City Sunday for the fifth annual Memorial Stair Climb at the Town Pavilion to honor firefighters killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

The Star’s Matt Campbell reported that the participants climbed 110 stories — the number of floors that many fire fighters attempted to ascend on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s still hard to imagine the courage it took for those guys to climb up all those flights knowing they probably wouldn’t be coming back alive. The ultimate sacrifice of their own lives.

One of the most amazing aspects of this story, to me, was that “it took only 4 minutes when registration began on June 1 to fill up the 343 slots for the climb.”

Three-hundred-forty-three. That’s the number of fire fighters who died that day in New York. Proceeds from registration fees and T-shirt sales go into a fund for survivors of police officers, fire fighters and emergency medical providers who have died in the line of duty.

A snappy salute goes out to those climbin’ fire fighters…I think it would take me half an hour to make it up 10 floors.

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It is downright disheartening to watch the Royals imploding before our eyes, but it’s not an apparition.

This downfall has been in the works for several weeks. (Those of you who are regular readers might recall my prediction on Aug. 23 that the Royals “probably aren’t going to win the American League championship.”)

The nadir of this slide into mediocrity occurred tonight. The Royals led the Orioles 6-4 going into the bottom of the eighth inning. They needed just six outs. But then a funny thing happened: The Orioles scored 10 (TEN!) runs in the bottom of the eighth, including TWO grand slam homers.

Here’s how our vaunted bullpen performed in the eighth inning: Chris Young gave up one run, Kelvin Herrera four, Franklin Morales another four and a guy named Chamberlain one. It was a milestone performance, in that it once and for all blew up the notion our bullpen is as strong as last year.

Baseball is all about momentum. Last September the Royals went 15-11, nudged into the playoffs and then got even hotter than they had been.

This year, they are 3-7 in September, and the momentum is all on the losing side. The next milestone will be when the Toronto Blue Jays overtake the Royals (the Jays are three games back as of tonight) for home field advantage in the American League playoffs…That’s when you’ll see widespread panic among the body politic. 

…As I said on Aug. 23, you’re not going to see the most likely scenario laid out on The Star’s sports pages; they don’t want to spoil the script. You probably won’t get it on 610 and 810 sports-talk radio, either; they don’t want to kill their ratings.

So now what? Well, what we’ve gotta do here is brace ourselves for keen disappointment; it’s barreling straight down the tracks. And it’s OK to cry.

:: A friend sent an email tonight, saying: “I’m very disappointed in the KC Star today. I couldn’t believe that there was not one mention of 9/11??? I was pretty dumbstruck…What’s up with that? Their choice of news coverage baffles me at times.”

…I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t even noticed. I thought my friend must be wrong, and I quickly went back to check. I shouldn’t have doubted her because she’s an avid reader of The Star (at least until now).

I wrote back that The Star’s oversight was not just disappointing but bordering on outrageous. The New York Times had an editorial titled “Will We Always Remember?” (Particularly interesting in light of The Star’s forgetfulness, don’t you think?)

The Times also had a story that contained some 9/11 emails recently released by the George W. Bush Presidential Library. One of those emails, sent at 8:56 a.m. Eastern time by White House media affairs director, said: “Turn on CNN.”

Here’s the story. I think you’ll find it interesting.

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Shall we boogaloo on over to the Hillary Clinton story?

Not her apology — issued on national TV Tuesday — for setting up and maintaining a separate email account while she was secretary of state. The apology may help her a little, but I agree with Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore, who suggested Tuesday that Clinton was only apologizing because “she got caught and is dropping in the polls.”

The bigger story is the underlying dynamic and suspicion that her campaign for the Democratic nomination is unraveling by the day.

Charles Blow

The media is playing a huge role in this, and New York Times columnist Charles Blow today put his finger on it in his column today.

Here’s what he said:

“There seems to me a gravitational pull of media desire that wants, on some level, to see her crash and burn. Twice snubbed. The ‘queen’ goes down, again.

“The media, and possibly even the public, loathes coasting. Trajectory, either up or down, makes a better story. Since Clinton started with such high expectations, the only trajectory available to her — and to those covering her — was down.

“Now she can’t seem to stop the slide. She simply can’t direct the narrative away from the email and toward her policies. And this constant chatter about things other than her vision for the future and the suggestion that she is not being fully forthcoming is hurting her in the polls.”

As is the case in so much of sports, it’s all about momentum. Late last summer the Kansas City Royals captured momentum, and look at the thrills we experienced as a result.

Clinton was going along smoothly until the email scandal broke, and now she appears to be caught in a swirling descent similar to those hair-raising, haunted-house slides that, in short order, deposit you back on the sidewalk.

As Blow went on to say, “It’s not clear to me how this story ends other than how it appears it wants to end: badly.”

The latest bit of bad new for Clinton came this morning when figures released from a Quinnipac University poll showed Clinton being the choice of 40 percent of likely Democratic caucus participants in Iowa, but Bernie Sanders with 41 percent.

Polls also show Sanders gaining ground fast in New Hampshire.

So, while Clinton still can claim the mantle of being the overall frontrunner based largely on the depth of her organization and her durability in the public arena, she appears to be extremely vulnerable.

Chris Cillizza

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, who has a column called “The Fix,” wrote today that once a frontrunner loses traction, he or she can lose a lot of ground quickly. 

“(W)ho’s to say what political cost Clinton might pay for losing the first two states to Sanders with (Vice President Joe) Biden, potentially, waiting to ambush her in the Palmetto State (South Carolina)?” Cillizza said.

“Remember how Rudy Giuliani was just going to let the first three states play out before making his mark by winning the Florida primary in 2008? He was irrelevant long before the vote turned to the Sunshine State.  The first states to vote inevitably impact how the race is covered and, therefore, how voters (and donors) regard it. Front-runners need to win; otherwise they aren’t front-runners anymore.”

A news story on page A18 of today’s New York Times said Democratic Party officials have been “casting about for a potential white knight to rescue the party from a beleaguered Clinton candidacy.”

Democrats know full well that Sanders, an independent who has characterized himself as a “democratic socialist,” probably can’t win in November 2016. Among those mentioned in the story as possible Democratic saviors were Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Secretary of State John Kerry.

Al Gore was also mentioned, but I can’t see that at all; his day under the arc lights is long past. The most likely of the those four to emerge, I would say, would be Kerry, mainly because most Democrats seem to trust him and he has steered clear of impropriety during his long career in politics.

The story quoted Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist, as saying:

“You still have to think of her (Clinton) as the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination. But the challenge she faces in the general election is both the trust problem and the likability problem.”

Trust and likability? If a candidate for president doesn’t have either of those qualities, she — or he — might as well get out of politics, go to the haunted houses and enjoy a few rides down the tubes.

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Well, it’s hot and steamy and too expensive to play golf on the holiday, so I better get to writin’.

…I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Royals’ pitcher Johnny Cueto, who has been an unmitigated disaster in his last three starts. It’s beginning to look like trading away three top pitching prospects to “rent” him for a few months, until he becomes a free agent next year, could be one of the worst trades the Royals have made in a long time.

Before we go any farther, let me assure you I’m not going to write an entire column about Johnny Cueto; he’s just my lead-in.

A few days ago, while thinking about a possible nickname for him (besides “Ace,” which he’s definitely not looking like) the name The Fantastic Johnny C popped into my head.

The Fantastic Johnny C, boogalooing down Broadway

That was appropriate and kind of catchy, I thought. Rock’n’Roll seepage then set in, and I thought I recalled a person who really went by the name The Fantastic Johnny C. Then it came to me: the real Fantastic Johnny C was the guy who had a smash hit with the song “Boogaloo Down Broadway” in 1967.

I then jumped on YouTube and listened to it five or 10 times.

While Johnny C wasn’t technically a one-hit-wonder, he didn’t make much of a mark with any other song.

According to the website http://www.allmusic.com, he was born Johnny Corley, in 1943, in Greenwood, SC.

The allmusic.com bio continues…

“He joined the armed services at an early age, leaving Brewer High in Greenwood before graduating to enlist. When his military duty ended, he moved to Norristown, PA, a small city 18 miles from Philadelphia, and found work as a heavy-equipment operator while becoming increasingly unable to resist the temptation to sing professionally. R&B producer Jesse James attended the same church as Corley and quickly spotted his talent. James made a career out of transforming gospel singers into secular performers; he discovered Cliff “the Horse” Nobles a short time later at the same church.

“James became Corley’s manager and wrote songs for him — one of them, ‘Boogaloo Down Broadway,’ convinced Corley to give pop music a serious try. ‘Broadway’ became a big hit, hitting number five on the R&B charts and number seven on the pop charts. The follow-up, ‘Got What You Need,’ didn’t surpass or equal ‘Broadway,’ but it did chart, while ‘Hitch It to the Horse’ bounced onto the R&B charts and even crept into the pop Top 40, in 1968.”

It was Jesse James who came up with the name by which Johnny Corley would henceforth be known. Johnny released only one album and, besides “Broadway,” it contained some covers, including “Barefootin” and “Land of 1000 Dances.”

Allmusic.com says that after his big hit, Johnny C set his sights on becoming “the number one soul brother.”

But like a lot of other artists who nurtured visions of long-term stardom after having a Top 40 hit, his star faded. The website http://www.waybackattack.com says that after 1970 Johnny C “resumed life as he’d previously known it except for the occasional return to performance glory.”

…I hope the arc of Johnny Cueto’s star doesn’t descend has quickly as that of the one, true Fantastic Johnny C, even though I’ve got a bad feeling about Cueto.

But let’s not dwell on the negative on this Labor Day 2015. Let’s drift back to the 60s and focus, for a few minutes, on a truly great song. 

So get your partner, get in line,
We’re gonna have ourselves a heck of a time.
Baby, oh baby, Boogaloo down Broadway…

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One of my favorite songs from the 50s is “Little Darlin” by the Diamonds. It rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1957.

One of the highlights of the song is the spoken interlude by the bass singer. He begins his pleading soliloquy to the girl of his dreams by saying, “My Darlin’ I need you,” and he finishes with an imploring, “Please…hold my hand.”

I picked that line up a long time ago and began using it around the house as a calling card. Every once in a while, I’ll go up to Brooks or Patty and say, “Please…hold my hand.”

Sometimes, I get my hand held, but most of the time I don’t…because, you know, once you make a joke of something like that, it tends to get old. Still, like I said, I do get indulged now and then.

And even though I wield the line half-jokingly sometimes, can we all agree on one this: Getting your hand held — held seriously — is a beautiful thing?

…This is a roundabout way of getting to an irresistible love story that was posted this week on The New York Times website. The story, written by John Leland, is titled “Too Much in Love to Say Goodnight.”

It’s about a 27-year-old man named Caleb Wiese and a 24-year-old woman named Katherine McClintic — both New Yorkers — who got acquainted through their mutual love of swing dancing. For many months they were just dance partners, shaking hands and saying “thank you” after songs.

But as they became more frequent dance partners, going to and from dance venues together, ol’ Cupid was doing his thing.

McClintic said Wiese’s first romantic overture came in the middle of a song, when he was looking at her, stopped and said, “I need to talk to you.”

And what he said was simply, “I like you.”

Somewhere around that time, after a night of dancing, Wiese took her hand and held it while they rode the subway toward their respective residences.

McClintic’s reaction?

“I started freaking out. It was very nice, and I was enjoying it a lot, but it was like, well, I don’t know what to do about this. Just the hand-holding. It was very old school.”

Caleb Wiese and Katherine McClintic (center) engaging in what led them to romance.

Now, the couple is engaged, and, according to The Times story, they’re getting married today…For the reception, naturally, a swing band will be performing, and some swing-dance friends will be giving lessons to the uninitiated.

So, back to where I started…

Never underestimate the power of holding hands. Sometimes, it can just carry you away, as if you’re dancing on a cloud.

Now, here’s that song.

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:: The drownings of the 3-year-old boy, his 5-year-old brother and their mother off the coast of Turkey struck me harder than they otherwise might have because five years ago, Patty and I, while vacationing in Turkey, visited Bodrum, the beach city where the bodies washed up.

I remember vividly that as we approached Bodrum, descending a steep hill in a van, I was mesmerized by the sight of the sparkling blue water of the Aegean Sea below us. Normally, I’m not much of a beach person, but seeing that water, my overriding thought was to get in the water as soon as I could. And I did, shortly after we arrived. The cool water felt as good as it looked.

What a stark contrast that five years later, the world’s attention is on that beach because four people died in a desperate attempt to make a 14-mile trip from Bodrum to the Greek island of Kos on a rubber raft, in search of a better life.

For some reason (local, local, local?) The Star did not run the haunting and heart-rending photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying face down on the beach, as if he were asleep. The Star ran a relatively short and uninformative wire story on A-2 today, while The New York Times had one story about the Kurdi family and another about the migrant crisis across the top of its front page.

I’ve said this many times before: I think it’s just crazy that The Star seldom runs big national and particularly international stories on the front page. As far as I’m concerned, The Star does a tremendous disservice to its print and online readers by virtually ignoring these blockbuster stories.

In case you haven’t seen that photo, here it is…

:: I was in Louisville visiting relatives earlier this week when the story broke about the nutty county clerk in eastern Kentucky — Rowan County — refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. My first thought was that the clerk, Kim Davis, was a latter day George Wallace standing in front of the school doors, refusing to admit black students.

My second thought had to do with the federal judge who had Davis jailed for contempt of court. The judge’s name is David Bunning. I immediately surmised he must be related to Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Jim Bunning, who represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate from 1999 to 2011. I was right: 49-year-old David is Jim’s son.

Extending the Kentucky connection, while growing up in Louisville I was a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds. On the final day of the 1964 regular season, Jim Bunning, pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, ended the Reds’ hopes of winning the National League pennant by pitching a six-hitter against the Reds in Cincinnati. In deep pain, I listened on the radio as the Phillies won the game 10-0.

:: I see that the Obama administration is once again considering transferring some of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. And just as you would expect — and just like last time — Gov. Sam Brownback is out front, railing against the idea. “We’re going to fight this with everything we’ve got,” he told Leavenworth residents at a town hall meeting Thursday.

Never mind that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks is one of the most secure facilities on earth and a logical and obvious place to relocate some of those prisoners. There aren’t going to be any tunnel escapes like the one in New York State in June, or more notoriously, the one in Mexico where drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman got virtual red-carpet treatment and departed through a mile-long tunnel constructed by his associates.

And, finally, regarding the possibility of terrorists making their way to the fort and wreaking havoc…First, I wonder if they could find their way to Leavenworth, and, second, would they really think they could make much of a splash in Leavenworth, Kansas?

**

I mentioned that I was in Louisville earlier this week. Here’s a photo of me with three of my brainy and beautiful cousins. That’s Sharron Hilbrecht on the left, her sister, Colleen Salazar, at far right (both of Louisville) and Josie Fitzpatrick on my left. Josie is assistant principal viola player for the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.

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