TV time and halter tops

Robert Osborne, Neko Case & Eli Wallach

When National World War I Museum honcho Eli Paul scored a guest spot with host Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies to promote the Liberty Memorial based museum here he got a taste of all three.

"It was a really cool deal," Paul says. "I got to mention the museum a lot to our demographic."

Not to mention behind the scenes action with acclaimed singer/songwriter Neko Case, who headlines the Uptown July 19.

 "I'm not going to be in Kansas City for her show, but I promised her a tour of the museum," Paul says. "She's a very interesting person, very intelligent. I didn't have to leave for a couple hours so I got to be behind the camera and watch her. She did four movies and she did a great job. I can't remember all the movies but she likes black and white movies, and one of them was ‘A Face in the Crowd' starring Andy Griffith."

Which brings us to the cutting room floor portion of Paul's adventure...

"At one time we were sitting on the couch and Mr. Osborne referred to me as Eli Wallach," Paul says. "Then I heard the director in the back yell, ‘Cut!' But you know, I'm a fan of the Magnificent Seven so I thought that was a compliment."

Halter Top Day goes to heck
 in a hand basket

For more than a decade, the KC Royals resisted the temptation to resurrect one of the team's arguably tackiest promotions ever, Halter Top Day...

"I hear about this so often it's unbelievable," then Royals marketing sparkplug Mike Levy told me at the Star in 1998.

"Let's put it this way," he continued. "Certain promotions at one time were politically correct and now they're not... I guess the best you could say about it is we always have it under consideration, because each year it continues to resurface in our marketing session."

So maybe there was a snowball's chance, but not much more.

Until this year's 40th anniversary...

"They were infamous," Royals mouthpiece Toby Cook told me just prior to the season's start.

Well, they did it - the Royals brought it back on Saturday, but in dialing out the poor taste, they also killed off the promotion's soul. 

Hey don't take my word for it.

Former New Times photographer Dale Monaghen was a working photojournalist at the first Halter Top Day in the 1970s.  Monaghen's take on this year's halter tops?

"It's kind of matronly looking," he says. "Let's just say, it's not very revealing compared to the ones in my photos. The new one looks like a T-shirt without sleeves. It does have a V neck but it goes up in the armpit area a lot higher."

Therein lies the problem.

The original Royals halter tops were cleavage-free, but open backs encouraged bra-less-ness, midriffs were exposed and sagging sides made for major peek-a-boo action, Monaghen notes.

Now let's do the math...

On a scale of one to 10 - with 10 the raciest - how the two compare?

Monaghen rates this year's a 4 and the original halter top an 8.

Translation: after disavowing halter tops for years, the Royals acceded to overwhelming fan fervor, then big time chickened out with a way conservative design.

Still, as unsexy as they were, this year's promotion wasn't a complete bust.

"Well, on the right person wouldn't anything be sexy?" Monaghen quips.

You guys think this looks easy, right?

Wrong....

Writing KC Confidential and living to tell the story is no walk in the park. All I can say is, thank heavens Sun Publisher Steve Rose promised to throw in combat pay with my seven figure contract.

How grisly can it get?

When was the last time you got a drink tossed at you in a public place?

It was a first for me, too, shortly before midnight Thursday when Pitch staff writer Peter Rugg exited Lew's Grill & Bar in Waldo, executed a finger point shout out to me and then hurled his drink, striking me, a waitress and Lew's co-owner Andy Lewellen.

You got it, free public showers, no waiting, courtesy of KC's leading alternative newsweekly.

The incident came on the heels of my reporting on another journalistic landmark by a fellow Pitch writer who created a stir by knee jerking on the Jazzy Jeff controversy at Power & Light and dropping no less than four f-bombs on Cordish, the P&L District, concert promoter AEG and the Sprint Center.

Back to Thursday...

So I'm sitting in Lew's interviewing Lewellen when I notice the two Pitch reporters in an adjacent booth.

What followed is one for the funny books and local pop culture history - though I can't decide whether to classify it as a drive-by dissing or a splash-and-run. 

"I've seen a lot of things; you have the weirdest people come up and talk to you," Lewellen says. "But I've never seen anything like that."

Uh, ditto...

Find more Hearne at kcconfidential.com. Contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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