Daily Briefs: David Cook Day, a TIF Virgin No More, When Nature Attacks
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By CHRIS PACKHAM
It’s David Cook Day, Charlie Brown! Look, honest, I got no beef with David Cook Day in Kansas City. Because here’s the thing: I’ve never even seen American Idol. Sorry — I’m just not a man of the people like Hillary Clinton. I think probably something else is on TV that night, but I’m not 100 percent sure what night it is. So it’s entirely possible that I’m out drinking or attending to my many volunteer activities, such as buying cigars for children, which is a public service I provide at absolutely no cost. But seeing as it’s David Cook Day Eve, why don’t you all take a half-day off work, go home, and think about how commercial interests have sucked all the meaning out of David Cook Day.
The Brave Li’l Suburb: In the equivalent of a tax-break bat mitzvah, the City Council of Overland Park just approved the city’s first TIF. Congratulations, Miss Overland Park. Now you can be called upon to read the Torah at a Shabbat, for today you have blossomed into a woman. Here, let me tuck this check into your coat pocket. Anyway. Developers will get $3.5 million in tax-increment financing to redevelop the Cherokee South Shopping Center at 95th Street and Antioch, if they meet certain requirements, which include delivering an anchor tenant. WEIRD! It’s like this whole other country down there.
Volcanos: Nature’s eruptions of ash, gas and magma: SURPRISE! The Chaitén Volcano in southern Chile erupted without warning last Friday for the first time in recorded history. These things happen. Five centimeters of ash have collected in Chaitén alone, and the plume is blowing across Argentina, choking vegetation and threatening all the cattle. BUT LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PICTURE!
It’s a volcanic ash plume encountering a thunderstorm, and the image completely makes up for all the human and bovine suffering caused by unleashed tectonic forces. It’s also helpful, for some reason, to remember that all of Yellowstone National Park is actually a supervolcano, which erupts periodically and sterilizes the entire surface of the Earth. So really, this isn’t all that bad, as volcanic explosions go. Apocalyptic scenario sponsored by Nature, producer of soy isoflavones, MRSA, pooping, kittens, Larry Moore naked, and atoms.
Meet Vic: In case anyone wants to mess with me, I’ve hired a bodyguard. His name is Vic. He can’t run far or fast without collapsing into a wheezing heap of gasping and heart attacks. And he’s not smart. In fact, the only thing he can do is this:
