Kansas City With The Russian Accent

From The Mind of One Russian Jewish American

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  • DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture

    Fellow Citizens (and Permanent Residents) of Kansas City and beyond!

    Time has come to stand up against over-saturation of our visual space with penises, breasts and other dirty, dirty genitals. Everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, we cannot avoid being confronted with genitalia and/or breasts. Some may call it art, but we know better – it’s pornography, a mere glimpse of which leads to lust, perversion and, dare I say, fornication.

    Accidental breast and penis sightings ruin our children. We all know who else loved art in all of its nakedness – people like Hitler, Charles Manson, and, I assume, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. One day little Hitler was looking at some shameful works of art and the next thing anyone knew….well, we all know what happened next. On the other hand, George W. Bush didn’t like art, especially the obscene kind, and he grew up to be an American President.

    It’s for the well-being of the children that I call upon you to join the new organization – DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture. Let’s prevent the next tyrant or a murdering cannibal from growing up in our communities. Let’s raise our children to be American Presidents like George W. Bush.

    Of course, we denounce any censorship, this is not Soviet Russia after all. Everyone is free to express their opinion and artistry on public property as long as it doesn’t harm the children* and/or biblical in nature. You might have heard of a whorish sculpture which every one of our children is forced to walk by on their way to and from school. Thousands of them come home in tears,embarrassed, shocked and even (god forbid) aroused! They want to know why the photos sent to them by their classmates feature a lot smaller breasts. They want to ask questions like where they can see more art like this. They spend a long time alone in their rooms and hide things hastily (probably art) when we come in unannounced.

    DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture are here to save your children. When the offending sculpture will be finally removed from our sights and melted into something they could sell at Crate and Barrel (or at least ammo), we will all as one call on the Kansas City Administration to

    Remove An Offensive Penis From Its City Hall.

    Yes, your children wandering around the City Hall are confronted with a penis and it hurts them now and for the rest of their lives.

    Click to enlarge the offending penis

    Fellow Citizens (and Permanent Residents) of Kansas City and beyond! DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture have a lot of work ahead of us. This Metro Area is literally stuffed with thousands of penises and boobs.

    We need to move fast before it’s too late and we have another Hitler on our hands.

    Email all the (sculptural) penis and boob sightings to douchebags@gmail.com

    *Everything hurts the children.

    Continue reading →
  • Old Photos: Flowery Face Lift For Neosho, MO

    There is already a post on this blog about Neosho, MO also known as the Flower Box City, but it seems like the Life Magazine Archives recently received a great many new color photos (or I just failed to notice them before). These photos look like stills from the Andy Griffith Show except they were not taken in the imaginary Mayberry, but in the very real American town of Neosho, not too far from here, for the 1955 Life Magazine article “Flowery Face Lift, Neosho learns what petunias and marigolds will do for a town”

    Until six months ago the 5,790 residents of Neosho, Mo. took for granted the colorless environment they shared with many other small towns in the U.S. Then the New York Community Trust, a $20 million fund administered by 15 banks, picked Neosho for a test run in civic beautification by offering $5,000 in prizes for the handsomest window boxes. 

    Suddenly Neosho burst out into a flowery rash of red, pink and gold. The prize money was all but forgotten as the community plunged headlong into a floral face lift which quickly showed not only Neosho but surrounding towns how much could be done with a little money and effort. Housewives planted petunias in old baby buggies and potbellied stoves. Merchants splurged on fancy trimmings like concrete and wrought iron. The city piled free dirt near the jail and found new use for municipal trashcans. Postman David Weems articulated everybody’s feelings: “It’s a wonderful thing-it just looks nice all over town.”

    © Time Inc.Wallace Kirkland.
    Continue reading →
  • Dusseldorf and Cologne

    Preface:

    Germany wasn’t on my bucket list. I don’t even have a list. The only reason I use it to name my travel posts is because I like the way they look on my travel page, all nicely lined up.

    The original plan was to stop at Bruges on the way from Amsterdam to Paris, but the prospect of spending a day with my childhood friend, riding on an autobahn, while still adding another country to the itinerary outweighed my desire to see the exact spot where the body of a killer plopped down from the tower in that one movie. A chance to see the famous Cologne Cathedral in person and me having only a vague idea of how to make the trip from Amsterdam to Bruges and still make it to Paris the same night tipped the scale and the next morning we were on the way to Düsseldorf.

    Face:

    I was underwhelmed by the autobahn. Besides not having a speed limit in some places it wasn’t that much different from the stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St.Louis. My friend drove fairly fast on some stretches, but just like here we were frequently slowed down by construction and slow drivers in the passing lane. My eye was missing my favorite highway entertainment – the billboards. It took about 2.5 hours to arrive in Düsseldorf.

    Düsseldorf turned out to be a lively town with an interesting but fairly generic historic center and a large and expensive shopping district. That one restaurant downtown with a German name serves the best liver I’ve ever had. Make sure to check it out while you there.

    Continue reading →
  • Jewish Veterans Museum

    I had various ideas for a post about Jewish War Veterans during the Jewish American Heritage month, but none of them worked out so I just went to the Jewish Community Center and took some (low quality) photos of the displays presented by the Jewish War Veterans MO/KAN Post 605.

    For a professional online exhibit on the subject please visit: Jewish Veterans of World War II.

    Continue reading →
  • Jewish Veterans: Bert Berkley

    Every year I have an idea to write a post about a Jewish veteran for the upcoming Veterans Day, but with my lack of interviewing skills and not personally knowing any veterans, every year I come up with nothing. Last year I took a few photos of the Jewish Veterans Museum and since my email to the local post of the Jewish War Veterans went unanswered, I decided to search for something interesting online. Only few names come up when searching for the Jewish Veterans in Kansas City and one of them is Bert Berkley – veteran, civic leader and the Chairman of the Board of Tension Envelope.

    The article below was published in the Outlook – Kansas City Business Journal in May of 1979. The issue is available at the Missouri Valley Special Collections at the  Kansas City Public Library (if you have a Twitter account, you should follow @KCPubLibrary).

    The article is presented almost entirely with an exception of the discussion of the envelope business and its future as seen in 1979; I felt these details were irrelevant. Many of the things the article talks about in the future tense are now well in the past, that’s why I enjoy reading the old magazines.

    This is the most typing I’ve done in the past ten years, and even though I am positive no one will finish reading this, I still liked doing it.

    Continue reading →
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