These Jokes May Drive You To Drink

by Kevin Burton    Here’s a tip for you discerning eligible bachelors out there, one you may not have picked up on:    Women dig grammar.    In the 70s I would have said “chicks dig grammar,” but you never know when somebody, some female somebody, will stumble upon Page 7 for the first time.  …

Good Riddance Steve Physioc, Go Royals

by Kevin Burton    The Royals lost their season-opening baseball game to Minnesota 2-0 Thursday. The prediction I saw last week said the team would lose 103 games this year.    So why am I newly pumped about the team?    The team has promoted Jake Eisenberg, who had been doing play-by-play for its Omaha …

Any Day, Anytime, Anyplace

by Kevin Burton    You pays your money, you takes your chances.    If we’re being honest, is that not a suitable tagline for the post-national United States?    Isn’t that phrase a lot more indicative of the American experience than say “land of the free, home of the brave?”    Now that phrase is …

Wichita State Great Ron Baker Turns 30

by Kevin Burton    Ron Baker, the shooting guard who helped usher in the greatest era of basketball at Wichita State, turns 30 tomorrow.    Some of us may not be ready to hear that.    Some of us overlooked, downtrodden people clung tightly to those Wichita State teams, underdogs who routinely slayed giants (I’m …

Board Game Beatdown South Dakota Style

by Kevin Burton    My wife and I loved our South Dakota-Nebraska vacation last fall.  We really didn’t want to come home.    On the way home I kept a Nebraska station on the car radio well past the point where we could actually hear it well enough to recognize a song.     “Hey, if …

Can You Imagine Elton John As A Banker?

by Kevin Burton    Elton John turns 76 today.  So when I was nine years old listening to Crocodile Rock, he was all of 26.    He wasn’t called Sir Elton back then, not hardly.  He was a sight to behold.    His wild costumes and antics on stage. His huge international hit songs, these …

Wobble Talk And Fighting Words In English

by Kevin Burton    Here’s one subject that never came up when I was teaching English in Mexico – thank God!    In English, when you see the vowel combination “ae” how do you pronounce it?    This was brought to my attention on an otherwise glorious Saturday morning by our friends at the Merriam-Webster …

Do The Math, Trust God In Troubled Times

by Kevin Burton    A Little theological math today on Page 7. It’s faith and fun with fractions actually.    One of my Sunday School teachers liked to put the fraction one over infinity on the chalkboard to illustrate where the bulk of our focus should be going.    The denominator infinity of course illustrates …

Why Do We Love March Madness So Much?

by Kevin Burton   In the bad old days, being without a girlfriend, or a date, or even a prayer, on Valentine’s Day was a sharp searing pain to the psyche.    Now by comparison, being without a basketball team for the big dance, or even the little dance, is a dull ache. March Madness is …

Spoonful’s John Sebastian Turns 79

by Kevin Burton     Happy 79th birthday to the personable multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter John Sebastian.    Both his music and his personality seem accessible, based on how he comes off in interviews on You Tube. I mean, here’s a rock and roller who plays the auto harp of all things. He said he learned the instrument …