Thursday, July 17, 2008

The King of Sting


Today I finished an awesome book. It is called "The King of Sting". It is the true story of the life of Craig Glazer, who owns Stanford's Comedy Club in Kansas City. I listen to the Johnny Dare Morning Show in KC and Craig is a frequent guest and "friend of the show". I use that term loosely, because they are usually busting Craig's balls and he is affectionately known as "Guido Libido", a ferrari-driving, womanizing slickster. The book begins as he and some friends in college are broke and put in a bunch of money to buy some weed to resell (its actually Craig's last $300). The drug dealers take all their money and beat the hell out of Craig. His plan to get them back results in a series of more than 30 "stings" where he and tough guy Don Woodbeck steal money and drugs from drug dealers over a period of years. After the stings run out, he returns to KC, only to be chosen to become an agent for the KS Attorney General's Office...taking down big drug dealers...so it was the same gig...only the badge was legal. An interesting personal aside, one of the other agents Craig worked with and was named in the book, Jerry Federgreen, worked (in his retirement) at Lake Shawnee Golf Course with me for 5 or 6 years in the late 1980s-early 1990s. Jerry was a skinny little jewish guy with thick glasses...from New York...kind of a grumpy little guy...I never pictured him as a cop...turns out, Jerry was one of the agents who ended up "arresting" Craig, who was just doing what he did...setting up drug dealers. Craig moved to Hollywood, stole from more drug dealers and eventually did a couple stints in prison...but the theme of the book was that his life was basically like a staged movie, with him as the director and a crazy cast of characters around him, including movie stars, drug dealers and lots of women. I'm really not much of a reader, but I finished the book in only a few hours. This book is a must read and I give it a 5 on a scale of 1-5.

1 comment:

Chez said...

hay cowboy, welcome to the blogosphere ... you're off to a good start. this book sounds interesting ~ i just added it to my library mailing list.