lifestyles
Julianne Peter/KANSAN
Above: George Detsios prepares the daily specials in the back of his Cheese and Sausage Shop in Kansas City, Mo. Below: George stands below the Greek flag, which is one of his shop's many decorations.
By Mary Beth Kurzak Special to the Kansan
Lots of things don't match in George's Cheese and Sausage Shop, including chairs, place mats, coffee cups and plates. In this little lunch-time restaurant in Kansas City, Mo., classical music plays softly in the background and the smells of Greek food permeate the air.
It is inviting and comfortable, like the owner. The bell above the door tinkles as two men in business suits come in to the enthusiastic greeting of George Detsios.
"Hello! And how are you today?" he says in his booming Greek accent.
The sign in the window may say "George A. Detsius, Proprietor," but to anyone who crosses the threshold of 4546 Main St. the shop's owner is always just George.
At about 5 foot 3 inches tall, George bustles around the tiny restaurant in his green apron, his eyes sparkling, and a smile on his face that makes the dimples in his cheeks even deeper.
George, 62, was born in Cyprus, an island off Greece in the Mediterranean. By the time he was 8, his family fled the island in fear of the Nazis, who were taking over Europe.
They ended up in East Africa, where George spent the majority of his childhood. His father was hired to supervise the German and Italian prisoner-of-war camps in Kenya, which was then part of the British Empire.
During his high school years in Kenya, George read a lot about the United States. After the war, he and his family returned to Cyprus, and George decided to go to college in America.
He applied to and was rejected by 20 schools. He had almost given up when he read about the Fulbright Scholarship in Time magazine.
"I thought, hell, 20 rejections, let's go for 21," George said.
But the rejections stopped at 20. He was accented at the University of Kansas through a
program with the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He later found out that he was chosen from a group of 2,500 applicants.
George arrived at KU in 1952 and eventually graduated with a degree in business administration. He decided to stay in Kansas, and, in 1973, he opened his cheese and sausage shop in Crown Center. Nine years later, he moved the shop to its present location — a modest strip of shops nestled among the growing corporate high-rises near the Plaza.
Simple but wise.
It is home away from home.
A home-cooked meal, good conversation and a kind, accepting face. The formula is simple and the end result is the basic standard George strives for every day — humanity.
Making people feel at home, George said, is
humanity. And that is important to him.
Brennan Smith, Hutchinson senior, first met George two years ago when he went to the cheese and sausage shop with his family. After chatting with George for about 20 minutes, they realized they still needed to order. But there were no menus.
Instead, Smith said, George passed out spoons to the whole family and took them to the kitchen, which is a small extension of the shop itself. George went from pot to pot, ladling out samples of beef goulash, chicken curry and stuffed peppers on each spoon.
Hanging out in the kitchen, just like at home. Smith said that soon after he and his family began eating. George pulled up a chair.
"A quarter of the way through the meal we had explanations of the life backgrounds of every other person in the place," Smith said.
Being a part of people's lives is important.
George said, even if it is just for a short while.
George said, even if it's just for a short while.
But for many, just a short time with George is enough to bring them back and become a part of his life as well.
Humanity is a two-way street.
A man comes in and speaks to George. They go outside to the man's truck.
The man is a sculpture professor at the Kansas City Art Institute. He built a steel wheelchair ramp for George's mother. After having pneumonia, she needed a wheelchair and a way to get in and out of the house she shares with her son.
George made a fair trade — a wheelchair ramp in exchange for a cup of coffee.
"This is something nice that happens with people," he quietly explained.
Smith chose George's as the setting for a play he wrote for a class. He said the restaurant was a place for plays to happen.
"There are very few magical places in this world," he said.
Smith described George as possessing life wisdom.
"He is optimistic while still being realistic," he said. "He balances hope for himself and others while still being down to earth."
Jon Stewart talks shop on the FOX Network
By Frazier Moore The Associated Press
By Frazier Moore
Jon Stewart is a career woman on the go ... a caring mom and loving wife ... a —
NEWYORK—Who says he can't have it all?
That would be Stewart, a 31-year-old, New Jersey-born comic whose half-hour talk show on MTV last season has grown up, in a sense, to become a late-night program syndicated to stations across the country. The show airs locally from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Monday through Friday on Channel 4.
Oops, wait a minute. This isn't a panty-hose or diet soda commercial. It's a story about a talk show host.
Despite the ironic, ultrahit trappings of "The Jon Stewart Show" (hey, the host and his guests sit in car seats borrowed from a deep, for goodness sake!), you don't have to wear Doc Martens, a carry torch for Courtney Love or have your navel pierced to be entertained, even charmed, by Stewart's chat and shenanigans.
Stewart's show is edgy but accessible. Off-pulling attitude? No way. Stewart wants it all, and he might just get it.
For instance, Stewart, whose "Q" rating isn't exactly off the chart, has launched a national awareness-building campaign. The idea: To phone other men who share his name and enlist them to spread the word about his new show. On the air one night he rang a John Stewart in Louisiana and asked him to talk up "The Jon Stewart Show" at the local mall.
Expect a refreshingly old succession of guests that so far has included Ellen DeGeneres, comic-promaniac Bobcat Goldthwait, the organist at Madison Square Garden and a 3-year-old who loves toothpaste. The humor is smart-alekey but good natured.
Elsewhere in television ...
MORE TALK CHANNELED: There's yet another talk TV alternative thanks to the Talk Channel, a new cable service that was scheduled to sign on Saturday. Joining such akmasters as Phil, Oprah, Dave (and Jon), as well as the NBC-owned cable channel America's Talking (which bowed in July), the Talk Channel bills itself as a 24-hour, audience-driven, news-oriented talk cable network. Based in Manhattan, it is owned by Multimedia Entertainment, which produces syndicated talk fare including "Donahue" and "Rush Limbaugh." The Talk Channel has announced agreements with such cable carriers as Time Warner Cable, Continental Television and Cox Cable Communications.
To be truthful, the bit tanked. But one of Stewart's strengths is his laidback way of saving himself (and his show) when things aren't going so well. It's a skill reminiscent of another John, last name Carson.
"I find you one of the most soothing people I've ever met in my life," Stewart said at the segment's conclusion. The audience went wild.
Indeed, even Carson might have been impressed by how Stewart rescued an interview with a shy Brendan Fraser.
But not content to be just a playful hour of lemmy-fresh entertainment, "The Jon Stewart Show" also clearly means to be a good TV citizen. With the start of football season, Stewart introduced the North Yonkers Knights, an adorable pack of 8 to 10 year olds (including one girl), which the show will follow, and sponsor, all fall. On the team's first appearance, the team was given Barney dummies to practice hitting and tackling.
ANALYSIS
On the clubby little stage, musical acts perform in what may be the most Generation X-clusionary portion of the show with musical guests that include Public Enemy, the Gin Blossoms and Helmet. But on the other hand, Stewart has also welcomed Johnny Cash.
"We just want to do a show where if you're 60 and you like it, that's great. And if you're 15 and you don't," he says, screwing his face up — "well, FINE, Beavis!"
Stewart is in his office across the street from the show's Chelsea studio. The Wardrobe Department is several shopping bags beside Stewart's desk. There are T-shirts, sweaters and a stack of new Levis jeans.
So big deal, Stewart wears jeans on every show. That's just Jon, OK?
"I hope we're not setting up some kind of environment with the show that says, 'Hey, look at us, we're cool, we're wearin' jeans,'" he worries. "I've dressed like this since 8th grade."
Another matter worth clearing up concerns Stewart's mistaken role as "replacement" for Arsenio Hall, whose defunct show, like Stewart's new one, was produced by Paramount Television.
"To me, we're a new product that the same company is putting out," he says. "Like that guy Al Elsen: He's got 2,000 Flushes Blue, and then maybe he introduces 4,000 Flushes Blue. Different products."
"Us? We're just a little startup shop. Right now, we're maybe 125 Flushes."
He laughs. "Maybe that's a bad example."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY
The New York Times reported in August on Zimbabwe's recent salutary birth control performance, an effort led by more than 800 family planning missionaries who regularly tour the countryside. The achievement also has helped produce a new export industry. Zimbabwe now sells wooden penises for family planning programs to use in other African countries as models for teaching how to put on a condom.
In July, a prototype suitcase-car, manufactured by the government of Toyooka City in partnership with an electronics firm, was introduced at an international travel-baggage exposition in Japan. The device looks like an ordinary, large plastic suitcase but can be converted into a battery-driven automobile capable of transporting a rider at about 6 miles an hour. A spokesman for the manufacturer admitted its drawbacks. It costs about as much as a real car, and it weighs more than passengers are permitted to carry aboard airliners.
■ According to England's Manchester Guardian newspaper in August, members of a village in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea had raised about $530 for O.J. Simpson's legal defense fund.
INEXPLICABLE
I DON'T THINK SO
A New York City Emergency Medical Services crew that was called to a Macy's restroom July 25 diagnosed the contents of a plastic bag that a cleaning woman had found in a toilet as a fetus. A few minutes later, a crew from the city medical examiner's office arrived and correctly determined that the bag contained spaghetti. Police in Des Moines, Iowa, in April easily subdued Ronald Albert Siedelman after he had given a teller a long, poorly written note that officers characterized as implying a robbery and asking for "19 trillion." Siedelman further astounded tellers by walking outside as tellers were deciphering the note. He said he wanted to smoke a cigarette and did not want to violate the bank's no-smoking policy.
Lloyd Johnson Jr., 38, was arrested in Jacksonville, Fla., in May. He admitted to running by a bank's drive-through teller chute and swiping money just before the waiting motorist could grab it. Johnson told Judge Morton Kesler that he wasn't a thief. Johnson said he had been using an automatic teller machine elsewhere on the bank's property but was unfamiliar with how it worked and thought he had to run over to the drive-through chute to retrieve his money.