Jason Sudeikis, Paul Rudd, Heidi Gardner share what they love about KC and Big Slick
Your Guide to KC: Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.
The cause of Big Slick Celebrity Weekend — now in its 15th year of raising millions for the patients at Children’s Mercy hospital —surges so much inside Heidi Gardner that she knows she has to calm herself down as she recruits fellow celebrities to appear for the fundraiser.
“I had to lay off a little bit of saying, like, ‘It’s so fun, and you have to come and there’s nothing like it and we all wear T-shirts,’” the “Saturday Night Live” star, who brought along several cast mates, said at a press conference at the hospital Friday morning. “But I also have to say, ‘It’s not a cult,’ because it’s sounding really cult-y.”
Added co-host Jason Sudeikis, “It has all the warmth and fuzziness of a cult without, you know, the chaos.”
More seriously, though, the pride they and fellow hometown hosts Paul Rudd, Rob Riggle, Eric Stonestreet and David Koechner feel in Big Slick is entwined with their forever fervor for Kansas City.
Along with Chiefs superstars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, who were expected to attend the Party & Show on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Center, they are about the most high-profile current ambassadors we have.
And a great reflection of the better angels for which we want to be known.
As such, they appreciate the testimony that Big Slick lends not only to the wonderful cause at hand but also to the region that has so taken it to heart.
Amid the Hollywood writers strike last year, Gardner said after Big Slick she spent the rest of the summer at home and swooned even more over the hometown she already loved.
When I asked what she tells friends about what distinguishes Kansas City and why they ought to be part of this or visit otherwise, Gardner perhaps spoke most eloquently to an intangible many of us might feel.
“I had a friend last year who described Kansas City as ‘a big hug,’” she said. “I think we can all agree that immediately when you touch down you’re embraced.”
Essentially riffing off that a few minutes later, Sudeikis said Kansas City speaks for itself from the time you arrive …
“Especially since they fixed the airport …,” he said, referring to the new single-terminal Kansas City International that opened last year. “It’s like, ‘Did I land in Utopia?’
“‘No, this is Kansas City.’”
Accenting the point as only those who grew up here could, he added, “‘Is this Kansas?’
No, he continued, “‘It’s confusing. Stop asking questions.’”
Enter Rudd, noting he still doesn’t quite get the whole border thing: “‘There’s this street, (and) if you you cross it, on one side you’re in Missouri?”
Added Sudeikis, “And what’s the street name?”
State Line Road.
“How clever are we?” Sudeikis said.
Clever enough to have ascended into memorable entertainment careers, anyway. And to create their own self-perpetuating culture on behalf of Children’s Mercy on what began as more or less a whim of Riggle’s in 2010 to host a poker tournament with Rudd and Sudeikis to raise $50,000 one year.
Now, shoot, Union Station is touting the event in lights.
“Just another example of our city showing up for us,” Stonestreet said.
Marveled Sudeikis, “It wasn’t graffiti.”
But it makes sense: from one Kansas City institution to another.
Dedicated to an enterprise making the world a better place and bolstered by family and friends who do most of the grunt work (“welcome to my childhood” Rudd said, when Riggle pointed to matriarch Gloria Rudd running a tight event schedule), Big Slick reverberates all the more overlaid on a community that feels it in ways others might not.
“I’ve never been any place that’s more proud of (itself),” Rudd said.
He was answering in the context of the Big Slick-partner Charlie Hustle T-shirts he sees all over and wears himself.
But his words were more universally applicable.
“The people of Kansas City are so welcoming and so kind,” Riggle said. “I’ve always been very proud of Kansas City, wherever I lived, whether it was New York, L.A. or anywhere (else) in the country I’ve lived. …
“I always brag. I always talk about how nice the people are, how great the town is, how much fun it is. All the big stuff, too: Obviously, barbecue, fountains, whatever you got.”
So “the chance to show it off,” as he put it, is practically a cause in itself.
“And they fall in love with it, too,” Riggle added. “And I swell with pride: ‘See, I told you this place was amazing.’
“And Kansas City hasn’t let me down yet. They’re such wonderful, wonderful people, and they show up and they do the right thing.”
All the more so through Big Slick, now a Kansas City icon that Sudeikis figures sells itself at this point.
“Which is amazing,” he said. “I wish I could have been like that at 15.”
Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian is changing uniforms this spring and summer, acting as a tour guide of sorts to some well-known and hidden gems of Kansas City. Send your ideas to vgregorian@kcstar.com.
