There are aliens in Leawood, and I have proof.

I think I've solved the puzzle, I've cracked the code, I've figured out the mystery of the Take 5 Coffee Bar.

The place would raise the eyebrows of even the most casual Kansas City observer. There are so many things about this coffee and wine bar that just don't add up. Here it is located in southern Johnson county, amid some of the most vacuous real estate on the Kansas side of the state line, and yet upon arriving you walk into an atmosphere of swinging jazz and blinding happeningness.

I was there Friday night and ringing through the air were the unmistakeable blurts and trills and diddlings of high-end improvisation. And weirdest of all, the owners were happy about this. They were encouraging it. They were actually paying the musicians, Roger Wilder and Stan Kessler, to do this.

How can this be? Well, I have sniffed this out and found there can be only one logical conclusion: The owners are aliens and this suburban jazz haunt is their front. This is their way of trying to set up shop and blend in and pass themselves off as normal. But being aliens they aren't very adept at reading the cultural landscape. They are ignorant of the extreme drop-off of hipness as you venture deeper into the Johnson County suburbscape.

 Now the city is where you open a jazz club. Any five-year old living here knows that. But these aliens, they have that affliction that plagues many visitors to a foreign land--they lump us all together --which is why they think they can open a jazzy coffeeshop in extreme southern Leawood and not blow their cover.

Who are they kidding? They think I'm not going to start asking questions when I have to drive past twelve gated communities to find this place tucked away inside a hulking shopping strip next to a Walgreens and a gift shop? Well, I'm on to them, and I'm going to be watching them.