St. Louis News Blog

Who wants to bet how long it'll be before Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report come to town for this one? 

You have a weekend, then a short week, and before you know it, you'll be in line outside the electronics store at 4 a.m. waiting to get flat-screen TV at deep, deeeep discount.

So please, enjoy this final weekend before holiday madness descends on all of us. Here are ten options for weekend fun for $10 or less, which is about the only thing these events have in common, besides their St. Louis location.

Looking for local music? Peep our weekend concert calendar.

Credit: Dale Chihuly

​Dale Chihuly at the Duane Reed Gallery (Opens Friday)
While nature is settling in for a long winter's nap, Dale Chihuly's glass pieces -- best known in St. Louis for being on display at the Missouri Botanical Garden are as lively as ever -- and they're within the warm confines of the Duane Reed Gallery (4729 McPherson Avenue; www.duanereedgallery.com or 314-361-4100) beginning Friday, November 20. Opening with a free public reception from 5 to 8 p.m., this exhibition of Chihuly's latest work features the stunning winter-whiteness of Palazzo Ducale Tower, a writhing, elegant form that will tower over gallerygoers, shimmering and shining all throughout the winter -- well, almost. The show remains on view Tuesday through Saturday until Saturday, January 30. Alison Sieloff has more details for your right here.

​In an interview with the St. Louis Beacon, conducted via text message (oh, brave new world!), disgraced former state senator Jeff Smith shares his perspective on the revelations of last summer which led to his sentencing earlier this week to a year in federal prison for obstruction of justice. Among other revelations:

As Smith recalls, he listened to [State Rep. Steve] Brown's tapes in mid-July, roughly the week before his annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament and community fair in his district....
Smith said his only concern at that time "was I wanted assurances" from the U.S. attorney's office "that they would not indict before the 3-on-3 tournament which we'd spent months preparing for."

What a guy.

Will the trolls have the last laugh?

​Somehow we knew it would come to this.

An anonymous website called "Kurt Greenbaum is a Pussy" (www.kurtgreenbaumisapussy.com) popped up yesterday with a mission -- it seems -- to destroy the career of Post-Dispatch editor Kurt Greenbaum.   

Greenbaum is the man who infuriated an army of Internet trolls this week when he wrote how he outed a commenter on the newspaper's website. The commenter allegedly wrote the word "pussy" in response to an article on stltoday.com that asked readers to "name the strangest food" they'd ever eaten.

Greenbaum saw that the response came from an IP address belonging to a local school and called the school's headmaster. The commenter was later confronted by the principal and resigned immediately from his job.

The site kurtgreenbaumisapussy.com is registered to Domains By Proxy, an Internet hosting site that allows web creators to hide their identity. Daily RFT has emailed KGP, asking for an interview. We'll let you know what -- if anything -- we hear.

Meanwhile, the website contains Greenbaum's home address and phone number as well as the addresses and phone number of his bosses at the paper and encourages readers to let them know how they feel.

Update 3:22 p.m.: The site no longer lists Greenbaum's home address. Also the site's creator returned my query and said he/she would answer some questions via email. He/she wouldn't talk on the phone and wanted to remain anonymous. Pussy!

I'm awaiting his/her response.

The Internets are abuzz over a St. Louis pet spa owner's call to arms via social media.

Wikimedia Commons

​Yesterday a little after two o'clock, Mark Langevin, a co-owner of A Walk in the Park Grooming, a new pet boutique in Tower Grove South, asked patrons and friends to rally up against PetSmart for serving A Walk in the Park with a lawsuit at its grand opening party on November 8.

Langevin said PetSmart was suing him and his partner, Chris Lee, over a non-compete that Lee had signed as an employee of PetSmart between 2002 and 2008.

"A protracted legal battle may have the very impact that PetSmart desires," Langevin wrote in his missive. "Conceivably, the costs associated with this could drive us out of business. Although we are prepared to do what we must, we believe that there is another way to stop this whole thing. We must bring pressure to bear on PetSmart in order to convince them to withdraw this suit. In order to accomplish this, we must have community support."

www.biojob.com

​Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) this week mailed a letter to ten of the nation's top medical schools asking for their policies on ghostwriting.

The senator -- the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee -- has grown alarmed by a New York Times series examining how pharmaceutical companies authored studies promoting their drugs. The companies then had medical academics sign onto the reports, making it appear as though the ghostwritten article was authored by a scholar.

Washington University in St. Louis was the recipient of one of Grassley's letters that stated (in part):

connectmidmissouri.com

Alyssa Bustamante

​By now you've heard the story of Alyssa Bustamante.

The 15-year-old from outside Jefferson City is accused of digging a grave and then strangling and stabbing to death her nine-year-old neighbor because, according to police, Bustamante "wanted to know what it felt like" to kill someone.

Bustamante is clearly a fucked up kid. She suffers depression, routinely cuts herself and tried to commit suicide two years ago. But did you also know that she is "emo"?

What is emo, you ask?

Thankfully we have Channel 5 (KSDK) to explain.
If you missed station's lead story last night on the definition and (possible perils) of the emo lifestyle, you missed some unbelievably earnest -- and unintentionally comedic -- reporting.

Check out the video clip after the jump...

In the fall of 2006, shortly after the death of her mother, the feminist writer and critic Ellen Willis, Nona Willis Aronowitz met up with her friend Emma Bee Bernstein for brunch.

"I'd been bombarded with my mom's colleagues, friends and students, people who had been influenced by her," Aronowitz remembers. "I had feminism on my mind. Emma had wanderlust. Both of us were stuck in this New York bubble. We wanted to find out what issues were important to women all across the country."

courtesy Nona Willis Aronowitz

Bernstein (left) and Aronowitz in Austin.

​That day, the two women resolved to take a massive road trip and find out what feminism meant to young women outside New York. Unlike most people who make such grand resolutions, particularly over bloody Marys, they followed through and chronicled their trip, which mostly took place in the fall of 2007, in the new book Girldrive. Aronowitz, a journalist, wrote most of the text and Bernstein, a photographer, took most of the pictures.

Over the course of their journey, which took them from New York to California with stops at many points in between, they interviewed nearly 200 women, not all of whom identified as feminists.

anytimecostumes.com

Taxed enough already, kid?

​You know how it is each April. You'd think your kids would be happy. Summer is just around the corner. Little League season is starting up. In short, there's a lot to look forward to.

But no. All your kids can think of is the @$%&in' government. 'Cause April is tax time, and nothing pisses off the kiddies more than filing that annual 1040 form.

Well, good news! Now your tykes have an outlet.

A 22-year-old student in Alton, Illinois, has formed an organization specifically tailored for angry, small-government-minded juveniles. It's called the Alton Youth TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party Organization and it's having a rally this very month!

"I am very conservative. The youths don't know what is going on, and we don't have anything that focuses on getting news to kids," Eric Maxon, founder of the group told the Alton Telegraph this week. "Our generation will be the outcome of legislation being passed now. We will pay for it in the end."

Word up! The rally takes place Nov. 28 at Alton's Gordon Moore Community Park.

Viva la revolucion!