St. Louis News Blog

Through Wednesday St. Louis had the most rainfall ever in the month of October -- 9.47 inches. And that figure doesn't include the two to three inches that has fallen since yesterday. Seriously, I say it's time to build one of these...

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A Daily RFT post on Tuesday joked that Kim Peek, the developmentally disabled genius who inspired Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man, is incredibly gifted when it comes to memorizing dates and times.

Perhaps Peek is looking for a job as a blogger, because this writer is obviously not so good with such details.

An attentive reader pointed out that Peek is actually scheduled to appear on Monday, October 12, at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, not this past Monday, October 5, as originally reported.

In the words of another idiot-savant, one Homer J. Simpson, d'oh.

Apologies for the mix-up. Go hear the man's amazing story and see him show off his prodigious memory. Complete event info here. It's free. You won't be disappointed.

And now the best moment in Rain Man:

Courtesy Rock Hill Police Department

Officer Ron Zeigler loves signing his autograph -- on your speeding ticket, that is.

​ ​ Gentlemen, start your engines. Twenty-six years and 150,000 traffic tickets later, Rock Hill's rainmaker is hanging up his radar gun. You heard right folks, Officer Ronald Zeigler will soon write his final speeding citation. To be more precise, you have until his shift ends at 7 p.m. on October 20 to get his autograph, and he'll only be too happy to oblige.

www.bigsmalltown.com/postcards

​Just when you thought the week was going to end without somekind of bombshell, well, here it is:

St. Louis now ranks No. 43 as the most-booked travel destination for the rest of 2009. How does one wrap one's mind around such news? Should we be happy, sad, or simply scratch our heads? Yes, the latter alternative does seems best.

In any case, this revelatory news comes compliments of Travel Leaders, a travel and tourist association who've been conducting fall travel surveys the past seven years.

Tying St. Louis for the not-terribly coveted 43rd spot were Memphis, West Palm Beach, Palm Springs and Hilton Head, South Carolina.

If you're not sitting down, please do -- Cleveland, finished a spot ahead of St. Louis in travel popularity!

After ingesting the survey's highlights -- which included the unsurprising fact that Las Vegas, Orlando and New York finished in the top three -- the Daily RFT called Travel Leaders in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and got hold of Steve Loucks, vice president of communications.

Number 43!?

Photo: Egan O'Keefe

Organizers of the ride, who ran it last year as a school project, but continued this year for fun. See more photos from the ride.

​Well, the 2009 version of the St. Louis World Naked Bike Ride, a bare-assed protest against the world's dependency on fossil fuels, is in the books. Like last year, riders rolled out of Tower Grove Park at 9 p.m. under the cover of darkness and pedaled through a sliver of the Bible Belt with little more on than strategically placed body paint. They arrived on Manchester, greeted by cheers from supporters outside the several bars in the Grove, with many riders eventually opting to party at the Atomic Cowboy afterward.

Photo: Egan O'Keefe

Riders were encouraged to go as "bare as they dared." See more photos from the ride.

​Photographer Egan O'Keefe was there and has this slideshow of the festivities, which is not safe for work, natch.

Also this year, videographers Stew Smith and Amanda Andert were there to interview the participants.

The movie Cold Souls sounds kind of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without the Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet part. In other words, it's about a company that extracts your soul and stores it for you in a glass jar. That's what Unreal has surmised anyway, based on the movie's viral marketing scheme. We won't find out for sure until it comes out on DVD because, guess what? Cold Souls is never gonna open in the state of Missouri. Ever.

Putting bitterness aside, because Unreal is exceptionally good at that sort of thing, we must admit the movie's viral marketers got skillz. The Soul Storer, the web site they have constructed, takes info on your age, location, occupation, favorite color and film and produces a picture of what your soul would look like. (It's the best viral marketing site we've experienced since Mad Men Yourself, and that one is so last week.)

Behold, the soul of Unreal:

thesoulstoragecompany.com

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photobucket.com/albums/h30/hamwad

This rant has nothing to do with Vietnam.

​The Big Lebowski is one of the funniest movies ever made. It's also, as Paul Friswold pointed out in this week's calendar section, one of the most quotable. It's no coincidence, then, that the film contains a shit ton of swearing. The cursing, as anyone who has ever proclaimed "Fuck it dude, let's go bowling" can attest, is essential to the humor.

The copy editors at the Post-Dispatch must have been sleeping Tuesday night. How else to explain the words "Riverfront Times" sneaking into Wednesday morning's paper?

But there it was on page B4 of an article (excerpted below) on Valley Park and a feud between its ex- and current mayor. 

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flcikr.com/photos/Junior Riberio

What's in a name, you ask? Well, there's a new study now making the rounds that suggests that boys growing up with rather unconventional names like Garland or Tyrell or Kareen stand a much greater chance of someday finding themselves behind bars.

Conversely, give your bouncing baby boy a relatively normal and popular moniker such as Christopher, Robert or Michael, and bingo, they have a higher probability of living out law-abiding lives.

The study, which analyzed more than 15,000 names, was published in Social Science Quarterly. It was done by a Shippensburg University professor named David (another popular name) Kalist, who presumably has a good deal of time on his hands.

"Unpopular names," postulates Kalist, "are likely not the cause of crime," but that factors often associated with those names can "increase the tendency toward juvenile delinquency."

The reason, Kalist goes on to explain, is that boys with unfortunate, girlish or uncommon names more than likely will face the ridicule of peers, often come from families of poorer backgrounds, and face job discrimination in the workforce.

So be a good parent, and name your newborn boy Johnny -- yes, as in Johnny Be Good.

Posted just a few weeks ago on June 23, here's this year's viral screw-up that's been pasted all over the Internet. Enjoy.

Enjoy!

Take a bow, Mississippi -- that is, if you're able to. A new report out today shows that the Magnolia State is still America's King of Fat. That makes it five straight years that Mississippi has been the nation's heavyweight champ, with the highest rate of adult obesity in all the land, according to a study conducted by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Some 32.5 percent of Mississippi's grown-ups are obese. The other three states with adult obesity rates exceeding 30 percent are Alabama (31.2 percent), West Virginia (31.1 percent) and Tennessee (30.2 percent).

We're anything but bantamweights in Missouri, however. The report shows that our adults clock in at a rate of 28.1 percent. Click here for a state-by-state look at adult obesity. Note that Colorado adults are the least obese (18.2 percent), followed by Massachusetts (21.2 percent) and Connecticut (21.3 percent). Not a single state showed any signs of getting skinnier.

Obesity for adults is defined as having a body mass index above 30.

flickr.com/photos/adohnes

"It's not like catching the chickenpox. There has to be a history."

So says Dr. Allan Lans regarding social anxiety disorder and this season's toll of ballplayers said to be suffering from it, a list that includes St. Louis' introspective shortstop Khalil Greene and Detroit's flamboyant hurler Dontrelle Willis.

A New York psychiatrist with a long history of working on the psyches of professional athletes -- most notably as a member of the Mets' staff -- Lans tells the New York Times that he's "very suspicious of that diagnosis." Lans is not disputing that social anxiety is a real illness, but he says the ailment is being overdiagnosed.

Jennifer Silverberg

Former Valley Park Mayor Jeffery Whitteaker led the fight to pass the anti-illegal immigrant ordinance in 2006

In a ruling that could have national implications, Valley Park's controversial and long-debated ordinance prohibiting city employers from hiring illegal immigrants was unanimously upheld today by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision affirms a lower court ruling in favor of Valley Park, where Hispanics represent barely 2 percent of the city's population.

The issue has sharply divided Valley Park's 6,500 residents, ever since the ordinance was adopted in 2006, thanks largely to the efforts of Jeffery Whitteaker, then the city's outspoken mayor.

A St. Louis County judge struck down the original ordinance, which would have imposed $500 fines on landlords and employers who rented homes or offered jobs to illegals. Following that setback, the city revised the law again, this time to repeal the rental prohibition, but keeping the provision in regards to employing them.

In a RFT feature story in 2007 that dealt largely with Whitteaker's anti-illegal immigrant vision for Valley Park, Whitteaker, who last year lost his bid for reelection, explained his rationale for spearheading passage of the ordinance.

"My main issue is overcrowding," he said. "You got one guy and his wife that settle down here, have a couple of kids, and before long you have Cousin Puerto Rico and Taco Whoever from moving in."

flickr.com/photos/whinendine

Six years ago, Margaret Benedict remembers being riveted by an article in Investor's Business Daily on the life and times of Joyce Clyde Hall, the highly-driven founder of Hallmark Cards. At the time, Benedict was reaching the end of a long career as a fifth-grade teacher in St. Charles.

"I've always loved biographies. They've always been my favorite genre," Benedict, who lives in Kirkwood, said last week. (In fact, she required her students to read eight biographies a year.)

"After reading the story on Hall, I kept wanting to learn more about him -- and couldn't really find much. So I contacted his grandson, Donald Hall, who is the president of Hallmark. He sent me a copy of his memoirs and invited me to come to headquarters in Kanas City. Everyone at Hallmark was extraordinarily helpful in me writing this biography."

The rest, so to speak, is history.

flickr.com/photos/goldstaraward

Cheer up, Pop, I bought you some Skypanels.

Every publicist faces an inherent credibility problem when pitching a story to the media. In their constant quest for attention -- and ink -- the publicist rarely has the upper hand. They must dutifully, as essayist Lance Morrow once wrote, "chum the waters and bait the hook, and go trolling for love and laughter..."

Gretchen Hydo, of Chatterbox PR, Ink in Van Nuys, California, recently came a trolling with a rather remarkable pitch of her own. Hoping to convince RFT -- or anyone for the matter -- to run a story on how Skypanels are a perfect Father's Day gift, Hydo wrote:

"With Father's Day right around the corner, it's time to celebrate Dad. But when Dad's in debt, or in the doghouse, how do you mark that special day? And what do you do for a divorced Dad or the Dad who has it all? Go for 'the get' -- in this case the gift -- the one that won't break your bank, the one your gadget guru hasn't gotten. We all know he doesn't need another grill (or necktie)!

"How about Skypanels?

To the uninitiated, Skypanels are light diffusers that have photos of actual sky, clouds, palm trees, hot air balloons, and so on, to help create a more relaxed, soothing atmosphere. The panels are custom designed and fit into standard florescent ceiling fixtures.

Now, about that  Father's Day pitch. I reached Ms. Hydo this morning and asked, point-blank, whether Skypanels might be an appropriate gift for, say, a suicidal Dad.

"Oh yeah, if Dad is suicidal, this will elevate his mood."

"OK, how about if Dad has a terminal illness?"

"Yes, it will help to brighten his mood, because he probably can't get outside much, so the Skypanels will bring the outdoors to him."

I pressed on.

"All right, let's say Dad is on trial for murder. Will Skypanels help with that?"

"No, I don't think it will help. Because if he's on trial for murder, he's probably in jail, and if he is, he doesn't deserve Skypanels." 

Is there really anything more to say?

Courtesy of Missouri Preservation

Missouri Preservation is out again with it annual list of Missouri's most endangered historical properties. Cracking the lineup again is the James Collier Marshall Home -- often referred to as the Fairfax House -- at 9401 Manchester Boulevard in Rock Hill.

In observance of National Preservation Month, the full slate of nine endangered sites was unveiled (click here for complete list) in Hannibal at the Pilaster House -- also on the list, and known, too, as Dr. Grant's Drug Store.

"When we put this list together, we are not only looking at buildings that may not be physically sound or falling down," explains Missouri Preservation Board President Karen Bode Baxter. "But we also took to see if, like in the case of the Rock Hill house, it is being threatened by commerical development."

flickr.com/photos/mickdansforth

Conspicuously absent ifrom the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's account of Dennis Skillicorn's execution by lethal injection was what the killer chose for his final meal.

The Daily RFT has learned that Skillicorn dined alone in his cell, devouring a double-bacon cheeseburger and potato chips that was delivered from the Crossroads Restaurant & Lounge near the Bonne Terre prison, where Skillicorn met his maker at 12:30 this morning. The 49-year-old murderer did not have anything for dessert.

Vickie Green, a cook at the Crossroads, said her restaurant has been "selected several times" by prison officials when ordering up last suppers for its doomed inmates.

"I think it's because we got the best food in the county," said Greene. " We were honored to be the place they chose."

Jennifer Silverberg

Club Casino owner Cedric Taylor stands in front of his nightclub on State Street in East St. Louis

On March 19, leaders from across the metro east gathered at a news conference and demanded that East St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks -- also the city's liquor commissioner -- make the nightclubs in his jurisdiction close earlier

A week after the press conference, FBI agents raided Parks' city hall office, removing documents that the major characterizes as an investigation of "unlawful solicitation of money regarding liquor licences."

Parks has since decided not to curtail the 6 a.m. closing time, but controversy continues to swirl. Police say the clubs are a magnet for violence and that shutting them down earlier might curb the city's late-night mayhem. Nightclub owners and patrons say they're being unfairly blamed for their city's crime woes.

In our news feature this week, RFT staff writer Keegan Hamilton investigates the scandal and controversy of Eastside politics, while painting a vivid portrait of the wild world that is the East St. Louis nightlife.

Almost 60 years ago, a Missouri woman named Jetta Carleton wrote a bestselling novel, The Moonflower Vine, about the secret desires and longings of a close-knit farm family living on the state's westerly fringe.

The book, the only one Carleton ever published, received rapturous reviews and earned a spot on the New York Times' bestseller list, alongside novels from such literary luminaries as Salinger and Updike. But, as RFT staff writer Aimee Levitt, informs, Moonflower's season in the sun was brief and faded quickly into obscurity.

Levitt's prose-worthy feature this week, "Moonflower Resurrection," elegantly tells the story of the spirited, red-haired Carleton, and how and why this long-forgotten book has, like the moonflower itself, come out in full bloom again. 

zitdoctor.com

Dr. Jerome Aronberg

There I was this morning, doing a little fist pump in front of the TV, having learned that my beloved San Francisco Giants had beaten the Nationals the night before with a three-run, walk-off homer, when my wife, daily newspaper in hand, trotted up the stairs.

"You gotta to see this," she announced.

"Clayton doctor is charged in sex case," the headline read.

But not just any Clayton doctor. No, it was my Clayton doctor, the guy I saw several years ago for a very unfortunate skin rash. Let's just say it was a real pain in the ass.

I grabbed the paper and read on:

flickr/photos/kimberlyfaye

This just in to the Daily RFT newsroom, and it's a shocker:

Webster Groves High School officials announced today that due to the number of snow days during the current school year, 30 minutes (yes, 30 long minutes) will be added to the academic year in order to meet state attendance requirements.

"To accomplish this," the school said on its website, "we are adding one additional minute to each school day, particularly 7th period, from May 4-May 28."

That's right, one extra minute. Can it get worse? Yes, it can:

"We will also add an additional two minutes to each final exam on May 29 and June 1-2, making dismissal time 11:09 a.m. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause."

The horrific story of Philip Markoff, the Boston University medical student accused of murdering a prostitute he'd solicited through Craigslist, has obviously inflicted tremendous strain on the multimillion-dollar Internet company and its founder, Craig Newmark.

Generated by our sister paper in Minneapolis, our feature this week is one a helluva compelling story of how Newmark, under attack from all corners, has found an unlikely ally: a victim's family.

But don't stop there.... 

Every year, thousands of Americans are suckered out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by a burgeoning number of West African e-mail hucksters. Law enforcement agencies have done little or nothing to track down these far-flung perpetrators. Enter Paul Kinsella of New Athens, Illinois.

In this week's feature, RFT writing fellow Nicholas Phillips delves deep into the mindset that governs this full-time -- and quite obsessive -- scam baiter. As Kinsella put it, "I like being a jerk." And, as you'll see, he's darn good at it. For your reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend "Master Baiter."

In our News Real, writer Kristen Hinman skillfully chronicles the story of Frederick "Fritz" Lehmann and how his family's prized and extremely expensive Chippendale chairs went missing years ago -- only to turn up earlier this month inside the Botanical Avenue dining room of a St. Louis attorney.

Also on tap this week, our sagacious theater critic Dennis Brown fires off some critical commentary in the "verbal quicksand" that has all but doomed this particular adaptation of Kafka's The Trial at the Tower Grove Abbey .

Restaurant reviewer Ian Froeb, meanwhile, pays a visit to Dressel's in the Central West End and finds that the old faithful establishment, more than 30 years later, hasn't lost a beat.

I'm convinced that Google Maps will someday provide us with a form of virtual travel that's just as good as the real thing. For example, I already use the Web site (and its incredible Street View feature) to revisit places I've traveled and check out new places I'd like to see.

It can also be used for less exotic jaunts. Like retracing that shooting spree Sunday night in St. Louis that ended with four people shot within the span of five hours. Miraculously, none of the injuries are considered life threatening.


View Sunday Night Shoot Spree -- St. Louis, Mo. in a larger map
Click the link above to check out an interactive map of the shootings or continue reading to see Street Views of the crime scenes. Yeah, I know. It's hardly Lonely Planet travel material. Let's call it Rough Guides.
  

photo by Keegan Hamilton

East St. Louis mayor Alvin Parks said Friday that the city's bars, liquor stores and nightclubs will continue to serve alcohol until the current closing time, despite criticism.

A repertorial smorgasbord awaits this week in RFT. Writer Kristen Hinman gets the ball rolling with a story on the Liberation Christian Church, whose hip-hop "Soul Force" sermons has made for a unique worship experience every other Sunday on the Delmar Loop. You'll also want to take a look at "Diary of a Mad Man," by Keegan Hamilton. Here, Hamilton tells the bizarre story of Dennis Long, who, after failing to get us to write a story about him, went out and made his own news -- as in stealing a Mercedes-Benz, dousing himself with gasoline, lighting a match, then crashing the car through the front door of a Florissant nursing home

The feature story is one you're not going to want to miss, either. Kristen Hinman (yes, it was a busy week) summons the literary world inhabited by Keisha Ervin, whose gritty tales about the mean streets of St. Louis have earned her the reputation as one of the country's hottest purveyors of urban fiction.

And, as always, spend some quality time with RFT theater critic Dennis Brown, who this week let's us know about that surprise finale at the Kevin Kline Awards. In Cafe, Ian Froeb takes us back to the reinvented, but hotter-than-ever eatery, The Shaved Duck. Our featured music presentation comes complements of Christian Schaeffer, who talks with CeliaShacklett , a one-woman musical renaissance.

Our feature story this week, "Death Watch," is a must-read for anyone who has wondered about assisted suicide, the changing ways in which it is practiced, and the ethical and moral questions it raises.

This engrossing story by RFT writer Aimee Levitt focuses on the Final Exit Network, a radical offshoot of the now-defunct Hemlock Society who have chosen helium as its preferred agent of death and total secrecy as its modus operandi. As Levitt skillfully chronicles, the group's uncoventional protocols and its clandestine behavior have put the assisted-suicide network on life support.

We're back at you, and on April Fool's Day no less.
 
This week we proudly present our special "Play Ball" Opening Day 2009 spread, complete with a full-page St. Louis Cardinals schedule (suitable for framing), and a thought-provoking piece by our baseball blogger extraordinaire, Aaron Schafer, who ponders whether this will at last be a breakout year for top Redbird prospects.

In keeping with the baseball theme, our News Real, with its oh-so--clever headline, "The Sultans of Sod," details the lengths Cardinals groundskeepers go to to keep Busch Stadium green.

We're back on the streets, so grab yourself a copy and start moving your eyeballs. We have a lot to offer this week, and you sure can't beat the price. Your reading satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back!

Unreal, for one, is up to its old tricks with some off-the-wall interviews with a so-called certified ethical hacker and a terrorist priest. This week's News Real from Keegan Hamilton lays out the reasons why the tiny police force in hardscrabble Kinloch is up in arms.

You're not going to want to miss the second installment of "Vanishing Act," an RFT Special Report by Kristen Hinman, who continues to cobble together the sorry saga of Christian Ferguson, who is almost surely dead. Police think they know who the killer is, and yet there is nothing they can do about it.