St. Louis News Blog

Like so many of our fellow layabouts who have nothing better to do, Unreal has looked on slack-jawed and mesmerized over the past week as Stltoday.com social media editor Kurt Greenbaum underwent a slow-motion self-immolation, beginning last Friday when he outed a poor schmoe at a local educational institution who had the gall to answer an innocent question -- "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten? And did you like it?" -- with a one-word rejoinder: "Pussy".

twitter.com/kgreenbaum

Kurt Greenbaum

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worldtoiletday.com

​There was a time, like this morning, when Unreal considered Thanksgiving by far the shittiest holiday in November. To put it delicately, there are certain traditional foods that do not agree with our digestive system. (Plus, time in the crapper means desperately-needed time away from our family. And the Detroit Lions.)

But we were, as we are with so many things, definitively proven wrong. It turns out that tomorrow, November 19, is World Toilet Day.

Ah yes, we thought, a time to honor the porcelain bowl, which so often sees only our posterior, never our face, unless we've had one tequila shot too many. And that ain't so pleasant, either. Oh, toilet, cold, white and shiny, which has cradled our ass through so many difficult hours, been the receptacle of so much piss, so much shit, and just a soupçon of vomit, we give you our love and our gratitude...  (Give us a few hours and we'll concoct a few rhymed couplets in your honor!)

But we were wrong again.

bergersbeat.com

Jerry Berger

​Back when we was a pup, men were men and what happened in the newsroom stayed in the newsroom. That's why Unreal coughed up our morning tequila shot when we read Chad Garrison's scoop about 76-year-old Gossip Column Emeritus Jerry Berger getting banned from the Post-Dispatch premises for allegedly feeling up the male help.

"After a recent newsroom visit, we received several complaints from staff members about inappropriate behavior directed at them from Jerry," says P-D editor Arnie Robbins. "I love Jerry. We're friends. But we cannot tolerate that type of behavior in the newsroom."

Well, here at Riverfront Times, we take pride in our old-school cred. That's right: We not only tolerate "that type of behavior in the newsroom," we openly encourage it.

This Unreal does not understand: Somehow, stores in Boca, Cape Cod and Long Island are already stocking the Booty Pop. Come on, Ladue, what gives?!

Last week Unreal revisited our favorite local sex blogger, The Beautiful Kind, a 36-year-old divorced mom who was recently ranked #5 on a fellow sex blogger's list of the 100 best on the Internet.

Unreal has, we must admit, kind of a soft spot for Elvis movies. We like to revel in their badness. But Everything is Terrible is in a whole 'nother league. As students at Ohio University, this group of friends got in the habit of watching bad video. Really, really bad video. Like, ten times worse than Elvis movies video.

When graduation scattered them across the country, they started a blog so they could continue to share their most prized crap with one another. (Motto: "If everything is terrible, then nothing is.") Things snowballed, as they do, but instead of writing a book, the group created a movie and a stage show, which they are bringing to Antarctica (5226 Gravois Avenue) tomorrow night.

everythingisterrible.com

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This morning, Unreal called up Commander Gilgamesh, one of the group's original members, currently based in Chicago, to find out more.

Unreal: So what can we poor, unsuspecting St. Louisans expect tomorrow night?

Commander Gilgamesh: We don't even know until we do it, but I can promise surprises, special guests, surprises and giant aliens with long arms and furry heads. And we definitely have the movie. That never falls apart.

Unreal likes to think we knew her when...

Courtesy of Simon & Schuster

Who has two thumbs and agreed to pose nude for Esquire (as an experiment, of course)? This guy!

​A.J. Jacobs, the quirky Jew who lived biblically for a year (and lived to tell) and read the entire encyclopedia (see above parentheses), visits the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival Tuesday to pimp his new project, The Guinea Pig Diaries, My Life as an Experiment.

Dude is a writer for Esquire who not only gets to turn a lot of his magazine work into book fodder, but gets paid to do things like outsource his life to a pair of Indian assistants.

No, really. It's in there, along with essays about the trials and tribulations of practicing something called Radical Honesty and what it's like to get nude for a photo shoot.

Unreal quite enjoyed the book, not only for Jacobs' smart sense of humor but for his breezy, hey-if-you've-got-five-minutes-in-the-pooper-ponder-this-for-a-second-willya sorta tone.

Btw, bathroom reading is something Jacobs can appreciate. Keep going. 

Unreal: Are you wearing pajamas?
A.J. Jacobs: [Laughs]. No, I'm going formal. I'm in a T-shirt and jeans.

In this awesome recession we have going on right now, I feel like you're going to make a lot of people jealous with this book. I mean, you are basically making a living sending lots of e-mails, posting ads on Internet dating sites and, um, outsourcing your job.
{Laughs]. Well, I have to say I feel quite lucky to be able to make a living this way. I am blessed as they say in The Bible.

I'm sure it was flattering when Mary Louise Parker said you should pose naked in Esquire. Were you disturbed when your wife agreed?
Oh! More than a little! I was completely disturbed. It was horrible.

Is the portrait hanging in your living room?
Actually Esquire made up a little mock cover and put my nakedness on it. So we do have that, but not in the living room. We don't want to scare our guests.

Well, I'm going to be, what do you call it, radically honest. I liked it a lot better than the ones I found of you on Google images.
[Laughing]. Well thank you that's very flattering.

​Just published yesterday is RFT's reportage from the Miss Gay America pageant, which overtook the Millenium Hotel downtown last week. It's a delicious read.

The RFT also captured behind-the-scenes video at the pageant, asking contestants what it took to become the top dog in a pageant whose motto is: "Where boys are boys, and female impersonation is an art."

So no, there are no surgical augmentations below the neck for these contestants.

In one man's words:

"So, it's just like what you would see on television, it's not much different, it's just men wearing dresses and portraying the image of a woman."

(Video by Stew Smith and Amanda Andert.)

Wikimedia Commons

You won't find a crapper as rustic as this one at the I-44 Conway Welcome Center. It has modern wastewater treatment!

​This just in from the latest issue of AAA's Midwest Traveler magazine: a $10.8 million Missouri rest stop has collected props from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in the coming-in-ahead-of-time-and-under-budget category.

Your humble Daily RFT correspondent celebrated for a minute here before it hit us: Missouri has a rest stop?

The Route 66-themed outpost apparently opened back in May in a faraway-sounding place called Conway. Among the eco-friendly perks are motion-sensored toilets, pet walking areas and "a modern wastewater treatment system."

Alrighty then!

That'll sure differentiate the Conway Welcome Center from our run-of-the-mill do-me-doggie truck stops.

​Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interesting story about the Missouri Department of Revenue's determination that yoga studios are fitness centers and therefore subject to the state's 4 percent sales tax on the latter.

In Unreal's continuing effort to make the world a better place, we turn to potentially misleading typos in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. An inveterate racetrack denizen, if there's one thing Unreal knows, its how to read the odds.
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Unreal loves a business trip as much as anybody. Oh, the fun we've had on long drives out to the O'Fallons, Lake of the Ozarks and Ste. Genevieve! The best part, though, comes after we get home, when that little expense check magically shows up in our pigeonhole. How wonderful life would be, we've often thought, if we could just disappear for a few days and then get that expense check without, you know, actually doing any work.  Daily life, especially in these times, does get expensive and a little extra cash is always welcome.

Then we heard about the Maloney & Porcelli Expense Report Generator. Through the magic of the Internet, it makes a full expense report for you, with receipts and everything, that you can just send to your accounts person.

Eagerly, we decided to try it out. Three hundred twenty bucks and thirty-eight cents sounded like a reasonable expense check for the strenuous business of sitting at home in our underwear watching daytime TV.

Jeff Rainford

​Is it just Unreal, or is that St. Louis' Chief Ball Buster Jeff Rainford calling the shots against the Second City?!

www.espn.com

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​Unreal likes to pride ourself on ingenuity. But we're not too cocky to tip the ol' cap to the truly awesome ideas of others, like "Texts From Last Night."

That website's premise is simple and effin' hilarious. Simply send in your (frequently drunken) texts from last night, including area code, and we'll post 'em, say the site's anonymous founders.

For Unreal's purposes, here's where it gets even more beautiful: TFLN lets you search for entries by zip code!

The recent revelation caused Unreal to think that we should start a lil' "314's Greatest Hits from TFLN" as a regular Friday feature on Daily RFT.

You're not busy, are you? Enjoy!

(314): I will give everyone a free pointer today. Here it goes, always pee by the house late at night to avoid getting shot by drunk bastards with guns. Never go by the tree line.

​A little nugget from the Unreal e-mailbox, which raises several questions at once:

1. Why the $67 price tag?

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2. By the same token, where'd they come up with the $5,254.96 figure? Why not shoot the moon and go for $5,254.97?

3. The small print at the bottom ...​says:

si.com

Broadway Joe: The man least likely to pottymouth that other Joe

​This just in to the Unreal e-mail bag. The second installment of HBO's quarterly Joe Buck Live show's slated for Tuesday, September 22. Per the press release (boldface is ours):

In addition to a previously announced live gathering featuring three of the NFL's all-time great quarterbacks - Dan Marino (Dolphins), John Elway (Broncos) and Joe Namath (Jets) - Buck will host a roundtable discussion with newsmakers Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys) and Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks). Buck will also go one-on-one with former baseball star Curt Schilling, who is among the most opinionated observers on the sports scene.

The burning question, of course, is: Who'll take up the challenge Artie Lange threw down with his obscenity-drenched rant during episode one on June 15? If your memory's hazy, after Buck allowed that his favorite website is TMZ.com, pottymouthed comedian Lange posited that next on Buck's list was "suckingcock.com."

This time around, Unreal's money is on Cuban. Least likely? Namath.

Following is a poll, complete with the odds as we see them:

​ From the Hyde Park Herald, until last January the President's source for neighborhood news:

Hyde Park Herald

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flickr.com/photos/dee_lightful

​Unreal doesn't consider ourself a likely candidate for salvation, but we happened to hear Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" on the radio the other day and decided that if it ever does happen, it will be on a dance floor. Of course, our Patti-inspired vision involves vast quantities of hallucinogens and maybe some ecstatic Sufi-like spinning.

Then we heard about The Body Light Club, a Christian nightclub downtown, next door to the City Museum. Our heathenish heart atremble, we called up Leonard Foxworth, Jr., the club's owner to find out how soon we could get saved.

Unreal's got nothing against Apple, but we were briefly puzzled to see, amid the computer maker/geek cult's hype for the newest iteration of its OS X operating system, Snow Leopard, the highway sign for Interstate 64:

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What could this mean?

Awful Library Books

​Unreal recently came across an absolutely wonderful blog called Awful Library Books. Founded by two Michigan librarians named Mary and Holly, the site is, in their words, "a collection of public library holdings that we find amusing and maybe questionable for public libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection."

Herewith Unreal's favorite awful titles:

• Wax in Our World
• Our Backward Children
• My Cat's in Love or, How to Survive Your Feline's Sex Life, Pregnancy and Kittening
• Teacher Spanks Johnny: A Handbook for Teachers
• The Love Bugs: A Natural History of V.D.'s
• What's Wrong With My Snake?
• Do-It-Yourself Coffins
• More Great Pantyhose Crafts
• A Passion for Donkeys
• Phunology (a true classic in the genre of parlor game instruction, dating from 1923)

While dining on goat and fufu at a Nigerian restaurant this weekend, Unreal spotted a preview for a film called Hitler. Immediately, we fell in love and abandoned all plans of downloading an advance copy of New Moon. This is the film to see this year. We dare you to tell us any different.

Is it just us, or is it always the high-school band director??

STLtoday.com

The skin-flute is indeed a formidable instrument.

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flickr.com/photos/syl2007

​Unreal has just been informed that the biggest question that plagues single women is "Why are all the good men taken?"

This came as a surprise to us, because we always believed the lament of the single woman (well, actually, women in general) was "Why are men such assholes?"

But we came across the good men being taken question in an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which told us right away that this was a question of serious scientific import. Or maybe the asshole question is far too complex to be resolved with one experiment on a group of undergrads who need the credit for their Intro to Psych course. (Remember when you actually got money for participating in a psych experiment? Unreal does -- with longing.)

Ph.D. student Jessica Parker and her advisor Dr. Melissa Burkley, the authors of this article (called "Who's chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching"), hypothesized that "taken men are perceived as good" and set up an experiment on 184 undergraduates, 97 of them female, at Oklahoma State University to prove it.

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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Here at Unreal's dear old RFT base of operations, we get TONS of e-mail. By TONS we mean scads, heaps, piles, mountains. Think: landfill. We're, like, the cat lady of e-mails.

But we're not complaining. Fact is, scrolling down our inbox, sifting through our massively clogged spam filter -- and throwing nearly everything away -- can induce in Unreal a  Zen-like calm. There's a certain Dada-ist bent to the process, even as the eyes glaze over and the brain's alpha waves kick in. Every once in a while, a chunk of virtual flotsam catches our eye and won't let go...

Such was the case this morning, when we encountered:

Subject:     Yaz Ayları için Oyuncaklar

August Busch IV

 It's been a while since Unreal posted our Entirely 100% Unauthorized August Busch IV Dating Contest.

And, truth be told, we kind of forgot about the competition. That's because just one Daily RFT reader (Dena Vellone) initially responded to our quest to find a new life partner for the recently divorced -- and unemployed -- August Busch IV.

Now, five months later, and suddenly there's a renewed interest in the contest. Readers "Helen," "Fuzzy," "Rose Lynn" and "Lily" have all commented this month to either wish the beer scion luck or throw their names into the ring to become his soul mate.

That's fine. But as we originally posted, better would be to send us an email (200 words max) stating why you think you'd be a perfect fit for A4. A picture of yourself wouldn't hurt either. 

We'll then post your sentiments on this blog, and we'll do our best to pass them, as well as your photo, along to the eligible bachelor himself.

So drop us a line ladies (or gentlemen). After all, this Bud could be for you.
 

Every once in awhile Google's and Yahoo's "alert" e-mails bring Unreal a nugget of can't-live-without news, like an announcement of a gigantic bible-eating & pie-beating convention at America's Center, or the publication of a book about how not to make sex with your mother-in-law really awkward.

Unreal really enjoyed the gem delivered this morning under the headline, "Man With Workout-Ball-Slashing Fetish Charged."

Wikimedia Commons

Here's what appears when Unreal searches online images for "fetish." Ball-slashing not found. Drats.

According to the story, "The St. Louis County Sheriff's Office says a man with a self-professed sexual fetish for slashing rubber balls was arrested and has appeared in court.

"Police started looking for 31-year-old Christopher Bjerkness after surveillance tape allegedly showed him breaking into a fitness clinic in May and slashing exercise balls.

"Duluth Police said Bjerkness was arrested after he called them from..."

Hold up there! DULUTH?!

OK, uh, yeah, that would be St. Louis County, Minnesota.

'Round these parts, we're more likely to see a headline about arrests of drivers of redneck limos.

For the rest of that Duluth story, take the jump.

www.inperspire.com

A few weeks after we interviewed Darla Dale, one of the founders of Inperspire Motivational Fitness Towels, a lovely little package came across our desk. Inside, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper, was an Inperspire towel for our very own, plus a coupon for 20 percent off our next order for Inperspire.

Now, we love our towel. It is soft and white and emblazoned with the slogan "Sudo, ergo sum. I sweat, therefore I am" and a drawing of Rodin's The Thinker. (Unreal, you may have noticed, is the philosophical type.) We haven't sweated into it yet -- so far we've only used it as a scarf to ward off hypothermia brought on by the hyperactive air-conditioning at our desk -- but we love our towel and you will have to pry it from our cold, dead hand.

But we also want to share the Inperspire love. So if you would like the 20 percent off coupon, please send a picture of your t-shirt pit stains to unreal@riverfronttimes.com. No smelly t-shirts, please. A picture can say a thousand words about how badly you need a new towel.

Though it's unlikely Ichiro Suzuki combed through last week's Riverfront Times Guide to the All-Star Game, the Seattle Mariners star did visit one prominent spot on Ian Froeb's fact-packed (if controversial) "Inside Baseball: A tour of St. Louis landmarks, from the famous to the infamous (and everything in between)."

Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons)

Seattle Times sports columnist Larry Stone writes that while in St. Louis for the All-Star Game, Ichiro "spent part of Monday visiting the St. Louis grave of Hall of Famer George Sisler, whose single-season hits record he broke in 2004. Ichiro very much wanted to pay his respects to Sisler, and brought flowers to leave at the gravesite."

Ichiro, Stone notes, broke Sisler's single-season hits record back in 2004. Sisler family members were present at Safeco Field for the game in which Ichiro tied and then broke the record. (Sisler amassed 257 hits for the St. Louis Browns in 1920; Ichiro finished '04 with 262 hits.)

Sisler is buried at the Old Meeting House Presbyterian Church Cemetery, at 2250 North Geyer Road in Frontenac.